But in spring 2025, the 22-year-old offensive midfielder was fighting to recover after a serious injury to his collarbone. Dobbins was participating in a game near the end of the season when tragedy struck, in this case literally.

“Someone came and blindsided me. I had broken my clavicle, and it broke into three pieces,” Dobbins said. “It was pretty gnarly.”

Tim Puls, the head coach of the CSUSM men’s lacrosse club, said it was the second time that Dobbins had been injured within a year.

“In the fall (2024), he broke his collarbone in one of our fall scrimmages, and he recovered from that,” Puls said. “Then he broke his other collarbone, his left side, in the spring.”

If you’re not that familiar with lacrosse, Puls described it as “hockey on grass and turf. You’ve got some big boys in these leagues, and you’re running around with sticks. It’s pretty physical.”

Despite the physicality and even after two injuries, Dobbins said he wasn’t ready to give up. After all, he has been playing the sport since he was about 4 or 5 years old.

But the path back to the field wasn’t easy. After the second injury, Dobbins was scheduled for surgery to repair his collarbone. The day before the surgery, however, he started having breathing problems and lower back pain.

That’s when doctors discovered blood clots in his lungs. Because of the collarbone injury, blood had begun slowly filling his lungs and becoming clots, which collected in his lower lungs.

“If I had gone in, it’s pretty scary to think about back then, it probably wouldn’t have been good for me,” Dobbins said.

After the surgery, he worked with a physical therapist, learning the basics.

“My rehab was grueling and not fun at all,” he said. “I pretty much had to relearn how to use my arm, how to eat, drink, grabbing cups. It was a process.”

But through it all, he knew he had to get back on the field and rejoin his team.

His coach said Dobbins, as a captain, is “like the heartbeat of our team.”

“He takes this sport very seriously, and he wants to play at the highest level,” said Puls, adding that Dobbins “does a great job of being a leader and helping out the young guys.”

A transfer to CSUSM in 2024, Dobbins previously played at Stevenson University, an NCAA Division III school in Maryland.

Founded in 2010, CSUSM’s lacrosse club competes at Division II level in the Southwestern Lacrosse Conference. Led by Dobbins, who recorded 40 goals and 15 assists, the team went 16-2 this spring, losing in the semifinals of the national playoffs.

It’s this team and family that Dobbins credits for helping him stay positive during his recovery.

“I missed playing with my boys, my best friends,” he said.

Puls, who is also Dobbins’ stepfather, credits the team with helping Dobbins by keeping his spirits up.

“These guys supported him, they were calling and talking to him, guys were coming over to the house checking on him, making sure he was good physically and mentally,” Puls said. “And soon as he was able to move around, he went out with the guys to get some shots and reps in.”

Dobbins, who will be a senior this fall, has a major in wildfire science and the urban interface. He said he wants to win a national championship in lacrosse and then focus on firefighting.

He also said his injuries taught him a valuable lesson.

“Luckily, the body is marvelous," he said. "I learned a lot through the process. The body will never let itself fail.”

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Rahn, though, isn’t a firefighter who was called into duty to help battle what became one of the biggest and most destructive fires in California history. Rather, he’s a wildfire researcher at Cal State San Marcos who, in 2019, created a unique degree program called Wildfire Science and the Urban Interface. He’s also the executive director of the Wildfire Conservancy, a nonprofit research foundation dedicated to serving the state’s firefighters and protecting its communities.

The wildfires that devastated the L.A. area, and even caused minor damage in pockets of San Diego County, have been contained. But the significant problem of grappling with ever larger and more dangerous fires fueled by climate change is only growing worse, and Rahn can be found permanently stationed on the front lines of that fight.

Question: What was the nature of the work you were doing during the L.A. fires last month?

Matt Rahn: I and my team at the Wildfire Conservancy have been doing research related to firefighter health and safety. Specifically, we have been conducting an exposure study related to the toxic, hazardous and carcinogenic materials firefighters are exposed to in a wildland urban interface fire. We are collecting data on exposures using silicon wrist bands (as a passive sampling device that is extremely good at absorbing all the contaminants firefighters are exposed to). We compare these to urine and blood samples taken from firefighters to track exposure to substances like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (or PAHs), volatile organic compounds (or VOCs), heavy metals and other compounds. We use a variety of techniques, including micro RNA analysis that can measure the change in gene expression, particularly those responsible for either causing (or suppressing) cancer. 

Q: What was your reaction when you first heard about the fires? Could you have imagined that it would ever get that bad in the nation’s second-most-populous city?

MR: Sadly, I wasn’t shocked. For over 10 years now, we have been saying what is now common vernacular: We no longer have a “fire season,” we have a year-round fire risk. And we no longer have “wildfires” but rather fires in the wildland urban interface (or WUI), which is the area where human development and infrastructure meet undeveloped wildland or natural areas. But this change began much longer ago. 

In 1991, in a remarkable and singularly cataclysmic event, the Oakland Hills became engulfed by a devastating fire that resulted in 3,280 homes lost, 25 fatalities and 1,520 acres burned. At that time, the loss was unthinkable; by today’s standards, the Oakland Hills fire, while still tragic, is certainly not the largest of its kind. That resulted in renewed recognition of the dangers posed by fires in the WUI and prompted new research and development into improved prevention and suppression methods, policy, and procedure of these kinds of fires. Unfortunately, that focus was short-lived, and over a decade would pass until California experienced another devastating wildfire, this time in San Diego County, that would grab national attention. 

Engulfing more than 280,000 acres, destroying 3,241 homes and causing the loss of 16 lives, the 2003 Cedar fire surpassed all records and became the most devastating fire in California’s history. With a total economic loss of nearly $2.5 billion, we realized that the devastation was not contained to acres burned; the fiscal impacts to our communities far outweighed the actual cost of fighting this megafire. Even with a peak of 6,635 firefighters battling the blaze, suppression was less than 2% of the total cost of that wildfire incident.

For more context, since 1970, the U.S. has witnessed a roughly 300% increase in acres burned each year. Fifty years ago, wildfires would burn about 3 million acres per year across the entire U.S.; today, a single fire in California can consume one-third of that historic national acreage. So, fast forward to the fires in Paradise, California in 2018 and the 2023 fires in Maui, where over 100 people lost their lives. Sadly, we all should have seen this coming.

Q: Do you think there’s any merit to the criticism that city officials could have done more to keep the fires from getting so out of control? Or was this strictly a scenario of worst-case environmental conditions?

MR: Persistent drought, hot and dry temperatures, and extremely high winds in a community not built to modern standards for wildfire-prone areas were dangerous starting conditions for any fire event. The high winds provided an extremely short opportunity to prevent a conflagration. These winds also prevented the use of aerial attacks in the early stages of the fire. Fire agencies were left with ground resources, battling one of the most difficult and hazardous fire storms in U.S. history. Given the extreme fire behavior and conditions, the ultimate suppression and containment of the fires and prevention of additional losses was due in large part to the remarkable firefighter staffing and surge capacity that was mobilized. 

It’s easy, if not dangerous, for folks so quickly to criticize agencies and municipalities, and make a tragic incident like this a political talking point. Organizations like Cal Fire, L.A. City and County Fire, and even the National Institute of Standards and Technology are all working to recreate the mobilization of resources and try to understand how response impacted outcomes. This is a very complicated and labor-intensive process that needs to be completed. 

 

Q: If I’m remembering correctly, the worst fires in the state over the last decade or so have been in Northern California, including the Camp fire in 2018. Do you think Southern Californians had acquired a false sense of security and complacency?

MR: Unfortunately, many communities acquire a false sense of security and complacency. We see this year after year. When there is smoke in the air and a major incident that galvanizes our communities, state and nation, all the attention is given to that fire, with a collective promise that we will not forget and will work to keep our communities safe. But as time passes (and in some cases, not much time can pass), communities become lax in their collective efforts for fuel reduction programs, maintaining defensible space or other factors that can significantly contribute to community resilience. We cannot allow this to occur. 

In fact, the Wildfire Conservancy along with some of our instructors in the Wildfire Science and the Urban Interface degree at CSUSM have teamed up to address this exact issue. We were awarded a grant from the FEMA Fire Prevention and Safety program in support of community resilience and advanced training support for Maui. Together with the County of Maui and Maui’s fire department, emergency operations and community associations, the Wildfire Conservancy will build on existing programs with the Responding to the Interface (RTI) program (from Cal Fire and the International Association of Fire Fighters) as the foundation for working with high-risk communities to develop a comprehensive and customized WUI firefighter training tailored to Maui and its communities, and create an annual event that is designed to improve community resilience, awareness, outreach and education. We are working to bring this effort to a national stage starting with Maui and continuing to California and beyond. 

Q: What have you heard from the fire crews that were battling the blazes in L.A.?

MR: We have so far connected with hundreds of firefighters from Cal Fire, L.A. Fire Department, L.A. County Fire Department and other departments like Santa Barbara, Ventura, Fillmore, Oxnard and Pasadena. They are just now beginning to catch their collective breath and recover from these incidents. They are keenly aware of the exposures they have experienced in these fires. The success won by those “boots on the ground” may come at a significant personal and societal cost. The fires resulted in extreme high-level exposures for responding firefighters, at a scale not seen since Sept. 11, 2001. Many of us in the scientific community are speculating that these fires may well constitute an exposure incident that far exceeds that momentous day. The full impact has yet to be realized. 

 

Q: How long have you been a scholar and researcher of wildfire science? How did you first get involved in it as a discipline?

MR: I began working on wildfire issues shortly after the Cedar fire in 2003 and became more fully engaged in research after the Witch and Guejito fires in 2007. My first projects were focused on things like fire sensors to provide early detection of wildfires in remote areas and economic impact studies related to the Cedar fire. I then moved quickly into research on attack effectiveness, completing the seminal study on wildland firefighter staffing that is still used to this day as the standard for helping advocate for proper state firefighter staffing. We then moved quickly into firefighter health and safety, given the impacts we were seeing related to cardiac events, dehydration and heat illness, and cancer. Since then, my time and effort on wildfire and urban interface fires has increased dramatically, culminating in the new degree program at CSUSM in 2019 and the launch the same year of the Wildfire Conservancy.  

 

Q: How has the field evolved over the years as wildfires have gotten bigger and more destructive?

MR: We have been ringing the bell on wildfires and the WUI since the early 2000s. Back then, we were using terms like “the new normal.” Today, everyone is keenly aware of the risks, and the number of agencies, organizations and individuals involved in answering the call has increased significantly. Our first symposium on these issues was held a little over a decade ago in Sacramento, in partnership with Cal Fire and Cal Fire Local 2881. Experts from around California and the nation gathered and agreed that wildland firefighting was easily a decade behind structural/urban firefighting. The recommendation was to increase research and education programs in response to this. CSUSM has helped lead that effort with the new degree program, and organizations like the Wildfire Conservancy have formed to prioritize some of the most pressing issues facing our communities and first responders. 

 

Q: How would you describe CSUSM’s wildfire science program and what it does?

MR: The degree program is unique. It’s focused on the WUI as its primary mission, educating our next generation of firefighters to deal with the unique issues related to these kinds of incidents. Clearly there is a need, and that need is growing. It is no longer just a California issue or something that is particular to the western U.S. Nearly every community in the nation has some kind of risk related to WUI fires. Providing the training and education for that growing risk is critically important. 

What makes this program unique is that it was designed with firefighters and key agencies, including Cal Fire, the fire departments of San Diego and L.A., the U.S. Forest Service, NIST, and many other departments from around the country. We designed our curriculum based on their input, and it includes coursework in community planning and resilience, firefighter health and safety, wildfire law and economics, kinesiology and fitness, and even emerging tools and technologies. Our program also offers a course in firefighter mental and behavioral health, the first of its kind in the nation. The program is designed for working professionals, is fully online and has the ability to put a pause on coursework for students who may be deployed to major incidents during the semester. And yes, several of our own students were working on the L.A. fires. 

We are lucky to have some of the foremost experts as instructors for some of the more specialized courses, and several remarkable faculty members at CSUSM also are teaching in this program. One last thing I should mention is that each student, at the end of their last semester, works with us to conduct their own “senior thesis” and research project focused on WUI issues. I’m happy to say that three of our former students will publish their research papers in the new Journal of the Wildfire Conservancy, a new science journal produced through the CSU system.

Q: CalMatters did an award-winning investigative series called “Trial by Fire” in 2022 about the traumatic toll of wildfires on firefighters, almost akin to being in war. How concerned are you about that, and what are some steps you’d recommend to deal with it?

MR: Modern firefighters are responding to some of the most horrific, toxic, hazardous and carcinogenic incidents ever imagined, working in environments where the human body was never meant to be. They are sleep-deprived and regularly experience potentially traumatic events that can affect their mental health. We are seeing the results of this today through rising rates of cancer (far higher than the general population), increased rates of suicide and suicidal ideations, and high rates of heart attack and stroke. We can and must do better for those who are sacrificing themselves (and their families) in service to our communities. This is why we started the degree program and launched the research foundation. I know this is the thing that motivates so many of our fantastic researchers, faculty, instructors and students who have dedicated their careers to helping. 

 

Q: I know funding, and the lack thereof, is a big part of this, but how would you like to see firefighting improve to confront the threat posed by bigger wildfires fueled by climate change?

MR: We need to give our fire agencies the resources, staffing and technology they need to respond to these events. We absolutely do need more boots on the ground, air attack resources and access to new tools and technologies. We also need a significant investment in personal protective equipment and advanced technologies that can reduce occupational exposures and risk. Fire prevention is also a big piece of the puzzle. We need to take the commitment to fuel management and defensible space seriously, and dedicate the resources needed to create long-term, large-scale sustainable efforts. We also need to rethink our laws, codes and regulations related to housing, businesses and infrastructure, and invest in programs that can better inform future decision-making, land-use planning and community-wide wildfire protection plans. 

 

Q: What lessons are you taking away from the L.A. fires? Should we be rebuilding in these fire-devastated areas? How can we make such communities more resilient?

MR: We as humans tend to build in high-risk areas, whether they are fire-prone or at risk from floods, earthquakes, tornadoes or hurricanes. We have made remarkable strides in addressing community resilience and facility-hardening across many of these high-risk areas, including wildfires. We know what can and does work, and considerable investments are being made to develop new materials, designs and strategies to increase protection. However, none of this works if we continue to allow for poor planning and fail to provide for programs to help improve and retrofit existing communities. It will continue to fail if we don’t take our commitment to fuel management and defensible space seriously. And it will fail if we don’t take immediate action finally to fund a full-time, year-round fire service through Cal Fire and provide our struggling fire agencies the staffing and resources they need to do their job. In addition, we desperately need a significant overhaul to California’s insurance laws and regulations. Each of these issues by itself is not a solution and can easily fail when handled alone. However, if we think of each issue as a separate stick, when they are bundled together, they form a stronger and more resilient unit. We are all in this together. 

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Little did he know that a simple request for help from a colleague would turn into a lifelong passion.

“As I started digging into it, I realized there are lifetimes of careers available for this research,” said Rahn, research faculty and director of the Environmental Leadership Institute for Cal State San Marcos’ Temecula campus. “I’m always encouraging other people and agencies to get involved because there’s so much that needs to be done to move this forward.”

Persistent problems with urban structure fires in the early 1970s led the federal government to commission a report called “America Burning” to evaluate fire loss in the United States and make recommendations to reduce loss and increase safety.

The report helped set new standards for everything from smoke detectors to the materials used for furniture. And the gains were remarkable. Though the U.S. population rose 35 percent from 1971 to 2012, the number of structure fires declined by more than 62 percent in that span. Structure fire deaths declined by nearly 69 percent.

“At the same time, from the 1970s to today, the wildland fire industry actually did the opposite,” Rahn said.

Rahn noted that the U.S. has gone from about 3 million acres per year burning in the 1970s to about 8 million per year today. The number reached 12 million acres last year, the highest in recorded history, Rahn said.

A push for an updated “America’s Burning” report related to wildland fires never came to fruition, but Rahn was part of a state-wide symposium in 2014 to address wildland fires.

“Everybody at the symposium collectively said, ‘We are easily a generation behind in wildland firefighting compared to structure, urban and high rise. So how do we get this moving forward very quickly?’ ” Rahn said. “And the answer, collectively, was education and research.”

Rahn examines a large cross-section of research topics that includes economics, policy and law, improving attack effectiveness, community resiliency and firefighter health and safety. He recently received a U.S. Forest Service grant that includes funds for multiple studies that will investigate firefighter issues with hydration, cancer and exposure.

Rahn typically works with two or three students and three research associates. They collaborate with a number of agencies, including Cal Fire, the International Association of Firefighters, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Forest Service.

Research topics are driven by industry needs.

“What I saw happening, and this is especially true in the environmental science arena, is that you get a lot of good research and a lot of good information out there, but it doesn’t necessarily hit the target on what the actual industry needs,” said Rahn, who is also a member of the Advisory Council for CSUSM’s College of Science and Mathematics.

Rahn recalled that someone at the 2014 symposium noted that firefighting technology has not changed much in the last 100 years.

“If you took somebody out of the military in 1911 and dropped them on the modern battlefield, it would be unrecognizable,” Rahn said.

Firefighting, on the other hand, still makes use of the Pulaski, a hand tool with an ax for chopping on one side and a mattock for digging on the other. It was invented by Ed Pulaski -- in 1911.

While Rahn would love to see improvement in the tools available to firefighters, he notes that there are many fundamental issues that must be addressed before making headway on major technological advances.

For example, protective equipment that firefighters wear is largely based on material developed in the 1970s.

“You’re telling me that in the last 40 years we don’t have a better fire-resistant material?” Rahn said. “We have no respiratory protection for wildland firefighters aside from basically a bandana. Firefighters are being exposed to horrendous chemicals in the smoke, especially when you have vehicles and structures burning at the same time as the wildland. We don’t have a solution for that.”

But Rahn and his students are aiming to help change that.

They recently worked on a hydration study that examined 100 firefighters. They learned that many firefighters actually start their shift dehydrated. The firefighters’ heartrates were high and core body temperatures exceeded safe levels. But they found that drinking cool water had an immediate positive effect. Their ongoing research will examine factors such as the impact of how much firefighters drink, what they drink and the temperature of what they’re drinking.

The work of Rahn and his associates has not gone unnoticed.

In August, the International Association of Firefighters passed a resolution recognizing the importance of research and education in wildfire and wildland urban interface (WUI). The resolution notes that Cal State San Marcos “is a leader in analyzing and resolving complex problems and has taken a strong leadership role in research and education on wildfire/WUI.”

“It was nice to see that they recognized that the work we’ve done up to this point is worthy of that kind of recognition and they want to see this continue,” Rahn said. “That right there is a gamer-changer as far as what we’ve been doing.”

CSUSM’s Environmental Leadership Institute serves as a resource for environmental planning, analysis, assessments, policy and education for emerging practitioners and leaders. Visit the Institute’s website for more information on education and training programs and services.