File photo. This week's fire on High Street was mainly smoke damage, but still displaced over a dozen people for several days.
Twice in ten days, North Bay fire crews have had to respond to significant fires involving multi-residential units.
This week’s fire that caused significant smoke damage to an apartment building on High Street, and last week’s fire that gutted a boarding house on McIntyre, displaced, at least temporarily, almost 30 people in total.
Fire chief Grant Love says other than that, though, the fires are not similar.
“The second one was more smoke in the area when we arrived. The first one the building was fully involved. From that point of view there wasn’t much similarity. But the main thing was the number of people that had to be evacuated would be similar in size.”
There were different crews responding as well, so Love says training on evacuation procedures for multi-residential victims has paid off.
He is concerned, however, with one thing.
“What raises a concern to me is the possibility of some older buildings that may not have been kept up to standards or their systems maybe being not kept up.”
Love says sometimes the tenants are the reason a building falls into disrepair, or there are problems associated with its structure or fire safety.
But he also recognizes a lot of other multi-residential buildings wthin the city are older, and at the same time, are increasing their occupancy to accommodate the city's low vacancy rate.
“There’s lots of buildings like what we’ve seen and a lot of them are being turned into what I’ll call multi-residential or multi-family suites just because of their size, just because of the location and the fact that North Bay uses a lot of room type rentals.”
Love says many landlords go through the proper process of informing city officials and fire officials when they make changes to their buildings.
But he knows that doesn’t always apply, and it raises concerns about safety, for everyone involved.
“It’s not just a case of our firefighters being kept safe but also the residents and the people around them are kept safe. Especially if it’s been modified.”
“For example, I could have 'X' number of rooms in my place, in my building, and it could be fine for the way that it is. But as soon as I add a room or put an addition on to it, now things have changed.”
Love says the secret is open communication between landlords, tenants and the city.
“We all have to work together because we all realize there is a need for this type of thing. The important thing to realize it’s the landlord and the building owner that is ultimately responsible for the safety of the people in there.”
