Resilience

In the face of escalating wildfire threats, an insurance market in crisis, and bold decarbonization goals, California must reevaluate its building practices to focus on resilience. Building with non-combustible materials offers numerous benefits in wildfire-prone areas like California, including enhanced fire safety, lower insurance costs, reduced GHG emissions and environmental harm, increased structural durability, resilience against other natural disasters, higher property values, better air quality and health protection, energy efficiency, and community-wide risk reduction. Incentivizing, prioritizing, and investing in fire-resistant, non-combustible building materials is a smart, cost-effective, and sustainable way to protect homes, communities, and lives.

Non-Combustible Materials: 

Non-combustible refers to materials that will not ignite or burn under typical fire conditions​. The California Building Code (CBC) formally defines a non-combustible material as one that passes stringent fire tests (such as ASTM E136) to ensure it does not contribute fuel to a fire​. Examples include concrete, brick, metal, stone, and fiber-cement, all of which won’t burn even in direct flame. 

Non-combustibility is an absolute standard – if a material is truly non-combustible, it can be used anywhere building codes require fireproof construction, such as in exterior walls in wildfire zones or the structural frames of buildings classified as non-combustible construction type. 

Non-combustible materials offer the best performance in a fire – they do not ignite or add fuel, which means they can stop fire from spreading dead in its tracks​. For example, a concrete exterior wall will not catch fire from embers.