The sweeping updates include a slate of construction safety code changes.

Six months after an explosion and fire destroyed a grid-connected energy-storage battery facility in Surprise, Ariz., investigators are still trying to figure out all that happened. 

For more than two decades, science has recognized that building fires have become hotter, faster-spreading and more toxic. 

An update of a National Institute of Building Sciences study on benefit-to-cost ratios of hazard-mitigation investments has determined an 11:1 BCR over time for jurisdictions that have adopted model building code updates versus those that still use codes from the 1990s.