Toronto highrise tenants will soon know if they´re `living in a fire trap´
(The Star Food)

Toronto highrise tenants will be able to see how their buildings fared on recent fire code inspections by the end of the year, Toronto Fire Services pledged Friday.The news follows a Metro investigation earlier this year on one man’s frustrating fight to get information about his own building’s fire code inspection. He was told to file a freedom of information request, a complicated and sometimes expensive process with a labyrinth of bureaucracy.Toronto Fire Services Chief Matthew Pegg acknowledged at Friday’s tenant issues committee meeting that in the past the process has been “very cumbersome� and “not effective and efficient.�Read more: Toronto tenants left in the dark on fire inspections“We understand that there is a need to improve open access to data,� added deputy fire chief Jim Jessop.Jessop said the goal is to provide tenants living in highrise buildings information from January 2017 to present on the date Toronto Fire was in their building, a copy of noted violations if any, and the date violations were cleared.Notices of violations will only be posted online once the file has been closed by Toronto Fire. The department is already required by law to post certain orders and notices in buildings after fire inspections. All highrise buildings were inspected in 2016 for fire code violations, Jessop said, but he did not have offhand a breakdown of the number of violations and which buildings they were in.Money for the open data initiative is already built into Toronto Fire Service’s 2018 budget request, which has not yet been approved by council. Chief Pegg did not have a dollar figure for how much it would cost.Tenant issues committee chair Councillor Josh Matlow said he heard from many concerned tenants who were “incredibly scared by what they saw� following the tragic Grenfell Tower fire in London, England, that killed at least 80 people.“When they tried to address that fear a ...