The Ontario Fire Code

The Ontario Fire Code is Provincial legislation that enables a Municipality to ensure all buildings are maintained to an acceptable standard. The Code is a Regulation under the Fire Protection and Prevention Act and serves as a maintenance document to the Ontario Building Code. If you have been issued a report citing a violation, the reference to the code would have come from the Ontario Fire Code.

General Information: This area requires that property owners maintain, check, inspect and test all fire safety devices in their building and to maintain the appropriate records of this test. It also allows the Inspector to request these test records and supplies a description of any referenced documents in the code.

Fire Safety: This area spells out general maintenance requirements for basic fire safety items, exits, emergency lighting, exit doors, fire separations, heating systems as well as housekeeping issues. The requirements for smoke alarms and fire safety plans may also be found in this section.

Fire Safety for industrial and commercial uses: This area addresses specific maintenance and testing for the use and storage of wood and lumber, tires, industrial trucks, salvage yards and shops, dry cleaning and drying plants and bowling alleys.

Flammable and combustible liquids: This area deals with the use and storage of flammable and combustible liquids of all kinds.

Hazardous materials, processes and operations: This section deals with special hazardous processes such as fireworks and pyrotechnics, compressed gases, spray applications, dip tanks, combustible dusts and radioactive material.

Fire Protection Equipment: This section spells out maintenance requirements for all fire protection equipment such as fire alarms and sprinkler systems.

Inspection: testing and maintenance of fire emergency systems in high buildings. This section deals with maintenance of systems in high buildings

Demolition: This area deals with requirements that must be met during demolition of a building.

Retrofit: This section is broken into eight further sections to address different types of buildings. This section allows an Inspector to order upgrades to an existing older building to bring it closer to today’s fire safety standards.