California has always demanded more from its buildings. From seismic codes to energy standards and drought-resistant landscaping, the state has long pushed designers and builders to think harder about how structures perform under pressure. Now, with increased wildfire risk reshaping entire communities at a greater frequency than ever before, that same rigor is being applied to fire resiliency. From the inside of the walls out, ClarkDietrich offers a variety of non-combustible, engineered solutions that address these challenges directly, both in residential and commercial construction.
Here are three products that architects and builders in California are specifying today.
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- Structa Wire Structalath
Stucco is non-combustible by nature and achieves a one-hour fire-rated wall at 7/8" thickness, making it a preferred exterior siding material by CAL FIRE. But stucco’s fire performance is only as strong as the system supporting it. Thin spots, poor embedment, or inconsistent coverage can create exactly the vulnerabilities a fire-resilient wall is meant to eliminate. Structa Wire’s welded wire lath, Structalath, addresses this directly: its furring geometry allows cement to get behind the wire for thorough, uniform embedment, helping stucco cure evenly and act as a true continuous shell with no gaps for wind-driven embers to exploit. The Easy Embedment System™—combining Structa Wire lath with E-Flange™ casing beads, which increase embedment by up to 70% at termination points—ensures that consistency extends across the entire wall, from field to edge.
Structa Wire products have been specified by two national homebuilders for some of California’s most visible fire-resilient projects, including LA rebuild projects and Escondido’s Dixon Trail, the nation’s first Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood.
- ProChannel Ci™
Fire resiliency requires walls that perform across multiple demands simultaneously: moisture management, thermal efficiency, and long-term durability through California’s punishing heat and weather cycles. ProChannel Ci Cladding Support with Grip-Deck TubeSeal® Technology is engineered to meet all of them within a single, integrated assembly. Designed for use within NFPA 285-compliant exterior wall assemblies, it creates a 7/8" vented rainscreen cavity for moisture drainage and air movement. It installs over exterior continuous insulation without clips, girts, or large penetrations through the insulation that would compromise thermal performance or envelope integrity. Grip-Deck TubeSeal® fasteners seal each penetration at the WRB and air barrier, keeping the assembly thermally efficient.
Santa Monica-based architecture firm Minarc has specified ProChannel Ci for fire rebuild homes in the Palisades and Malibu areas, where high-performance, non-combustible assemblies are a design priority.
- Steel framing
Exterior cladding is the first line of defense, but what’s inside the walls matters, too. Wood framing, the default in most homes, doesn’t just fail to resist fire—in a wildfire scenario, it contributes fuel to it. Cold-formed steel framing, like the ClarkDietich ProSTUD® drywall framing system, changes that equation entirely. Steel is non-combustible, won’t reignite, and can be fire-rated for up to four hours. It maintains structural integrity under extreme heat and eliminates the combustible framing that allows fire to move rapidly through a structure once the exterior is breached.
Minarc has also specified ClarkDietrich cold-formed steel framing for its Palisades and Malibu rebuild projects, a deliberate choice by a firm committed to non-combustible construction in California’s highest fire-risk zones.
For specifiers navigating both fire resiliency and sustainability goals, ClarkDietrich low embodied carbon steel framing offers the added advantage of containing 30% less embodied carbon than its standard counterpart, making it a natural fit for the growing number of projects where building for the future means accounting for both climate resilience and climate impact.
Building for What’s Next
California’s fire resiliency challenge is bigger than any single product, project or community. Whether teams are rebuilding in the wake of recent disasters or proactively designing to a higher standard, a clearer picture is emerging of what fire-resilient construction actually requires. The scale is significant, the stakes are high, and the margin for error is small.
What’s rising to meet that challenge is a shorter list of materials that consistently perform under pressure. ClarkDietrich Structalath, ProChannel Ci, and cold-formed steel framing are on that list for good reason. For builders and architects ready to move beyond conventional methods, these products offer a proven, code-compliant path forward.
And it’s worth noting that these three products are just a portion of what ClarkDietrich offers for fire-resilient construction. Solutions like BlazeFrame® extend the portfolio further for teams designing to the highest fire-rated assembly standards.