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Eagles can wrap rap it up at home page 35
Thursday March 22, 2, 2012 Serving Surrey and North Delta www.surreyleader.com
Surrey landlord fined $115,000
Needless fire deaths targeted
Failed to repair Kwantlen Park Manor
Surrey and the province to crack down on lack of functioning smoke alarms
by Kevin Diakiw THE LANDLORD of a soggy Sur-
by Kevin Diakiw HAVE YOU ever popped the battery out of your smoke alarm
when food overcooks and sets it off? It’s a seemingly harmless practice that could prove deadly. Scores of people are dying needlessly in residential fires in Surrey and across the country every year, simply because their smoke alarms are either broken or have been disabled. In fact, even smoke alarms that haven’t been tampered with can fail to function over time. And it’s primarily the young, poor, elderly, addicted and aboriginals who are dying in the fires, according to a report published by the University College of the Fraser Valley. Last March, nine families were disQ Nearly 33% were seniors (over placed from their Whalley apartments after a fire in one of the suites spread age 65) through the building. The original unit did not have a Q Almost 29% were impaired by functioning smoke alarm. Fortunately, no one was killed in drugs or alcohol the blaze, but one person was taken to hospital, treated, and released. Q About 45% A study being released today looked were asleep at 50,000 residential fires in Alberta, B.C. and Ontario over a five-year period. Out of those fires, there were 663 deaths – 500 of which (75.4 per cent of the total) were attributable to a non-functioning smoke alarm. Using those numbers, Surrey Fire Chief Len Garis, one of the study’s authors and president of the B.C. Fire Chiefs’ Association, said if every home in Canada had functioning smoke alarms, 69 lives could be saved each year – about 10 in Surrey.
Fire fatalities:
See MINISTER / Page 3
EVAN SEAL / THE LEADER
Hoping for help on high
Rev. Father Mykhaylo Pozdyk stands underneath the domed ceiling at St. Mary’s Ukrainian-Greek Orthodox Church in North Surrey. The parish needs to raise between $120,000 to $300,000 to repair or replace the 60-year-old building’s roof. See full story on page 9.
rey dwelling has been ordered to pay a $115,000 penalty for failing to plug the leak in the roof of the Whalley complex. It’s the first time the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) has levied such a fine against a landlord in B.C. Tenants at Kwantlen Park Manor, at 12975 106 Ave., have long complained about the damp conditions Tenants in the building. have long Gurdyal complained Singh Sahota and about his company the damp Waterford Developconditions in ments the building. have been ordered several times in the past to fix the leaky roof, but it was never done. Sahota’s lawyer states that one tenant is the sole source of the complaints about the building and that “any health and safety concerns are unsubstantiated.” But the RTB poured over 300 pages of evidence in coming to its decision to levy the fine.
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