Legend tells us that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow knocked over a lantern in the barn on the evening of October 8, 1871, igniting the Great Chicago Fire that destroyed 3.3 square miles, killed 300 people, and left another 100,000 homeless. Only a handful of structures in the path of the fire survived, and those that did were almost exclusively of masonry construction.
One of the most significant legacies of the fire, besides the O’Leary family being unceasingly (and probably wrongly) blamed, is the abundance of brick structures built to replace those that were lost and to prevent another catastrophic fire in the future. The City of Chicago eventually banned wood construction, and other cities, such as Denver, Colorado, followed suit with their own “insist on brick” policies after their historic fires.
While brick walls are not the only ones that can satisfy the minimum fire resistance ratings mandated by today’s building codes, designers and developers are beginning to demand more than simply “good enough” when it comes to fire safety. The dramatic videos of wildfire destroying homes, businesses, and landmarks in the western U.S. has them asking, “How do we design for a future in which wildfire and extreme weather threats are the norm?”
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