When it comes to fire safety and construction regulations, it’s always best to set sky-high safety standards and hold your buildings to them. Unfortunately, modern civilizations are built on lessons learned the hard way. Most of our international building codes and city safety regulations exist because of tragic events that showed us how we shouldn’t build things.
Dozens of fires and natural disasters have ripped through our world’s greatest cities, leaving destruction – and eventually, new regulations – in their wake. But the following fires have had a huge impact on modern fire codes, especially in the cities they nearly destroyed. These five beastly blazes probably made it into your history textbooks, but you may not know how they laid the groundwork for the rules you must follow today.
