Travis County, Austin officials urge residents to harden homes and sign up for alerts during Wildfire Awareness Month

Travis County Judge Andy Brown and Austin Mayor Kirk Watson urged residents at a joint press event in Austin to prepare now for wildfire season, emphasizing yard hardening, evacuation planning and signing up for emergency alerts.

The warning comes as local officials said the city’s wildland-urban interface (WUI) now covers a larger share of habitable land and recent regional fires have demonstrated how smoke and embers can spread rapidly. "We often see dry grass, low humidity and strong winds, and these are the perfect conditions to start a small fire that gets bigger and gets out of control very quickly," Judge Andy Brown said. "That's why we're asking everybody to take wildfire safety seriously and to take some simple steps to get prepared."

Officials said the updated WUI map approved recently by Austin City Council now classifies about 51% of Austin's habitable land as at-risk, up from about 38% nearly a decade ago. The shift reflects both growth in homes at the wildland edge and revisions to how risk is mapped. "Austin ranks fifth in the nation in the number of homes at risk of wildfire," Mayor Kirk Watson said, and he cited population growth and new homes built in the wildland-urban interface as…