NFPA Journal - July/August 2018 - 43
FEATURE | THE AIRBNB CHALLENGE
As Airbnb and other short-term rental services expand
to include a range of property types, regulatory
challenges create uncertainty over the level of safety
those spaces should provide
By Angelo Verzoni
our years ago, Medina Eve wrote about
a frightening Airbnb stay. In an article for the online publishing platform
Medium, she detailed how she and her
partner had used the online marketplace, where
homeowners rent their properties to guests seeking
an alternative to a hotel or other accommodations,
to book a cabin in the remote woods of Ontario,
Canada. After trudging through snow, they followed the host's instructions to retrieve the key and
let themselves into the cabin, which she described
as "a treehouse, only firmly planted on the ground."
Right away, Eve felt nervous about the property.
The cabin had a wood-burning stove on the first
floor, and its chimney snaked through the ceiling
into the second-floor bedroom, passing within a foot
of the bed before disappearing into the roof. Eve and
F
her partner took note of a fire extinguisher hanging
on the wall. She texted a friend, jokingly, that she
would die there, and included a string of fire emojis.
That night, the couple woke to find their bed smoking and, seconds later, on fire. "Our blankets act like
kindling, flames licking upwards," Eve wrote, adding
that it became difficult to breathe and see. Her partner rushed to grab the fire extinguisher, attacking
the fire with what little remained inside the tank.
"There are two, just two, brief spurts left in it," she
said. "But it's enough to get us the hell out of there."
According to airbnb.com, on any given night, 2
million people stay in properties rented by the service in some 65,000 cities around the globe. There
are more than 4 million active Airbnb listings in
191 countries. "What makes all of that possible?"
the website reads. "Trust." u
THINKSTOCK, ISTOCKPHOTO
http://www.airbnb.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - July/August 2018
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