While performing a preplan survey or conducting crew familiarization in your district, it’s wise to take a second look at brick buildings, particularly downtown. You might be surprised at what you ...

While no building is truly fireproof, construction materials and systems can make a building fire safe. Fire-resistive construction gives time to discover a fire, suppress it before it spreads and ...

Wood construction of big buildings is catching on just about everywhere for good reasons: wood is renewable. In construction it is light, fast and less expensive than other materials. It's also just ...

Safety concerns following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 led to building safety codes that limited the use of wood in construction. While it was one of the first and most common materials used to make ...