escapades of the elusive kat

Very little is built of wood these days -- I mean, you don't build a 20+ story condominium tower out of wood. In fact, in my province, Ontario, they've been trying to relax the construction rules to allow more smaller buildings to be built with wood (e.g. 4-5 story buildings). And the newer the construction, the more stringent the fire safeguards have to be, e.g. firewalls and such to mitigate the risk of fire spreading to other units if one breaks out in one unit of a building.

Likely the main difference is North American society is far more litigious and citizens would sue the pants off government officials for lax building code guidelines.