As in several other cities in Quebec and in Canada, the City of Montreal has taken action to diminish the growing number of false fire alarms on its territory and to encourage landlords to maintain their system well. The Service de sécurité incendie de Montréal (SIM) - the Montreal Fire Security Service will put into action this new regulation.
« The objective aimed at by these new measures is first and foremost to develop the awareness of the citizens who react less and less to the sound of a fire alarm. Consequently, this programme should also incite owners of dwellings to adequately maintain their alarm system and allow the Service de sécurité incendie de Montréal to guarantee the availability of its forces who will have to respond to urgencies and to the calls of the first respondents, » said Claude Dauphin, president of the executive committee and the person responsible for public security of the City of Montreal.
On his part, Serge Tremblay, director of the Service de sécurité incendie de Montréal has mentioned:
« The new measures will give us the opportunity to make owners of dwellings more aware of the importance of having a sound fire alarm system. Let us not forget that a system going off frequently without reason leads to diminishing vigilance of the occupants who, because they do not feel concerned anymore, hesitate to evacuate the premises thereby endangering, as a matter of fact, their security. »
Landlords and tenants will be informed of the new regulation, which will become binding on the 1st of December 2008, between the 1st of October and the 30th of November 2008. As such, a landlord whose fire alarm system goes off because of a malfunction or of an error of usage twice in 12 months, will receive an invoice from the City of Montreal.
The number of false fire alarms has gone up from 13 717 to 15 077 between 2004 and 2007, representing 29 % of firefighters leaving their quarters.
Fee scale
The new regulation foresees a fee scale according to the nature of the dwellings. For category 1 (residential buildings of one or two floors/with a small risk factor) and category 2 (residential dwellings with three stories at the most/with a medium risk factor), no fees will be exacted for a first unwarranted intervention, but from a second intervention onward, fees imposed will be 100 $, 250 $ for a third intervention and 500 $ for a fourth one and more.
For category 3 (residential, commercial and industrial buildings of six floors at the most/with high-level risks), still no fees for a first unwarranted intervention, but the following one will be 250 $ for a second one, 750 $ for a third one, and 2 200 $ for a fourth one and more.
Finally, there is category 4 (residential, commercial, industrial and institutional buildings/with a very high risk factor, example: commercial centres), no fees for the first unwarranted intervention, but beginning with the second one, fees will be 250 $, 750 $ for a third intervention, and 2 700 $ for a fourth intervention and more.
The City of Montreal signals that it foresees reimbursing part of the costs incurred by landlords who decide to invest in the installation of new farm alarm systems after having received one or several invoices for unwarranted interventions.