TERREMOTO: Learning from the L.A. fires — LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AOTEAROA

"The hazy, ashy, golden mess in the sky would have been beautiful ... if it wasn't"

An eye witness recollection of the billowing smoke-laden clouds and light effects
that accompanied the raging firestorms that blighted Los Angeles in January 2025

Talking across the Pacific to members of the team at TERREMOTO landscape architecture design studio - Dani VonLehe, David Godshall and Hannah Pae - about the devastating L.A. fires turns quickly from descriptions of the "mega-monster" that it was, to a focus on responsive and restorative post-disaster thinking.

Less than two months on from the sense of danger and futility experienced during the height of those tragic wildfires, this is a team that is moving directly into serious on-the-ground problem-solving mode.

It's a shift in focus that they've constituted as a project in its own right; an opportunity to learn from the complexities of what has occurred in order to introduce more resilience into the communities they live and work in.

Whenever a disaster strikes in your own backyard the dedication and cool-headed discipline inherent in this shift in focus has to be marvelled at.

Everyone at TERREMOTO knows people who lost homes and a small number of active projects went up in flames. Disconcertingly there was nothing faraway or abstract about the confluence of extreme wind and extreme fire nor the magnitude of damage caused to habitats and ecosystems of all kinds.

This is taken from a car driving north on the I-5 Freeway, passing by the rapidly growing Hughes Fire (by Castaic Lake), which had begun at 10:54am on the morning of 22 January. At this time, resident evacuations had started in this zone. Hannah Pae: “Half an hour after I’d passed this point, the freeway was shut down, as the fire had managed to jump the freeway”. (Photo: Hannah Pae)

*Four minutes later from the previous photo, driving through the fire-induced smoke cloud. Light conditions have changed completely. (Photo: Hannah Pae)*

So what do you get busy on in the aftermath if you're a landscape architect?

Well at TERREMOTO you get busy getting serious about soil heath and the "million questions" that follow. You get busy data harvesting and taking part in webinars on topics like biochar and heavy metal sequestration.

You learn enough to become hungry for more information, and then more hungry to match that to actionable insights.

An initial phase during the uncertainties swirling around Los Angeles has been problem definition. It's where an old American adage that "a problem well stated is a problem half-solved" becomes relevant.

Equally the TERREMOTO team is being mindful to tread a careful line between "what we know and what we don't know" on critical topics like fire ecology and bio-remediation.

Hannah observes that alongside the importance of acquiring science-based knowledge and sourcing that from niche experts, there are the mental and emotional challenges in the wake of the fires related to "how we can work as a human species to co-exist with nature personally and communally" in contrast to "a fight to control it".

Allowing for views that L.A. was ill-prepared for the fires and that they were 'decades in the making', a pressing challenge is to locate and adopt pragmatic common sense approaches for the future versus giving into what Dani calls a "logic of fear", seen in overly reactive measures such as doing more damage to endemic chaparral ecoystems and their related biodiversity and wildlife.

All New Zealanders who have experience of disaster recovery will identify with the needs that arise in the ensuing days, weeks and months, such as essential services and housing, and that those immediate needs take an understandable priority. At the same time each response typically highlights longstanding planning and infrastructure issues that need fixing but that take second place.

Dani lives in Altadena, where a 'do not drink/ do not boil' water notice was only lifted last week in line with testing requirements for safe drinking water set by the CA State Water Board. She mentions this only because it has highlighted how fragmented the many local water entities in the city are.

"There are public questions being asked about consolidation of those entities as a part of other concerns. It raises a tension between how things are currently managed versus wanting to make meaningful changes to build the city back to be more climate-forward and future-oriented".

This photo was taken from Echo Park the morning the fires started on 7 January. Hannah: “I was curious what the strange cloud in the distance was, not knowing at the time that this was the start of the Palisades fire…”

FURTIVE FUTURE Hopes

Given his "great dread of how slowly bureaucracies move", David Godshall holds mixed hopes for the policy and governance aspects of future adaptation.

David's mixed hopes are also tinged with an anticipation there will be re-runs of this year's catastrophe, expressed through citing the proverb 'Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me'.

In a recent interview with Wonderground writer Georgina Reid David expressed the shattering effect of the fires as an exposure of the vulnerability of Los Angeles.

In an excerpt from this exchange he continued: "The Los Angeles wildfires, to me, make a clear case that the way we’ve been going about building our homes, cities and regions is failing us and isn’t working. Late-stage capitalism, paired with inane housing development standards, paired with inadequate Western models of forest management, paired with invasive species run amok, paired with climate change has created a complete shitshow of a situation ... a grotesquely broken system that is to the detriment of all life".

And then, with a ray of sanguine but frustrated hopefulness: "This tragedy, if handled well, could result in a period of radical experimentation towards alternative modes of building, development, landscape-making and being".

David told Georgina that the times ahead for the 'Motos' (a nickname for the TERREMOTO team) will be a mix of linking arms and staying "intact, productive and together as best we can".

*Dani VonLehe, David Godshall and Hannah Pae.*

Taking a Stand

Together Dani, Hannah and David are a working group within TERREMOTO (a word that means earthquake in Spanish and Italian). Evidence of their productivity and of taking a stand, is the creation of an early working set of seven Guiding Principles as a response to the fires.

In brief these present clear and unequivocal positions, with the following stubs:

We do not believe that wildfire is a problem to be solved.
We disagree with the present discourse that mostly vilifies Coastal Sage Chapparal as an enemy to humans that now needs to be suppressed.
We disagree with the carte blanche removal of burned trees in the immediate aftermath of a fire as the ubiquitous solution to mitigate future risk.
We believe that our short-term solutions as to how to begin to think about new landscape strategies for rebuild zones must include soil testing and remediation.
We believe that our long-term solutions will require we think deeply about plant layout in relationship to structures, the species we employ in our gardens and how detailed maintenance strategies for these newly emergent fire-safe landscaping approaches.
We believe that a meaningful response to wildfires will consider human resilience as in alignment with soil, vegetal, and structural resiliencies.
We want to acknowledge and flag that oftentimes designing landscapes that prioritize "fire-safety" above all else often serve ecology quite poorly.

The full detail of these Guiding Principles as they currently are, as well as a copy of the text of a Petition for a Climate Resilient L.A. can be downloaded here [PDF].

As David Godshall said to Georgina Reid "because we can’t snap our fingers and change the world, we have to figure out the best ways of working within this paradigm to get to the next paradigm".

HONOURING ALAIN PEAUROI

To close this article Landscape Architecture Aotearoa pays its respects to the life of TERREMOTO co-founder Alain Peauroi. Alain - a force of and for nature - died in San Francisco on 14 January after a decade long struggle with cancer. David Godshall: "In working on Alain's eulogy with his wife I discovered that Alain had told her that his love language was work … and so to honour him as a team and to continue his love … we must work".

See Also

TERREMOTO has been awarded a National Design Award for Landscape Architecture. The National Design Awards, currently celebrating their 25th year in the USA, honour innovation and impact and recognise the power of design to change the world. Established as a project of the White House Millennium Council, they bring "recognition to the ways in which design enriches everyday life". Categories include: Design Visionary, Climate Action, Emerging Designer, Architecture, Communication Design, Digital Design, Fashion Design, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture and Product Design. See the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
This small tweak to California parks could help prevent fires - Fast Company, 6 March 2025
David Godshall was a guest speaker at the 2024 NZILA Firth Wānanga in Wellington. Later this month he will be speaking at an Australian Landscape event - ‘Ways of Seeing, Ways of Being’.