I magine being a firefighter in a rural community when, seemingly overnight, a local farm is sold and 1,000 or more new homes are built on the property. This is happening across the country. The growth of the housing market in recent years has transformed many rural areas into suburban bedroom communities. Fire departments accustomed to fighting fires in older balloon-construction farmhouses, post-World War Ⅱ ranches, and barns are finding themselves responsible for protecting scores of homes made of lightweight wood truss construction. In some cases, a single new development may have more homes than the town in which the fire department was founded, and the homes may be larger than the firehouse.
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