> Many people in Europe do indeed identify as European I'll admit my surprise. US has a lot of variety, still I'd have expected that residents of Anchorage and

> Many people in Europe do indeed identify as European I'll admit my surprise. US has a lot of variety, still I'd have expected that residents of Anchorage and Manhattan have more more in common than residents of Iceland and Malta. > We are talking about multi (>4) story, multi family apartment buildings, how are wildfires relevant? > Again we are not talking about requirements for some cottage in the woods, these are city buildings. The whole argument is for buildings where you have space constraints. > Again I don't see the relevance, we are talking about a national building code, but only a tiny fraction of US cities are earthquake zones. The article also asserts that most Asian countries (which presumably includes Japan) have only one stairwell requirements. I think you are underestimating the population densities of US cities. I live in a major city and wildfires have burned homes a few miles from me. Residential areas are vast and fire departments are few. I'm also not sure how you can say few US cities are in earthquake zones - maybe if you squint at the numbers, but most if not all of the west coast, Alaska, and Hawaii are in earthquake zones. That's a pretty large chunk to hand-wave away.