Almost every community has a plan for the day things go wrong on paper — at least, we like to think we do. However, after decades of studying and responding to fires that spread from areas with natural cover into neighborhoods, I’ve come to believe that most cities are only built for the best-case scenario.
Our streets, utilities and building codes work beautifully on blue-sky days. The problem is that the world doesn’t have many of those left. What does this mean for the future? We’ve reached the point where fire protection can’t be separated from city planning. The built environment is part of the fire ecosystem now, and if we don’t design it that way, we will keep fighting a physics problem we can’t win.
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The limits of response
Over the past 150 years, fire departments across the country have built up extraordinary capabilities from modest beginnings. We develop highly trained firefighters, drill on specialized equipment, and invest in robust, statewide mutual-aid systems. But in recent years, fire behavior has outpaced the design assumptions of the communities we protect. When homes are six feet apart and when roofs and fences connect fuel beds from one lot to the next, no amount of hoseline or air support can contain a wind-driven wildfire once it takes hold.
On those days, limits aren’t due to staffing, training or tools — they’re a result of the built environment. Firefighters can’t “make a stop” if the ignition pathways are designed into the neighborhood. You can’t ventilate a roof made of kindling and you can’t protect a house that ignites from embers blowing through a plastic vent. What used to be a standalone wildfire on the edge of town now turns into a full-scale urban fire, fed not by brush and trees, but by decks, fences and eaves.
Why urban planning is fire planning
It’s time we treat zoning plans, subdivision designs and municipal codes as critical documents for fire protection. The geometry of our cities determines whether a small ignition becomes a regional disaster. Narrow setbacks, shared combustible fencing and ornamental landscaping placed directly against walls create a continuous fuel chain. The next generation of resilience isn’t about faster responses — it’s about breaking that chain before the first spark lands.
Communities that have embraced “home-hardening” measures — non-combustible roofs, ember-resistant vents, tempered windows and vegetation management within the first five feet — show measurable reductions in losses. But the larger truth is that individual actions only go so far. Resilience can’t be optional, and safety can’t depend on whether a homeowner checks the right box on a permit form.
Local governments have the authority — and the responsibility — to build protection into the system itself. That means modernizing building codes, redefining acceptable spacing and aligning insurance or economic incentives with actual risk reduction. It also means designing utility corridors, access routes and water systems that can perform when power fails or pressure drops.
Seeing the city as a system
Fire protection engineers and urban planners often work in different rooms, speaking different industry-specific languages, resulting in a city that appears compliant on paper but is actually vulnerable. A subdivision may meet every line of code yet still be unsavable when the wind shifts.
True resilience requires seeing the city as a system of systems — electrical, transportation, communications and emergency response — each influencing the others. When one fails, it pulls the rest down with it. That’s what we’ve seen in wildland-urban interface events across the Western U.S.: communications overloads, roadways blocked by panicked evacuations, hydrants without capacity and emergency operations centers overwhelmed and unprepared, complicated by conflicting data.
The solution isn’t simply more funding or more technology. It’s integration. Fire departments must have a seat at the planning table from the start — when subdivisions are drawn, not after the first call to 911 during a wind event. Planning departments should model fire spread the same way they model stormwater or traffic flow. And utilities should design with the understanding that every transformer, meter and pole sits in a potential ignition zone.
From compliance to performance
Too many of our current regulations are written for compliance rather than performance. They check the box, but it doesn’t change the outcome. A resilient community isn’t one that meets the minimum — it’s one that performs under stress.
That shift from compliance to performance mirrors what the fire service has had to do operationally. We no longer define success by the number of engines on scene, but by the outcomes: lives saved, structures protected and community continuity maintained. City design should be held to the same standard.
This is where local leadership matters. Fire chiefs, city managers and planning directors must align their missions. Resilience should be a shared metric that drives capital projects, permitting decisions and public communication. When a subdivision is approved, the question shouldn’t be, “Does it meet the minimum code requirements?” It should be, “Can it survive a wind-driven fire at 2 a.m.?”
Shared responsibility
There’s a line firefighters know well: “We didn’t start the fire, but we’ll be there when it burns.” The truth is, we can no longer afford that separation between cause and consequence. Firefighters can’t protect what isn’t defensible.
Shared responsibility means engineers, architects, developers and public officials accept that fire behavior is no longer confined to the wildland. The urban interface now runs through cul-de-sacs, apartment complexes and light industrial zones. Every new project must consider ignition, flame spread and access as fundamental design criteria, not afterthoughts.
Designing for the worst day
We must stop considering resilience as just an emergency management slogan — it should be our discipline. It means designing for the day when the wind is strong, the humidity is low and the fire has already jumped your first line. It’s easy to build cities for perfect conditions. The challenge — and responsibility — is to build them for the day everything goes wrong.
That’s not pessimism; it’s preparation. When we design communities that can withstand their worst day, we also create places that thrive on their best. Roads are safer. Power grids are more stable. Emergency response is faster. Insurance markets remain viable. The benefits ripple outward.
In the end, resilience isn’t just about fire — it’s about trust. Communities trust that the systems built to protect them will hold when it matters most. Firefighters trust that the city they defend was designed to be defendable.
That’s the contract we need to rewrite, not between firefighters and fire, but between cities and the people who call them home.
