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HALIFAX, N.S. —

If your landlord tells you can’t have a real Christmas tree in your apartment because it’s against the law in Nova Scotia, he’s being naughty.

If, however, your landlord prohibits natural trees on the grounds of messiness or difficulty of disposal, that’s harder to argue.

“The owner of a building can make any requirement they want. If they don’t want trees in their building, they can use their control as the owner to prevent someone from having them. It’s not a law,” said Matt Covey, an HRM division chief of fire prevention.

“The (provincial) Fire Safety Act gives us some latitude to prevent undue fire safety hazards. So we don’t allow natural Christmas trees in exits or common spaces in buildings or lobbies, stuff like that. The only way we would allow that is if it is protected by a sprinkler system.”

Statistics on different categories of fires include candles and decorative lights, but Christmas trees are not involved in enough blazes to warrant a category of their own.

Top 3 holiday fire causes

“It’s unusual,” Covey said of tree fires. “If we’re talking about what’s our biggest hazard, it’s cooking. Kitchen fires are number one over the holidays, we get tons of calls for those. Christmas trees are a risk, it’s a dry object in your house that you tie an electrical wire around, so it’s a hazard, but it doesn’t seem to cause a big problem for us… If I had to pick a top three, it would kitchen fires, then smoking, then candles. Christmas trees just aren’t high on the incident list.”

Captain Pat Kline, the acting chief for District 3 in Halifax, says the biggest issue with Christmas trees is that they’re cut down so early in the year, they tend to dry out by the time you get them into your home.

“So, you have to be very diligent to keep them well-watered, and you can’t leave them in your house too long. If you’ve seen any of the videos of Christmas trees catching fire, they burn incredibly fast and incredibly hot,” he said.

“The good thing now is that Christmas tree lights are very cool, they don’t generate a lot of heat. It can be a situation where a Christmas tree is too close to candles, or another heating source that’s too close. I don’t think the lights have been a big issue with fires lately, maybe t10 or 20 years ago that may have been an issue. (LED lights) don’t put out any heat.”

Kline says tenants who are seeing rules surrounding Christmas trees posted for the first time may live in a building owned by someone who has just become aware of the rules.

“An apartment building owner can say…you have to have an artificial tree. Sometimes it may be a disposal issue. You can’t have decorations in the hall, or on your apartment door, you can’t hang a wreath on your apartment door. That’s a fire regulation,” said Kline. “The hall is a common escape route and if people have elaborate Christmas decorations on their doors, now that’s a fire hazard.”



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