What Counts as a Strata Emergency in BC (and What Happens Next)

At 2:14 a.m. a resident calls to say water is coming through her ceiling. Somebody has to decide, in the next few minutes, whether the strata corporation can enter a locked unit without notice and spend money nobody voted on.

The good news is that BC's Strata Property Act answers both questions with the same words, in three different places. Once a council sees that, "what counts as an emergency" stops being a matter of opinion.

This article is general information about the Strata Property Act and the Schedule of Standard Bylaws, not legal advice. Your registered bylaws may set different limits, and any specific incident should be discussed with your manager, your insurer or a strata lawyer.

The Act's definition, hiding in plain sight

The Strata Property Act does not have a section headed "emergency." What it has is one recurring test, used wherever the Act allows the strata corporation to act without the approval it would normally need.

To spend money that was not approved, the Act permits an expenditure out of the operating fund or the contingency reserve fund where there are reasonable grounds to believe that an immediate expenditure is necessary to ensure safety or prevent significant loss or damage, whether physical or otherwise — and the expenditure must not exceed the minimum amount needed.

To enter a strata lot without notice, the standard bylaw allows entry in an emergency, without notice, to ensure safety or prevent significant loss or damage.

To change common property without a vote, the Act allows a significant change where there are reasonable grounds to believe that immediate change is necessary to ensure safety or prevent significant loss or damage.

One test, three powers:

• Immediacy. Not "important." Not "urgent by Monday." Acting now rather than after the ordinary process.
• Safety, or significant loss or damage. Trivial loss does not qualify, and inconvenience is not damage.
• Reasonable grounds to believe. You are judged on what a reasonable person would have concluded with the information available at the time — not on what turned out to be true.

That last point is a comfort. A council that entered a unit because water was pouring into the one below has not done anything wrong if the leak turns out to have come from somewhere else.

What is clearly an emergency

• Water actively escaping — a burst supply line, a failed hose bib, a sprinkler head, water coming through a ceiling
• Fire, smoke, or a fire alarm activation
• A smell of gas, or a suspected carbon monoxide source
• A sewer backup
• Loss of heat in cold weather, where the building or vulnerable residents are at risk
• Total loss of power, or an electrical fault with visible arcing, burning or heat
• Elevator entrapment
• Structural failure or visible collapse risk — a balcony, a canopy, a retaining wall
• A failed building entry door or lock leaving the building open overnight
• An impaired fire alarm or sprinkler system, which normally requires a fire watch until restored
• Storm damage that has created an ongoing exposure — a lifted roof section, broken glazing

What usually is not

• One elevator out of two, during business hours
• A burnt-out corridor light, graffiti, or a broken planter
• A leaking faucet inside a strata lot that is the owner's responsibility to repair
• A resident locked out of their own unit
• A garage gate stuck closed where a pedestrian door still works
• A noise complaint at 2 a.m. — that is a bylaw matter, and if there is a threat it is a police matter. See strata issue or police matter
• A contractor who needs a decision tonight because of their own schedule

And a genuinely grey middle: no hot water, a parkade gate stuck open, heat failure in shoulder season, a single flooded storage locker. Reasonable people differ, which is exactly why the decision should be made against the Act's test rather than against how annoyed the caller sounds.

Whose emergency is it?

Before anyone dispatches a contractor, one question decides who pays: is the failed component the strata corporation's responsibility or the owner's?

A supply line inside a strata lot that the owner is responsible for maintaining is an owner emergency. A common property riser in the wall behind it is a strata emergency. The consequences are often identical — water everywhere — but the invoice is not.

In practice the strata often has to act first and sort out the cost afterwards, which is correct: stopping the water matters more than settling responsibility at 2 a.m. The Act contemplates the strata recovering the cost of work that was properly the owner's, and that recovery is one of the limited categories a lien can secure. Our guide to strata versus owner maintenance responsibility is the reference to have on hand before the call comes.

The money: what a council can spend without a vote

Two separate authorities, and councils conflate them constantly.

The ordinary unapproved-expenditure allowance. The Act allows a strata corporation to make an expenditure that has not been approved, up to a limit that is the lesser of the amount set out in the bylaws, or $2,000 or 5% of the total contribution to the operating fund for the current year — whichever of those is smaller. Note that if your bylaws set a lower figure, the bylaw figure governs. Many stratas have never looked at what theirs says.

The emergency authority. Where the emergency test is met, the expenditure may exceed that limit — but it must not exceed the minimum amount needed to address the emergency.

That second phrase is the discipline. Stop the water; do not authorise the renovation. Make the balcony safe; do not approve the replacement programme. The restoration project that follows is a normal expenditure requiring normal approval, and it should go to owners as one.

The Act also requires council to inform owners about an emergency expenditure as soon as feasible. Do it in writing, say what happened, what was spent and why, and put it in the minutes. Councils that communicate promptly after a 2 a.m. call almost never get criticised for the decision itself.

Entry, briefly

Emergency entry without notice is available on the same test, and the practical rules are simple: document the grounds before you enter, take two people, do only what the emergency requires, leave written notice of who entered and why, secure the unit afterwards, and minute it. The full framework is in can the strata enter your unit.

Insurance: make the call early

The most expensive mistake in a strata emergency is usually not the response — it is the delay in telling the insurer.

• Notify your broker or insurer early on anything that could become a claim, even if you are not sure it will. Late notice is a defence insurers use.
• Mitigate. Policies expect the insured to take reasonable steps to prevent further loss. Emergency response is mitigation, and the cost of it is often part of the claim.
• Photograph everything before drying, demolition or repair.
• Understand the deductible before you decide to claim. On water losses in particular, the deductible can exceed the loss. Our guides to how a strata insurance claim works and water damage and the strata deductible cover the trade-off.
• Tell affected owners to notify their own insurers, because their contents, improvements and loss assessment coverage may respond where the strata's policy does not.

What a council should expect its manager to have in place

This is the part to ask about before you need it, and to write into the management agreement rather than assume.

• A written definition of emergency in the agreement, using the Act's language rather than a vague reference to "urgent matters"
• An after-hours number that reaches a person, and a plain description of what happens after that call — who is contacted, in what order
• A stated spending authority for after-hours response, aligned to your bylaws and the Act's limits, so nobody is negotiating authority at 2 a.m.
• A pre-qualified vendor list with after-hours coverage across restoration, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, elevator, glazing, locksmith and security — with current WorkSafeBC clearance and insurance on file
• A building information pack the responder can act on: shut-off valve locations, riser and sprinkler diagrams, panel locations, access and key or fob custody, alarm and monitoring contacts, insurer, broker and after-hours adjuster
• A named escalation tree for council, with alternates
• A written incident report after every call-out, and a standing agenda item at the next council meeting
• Owner communication templates, so a building-wide notice goes out in minutes rather than being drafted from scratch

None of that is exotic. All of it is the difference between a competent response and an expensive one. Our guide to what a strata manager actually does sets out the broader scope.

Preparing before the call

1. 1.Check your bylaws for the unapproved-expenditure limit and update it if it is unrealistic — through the bylaw amendment process, not by ignoring it.
2. 2.Confirm the after-hours number works, by calling it. Twice a year.
3. 3.Walk the shut-offs with your council. Every member should know where the main water shut-off is.
4. 4.Keep the contingency reserve fund healthy. Emergency authority is worthless if there is no money behind it — see how a BC strata budget is built.
5. 5.Run a tabletop once a year. Twenty minutes at a council meeting: a pipe bursts on the eleventh floor at midnight, who does what.
6. 6.Plan for the seasonal ones. Winter has its own list — see snow removal and winter maintenance.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as an emergency in a BC strata? The Act's test is whether there are reasonable grounds to believe immediate action is necessary to ensure safety or prevent significant loss or damage. The same wording governs emergency spending, entry without notice, and immediate changes to common property.

How much can a strata council spend without owner approval? Ordinarily, the lesser of the amount in the bylaws or $2,000 or 5% of the total contribution to the operating fund for the current year. In a genuine emergency the strata may spend beyond that limit, but only the minimum amount needed to address the emergency, and council must inform owners as soon as feasible.

Can the strata enter my unit without notice in an emergency? Yes. The standard bylaw permits entry without notice in an emergency to ensure safety or prevent significant loss or damage. Outside an emergency, 48 hours' written notice is required, stating the date, approximate time and reason.

Who pays if the emergency started in my unit? It depends on whether the failed component was the owner's responsibility or the strata's, and on what the insurance responds to. The strata will usually act first to stop the loss and resolve responsibility afterwards; costs the strata incurs doing an owner's work can be recoverable.

Is a broken elevator an emergency? An entrapment always is. An out-of-service elevator generally is not, unless the building has only one and residents with mobility or medical needs are effectively trapped in or out of their homes — at which point it can be.

Related reading

• Who's Responsible? Strata vs Owner Repairs and Maintenance in BC
• Can the Strata Enter Your Unit? Right of Entry Rules in BC
• How a Strata Insurance Claim Actually Works in BC
• Water damage and the strata deductible, explained
• What Does a Strata Manager Actually Do (and Not Do) in BC?
• Snow Removal and Winter Maintenance: A BC Strata's Responsibilities

The spending provisions are in Part 6 and the entry bylaw in the Schedule of the Strata Property Act.

Emergencies are where management either earns its fee or costs you one. Onehive provides after-hours response and documented incident reporting for strata communities across Metro Vancouver as part of strata management — request a proposal.