Blatchford: Politicians fiddle with laws as buildings burn

The way Quebec politicians and others are carrying on, youd think that the automatic sprinkler system was an untried, still slightly sketchy, cutting-edge technology and not one proven up the yingyang in the 142 years since it was invented.

Its not a simple problem, Quebec Health Minister Rejean Hebert told reporters Monday at LIsle-Verte. If it would have been simple, it would have been done.

If the answer was simple? It couldnt be more simple: Order all care occupancies housing those incapable of self-preservation vulnerable by dint of age or physical or mental disability to be retrofitted with sprinklers.

Or take what Premier Pauline Marois, who this weekend visited the site of the horrific fire that killed 32 vulnerable old people last Thursday, said. If only we were able to stop this from ever happening again, this type of thing.

If only we were able to stop such fires?

Automatic sprinklers do precisely that. They stop fires in their tracks, contain them and contain the spread of poisonous deadly smoke.

For all the speculation now about whether the fire at La Residence du Havre was started by someone sneaking a smoke in his room, the truth is, if the joint had had automatic sprinklers, a dozen residents could have been puffing away in their beds and in the worst-case scenario, those dozen might be dead but no others.

Honest to Pete, if this is what passes for leadership in this country, we might as well take a page out of the book of Fitchville, Ohio, circa 1963.

In the early morning of Nov. 23 that year, fire destroyed the Golden Age Nursing Home in Fitchville, then an unincorporated township in a remote area about 80 kilometres west of Akron. The nearest fire department was in New London, about 10 kilometres away.

And, as the subsequent U.S. National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) investigation later found, night telephone calls to the New London fire department were received at the local funeral home.

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Blatchford: Politicians fiddle with laws as buildings burn