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Comment by jen20 | Hacker News Reader

Safe compared to what? I realised when I moved to the US from the UK that the number of people I heard on a ~weekly basis who lost possessions or even lives in a house fire went from effectively zero to more than zero.

It just seems to be accepted as “ok” that houses are constructed from wood and can fairly trivially burn to the ground - especially given the standard of electrical wiring often found! I for one welcome any ban on wood housing construction and hope it spreads far and wide - and certainly will never spend money on a house that fundamentally represents the second of the Three Little Pigs.

(Edit: Perhaps LA also has earthquakes to consider - that’s fine and a trade-off worth discussing. Where I live earthquakes are non-existent, yet it’s still basically impossible to buy a house constructed properly)

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The UK has ~82 house fires per day, for 27 million dwellings. It’s not clear if these map 1-1 with buildings (I.e building a split into apartments).

The USA has 928 fires per day for 139 million houses.

So if hastily googled statistics are to be believed, you’re over twice as likely to have a house fire in the USA.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

The USA also has a much more diverse set of climates than England - nit, your source is studying fires in England specifically, not the whole of the United Kingdom. I'm also curious where your figure for the USA Comparing rates of fires in hotter, more arid climates like Texas or California with England seems like a pretty big leap.

I'm also curious where your figure of 928 fires per day in the US comes from, maybe I overlooked it but I didn't see the USA statistics in your link. FEMA puts the figure at 1.3 million per year, or over 3,500 [1] per day. It's likely that there's a significant difference between the definition of a "fire" between the US and UK sources.

1. https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/

I live in Mexico where houses are made out of concrete. A house fire is even worse, because you end up with a structurally unsound concrete shell that has to be demolished (and is quite expensive to do so). On a wooden home you simply rebuild on top of the ashes.

> I for one welcome any ban on wood housing construction and hope it spreads far and wide - and certainly will never spend money on a house that fundamentally represents the second of the Three Little Pigs.

Fire safety is great, and if that's what you prioritize buying in your life, all the more power to you.

But focusing so heavily on one variable for something this complicated on a societal level seems like it would lead to a bad outcome because design and engineering always contains multiple competing tradeoffs.

Fire safety is certainly an important consideration when it comes to building, but is far from the only tradeoff to consider: what about building cost, environmental impact, building speed, repairability, and many other variables?

These numbers are pure fiction, but what if improving fire safety by 25 times increases building costs by 4 times, hurts the environmental impact by 5 times, makes the building twice as hard to repair when something breaks, and triples the construction time?

>I realized when I moved to the US from the UK that the number of people I heard on a ~weekly basis who lost possessions or even lives in a house fire went from effectively zero to more than zero.

Where on earth did you move to where house fires are this common? I've never heard anyone talk about the possessions that they lost in a house fire because house fires are so uncommon.

Boston has a fire that displaces residents in a house at least once a week. Maybe every other week at most. And that’s just the city, not counting surrounding cities

In 34 years in the US I have never met someone who has mentioned that they personally lost possessions in a house fire. Are you working in a field that causes you to interact with people who had their house burn down or something?

Not particularly. Today I heard of a musician friend who lost a bunch of equipment in a house fire in Texas. They’re mostly stories similar to that.

50 years here, over half of which have been in Southern California, and I’ve never met anyone who has lost possessions either.

Maybe you live in new neighborhood. Last Summer a house a couple blocks from me burned, and while the fire dept. arrived quickly it was obvious that all the contents of the house were lost. Most of the neighborhood was built around 100 years ago so the structures have been through several generations of electrical wiring. Also, when I was 13 my family's house had a fire and I lost all all of my possessions. I saw the remnants of my bedroom, but I don't think I ever got a real accounting of all that was destroyed. To this day I take photos of artwork and other objects and have (obviously) offsite data backups in case something happens. Its a very strange feeling to suddenly just have the clothing and objects on one's person.

There was a house fire on my street in Washington, DC, in late 2014. The owners sold it at auction to someone who had it taken down to studs and brick before renovating it. Some time in the ten years before that, an apartment building fire a mile south displaced multiple families, and left nothing but the facade.

I'm pretty sure most Seattle house fires involve tents, rather than wood or concrete

> heard on a ~weekly

Could be a function of media. US media loves to scare its audiences.

The UK media is likely backed by Big Concrete™

I personally know several individuals who've had house (or trailer) fires. It seems entirely plausible that the comment was referring to personal interactions, not media mentions.

Wood construction doesn't mean bad fire safety.

> from the UK that the number of people I heard on a ~weekly basis who lost possessions or even lives in a house fire went from effectively zero to more than zero.

Really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire

Actually this one is a good point and one I had forgotten about since it was after I left the UK.

We do get house fires in the UK, as you know - that's what the bloody noisy red Denis lorries are for! To be fair, I don't know directly of anyone who has suffered from a blaze here either. I do have contact with several US citizens who have lost their homes to fire or "weather" (it can get quite breezy in Florida, for example)

Our sticks n bricks will generally get you a longer time to get out than timber only but that also depends on safe methods of egress and lots of other factors. Bear in mind that our floors are mostly wooden joists. On the ground floor (US first floor) we plank with chipboard and finish with carpet or laminate or tiles. The first floor (US second) has joists with wooden planking faced with carpet or laminate or some tiles, the lower surface is plasterboard. Our internal walls are mostly stud wall ie wooden too.

It's the plasterboard (drywalling) that slows fires inside a house. Dense gypsum is a really good way to slow fire down. It won't stop it though. Also you need to consider steelwork. My home has been extensively modified internally and we have a lot of "steels" - mainly to stop the first floor from falling into the lounge and kitchen and to hold the roof up. Ironically, we have a C section steel running along the long axis of the house with wooden props to the roofing purlins to assist with additional snow loading. This is in south Somerset! We have modern insulation in a 1920s house which means that snow doesn't instantly melt on the roof anymore. Some of the original roof insulation was hay - I pulled it out myself.

The UK is generally a lot safer weather, earthquake and wildfire etc wise. However we can't be complacent and neither should you. For fire it is quite easy to form a simple home evacuation plan. It will only take you a half hour. Get a fire blanket for the kitchen. Sort out your fire/smoke detectors and test them occasionally. Get at least one fire extinguisher per floor. You can get "water mist" extinguishers that will cover everything in the home apart from self igniting metal fires. I was recommended them by a Fire Brigade official. Get an escape ladder for upstairs if required. You can get single use ones for about £50 that take up a tiny amount of space in the bottom of a wardrobe and hook onto the window cill. Make sure your windows will permit egress!

It is easy to compare construction methods and see one as better but it isn't that simple. If you live in a place where your home is easily destroyed then cheaper and quicker reconstruction is indicated along with quick evacuation. I should also point out that quite a lot of people around here live in mud huts: wattle and daub (mud/clay with straw and horse piss, OK any piss will do) with thatched roofs and a lot of timber.

I could go on ... 8)

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