Cambridge is similar to Dorchester and other parts of Boston with many three-family houses that are very close together. They have decent size apartments, sometimes with beautiful woodwork and detail, but were built many years ago before building codes and modern electrical systems. When they are rehabbed properly, they are gorgeous inside.
BUT, if they are rehabbed sloppily by do-it-yourselfers, they can be horrible firetraps.
There was a fire in Charlestown that took out a very old building that had been rehabbed into $700,000 condos.
As beautiful as those condos were, they still burned like a 150 year old wooden building.
I haven’t heard if there were any deaths in the Cambridge fire. However, the City of Boston has lost MANY firefighters due to old buildings being re-purposed. The Hotel Vendome in the back Bay was particularly bad.
http://www.celebrateboston.com/disasters/vendome-hotel-fire.htm
There needs to be more oversight on the remodeling of those old buildings with sprinklers and alarms installed. That was also a problem in Oakland.
Still, people will cheat and others will be careless and fires will happen. Just have to hope that they are few and far between and no one is injured or killed...especially the first responders.