The urban-wildland interface problem is particularly severe in Southern California.
People work in the cities, but prefer to live in rural settings.
The huge potential for destruction of homes, property, life and natural resources by large, running wildland fires in the urban interface has convinced fire officials that interagency efforts are needed to share costs and resources. Federal, state, county and city agencies simply do not have the resources to handle large fires within their separate jurisdictions without the aid of other agencies. Mutual aid agreements were initiated as at least a partial solution to this problem. Under mutual aid agreements, the closest fire fighting resource is dispatched to an incident. This helps keep fires smaller.