In early July, a three-alarm blaze claimed the lives of three people and seriously injured a fourth in a Washington, D.C., suburb condominium fire.

Fairfax County fire department spokesman Lt. Mark D. Stone said in a Washington Post report that the fire's rapid spread was accelerated by the buildings' wood frame construction, which burned easily. "There was no fire-resistant material, like concrete," he said.

Of the four buildings involved in the early morning fire, two were left largely in ruins.

Fires like this one call into question the level of fire protection provided by building codes for housing. According to the National Concrete Masonry Association, less reliance on combustible materials in construction, more attention to appropriate use of firewalls and use of sprinklers would reduce fire risks for occupants and owners of residential structures.

"If these buildings had better incorporated noncombustible materials such as concrete in the floor systems and concrete masonry in the form of fire wall separations, the spread of the fires would likely have been limited and perhaps confined to the area of origin," said Robert Thomas, vice president of engineering at the National Concrete Masonry Association. "Accidents happen, but communities can require better construction and thus better protection to limit the effects of those accidents."

Mark B. Hogan, president of the National Concrete Masonry Association said a greater focus on balanced design for improved fire safety is needed.

"Too often, we see building codes that allow trade-offs between the three elements of balanced design, detection [alarms], suppression [sprinklers] and containment [firewalls]," Hogan said. "Such trade-offs permit an overreliance on one or more of the elements of fire safety at the expense of the others."

Experts in fire safety know that balanced design requires buildings be constructed with firewalls that will remain functional during and after the fire. That means using durable, non-combustible materials for fire walls that won't burn and will withstand the impact of flying debris, explosions and the stresses of fire.

"At one time, a fire-resistive building was a structure that, barring a collapse or explosion, would confine a fire to one floor," said Vincent Dunn,retired deputy chief, Fire Department of New York. "Today, we no longer have fire-resistive buildings. If sprinklers or firefighters do not extinguish a fire, the buildings will not confine it."

The National Concrete Masonry Association supports building codes that require balanced design and encourages code writing officials to require buildings to be constructed with a combination of detection, suppression and firewalls for containment.