Fire Safety in Housing

For years, stakeholders and partners have asked Codes Canada and the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes (CCBFC) to consider the fire performance of houses in regards to occupants’ as well as emergency responders’ safety. In 2015, the Executive Committee of the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes (EC) agreed to a new strategy to address these requests in order to reach a decision on the fire safety in housing. In February 2017, the EC identified this task as a priority.

In order to assess the adequacy of the fire performance of houses one needs to understand how inherent fire safety features and construction materials found in today’s houses have influenced the fire performance over time. It is also important to identify the societal expectations for the safety of occupants today and into the future. Both considerations, current fire safety of residents in houses and societal expectations also need to include fire-fighting practices when it comes to rescue operations in burning homes.

The objective of this project is to provide CCBFC objective information that can be used to rationalize a decision on whether current fire safety in housing is adequate and whether additional changes may be necessary. In other words, quality, objective information is needed to understand the positive impact of those fire safety measures that have already been implemented over time as well as the potentially negative impacts introduced by more flammable or faster burning construction materials, and to allow an objective look at the fire safety risk of homes for residents and emergency responders.