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0 pointsusername906y ago0 comments

You are much more likely to die in a fire in USA, so it makes sense for Americans to take more measurements to prevent it. But in for example Switzerland fires is not a big thing so there is no need to have any laws against it.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fire-death-rates

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9 comments · 2 top-level

novok6y ago· 4 in thread

I'm also guessing german europe (swiss, austria, germany) lives in an earthquake free zone, so they can make stone buildings without much consideration for earthquakes while most of the US population has to think about earthquakes and/or hurricanes, so housing is more likely to go towards flexible and flammable wood.

dpe826y ago

Actually, it's mostly a cost thing. US code allows very inexpensive building materials and practices relative to Europe.

I suspect that is a result of different cultural expectations related to who should be able to afford to own their own home - even if the homes don't last very long.

alister6y ago

The choice of wood for residential housing is based on cost. Trees are plentiful in the U.S., so wood construction is the cheapest option. In countries without lots of trees, they’ll use concrete, stone, or something else.

wongarsu6y ago

Germany has plenty of wood, and ~300 years ago the majority of buildings were made from wood, with straw and clay as filler material, and straw roofs.

From my understanding the switch to stone was mostly for fire resistance. City walls lead to very dense cities where fire could spread rapidly. Stone walls with clay tile roofs make it much harder for any fire to spread within a building and to other buildings.

Today we would have the fire fighting techniques and more fire resistant wood panels, but old habits die hard (and we are used to buildings standing for hundreeds of years)

antod6y ago

In a house fire you'll usually be killed by your burning synthetic furnishings before the burning structure gets much of a chance.

modriano6y ago· 3 in thread

Based on this data, the fire death rate in the US is 1.16 per 100k pop. and the rate in Switzerland is 0.28 per 100k pop. Percentage wise, that's a big difference, but that's only because both of these numbers are extremely small. I don't think it's really accurate to say you're much more likely to die in a fire in the USA; it's extremely rare in both countries.

ISL6y ago

1.16/0.28 is a big difference.

If Switzerland had the US rate, ~75 more people would die every year.

If the US had the Swiss rate, ~2800 people would live to see another year.

modriano6y ago

I know the US (330 mil. pop.) is a much larger country than Switzerland (8 mil. pop.). You also could have said: "The cost of improving the Swiss housing and infrastructure to reduce the mortality rate due to fire would be a miniscule fraction of what it would be in the US". You have to normalize to look at these things, and you also have to look at the bigger picture, or you could totally mislead yourself.

Put in normalized terms,

- 0.00028% of the Swiss pop. dies from fire annually

- 0.00116% of the US pop. dies from fire annually

- 0.001% of the US pop. dies from drowning annually

- 0.001% of the US pop. dies from exposure to mechanical force annually

- 0.006% of the US pop. dies from gunshot annually

- 0.01% of the US pop. dies from falling annually

- 0.015% of the US pop. dies from road injuries annually

- 0.03% of the US pop. dies from respiratory illness annually

Here's [0] a visualization I made of causes of mortality a few years back. Play around with this a little bit; it's pretty interesting looking at actual mortality rates.

[0] http://bl.ocks.org/MattTriano/raw/154e9c142504d61985e2b65287...

briandear6y ago

An extra 2800 people out of a population of 380 million? Statistically meaningless.

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