Is your building safe? Fire safety considerations for high rise residents

Many people living in apartment buildings were left wondering if their buildings aresafe after seeing thefire that consumed Grenfell Tower in London, England last week.

"It wasn'tsomething that anybody expected to see," Tom Ruggle, Chief Fire Prevention Officer for the City of Kitchener told CBC's Craig Norris, host of The Morning Edition, on Monday about his reaction to the fatal fire.

"From a professional side, we really expect buildings to perform better than that."

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However, Ruggle said what happened inGrenfell Tower is not something that would likely happen in Ontario due to building design and the provincehaving set fire codes that look at compartmentalization and confiding problems to an area of the building.

The codes also include retrofitting older buildings to make them safer.

Safety protocol

It's important that residents living in high rise buildings speak with their property manager to find out what the safety procedures are in case of a fire, said Ruggle.

"Every building of this kind has to have a fire safety plan," he said.

The plan takes into account how the building wasbuilt, looks at safety systems that are in place, the number of stairwells and whether or not there are sprinklers to giveoccupants standardized procedures to follow in case of a fire.

He adds it's critical that residents take time to read thefire safety plan in their building

"As soon as the problem occurs, the decisions that the occupants make are the ones that are going to be most critical and the most important," he said.

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Residents should also keep an eye on their buildings to make sure building owners are keeping the building safe.

Ruggle said that complaints from residents arethe main reason that fire prevention teams go into a building to check things out.

"We don't have enough resources to get out into every building in the frequency that I'd like but if we get a complaint from a resident that they are seeing issues with maintenance or they don't feel safe, that gets my guys out in the building to do a complete walk through," he said.