In June 2012, I wrote about the Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs, so large that astronauts aboard the International Space Station could see its smoke. In January 2025, it happened again, this time at the edge of a city of millions.
On January 7, the Palisades and Eaton fires broke out in Los Angeles County, pushed by Santa Ana winds gusting up to 100 miles per hour after months without rain. From orbit, satellites followed the smoke as it drifted out over the Pacific. On the ground, entire neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades and Altadena were lost. When I wrote this post, at least 24 people had died and more than 12,000 buildings had been destroyed.
One detail stayed with me. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena had to be evacuated, and the Deep Space Network operations center was left empty for the first time since 1963. The team kept in touch with the spacecraft from elsewhere, and no data was lost. Far away, the probes went on talking, unaware that the people listening to them had to leave their homes.
From up here, Earth is a small, bright point in a great deal of darkness. It looks calm. It isn’t always. My thoughts go to everyone who lost someone, or everything, in those fires.
