Communities in the wildland– urban interface (WUI) have challenges that other communities don’t. They struggle to establish and maintain a viable wildfre mitigation effort over time. While many communities understand their risk and want to reduce it, they don’t have the local capacity to accomplish it for lack of funds or staffng or because it places more burden on community volunteers. Then, when a wildfre strikes, the community struggles to stay ahead of it in terms of last-minute risk reduction, communication with residents, and stress related to an incident. The national Community Mitigation Assistance Team (CMAT) concept was developed to offer assistance to targeted communities to address these issues by frst helping to build local capacity during the off season in anticipation of an event and then by helping communities cope with wildfre on the landscape by using it as a motivation for risk reduction at the community level. This article explains the use of these teams and who comprises them.