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by ur-whale 2043 days ago
In houses than are typically built with a wooden frame. From a European pov, that sounds like a recipe for fire.
1 comments

Americans love building single-storey detached houses on big lots. And when they build an upper floor, they love complex roof systems where almost every upper floor window has a first floor roof or porch below it.

This means problems like fires spreading to adjacent buildings and fires trapping people where they can't escape are much reduced; you'd never see a repeat of the great fire of London in an American suburb because there's practically a fire break between every single home.

This is made affordable by America's vast tracts of land and high rates of car ownership.

I'm curious how you'd compare the Great Chicago Fire (that happened ~200 years later)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire

The same day, a forest fire ravaged a number of small towns:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_fire