Can I ask why so many houses in the US are made of wood?
Every time I see the aftermath of wildfires and tornadoes, it’s always wooden structures that add to the situation…
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It’s really bad, my hometown (Portland) is really struggling here.
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Tradition plus availability
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Maybe Europe should start some kind of Marshall Plan for the US to send you bricks for proper houses and CARE packages for the poor?
The US did that (CARE packages, not bricks) for us after WW2. My family survived cause of that…
We are rich now, maybe it’s time to settle the debt?
Oh lots of the US builds with bricks. Mainly the seismically stable areas like Kansas.
However, it turns out that brick houses do poorly when faced with earthquakes…
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Also in Japan?
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Yeah mostly either wooden for old stuff or reinforced concrete for newer. Very little modern brick.
Our current place is concrete and steel.
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Wooden house in an earthquake
In California you don’t really expect your house to be burned by wild fire along the coast but earthquake, it’s a big possibility.
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I remember the times, when we all lived happily in trees and later caves! Why did that change so fast???!
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There’s no place to plug in the amp on the tree or in the cave. Not to mention terrible acoustic, 
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Yeah - in those times everybody was either a singer or a f#cking drummer 
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“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”
― Douglas Adams
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california is big enough that almost everybody knows somebody there. so yes, i hope everybody is ok. when my girl was in college she got to do an exchange thing where she went to australia and arrived just in the middle of it burning down. although it never got close to her, it’s a frightening thing.
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I can vouch for that…
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You’re from new Zealand, right? So I believe you!
Still I think it’s hard to make a wooden house fireproof, but it’s relatively easy to make a “brick” (non-wood) house earthquake proof, right?
Maybe there should be regulations for rebuilding houses, to make them both fire- and earthquake proof.
Also I saw a documentary some time ago - I think either " Fire in Paradise" or “Rebuilding Paradise” - where it was shown how rules for planning gardens/parks and distance between burnable material and houses could have prevented spreading of fire.
And those rules were fought hard from house owners, cause of aesthetics and perceived restrictions of “freedom” … WTF!!!
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No. In fact the bricks and masonry form an additional hazard in earthquakes both if they are load-bearing or a facade/veneer.
From timber, you gotta go to reinforced concrete instead. Masonry is a bad plan - too brittle to lateral motion as is common in quakes, and prone to buckling and collapsing.
Additionally, brick facades can restrict the motion of the wooden framing before it buckles, and that is also counterproductive in a quake.
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This is why I put “brick” in quotation marks. I mean non-wood non-inflammable materials.
I saw video of sky scrapers in Tokyo, happily swinging in a severe earthquake. I presume they are not made of wood?
So what abou using those building principles for all houses in earthquake areas that also have wild fires?
Like I said, reinforced concrete is common and flexes. It’s common in modern construction in Japan today, including housing.
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