6 ms·
Unfortunately people from the US (including those who have never lived in an apartment or thought about fire regulations before) instinctively get really worrie
by slyall 3y ago
Unfortunately people from the US (including those who have never lived in an apartment or thought about fire regulations before) instinctively get really worried about this whole idea and assume people are just going to get killed.
Happens in this thread and whenever it is brought up in social media. The original article talks about statistics, various extra measures to ensure safety and limiting to buildings 6 stores or less.
But US commentators have trouble getting past their initial reaction. They also do the usual US thing of discounting anything from overseas as "not applicable to US conditions".
- kccqzy 3y agoI totally agree with you that it's definitely instinctive. The article has a link to mass timber construction for fire officials. Coincidentally there is an office building near me with mass timber structure but whenever I tell people about it, they instinctively think of it as less safe than steel and concrete.
- davidw 3y agoHaving lived in both places - Italy and the US - I think it's a natural question. The answer I've heard that makes sense, is that if you do this in US buildings you need decent fire suppression systems even if those bump the price. But it's well worth doing in terms of making more types of nice buildings viable.
- eru 3y agoYou could just add that as an option to the housing regulation: Either build in the traditional American style out of wood, or (new option) build out of stone and add a robust fire suppression system, but in return we let you get away with a single staircase and other features that increase density.
- davidw 3y agoConcrete is probably not a great thing in much of the US for lower-rise buildings. Definitely not here in Oregon. And the fire suppression stuff is mandatory in multifamily housing anyway.
- ajmurmann 3y agoWhy is concrete bad in Oregon? Autoclaved, aerated concrete is common in Germany which has a slightly harsher version of our Oregon climate.
- davidw 3y agoIt outputs a lot of CO2, and there are a lot of trees to construct low-rise apartments with.
- thatfrenchguy 3y agoEarthquakes
- eru 3y agoAllowing non-wooden construction (and then a different fire safety regime for it) is not the same as mandating it. Developers in Oregon would presumably stick to wood, then. No harm done.
- autoexec 3y agoI think there is some of that certainly, but it's also worth being cautious anytime a developer says they want to abandon fire codes that were put in place to save human lives so that they can add greater density housing. Fire codes got where they are in part because developers were fine with packing people into unsafe housing situations. Let's not let our guard down entirely now.
- notatoad 3y ago>that were put in place to save human lives There's an assumption here that the code was put in place to save lives. There's a whole lot of regulation that exists simply to make it difficult to build. Lots of people profit when housing is scarce (or unavailable to certain demographics), and want to keep it that way. It is always worth asking what the point of a regulation is, and whether it accomplishes the thing it claims to be trying to accomplish.
- autoexec 3y agoI think it's a much bigger assumption that the fire code which requires people have somewhere to escape to when a stairwell is on fire was put in place to make it difficult to build instead of for helping to keep families from burning alive. I fully agree that if after careful and thorough examination it's determined that the codes are outdated and can be removed without endangering people that they should be, even if it didn't make it easier for developers.
- alistairSH 3y agoMore likely the code is amended and not removed. Two stairs OR better fire suppression/resistance.
- notatoad 3y ago>I think it's a much bigger assumption... i don't think it's that big of an assumption. there's a long history of discrimination being enforced through building codes. will a second stairwell save a life at some point? almost certainly yes, but it wouldn't be an effective blocker if it obviously didn't. the question isn't whether it improves safety, it's whether it improves safety enough to be worthwhile. a second stairwell would also almost certainly save a life if it were required for single-family homes too, but we don't do that because there's some line somewhere where we decide making things 100% safe is silly, and compromise the edge case of safety for the sake of practicality. and there's a lot of forces trying to move that line away from practicality when it comes to multi-family housing.
- wolverine876 3y agoI also have an instinct to avoid standing where I could fall a long way - it's probably a good instinct. You haven't provided evidence that the instinct regarding fire safety in single-stair buildings is flawed.
- amrocha 3y agoIt's not an instinct, it's a gut reaction to change. The evidence is that people aren't burning to death in Europe.
- wolverine876 3y agoThat comment is the gut reaction. What is the injury rate in Europe with and without single-stair construction? In the US? In buildings with otherwise American-style construction?