Ben Hamlington looks across a ragged pile of ash and debris, the remains of what used to be his family's home. It was destroyed in the Eaton Fire, which spread at ferocious speeds in high winds, eventually destroying more than 9,000 houses and buildings around Altadena, Calif.
"My 9-year-old really wants me to see if there's anything left recognizable," he says. "I don't think there's much worth going through."
All that's left are echoes of what once was there. A jumbled pile of springs shows where a mattress was. A bed frame is nothing but twisted, black metal.
Hamlington understands the risks all too well. As a research scientist at NASA, he's spent his career studying climate change impacts, quantifying how quickly sea levels are rising and threatening coastal communities. Losing his home has erased the line between his job and his life, he says.
When the smoke first appeared two weeks ago, Hamlington's wife and two daughters decided to leave home. He stayed behind with the family dogs, getting a text at 3 a.m. for a mandatory evacuation.
"I came outside, you couldn't see anything there was so much ash," he says. "The winds were blowing directly this way."
It wasn't the first time he had experienced a climate change-driven disaster. Hamlington lived in Virginia before moving to California six years ago, and his community flooded after a hurricane when his kids were young.
"I joke that I'm a terrible climate scientist," he says with a wry smile. "I can't see this stuff coming. I keep moving them in different areas."
Altadena is nestled against the San Gabriel Mountains, the steep slopes covered in dense chaparral brush that burns easily. The edge of town is categorized as high risk for wildfires but Hamlington's neighborhood isn't because it's farther away from the hills. Still, powerful winds drove the fire far inland, lofting embers that ignited homes.
"This is what we expect to happen as we go forward into the future, that places that you don't expect to have a problem have these types of issues occur," Hamlington says.
As temperatures rise with human-caused climate change, wildfire risk is getting worse. A hotter atmosphere saps moisture from vegetation, making it more flammable. One analysis found that roughly a quarter of the overall dryness in the Los Angeles area can be attributed to climate change. Studies also show wildfires are exploding more quickly, spreading 400% faster in California from 2001 to 2020.
Now, those kinds of climate change studies are more personal for Hamlington as his family navigates the future.
"The climate scientist side of me thinks maybe it's not a good idea to rebuild," Hamlington says. "Obviously this could happen again."
At the same, Hamlington says it's tough to think about leaving a community his family loves, one where his neighbors have lived for decades.
"If enough of us move developers will come in, put in apartment buildings and this will never be the same," he says.
That internal conflict is playing out in communities across the country, as climate-fueled disasters like hurricanes, storms and floods get more intense. Scientific studies show the risks are getting drastically higher in some places. But how should those communities react?
"How do you deliver a message that is so hard to hear about where someone has lived their whole life or the community they grew up in, that it has now become unsafe because of our changing climate?" Hamlington questions.
As humans continue to burn fossil fuels, Hamlington says the climate will keep getting hotter. That means more communities will face worsening disasters. But there's still time to avoid the worst outcomes if climate change can be slowed down by cutting fossil fuels. Countries that signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 have committed to reducing planet-warming pollution, but so far, the world is not on track to meet the accord's goals.
Experiencing this fire, Hamlington says the work feels even more urgent.
"I'm not at all pessimistic," he says. "Just keep doing what we're doing and learn from experiences like this. It's a very tough lesson to take maybe, a very direct lesson, but take it and put it into the work that we're trying to do."
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