Ontario mandate for fire sprinklers in retirement homes a Canadian first

I guess it's not surprising that there's a push on in Ontario to retrofit older nursing homes with automatic fire sprinklers as the leading edge of the Baby Boom is contemplating the prospect of long-term care.

To be fair, though, the issue has been front-and-centre for years in a province that has one of the worst records in North America for institutional fire deaths.

An inquest into the 2009 nursing-home fire in Orillia, Ont., that killed four seniors and injured six others last year recommended all retirement homes and assisted-living centres be retrofitted, the Toronto Star reported at the time. New facilities have required sprinklers since 1998.

But the same day the coroner's jury made its recommendations, a fire at an older seniors' residence in Hawksbury, Ont., claimed two more lives, Christie Blatchford noted in the National Post.

[ Related: Mandatory sprinklers at retirement homes among fire code changes ]

Blatchford also observed that three previous inquests had resulted in the same recommendation but the Ontario government failed to act.

According to the Ontario Fire Marshall, some 4,300 care facilities in the province do not have sprinklers, Blatchford wrote. said. Since 1980, 46 seniors have died in Ontario care-home fires.

The elderly and disabled living in institutions are especially vulnerable to fire because of the difficulty in evacuating the buildings quickly.

This week, Ontario Community Safety Minister Madeleine Meilleur announced the provincial Fire Code and Building Code would be amended to require all facilities where seniors, the disabled or other vulnerable people live to be retrofitted with sprinkler systems, CTV News reported.

“The new measures will improve fire safety for all people in Ontario living in these homes and it will give peace of mind for their loved ones,” Meilleur said.

The Toronto Star estimated more than 200,000 Ontarians live such facilities.

What's taken so long, you might ask?

The obvious answer is cost. Many facilities are privately owned and profit-oriented businesses reluctant to spend money if they aren't forced to do so.

The Star's story on the new regulations give some indication of the price tag. Revera Inc. said it spent $55 million adding sprinklers to its retirement homes in Canada, with the cost ranging from $250,000 to $1 million.

“We believe it was the right thing to do because safety is important to us,” Revera senior vice-president Janet Ko told the Star. “It was a significant investment.”

Ko added all retirement-home chains have been working towards retrofitting.

"It boosts the confidence levels of all seniors ... and their families," she said.

But public institutions seem equally unwilling to spend the money, if only because governments seem perennially cash-strapped.

The Ontario government is giving retirement homes five years to carry out the retrofit work, starting next January, and publicly-owned facilities have until 2025, the Star reported.

[ Related: Two seniors remain in acute care after nursing home fire ]

Meilleur said the long time frames allow facilities with more than four residents to do the retrofits within their renovation cycles.

Ontario is the first province to mandate such a broad sprinkler retrofit program for care homes, so its success should be watched closely by other provinces.

A 2011 post on PTSC Online, a site for fire and emergency organizations, said the likelihood of dying in a care-home fire is five times the national fire fatality rate and three times higher than in care facilities in the United States, where sprinklers are mandated for any institution receiving federal funds.

With no national code, it's up to the provinces to make the needed change, said Sean Tracy, Canadian regional director of the National Fire Protection Association.

"We need to change as this fire death rate should be unacceptable in any developed country that purports to care for its elder and infirm," he wrote.