Last week, Waltham, MA, city councilors voted unanimously to call on the state of Massachusetts to implement tighter restrictions on the size of wood-frame residential buildings after a massive ten-alarm fire that destroyed a wooden apartment complex under construction in late July. The fire was the Boston-area’s second major wood-frame fire in a month and the fourth since the start of June. The incidents come at a time of increasing concern over the use combustible building materials in the low- to mid-rise residential building market, as a number of wood-frame apartment complexes have been the site of notable fires in Charlotte, NC; Warner Robins, GA;  Midvale, UT; Oakland, Dorchester, Lawrence and Lowell, MA; East Hollywood, CA; Waterbury, CT, Emeryville, CA; St. Petersburg, FL; Arlington, VA; College Park, MD; Overland Park, KS; Raleigh, NC; and Maplewood, NJ. There have been dozens over the last few years.

"The buildings made of this material have shown a propensity to erupt into a conflagration," Waltham Council Vice President Robert G. Logan said in a Boston Globe article. "So I think the state needs to go back and rethink whether or not to allow that kind of construction, especially in buildings of that size."