Stoking the fires of change
Photojournalist Stuart Palley ’11 experiences wildfires in the moment. ˾researcher Chris Roos looks at them through the long lens of archaeology. Ultimately, their perspectives are the same: Wildfires are getting worse, and there’s an urgent need to adopt coexistence strategies.
An unusually hot, dry spell bakes the landscape. Ready to say goodbye to summer, friends gather for Labor Day barbecues in neighborhoods surrounded by forest. Winds whip up and embers fly. In the blink of an eye, 1,500 structures are set aflame.
That hypothetical scenario cooked up by environmental archaeologist and a friend about a fictional New Hampshire hamlet now plays out too often in places where wildfires were once unknown. “Climate change makes it real for a lot of people,” says Roos, an ˾anthropology professor who has studied wildfires in the Southwest for more than a decade.
A blaze was too close for comfort in an iconic photo showing a barefoot man clad in a T-shirt and boxers, fleeing for his life in Thousand Oaks, California. Time magazine named it one of the top 10 photos of 2018. That terror-filled moment was caught by ˾alum , a professional photographer whose stunning images accompany this story.
In a flash, wildland infernos not only destroy homes but also livelihoods, dreams and ecosystems, Palley says. On the ground, he has witnessed these “incredible forces of nature” building in strength and fury. “Wildfires are getting worse,” he says. “They move faster and are more intense and destructive, and the time of year during which they occur is more widespread.”
Roos compares the trend of bigger, scarier and harder to control wildfires to medication-resistance superbugs. “Antibiotics can be used effectively to treat everyday infections, but they’re almost useless in fighting superbugs,” he says. “Likewise, we can generally control smaller wildfires, but megafires are like superbugs; we’re limited as to how much we can contain them.”
‘Earth on fire’
Like hurricanes along the Gulf Coast or tornadoes in the Plains, wildfires were a seasonal fact of life while Palley was growing up in Newport Beach, California. As a University student, he never envisioned a career kindled by fire. The opportunity to explore varied interests drew him to ˾as a double major in history and finance, with minors in human rights and photography. After shooting for The Daily Campus and other publications, he tapped into a talent for environmental photography at SMU-in-Taos and started focusing on visual storytelling.
Understanding the complexities of combustible issues depends on the kind of multidisciplinary mindset Palley honed as a student: “Recognizing the impact of history. Spotting patterns and taking disparate information and connecting the dots. Analyzing infrastructure investments and looking at them from a public benefit perspective. Everything I studied has helped.”
Palley went on to earn a master’s degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri. He began covering wildfires as a newspaper intern with the Orange County Register in 2012. The following year, he started shooting long exposures of fires after dark for a personal art project and subsequent book, Terra Flamma, roughly translated from Latin as “earth on fire.” Over five years and 45 fires, Palley created photos intended to burn in your memory and spark conversations about what he characterizes as “the most acute effect of drought, climate change and human sprawl in California and beyond.”
Centuries of fire wisdom
Roos and Palley met in 2019 at an ˾community event in Southern California.