Key Takeaways:
The United States is entering 2026 with an increasingly familiar pattern: wildfire conditions are ramping up early, expanding across regions and challenging the idea of a neat start and end to “fire season.”
National fire intelligence reported that fire activity increased across the U.S. in March, with national readiness also rising—an early signal that conditions are aligning for significant incidents. At the same time, seasonal climate outlooks are pointing toward warming and drought persistence or development across key parts of the country, reinforcing the reality that wildfire risk is increasingly shaped by long-duration climate and fuels trends, not calendar months.
The 2026 forecast is a reminder that the wildfire problem is now as much a built environment problem as it is a wildland one. When wind-driven fires reach communities, the outcomes depend heavily on whether buildings and neighborhoods are prepared to resist ember exposure, radiant heat and direct flame contact.
This is especially the case in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), where development and vegetation meet. The takeaway for building safety and fire service professionals is clear: resilience can’t be seasonal. Communities need durable, enforceable approaches that reduce vulnerability year after year, regardless of whether a given year’s “fire season” is mild, severe, early or late.
The National Interagency Fire Center(NIFC)National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook documented a sharp rise in activity in March and reported thatNational Preparedness Level increased to 2 on March 20,2026,with the Southern Area reaching a geographic area Preparedness Level of 3. That same outlook reported that as of March 31,2026,1,615,683 acreshad burned nationally—231percentof thepreviousten-year average—with16,746 wildfiresreported (also above average).
The drivers described in the outlook are equally notable: widespread below-normal precipitation in March across much of the country, expanding drought and periods of exceptional warmth that rapidly dry fuels and extend the window for large fire growth.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s(NOAA)Spring Outlook (April–June) similarly warned that drought was expected toworsen or developacross large areas of the West and parts of the Plains, alongside a temperature outlook that favorsabove-normal temperaturesover wide portions of the country.
These are the kinds of early-season signals that matter for communities: wildfire disasters are rarely the result of a single factor. Theyemergewhendrought, heat, low humidity, windeventsand receptive fuels overlap. Sometimesthis occurs forshort periods, sometimes across entire seasons and increasingly across multiple regions at the same time.
Wildfire risk has always been seasonal in the sense that fuelsdryand ignition patterns changethroughthe year. But the idea of a predictable, bounded “season” is less useful when national outlooks describe meaningful fire potential outside traditional windows. In 2026, NIFC described an “unprecedented early season heat wave” in March that accelerated drying and supported increased activity, including large wind-driven events.
NOAA’s seasonal drought and precipitation signals point in the same direction: when drought persists or expands and temperatures run above normal, the period when fuels are receptive widens, and fire behavior becomes more difficult to control. Thatdoesn’tmean every region will burn every year,but it does mean communities shouldplan forwildfire as achronic riskrather than a short, episodic event.
This mattersforpolicy.If “fire season” is treated as a temporary disruption, the default posture becomes reactive—extra staffing, restrictions, public messaging—then a return to baseline. Resilience, by contrast, is built into the community’s DNA through land use decisions, construction requirements and defensible space practices that persist beyond any one summer.
One of the most important signals in the April 2026 national outlook is the geographic breadth of above-normal significant fire potential,not only in the West, but also across parts of the Plains, Southand Southeast during spring and into summer. For April, the outlookidentifiedabove-normal potential across much of the central and southern High Plains into portions of the Southwest, as well as South Texas and much of the Southeast.
As the outlook progressed into May,Juneand July, it projected shifting and expanding areas of above-normal potential across portions of the Southwest and West, and later into parts of East Texas and the Lower Mississippi Valley by July. This isan important reminder that significant fire potential can track drought and heat patterns far beyond the traditional mental map of “wildfire states.”
For building safety professionals, this national spread is not an abstract map exercise.It’sa governance and preparedness challenge. Many communities facing increasing wildfire exposure do not see themselves as “WUI communities” until a wind-driven event proves otherwise.The U.S. Fire Administration’s(USFA)WUI resources emphasize that WUI fires are not limited to the West and note thatmore than 60,000 U.S. communities are at risk.
Wildfire becomes catastrophic for communities when it transitions from a vegetation fire to astructureignition and neighborhood-to-neighborhood spread problem. That transition happens under extreme weather and fuel conditions, but it is mediated by the vulnerabilities of buildings,parcelsand neighborhood layouts.
At the structure level, embers are a dominant pathway.CAL FIRE’spublicguidance explains that structures ignite because of embers, directflamesor radiant heat,and estimates that60to90percentof home ignitions occur because of embers. NIFC’s mitigation guidance similarly highlights that during wildfires, embers cause most home ignitions and emphasizes “home hardening” and defensible space as key actions that improve survivability and reduce risks to firefighters when resources are stretched.
This is where the building safety lens matters. Embers exploit openings and weak points: vents, eaves, under-deck areas, roofedgesand combustible materials within the immediate perimeter of structures. Neighborhood-scale factors, such ashousing density, attached fences and continuity of combustible landscaping,can turn isolated ignitions into rapid structure-to-structure spread.
When communities recognize wildfire as a built environment problem, they naturally begin asking different questions:
These are codequestions,not just operational ones.
Because communities rebuild and expand continuously, resilience is most effective when it is institutionalized—through adoption, implementationand enforcement of modern codes and standards that reduce vulnerability for each new project and major renovation.
The International Code Council(ICC) hasemphasized that building codes are a foundational tool for community resilience across hazardslikewildfireand that communities must push for adoption and enforcement of current codes to capture those benefits.
The evidence base for modern codes continues to grow.FEMA and USFA’s Building Codes Savepilot highlights the measurable life-safety and economic value that codes can deliver over the life of structures—supporting the broader argument that code adoption is not just policy, but a long-term investment in risk reduction.
Wildfire resilience is a particularly clear case for this compounding effect. Each year a communitypermitsnew construction in wildfire-proneareas,it is either building tomorrow’s lossesor tomorrow’s survivabilitydepending on whether requirements address known ignition pathways and exposures.
TheInternational Wildland-Urban Interface Code®(IWUIC)is designed specifically to address the vulnerabilities that drive large-loss WUI disasters. ICC describestheIWUIC asestablishingrequirements for land use and the built environment in designated WUI areas, includingignition-resistant construction,defensible space,emergency vehicleaccessandwater supplyprovisions. The code isintended to safeguard life and property from wildfire intrusion and help prevent structure fires from spreading into wildland fuels.
This matters because resilience must be systematic. Ignition-resistant construction without defensible space leaves homes exposed to high-intensity fire at the parcel edge; defensible space without construction provisions leaves openings and attachments vulnerable; access and water supply gaps can undermine suppression and evacuation operations. IWUIC is built tooperateas a coordinated package rather than isolated checklists.
Importantly, the IWUIC conversation is not only about “Western” wildfire. It is about protecting communities in any region where vegetation, weather, and development patterns create WUI exposures,an issueUSFAexplicitly elevates as national in scope.
The 2026 outlook provides urgency, but communities should treat it as a prompt to build durable systems rather than one-time seasonal preparations. Based on IWUIC’s core structure and complementary federal wildfire guidance, a practical national approach includes:
1) Define and map the WUI—then align policy to it
It is difficult to manage whatisn’tdefined. IWUIC is intended to apply withindesignated WUI areas, which requiresjurisdictionstoestablishwhere WUI conditions exist and what hazard classifications apply. Washington’sapproach—pairingadoptionauthority with mapping support—is one example of how states can enable locals to do this consistently.
2) Reduce the dominant ignition pathways
Embers are a primary ignition driver for structures, so mitigation strategies should focus on the building features and site conditions embers exploit. CAL FIRE emphasizes ember-driven ignition and the role of hardening to reduce vulnerabilities. NIFC likewisepoints tohome hardening and defensible space as critical, especially when firefighters cannot be everywhere at once during large events.
3) Treat defensible space as a life-safety buffer, not landscaping advice
USFAprovides anaccessibledefensible space framework, including the importance of the immediate zoneadjacent tostructures (0–5 feet) and expanded zones outward. The key is that defensible space is not a one-time project, ratheran ongoing condition that supports both structure survivability and safer firefighting operations.
4) Build resilience that compounds
Every permitted project is an opportunity to reduce futurerisk. Codes create consistency across builders, designers and owners and help avoida patchworkof best intentions and uneven practices.ICChas long emphasized that modern codesare foundational to disaster resilience and must be adoptedand enforced to deliver benefits.
Whether 2026 produces record losses nationwide or concentrated impacts in select regions, the underlying lesson is already visible in national data and forecasts: wildfire is a year-to-year certainty somewhere, and a growing risk in more places than many communities assume. The choice communities face is not whether to “win” a single season—it’swhether toreduce vulnerability over timeso that fires are less likely to become neighborhood-scale catastrophes.
That is why IWUIC adoption and implementationmatterseven in years when fire activity is quieter locally. Resilience is not an annual campaign; it is an accumulated outcome of planning, code adoption, consistentenforcementand a built environment designed to withstand the exposures we already understand. In a world where “fire season” is increasingly fluid,the most responsible strategy is tobuild forwildfire every year,because the built environment lasts far longer than the forecast.
Theoriginal versionof this article was published in the International Code Council’s Building Safety Journal.
Justice Jones realigns human culture with fire environments as Fire and Disaster Program Manager at the International Code Council. Previously, as Austin’s Wildfire Mitigation Officer, he led the largest municipal adoption of the ICC Wildland-Urban Interface Code and made Austin a nationally recognized fire-adapted community. A U.S. Air Force veteran and Certified Arborist, he served as Texas A&M’s State WUI & Prevention Coordinator. Justice sits on the IAFC Wildland Fire Policy Committee and works as a Technical Specialist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He is a recipient of the Fire Adapted Communities Leadership Award (2016), holds dual B.A.s from UT Austin, and a NFPA certified Wildfire Mitigation Specialist.
