ONTARIO TO SPEND $20M TO HELP SMALL RETIREMENT HOMES INSTALL AUTOMATIC SPRINKLERS
Oct 11, 2017
By Bob Komsic
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The province has announced it’ll spend $20-million to help install automatic sprinkler systems in small rural, retirement homes.
(CARP)
The homes will have to apply for the program, which aims to help those facilities will less than 49 beds comply with the rules.
The president of the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs feels this will make a difference.
”The initiative will undoubtedly save lives,” said Steve Hernan.
In 2014, Ontario became the first province to make sprinkler retrofits mandatory.
By January 1, 2019 all retirement homes must have automatic systems in place.
Currently, about 60% of the more than 730 licensed retirement homes in Ontario have them.
A coroner’s inquest into the 1995 fire that killed eight at a Mississauga seniors’ home recommended all new homes have them and existing homes should be retrofitted.
Calls for sprinklers increased after another deadly fire in 2009 left four dead at a nursing home in Orillia.