City partners with Children’s Hospital to help protect kids from falling out windows
Posted Apr 10, 2019 11:12 am.
Last Updated Apr 10, 2019 11:13 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
CALGARY (660 NEWS) – The City of Calgary has partnered with Pediatric Emergency Physicians at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, in anticipation of changes to the 2020 National Building Code.
The changes would address the safety of second storey windows in homes, and protect children from falling out of those windows.
“Every year across Canada, over 420 young children are treated in emergency departments because they have fallen out of second storey windows in their homes,” said City of Calgary Chief Building Official Marco Civitarese. “We felt that as a regulatory body responsible for the safety of buildings, addressing this issue was important and we wanted to make an impactful change.”
In 2014, The City began working with the National Research Council (NRC) to make changes to the National Building Code with the aim of keeping children safe.
In 2016, 15 per cent of major trauma patients at Alberta Children’s Hospital were children who fell out of windows in their own homes.
Currently, the National Building Code has no restrictions on how much a second storey window in a house can be opened, how far from the finished floor it is, or provisions for adding safety devices to restrict opening a window.
The proposed changes state that the portion of a second storey window that is able to open must be at least three feet from the finished floor, or the window must have a device in place to permanently restrict the opening to no more than four inches.
“The changes to the code will have a positive impact across the country, so this is good news for not only Calgarians but all Canadian families,” said Civitarese.
The City of Calgary’s recommended building code changes to second storey windows will go through a final review at the end of May.
The City reminds Calgarians to safeguard against window falls by:
– Installing a safety device such as a guard or limiter that restricts window opening to 4 inches (10 cm)
– Closing and locking windows with low sill heights when small children are in the house
– Moving all furniture away from windows.
– Remembering that screens are NOT safety devices. They are designed to keep bugs out, NOT to keep children in. They are not durable and can be removed easily.
