Ontario looks at speeding up sprinkler installation

The Ontario government is looking at whether it can pick up the pace on requiring seniors' homes to have sprinkler systems

Toronto Star
January 25, 2014
By Rob Ferguson and Theresa Boyle

A deadly fire at a Quebec retirement residence has prompted Ontario to look at speeding up the installation of sprinklers in seniors’ homes.

“We do have to take another look to see if there’s anything we can do to accelerate that . . . everyone is saying, ‘Is there something more we should be doing?’ ” Health Minister Deb Matthews told reporters on Friday.

Last May, the Ontario government announced that all private retirement homes must install life-saving sprinklers within five years.

But the deadline for publicly funded nursing homes is not until 2025. The phased-in approach is meant to coincide with provincial plans to redevelop older homes to bring them up to modern standards.

Plans for sprinkler retrofits followed years of lobbying by fire authorities, coroners and several politicians, proposing mandatory sprinkler legislation after 45 fire-related deaths in buildings housing seniors in the province since 1990.

A 2012 Star investigation found that many seniors would die if fires broke out because their buildings are missing fire-suppression equipment.

The catastrophic blaze at the Residence du Havre in L’Isle-Verte, Quebec is forcing Ontario officials to rethink the retrofit deadlines.

“I cannot imagine having to deal with that situation here in Ontario,” Matthews said. “It is an opportunity to take another look.”

But nursing home officials say it wouldn’t make much sense to install sprinklers before older homes have been rebuilt or renovated, the deadline for which is still 11 years away.

“Taking out ceilings and pipes is a huge undertaking and very expensive. If a home is slated to be rebuilt anyway, doing the sprinkler retrofits beforehand is almost like throwing money away,” said Donna Rubin, CEO of the Ontario Association of Non-Profit Homes and Services for Seniors.

It would make more sense to speed up the renewal of the homes and put in sprinklers at the same time, she said. However, the province is already behind schedule in its plans to redevelop homes by 2025, and a big reason for that is the government has not provided enough funding, according to the homes.

Any plan to pick up the pace would have to be backed up with more money, Rubin said.

The Quebec fire happened in the middle of the night when staffing at homes is at its lowest. The tragedy is drawing attention to the problem of understaffing.

Ontario nursing homes are required to have only one registered nurse on at all times, and there are no staffing requirements for private retirement homes.

Meantime, residents are a lot frailer than they were, even just a decade ago. At least 60 per cent of nursing home residents have dementia, 46 per cent are aggressive and many have multiple chronic illnesses and physical disabilities.

And private retirement homes, which are typically for less frail seniors, are now being referred to as the new long-term care homes because residents there can be quite ill and needy.

Nurses in nursing homes sometimes have no choice but to chemically restrain residents, particularly on the overnight shift, because they are so busy and the homes are so understaffed, Rubin said.

Rubin and Candice Chartier, CEO of the Ontario Long Term Care Association, recently appeared before the province’s finance committee to make a case for more funding.

“We would appreciate any extra staffing. Night shift is the leanest shift when it comes to staffing,” Chartier said.

Still, she said homes do as much as they can to address fire safety. Every home has an emergency evacuation plan and fire safety checks are done on every shift. That includes checking fire alarms and emergency exits.

Nevertheless Andy Glynn, vice-president of the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs, said it’s possible that a tragedy like the one in Quebec could happen in Ontario. “There is a real potential for that,” said Glynn, also deputy fire chief in Oakville.

“But we are taking lots of steps to try and prevent those things,” he hastily added, noting, for example, that local fire departments do mock evacuation exercises with homes.

He said that Ontario, in fact, is a leader in many ways when it comes to fire safety in seniors’ homes. Last year, it became the first province to require sprinkler retrofits in older homes. (They were already required in buildings constructed since 1998.)

Sadly, it has taken many retirement-home tragedies and resulting coroner’s inquests for Ontario to get to this point. Among them: a 2009 fire in Orillia that left four residents dead; a 2008 blaze in Niagara Falls that left three residents injured; and a 2008 fire in Huntsville that left 56 homeless.

When the province last year mandated sprinkler installation, it also announced additional fire safety requirements for private retirement homes. For example, their fire alarm systems must be hooked up with local fire departments. There are also new minimum standards for smoke detectors.

“The challenge for the sector is that they are not receiving any government funding to support the retrofitting,” said Laurie Johnston, CEO of the Ontario Retirement Communities Association.

Graham Webb, counsel for the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, said that if he were helping elderly parents choose a home, he would advise against any that do not have sprinklers and he would inquire about staffing levels.

Quebec government officials noted Friday that while the Residence du Havre did not have a sprinkler system, that province’s rules don’t require one for a building serving the “autonomous or semi-autonomous” so long as it has only three storeys or fewer.