The Gazette, Spring 2006, 1,225 words

By Karin Mark

In April 2004, an early-morning fire broke out at a residential marijuana grow operation in Surrey, B.C. and spread to two other homes nearby. The neighbours were alerted by a passerby and escaped, but the fire caused major property damage.

It was a striking example of a public safety menace that threatened to spiral out of control - a byproduct of the rising number of grow operations popping up in B.C.’s neighbourhoods.

The basis for a solution arrived a few months later during a conversation between Surrey Fire Chief Len Garis and Dr. Darryl Plecas, professor and chair of the Department of Criminology/Criminal Justice at the University College of the Fraser Valley.

Plecas’ research on grow-ops identified a host of associated hazards, including fire and electrocution. The typically unsafe electrical practices present major electrocution risks to unsuspecting neighbours, inspectors and emergency responders. A Surrey case study showed that residential grow-ops are 24 times more likely to catch fire than a normal home.

These alarming statistics prompted the Electrical and Fire Safety Inspection (EFSI) Initiative, which was the result of collaborative efforts among a number of agencies and governments in B.C. Within a year of the 2004 grow-op fire, the City of Surrey hosted a 90-day demonstration project to test an alternate approach to addressing grow-ops - one driven by public safety rather than criminal prosecution.

The project ran from March 15 to June 3, 2005. An EFSI team of two police officers, two firefighters and an electrical inspector enforced the Safety Standards Act at 126 suspected grow operations identified through tips to Surrey RCMP and electricity consumption records.
Most of the sites violated electrical code. The team disconnected the power at 78 sites and issued seven-day notices at 11 others. A further 30 sites were referred to the RCMP and BC Hydro for theft of power.

In total, 94 per cent of the 126 sites handled by the EFSI team needed to be rendered safe in some manner. Power reconnections only occurred after the sites met code and received electrical permits. In addition, a total of 49 children were found at 28 (22 per cent) of the sites handled by the team.

Each case was processed in about four hours, including all the research, reports and site visits. Costs for the pilot, including the four-person field team and a clerk, were estimated at about $40,000 per month.

Progress is also being made towards provincial legislative changes aimed at improving access to electricity consumption data for EFSI purposes. At the local level, Surrey is continuing its EFSI inspections and improving the process with bylaw changes intended to recoup costs from property owners.

Approaching grow-ops from a prosecution standpoint alone does not eliminate the safety threat, which includes fire and electrocution hazards, violence and crime.

The same view motivated various EFSI stakeholders to overcome their differences and work together. Key to the project’s success has been the participation of the Ministry of Community, Aboriginal and Women’s Services (MCAWS), BC Hydro, the Fire Chiefs’ Association of B.C., the City of Surrey, the Ministry of Solicitor General, the Office of the Fire Commissioner, the Ministry of Attorney General, the RCMP in B.C. and the British Columbia Safety Authority.
Garis expects that overcoming each partner’s cultural biases will be a challenge for other local governments that adopt the EFSI program.

"We brought three organizations together-fire, police and safety inspectors-and we gave them an abstract process that challenged . . . the way they’re doing business," he said. "We had to create buy-in and it was fraught with challenging those norms. But the results were tremendous."

Collaboration began when the Fire Chiefs’ Association issued a report in September 2004 that called on MCAWS to immediately address the risks associated with grow-ops. Soon, a new task force developed the concept and addressed the issues.

Initially, challenges with B.C’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act threatened to scuttle the project since legislation restricts BC Hydro’s ability to reveal client consumption patterns. However, the RCMP’s participation in the EFSI teams turned out to be key, as the act allows BC Hydro to release information to police for criminal investigations.

Another step was to declare grow-ops a public safety hazard, since this legitimizes the EFSI project and paves the way for its adoption in other communities (the BCSA conducts electrical inspections in all but eight B.C. municipalities). Just prior to the pilot project, the British Columbia Safety Authority came through with an information bulletin that linked marijuana grow-ops with electrical hazards, providing the authority for inspections that enforced the Safety Standards Act.

According to RCMP estimates, there are 20,000 grow-ops in B.C. that contribute to a marijuana trade worth $7 billion annually. Grow-ops have spread because the penalties are insignificant and the rewards high, said RCMP Insp Paul Nadeau, major case manager for the drug enforcement branch in the province and head of the Coordinated Marijuana Enforcement Team.

In Nadeau’s view, the EFSI program addresses a backlog of police tips and deals with the small growers, allowing the police to target the major crime networks behind the marijuana trade.

"It gives us a chance to concentrate on the organizations rather than the grow-ops, and to me that’s being much more strategic in how we deal with these things," he said.

That view is shared by Surrey RCMP C/Supt Fraser MacRae.

"I think it allows a response that we aren’t currently able to provide, in terms of pure volume," he said. "This initiative is an example of how pervasive the [marijuana] production culture is and how necessary it is to have more than a single-facet response."

Garis hopes the program is so disruptive to grow-ops that it drives them out of residential neighbourhoods altogether. But, to prevent displacing the problem to other cities, the EFSI program needs to be applied on a larger scale.

To this end, Surrey’s involvement has been critical. A suburb of Vancouver, Surrey helped develop the concept, lobbied to move it forward and then planned and hosted the pilot. Its fire and electrical departments assumed responsibility for developing the EFSI team’s operational guidelines and training program. And, before $50,000 in provincial funding became available in April, the city was prepared to cover the pilot’s costs.

"It is incumbent on our cities to use whatever means possible to deal with this rapidly growing problem," said Umendra Mital, manager for the City of Surrey.

"We were looking for a simple, lawful approach that would allow us to put a dent in the growth of the grow-ops. We put safety first."

Glen Sanders, president of the Fire Chiefs’ Association of B.C., said he appreciates EFSI’s straightforward approach, adding this sort of problem is often left up to the police.

"This takes the criminal element out of it, so it’s strictly a public safety issue," he said. "Using this streamlined approach, we reduce the safety risk without a lot of the process that the police are hamstrung by."

With enhancements underway to the EFSI field process, governing bylaws and legislation, it’s clear the end of the pilot project was just the beginning of the EFSI Initiative.

"It was about breaking down the cultural norms of the various services, identifying a common problem and coming up with a common goal where everybody contributes," concludes Garis. "It’s very rare you see this. It’s a stellar example of what cross-disciplinary systems can achieve."