Looks as if that was a horror story. However, wouldn't there be upgraded firecodes and such for a public venue.
For example, the fire in Bradford started in the wooden bleacher seats which then spread to the wooden roof.
Consider cement risers with modern plastic chair-back seats, or even aluminum bench seats that are very common in the US nowadays.
In addition, if the wood timbers just replaced the steel support structures, then the roof wouldn't be as "woody" as that in Bradford.
I guess this is part of my question: I heard that timbers that are of the size needed to support a second deck of luxury suites have a better fire rating than steel. Not being an architect, that last part might also read that steel beams of a comparable size have a lower melting point than that of timbers which at that size would take hours to burn thru enough to cause the colapse upper deck.
I hope that I'm making a clear case here for using timbers in such as way as Bradford did.
Any additional thoughts? Thanks.
