A wildfire consulting and communications practice.

Todd Lando

Todd Lando is a wildfire mitigation specialist and Marin County native with more than 35 years in the fire service, from seasonal firefighter to battalion chief, all of it in Northern California. He has worked both the front lines and the planning side of the fires that reshaped how the fire service treats the wildland-urban interface (WUI), including the 1991 Oakland and Berkeley Hills Tunnel Fire, the 2017 North Bay fires, the 2017 Thomas Fire, and the 2018 Camp Fire. He has planned wildfire prevention for property owners, builders, communities, and agencies across the western US, and has built websites for the fire service since 1998.

In 2018 he coined "Zone 0" to name the five feet closest to a structure. The science on that area was well established; a usable name for it was not. The term gave researchers, regulators, and homeowners a common vocabulary, fit cleanly into the existing defensible space zone system, and has since become the national standard, now written into California regulation. His part did not end with the name. He helped carry Zone 0 from a concept into fire service practice and state policy, and he has studied its results at thousands of homes hit by wildfire, documenting what the absence of an ember-resistant zone cost. That fieldwork is the basis of his advice to owners, designers, and agencies on how to put Zone 0 in place and why it works.

A recognized voice on wildfire evacuation and resident preparedness, he has led community-scale evacuation studies and developed the guidance and training built from them. He served as executive director of Fire Safe San Mateo County and Fire Safe Marin, the nation's first two nonprofit fire safe councils, and helped develop several of the community wildfire mitigation programs now in use nationally. He serves on California's Wildfire Mitigation Advisory Committee, which advises the state on wildfire preparedness and mitigation, and holds the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) Certified Wildfire Mitigation Specialist credential. He learned local planning and vegetation management as a Fire and Fuels Management Specialist at Urban Forestry Associates, bringing GIS, web, and database work to the fire prevention side.

He studied Forestry and Wildfire Management at the University of Montana and holds a bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies and Urban Planning, with an emphasis in Natural Resources Conservation and Restoration, from Sonoma State University. His background also runs through graphic and web design and journalism, which is where the communications side of the practice comes from.