Summers in Austin, Texas, where I’m an architect, are long, hot, and dry. The consensus is that it’s only a matter of time before a wildfire turns one of our peaceful neighborhoods into an evacuation zone. Prolonged droughts coupled with development inching closer to greenbelts, nature preserves, and other wildland areas create perfect conditions for such an event. So that structures near these undeveloped areas might better survive a fire, Austin adopted the International Wildland-Urban Interface Code (IWUIC).

The International Code Council issued the first IWUIC in 2003. According to its writers, the code is “founded on data collected from tests and fire incidents, technical reports, and mitigation strategies from around the world.” Applying to all structures, residential and otherwise, that are located in WUI (pronounced “woo-ey”) zones, its purpose is to “mitigate the risk to life and structures from intrusion of fire from wildland fire exposures and fire exposures from adjacent structures and to mitigate structure fires from spreading to wildland fuels.”

It’s updated every three years and governs new builds, additions, relocations, and repairs to structures. The code defines a WUI as a “geographic area where structures and other human development meet or intermingle with wildland or vegetative fuels.”

Like fellow architects and builders in a growing range of the country, I recently found myself faced for the first time with needing to know how to make projects more fire-resistant in order to meet this code. This article is my attempt to share what I have learned. Like most readers of this magazine, I assume, I work primarily on wood-framed homes, so that’s what I’ll focus on here. And when I refer to “the code,” that means the 2024 IWUIC, since it is the most recent version.

Your jurisdiction could be using a prior edition…