They build six story apartment building with large footprints, out of 2x4s and plywood, which will burn like gasoline once a fire gets started. They don’t become fire safe until the drywall and sprinklers go in, and the fireproofing is sprayed in the dead spaces. One of these burnt in Conshohocken, Pa.
http://morethanthecurve.com/five-year-anniversay-of-the-conshohocken-fire/
They’ll think it is a reasonable risk until some fire company gets taken out by the fire gods.
The Avalon in NJ burned to the ground in 2015. It was completed and fully occupied. Once the fire got the the wood frame and i the walls, it was too late.
I don’t think plywood is necessarily the problem. Today’s construction uses not plywood but resin and glue filled chipboard that burns like a son of a gun and melts when hot enough, causing building collapse.
The Challenges
However, lightweight construction materials haven’t emerged without their fair share of critics and skeptics. One of the biggest challenges engineers face when using these materials is fire resistance.
These concerns recently came to light in northern New Jersey when a fire destroyed a large apartment complex that was built with lightweight wood. Officials at the scene said that the fire was worsened because of the open truss-style roof and engineered wood designed to be lightweight.
“The horse is out of the barn on lightweight construction; it’s the state of the art in building today,” said John Wisniewski, chair of New Jersey’s Fire Safety Commission. “It would be impossible to mandate construction with non-lightweight material at this point in time. But we have the necessary augmentation to lightweight construction, and that is sprinkler systems.”
>>They build six story apartment building with large footprints, out of 2x4s and plywood, which will burn like gasoline once a fire gets started.
My city passed an ordinance requiring large multi family structures like this be steel and concrete construction because of this issue, among others.