Reroofing in a fire hazard zone? CBC 705A no longer exists

If your reroof permit, your standard roof note, or your WUI compliance letter still cites CBC Section 705A, you're quoting a section the state deleted. The requirement behind it is alive and well — it just doesn't live in the Building Code anymore.

Here's the thing: this is a relocation, not a rewrite. The 2025 cycle pulled California's wildfire roofing provisions out of CBC Chapter 7A and into a standalone book — the California Wildland-Urban Interface Code (Part 7) — and the January 2026 errata, announced in BSC Information Bulletin 26-01, chased the stale pointers across the Building Code, Fire Code, and CALGreen. The errata are enforceable as of January 1, 2026. So a roof note that read correctly last fall can draw a correction at the counter this summer.

What 1505.1.1 actually says now

The section that governs roofing in fire-hazard country is CBC Section 1505.1.1. It used to point you at "Section 705A" inside the Building Code. After the errata, it points somewhere else entirely.

Verified against the live 2025 CBC text: 1505.1.1 — "Roofing requirements for structures located within Fire Hazard Severity Zones or in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) shall also comply with Chapter 5 of the California Wildland-Urban Interface Code." The change-list traces this to IB 26-01 p.3: pointer corrected from CBC "Section 705A" to "Chapter 5 of the California Wildland-Urban Interface Code."

That's the whole move. Chapter 7A left the Building Code; its construction rules now sit in Chapter 5 of the WUI Code. Anything still citing 705A or Chapter 7A by number is pointing into a hole.

The reroof rule itself didn't change

For a reroofer or an ADU/SFR builder, the practical requirements are the same ones you already know — they're just in a new book. California WUI Code Chapter 5 still calls for:

• A Class A roof assembly tested to ASTM E108 or UL 790 (§504.2), with the familiar exempt assemblies — clay or concrete tile, slate, metal, and the like.
• Hips and ridge caps mudded in to block ember and flame intrusion (§504.2.1.1).
• Valley flashing of corrosion-resistant metal over a mineral-surfaced cap sheet (§504.2.2).
• Protected enclosed eaves and soffits — noncombustible or ignition-resistant on the exposed underside (§504.3).
• Ember- and flame-resistant vents where the roof is vented (§504.10).

And the trigger reroofers care about is still there: under WUI Code §507.1, replacing the roof covering — or replacing 50 percent or more of it within a 12-month period — on an existing building means the new covering has to meet new-construction requirements (§§504.2 and 504.2.1). Patch repairs to an existing roof still have to hit at least a Class A classification.

The errata didn't rewrite these rules — they fixed the address. The detail that matters is exactly that: cite Chapter 5 of the WUI Code, not 705A.

The same fix shows up in the Fire Code and CALGreen

This wasn't a one-section cleanup. The errata repointed every place the old Chapter 7A address was hiding.

California Fire Code Section 202 carries the Wildland-Urban Interface Area definition. Its reference used to run through CBC Chapter 7A (§702A.2). The errata retargeted it (IB 26-01 p.7), and the live CFC text now reads simply: "WILDLAND-URBAN INTERFACE AREA (WUI). [SFM] (See California Wildland-Urban Interface Code Chapter 2 for defined term.)" For the record, that defined term is a geographical area the state has identified as a Fire Hazard Severity Zone under Public Resources Code §§4201–4204 and Government Code §§51175–51189, plus other areas the enforcing agency designates.

CALGreen Chapter A5 got the same treatment: its references to CBC Chapter 7A provisions were corrected to point at the California Wildland-Urban Interface Code (IB 26-01 p.9).

Same move, three books. If you build from office master templates, the stale citation probably rode along in more than one of them.

What to do Monday morning

This is a find-and-replace problem, not a redesign. Open your standard roof notes, your WUI/ignition-resistant construction schedule, and your reroof permit boilerplate, and search the literal strings 705A, 702A.2, and Chapter 7A. Update the hits to the corrected target — Chapter 5 of the California Wildland-Urban Interface Code for roofing — then fix the master so you're not re-stamping the dead number next month.

One caution worth keeping: confirm against the adopted code text and verify with your local jurisdiction. Some cities amend on top of the state code, and your AHJ has the final word on which edition and which corrections they enforce. None of this is legal advice — it's a citation map.

What CrossBeam does with it

CrossBeam reads plan sets against the code as corrected, so a roof note still pointing at deleted Chapter 7A or Section 705A gets flagged before the city sees it — with the live WUI Code section it should cite instead. Stale wildfire-roofing boilerplate is one of the quietest ways to draw a correction, and one of the easiest to catch early.