Buildings in B.C. that are under six storeys will no longer be required to have more than one egress staircase, a change that has firefighters concerned about safety.
B.C. Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon announced the change to the provincial building code last week.
He says the change will help with the province’s housing crisis.
Requiring only a single staircase leaves more space for housing units, and makes six-storey buildings viable on smaller lots.
It’s understandable and extremely good to be distrustful of the motives of politicians. Genuinely, I applaud you for not trusting them blindly.
But in this case especially, Revi Kahlon and the other NDP members who worked on this have provided overwhelming evidence (facts) for the safety of single stairwell designs. Their evidence is coming from Europe and asia who have used these for a long time and still have better fire safety than we do in north america, they also have evidence from Seattle, which implemented similar changes and has found no measurable increase in fatalities or injuries from fires.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the Fire Chiefs Association has provided limited supportive data to counter the mountain of evidence that exists for switching to single stairwell, and that’s before even considering additional safety measures like pressurized/ventilated hallways, external fire exits, fire barriers, and high flow per-apartment sprinkler systems.
Positive pressure hallways/staircases would make a huge impact on the spread of smoke. Smoke would still be an issue if the fire was in the hall itself, but no amount of staircases can help you if you can’t access them. The quote from the Fire Chiefs Association really makes me think we’re using the second staircase to skimp on every other aspect of fire safety.
Unfortunately, as far as im aware, we generally are skimping. In the videos I linked above, it’s explained (with sources!) that most of the “issues” which the Fire Chiefs Association raises are issues in dual stairwell buildings as well. This is because of a number of factors, but includes items such as:
In the case that a fire breaches the containment of an apartment unit and spreads to the rest of the building, one stairwell is often allowed to burn relatively uncontrolled so that firefighters can focus on evacuating residents instead
The long hallways of dual stairwell buildings mean that it’s more likely for residents to get cut off from a safe stairwell, or need to travel a longer distance to a safe stairwell, vs single stairwell buildings where the stairs are right there
As dual stairwell buildings often end up with only 1 usable stairwell in the case of a fire, it’s a little silly to say that dual stairwell buildings allow residents coming down to not obstruct firefighters going up (especially when you consider that even with 2 stairwells, you can’t control which one people will use, even if both are functional)
Finally, for what it’s worth, my understanding is that positive pressure halls/staircases do aide greatly, even in the case that a fire is directly in the hall as they keep smoke from settling.
Edit: forgot two:
they’re in quite a few buildings now, but implementing widespread sprinkler systems in apartments is shown to contain fires to a room 96.2% of the time. (There’s a few different figures for this, but it generally seems to be between 88-97% effective)
IMPLEMENTING WIDESPREAD AND MANDAROTY TESTING OF SAFETY MEASURES. The majority of major & lethal fires are caused by faulty, untested, or otherwise nonexistent fire safety equipment. Requiring proper testing of sprinkler systems, fire alarms, ventilation, validation of building integrity, and other measures could greatly reduce fire danger in north american apartments, regardless of how many staircases they have.