The Kauaʻi County Council Planning Committee considered a bill that would update the county’s island-wide building code to make new homes more defensible against wildfires during a meeting in Līhuʻe on Wednesday.
The 35-page Bill 2998 would update building code to Wildfire and Wildland Urban Interface (WWUI) standards for new construction on Kauaʻi. Roofs would be made from noncombustible material to prevent ignition, vents would be covered with noncombustible mesh to prevent embers from entering, elevated homes would have noncombustible mesh underneath to prevent embers from getting underneath the home and windows would be made of dual pane tempered glass. The proposal also builds in a five-foot hardscape made of brick, gravel or concrete free of vegetation and debris around a home to prevent embers from igniting vegetation or items and providing prolonged flame contact. The WWUI standards would be enforced by the planning department rather than the building division.
Derek Alkonis, senior research program manager of fire safety at Underwriters Laboratories Research Institutes, and Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director at Hawai‘I Wildfire Management Organization, said Wednesday that the Lahaina fire revealed a statewide problem on preparedness and prevention for wildfires in the built environment.
“We’d always thought about wildfire on the landscape, Pickett said. “We worked with landowners, we worked with farmers and ranchers, and we thought of it as a wildland fire situation, until Lahaina burned and really what the fuel was not the grass it was the town.”
Wildfires are an ongoing threat, and tropical storms in the Pacific bring strong winds during the driest months that could lead to wildfires, Alkonis said. According to the U.S. Forest Service, Hawaiʻi has a greater average wildfire likelihood than 84% of U.S. states. Kauaʻi Fire Department firefighters extinguished a 100-acre brush fire in Wainiha on Thursday afternoon.
Alkonis stated that in Lahaina, winds pushed the embers into the community and landed on houses built with combustible materials in a dense area.
The Lahaina Fire Incident Analysis Report found that embers penetrated through roofs, vents and windows during the Lahaina fire, and recommended that counties adopt WWUI building codes to lessen fire impact in the built environment.
“This is an important moment to give the firefighters a fighting chance because they can’t do their job when the construction is not resistant to fire. It’s dangerous to the residents, it’s dangerous to the firefighters, but we can do something in policy,” Alkonis said.
Kauiʻi County Mayor Derek Kawakami said Wednesday that they have a responsibility to protect Kauaʻi’s residents and the place they call home.
“The way we build our homes matters. With that, we introduced Bill No. 2998, which would establish Kaua'i County's first Wildfire and Wildland Urban Interface standards including home-hardening, defensible space, and setback requirements to reduce our community's vulnerability to wildfire,” Kawakami said. “This is not about eliminating wildfire; it's about learning from Lahaina before we experience a disaster of our own, and I believe we have a responsibility do so.”
Kawakami said that this will increase building costs, but he said that it’s an investment worth making because it could help save lives in the case of a wildfire.
Kauaʻi Fire Department Chief Michael Gibson said that he believes wildfire resilience is an evolution of fire safety.
“We cannot prevent every wildfire and cannot control the wind, the drought, weather conditions that cause Fire to grow so rapidly. There are things we can do before the Fire ever starts,” he said.
The department has three type 5 wildland fire engines arriving by the end of the year and a third front-line four-wheel drive water tender arriving this month, which Gibson said are badly needed.
Lance Delos Reyes of Unlimited Construction conducted a cost study for the Wildfire and Wildland-Urban Interface standards for 10 three bedroom, two bathroom homes and found that the cost of a new home would increase by approximately 1.6% for slab on grade foundations and 1.7% for post on pier foundations, equating to an increase of approximately $6,700.
The Contractors Association of Kauaʻi wrote to the council and expressed a concerns that home costs differ greatly in design, size, materials, budget and location, and the cost of concrete for the hardscape and WWUI standards would increase the cost of the home. The association asked the council to return the bill to the planning commission and planning department for additional work, to consider property tax incentives for implementing WWUI standards and to educate residents on how they can reduce wildfire risk.
Councilmembers expressed concerns over the increase in costs for new homes.
Councilmember Fern Holland said that she thinks the work is important but wanted the committee to put more thought into options for homeowners.
Councilmember Felicia Cowden expressed concern that high housing costs could be contributing to outmigration in Hawaiʻi.
U.S. Census data shows that Hawaiʻi’s population decreased by 1.5 percentage points between 2020 and 2025.
Cowden said that the increase in home costs “could be catastrophic for the longevity of our existing population to be able to be here.”
Doug Green, owner of DoKi Solutions, told councilmembers that implementing WWUI standards would not lower the cost of home insurance, but ensure that insurance companies don’t leave the market in Hawai’i.
According to a report from Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice, insurance nonrenewals, or when an insurance company will not renew a current policy when it expires, increased by 216 percentage points in Hawaiʻi between 2018 and 2023.
“Because homes are fuel, homes are part of the problem, and because homes are part of the problem, homes need to be part of the insurance solution,” Green said Wednesday.
WWUI standards could provide insurance companies with verified risk reduction to homes and neighborhoods already existing on Kauaʻi.
Pickett said that insurers are looking for whole neighborhoods and regions to meet these science-based, performance-based metrics.
The committee voted Wednesday to defer the bill to discuss at their next meeting in September.
AIA Hawaiʻi President Melani Islam told Aloha State Daily in an email that AIA Hawaiʻi engaged its membership and provided detailed comments on the bill.
“AIA Hawaiʻi supports the goal of Bill 2998 to make Kauaʻi communities more resilient to wildfire, and we appreciate the County’s willingness to engage the design and construction community as this important legislation has developed,” Islam said. “We’re encouraged to see several of the issues we raised reflected in the current bill, including greater attention to defensible space and landscape management, homeowner education, maintenance of wildfire-resistant conditions, and flexibility for certain multifamily and shared-wall development.
Kauaʻi County became the first Hawaiian county to implement WWUI standards when it passed Bill 2961 in 2025 for homes in Plantation Camp communities. The City and County of Honolulu, Maui County and Hawaiʻi County have not enacted WWUI standards in building codes. According to Pickett, the City and County of Honolulu created a county wide working group on fire wise standards and Maui is ramping up their firewise program and vegetation management.
Haley Lehman can be reached at haley@alohastatedaily.com.
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