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by Normal_gaussian
3565 days ago
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You may have missed them but it is worth pointing out these two tiny sections of the article: > In general, a large mass of wood, such as a CLT floor, is difficult to burn without a sustained heat source—for the same reason that it is hard to light a camp fire when all you have is logs. Once the outside of the timber chars it can prevent the wood inside from igniting. The big urban fires of the past, such as the Great Fire of London, which occurred 350 years ago this month, were mostly fuelled by smaller sections of timber acting as kindling. Prospective tenants would doubtless need lots of reassurance. But with other fire-resistant layers and modern sprinkler systems, tall wooden buildings can exceed existing fire standards > What about woodworm and rot? “If you don’t look after it, steel and concrete will fail just as quickly as timber,” says Michael Ramage, head of the Centre for Natural Material Innovation at the University of Cambridge in Britain. |
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In New Orleans 1972 a concrete and steel building called the Rault Center had it's top two floors gutted by fire, likely arson. The building has been vacant since then, much of it in an almost skeletal state and yet a renovation started last year.
If the Rault Center had sprinklers tragedy could have averted, but I don't believe a wood building could have contained the fire. A wood building certainly couldn't have stood neglected for decades after and still been of any use. http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_9ca3a457...