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Old Posted Oct 13, 2016, 1:47 PM
IMBY IMBY is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Tucson, AZ
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mdiederi View Post
Five floors is the maximum allowed for wood buildings by code in most jurisdictions in the United States.

Los Angeles recently started allowing seven floors. Here's the result:


http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/

Those flames are several hundred feet tall. It was a long horizontal building, 7 stories of wood, like a skyscraper on it's side, and the fire spread horizontally. Imagine if it were as tall as it was wide, the flames would have been over a thousand feet tall.

Built with all the modern fireproofing materials and requirements.

This building wasn't fully built, but was up to the full height, so luckily not open yet and no occupants were killed.

They can add as much fire prevention as they want to wood, and it might actually prevent some small fires from turning into big fires, but once the fire starts and takes hold of a tall wood structure, all bets are off. Your fireproofing better be solid rock.


http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/

Also, most of the tall wood buildings in Los Angeles are extremely ugly. Developers who skimp on materials usually don't hire quality architects.

If downtown LA gets hit with a 6 magnitude earthquake, you can expect to see several of these burning at the same time, probably with people in them, and no water to fight it because the water mains will most likely break in the quake. 110 buildings burned down in the Northridge quake fire.
I just finished reading Strangely Like War, The Global Assault on Forests by Derrick Jensen, and I'm more spittin' angry/revolted by lumber companies than ever before!

If you can save a forest, and all the creatures that become extinct, who have lost their homes, and stop the clear-cutting which draws scavengers like deer and increases the risk of forest fires, then use some other material to build. I also read that tree farms only have 3 life cycles and kaput! Then what?

It's no surprise that lumber companies are among the most powerful lobbyists on a state, country, federal level, insisting everything be built out of wood, and lying about how much more expensive it is to build with concrete.

In Mexico, the concrete firm, CEMEX, is on a par with our lumber companies, except they insist everything be built with concrete. I had a house designed for me in Baja and tell me about it! Even a concrete roof, for a rooftop patio, and would I ever fear a brush fire consuming my all-concrete structure? All my travels through both Mexico and Central America I noticed just about everything built with concrete, houses, apartment buildings, motels, etc.

It's a crying shame that wood construction is foreign to the Mexicans, and when they come here, they trade in their masonry talents for wood construction, and a missed opportunity to employ them to build more durable structures in this country.

I am so, so, so fearful of fire, it's ridiculous! At least my townhouse has cinder block walls going up the entire 2 floors, and when I unit burnt out in my neighborhood, the unit burnt out, it didn't effect any neighbors.

I'm gearing up to move to Tucson to retire, and I already have my eyes set on one of those many 1960's/1970's slump brick or cinder block one story patio townhouses, only the roof is built with wood.

I would never consider living in an all wooden structure, even if the rent was free! And these developers have the nerve to slap the word Luxury on to the building! Fireproof = luxury to me!

I get saddened everytime there's an apartment fire in this city, and tenants are forced to evacuate in the middle of the night, all which could be preventable with concrete construction, concrete walls separating the units.

What's really a frightening idea is if there's ever widespread anarchy in this country, one day, on a windy night, think of what all could burn down in just one night!

Here, in Las Vegas, with many houses built a mere 10 feet apart, and with our wind blasters that come through here at 50-60MPH, imagine!!! All it would take is one Molotov cocktail hurled into someone's living room window to get it all started!

Ah Well! Enough ranting about the widespread Weyer-haus-ing in this country!
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