In the Scars of L.A.’s Wildfires, Ecological Lessons Bloom

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Miroslava Munguia Ramos turned onto the road that leads into Sullivan Canyon and tried to summon the memory of what it looked like just three months earlier, in late January. It should have been months into the wet season, but the rains hadn’t come. Instead, the Palisades Fire — an unseasonable monster fanned by Santa Ana winds that whipped hot desert air through the dried-out canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains — swept through, torching 24,000 acres and destroying nearly 7,000 buildings. Munguia Ramos, stuck in her office outside the evacuation zone, started receiving texts from acquaintances working on fire crews. Their photos showed a world transformed. Ash was everywhere, turning everything that wasn’t a charred black into a featureless gray. To Munguia Ramos, the whole world seemed to have been drained of color.

We passed through the edge of the fire’s boundary, conversation giving way to silence as we surveyed the cars and houses reduced to twisted metal and piles of rubble. The road turned to gravel, winding inland toward the homes of some of the region’s nonhuman residents. Luke Kelly, an ecologist on sabbatical from his work at the University of Melbourne, where he studies the massive wildfires of southern Australia, shook his head at a stand of ghostly, charred oak trees. “That was a hot fire,” he murmured.