Bellingham, WA Fire Regulations: Brush Clearance (2026)

Bellingham sits at the foot of Chuckanut Mountain and surrounds Lake Whatcom, where second-growth forest meets developed neighborhoods - a classic Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) condition. The City has not adopted a stand-alone defensible-space ordinance. Vegetation hazards inside Bellingham are addressed through the 2021 Washington State Fire Code adopted at BMC Chapter 17.20, which incorporates IFC Section 304 (Combustible Waste Materials) and related housekeeping provisions that require accumulations of combustible vegetation to be abated, plus IFC Chapter 49 (Requirements for Wildland-Urban Interface Areas) where applicable. Bellingham Fire Department holds a contract with the Whatcom Conservation District to perform wildfire risk reduction and outreach to landowners adjacent to City-owned WUI parcels; when a neighboring structure shares an ignition-zone overlap with a city parcel, staff will limb trees and remove dead vegetation to help protect private properties. The 2024 Lake Whatcom Watershed Forest Management Plan, jointly developed by Bellingham and Whatcom County, identifies selective and variable-density thinning as the recommended primary silvicultural tool for accelerating the development of complex stand structures in even-aged, second-growth forests and supports retention of moisture-rich species to lower wildfire potential. The state's 2021 Washington Wildland-Urban Interface Code (WAWUIC, intended for adoption at WAC 51-55) is not currently in force - Senate Bill 6120 and a Washington State Building Code Council emergency rule delayed implementation pending publication of new statewide DNR wildfire-hazard and wildfire-risk maps under RCW 19.27.560, with finalized maps expected by December 1, 2026 and required use in June 2027.