No more skipping floors 4 or 13 in Vancouver buildings
Posted November 5, 2015 6:42 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The City of Vancouver is making things a little easier for fire crews trying to find suite numbers in buildings.
It’s going back to basic math to make things easier for first responders. It’s no longer allowing new buildings to omit certain numbers.
Chief Building Officer Pat Ryan says it isn’t just the 13th floor that crews had a problem with; one other number posed an issue.
“[There’s been] a desire to drop the number 4 from buildings,” he explains. “This was fairly inconsistently done — some buildings did it, some didn’t. It was mostly high-rises, initially. Then it became low-rise buildings.”
The number 4 can be a tough sell because it sounds like spoken word for “death” in Cantonese and Mandarin.
“There have been a few issues, but it’s preventative,” says Ryan. “It’s really recognizing that we have a very solid, well-designed building code, but we were adding in an element of uncertainty into the response. We wanted to remove that uncertainty and also provide a level playing field.”
He says it can be tricky for fire crews to help someone on what looks like the 4th or 13th floor — but actually is the 5th or 14th.
The new rule will only apply to new applications, including those to re-number addresses.
