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> While that one tower was burning in London there were probably hundreds of other buildings of the same size burning in other places around the world at the sa

> While that one tower was burning in London there were probably hundreds of other buildings of the same size burning in other places around the world at the same time Hundreds sounds like a massive overestimation to me. You're saying that every single day there are hundreds of comparable building fires around the world. If we conservatively take "hundreds" to be 200, that would be 200*365 every year. That's 73000 every year!

jondubois 9y ago
Well according to this source: http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-reports/fire-statistics/fires-by-property-type/residential/home-structure-fires http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-re..., there were 358K+ home fires in the US alone between 2010 and 2014 and I'm guessing that US has pretty good fire safety standards compared to the rest of the world (and this doesn't even include buildings which are not homes). 73K per year doesn't seem so crazy anymore.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  Except that the comment I was replying to was taking specifically about buildings of the same size as the London one - and clearly taking about fires of a comparable magnitude to the London one (otherwise their comparison would have been meaningless). Home fires are irrelevant to that.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  I doubt that US has that much good fire safety standards when compared to - say - Europe. There is generically a far wider use in the US of combustible materials in buildings (compared to Europe) and this is probably only mildly balanced by the low density of housing (with the obvius exception of the relatively few big cities). If we use these data: https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/fire_death_rates.html https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/fire_death_rates.h... They are better than before: https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v12i8.pdf https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v12i8.pdf but not enough. Between 3000 and 4000 deaths per year (out of a population of around 330 millons) is 0,001 % or 1 every 100,000,which is still very, very high.

jondubois 9y ago

Well according to this source: http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-reports/fire-statistics/fires-by-property-type/residential/home-structure-fires http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-re..., there were 358K+ home fires in the US alone between 2010 and 2014 and I'm guessing that US has pretty good fire safety standards compared to the rest of the world (and this doesn't even include buildings which are not homes). 73K per year doesn't seem so crazy anymore.

jamesrcole 9y ago
Except that the comment I was replying to was taking specifically about buildings of the same size as the London one - and clearly taking about fires of a comparable magnitude to the London one (otherwise their comparison would have been meaningless). Home fires are irrelevant to that.
jaclaz 9y ago
I doubt that US has that much good fire safety standards when compared to - say - Europe. There is generically a far wider use in the US of combustible materials in buildings (compared to Europe) and this is probably only mildly balanced by the low density of housing (with the obvius exception of the relatively few big cities). If we use these data: https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/fire_death_rates.html https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/fire_death_rates.h... They are better than before: https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v12i8.pdf https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v12i8.pdf but not enough. Between 3000 and 4000 deaths per year (out of a population of around 330 millons) is 0,001 % or 1 every 100,000,which is still very, very high.