Hamilton’s fire chief says recent fires in the city have been burning “hotter and faster” than they have in the past ten years and suggests it’s due to contents in homes today that are not made of natural products like they used to be.
“There’s a lot of synthetics, resins and flammable materials that are involved, so they’re burning hotter, faster,” Dave Cunliffe told 900 CHML’s Hamilton Today.
“Also, we have open concept … so without the containment that we used to have, where we’d have the four walls, fires are able to get bigger.”
Cunliffe says those types of fires often lead to multiple alarm calls requiring a much larger amount of resources.
Hamilton fire has responded to two and a half times more multiple alarm calls than was seen in 2019, with 40 of those types of events last year.
The city has already seen 10 multiple alarm blazes in 2023.
“Certainly it’s very concerning … not only are we seeing people getting hurt and killed, but we’re seeing significant damage where it’s not just impacting one or two families, it’s impacting multiple families,” Cunliffe said.
The tenth multiple-alarm blaze of 2023 on Century Street last Friday, which left one resident dead and sent five others to hospital, is still under investigation by Ontario’s Office of the Fire Marshal. The cause of the fire is not yet known, but there was an estimated $850,000 in damage at the two-storey home.
Cunliffe said the deceased was not seen during the early stages of the search and rescue at the height of the incident which saw a floor collapse in the rear portion of the house.
“This is the second really difficult fire we’ve had in the city. Just before New Year’s, we lost four people up on the Mountain,” he said. “In that case … there were no working smoke alarms, the fire marshal confirmed it. We’re still waiting for the one that happened on Century.”
Last year, the city had 323 structure fires with 72 per cent (235) at residential buildings. Fifty-one per cent of those incidents turned out to have non-working smoke alarms after an investigation.
Hamilton’s fire chief says working smoke detectors are “absolutely critical” amid a trend of denser flames in recent calls and “the law” as Ontario requires working alarms on all levels of any home.
“They have to be outside of sleeping areas, and it’s important that not only are they working, they need to be tested on a regular basis,” Cunliffe said.
He says detectors that require batteries should be changed out twice a year and life expectancy on a unit is typically only ten years from the manufacturer date.
Many newer alarms actually have a permanently sealed battery and power backup that typically lasts the lifetime of the device.
Cunliffe also says an escape plan, and having two ways out of every floor is also paramount in any home safety audit.
“You always need to know two ways out from every level and every room in your home, because you never know when that exit way may be cut off,” Cunliffe said.