MARYLAND — The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Fire Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., was the location for mass timber fire testing in October. This test was the third in a series of four experimental burns … designed to study fire behavior in mass timber structures. The results could inform building codes and fire models for multistory buildings made from wood and add to our understanding of smoke, emissions, and char formation. …the research team designed experiments to see how fire would behave in a building without sprinkler systems, a response from the fire department and other safety checks that exist in real-life scenarios. Testing to failure is important because “if you don’t know the order in which things fail, you don’t know [what] to design for”, said Erica Fischer, a professor at Oregon State University.