Single staircase egress is not supported

“City of Victoria staff will look into how to work with a provincial government decision to remove the requirement for a second exit stairwell in new buildings up to six storeys.

The move comes at the urging of Coun. Marg Gardiner, who said proper exiting has been proven to save lives.

Fire Chief Dan Atkinson told council the fire service doesn’t support removing the requirement, or the way the province arrived at its decision by canvassing other jurisdictions for best practices.

“We think this is too fast, we weren’t adequately consulted, our concerns weren’t adequately addressed through the consultation process,” he said.

“All we’re asking is that this go through the appropriate channels for any other change to a life-safety system, which would be to go back to the national codes review and let it run its course there.”

Atkinson said there is a consensus that removing the second egress stairwell increases risk for a building.

He said Victoria would not currently have the capacity to address a fire in that kind of structure the same way it’s done in places like Seattle, where those kinds of buildings are allowed.

Atkinson told council that Seattle would typically respond with 34 firefighters within 180 seconds of the first alarm to a fire at that kind of structure.

In Victoria, he said, they would be able to respond with about 14 firefighters for that kind of deployment, which would not be enough to attack the fire and work on rescuing occupants.

When the province announced the change last August, then Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon said it was about increasing housing supply, as removing the requirement for a second stairwell per floor would mean more options for residents who need larger layouts.

He also said it would mean more housing projects on smaller lots and allow greater flexibility for multi-bedroom apartments, adding housing density in areas of transit-oriented developments.

The idea of two exits is to allow occupants an alternate means of escape if one exit is blocked.

The province said new buildings designed with only one exit stairwell would require other safety measures, including sprinklers, smoke-management systems and wider stairwells.

The motion to study how to deal with the change passed 7-2, with councillors Matt Dell and Jeremy Caradonna voting against.

Dell said he was following the lead of the province, calling the change “a major way to help the housing affordability crisis in the city and across the country with a minor increased fire risk that we are going to have to mitigate.”

“We’ve heard from one stakeholder today, the fire chief, who I obviously deeply respect, but there’s a whole other body of knowledge out there that is weighing the pros and cons of the housing crisis, fire concerns, technology,” he said.

Staff are expected to bring a report back to council before the end of this year.

Gardiner had hoped any projects in the pipeline could be paused until they could be assessed against local guidelines after city staff report back later this year.

But council voted that down 7-2 — councillors Gardiner and Stephen Hammond were the lone votes in favour — with several councillors saying it wasn’t fair to change the goalposts for developers who may have bought land and started work based on the current B.C. Building Code.

According to city staff, there is just one project currently in the pipeline that meets the criteria for the change.”