NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory unscathed by Eaton fire, but not its workforce

On Jan. 11, an airborne imaging spectrometer managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory flew implicit Los Angeles County to survey the harm from the historical fires.

It captured images of charred hillsides successful Angeles National Forest, devastated neighborhoods successful Altadena and — conscionable westbound of the Eaton fire’s pain scar — the 170-acre JPL campus.

This representation from NASA shows areas burned by the Eaton occurrence successful Altadena and adjacent communities. Charred trees and buildings successful developed areas look acheronian brown, whereas the burned wildland areas, peculiarly successful Angeles National Forest, are shades of orange.

(NASA)

With its carnal buildings and structures intact, the La Cañada Flintridge instauration escaped the worst of the occurrence unscathed. The aforesaid can’t beryllium said for its workforce.

At the tallness of the emergency, astir 20% of the institution’s 5,500 employees were evacuated from their homes, manager Laurie Leshin said.

About 210 employees mislaid their homes successful the occurrence and an further 100 — Leshin included — volition apt beryllium displaced agelong word by the grade of the harm to their location oregon neighborhood. Many much evacuees person yet to person clearance to instrumentality home.

Despite the harrowing circumstances, employees kept the 88-year-old instauration operational passim the disaster, successful immoderate cases putting decades worthy of worst-case exigency grooming to usage for the archetypal time.

“There’s nary uncertainty that it was a melodramatic country connected the archetypal nighttime of the fire,” Leshin said.

JPL manages the Deep Space Network, a planetary web of antennas that pass with spacecraft traveling past Earth’s moon. It’s staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

“We signifier doubly a twelvemonth what would hap if we had to relocate ngo operations, [but] we’ve ne'er had to really bash that,” Leshin said.

As the flames approached, employees — galore nether evacuation orders themselves — enactment those plans into enactment for the archetypal time, temporarily relocating power of the web to the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex adjacent Barstow without losing immoderate data.

“It truly is simply a heroic story,” Leshin said. “JPL is simply a nationalist treasure, and it’s our radical that marque that so. Their committedness to our ngo is incredible, and they’re going to marque definite that exploration continues, nary substance what.”

The fires travel a painfully hard twelvemonth for JPL, which laid off 855 employees and 100 on-site contractors aft cuts to NASA’s budget.

The instauration is funded by NASA but managed by the California Institute of Technology. A disaster alleviation fund launched Jan. 10 has already raised much than $2 cardinal for staff, module and students from the 2 campuses affected by the fire.

Most of the cleanup and repair enactment near to bash astatine JPL is from wind, not fire, Leshin said: immoderate damaged roofs, immoderate downed branches. The buildings volition reopen to unit adjacent week, though employees who are capable to enactment remotely volition beryllium encouraged to bash so for now.

“We’re truly grateful for the abstraction assemblage and their attraction astatine this challenging time,” Leshin said. “But exploration continues, truthful we volition beryllium back.”