Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
In the wake of a devastating tornado that displaced more than 100 residents in southern Ontario earlier this month, engineering experts are calling for Canada’s building codes to be updated to include more protections against the natural disasters.
Greg Kopp, a lead researcher for Northern Tornadoes Project and the ImpactWX chair in severe storms engineering, surveyed the damage in Barrie, Ont. after an EF-2 tornado tore through a residential neighbourhood there on July 15.
“There’s many roofs off of houses, some walls collapsed. At least one house, the first storey collapsed and the second floor came down on top of it. So it was pretty significant,” he told CTVNews.ca during a telephone interview from London, Ont. on Friday.
The civil and environmental engineering professor at Western University said the destruction seen in Barrie, which left at least 70 homes uninhabitable, is partly because builders across Canada don’t focus on protecting against tornadoes, specifically.
“They don't think about tornadoes,” Kopp said.
Girma Bitsuamlak, a civil and environmental engineering professor and director of wind engineering facilities at the WindEEE Research Institute at Western University, said this needs to change because he has noticed more tornadoes occurring in more densely populated areas of the country.
However, he said there haven’t been as many deaths from tornadoes in Canada compared to in the United States, for instance, because of the inclusion of basements in many homes.
“We are lucky in Canada, the majority of our homes have basements,” he said.
Kopp said it’s important to focus on how the roof is secured to the walls in the event of a tornado.
“I think most people think about a well-built house as strong walls and a roof that doesn't collapse on you.”
“In Canada, we have lots of snow, obviously, and so the roof needs to be strong to hold up that snow and that actually makes the roof quite strong for tornadoes, but when the wind blows over the roof, it wants to lift it up. So you have to hold the roof down.”
To do that, Kopp said hurricane straps should be installed in every home in Canada to prevent roofs from blowing off during a tornado. He said the thin pieces of metal, which are nailed to each truss and to the top of a wall, ensure the roof is fastened to the walls during storms as strong as an EF-2 tornado.
What’s more, Kopp said the straps are inexpensive – costing a maximum of $60 to $80 for a single house. And while they may add “a little bit of time” to construction, he said it’s minimal.
“I think it’s a life safety issue,” he said. “When you’re losing a major structural component of a roof, it becomes really a significant life safety issue and the building code is all about that. And so, for the relatively low cost, I think there’s a really strong benefit for that.”
Kopp said he has worked with the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR), an independent, not-for-profit research institute affiliated with Western University, to propose the addition of hurricane straps in the National Building Code of Canada on three separate occasions, but their requests have been denied.
The researcher said he understands why builders may be opposed to mandating hurricane straps in construction.
“They oppose things that cost more money and they want to make houses as inexpensively as possible. So I think that's good for Canadians, but I think we also have to balance that with safety measures,” he said.
According to a spokesperson for the National Research Council’s Codes Canada, the National Building Code of Canada (NBC) has “requirements for resistance to wind loads; however, it does not explicitly address tornado wind forces.”
In a statement to CTVNews.ca, the spokesperson said the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire codes is developing updated provisions for resistance to “lateral loads, including wind,” in houses and small buildings.
The NRC further explained that under the NBC, all structures are to be designed to withstand the forces caused by the “strongest wind likely at that location in a 50 year return period,” according to weather observations and analysis by Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“A change currently proposed for the next edition of the National Building Code of Canada (expected to be published in December 2021), would update this wind data,” the statement read.
The NRC also noted that provinces and territories regulate the design and construction of new houses and buildings in Canada and the enforcement of the codes is under their jurisdiction.
In Ontario, for example, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing said the province’s building code sets “robust standards that must be met when it comes to the construction of houses. This includes requirements for ensuring the walls and roof of a house are secure.”
The spokesperson said the code includes “provisions requiring roof structures on buildings to be attached to the supporting walls so that they can resist being pulled up due to high winds. This includes requiring a specific number of nails to secure roofs to the walls of a house.”
“These requirements are based on the standard requirements found in the National Building Code of Canada.”
In Alberta, a Municipal Affairs spokesperson said they haven’t seen any “significant concerns with the current building code requirements, which already include construction mitigations for tornado protection.”
In Saskatchewan, which, like Ontario and Alberta, sees a higher number of tornadoes each year, a spokesperson said the province follows the guidance outlined in the national building code.
“With respect to roof systems and anchorage to walls, “hurricane strap type” fasteners would be required where the 1 in 50 hourly wind pressure is equal or greater than 0.8 kPa (kilopascals). Based on the meteorological information provided in the NBC and specific to building design, none of the 31 Saskatchewan locations identified in the NBC exceed the 0.8 kPa.”
And while the province isn’t currently looking into adding these measures, the spokesperson said building owners are “always supported when they choose to build over and above the minimum requirements of the NBC.”
Kopp agreed that building codes are always about minimum standards and that owners can always do more to enhance the safety of their homes.
“If we use hurricane straps, you can easily inspect, and the builders can easily see that it's there,” he said. “It’s going to make these houses much more resilient. So I think it’s something we should be doing.”
Bitsuamlak added that it’s important to continuously reinforce the code to make it more resilient, particularly in light of a changing climate, which he believes is contributing to an increase in tornadoes in certain areas.
“I'm not climate change expert, but I see it in my eyes, the events are becoming more recurring. So, there are cost effective ways, especially for new construction,” he said. “We need to do a better job in protecting our homes from tornadoes.”
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.