Property owner fined $4.7K in court for ignoring Welland Fire inspection order
Published January 28, 2022 at 1:47 pm
Any property owner who decides to defy the orders of Welland’s Fire Prevention Officers (FPOs) may find they won’t fare any better in court.
Yesterday (January 27), a long-standing Fire Code enforcement matter was resolved in Provincial Offences Court and it didn’t end well for the property owner.
Way back on August 28, 2019, the Welland prevention officers followed up on a complaint about the property at 43 Regent Street.
While there, the FPOs realized that a single storey storefront on the property’s southwest corner was being used as a repair and salvage shop while the basement area was being used illegally as a residential apartment.
They found a large number of fire safety violations in the storefront and the downstairs apartment, including: six-foot-high ceilings in the apartment, insufficient smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, fortified exit doors, inappropriate use of extension cords and a high volume of combustible items stored in an unsafe manner.
When they inspected the bathroom shower stall in the basement apartment, they discovered there was an open, uncovered electrical panel in the actual shower.
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The FPOs immediately served an “Immediate Threat to Life” notice to the basement, removing the tenants from the building and disconnecting all power to the unit.
After that, they inspected a two-storey residential apartment attached to the building on the northeast corner of the property where they found more Fire Code offences. They handed the owner a compliance order to clean the issues up.
When the fix-up date expired, they came back to the property to reinspect the property and decided that it was time to deal with the issues in court.
On January 27, 2022, the property owner was convicted in Provincial Offences Court of failing to comply with an inspection order and was fined approximately $4,700, including court costs and a victim fine surcharge.
The Welland FPOs had now said the property meets their compliance orders
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