Resilient Landscapes: The Land Use Planning for Wildfires in California Training Program

[00:05] - Roberta Rewers

On today's episode of the APA Podcast, we go behind the scenes of the Land Use Planning for Wildfires in California training program, a unique interdisciplinary program that brings planners and fire officials together to reduce risk, strengthen collaboration, and improve long-term resilience. The program is the recipient of the 2025 Resilience and Sustainability Award. Joining us to discuss the program are Molly Mowry, AICP, executive director of the Community Wildfire Planning Center, and Matt Damon, staff chief of Community Wildfire Mitigation Assistance with CAL FIRE in the Office of the State Fire Marshal. I'm Roberta Rewers, APA's Senior Communications Manager. Thanks for joining us. 

Molly and Matt, thanks so much for joining us to talk about the Land Use Planning for Wildfires in California training program today. Can you provide the listeners a little bit of a high-level overview of what the training program is and what it's about.

[01:03] - Molly Mowery

Sure, I can start. Thanks so much, Roberta. So our training program is grant-funded, and it was initially,  or originally initiated by the California State Legislature back in 2018. And the purpose of that legislation originally was to simply educate land use planners in California on wildfire. And CAL FIRE was tasked with that. So CAL FIRE reached out to our organization, the Community Wildfire Planning Center, and together we began to co-develop these trainings.

And really right from the beginning, we recognized that, yes, the intent was to educate planners, but we really couldn't educate planners without also bringing in the fire professionals. So the trainings are essentially bringing together land use planners from across California, as well as fire professionals. That could be fire chiefs, fire marshals, fire mitigation specialists, fire inspectors, you name it. Anyone really engaged in wildfire development, or I should say development-related decisions in and across California.

 We brought those two groups together and of course, you know, additional allied professions, and we do all-day trainings. They're in person, they're across California. And we facilitate conversations. We help everyone in the classroom know what do they have to know about wildfire in California, in terms of what are state requirements, but what are best practices too, to deal with where we're building, where we're developing, where we're making decisions about where we live and how essentially, we can be better reducing wildfire risk to these communities.

[02:52] - Matt Damon

Can I add to that as well?

[02:54] - Roberta Rewers

Please.

[02:55] - Matt Damon

And I think one of the kind of basic tenets, and I don't know if Molly, you're gonna talk about this later, but just the way that the class is broken up with the morning going with the concept of "think like a firefighter," and then the afternoon being "think like a planner." And I think that really just adds to the unique nature of the class, and having that distinction has really helped with folks being able to wrap their mind around the two different kinds of, in some people's minds, unrelated concepts, but then bringing it together and in a way for each to be able to really absorb.

[03:39] - Roberta Rewers

And Matt, you touched on one piece that makes it unique where different professionals are putting each other in their partner's shoes, so to speak, to learn from each other. What else makes this different or unique than any other kind of coursework that's available or any previous trainings that maybe were available?

[03:58] - Matt Damon

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the, probably the first thing that makes it unique is what is now called the Community Wildfire Mitigation Assistance Program within the Office of the State Fire Marshal and CAL FIRE. It's a pretty unique program just in that the real goal of our program is to assist local jurisdictions with wildland-urban interface regulations and other concepts, specifically dealing with the safety element of their general plan.

Also, one of the goals of the program is to help establish relationships and to make connections and to facilitate collaboration. And I think that's just really come through in our delivery of the class, working with CWPC and bridging that gap between different groups, whether it's firefighters, fire marshals, local planners, building officials, other interested stakeholders, and just helping to facilitate those relationships.

[05:03] - Molly Mowery

Yeah, if I could add to that — and I know we've already said this in so many words, but I think it's a really important point — is that this is a really unique training in the sense that it's bringing two distinct disciplines together to engage on a topic that is multidisciplinary. The wildland-urban interface requires different disciplines to help solve this challenge. And, you know, we see a lot of trainings for planners, we see a lot of trainings for the fire service. We don't see trainings that bring those two groups together at the same time. So I think that's what makes this unique, as well as the sustained nature of the trainings.

We've been really fortunate too, to get sustained funding through CAL FIRE for these trainings so that they're free. We've been doing it for four years now. I think we see a lot of other training programs come and go, but this is something over time that, you know, we've been able to sustain and continue, and we continue to see demand for it. So that's really exciting because, you know, we didn't know how it would start out, but it's been wildly successful from the beginning, and we just feel really fortunate that we can continue to offer these trainings at no cost.

[06:25] - Roberta Rewers

And you mentioned, Molly, that you're now in the fourth year of offering these trainings. What have you both learned from the planning side and the fire service side from the very first training to where you're at right now?

[06:38] - Molly Mowery

I think one thing that we've seen and have learned in the process is really how dynamic this field is. The actual solutions may not always change, but for example, you know, legislation changes every year, so we have to keep the training content up to date with reflecting what the state requires, as well as continuing to educate ourselves on what are best practices that we want to share throughout the course and the day. And so a part of that is we're learning from the participants too, because we get all of these planners and folks from different jurisdictions from across the state, and it's really helpful because we — it's like a continuous feedback loop where we share information and we also receive information. And so it's almost like a constant spiral of improvement as we, you know, continue to offer these trainings across the state.

[07:40] - Matt Damon

To add to that, I guess a little bit too, is one of the things that I've really enjoyed seeing through the course of the class is the way that we'll see the different functions, whether it's fire marshals talking to planners, especially in the morning, and to where they're able to bring up local examples of things, and to where a fire marshal from one jurisdiction might be helping to explain a fire concept to their planning manager or planning director or their staff. And to where they're not only learning from the cadre and the things that we're trying to share, but also learning from each other, and they can cite local examples. They can really just add to where each class is unique, and they're sharing different things. And so they're not only hearing from us but also from their partners. And it really just helps to build their relationships and build those connections, even at a very small level, for the participants of the class.

[08:52] - Roberta Rewers

Thinking back — it can be this year, year number three, the first year — what was one of the biggest challenges that you had to overcome putting together this program, finding education, or excuse me, educators to come and help? What was something that you thought you figured out you had to overcome?

[09:10] - Molly Mowery

You know, some of the challenges were really just related to timing of the fire seasons, or I use the term "seasons" loosely here, but we definitely had some of the communities that we were planning to offer trainings in directly affected by wildfires — or in some cases, ironically, floods — so we really had to accommodate what the needs were. In all cases, we were able to reschedule, but we wanted to obviously be sensitive to what the capacity was because we have emergency managers, fire folks, planners that all would be engaged in local recovery efforts for any type of disaster. And so we had to just sometimes find different venues, change the date, et cetera. And I think it wasn't really a challenge we anticipated from the beginning, but of course, probably looking back, not surprising that this would happen in a state as active with potential hazards as California.

[10:18] - Matt Damon

I think another big challenge is working on the translation of concepts, whether that's some of the fire concepts into concepts that planners, that building officials are understanding in a really straightforward way, and vice versa, of taking some of the planning concepts and presenting it in a way to where the fire officials that maybe don't have a background in planning or some of those other concepts.

And I think through the diverse makeup of our cadre, as well as really learning from the students, and like Molly said, the class really evolves over time, or has evolved over time, and taking some of those different things and then integrating it into the presentation of classes as they go along, started as a challenge and then I think has turned into really a strength of the class, of really being able to effectively communicate concepts to the wide audience that we have.

[11:28] - Roberta Rewers

And I imagine the participants, like to your point, Molly, that you have communities being impacted in real time by these wildfires, that this ends up being a very deeply personal experience too, because it's not only your community, they might be experiencing loss or friends or family as well. So there's sort of an even deeper-rooted element, I think, of this is personal, it's real, we're living here, this is our home, our community.

[11:56] - Molly Mowery

Yeah, to that point, specifically at the beginning of our trainings, we will sometimes ask participants —and, you know, we'll have anywhere from 30 to almost 50 people in any given training. So it's a really good group of folks. And we will ask, how many of you have experienced wildfire in the last year? And we've had some classes where everyone raises their hand.

So to your point, Roberta, it's personal, it's professional. You know, when we talk about impacts, and we have a discussion on what types of impacts people have experienced in their communities. Again, it's just, it's very, I almost want to say it's very humbling to look at the types of experiences and have people share what they've gone through in relation to wildfire. Some of them, even for communities who have experienced wildfire five years ago, many of those planners or fire professionals in the room are still also dealing with the long-term impacts from those fires in their professional work. So it really is eye-opening to appreciate how deeply this touches people across the state.

[13:19] - Roberta Rewers

Can we transition maybe to a happier subject area of some successes that you've seen coming from the program? We talked a little bit about two distinct professions building a greater understanding of what everybody does in their day job. What other sort of successes have you seen, small or big scale?

[13:39] - Matt Damon

Seeing just some of the relationships, I think that's one of the things that is really important to me and something that I've seen over the course of my career, just how important that is. And seeing several times over, to where folks will come into the class and then at a break or at the end of the day, to where you'll have folks that are from the same jurisdiction and didn't even realize it. And they walk away from the class having the shared experience of taking the course and then making that connection. It's like, oh wow, there's like three projects that I'm working on that I had no idea who to talk to, and here you are.

And seeing that — and like I said, it hasn't just been once or twice, but really numerous times over the course of, gosh, I think we're at almost 30 classes now that we've presented — and just seeing that play out is just so, it makes me feel really good just to see those relationships build because the lack of that relationship really just makes everyone's job harder and makes it more difficult for us to meet all of the really shared goals of wildfire mitigation. And it's really great to see that.

[15:04] - Molly Mowery

We also do a breakout activity in the afternoon, and it's called our plan alignment exercise. And we get — essentially what we do is we first have the lecture part where we talk a lot about different plans, like the general plan and the general plan safety element, other types of community plans, and then we talk about a community wildfire protection plan and the hazard mitigation plan and how all of these plans are meant to align and fit together or support one another. And then, you know, we know people work on a lot of other plans besides those. And so we have breakout groups where, you know, five or six folks get together, we try and make it as mixed up as possible so there's a diversity within each group, and we ask them to share plans that they're working on, and they might be very different. They might be emergency management related, they might be open space recreation or trails plans, they may be watershed related, or specific plans or master plans, community plans, you name it. And so we get a really wide variety of plans that people discuss within their breakout groups, and we ask them to pick three plans, and then talk about how they could align or support one another.

And, you know, every time we do this exercise, it's so exciting to see people who have, in many cases, never met and have very different professional backgrounds, but come together on, you know, just within 30 or so minutes, sharing with their peers and coming up with really creative ways of thinking about the plans, the different plans they work on could align. And when we do our evaluations at the end of the day, that breakout activity is consistently one of the top-rated activities or topics from the day.

So I think it's just really exciting to see that although, yes, we're bringing our knowledge as the instructors, we're facilitating these conversations, we're also really providing people who have a lot of their own expertise the chance to network with one another and share their knowledge in ways that, you know, we can't always script. And that's, I think, one of the neat things about this training.

[17:30] - Roberta Rewers

The training itself — the state of California is geographically very big. How does that managing just the vast span of the state itself come into your training programs and planning where to hold them, when to hold them, sort of? Elements?

[17:50] - Matt Damon

Well, I think Molly and her team have done a really great job with a lot of the logistics side of that, of working on really trying to hit the different areas. As a group, I think we've really tried just to look at hitting different parts of the state when we get together every year and kind of work on our updates, or even initially of looking at, okay, we want to make sure that we have a good spread.

We knew, I think, the first round we were doing 10 classes, and it's like, okay, we want to make sure that we have different geographical areas because those — it does kind of just organically happen when you're having a class in Redding, it's very different than having a class in Riverside County or in the Bay Area. And it just kind of happens that sometimes they'll be folks that are traveling a great distance to go to the class, but usually it's more or less within a few hours. And it does lend itself to those classes being very different because they have shared experiences or they have shared backgrounds or shared similarities within those different areas.

[19:10] - Molly Mowery

The other thing I would add to that is, you know, Matt, from your end, from the Community Wildfire Mitigation Assistance Program staff, it feels very regionalized because you have staff coming from those areas, from those regions or the counties that they work in. And so it becomes, I think, much more personal when you have communities working on, let's say, their safety element update in their general plan, and then you can partner them directly with the CAL FIRE person that they would be working with to support that safety element update. And so that changes with each class as well. And I think it gives it a more localized feel to it besides just, you know, someone from CAL FIRE is here.

[20:04] - Matt Damon

That's a great point, and thank you for reminding me of my own staff. But no, that really is, again, to the earlier point of that relationship building, it does provide a really good opportunity. We have staff that essentially are spread throughout the state that have a handful of jurisdictions that they're all more or less responsible for all the different aspects of our program. And so that gives them a good opportunity, especially to have some face-to-face time where maybe they've only met in virtual meetings or in emails.

 And so that is just another great offshoot. We always ensure that we have our staff attending those classes when there's — we'll look at the makeup of the class ahead of time to see the different jurisdictions and make sure that we have all of those covered. And it really has been a nice kind of side effect that we maybe didn't anticipate, but it's really played out as just a fantastic opportunity to get people together. And there's always at the break times or at lunch great conversations that we're always hearing in passing or, "Oh, I think I need to go over and join that conversation," just with those nice little opportunities.

[21:30] - Roberta Rewers

What's next for the training program? I believe you're piloting a course or two in Washington State?

[21:38] - Molly Mowery

Yeah, in fact, we already have. So the Community Wildfire Planning Center, CWPC, we were really fortunate to get a generous grant from Resources Legacy Fund this past year. And, uh, my colleague Kelly Johnston and I were able to take the, the model from the training programs that we're doing with CAL FIRE in California and take those concepts to Washington. So we worked really closely with the Washington Department of Natural Resources and Department of Commerce and a lot of other state and local agencies and organizations. And we took the concepts of think like a firefighter and think like a planner that Matt shared earlier, but we customized them for Washington and matched them more with where Washington State is at. And so we had two trainings last fall, and we are also fortunate to be able to plan two more trainings in Washington this coming year.

And so we're excited. It's been also very well received there. And I think what we're finding is, although sometimes we get asked, you know, could you offer these virtually, we find that — I know it sounds a little corny — but the magic really happens in person, and we realize that sometimes it can be hard for people to take a full day off, or not off, but a full day to attend the training, but truly, as Matt was talking about, those relationships really get built by interacting directly with peers.

So we are always looking for ways to take some of the education and learning from these trainings and bring them to wider audiences and make them accessible through other avenues, like Matt and my colleague Kelly, and our other colleagues, Shane Vargas and other folks from CAL FIRE. We have presented at the APA California Chapter Annual Conference, and we will, I'm sure, continue to do that in other similar venues. But like we said, the core of the program really has been these in-person trainings. And so we do plan and hope to continue offering those, both in California and Washington, and maybe beyond.

[23:58] - Matt Damon

And I think from the perspective of CAL FIRE and the Office of the State Fire Marshal, certainly continuing this class into at least the immediate future is definitely supported by our leadership. Looking at other opportunities and other things we can do is certainly on the table, and trying to figure out the next way to reach people and to support local jurisdictions is very important to us. But I think when we first started this class, we weren't sure, oh, well, maybe we'll do the 10 classes and just kind of be like, okay, great. And here in our, I think it's really our fourth year together of working on the course and doing it, the interest isn't going away. So continuing with what we're doing, I think, is in the immediate future, and we'll see what's on the horizon.

[24:56] - Roberta Rewers

Final question for each of you. What do you want listeners to take away from the training program overall?

[25:04] - Molly Mowery

I think it goes back to one of our lessons learned, and it wasn't a hard lesson to learn. It was more of an exciting lesson, I guess. If you want to solve a challenging topic, you really need to bring together the different disciplines that would be engaged in that solution. So for us, in this case, it was obviously the wildland-urban interface. And, you know, we hear a lot of different — and I'm trying to think of how to really word this — we hear a lot of different solutions that people want planners to follow for reducing wildfire impacts to communities. But those solutions don't always engage planners in that process. I think this is really unique in the design, and I think that is what could be replicable to other similar topics where there's multi-disciplines that need to engage in positive planning outcomes. You know, it's not just for the planners. It's not just for the fire service. It's not just for any other profession. Not only are they participating, but we see them as part of the solutions in this case.

[26:19] - Matt Damon

And I think for me, the takeaway, and I've probably said it several times already, is just the importance of the creation and then the maintenance of those relationships. With the other functions within jurisdictions of just how critical it is to nurture that process and to be working with those other functions. And as folks go along in doing their job, understanding your partners and what their role is, and then how that impacts what you're trying to do. It just makes for such a better process, a more effective process, and ultimately better service to the folks we're trying to help and guide through many of our processes.

So that's always my takeaway at the end of our day, is just the importance of relationships, and maintaining that takes work, and sometimes it takes people being a little bit uncomfortable, but the payback is almost always exponential to the effort that you put into it to put yourself out there. So, that's always my go-to.

[27:43] - Molly Mowery

I want to add one more thing too, because I think it's implicit in everything we're talking about, but I want to make it more explicit, because our organization works with, and we have worked with states and communities and state agencies all across the country. And I think it's amazing what CAL FIRE is doing to invest in supporting land use planners across the state of California. It's, you know, many other state agencies are interested in this type of effort. They would, I think, love to do something like this themselves. But CAL FIRE is really making it happen and investing also in training their own staff to be — to learn more about land use planning so that they can be more effective in working with communities.

And so I just — I know that goes a little bit beyond this training, but it certainly is a successful ingredient as to why these trainings even happened and why they continue to happen and just to see a state fire agency take that type of, or that level of leadership, I think is, it's amazing. And I really hope that that could serve as a model across other states in the future.

[29:11] - Roberta Rewers

It sounds like with your training program, you've already kind of established how do you start building that relationship so other folks in other communities around the country can start to mirror what you have been able to do in California.

[29:26] - Molly Mowery

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think we have a good formula and a good model, and it's not hard to replicate it. It just takes the leadership and the will to make it happen.

[29:40] - Roberta Rewers

Is there anything else we didn't touch on that you wanted to share with listeners?

[29:45] - Molly Mowery

Do you have anything, Matt?

[29:47] - Matt Damon

I can't think of anything else. This has been fantastic. Thank you for having us and me. And I think it's just, quickly, Molly talked about attending the California chapter conference of the APA, and we always hear when we're walking around, and people do the name tag read and they're like, oh, what's CAL FIRE doing here? And we've had so many great conversations of just like, oh well, you know, we have our program, and we have this class, and we have a lot of shared goals and shared responsibilities. And so I just really value the work that planners do, and Molly and Kelly from CWPC just do such a great job with really steering this class. We definitely could not have done all of the things without her and her team. And so it takes collaboration and it takes, like Molly said, a lot of hard work, but I think the payoff is certainly worth it in the end.

[31:08] - Roberta Rewers

Well, I think you have established a great example.

[31:11] - Molly Mowery

I think that what's also interesting to reflect on is where and how far the planning profession has come just in the past 10 years. And speaking of conferences and topics, there's always been a small group of us planners dedicated to studying hazards and talking about the importance of hazard planning. But you've really seen the interest and enthusiasm for this topic ramp up.

So I know that's one of the reasons why these trainings are really successful. We're no longer in the phase of trying to convince planners why they should care about this topic. We're really — we've moved into the phase of people want to know, and they want very tangible solutions. Tell me what I can really do in my community. So I think that's one of the benefits of these trainings. It's the right timing and the right level of information for what planners are looking for now.

[32:16] - Roberta Rewers

Molly and Matt, for anyone who's interested in learning more, where can they find information about the training program?

[32:23] - Molly Mowery

Thank you, Roberta. The best place to go for more information is our CWPC website. It's communitywildfire.org, and you'll see trainings, and then if you click on trainings, we have listed all of the upcoming trainings in California, and if there are other training locations available. And that is constantly being updated as we schedule more trainings. So we just encourage anyone interested who's in California and wants to attend to visit the site, or they can contact us and ask to be on a training notification list. But the best place to go is the website, communitywildfire.org, and there's a contact form on that too if they have questions.

[33:05] - Matt Damon

And yeah, same for us, with the OSFM, the Office of the State Fire Marshal website, osfm.fire.ca.gov, and it basically links to Molly's website, but lots of other information about our overall division, the Community Wildfire Preparedness and Mitigation Division that's under What We Do. And there's tons of links and descriptions about all of our programs and a link to the class. Lots of information available, but always happy to chat and have the conversations.

[33:43] - Roberta Rewers

Molly and Matt, thanks so much for joining us today and talking about the Land Use Planning for Wildfires in California training program and sharing a lot of really great lessons learned.

[33:55] - Molly Mowery

Thank you for the opportunity, and I think we also just want to say how honored we were for our training program to be recognized by APA this year.

[34:04] - Matt Damon

Truly, yeah, thanks for having us, and I really enjoyed this, and it really was an honor and a surprise recipients of that award, and yeah, thank you.

[34:20] - Roberta Rewers

Thanks for listening to another episode of the APA Podcast. Learn more about the National Planning Awards at planning.org/awards and learn how to nominate your own work. If you want to hear more great conversations with experts from across the planning landscape, subscribe to the APA Podcast so you'll never miss an episode. You can find the APA Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our entire library of past episodes at planning.org/podcast.