Lighthouse shelter and supported living hit with dozens of fines

The Saskatoon Fire Department has issued fines to The Lighthouse over a series of code violations in the past several months.

According to the City of Saskatoon, there were 42 Fire Safety Act violations for issues like failing to maintain life safety systems and building systems — including fire alarms and sprinklers.

There were also issues with some pathways and evacuation routes out of the building being blocked, a lack of records and failure to maintain fire separations.

According to assistant fire chief Yvonne Raymer, it dates back to April of last year.

“Unfortunately, deficiencies continued to increase instead of decrease. We weren’t getting rectified, so when we had that Dec. 10 fire, the fire investigator indicated that there were a number of deficiencies identified even during the fire investigation,” she said.

She said tickets were issued “more as a tool” to get work on the issues addressed and to get them back to a state where there weren’t safety concerns. But she stresses the shelter was not in danger of closing down, and it still isn’t.

“But if we didn’t start to rectify some of the deficiencies, the building could continue to decline, which would put people at risk,” she added. “So we wrote the orders instead.”

Since April, four inspections of the facility have taken place — three in December and one on Jan. 4.

Since the latest inspection, 14 issues have been fixed, including egresses and sprinkler systems.

“We are moving in the right direction,” added Raymer, who doesn’t expect the fire department will be put in a position to do the work or to contract it out at this point.

According to one report, The Lighthouse’s board of directors has taken over management of the building.

Requests have been made to The Lighthouse and to its board for comment regarding when exactly it took over management and why.

No one has commented or returned the requests as of publication time.