Condo News—November 2023
Toronto condo gym ceiling suddenly collapses, leaving residents on edge
CBC News (abridged)
03 November 2023
Residents of a high-rise apartment and townhouse complex along St. Clair Avenue West are raising safety concerns about the integrity of their home after the ceiling to their shared gym collapsed.
A post on Reddit shows pictures of what appear to be the gym located at Reunion Crossing at 1808 St. Clair Ave. W. with its ceiling caved in on Wednesday night.
Jordan Patel told CBC Toronto he and his roommates moved in that same day and were told by security that the gym ceiling broke apart.
"Is this going to happen to our place too?" Patel said in an interview.
A spokesperson for the building developer, Diamond Kilmer Developments, told CBC News in an email that their engineers "continue to advise that there is no concern as to the structural integrity of the building or the residential units."
"However, out of an abundance of caution, our common areas will remain closed pending further investigation into the failure of a design feature in the ceiling of the fitness facility. "
Ritik Sharma, who moved into the building in June, says he found out about the ceiling through a resident group chat. When he went to go see the gym for himself the next day, he said no one was allowed in.
heard nothing from building management
He says he hasn't heard anything about the incident from the building's management team, but is waiting to see how the situation gets resolved.
"I just now, like, doubt the whole durability of this building."
I doubt that this is a structural problem and it will be repaired in short order.
There is no need for the residents to wear safety helmets.
It is disappointing, but not unusual, that the condo’s management failed to communicate with the residents.
Toronto sees 72% jump in lithium-ion battery fires, but what’s being done to address safety
City TV News (abridged)
By Nick Westoll
24 October 2023
As Toronto Fire Services reports another noticeable jump of lithium-ion battery fires in mobility devices, it raises questions about what’s being done to address the emerging safety concerns.
The most recent fire happened in downtown Toronto near Yonge and Church streets on Sunday after an e-bike battery caught fire in a residential building. Two people had to be treated for smoke inhalation. The cause and circumstances of the fire are still under investigation.
In all of 2022, there were 29 fires linked to lithium-ion batteries. However, there have been 50 such fires so far in 2023.
CityNews spoke with Toronto Fire Services deputy chief Larry Cocco to talk about the increase in incidents. He said the three typical causes are thermal (overheated), electrical (overcharged or charged with substandard equipment) or physical (damaged batteries) failures.
“The devices that are manufactured correctly and maintained correctly, we’re not seeing the problem. What we’re seeing is when the devices are not cared for properly or used properly,” he said.
“When the devices are not cared for properly or used properly, altering the battery is going to guarantee you a failure. Altering the device is going to guarantee a failure.
“We’ve had incidents for example, where an individual wanted to increase the power in their e-bike so they doubled the battery capacity and the device couldn’t handle it.”
What’s being done to address safety? Not much.
It is up to the condo board to be aware that lithium-ion battery fires can happen and they should inform the residents of this concern. It is not just e-bike batteries that catch fire, portable vaccum cleaner batteries have also caused fires.
Fire in Australia’s tallest building endangers lives, confirming warnings made 17 years ago
WSWS
Paul Bartizan
16 July 2023
A fire in a garbage compactor early this month at the base of the Q1 apartment tower, Australia’s tallest building, created an emergency that risked major loss of life as smoke filled corridors and an exit stair. The building is in the heart of the Surfers Paradise tourist precinct in Queensland.
While Q1 developers and builders were alerted to fire-safety design flaws soon after the building was completed in 2005, their failure to act on these warnings jeopardised hundreds of lives two weeks ago.
Around 7a.m. on 3 July, as residents of 527 apartments in the Q1 complex were just waking, a fire started in a large bin sitting at the base of the garbage chute that extends the full height of the 80-storey building. The fire triggered alarms and firefighters were called. A carelessly disposed cigarette butt or lithium battery can ignite accumulated garbage.
Seventeen residents aged between five months and their late 80s had to be treated for smoke inhalation. Nine people were taken to hospital. Some residents were injured when they fell down the exit stairs, including a young boy with a reported fractured wrist and an elderly man with a suspected broken leg.
smoke spread up through the garbage chute
Q1 was fuller than usual because schools in the eastern Australian states were on holiday, with at least 1,000 people staying in the building. Rather than containing the smoke from the bin fire in the garbage room, it spread up the chute and through garbage hatches then into corridors and the adjoining escape stairwell. This is not meant to happen. Fire escape stairs in high rise buildings are the only way out for residents during fires as lifts are disabled. They are also the only way up the building for fire fighters as their equipment cannot reach the upper levels of such skyscrapers.
smoke and fireproof damper failed to close
Initial reports have stated that a fire safety feature failed to operate. By regulation, a smoke and fireproof damper should automatically close at the base of the garbage chute to prevent smoke rising up the chute. This mechanism failed. Regular maintenance and checking of such devices are necessary.
The Q1 apartment tower stands at 322 metres. Built in 2005, until 2011 it was the tallest residential building in the world.
In 2012, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio National “Background Briefing” program publicised fire safety problems with Q1. The World Socialist Web Site reported on these revelations and interviewed mechanical engineer Laddie Assey, an expert in fire safety systems who happened to own an apartment in the Q1 complex. Assey explained the problems in detail and how he had spent seven years trying to get the fire safety issues fixed.
The Q1 bin fire last week has entirely vindicated Assey’s safety concerns. The problems have not been rectified, even despite the experience of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London where 72 residents lost their lives.
On July 3, the ABC quoted Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) acting inspector Glenn McKissack who said, “Some floors were a little bit worse than others but mainly it was light smoke… It was enough for our crews to wear breathing apparatuses, however it wasn’t black or thick or anything like that…. Some of those people [elderly residents] found themselves stuck in the stairwell and not able to go further and our firefighters assisted them to go down… We did try to use the PA system to ask people to stay in their units with closed doors, however some of those people had already started to evacuate.”
Understandably, residents evacuated when confronted with smoke in corridors that seeped under their apartment doors. The “stay in place” advice given to residents at Grenfell Tower in London was a contributing factor in their deaths.
the fire alarm had not sounded on her level
One resident explained that the fire alarm had not sounded on her level despite smoke filling corridors. The ABC interviewed two young women who were holidaying on level 74 and were only woken up with a knock at their door. Matisse Liu and Olivia Chapman explained, “It was kind of hard to breathe at the top but, as we got down, it was fine. As we were just going down there were more people, a bit chaotic on the stairs, and there were some kids crying ... people carrying dogs and pets out.”
An evacuating resident stated that one of the fire escapes was fully blocked with smoke and they had to use the second stairwell. At Q1, the fire escape stairs are configured in a scissor style with two stairwells intertwined. Another resident reported that on level 48 the smoke was thick enough to prevent visibility, apparently contradicting what the QFES official claimed.
A resident told Nine News, “We woke up and there was terrible smoke in the corridor… We passed a couple of people on the stairs and they were in a really bad way, as far as they weren't able to move. So, when we got down to the bottom we went over to the firies and let them know there's a couple of people stuck upstairs.”
The fundamental design flaw pointed to by Assey is the location of the garbage chute in a lobby between the corridor and the stairwell. Residents need to pass through the garbage chute lobby to access the stairwell on the north side. This planning avoids a separate room and doorway for the garbage chute which would have cost more and cut the floor area available for apartments thus reducing developer profit.
Fire safety in apartment buildings
Fire safety in apartment buildings relies on fire proof doors, walls and floors encapsulating each compartment to contain the fire and smoke within the apartment where it breaks out. Sprinklers are installed in Q1 to extinguish a fire contained in any apartment before it spreads. Unlike Grenfell Tower, Q1 is not clad in combustible material that would allow flames to spread up the outside of the building. However, like Grenfell, the infiltration of smoke into the stairwell meant that a safe egress route was compromised.
I worked at a condo where I had the smoke and fireproof damper mechanism inspected. It is something that few condo managers know they exist.
The garbage chutes on every floor must properly close after use. This is an important safety feature to prevent smoke from entering the hallways.
Florida condo dwellers might be in for sticker shock, but it’s for a good reason
the Miami Herald Editorial Board (abridged)
03 November 2023
Florida lawmakers made a choice after the 2021 Surfside building collapse: to protect human life instead of continuing to allow condominiums to defer important maintenance that could put more people at risk. With 98 lives lost at Champlain Towers South, that choice was a no-brainer, and a slew of new regulations and requirements will come due soon.
The unintended result is that some condo dwellers might be in for a sticker shock. State law now bans condo associations from waiving financial reserves for building maintenance, a common practice among associations. By January 2025, they will have to conduct “structural integrity reserve studies” to determine how much money must be set aside to complete structural repairs such as roofs, load-bearing walls and fire-protection systems.
Too costly
These new requirements, along with the skyrocketing costs of property insurance, could create a perfect storm and make condo living unaffordable for many Floridians. Officials in South Florida are sounding the alarm, saying that foreclosures will start to happen. That was a topic of concern during a recent Broward County legislative delegation meeting, where elected officials said they are hearing from residents who cannot afford another special assessment, the Sun Sentinel reported.
buildings that have not kept reserves
Hit the hardest will be residents of buildings that have not kept reserves. As condo lawyer Ryan Poliakoff told the Herald Editorial Board, many condos “were living off borrowed money.” Costly choices made 10, 15, 20 years ago to waive a rainy-day fund will now come due, and those picking up the tab might not even be aware of it unless they have kept up with their association.
insurance premiums rising by a whopping 100%
We have known that a time of reckoning was coming since the Herald Editorial Board proposed in July 2021, a month after Surfside, to change state law that allowed condo boards to waive reserves with a majority vote of residents present at a meeting. What no one predicted then was record inflation, high interest rates and, above all, that Florida’s insurance industry would tailspin into a crisis. Poliakoff said he’s heard stories of condo insurance premiums rising by a whopping 100%. He’s not exaggerating.
This year, the Legislature made changes to clarify and ease the impact of the reforms they approved in 2022. Among the changes was the required inspection of residential condo buildings of at least three stories — up until then only required in Miami-Dade and Broward counties — that were at least 30 years old, or 25 if they were near the coast. This year’s tweaks moved the timeline for coastal buildings back to 30 years while giving local governments the authority to require inspections sooner. The new law also extended the deadline for the completion of reserve studies.
unscrupulous condo associations
Rep. Vicki Lopez, one the sponsors of this year’s legislation, said she met with condo owners over the summer and will file a new package of reforms that will mostly target unscrupulous condo associations — another issue that requires attention. The Miami Republican said her upcoming bill will, among other things, crack down on fraudulent condo elections, give more regulatory power to the Department Of Business and Professional Regulation and require condo associations with more than 25 units to upload their records onto a website.
Lopez may address finances once the bill is filed, but she believes the new reserve requirements will be a “one-time big hit” and condo association have options such as taking out loans. She said she’s still assessing how many condos will have to build up reserves from zero.
“I want to wait and see what I’m dealing with,” Lopez told the Editorial Board.
Lopez is right: We have yet to see the full impacts of these post-Surfside reforms.
A lack of Reserve Funds is a common problem with condos. I sold my last condo because I knew that building maintenance was compromised and the Reserves were
far too low.
Fraudulent condo elections! Condo Madness started with just a single page on rigged condo elections and the subject ended up being a full chapter with eight sub-sections.