California’s worst fire season has sparked new urgency around codes, materials and defensible space strategies.
- Updated codes like California’s Chapter 7A and Zone Zero standards provide essential wildfire defense guidelines.
- In addition, organizations including Firewise USA and Community Brigade offer volunteer-based, educational wildfire protection and home-hardening strategies.
- IBHS and CAL FIRE research shows that wildfire resistance can be built for under $3,000 and can be incorporated into site-built or modular homes.
When wildfires raged through the Pacific Palisades and Eaton areas of Los Angeles in early 2025, they became the most destructive fires in California’s history. Fueled by dry weather, unusually high winds and existing water shortages, the fires decimated 23,000 acres and almost everything in their path. Many homes in the Pasadena/Altadena areas where the Eaton fire struck were built before 1939.
And while these fires were widely publicized, less well-known wildfires are also happening all over the US. The National Interagency Fire Center reported 56,580 wildfires in 2023, accounting for over 2.5 million acres of burned land.
Although we can’t control the weather, we can be smarter about the way we rebuild. This includes identifying and implementing proven materials and methods of mitigation that can help protect homes, businesses and communities during future wildfires.
Effective mitigation strategies aren’t specific to a particular building system. Instead, they can be implemented cost-effectively in site-built, modular and other types of prefabricated homes.
Codes Are Effective
Most homes do not burn down from direct contact with flames, but from embers — small pieces of burning debris. Embers land on property and/or structures, smolder and then ignite. The Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Foundation reports that “flying embers are the cause of up to 90% of homes destroyed by wildfire.”
Over the last five years Chris Ochoa, Senior Counsel for Codes, Regulatory and Legislative Affairs for the California Building Industry Association (CBIA) has been closely working with the California State Fire Marshal to collect more than 140,000 data points related to fires. This data shows that homes built to the 2008 California Building Code Chapter 7A, which establishes requirements for fire and smoke protection in buildings, have a six- to seven-times better chance of surviving a wildfire event than homes built prior to 2008.
The emphasis on well-planned communities and defensible spaces around homes is a top mitigation topic for many organizations looking to provide steps for homeowners to prevent wildfire damage and spreading. Exit routes for residents, wider roads for emergency vehicles and vegetation restrictions are all part of this type of mitigation.
These approaches work. “During the Silverado fire in 2020, Orchard Hills, a master-planned community in Orange County, experienced winds in excess of 80 miles per hour,” says Ochoa. “The entire neighborhood community was evacuated, but two or three days later those [community members] were all able to get back into their homes and the local fire department said not a single home was lost or damaged, largely due to building to Chapter 7A standards.”
California Building Industry Association (CBIA) has been closely working with the California State Fire Marshal to collect more than 140,000 data points related to fires. This data shows that homes built to the 2008 California Building Code Chapter 7A, which establishes requirements for fire and smoke protection in buildings, have a six- to seven-times better chance of surviving a wildfire event than homes built prior to 2008.
The emphasis on well-planned communities and defensible spaces around homes is a top mitigation topic for many organizations looking to provide steps for homeowners to prevent wildfire damage and spreading. Exit routes for residents, wider roads for emergency vehicles and vegetation restrictions are all part of this type of mitigation.
These approaches work. “During the Silverado fire in 2020, Orchard Hills, a master-planned community in Orange County, experienced winds in excess of 80 miles per hour,” says Ochoa. “The entire neighborhood community was evacuated, but two or three days later those [community members] were all able to get back into their homes and the local fire department said not a single home was lost or damaged, largely due to building to Chapter 7A standards.”
Policymakers in California are also pushing to pass Zone Zero standards that require an ember-resistant zone extending five feet horizontally around a structure, including any attached decks or stairs, with the goal of reducing the spread of embers or flames.
In fact, many of the surviving homes in the Palisades and Eaton fires had implemented mitigation strategies that included keeping trees and bushes away from their homes, thereby creating a defensible space around their home. Photos of these homes are very telling in terms of the successful mitigation.
Voluntary Standards Also Help
Building codes are not optional but they’re also not the only standards. Some programs such as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)’s Wildfire Division provide free resources to residents and safety professionals to help ensure community safety from wildfire. Firewise USA is a program administered by NFPA, a nonprofit focused on saving lives and reducing loss, based in Quincy, Massachusetts. The Firewise USA program is co-sponsored by the USDA Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters and is a voluntary program that focuses on education and mitigation for fire safety.
The Community Brigade in Los Angeles is another volunteer program that both responds to fires in communities and helps homeowners understand and implement wildfire building standards such as firebreaks, ember-resistant vents and fireproof roofing materials. They also make recommendations on using fire-resistant plants and materials in defensible space around homes to reduce the risk of future wildfires.
What About Insurance?
As with other areas of the country experiencing unprecedented disasters, California is seeing insurance providers exiting the state or choosing not to renew policies for homeowners in high-risk areas.
California’s FAIR Plan currently provides property owners access to basic fire insurance when access to coverage in the traditional market is not available through no fault of the property owner. Continual research is necessary to provide insurance companies with the type of data necessary to offer homeowners discounts for mitigation. Damage Inspection (DINS) Data, collected by The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) documents structures damaged or destroyed by wildland fires. This data is crucial for understanding the extent of fire damage, informing recovery efforts and helping property owners understand the damage to their homes. It also helps identify building code and wildfire mitigation strategies by characterizing building vulnerabilities and developing responses.
Other research is being done by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), an independent nonprofit research organization dedicated to protecting homes and communities from natural disasters. IBHS teamed up with Headwaters Economics, a Bozeman, Montana nonprofit research group working to improve community development and land management, as well as with CAL FIRE, to examine the cost for improving the structure and design of existing homes to increase wildfire resistance.
The study showed that some of the most effective strategies to reduce the vulnerability of homes and neighborhoods to wildfire can be done for less than $3,000 during new construction.
Resilient Communities
KB Home, one of the largest homebuilders in the US, is currently selling homes in their new 64-home community, Dixon Trail, in Escondido, California. The community is being built to wildfire resilience standards developed by IBHS.
The Dixon Trail community uses fire-resistant building methods and materials based on over a decade of IBHS wildfire research. Each home is being built to the Wildfire Prepared Home Plus standard and will receive a designation certifying that it has met IBHS’s most stringent requirements for homesite-level fire mitigation.
Wildfire Prepared Home Plus builds on IBHS’s Base program which requires items such as a Class A fire-rated roof, ember-resistant vents, defensible space around the home and no combustible fencing within five feet. The Plus program requires fire-resistant windows, a noncombustible deck and covered gutters, to name a few. Dixon Trail is the first applied use of the researched-based, community-level mitigation strategies of structure separation, fire pathway reduction and wildfire-resilient building materials under IBHS’s Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood standard. Once the neighborhood is completed and has passed an IBHS evaluation, a final Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood designation will be issued.
Looking to the Future
As wildfires grow more frequent and more destructive, the need for proactive, evidence-based mitigation is essential to the safety of humans, homes and entire communities. From updated building codes like Chapter 7A to initiatives such as Firewise USA and cutting-edge research by organizations like IBHS and CAL FIRE, California is forging a path toward greater wildfire resilience.
For modular homebuilders, the opportunity lies in being educated in mitigation strategies and the ability to offer customers products that are built to withstand wildfires. As we look to the future, it’s clear that state and community-wide cooperation will be the cornerstone of surviving future wildfire events.
Heather Wallace is a freelance writer and industry engagement specialist with over two decades of experience in various areas of the building industry. She has covered topics on construction, technology, workforce development, green building, and sustainable living.
Photos courtesy of: Michele Steinberg, NFPA.
