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"Emmitsburg Mayor Frank Davis voted for Donald Trump in hopes he would cut federal spending. Now Davis hopes those cuts don't include the permanent cancellation of classes at the National Fire Academy, which is part of the town's identity and helps drive its economy. Davis is also a chief at Emmitsburg's firehouse, known as the Vigilant Hose Company."
Trump killed the Fema training academy. It's not coming back.
I had a house fire.
I see your point, but I have to tell you: in a wood structure the difference between 8 and 20 minutes won't mean a lot for the structure. After a very small period of time, fire will have tasted most of the structure and it's a gut-job.
And, from experience, it's better as a gut. We languished in fleabag motels for 10 months with very little, and by the time they were done they could have rebuilt (1990) faster.
Edit: i am always surprised by downvotes when I'm being honest. It was horribad to lose all our basic needs in 7.5 minutes, guys. The fleabag motel had mushrooms growing out of the ceiling corners. I still maintain a gut-job would have lost us no more contents and would have been a quicker rebuild with wiring and pipes not compromised by heat. But, tell your house fire story and we'll compare notes.
It really depends on what is inside the house more than what the house is made of. A kitchen fire will typically take much longer to spread than a bedroom fire for example, because one is fairly sparsely furnished, and requires the original ignition source provide enough energy to start pyrolising the structure itself, whereas the other just has to produce enough energy to start your bed/clothing/curtains on fire, starting a chain-reaction.
Instead of worrying about what your house is made from, which is far outside the scope of what most people can control anyway, invest in fire-retardent furnishings.
And what happens to your house if your neighbor's has been ablaze for 20 minutes vs 8? Fire Departments are also pretty the only ambulance service in a lot of rural areas as well
maybe people should stop building homes with wood. We invented bricks quite a while ago
Wooden structures are easier and cheaper, if you build out of brick, housing prices in the US will go up even more. Also, wood has some other advantages over bricks, such as being more resilient against earthquakes.
How much of the US is over a fault line?
Just about all houses in Europe are made of brick.
They're no more expensive than houses in the US.
Not saying which is better (frankly I don't know), just pointing out that it really isn't as straightforward as using brick rather than wood making US house prices go up - maybe in the past, but nowadays land prices, manpower costs and speculation are what drives the realestate prices.
(After all, brick is basically baked clay, so hardly expensive stuff)
Also as somebody else pointed out brick houses last significantly longer than wood houses.
How much of the prizes are really material costs vs. investor gains?
On a quick search, it seems wood houses are even more expensive to build in Europe (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352710222001012). This is probably not true in the US (which has a very different infrastructure). But if one takes resale value or long time reinvestments into account, I don't think wood houses are that much cheaper, even in the US, as a percentage of the overall investment.
I like sequestered carbon
Idk ive seen quiet a few house fires in wood log houses that all withstood it very well. The op of the comment doesn't know what hes talking about.