Wood buildings not higher risk
Apartment buildings built from wood are everywhere in metro Denver. And though a devastating fire reduced a project that was under construction to ashes and killed two people Wednesday, the core material does not make them an inherently high fire risk, officials say.
The metro area has added more than 47,000 apartment units since the middle of 2008, according to the Colorado Apartment Association. An additional 12,000 apartments could be built before the end of 2018, according to a recent estimate.
If any of those units are in a building shorter than four stories, odds are they are built around wood framing. That goes for homes, duplexes and even some commercial buildings, officials say.
“Wood construction is very, very common,” Andrea Burns, spokeswoman for Denver Community Planning and Development, said Thursday. “Most buildings under three stories are wood construction.”
Thanks to improved structural integrity of new materials, rigorous inspection standards, mandatory sprinkler systems and other safety measures, contemporary stick-built structures are also considered a low safety risk once completed. Wood framing is sometimes treated with fire retardant, and builders encase it in drywall, made of fire-resistant gypsum board, before a project is complete.
“It’s an economical way to build,”
Colorado Homebuilding Academy director Michael Smith said. “And when a building is completed, that entirely changes the combustion properties of the buildings to make them safe.”
The International Building Code was updated in 2015 to allow greater leeway on wood-framed projects, as highlighted at the time by the Colorado Real Estate Journal. The update to the code, which the city of Denver follows, allows for up to five stories of wood-framed construction on top of a concrete first floor, as long as the building does not exceed 75 feet tall and meets fire protection criteria, city officials say. Most buildings include no more than four wood-framed floors, the city’s Burns said.
The structure that burned Wednesday in a three-alarm fire appeared to be following these guidelines, Denver Fire Department Capt. Greg Pixley said. The Emerson Place Apartments, 1833 Emerson St., had a concrete basement and first floor with wood framing for the upper floors. The wood was exposed when the fire broke out.
In addition to the fatalities, six people were injured in the fire.
City officials say the project had been inspected as recently as Monday. Its larger electrical work had passed a “partial rough inspection,” city officials say. The general contractor, Vertix Builders Inc. had a license in good standing.
Denver Fire had not responded to a three-alarm fire since December 2013, when an apartment complex that was under construction in Glendale burned to the ground, Pixley said. No one was injured.
“Any building has fire danger. That is why we put smoke detectors and sprinkler system in there,” Pixley said. “The complication with an under-construction building is it has less protection. We didn’t have any fires like this last year. It’s just a unique situation.”