Fire Safety and Security

This report examines structure fires in British Columbia (BC) that occurred over a thirteen year period to explore variations in outcomes as a function of building height and life safety systems. The study outlines the data definitions that were used to identify the relevant subset of fires that occurred in the province during this time period.

The purpose of this study is to describe firefighter injuries and deaths in structure-related fires and to investigate the underlying connection between building properties, including fire safety measures, and their effects on the risk to firefighters responding to a fire event. For the first time, comprehensive fire-related data across Canada is available in the form of the National Fire Information Database (NFID). Using this new dataset, in conjunction with a literature review and an Association of Worker Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC) dataset, this report explores the impact of building properties (e.g. construction material, height) and fire safety measures (e.g. sprinklers, fire alarms) on firefighter casualties. For the purposes of this report, casualties represent both injuries and deaths.

With routine changes to building codes, the use of educational campaigns, and the technological advancements associated with smoke and fire detectors and alarms, it is much more common nowadays for homes to have functioning smoke and fire detectors, alarms, and suppression systems. However, this was not always the case for homes built decades ago. Given this, this research note focuses on the risk that older homes and those living in them face from fires and assesses whether there is a greater risk of fire-related deaths and injuries for those living in homes built before 1975 compared to those built after 1975.

This report examines 42,701 residential1 fire incidents reported to the British Columbia (BC) Office of the Fire Commissioner (OFC) between 1988 and 2015, inclusive (22.4% of the 190,564 fire incidents reported over this time). The high-level purpose of this analysis was to examine the significance of the method of fire control and fire safety systems on the fire outcomes (with respect to damage to properties and fire-related casualties). Building on these patterns, this analysis explores the fire outcomes for the specific subsection of areas within residential properties that experienced a disproportionate number fires and fatalities: the living room, the kitchen, and the bedroom. These room-specific findings are discussed with respect to the potential to enhance residential building fire safety in a targeted manner intended to both increase protection for residents and keep the costs of fire protection relatively low.

This report examines British Columbia (BC) building fires as a function of the general construction type. The fires that are examined were reported to the BC Office of the Fire Commissioner (OFC) between October 20, 2008 and October 19, 2013. The data included in this analysis was provided by 339 reporting agencies across the province, sampled from First Nations band areas, non-municipal areas (with and without fire protection), and municipal areas.

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The purpose of this study was to examine fire-related casualties, fire outcomes, and casualty behaviour for fires that occurred in residential properties, and to compare fires that occurred in buildings completely protected by sprinkler systems with those fires that occurred in buildings without any sprinkler protection.

This paper summarizes the findings from an evaluation of the historical fire protection performance of sprinkler systems in multi-level residential buildings in British Columbia (BC), with the intent of anticipating how the fire safety systems should perform in six-storey mid-rise wood-frame buildings, permitted in BC since 2009.

A large-scale fire demonstration was conducted to observe and validate the fire safety performance of a cross-laminated timber stair-elevator shaft as an alternative solution to a shaft of noncombustible construction for the now-completed 13-storey residential mass timber building project – Origine in Quebec City. The results demonstrated that the severe, high-intensity fast growing fire in the adjacent apartment had no impact on the mass timber stair/elevator shaft; the conditions inside the shaft were unchanged before, during and after the fire.

This Canadian Wood Council (CWC) publication was developed to assist designers in applying the fire safety requirements of the National Building Code of Canada for all buildings. This is a companion, explanatory document to the NBCC. Fire Safety Design in Buildings complements the Wood Design Manual, Wood Reference Handbook and other CWC publications, providing a comprehensive family of reference material for professionals involved with building design.