A SIMPLE SOLUTION For preventing deadly fires
SIMPLY PUT, SMOKE DETECTORS SAVE LIVES. But changing behaviours and overcoming complacency are uphill battles in the fight against fire prevention
JOHN AMME SOUNDS BITTER. And perhaps with good reason. A fire in his attic caused $60,000 worth of damage to his home near Gage Park.
“I just couldn’t afford the insurance, you know what I mean?” says Amme, a 59-yearold unemployed welder, smoking a cigarette on his front porch.
It was just after 5 a.m. on Feb. 11, 2016 when firefighters were called to his house on Hilda Avenue.
“We were drinking downstairs,” Amme recalls, referring to himself and a buddy who was renting his attic for $400 a month.
Then his boarder called it a night, went upstairs and fell asleep with a burning smoke, he says. “I should have known better,” Amme says. If there’s a bright side, no one was injured in the fire, although Amme, his son and the renter were checked out for smoke inhalation as a precaution.
“First time,” he adds. “Sixteen years living here and I tried to help my buddy out.”
THE FIRE in Amme’s house is just one example of a common pattern in Hamilton.
Careless smoking is the city’s leading cause of residential fires, followed closely by unattended cooking.
What’s more disturbing is the lack of compliance with smoke detector regulations in Hamilton. Last year, based on fire department numbers, fewer than half of residences involved in a fire were in compliance with smoke detector rules, which require a working one on every storey and outside sleeping areas.
GREG HORDIENKO,
a 15-year veteran of the Hamilton fire department, was one of the first responders to last October’s fire on Grenfell Street that left three people dead. He carried one of the victims downstairs but it was too late.
Three of the four smoke detectors in the Grenfell Street house didn’t have batteries, according to a preliminary report by the fire marshal, and the fourth was too far away from the source of the fire to be activated.
Any death from a fire is tragic, Hordienko says, but particularly so in cases where there was no working smoke alarm.
“Just that little added safety feature could have saved their life.”
Megan Mikalauskas, a renter who survived the Grenfell fire but lost her mother and friend, has been frustrated to see subsequent deadly blazes on the news.
“Go through your house and make sure everything is working, and if you can’t do it, there are people from the fire department … who will come in and do it for you.”
John Verbeek, Hamilton’s assistant deputy fire chief, has been with the fire department for 35 years, “and the same messages 35 years ago are the same ones we’re saying today,” he said.
Smoke detectors save lives, he says simply.
“It’s probably the one and only thing that will give people the earliest warning of a problem in their home,” said Verbeek, who is responsible for fire prevention, community safety and planning.
“How many times do you walk past them, don’t pay attention or even think about the fact that they’re up there?”
THE CITY has a program called Alarmed and Ready to help increase smoke alarm compliance.
Firefighters will either change smoke alarm batteries or install the proper number of smoke alarms free of charge for those who own a home and are a senior, disabled or living on a low income.
In 2013, the fire department went a step further. Firefighters conducted a blitz of the Keith neighbourhood, near the waterfront between Sherman Avenue and Wellington Street and installed nearly 100 smoke alarms free of charge to anyone who wanted to participate in the program, regardless of circumstances.
It’s a model that could be replicated in other neighbourhoods as well, Verbeek notes.
There’s good evidence that these types of blitzes of at-risk neighbourhoods can pay big dividends.
Surrey, B.C., tried a similar experiment on a larger scale, targeting areas that were at higher risk of fires because of social and economic factors.
Seven high-risk zones were identified and more than 18,000 dwellings were visited by fire services in one week. Two years later, the data from Surrey showed that residential fires in the targeted areas were down by almost 65 per cent.
The proportion of working smoke alarms in Surrey rose from 16 per cent to 59 per cent. Over the subsequent decade, injuries and deaths from fire in Surrey dropped by almost two-thirds.
“If you treat those locations with fire safety education, make sure they have working smoke alarms, you will absolutely crush the rates of fires,” Surrey Fire Chief Len Garis said.
Garis is project manager of a national study that’s examining 10 years of fire-loss data representing about 70 per cent of the country’s population.
The Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs project will consider research questions, including risk factors for people and places, he says.
“We’re trying to create a national approach to these types of problems so that we can arm other fire chiefs and other fire departments across Canada with the tools to do this kind of work.”
Amanda McCormick, a criminology professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, teamed up with the Surrey department to examine community variables in 20 years of fire data.
“It turned out that there were a lot of differences,” McCormick said.
For example, some parts of town had lower rates of working smoke alarms while in others, kitchen fires were more prevalent. Armed with the findings from the 2009 study, which also looked at age and gender, but not income levels, Garis was able to develop a more targeted approach to fire prevention, McCormick says.
“It’s common sense to expect that there will be variations within your communities in terms of the source of fires, the response to fires and people’s preparedness to react to fire,” she said.
But accessing data to properly ex-
“Just that little added safety feature could have saved their life.” GREG HORDIENKO 15-YEAR VETERAN, HAMILTON FIRE DEPARTMENT
“The problem has been access to data to really measure and substantiate that those variations exist and then to build those evidence-based strategies.” AMANDA MCCORMICK CRIMINOLOGY PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF THE FRASER VALLEY WORKING WITH THE SURRY, B.C. FIRE DEPARTMENT
amine those variations and then build evidence-based strategies to fight fires can be tough, she says.
Other B.C. fire services were interested in Surrey’s data-driven approach but lacked funds and expertise to conduct such analysis, McCormick says.
Since then, there’s been more awareness of the value of data in developing better fire-prevention strategies, she adds.
“I think there needs to be more of an investment in these types of projects because in the long run it’s going to help fires services save money; it’s going to help save lives.”
IN HAMILTON, Ward 4 councillor Sam Merulla says smoke detectors should be mandatory and hard--
“I think sometimes there’s a bit of a reluctance of tenants to call us or to get us involved because they’re concerned about possible repercussions of a landlord on them.” JOHN VERBEEK ASSISTANT DEPUTY FIRE CHIEF, HAMILTON FIRE DEPARTMENT
wired into the electrical system.
More than a third of all fire deaths in Hamilton from 2012 through 2016 occurred in Ward 4, which has just seven per cent of the city’s population.
Ward 4 had the third-highest number of fires in Hamilton over the five-year period and nearly 80 per cent of the ward’s dwellings were built before 1961.
“If you have a proper fire escape and a working smoke alarm, I can’t see anybody sleeping through it,” Merulla said.
“Those are the types of things that save lives and they’ve been proven to save lives.
“Those are issues that, legislatively, should be provincewide or nationwide,” he added. “It shouldn’t even be up to the municipalities.”
Sometimes, says firefighter Chad Hiller, even the presence of a smoke alarm isn’t enough to overcome human behaviour.
“We can go in and install it,” said Hiller, a 15-year veteran of the Hamilton fire department. “But eight hours later the batteries can be taken out of it because someone wants to smoke in their bedroom.”
An area’s proportion of rental properties, low-income residents, age groups such as seniors and children, recent immigrants with language barriers, and people with disabilities are important factors to consider for fire safety, McCormick said.
“All of those are going to affect the likelihood of things like smoke alarms being installed and it’s going to affect what people are going to do when that smoke alarm goes off.”
In Hamilton, a high number of people in the lower city are tenants.
Half of all residential fires in the city from 2012 through 2016 occurred in rental units.
In Ward 2, for example, about 75 per cent of the people are tenants. That ward had the highest number of fire-related injuries during the fiveyear period and the second-highest number of fires.
By contrast, just six per cent of Ancaster’s residents are tenants and that ward had the lowest number of people injured in fires over the five years.
In a house that’s been converted to a triplex or fourplex, for example, each tenant is dependent on the behaviours of the others tenants.
All of them, meanwhile, are dependent on the building’s owner to follow fire code regulations and ensure that smoke alarms are properly installed and functioning.
“I think sometimes there’s a bit of a reluctance of tenants to call us or to get us involved because they’re concerned about possible repercussions of a landlord on them,” Verbeek said.
“But they should. No. 1, it’s their safety that’s paramount.
“It is the law that the owner’s responsible to ensure that things are working.”
Verbeek says any information provided to the fire department is kept confidential.
“Tenants should never be afraid to contact us and have us involved. We don’t release ever the names of people who make a phone call to us.”
Ward 3 has one of the highest rates in the city of dwellings that have been converted into multiple units.
Gentrification, which is quickly transforming Wards 2 and 3, could help reduce the fire burden as dwellings get converted back to singlehome dwellings.
A consequence of that, however, is that gentrification decreases the stock of lower-priced rental accommodations in a city that already has 6,000 people on the waiting list for affordable housing units.
“That’s going to potentially eliminate some of the unsafe living conditions for people while simultaneously putting greater pressure on displacement,” said Ward 3 councillor Matthew Green.
“It’s an unintended consequence of this real estate market we’re in right now.
“There’s a very immediate need to build more affordable units.”
Aidan Johnson and Terry Whitehead, hope to tackle fire safety and hygiene problems in rental housing through a licensing pilot project in their wards — 1 and 8.
“The truth is licensing is the most concrete thing that the city can do to get at the problem of fire and squalor in rental housing,” Johnson said.
Fire department statistics show that out of 14 residential fires in Ward 1 in 2016, seven broke out in rental units.
If supported at an upcoming rental housing subcommittee meeting in April, the pilot project would oblige landlords in their wards to undergo inspections to receive licences, he said.
“And it’s not optional. It’s like a restaurant. If you have a restaurant, you must have a licence. Your kitchen must be inspected.”
Johnson and Whitehead are targeting landlords who rent to students, with a large number of them attending McMaster University and Mohawk College in their wards.
If successful, rental housing licensing — a contentious proposal that has died on the vine before — the goal would be to fan the regime across the city.
“There are lots of good landlords, but there are also too many bad landlords, and licensing is a way to get at the bad landlords and require them to create safer tenancy situations,” Johnson said.
CHANGING PEOPLE’S behaviours and overcoming the inertia of complacency are two of the biggest challenges in reducing the fire burden in Hamilton.
“The bottom line is most people don’t think this sort of thing will ever happen to them,” Verbeek said.
“You tend to go home at the end of the day and you know your home is your safe place.
“It’s where you’re comfortable; it’s where you feel safe.
“Yet, when you think about it, the majority of the fires that we have in the city … occur in people’s homes.”
Neighbours on Hilda Avenue took in John Amme and his son after the fire.
They also helped haul out garbage and provided dumpsters. They’ve painted over the burn spots in the attic.
Amme hopes to finish the repairs, sell his two-and-a-half storey home and move into a smaller place.
In the meantime, the smoke alarms are working.
“I know when dinner’s ready,” he said, “because the smoke detector goes off.”
Changing people’s behaviours and overcoming the inertia of complacency are two of the biggest challenges in reducing Hamilton’s fire burden
“There’s a very immediate need to build more affordable units.” MATTHEW GREEN WARD 3 COUNCILLOR
Half of all residential fires in the city from 2012 through 2016 occurred in rental units.