Abbotsford’s fire chief is looking to give inspectors more tools to get landlords to tear down or properly board up derelict houses at risk of catching fire.
Abbotsford Fire Rescue Service (AFRS) chief Don Beer says that while the city has seen a few vacant homes go up in flames, the situation elsewhere in the Lower Mainland has been even worse.
As home prices have risen, investors have scooped up old homes with the intention of redeveloping the properties. The homes are vacated, but not often torn down immediately. With the power off, they have a tendency, then, to catch fire when squatters move in and use fire to cook or provide light.
Beer said Richmond and Surrey have both dealt with the problem. Abbotsford hasn’t been as plagued by vacant house fires, but it’s also not escaped unscathed. The department has dealt with several such blazes in recent years. And this spring, the same vacant Crescent Way house caught fire twice in the space of a month. It has since been torn down.
Beer said the idea is to put processes in place before it becomes a major issue.
“It hasn’t at this point drained our resources or wreaked havoc,” he said. “What we’re doing is foreseeing what’s happened in other communities … so we’re not going to find ourselves behind the eight -ball with this.”
Under its new master plan, the AFRS is looking to set up a new system to focus fire inspections on “high-risk, low compliance buildings,” and monitor the scope of the derelict building problem.
While firefighters already have some options when it comes to dealing with derelict homes, Beer said the AFRS will explore rules to explicitly lay out what owners of vacant homes must do to protect their structures from fire, as well as the consequences if they do not follow through.
Richmond, which Beer repeatedly referenced, stiffened its fire protection bylaw by expanding the definitions of vacant properties and giving itself the ability to bill owners of such properties if firefighters need to attend. That city also maintains an inventory of vacant or abandoned properties, with police providing regular updates to the city so it can act as needed. Property owners have only 24 hours to board up their vacant properties after its discovered to be open. If they fail to do so, the city can board up the house itself and bill the owner.