When two different wildfires threatened Dave Kokot's house in Spokane, Wash., earlier this month, he and his family packed up keepsakes as they prepared to leave. Kokot was less worried about the house itself. He knew he'd given it the best possible chance of surviving the flames.
"You don't know how the house would go through a fire, but I think ours would have done fine," Kokot says.
The siding on Kokot's house is made of fire-resistant materials, instead of wood. He'd cleared the flammable vegetation around the perimeter and made sure tree limbs weren't touching his home. Research shows those precautions help houses resist the onslaught of tiny, burning embers carried by the wind, the main reason wildfires spread so rapidly in extreme conditions.
Kokot made those preparations because he spent his career thinking about wildfire safety, mostly as a fire protection engineer at the Spokane Fire Department. Recently, he's been pushing Washington state regulators to make those preparations mandatory for residents in areas at high risk of burning.
Washington has been developing new wildfire safety regulations for several years, including building codes for homes constructed in risky areas and rules for managing plants and vegetation. But restrictions that affect people's homes and gardens can be unpopular. After public pushback, state legislators backtracked and repealed some of the requirements.
Other Western states have also struggled to pass wildfire regulations affecting homeowners' properties. While flood risk is managed by the federal government, wildfire regulations are up to state and local governments. The result is a patchwork of rules.
"It's up to the political will of a community to adopt a building code to address wildfire," says Ryan Maye Handy, who works on community wildfire planning at Headwaters Economics, a land use think tank. "What we're increasingly seeing is many different interpretations of how to reduce that risk. It is literally all over the map."
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Washington rewrites its wildfire rules
In Spokane, dry conditions and extreme weather set the stage for the explosive wildfires in August. Like much of the Western U.S., eastern Washington is in drought after a winter with low precipitation. In the days leading up to the fires, forecasters warned of a dangerous mix of conditions: gusty winds, low humidity and high temperatures. More than 800 homes and structures were destroyed.
"This was a huge part of our city and a lot of people in the city thought: We're never going to have a fire here, it's never going to come to us and we don't have to worry about this," Kokot says.
Understanding wildfire risk can be challenging in many Western states. For floods, the federal government releases national maps showing which places are at risk of inundation. Wildfire mapping is left to the states, which involves using complex computer models to determine the chances of a fire based on vegetation, terrain and fire behavior.
In 2023, Washington building code officials gathered public feedback on the state's new wildfire hazard maps and regulations. In areas mapped as at-risk, newly constructed homes would be required to have fire-resistant roofs, siding and other measures. Homeowners would also be required to manage flammable vegetation to create defensible space, like making sure tree branches are 10 feet from a house or structure.
In a series of public hearings, some conservation groups pushed back, saying the vegetation rules would go against regional goals to increase the urban tree canopy and provide shade that would cool buildings during heat waves. Others said the wildfire maps were overly broad and didn't accurately reflect the real risk.
"Our greatest concern at Audubon is preserving bird habitat," testified Eric Seibel on behalf of the Tahoma Audubon Society, a wildlife conservation group now known as the Tahoma Bird Alliance. "I'm concerned that trees, which are our best defense against climate change, will be destroyed en masse if the provisions of the code pass."
In 2024, Washington passed a bill ordering state regulators to produce new wildfire hazard maps, with fewer rules that would be enforced. New construction would still be required to have fire-resistant roofs and siding, but no vegetation management would be required by homeowners.
"That got the fire service pretty concerned, because that's our primary protection," Kokot says. It's safer for firefighters to defend a burning structure when there's less vegetation directly next to it.
Washington state officials say the new wildfire maps will be released in December. The maps will now account for past wildfire history, which they say will more accurately show which areas are most at risk.
"It's trying to make sure that people are smart, building in those areas," says Angie Lane, assistant division manager with Washington's Department of Natural Resources, who is working on the new wildfire maps. "When you're starting fresh, it's easier to go ahead and prepare for all of that while you're building."
A patchwork of Western wildfire regulations
Oregon faced similar pushback while developing its wildfire regulations. Some residents were concerned that if their home was designated as high risk by the state, insurance companies would cancel their policies. Misinformation about the extent of vegetation restrictions also spread online.
Home insurance cancellations have increased rapidly in the Western U.S. as wildfires have become increasingly expensive. But insurance companies base decisions on their own maps, developed with much more granular and comprehensive data. Oregon even passed a law in 2023 banning insurance companies from using state wildfire maps.
"Insurers have their own proprietary maps that are quite sophisticated," Handy of Headwaters Economics says. "We know insurers are mapping wildfire risk already and the state maps are in some senses just catching up to that."
As a result of public pushback, Oregon repealed its wildfire rules last year.
Building codes for housing in wildfire-prone areas were pioneered by California. For almost 20 years, the state has required fire-resistant construction standards. Fire agencies conduct home inspections for vegetation and defensible space in many high-risk areas. The state is currently considering even more stringent vegetation rules, limiting how much greenery can be within five feet of a structure — what's known as "zone zero."
In Colorado, an effort to develop wildfire building codes was defeated more than a decade ago, after pushback from the local building and real estate industry. That changed after the destructive Marshall Fire in 2021. The state now has new rules on building codes and vegetation. Utah also recently passed its own rules.
Still, a number of Western states don't have statewide wildfire rules and codes, or even maps identifying high risk areas. Handy says that leaves many areas vulnerable, given that wildfires are becoming increasingly destructive as the climate gets hotter.
"One of the best ways to get everyone on the same playing field is a wildfire building code," Handy says. "We know now, more so than we knew 10 years ago, that regulating what we call the 'built environment' to reduce wildfire risk is extremely effective."
In Spokane, Kokot feels lucky that the fires were contained before they reached his house. The damage in his community, he says, shows how wildfires have changed, becoming larger and more frequent.
"We can't be complacent about the fires," Kokot says. "We have to predict that there's a possibility it could happen. We have to plan for it."
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