A Practitioner's Analysis and Alternative Framework

Submitted to Lakewood City Council

Submitted by

Matthew Haraminac

Founder | Employing Broker | Licensed General Contractor

ICC & HUD 203k Certified · InterNACHI CPI

Peak Property Services | Peak Real Estate Advisors | Lakewood, Colorado

Executive Summary

My name is Matt Haraminac. I am a licensed General Contractor, ICC-credentialed inspector, InterNACHI Certified Professional Inspector, and Employing Broker based in Lakewood. I hold a Bachelor of General Studies from the University of Michigan with concentrations in Political Science, Sociology, and Psychology, and a pre-law track — a background that directly informs the behavioral, regulatory, and compliance analysis throughout this document. At an earlier point in my career I was trained to conduct wildfire mitigation inspections and performed them in the field for the insurance industry.

Wildfire mitigation inspection work means walking properties systematically, assessing actual vulnerability conditions, and documenting what makes a structure and its surroundings dangerous. Done at scale, across a wide range of residential properties, it reveals something that does not show up in code language: the persistent gap between what checklists require and what people actually do when left without clear guidance, meaningful incentive, or an accessible path to compliance. Homeowners make bad choices not out of indifference to safety but because the rules are unclear, the cost is unpredictable, and no one has given them a practical reason to do otherwise. That pattern is what I am describing in this document, and it is the pattern the proposed code will reproduce unless Lakewood builds something more thoughtfully designed.

On the construction side, I navigate the building permit system daily, manage client projects in the residential exterior categories this code directly regulates, and have direct, current exposure to how compliance friction translates into real-world behavior. The client who recently told me he is skipping permits on his deck replacement because of this code is not an anecdote. He is a data point in a behavioral pattern I have watched develop for years.

What This Document Proposes

Lakewood can build a wildfire resiliency program that is serious, durable, and effective. This document proposes one. The framework rests on four principles grounded in fire science and regulatory design:

Calibrate to the actual risk. Lakewood's dominant ignition mechanism is ember transport in a suburban context, not advancing flame fronts through continuous fuel beds. WUI fire research consistently identifies ember exposure as a primary structure-ignition mechanism, and the interventions with the highest risk-reduction value per dollar — ember-resistant vents, noncombustible building envelopes, maintained foundation zones — should be the centerpiece of the program, paired with defensible space requirements as a complementary layer, not the other way around.
Tier the requirements to the context. Full current WUI standards should apply to new construction in the expanded Jefferson County-mapped zone, where compliance is achievable at the design stage. For existing homes in the state-mapped zone, the framework should shift from permit-triggered reactive compliance to a proactive, incentive-based program targeting the highest-value interventions across the widest possible share of the housing stock.
Make the safest choices the easiest choices. The proposed code, as written, imposes equivalent friction on the safest assemblies and the least safe ones, and attaches vegetation removal requirements that homeowners find prohibitive. A fast-lane covering all qualifying structure-hardening projects, with no collateral vegetation requirements, a defined checklist, and a defined timeline, would reverse that. Compliance should be rewarded, not merely required.
Address ignition at the source. The most immediate wildfire ignition risk in Lakewood is not the framing material in a deck replacement. It is open burning and fireworks. Fireworks represent a fire ignition risk under any conditions, and that risk becomes acute during red flag weather. Credible, punitive, publicized enforcement of existing rules, with the highest penalties reserved for red flag conditions, would produce more immediate risk reduction than any building code provision. The authority already exists. What is missing is the operational commitment to use it.

The Central Commitment: This document is not a brief against wildfire safety requirements. It is a proposal for a program that actually works: one that produces high real-world compliance rather than high paper compliance, that reaches the existing housing stock proactively rather than waiting for permit triggers that may never come, and that gives residents, contractors, and the City clear, practical, rewarded pathways to make Lakewood genuinely more resilient.

The sections that follow develop each element of this framework in detail, with supporting fire science, behavioral research, and specific program recommendations. The document addresses:

Lakewood's actual suburban ember-transport risk profile and how the proposed code misreads it
The Marshall Fire: what it tells us about the relative value of structure hardening and defensible space under real conditions
The compliance problem: why permit-triggered frameworks have limited penetration into existing housing stock, and what the behavioral economics of permit avoidance actually look like
The deck fast-lane: material science, the difference between WUI-compliant and genuinely noncombustible assemblies, and why rewarding the safest choice matters
The attic vent problem: the most cost-effective structural intervention available and why it is absent from the current proposal
Mature trees, urban ecology, and the perverse fire outcomes of code-driven blanket removal
Open burning and fireworks enforcement: the highest-leverage intervention being ignored
A tiered applicability framework: calibrated, proportionate, and legally defensible
A proactive program: specific interventions organized by penetration speed and cost-effectiveness
The point-of-sale model: a proven third-party framework that reaches the housing stock where permits never will

Section 1: Understanding Lakewood's Actual Risk Profile

The Ember Transport Problem

The state WUI framework was designed primarily around rural and semi-rural contexts where fire advances through continuous fuel beds, typically shrub-dominated chaparral or forest understory, toward structures at the wildland edge. Lakewood's risk profile is fundamentally different. It is a suburban municipality that borders open space and foothill terrain, but the dominant ignition mechanism for residential structures in this context is not an advancing flame front. It is ember transport.

This distinction is not semantic. It is the central organizing fact for any effective fire resiliency program, and the proposed code fails to reflect it adequately.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the primary federal research body on WUI fire science, states directly: research and experience from past WUI fires shows that a majority of structures are ignited by embers. NIST documents the ember ignition pathway as the dominant mechanism because embers arrive ahead of the flame front, affect structures far from direct fire contact, and exploit specific building vulnerabilities that defensible space alone cannot address. NIST documents four primary ember ignition pathways:

Embers landing directly on combustible roof or deck surfaces
Embers accumulating in gutters, against siding, or in the foundation zone and transitioning to flaming ignition
Embers entering the building interior through vents, gaps in the building envelope, or open windows
Embers landing on nearby combustible fuels (woodpiles, fences, sheds, mulch) that transmit fire to the structure

NIST research further notes that embers can be carried by winds and deposited several miles downwind of a wildfire. During a large wind-driven event, millions of embers may simultaneously impact a community. This means that defensive strategies focused on keeping fire away from the property perimeter, the conceptual basis of defensible space requirements, address only one part of the threat, and arguably the less controllable part.

The practical implication for code design is this: for a structure with noncombustible cladding, ember-resistant vents, a Class A roof assembly, and a maintained noncombustible foundation zone, the marginal risk reduction achieved by aggressive vegetation removal at 30 to 100 feet is often modest relative to structure hardening in suburban contexts. The structure's primary vulnerability has already been addressed at the building envelope. Inversely, a structure with combustible siding, standard 1/4-inch mesh attic vents, and a wood deck adjacent to the foundation wall remains highly vulnerable regardless of how much vegetation has been cleared.

Defensible space and structure hardening are not competing strategies. Fire science is clear that both are necessary components of a layered resilience approach: defensible space reduces the likelihood and intensity of fire reaching the structure, and structure hardening reduces the structure's vulnerability to the embers and heat that do arrive. The problem with the proposed code is not that it includes defensible space requirements. It is that it emphasizes vegetation management while providing no meaningful fast-lane, subsidy, or incentive for the envelope hardening interventions that carry the highest risk reduction value per dollar for the existing suburban housing stock. Both levers matter. The code should reflect that.

The Map: Understanding the Jeffco Expansion and Its Limits

The Jefferson County WUI map expansion was not arbitrary. It reflects deliberate, documented work by the Jeffco Wildfire Commission, the Jefferson County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP), and a direct policy response to the Marshall Fire's demonstration that grass-driven plains fires pose risks comparable to mountain fires. Jefferson County ranks second among Colorado's 64 counties for wildfire risk and in the 98th percentile nationally. The expansion of WUI boundaries past the mountains and into the plains, capturing areas near Arvada, Ken Caryl, and Lakewood, reflects a legitimate and considered risk judgment. The City Engineer and council members who have expressed respect for the Jeffco map are right to take it seriously.

The problem is not the map. The problem is what happens when the map becomes the sole basis for triggering a compliance framework that was not designed with the externalities of that expansion in mind. Lakewood's own public materials make the relationship explicit: the city describes its proposed code as aligning with Jefferson County's more stringent policy to maintain consistency across jurisdictions. This is not an inference about the drafting process. It is Lakewood's stated rationale. Lakewood is adopting a framework developed for county-scale planning across a jurisdiction that includes rural, mountain, and semi-rural communities with fuel conditions and risk profiles that differ materially from a dense suburban municipality.

A directly relevant comparison: the City and County of Broomfield, facing the same state code requirements, hired Blue Mountain Environmental to conduct parcel-level ground truthing of fuel loads within their WUI-mapped area. That assessment found that expansive areas classified by the state model as Moderate Load Dry-Climate Grass-Shrub (GS2 122) were more accurately characterized as Short Grass Low Load (GR1) — a meaningfully lower fuel load both in height and density per acre. The state model overstated actual fuel conditions at the local level. Broomfield's ground truthing is now being incorporated into a locally calibrated WUI map through the Wildfire Resiliency Code Board's modeling tool.

Lakewood has not conducted equivalent ground truthing. The Jefferson County map was developed at the county scale, using modeling inputs appropriate for county-level planning. Applied at the parcel level in a dense suburban municipality, the map's classifications may not reflect actual on-the-ground fuel conditions with the precision needed to justify the compliance burden being imposed. A risk designation appropriate for county-level planning is not the same as a validated parcel-level risk determination.

The state map's polygon-based structure also creates a practical problem that the Jeffco expansion was partly designed to address: properties split by polygon boundaries, fire risk that appeared to hop arbitrarily across parcel lines, and delineation problems that made the state map difficult to apply consistently. The Jeffco map resolves those administrative problems, and that resolution is worth respecting. But administrative clarity and calibrated risk are not the same thing, and the compliance obligations in the proposed code treat the Jeffco map as if it were a validated parcel-level risk assessment rather than a county-scale planning tool. That distinction matters when it is homeowners — not county planners — who bear the cost.

The ask here is not that the Jeffco map be discarded. It is that Lakewood conduct or commission the kind of ground-level fuel assessment that Broomfield undertook, so that the compliance framework being applied to Lakewood property owners reflects actual local conditions rather than a county-scale model that may overstate risk in the suburban portions of the mapped area. At minimum, the City should publish the specific methodology underlying the Jeffco map's application to Lakewood parcels and provide a clear process for property owners who believe their designation does not reflect actual site conditions.

Section 2: The Marshall Fire — What It Tells Us, and What It Doesn't

The Marshall Fire of December 30, 2021, is the implicit justification for nearly every WUI code adoption discussion along the Front Range. It is worth examining carefully, because the fire's actual mechanism both strengthens certain arguments for hardening measures and seriously undermines the premise of the vegetation-removal-focused portions of the current proposal.

What the Fire Science Shows

The Marshall Fire was ignited in short grass fuels near the intersection of Colorado Highway 93 and Marshall Road, in Boulder County. From the moment of ignition, the fire was driven by mountain wave winds. The National Weather Service Boulder documented sustained winds of 50 to 60 mph with gusts exceeding 100 mph at multiple observation points. Within three minutes of discovery, the fire was declared out of control. It reached the town of Superior, three miles to the east, within approximately 39 minutes of ignition. It ultimately destroyed 1,084 homes and 7 commercial structures, with an additional 149 homes and 30 commercial structures damaged, causing more than $2 billion in losses and making it the most destructive fire in Colorado history.

Research published by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Nevada describes the fire as having burned within a short grass fuel type, driven by extreme downslope winds. The fire's progression through the built environment was driven by structure-to-structure ember transport under wind conditions that made direct suppression impossible. High winds made aerial suppression unusable; firefighters reported that winds dispersed water from hoses before it could reach structures.

Forensic analysis by UNDRR found that many affected areas had design features that inadvertently increased vulnerability: drainage ditches and greenbelts that acted as fire corridors due to unmanaged biomass, and combustible building materials. Research confirmed that the loading of urban fuels, meaning combustible building materials, decks, fences, and outbuildings, greatly exceeded the loading of wildland vegetation in the interface areas. Once the fire entered the built environment, structure-to-structure spread became the dominant propagation mechanism.

What the Proposed Code Would and Would Not Have Changed

This is the critical question, and it deserves a direct answer.

Measures that would have meaningfully mattered in the Marshall Fire context: noncombustible cladding and roofing on structures, ember-resistant vents to prevent internal ignition, elimination of combustible decks and attached outbuildings adjacent to structures, and clearance of the foundation zone (within approximately 5 feet of the structure). These are all structure-hardening and zone-zero measures.

An important caveat is required here: the Marshall Fire was an extreme event, with wind gusts exceeding 100 mph that represent a high-end outlier rather than a typical WUI fire. It would be a logical error to use the Marshall Fire to argue that defensible space has no value; under slower, creeping fire conditions that represent the majority of WUI fire events, 30 to 100 foot clearances do reduce direct flame impingement and radiant heat exposure. The lessons of the Marshall Fire are more specific: under extreme wind-driven conditions, ember transport overwhelms defensible space as a primary protection mechanism, and structure hardening becomes the dominant variable. For a suburban context like Lakewood, that argues for a code that treats both as serious requirements, not one that heavily front-loads vegetation management while leaving structure hardening as an afterthought.

Key Point: The Marshall Fire burned through suburban neighborhoods where vegetation management had been practiced by many homeowners. The structures that burned did not burn primarily because trees were too close. They burned because their building envelopes were combustible and because ember transport under extreme wind conditions overwhelmed vegetation management alone. The lesson is not that defensible space is unnecessary. It is that structure hardening and defensible space must both be treated as serious, well-resourced requirements, and the proposed code does not reflect that balance.

Defensible space is a necessary layer of any serious WUI resilience strategy. The argument here is that it must be understood as one layer among several, properly weighted relative to the ember-transport risk profile that Lakewood actually faces, and paired with equally serious investment in structure hardening measures that the fire science consistently identifies as the strongest predictors of structure survival.

Section 3: The Compliance Problem

Permit Penetration: Why the Code's Impact Will Be Near Zero in the Near Term

A permit-triggered compliance framework has a fundamental structural limitation: it can only affect housing stock that goes through the permit system. For an existing residential neighborhood, this is a small and self-selected fraction of properties in any given year. The homes most likely to trigger permits, larger renovation projects by homeowners with resources to invest, are not the same homes most likely to be the most vulnerable. Older housing stock with combustible siding, wood shake roofs, and standard 1/4-inch mesh attic vents is least likely to generate major permitted exterior renovation work.

The following is an illustrative penetration model, not a verified estimate. The City should publish WUI-zone permit volume data, which it should have, to validate or replace these assumptions with actual figures:

Assume the Jefferson County map applies to several thousand homes in Lakewood
Assume approximately 1.5 to 2% of those homes generate some form of exterior renovation permit in a given year under normal market conditions
Of those, a fraction will trigger WUI applicability under the threshold-based system
Factor in permit avoidance driven by the anticipated compliance requirements. The code is not yet in effect, but direct client conversations already reveal a willingness to accept the risk of unpermitted work rather than face mandatory vegetation removal — particularly the loss of mature trees, semi-mature shrubs, and established landscaping that homeowners have invested years in developing. The trigger for avoidance in these conversations is not paperwork burden alone; it is the prospect of losing vegetation they value and cannot replace on any reasonable timeline
Factor in the reroof exemption, which removes the single most common exterior trigger from the compliance system entirely

The result is that the code will meaningfully touch perhaps 0.5% of the mapped housing stock per year. Over a decade, that is 5% penetration in an optimistic scenario, and the 5% will skew toward newer homes with less vulnerable building envelopes to begin with.

The Camp Fire in Paradise, California, provides the most rigorous real-world data available on what WUI codes can achieve when applied to new construction. Research by Syphard and Keeley (USGS/Sage Insurance Holdings, 2019) analyzing thousands of California wildfire structure losses found that post-code homes built after 2008 showed meaningfully higher survival rates than pre-code homes in comparable fire exposure conditions, with structural hardening features including enclosed eaves, vent screens, and multi-pane windows identified as the strongest predictors of survival. That difference is real and meaningful. But it required a full decade of new construction under the code before post-code homes became a measurable fraction of the housing stock. In Pacific Palisades, 86% of homes were built before 2000. Even with a fully enforced code applied to all permitted work since 2008, the pre-code housing stock remained overwhelmingly dominant. That is Lakewood's situation for the foreseeable future.

A permit-triggered code applied to existing housing stock, with a reroof exemption and threshold-based triggers, will not materially change Lakewood's fire vulnerability profile within any meaningful planning horizon. Meaningful risk reduction requires a proactive program, not a passive one.

The Camp Fire data makes this concrete. Post-code homes in Paradise showed meaningfully higher survival rates than pre-code homes, a real and important finding. But in 2018, a full decade after California's 2008 WUI code took effect, post-code homes represented roughly 350 out of more than 12,450 structures in the affected area: fewer than 3% of the total stock. After ten years of continuous code application, 97% of structures were still pre-code. Now apply that same logic to Lakewood. If this code achieves 0.5% penetration per year, an optimistic figure given the reroof exemption, the threshold triggers, and the anticipated permit avoidance, then after ten years, 5% of the mapped housing stock will have had some WUI-related compliance interaction. The other 95% will be untouched. Of that 5%, many interactions will be partial renovations that improve one component without hardening the whole structure. The homes most likely to be reached are the newest and least vulnerable; the oldest and most fire-exposed will be the last to come through the permit system, if they ever do. At the survival rate improvement documented in the Camp Fire research, the annual reduction in expected structure loss across Lakewood's WUI-mapped stock from this code, in a realistic fire event, would likely be extremely small relative to total housing stock. That is not a wildfire resiliency program. It is a starting point that cannot succeed without a parallel proactive program reaching the existing housing stock directly.

The Compliance Problem: A Framework That Taxes the Very Projects That Would Help

Dale Carnegie's foundational insight was that people respond to feeling respected, to understanding the reason behind what is being asked of them, and to being given a clear path to success rather than a threat of punishment. Compliance behavior in regulatory systems follows the same logic. A program that wants people to make safer choices has to make those choices accessible, affordable, and rewarded. A program that burdens people for trying to do the right thing teaches them, efficiently and durably, not to try.

The proposed code fails this test in a way that goes beyond administrative inconvenience. The projects most likely to produce meaningful fire risk reduction in the existing Lakewood housing stock are exactly the projects the code will make harder and more expensive to complete: replacing a combustible wood deck with a noncombustible assembly, upgrading siding to ignition-resistant materials, improving windows and openings. A homeowner who wants to do any of these things will now face additional WUI review, additional compliance uncertainty, potential vegetation removal requirements that may cost more than the project itself, and no clear fast lane or reward for choosing the safest possible outcome. The rational response, and the one already being voiced in direct client conversations before the code has even taken effect, is to do the work without a permit, or not do it at all.

The code is therefore not merely shallow in its reach. It is actively counterproductive in its incentive structure. The 95% of the housing stock it will never touch through permit triggers remains unchanged. And the 5% it does reach will include a meaningful share of homeowners who would have voluntarily chosen fire-resistant materials and assemblies, but who are now being handed a compliance burden that makes the safer choice feel like a penalty. Those are the projects that would have mattered. Those are the homeowners who were already inclined to help. A well-designed program earns their participation by making the safest choices the simplest and most rewarded ones. The proposed code does the opposite, and the housing stock, and the community's actual fire resilience, will be worse for it.

A well-designed program makes the safest choices the fastest and cheapest to permit, publishes approved assemblies with clear field-verifiable standards, and reserves enforcement resources for the highest-risk behaviors, which are not deck replacements but backyard fires during red flag warnings.

Section 4: The Deck Problem — A Case Study in Taxing Responsible Behavior

Decks are among the most frequently unpermitted residential structures under normal conditions. They are also, in a WUI context, one of the most significant structure-level fire vulnerabilities. Combustible decks attached to or directly adjacent to the foundation zone act as a pathway for ember-driven fire to reach the structure, a landing platform for embers that can pile and transition to sustained ignition, and a fuel source that can sustain fire long enough to ignite adjacent cladding.

The current proposal adds a layer of WUI compliance complexity to deck permits without providing any mechanism to make the safest assemblies easier or faster to approve: the worst possible behavioral incentive, with no differentiated benefit for homeowners who choose the genuinely fire-safe option.

The Real-World Impact: A Direct Client Example

In a recent conversation, a client who wants to replace a front porch and rear deck told me they are not pulling permits because they do not want to deal with, in their words, the 'bullshit.' This conversation is not an anecdote. It is a systematic market effect, and the two specific dealbreakers coming up consistently in these conversations are not abstract regulatory concerns. They are concrete and personal. The first is landscaping: homeowners who have spent years establishing mature trees, shrubs, and plantings are unwilling to lose them as the price of pulling a permit for an unrelated project. The second is scope creep: a homeowner who budgets for a deck replacement and discovers mid-process that the permit now triggers vegetation removal, defensible space compliance, and additional review has had their project cost multiplied by requirements they did not anticipate and cannot easily absorb. When those two conditions combine, the decision to skip the permit is not impulsive. It is rational.

Informal conversations with multiple building inspectors working in unincorporated Jefferson County have produced the same conclusion from the other side of the permit counter: the inspectors themselves anticipate a substantial increase in permit dodging as a direct result of this code. These are not contractors with a financial interest in the outcome. These are the people whose professional responsibility is to enforce compliance, and they are telling us plainly that the code as written will push work out of the system rather than into it. The answer to that problem is not more enforcement. Enforcement after the fact is expensive, legally complicated, and largely ineffective against work that has already been completed and occupied. The answer is a code designed from the start to be worth complying with: one that does not punish homeowners for engaging the permit system, that does not attach landscape loss and unpredictable cost escalation to routine exterior projects, and that gives people a clear and rewarded path to the safer outcome. A code that does not get dodged is worth infinitely more than one that does.

Every contractor who hears a client decline permits because of WUI friction faces a three-way choice:

Walk away from the job and lose the revenue
Do the work unpermitted and accept the professional and liability exposure
Spend uncompensated time talking the client into compliance, with no guarantee of success

None of these outcomes are good. The cumulative effect, across hundreds of projects over several years, is a gray market for exterior residential work. That is a building safety problem, a licensing problem, a zoning enforcement problem, and a fire safety problem simultaneously. The argument is sometimes made that municipalities can address this through enforcement: aerial imagery, neighbor reports, point-of-sale discovery. That is true in theory. In practice, Lakewood does not have the inspection infrastructure to proactively audit exterior renovations city-wide, and reactive enforcement of unpermitted work discovered years after completion is expensive, legally complicated, and produces poor outcomes for everyone involved. The far more efficient solution is to design a code that gives people a reason to engage the permit system rather than route around it. A fast-lane for the safest assemblies does that. A friction-heavy process that treats the safest and least safe choices identically does not.

The Material Science: What a Genuinely Noncombustible Deck Looks Like

The difference between a 'WUI-compliant' composite deck and a fully noncombustible deck assembly is significant, underappreciated, and directly relevant to why a fast-lane pathway for the genuinely fire-safe option is both justified and necessary.

Option A: Composite Decking on a Wood Frame (Typical 'WUI-Compliant' Deck)

Composite decking is a blend of wood fiber and plastic. Some composite products carry a Class A Flame Spread Index rating (0-25 on the scale) or WUI compliance certification from the manufacturer, meaning they meet a flame spread threshold under controlled test conditions. However, as noted explicitly in building industry guidance: no wood or composite decking is truly fireproof. Composite decking is an evolution of wood, not a departure from it.

Critically, a WUI-compliant composite deck surface installed over a conventional wood framing system, pressure-treated lumber joists, rim boards, and ledger, does not produce a noncombustible assembly. The frame members remain highly combustible, and the typical 'WUI-compliant' deck assembly retains most of the fire vulnerability of a conventional wood deck. Embers accumulating in the structural bay beneath the deck can ignite framing even if the deck surface itself has a favorable flame spread rating. The test that matters is ember accumulation and sustained ignition under the deck, not flame spread across the surface.

Option B: Porcelain or Manufactured Stone Decking on a Steel or Aluminum Frame

Products such as Mbrico, Tile Tech, Tanzite StoneDecks, and DekTek Tile illustrate a fundamentally different category of deck assembly. The fire science underlying this category, not the specific brands, is what matters for code design. Porcelain tile is classified as noncombustible under ASTM E136, the standard test method for noncombustibility of materials. It is manufactured by firing natural mineral materials at high temperatures, creating a dense, fully inorganic product. The fire-relevant characteristics established by material science and testing are:

Noncombustible by composition: no organic content that can sustain combustion
No flame spread: porcelain tile has effectively zero flame spread index
No smoke generation or VOC emission under fire exposure
Thermal stability: designed to withstand high temperatures without structural failure
Ember accumulation resistance: a smooth, dense, nonporous surface provides minimal substrate for ember accumulation and transitioning to sustained ignition

When paired with a steel or aluminum frame, or a pedestal and track support system, the entire assembly from walking surface to substructure is fully noncombustible. No organic content. No flame spread. No pathways for ember accumulation to reach combustible framing members, because there are none. These assemblies should be specified to ASTM E136 noncombustibility standards and verified through manufacturer code compliance documentation, which leading suppliers provide as a standard deliverable.

This is not a minor improvement over a Class A composite deck. It is a categorically different fire performance level, and the code currently treats them identically for permitting purposes. That is a design failure.

The Fast-Lane Proposal

A well-designed fast-lane does not weaken wildfire resiliency legislation. It strengthens it. By removing the collateral costs and vegetation requirements that are currently driving homeowners away from the permit system entirely, the fast-lane converts projects that would otherwise be done unpermitted and uninspected into documented, verified, high-value hardening improvements. A code that produces ten fully noncombustible deck installations on the record is meaningfully safer than one that produces zero permitted decks and ten unpermitted wood ones. The fast-lane is the mechanism by which this legislation produces actual structure-loss reduction rather than paper compliance.

Lakewood should create a WUI fast-lane with two defining principles. First, any project that qualifies for the fast-lane should trigger no vegetation removal requirements whatsoever. A homeowner who chooses a fully noncombustible deck assembly, installs ember-resistant vents, replaces combustible siding with ignition-resistant cladding, or undertakes any other qualifying structure-hardening measure has already done the work that matters most. Attaching defensible space and vegetation management obligations to that project does not improve fire safety. It punishes the homeowner for making the right choice and, as direct client conversations and Jefferson County inspector feedback both confirm, it is one of the two primary reasons homeowners are already planning to skip permits entirely. A fast-lane that carries vegetation triggers is not a fast-lane. It is the same barrier with a different name.

The second principle follows from the first. Structure-hardening projects across all categories, not only noncombustible deck assemblies, should qualify. A homeowner replacing combustible siding with fiber cement or noncombustible cladding, installing ember-resistant vents, upgrading to a Class A roof assembly, or improving window and opening protection is reducing their structure's fire vulnerability directly and permanently. These are exactly the projects that the fire science identifies as the highest-value interventions in the existing housing stock. They should be the easiest and most rewarded projects to permit, with a defined checklist, a defined timeline, no collateral vegetation requirements, and a clear field-verifiable outcome. Qualifying criteria should include:

Fully noncombustible deck or porch assembly: noncombustible walking surface (porcelain, ceramic, concrete, or manufactured stone tile) on a steel or aluminum frame or pedestal and track support system, with no combustible storage under the deck
Ember-resistant vent installation: replacement of standard mesh vents with 1/8-inch mesh or ASTM E2886-listed baffle vents throughout the structure
Ignition-resistant cladding: replacement of combustible siding with fiber cement, noncombustible panel, masonry, or other ASTM E136-compliant material
Class A roof assembly: full replacement with a Class A-rated roofing system meeting IWUIC requirements
Opening protection: installation of multi-pane glazing and ember-resistant window and door assemblies

Field verification across all of these categories is straightforward: the materials either meet the standard or they do not, and that is determinable at inspection without extended review or discretionary judgment. That simplicity is the point. Give homeowners and contractors a clear, fast, rewarded path to the projects that will actually reduce Lakewood's fire vulnerability. That is how compliance behavior moves in the right direction, and that is how a code earns the participation of the people it most needs to reach.

Section 5: The Attic Vent Problem — The Most Overlooked High-Value Intervention

If the City of Lakewood wants to identify the single most cost-effective structural intervention for reducing fire risk to the existing housing stock, it is not vegetation management at 30 to 100 feet. It is attic vents.

Why Vents Are the Critical Vulnerability

Attic and crawl space vents serve an essential building science function: they remove moisture and heat from enclosed spaces to prevent rot, mold, and structural degradation. But they are, by design, openings in the building envelope that connect the attic interior, which typically contains combustible insulation, sheathing, framing, and stored materials, to the outside air.

The standard residential vent installed in the vast majority of Colorado's housing stock uses 1/4-inch metal mesh. Research from both NIST and the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) has established clearly that standard 1/4-inch mesh vents are effectively open doors for wildfire embers. Burning embers as small as 3 to 4 millimeters can pass through 1/4-inch mesh and deposit inside the attic cavity.

Once inside the attic, embers encounter an optimal ignition environment: combustible insulation (fiberglass batts with paper facing, loose cellulose, foam board), wood framing, cardboard boxes, and other stored material in a space that is typically dry, warm, and ventilated, exactly the conditions that sustain ignition and fire growth. A single ember that deposits in attic insulation and achieves sustained combustion can burn through the roof assembly from the inside, consuming the structure from the inside out while the exterior still appears intact.

This mechanism, ember intrusion through vents leading to interior attic ignition, is documented across virtually every major WUI fire studied by NIST and IBHS. It is the reason homes survive direct flame front exposure only to be lost to a smoldering interior fire hours later.

The Mesh Size Problem and the Trade-Off

The fix to this vulnerability is well understood and relatively inexpensive: replacing standard 1/4-inch mesh vents with ember-resistant alternatives. However, mesh size selection involves a genuine building science trade-off that the code must acknowledge:

1/4-inch mesh: Adequate for moisture management but provides essentially no ember protection. Wide ember passage.
1/8-inch mesh: Standard recommendation from wildfire mitigation professionals. Blocks most embers while maintaining adequate net free ventilation area for moisture management. Recommended by Colorado's Wildfire Partners program.
1/16-inch mesh: Maximum ember protection. Most ember-resistant standard mesh available. However, requires more or larger vent openings to maintain code-required net free ventilation area, and clogs more frequently with dust, pollen, and debris, potentially creating moisture management problems if not regularly maintained.
Baffle-style and intumescent vents (Vulcan Vents, Brandguard, and similar): Purpose-designed ember-resistant vent products that use baffles, honeycomb matrices, or intumescent materials to block embers while maintaining airflow. These products are tested to ASTM E2886 and meet California Chapter 7A standards. They are the highest-performing option and carry documentation that simplifies code compliance review.

The critical design principle is that switching to finer mesh or baffle vents without increasing vent area may reduce net free area below the code minimum of 1/150 (or 1/300 with balanced intake/exhaust and a vapor barrier). A code provision requiring ember-resistant vents must also address the net free area calculation to avoid creating moisture intrusion problems in exchange for fire protection. This is a solvable problem, but it requires the code to acknowledge it explicitly.

Why This Should Be the Centerpiece of the Proactive Program

Ember-resistant vent upgrades have the following characteristics that make them ideal candidates for a proactive, incentivized program:

High fire risk reduction per dollar: Addressing the primary ember intrusion pathway through a vent retrofit. Costs vary significantly by house size, vent count, and product selection; homeowners and contractors should obtain quotes for their specific configuration, but the intervention is generally accessible without major structural work
Permanent improvement: Unlike vegetation management, ember-resistant vents do not require ongoing maintenance to remain effective
Self-verifiable: Easily inspected and documented
Compatible with existing structures: No structural modification required for most retrofit installations
Insurance-relevant: Colorado HB25-1182, signed in June 2025 and effective August 6, 2025, requires insurers to incorporate property-specific mitigation actions including structure hardening into their wildfire risk models and provide a right to appeal. The IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home designation program, which includes ember-resistant vents as a core requirement, expanded to Colorado in April 2026 and is linked to insurability and premium considerations. Homeowners who complete documented hardening improvements now have a legal pathway to ensure those improvements are reflected in their risk score

A subsidized or incentivized ember-resistant vent retrofit program targeting the oldest and most vulnerable housing stock in the state-mapped WUI zone would produce more measurable fire risk reduction per dollar spent than any other single intervention in the current code. It is conspicuous by its absence from the program as proposed.

Section 6: Mature Trees, Urban Ecology, and the Perverse Outcomes of Blanket Removal

Green Mountain and the Front Range Urban Forest

Lakewood sits at the interface between the Denver metro area and the foothills of the Front Range, with Green Mountain Open Space providing a significant green corridor in and adjacent to the city. Jefferson County falls within the Central Flyway, one of North America's four major migratory bird corridors recognized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, extending from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

The urban and suburban tree canopy along this corridor provides critical habitat functions that extend well beyond aesthetics:

Nesting and roosting habitat for raptors including Great Horned Owls, Red-tailed Hawks, Cooper's Hawks, Northern Goshawks, Bald Eagles, and Golden Eagles, all of which are documented across Jefferson County and the Front Range foothills
Staging and stopover habitat for migratory songbirds traversing the Central Flyway, particularly during spring and fall migration
Thermal refugia: mature tree canopy provides critical microhabitat in an increasingly warming urban environment
Prey habitat: mature trees support the small mammal and insect populations that sustain the raptor community that residents of Lakewood regularly observe

Colorado Parks and Wildlife documents approximately 40 raptor species in Colorado. Lakewood residents routinely observe Great Horned Owls, Red-tailed Hawks, Bald Eagles, and related species in the urban tree canopy, not incidentally but as a direct function of the canopy structure that has developed in the suburban landscape. These observations are not coincidental. They reflect a functional urban wildlife ecosystem that Lakewood's tree canopy actively supports.

The Multi-Dimensional Value of Urban Tree Canopy

Peer-reviewed research published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) established that tree canopy cover within a 10 to 30 meter radius of temperature measurement points, roughly the scale of a single residential lot, produces measurable cooling effects on ambient air temperature. The research confirms that increasing tree canopy cover within even a single suburban property yields measurable temperature reduction.

Research published in Scientific Reports on urban forests and stormwater management found that tree canopy intercepts between 15 and 40 percent of gross precipitation depending on species, with conifers intercepting 20 to 40 percent and deciduous species providing better soil infiltration rates. These interception and infiltration effects reduce stormwater runoff, decrease peak flows in drainage systems, and increase soil moisture retention, all of which have measurable infrastructure cost implications.

The EPA's Urban Heat Island research program has documented that urban tree canopy reduces ambient temperatures, improves air quality through transpiration, and reduces cooling energy demand in adjacent structures. At neighborhood scale, canopy loss increases ambient temperatures, raises cooling energy demand, and reduces stormwater system capacity. These are infrastructure costs that the City absorbs over time. They do not appear in the fire code cost-benefit analysis, but they are real and quantifiable.

The Perverse Fire Outcome of Blanket Removal

Uniform clearance requirements and restrictions on new tree planting create a powerful incentive to simply remove trees rather than manage them. The code does not offer a clear pathway for retention under an enforceable mitigation plan, and the uncertainty of variance processes pushes homeowners and contractors toward the simpler option: removal.

This creates a near-term fire risk outcome that is the opposite of what the code intends. When mature trees are removed:

The immediate result is debris: branches, root disturbance, wood chips, and disturbed soil that creates a ground-level fuel accumulation problem
Fast-growing brush and grass regrowth on cleared ground, particularly in Colorado's disturbed soil conditions, can produce vegetation that is more volatile than the mature canopy that was removed
Warm-season grass in particular, the fuel type responsible for the Marshall Fire, grows rapidly on disturbed ground and reaches critical fire-carrying fuel density within a single growing season
Without follow-through requirements for maintaining cleared areas, a wave of code-driven removals may increase near-term fire risk in the immediate aftermath of compliance

Additionally, mature trees in the Foundation Zone 0 to Zone 1 interface, when properly managed through limbing, duff removal, and maintenance of vertical clearance between ground fuels and lower canopy, provide significant shade over combustible ground fuels that would otherwise cure rapidly in drought conditions. Removing that canopy cover can increase the rate of fuel cure and fire-carrying potential in the areas immediately adjacent to structures.

What the Code Should Do Instead

Lakewood should publish clear variance and modification standards, with worked examples, that allow retaining mature trees when paired with an enforceable mitigation plan. The plan should specify:

Duff and debris removal to bare mineral soil within the foundation zone
Limbing to achieve specified vertical clearance between ground fuels and lower canopy, phased across multiple seasons under arborist direction rather than completed in a single compliance event
Removal of dead wood and fire-susceptible ladder fuel growth
Deep root watering and preventative irrigation during drought conditions to maintain tree health and reduce fuel cure rate
Preventative insecticide treatment for trees susceptible to bark beetle or similar pest vectors, administered specifically through direct trunk injection rather than soil application or spray. Trunk injection delivers the treatment systemically within the tree while eliminating the risk of soil contamination that can impact pollinators, beneficial insects, and adjacent food crops. This method is the recommended approach for urban and suburban settings where soil and groundwater protection is a co-equal concern alongside fire risk reduction.
Documentation and periodic inspection requirements to ensure maintenance

A critical and currently absent element of any workable tree retention framework is explicit accommodation for phased, arborist-directed compliance. Removing more than approximately 25 to 33 percent of a tree's live canopy in a single season is widely recognized in arboricultural practice as causing significant stress, increasing susceptibility to pest and disease vectors, and in some cases triggering irreversible decline. For large established conifers, which dominate the species profile in Lakewood's WUI-adjacent neighborhoods, that threshold can be even lower. Timing compounds the problem independently of volume. Pruning during active growth periods or during bark beetle flight season, which in Colorado typically runs from late spring through midsummer, increases stress and pest vulnerability at precisely the moment the tree is least able to recover. A compliance deadline that does not account for seasonal scheduling may effectively require homeowners to prune at the worst possible time of year, with the worst possible outcomes for tree health.

The practical consequence is severe: a homeowner who receives a compliance notice and attempts to meet clearance requirements in a single season, as the code currently contemplates, may kill or severely damage the very trees a variance was granted to protect. A code that destroys trees through mandated mismanagement is not achieving its stated goal. The mitigation plan framework should explicitly require that all tree-related clearance and limbing work be designed by a licensed arborist, phased across a minimum of two to three growing seasons, and scheduled in accordance with species-specific and seasonal best practices. Documentation of the phased schedule, with annual inspection milestones, should be sufficient to demonstrate ongoing compliance. Full clearance achieved over three seasons under an arborist's supervision is a better fire mitigation outcome than a single-season butchering that kills the tree and leaves a standing dead fuel in its place.

The standard should be auditable risk reduction through an enforceable maintenance plan, not a uniform landscape outcome. A healthy, limbed, maintained Ponderosa pine with cleared duff, managed vertical clearance, and documented maintenance may present substantially lower fire risk than unmanaged ladder fuels on cleared ground, and can be retained under a documented mitigation plan. It is also a habitat asset. The code should provide a clear pathway to treat it as one.

Section 7: The Enforcement Gap — Backyard Fires and Fireworks

The most operationally significant gap in Lakewood's wildfire resiliency posture is not in the building code. It is what appears to be substantially under-enforced open burning and fireworks rules. Fireworks present a fire ignition risk under any weather conditions; an errant firework in dry grass does not require a red flag warning to start a fire. That risk becomes acute during red flag conditions, but it does not begin there. I routinely observe and smell backyard fire pits and fireworks use during active red flag days in Lakewood, and the behavior is present outside of those windows as well. It is casual, widespread, and normalized. The City should publish citation data; if enforcement activity is minimal, that data will confirm what direct observation suggests: that the gap between rules on paper and enforcement on the ground is large.

Why This Matters More Than Most Building Code Provisions

A structure with noncombustible cladding, ember-resistant vents, and maintained defensible space can still be lost to an ember cast from a neighbor's fire pit during a 20 to 40 mph Chinook wind event. Hardening and defensible space reduce risk from an external fire event. They do not substitute for preventing ignition sources on the ground.

The fire science is clear: embers from burning materials can travel significant distances under wind conditions common on the Front Range. A burning log fragment, a piece of burning cardboard, or a firework that fails to fully combust and lands in dry grass represents an ignition event that no amount of structure hardening can prevent once it is airborne.

The Logical Inconsistency the City Must Address

Lakewood is proposing to impose significant new compliance obligations on homeowners undertaking permitted construction work, while simultaneously tolerating widespread and visible violation of existing open burning and fireworks rules during the highest-risk weather conditions of the year. If the City's stated goal is wildfire resiliency, its enforcement priorities should reflect actual ignition risk.

An active backyard fire pit or a fireworks discharge is a more immediate and direct fire ignition risk than the framing material used in a deck replacement, regardless of the weather. During red flag conditions the risk is acute, but a firework landing in dry grass or a backyard fire escaping during any period of low humidity and elevated wind represents a genuine ignition event. The current posture, which adds complexity to building permits while doing nothing about casual open burning and year-round fireworks use, is not a coherent resiliency program. It is paperwork.

What a Credible Enforcement Program Looks Like

Plain-language, widely published standards for backyard fire use: what is permitted under what conditions, and what constitutes an automatic prohibition during all red flag warnings
A simple, accessible reporting mechanism that does not require navigating a complex complaint process. A dedicated non-emergency line and online form, widely publicized
Staffed or coordinated enforcement capacity during red flag events specifically, which are predictable and calendared in advance through National Weather Service forecasting
Highly punitive fines for fireworks use at any time in the WUI zone, with fines escalating further during red flag conditions to reflect the acute ignition risk. Open burning fines should similarly scale with weather conditions. All fines should be published, consistently enforced, and set at a level that reflects the actual cost of a structure fire rather than a nominal nuisance penalty.
A public awareness campaign that explains red flag conditions in plain terms and the reasoning behind restrictions, so that enforcement is experienced as rational rather than arbitrary
Inter-jurisdictional coordination with Jefferson County and neighboring municipalities so that rules and enforcement are consistent across boundaries

None of this requires new regulatory architecture. The authority exists. What is missing is the operational commitment to use it. Lakewood should close this gap as an immediate priority, not an afterthought to building code adoption.

Section 8: A Tiered Applicability Framework

The proposed code applies a single framework uniformly across all properties and situations. A more effective, equitable, and legally defensible approach calibrates requirements to the actual risk profile and regulatory context of each category of property. The framework below is organized by map zone and property type, with a clear rationale for each tier.

The administrative logic is equally clean. Lakewood adopts the state code as written for the state-mapped zone, satisfying the state mandate directly and without modification. For the expanded Jeffco and Lakewood-mapped zone, where Lakewood has discretion to exceed the state minimum, a separate locally tailored code applies. Two codes, two zones, no overlap, no state review exposure on the local provisions.

Tier 1: State-Mapped Zone — Existing and New Construction

The state code applies as written in this zone, including its permit triggers. This is the state mandate and Lakewood must enforce it to remain in compliance with the CWRC. The permit trigger is the required floor.

That floor is not a ceiling. Permit triggers will reach a small and unrepresentative fraction of the existing housing stock. Lakewood should layer a proactive program on top: subsidized ember-resistant vent retrofits, foundation zone clearance assistance, structure hardening incentives, and the other high-value interventions detailed in Section 9. The permit trigger satisfies the state. The proactive program moves the needle on actual community resilience.

Permit-triggered requirements should be simplified to component-based applicability: if you replace or materially alter an exterior component, that component must comply. No percentage thresholds, no measurement disputes. Replace a roof, the new roof must meet the standard. Replace siding, the new siding must comply. The state requirement made legible at the trade level, where compliance actually happens.

Tier 2: Jeffco-Expanded Zone — New Construction

Full current WUI standards apply to all new construction in the Jeffco-expanded zone. This is the right place for the highest requirements:

Cost is absorbed into the project budget at the design stage, not imposed retroactively on existing owners
Compliance is fully inspectable at the time of construction, when it is both achievable and verifiable
Builders and developers have the resources and capacity to design to code; individual homeowners retrofitting existing structures generally do not
New construction represents a voluntary entry into the built environment and can reasonably carry a higher compliance threshold

Tier 3: Jeffco-Expanded Zone — Existing Homes

Existing homes in the Jeffco-expanded zone fall outside the state mandate's direct reach. The locally tailored code governs here, and it should reflect both the lower degree of validated parcel-level risk in this zone and the behavioral realities that drive permit avoidance.

The primary compliance instrument in this tier is the fast-lane: any qualifying structure-hardening project, including noncombustible deck assemblies, ember-resistant vents, ignition-resistant cladding, Class A roofing, and improved opening protection, should be permitted through a streamlined process with no collateral vegetation removal requirements, a defined checklist, and a defined timeline. Structure hardening in this zone should be the easiest and most rewarded thing a homeowner can do.

The proactive program described in Section 9 applies here with full force. These are properties the permit system is least likely to reach through normal triggers, making proactive outreach, incentives, and subsidized improvements the primary vehicle for meaningful risk reduction.

Tier 4: All Zones — Proactive Program and Enforcement

Regardless of zone, tier, or property type, the highest-leverage interventions should be available to all WUI-mapped properties through a proactive program: ember-resistant vents, foundation zone clearance, firewood and storage standards, gutter management, tree health investment, and credible enforcement of open burning and fireworks rules year-round, with escalating consequences during red flag conditions. This program is detailed in Section 9. It is the layer that reaches the housing stock that no permit trigger ever will.

Why a Tiered Approach Strengthens Legal Defensibility

I am not an attorney, and therefore what follows is offered as policy observation rather than legal opinion, informed by a background in political science and regulatory analysis, with the intent of identifying administrative risks the City should want its own legal counsel to evaluate before the code is finalized.

That said, a tiered applicability framework seems likely to strengthen the legal defensibility of the program by more closely aligning regulatory requirements with demonstrable risk and by improving the consistency and clarity of administration.

First, risk alignment. My understanding is that courts generally defer to local regulation under a rational basis standard, but that deference appears to depend on a clear and articulable connection between the regulation and the conditions it is intended to address. A framework that differentiates requirements based on validated local risk conditions would seem more resilient against claims that the code is overinclusive or applied without sufficient grounding in actual site conditions. It seems reasonable to conclude that a uniform framework applied across a broad map without local calibration may carry greater exposure to arbitrary and capricious challenges and overinclusive regulatory classification claims, particularly where the record does not clearly document why the same requirements apply equally to a mountain-interface property and a dense suburban parcel.

Second, preemption clarity. My understanding is that Colorado generally permits local governments to adopt stricter building and fire codes, which means preemption is probably not a significant litigation risk here. Even so, maintaining a clean line between state-mandated requirements and locally tailored provisions seems likely to reduce ambiguity and strengthen the City's position if questions about the interaction between state and local authority arise.

Third, and what seems most immediately relevant, is the administrative record. As noted in the map section of this document, Lakewood's own public materials confirm that the proposed code aligns with Jefferson County's more stringent policy to maintain consistency across jurisdictions. It bears repeating here in the legal context: Lakewood is proposing to adopt a county-scale framework without producing a locally specific analysis supporting its application to Lakewood's suburban conditions. While parcel-level validation is not a legal requirement as I understand it, its absence would seem to reduce the strength of the evidentiary record supporting the code's broader application. That matters practically because the City's ability to defend individual permit decisions and formal appeals likely depends heavily on the quality of that record. Where the record is thin, outcomes across similar applications tend to become inconsistent, and inconsistent outcomes across similarly situated applicants would seem to carry real risk of supporting claims of arbitrary administration. A documented pattern of inconsistency is, from what I understand, precisely the kind of record that creates traction for downstream legal challenges.

A locally calibrated tiered framework, supported by clearly articulated criteria, applied consistently, and grounded in locally specific analysis, would seem to produce a stronger administrative record, reduce variability in decision-making, and meaningfully lower the risk of successful challenges at the appeals stage.

The goal in raising this is not to suggest that litigation is likely or that the City acted in bad faith. It is to flag what appears to be a foreseeable and avoidable source of administrative friction that the City's own legal counsel is better positioned than I am to evaluate, and that a more carefully designed framework could help eliminate.

Section 9: A Proactive Program — What Actually Works

The following measures are organized by penetration speed and cost. The highest-value interventions are achievable on a five-year timeline through a well-designed proactive program. Permit-triggered code adoption alone will not achieve comparable results in thirty years.

Highest-Leverage, Near-Term Interventions

Ember-resistant vent retrofit program: Subsidized or incentivized replacement of standard 1/4-inch mesh vents with 1/8-inch mesh or ASTM E2886-listed baffle vents across the most vulnerable existing housing stock. This is the highest-value intervention per dollar for existing homes. A targeted program could be funded through a combination of state hazard mitigation grants, insurance industry partnership, and City matching funds.
Firewood and combustible storage standards: Clear, enforceable standards for firewood storage distances from structures (minimum 30 feet), prohibition of combustible storage under decks and in the foundation zone, and prohibition of propane tanks, wood piles, and similar fuels within defined clearance distances. These standards are self-enforcing through periodic neighborhood inspection programs and do not depend on permit activity.
Gutter management standards: Open gutters accumulate leaf debris, pine needles, and organic material that can sustain ember ignition. Standards requiring gutter guards or documented annual cleaning in the WUI zone are inexpensive to implement and meaningful in risk reduction.
Foundation zone clearance program: Assistance and incentives for clearing the immediate foundation zone (Zone 0, within 5 feet of the structure) of combustible mulch, debris, stored materials, and vegetation. This zone has the highest direct ember-to-structure ignition risk and is entirely within homeowner control at low cost.
Banning outdoor wood-burning fire pits in the WUI zone: Or implementing clear weather-triggered restrictions with highly punitive enforcement, as detailed in Section 7. Eliminating this ignition source in the mapped zone would produce more immediate risk reduction than any building code provision.

Medium-Term Incentive-Based Interventions

Structure hardening incentive program: Tax credits or direct rebates for noncombustible cladding installation, ember-resistant window glazing, noncombustible roofing, and related hardening measures on existing homes in the state-mapped zone. These improvements are permanent and durable. A modest subsidy program would drive voluntary adoption far faster than permit-triggered mandates.
Subsidized roof sprinkler systems: Ember shower suppression through rooftop sprinkler systems is documented to substantially reduce structure ignition probability during wildfire events. These systems are available as retrofit products and are substantially less expensive than full interior fire suppression. A subsidy or low-interest loan program would make this accessible to lower-income homeowners in the highest-risk areas.
Tree health program: Subsidized deep root watering, preventative bark beetle treatment via trunk injection for susceptible conifers, and fertilization programs for stressed trees in the WUI zone. Trunk injection is specified rather than soil application or spray because it eliminates the risk of soil contamination affecting pollinators, beneficial insects, and nearby food crops, making it the appropriate method for suburban settings. Stressed and dead trees are dramatically more volatile than healthy ones. The drought stress cycle on the Front Range is converting living trees to standing dead fuel at an accelerating rate. Investment in tree health is investment in fire risk reduction.
Water restriction offset for WUI-mapped properties: Homeowners in the highest-risk areas who are actively maintaining fire-resistant landscaping, including irrigated, healthy trees and grass, should receive a water-use offset that allows higher irrigation than the standard restriction. This aligns public safety and water management incentives correctly. A homeowner who keeps property irrigated and healthy is managing fire risk; the current water restriction framework does not account for this.
Field-applied fire retardant treatment for existing wooden fences: This is one of the most significant and most overlooked gaps in the proposed code. The code requires noncombustible fencing within 8 feet of structures for new permitted work, but provides no pathway whatsoever for treating existing wooden fences in place. The code's definition of fire-retardant-treated wood refers to pressure-impregnated products manufactured to ASTM E84 standards, a factory process. Field-applied coatings are not addressed at all. The practical result is a binary the code did not intend: do nothing because no permit is triggered, or replace the fence entirely when a permit is pulled. The obvious and far more accessible middle ground — field-applied fire retardant coatings applied to existing wooden fences — is simply absent from the framework. This matters because fences are frequently the structural link between an ember ignition in the yard and fire reaching the structure. A fence running from a gate to the foundation wall is a fuel pathway. Treating it in place is faster, cheaper, and achievable without a permit or contractor involvement. Field-applied coatings do have limitations: they require periodic reapplication, typically every one to three years depending on product and weather exposure, and they do not achieve the performance durability of pressure-treated wood. Those limitations are real and should be disclosed to homeowners. But as a proactive, low-cost, high-penetration intervention for the existing housing stock, a subsidized field-applied coating program would reach more fences in two years than the code's permit-triggered replacement requirement will reach in twenty. Lakewood should explicitly create a pathway for field-applied treatment of existing fences as a recognized compliance-equivalent option, and should pair it with a subsidized or discounted product program that makes adoption easy and inexpensive for homeowners who want to do the right thing without pulling a permit or replacing functional fencing.
Voluntary vegetation removal and revegetation with tax incentives: For homeowners who voluntarily remove high-risk vegetation and replace it with fire-resistant landscaping, property tax credits or direct rebates that make the economics of voluntary compliance attractive.

The Point-of-Sale Trigger: A Proven Third-Party Model

California's Assembly Bill 38 (AB 38), with key provisions effective January 1, 2020 for final inspection reports, July 1, 2021 for defensible-space compliance documentation requirements, and July 1, 2025 for low-cost retrofit disclosure requirements, established the most comprehensive point-of-sale wildfire disclosure framework in the United States. It provides a directly applicable model for Colorado.

California's AB 38 requires sellers of homes in high or very high fire hazard severity zones to provide buyers with documentation of compliance with defensible space requirements and a disclosure of fire-hardening features and vulnerabilities. The disclosure covers roofing materials, vent types, eave and soffit construction, window glazing, deck materials, and nearby vegetation. Beginning July 1, 2025, sellers must also disclose which of a standardized list of low-cost hardening retrofits have been completed.

Critically, the California framework allows defensible-space compliance documentation to be provided through inspections from state, local, or other government agencies or qualified nonprofits, and some local jurisdictions have developed inspection systems that include delegated or non-municipal documentation pathways. The flexibility in documentation source is what makes the system workable without overwhelming municipal inspection capacity.

For Lakewood, a point-of-sale WUI disclosure and inspection requirement administered through certified third-party specialists would:

Reach approximately 3 to 5% of the housing stock per year through normal real estate transactions, far exceeding the penetration rate of permit-triggered compliance
Create a market incentive for pre-sale hardening, as sellers who can document compliance or completed hardening measures face less friction at close
Generate a systematic record of housing stock vulnerability that the City currently lacks entirely
Distribute the cost of inspection and documentation to the transaction rather than to the permit process
Allow for negotiated compliance timelines, with buyers assuming responsibility for specified improvements within one year of purchase, as California's AB 38 allows

The political concern about point-of-sale requirements is that they feel punitive to sellers. The California model addresses this directly: the requirement is disclosure and documentation, not mandatory remediation. A seller who cannot document compliance does not lose the sale; instead, the buyer and seller negotiate a compliance plan. That is a workable, market-integrated framework that does not block transactions while still creating accountability.

Lakewood should adopt a version of this framework calibrated to the state-mapped zone, administered through a certified third-party specialist program with published credential requirements and audited outcomes.

Section 10: Process Reform and the Education Infrastructure

Rules that people do not understand cannot produce compliance. Before any enforcement phase of the WUI code begins, Lakewood should invest in the educational and process infrastructure that makes compliance achievable for ordinary homeowners and small contractors.

Process Consolidation

The current proposal creates multiple potential entry points, unclear reviewer authority, and no standardized checklist. When different reviewers apply different interpretations to similar projects, the City accumulates a record of inconsistent treatment of similarly situated applicants. That is a fairness problem and a potential basis for legal challenge. One application, one checklist, one reviewer-of-record, with defined and published timelines, is not an administrative nicety. It is a risk management requirement for the City itself.

The Certified Third-Party Specialist Pathway

The 'alternative materials and methods' language in the current code is not a program. It is a discretionary authorization that produces inconsistent outcomes by design: when there is no standardized pathway, results depend on individual reviewer judgment, the applicant's familiarity with the process, and their capacity to sustain extended review cycles. That is a systemic design problem, not a criticism of any individual. The practical effect is a two-tier system: applicants with the resources and sophistication to navigate an undefined process get flexibility, while everyone else faces a binary choice between strict literal compliance and permit avoidance.

Lakewood should establish a formal certified third-party wildfire mitigation specialist program with published credential requirements, published performance criteria, City review and audit protocols, and defined timelines. This creates a feedback mechanism: a program with documented criteria and audit trails can learn and improve. A program built on discretion accumulates opaque decisions with no systematic record of outcomes.

Training and Technical Resources

No enforcement phase should begin without the following resources publicly available:

Published approved assembly details for common applications: roofing, siding, decks, vents, foundation zone treatment
Worked example compliance paths for the most common existing home types in the mapped zone
A published, accessible variance and modification process with written decisions and defined timelines
Free workshops for contractors, architects, and homeowners conducted before the compliance date
An online resource library updated as the program matures

If the City is adding compliance obligations, it should also build the infrastructure that makes compliance achievable. An industry that does not understand the rules cannot follow them. Training is substantially cheaper than enforcement, produces better outcomes, and does something enforcement never can: it builds relationships between the City, contractors, architects, and homeowners that strengthen the community's capacity to respond to fire risk long after any single code cycle has passed.

Section 11: What Success Looks Like

A successful wildfire resiliency program for Lakewood should be measurable. The City should define and publish success metrics before the program launches, and commit to a formal review at 18 months with publicly reported results. Proposed metrics:

Permit volume in the WUI zone: Has permitting volume increased or decreased after code adoption? A decrease is evidence of avoidance and should trigger program revision.
Ember-resistant vent installations: How many homes in the mapped zone have documented ember-resistant vents? This is the highest-value structural intervention and should be tracked directly.
Open burning violations: How many citations were issued during red flag events? What was the outcome? Zero enforcement activity is a program failure that must be documented.
Point-of-sale disclosures: How many real estate transactions in the WUI zone generated a compliance disclosure? What was the distribution of hardening features documented?
Variance requests and outcomes: Are variance requests increasing? What is the average processing time? Consistent outcomes are the measure of process quality.
Contractor and homeowner feedback: Structured surveys at 6 and 18 months on process experience, cost impacts, and perceived clarity of requirements.

A program that passes rules and never measures whether those rules are producing the intended outcomes is not a resiliency program. It is a posture. Lakewood should commit to the former.

Closing: A Program Worth Building

Lakewood has an opportunity to do this well. The decision to pause before a final vote and take additional public input seriously reflects exactly the kind of deliberate process that produces better policy outcomes. That time should be used to build something genuinely worth building.

The case made in this document is not against wildfire safety requirements. It is for a specific alternative: a program calibrated to what the fire science actually shows about Lakewood's suburban ember-transport risk, designed around what behavioral research shows about how compliance actually works, and structured to reach the broadest possible share of the housing stock rather than waiting passively for permit triggers that arrive slowly, unevenly, and not at all for the most vulnerable properties.

Lakewood can build a program that looks like this:

New construction in the Jefferson County-mapped zone built to full current WUI standards, where compliance is achievable at the design stage and costs are absorbed into project budgets rather than imposed retroactively on existing homeowners.
Existing homes in the state-mapped zone served by a proactive, incentive-based program — subsidized ember-resistant vent retrofits, foundation zone clearance assistance, structure hardening tax credits, tree health investment, and water restriction offsets for homeowners actively managing fire risk — that reaches the housing stock where permits never will.
A fast-lane permit pathway for all qualifying structure-hardening projects, including noncombustible deck assemblies, ember-resistant vent installations, ignition-resistant cladding, Class A roof replacements, and improved opening protection, with no collateral vegetation removal requirements attached, field-verifiable standards, and a defined review timeline. Choosing the safest option should be the fastest and most rewarded path through the permit process.
A certified third-party specialist program with published credentials, published performance criteria, and audited outcomes that makes alternative compliance predictable and equally accessible for every applicant, regardless of their familiarity with the process or capacity to navigate extended discretionary review.
Clear, worked variance standards for mature tree retention paired with enforceable mitigation plans, preserving the ecological assets and wildlife habitat that define the character of Lakewood's neighborhoods while achieving auditable risk reduction.
Credible, punitive, publicized enforcement of fireworks rules year-round in the WUI zone, and open burning rules during all elevated-risk conditions, with the highest penalties reserved for red flag events. Fireworks represent an ignition risk under any conditions; the enforcement framework should reflect that.
A point-of-sale disclosure and inspection program modeled on California's AB 38, administered through certified third-party specialists, that reaches 3 to 5 percent of the housing stock annually through normal real estate transactions and creates a systematic record of vulnerability that the City currently lacks entirely.
A consolidated permit process with one application, one checklist, one reviewer-of-record, and defined timelines — paired with free workshops, published approved assemblies, and worked compliance examples before enforcement begins.
Published success metrics and a formal 18-month program review with public reporting, so the City can learn what is working, correct what is not, and demonstrate to residents that outcomes, not just rules, are what the program is accountable for.

A program structured this way would be something Lakewood could be proud of: evidence-based, practically designed, equitably applied, and genuinely effective at the task it sets out to accomplish. It would reach more homes, produce more durable improvements, and generate higher real-world compliance than the current proposal within any meaningful planning horizon.

The difference between a serious wildfire resiliency program and a regulatory posture is whether the rules produce the outcomes they describe. Lakewood has the opportunity right now, before a final vote, to choose the former. This document is offered in the hope that it helps.

I am available to discuss any element of this analysis in detail, to participate in a stakeholder working group, or to present directly to staff or council. I have a professional and personal stake in this community, and I want this program to work.

Matthew Haraminac

Founder | Employing Broker | Licensed General Contractor

ICC & HUD 203k Certified · InterNACHI CPI

Peak Property Services

Peak Real Estate Advisors

Sources and Citations

Wildfire Science and Structure Ignition

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Structure Hardening for Embers. NIST WUI Fire Group. nist.gov/el/fire-research-division-73300/wildland-urban-interface-fire-73305/hazard-mitigation-methodology-21

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). How Fire Spreads in the WUI. nist.gov/el/fire-research-division-73300/wildland-urban-interface-fire-73305/hazard-mitigation-methodology-6

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Reducing Impact of Wildland-Urban Interface Fires. nist.gov/el/fire-research-division-73300/reducing-impact-wildland-urban-interface-fires

USFA/FEMA. Protecting Structures from Wildfire Embers and Fire Exposures. usfa.fema.gov

Syphard, A.D. and Keeley, J.E. (2019). Survey of California WUI fires: impact of mitigation actions. Findings summarized in NCBI Bookshelf NBK588642.

Marshall Fire

Guy Carpenter. Post Event Summary: Marshall Fire. guycarp.com/insights/2022/01/post-event-marshall-fire.html

UNDRR. US Wildfire 2021: Forensic Analysis. undrr.org/resource/us-wildfire-2021-forensic-analysis. September 2024.

Juliano, T.W. et al. (2023). Toward a Better Understanding of Wildfire Behavior in the WUI: A Case Study of the 2021 Marshall Fire. Geophysical Research Letters, 50, e2022GL101557.

National Weather Service Boulder. Marshall Fire and High Wind on December 30, 2021. weather.gov/bou/MarshallFire20211230

Jensen Hughes. The Marshall Fire. jensenhughes.com/insights/the-marshall-fire

NCBI/National Academies. Defining and Contextualizing WUI Fires. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK588638/

Camp Fire and Code Effectiveness

Syphard, A.D. and Keeley, J.E. (2019). Factors Associated with Structure Loss in the 2013-2018 California Wildfires. Fire 2(3):49. doi.org/10.3390/fire2030049. (USGS/Sage Insurance Holdings; primary source on structural hardening predictors of WUI structure survival.)

IBHS. Post-Event Investigation: California Wildfires of 2017 and 2018. ibhs.org. (Cites Syphard/Keeley; confirms structural hardness factors as primary survival predictors.)

AfroLA News. How Should Los Angeles Rebuild? The Answer May Exist in Our Building Codes. March 2025.

Attic Vents

US Made Supply. Ember-Resistant Vent Guide: Brandguard, Vulcan and Retrofit Options. usmadesupply.com. March 2026. (Citing NIST and IBHS research on 1/4-inch mesh failure and ember entry.)

Wildfire Partners (Boulder County). Screening Vents. wildfirepartners.org/screening-vents

Fire Safe San Mateo. Vents. firesafesanmateo.org/preparedness/home-hardening/vents

Vulcan Vents. Wildfire Architecture: Fire-Resistant Vent Integration Guide. vulcanvents.com. December 2025.

Deck Materials and Noncombustibility Standards

ASTM E136. Standard Test Method for Behavior of Materials in a Vertical Tube Furnace at 750 Degrees C. The governing standard for noncombustibility classification. Porcelain tile meets this standard by material composition.

International Residential Code (IRC) and International Wildland-Urban Interface Code (IWUIC). Definitions of noncombustible materials and ignition-resistant construction. ICC.

Mbrico Tile Decks. Mbrico Tile Decks vs Composite Decking. mbricotiledecks.com. February 2026.

Mbrico Tile Decks. Fire Resistance Benefits of Mbrico Porcelain Tile Decking. mbricotiledecks.com. February 2026.

Tile Tech Pavers. How to Effectively Use Porcelain Paving Tiles to Create Fire-Resistant Roof Decks. tiletechpavers.com. February 2023.

Tanzite StoneDecks. tanzite.com

Weyerhaeuser/TimberTech. Composite Decking Considerations for Fire-Prone Areas. weyerhaeuser.com. September 2023.

Urban Tree Canopy, Heat Islands, and Stormwater

Meineke, E.K., et al. (2019). Scale-dependent interactions between tree canopy cover and impervious surfaces reduce daytime urban heat during summer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1817561116

Jiang, Y., et al. (2023). A comparative analysis of urban forests for storm-water management. Scientific Reports. nature.com/articles/s41598-023-28629-6

Street trees provide an opportunity to mitigate urban heat. Scientific Reports. February 2024. nature.com/articles/s41598-024-51921-y

USDA Climate Hubs. Northwest Urban Forests and Climate Change. climatehubs.usda.gov

US EPA. Reduce Heat Islands. epa.gov/green-infrastructure/reduce-heat-islands

Colorado Wildlife and Migratory Corridors

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Central Flyway. fws.gov/birds/management/flyways/central.php. One of four USFWS-designated North American migratory bird corridors; encompasses Colorado including Jefferson County.

Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge (adjacent Jefferson County). Home to 239 migratory and resident wildlife species. Friends of the Front Range Wildlife Refuges. ffrwr.org

Jefferson County Open Space. Rocky Mountain Greenway. jeffco.us/3639/Rocky-Mountain-Greenway (Regional wildlife corridor connecting Front Range National Wildlife Refuges.)

Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Wildlife Migration and Movement. cpw.state.co.us/wildlife-migration-and-movement

Bird Watching HQ. 27 Birds of Prey Found in Colorado. birdwatchinghq.com

Colorado Virtual Library. Uncommon Raptors of Colorado. coloradovirtuallibrary.org

Insurance and Mitigation Programs

Colorado HB25-1182. Risk Model Use in Property Insurance Policies. Signed June 2025, effective August 6, 2025. Requires insurers to disclose wildfire risk scores, incorporate property-specific mitigation actions into risk models, and provide a right to appeal. leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb25-1182

IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home Designation Program. Announced April 14, 2026. wildfireprepared.org. IBHS press release: ibhs.org. Third-party verified designation program offering Wildfire Prepared Home and Wildfire Prepared Home Plus levels; Colorado homeowners can apply at wildfireprepared.org.

Colorado Division of Insurance. Wildfire Resiliency Building Codes and Insurance. doi.colorado.gov/wildfire-resiliency-building-codes-and-insurance

Point-of-Sale Frameworks

Wildfire Today. New California Law Requires Seller of Home to Disclose Vulnerability to Wildfires. wildfiretoday.com (summary of AB 38 provisions)

Sonoma Valley Fire District. Real Estate Disclosure (AB 38). sonomavalleyfire.org/real-estate-disclosure-ab-38

Golden State Home Hardening. New Wildfire Disclosure Rules in California. goldenstatehomehardening.com. September 2025.

Schorr Law. California Wildfire Disclosure Requirements for Home Sellers. schorr-law.com. January 2026.

Green Mountain Open Space

gravmag.com. Colorado Jefferson County Open Spaces: Green Mountain Park. gravmag.com/jeffco.html (Green Mountain Park maintained by City of Lakewood; access off West Alameda Parkway; elevation 6,856 feet.)

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