What 3D Scanning the Aftermath of the LA Fires Revealed | Nonny de la Peña | TED

0:03 Soundtrack for the apocalypse is silent.

0:08 We felt the weight of that total absence of sound when we arrived

0:12 in the devastated neighborhoods of Altadena

0:15 and the Palisades after the January 2025 firestorm.

0:20 Our small crew of two or three was usually alone for blocks and blocks.

0:25 There was no sound of cars or children

0:28 or people or pool pumps or electricity across the lines.

0:33 Even the birds were gone.

0:36 I'm best known for having pioneered something called immersive journalism,

0:41 which uses emerging technologies to create new stories

0:44 that represent our world the way it really is: fully dimensional and not flat.

0:51 People then can experience stories with their whole

0:54 body and not just with their eyes.

0:58 Also, as a journalist,

1:00 I feel that we have a moral responsibility to bear witness to injustice,

1:05 to wonder, to the human condition.

1:07 With immersive journalism,

1:09 I am merging those new technologies with that code of ethics.

1:14 I'm also founding director for the Narrative

1:16 and Emerging Media program at Arizona State University.

1:20 So when the fires broke out,

1:22 I mobilized my colleagues and my graduate students, and we went out to cover,

1:26 using our Cronkite journalism news passes what

1:30 firemen called “Nuketown.” When we got there,

1:35 the fires were basically out, so there wasn't anything anyone could really do.

1:38 But when we'd run into a fire crew, they would rush over, and we thought, "Wow,

1:42 they're going to question our press passes." But no,

1:45 they just wanted to help in any way that they could.

1:47 And in our case, it was just water or granola bars.

1:53 All of us were suffering from shock and sorrow

1:57 as the sole witnesses for the devastation around us.

2:03 It was grueling work.

2:05 The air was toxic, it was incredibly hot.

2:08 We were wearing hazmat suits and heavy boots and double-filtered masks.

2:13 We were using specialized equipment designed by Mike Caronna,

2:17 who is a photojournalist and the former general manager for Reuters.

2:21 We had 3D-printed special parts that...

2:23 clamped to the top, middle and bottom of a pole,

2:27 so we could shoot in every direction all at once.

2:31 Each one of those dots represents a shot that we took,

2:34 and then [they] would be fused together using artificial intelligence.

2:38 I also used my phone to make very painstaking captures.

2:43 You have to use your camera like a paintbrush and get every bit,

2:47 every angle, and at the same time,

2:49 make sure that you're not stepping on upturned

2:52 nails or broken glass or shards of metal.

2:55 This is my graduate student, Ashley Buschhorn.

2:58 She was trying to capture a cactus that had

3:01 been really weirdly burned only on one side.

3:07 I'd often look up and see my colleague Mary Mathieson,

3:09 and she’d been taking the gear into these incredibly dangerous situations,

3:13 determined to get the best scan possible.

3:16 We scanned fallen angels, buddhas, melted trash cans, Teslas [and] surf wagons.

3:37 We filmed until the light was gone, every day.

3:42 We even used our headlights to capture

3:44 this car that was sliding down the mountain.

3:47 We didn't know if it would be there the next day.

3:50 More than once, I'd have to leave the crew

3:53 working and go sit in the car by myself.

3:57 These weren't just places on a map.

4:00 I grew up in and around these neighborhoods,

4:02 and often we were scanning the homes of friends of mine.

4:05 They hadn't even been back yet,

4:06 they didn't even know the status of their own places.

4:10 Like the cello teacher.

4:11 This is a home we brought my son to for years, every weekend.

4:19 This is a home where I held the baby shower for my first child.

4:27 This is my sister's good friend's equipment.

4:30 She taught horseback riding at Will Rogers Park, and when the fires broke out,

4:34 she rushed over to go rescue the horses,

4:36 and then her own home burned, and everything she owned was also destroyed.

4:41 This was a particularly difficult moment because I was standing

4:44 next to the wall that had collapsed over a bedroom,

4:48 where I said goodbye to one of my best friends about a year earlier.

4:51 She had died of cancer the next day.

4:54 Her partner escaped with a small suitcase

4:56 and a loaf of bread from their favorite bakery.

4:59 The thumbnail was completely black,

5:02 which is incredibly strange because none of my other

5:05 thumbnails were like that on any of my scans.

5:07 There was also some incredible stories.

5:09 This was a house where my son spent most

5:12 weekends during high school with a bunch of his buddies.

5:15 One of his buddies had been there the night before the fire,

5:18 and he left his car in front of the house

5:20 and took an Uber home because they'd been out partying.

5:23 They saw on Instagram an image which

5:25 seemed to indicate his car was totally intact.

5:29 So I called him when we got there to describe what we were seeing,

5:32 and it was extraordinary.

5:34 Other than ashes on top, his car looked [to be] in perfect condition.

5:38 He later got into the car and just drove it away.

5:42 Then there was the Bank of America building,

5:44 where a lot of people had their safe deposit boxes,

5:47 and they were told they'd been destroyed.

5:49 They'd lost family heirlooms and Holocaust papers.

5:52 But it turns out, underneath all this crazy rubble— everything was safe.

5:59 And here we were, taking these images, and there was nobody there guarding it.

6:05 Niantic, the company that makes Pokémon Go,

6:08 learned about the work we were doing,

6:10 and they used our material to try to help folks who'd been impacted by the fire.

6:17 And as a journalist, that's what you want, right?

6:19 You want your work to be used in a way that can make an impact,

6:22 that can help others.

6:25 I also had a third motivation about why I was doing the work I was doing.

6:30 I really understood personally the helplessness and just the feelings of loss,

6:38 because a year and a half earlier, I'd had my own fire.

6:51 This was my home studio where I'd lost everything

6:55 personally and professionally from pretty much my entire life.

6:58 During COVID, I had closed up my offices

7:01 in Santa Monica and I'd brought everything here.

7:03 I mean, no one was coming to work, so this is where I thought it would be safe.

7:11 It turned out, my electric bicycle battery had exploded.

7:17 I lost projects and equipment.

7:21 I lost photos and video archives, diaries, family memories.

7:29 I inhaled smoke.

7:30 I burned my gums.

7:32 I damaged my lungs.

7:33 And I now have what might be a permanent neuropathy in my esophagus.

7:40 When I looked at the remains of what had been decades of my life,

7:45 I just thought it was all gone.

7:48 But a few strange things actually survived.

7:52 This is a photo I took in college of one of my best friends.

7:56 My husband of 27 years ago,

7:59 he wrote me this love letter after our first date and it said,

8:03 "I think I see a kindred spirit in you,

8:05 and if you invite me, I'll cross the country in a heartbeat." Well,

8:09 I invited him and he asked me to marry him on our second date.

8:13 I also used my scans with my battle with the insurance company.

8:16 Like, they didn't want to pay on this sofa because I didn’t have a receipt,

8:20 and the receipt had been burned in the fire.

8:22 My scans showed very clearly there was a sofa in there,

8:25 and they had to pay on that.

8:26 And it was one of the reasons why I was out there, scanning everybody's homes.

8:30 I wanted them to be able to use what we had in any way that they could.

8:34 Another thing strangely survived the fire.

8:38 In 2009, I was at an event at the University of Southern California,

8:43 and Mark Hamill was at the adjacent table.

8:46 Now, I grew up in LA, and normally I don't bug celebrities.

8:49 I just let them go about their lives peacefully, right?

8:52 But my son was six and I couldn't resist.

8:55 I asked Mark Hamill to sign the program card.

8:58 And that flammable, fragile piece of paper,

9:02 it somehow survived a lithium-battery fire that was so hot

9:07 that the fire folks said it had to burn its course.

9:10 And there it was, like,

9:12 it drifted right on top of the hellscape that used to be my entire life.

9:18 And not only that, Mark Hamill wrote a message.

9:23 "The force will be with you always.

9:26 Your pal, Mark Hamill." I can't help but take that message literally.

9:32 The force, it's within us all.

9:35 And it's not what we lose that defines us.

9:38 It's who we love and how we take that love forward.

9:44 I know personally, when you’re looking at what [are]

9:47 the remains of what had been a vibrant life,

9:50 you can't help but feel like everything is gone.

9:54 But silence is not emptiness.

9:57 It's a place to reflect and remember,

10:00 to imagine the wild ways we can rebuild and to consider what really endures.

10:07 And now, as we come to the one-year anniversary of the fires,

10:11 I'm calling on everyone to feel the force,

10:15 to think about that love within you and help support our friends,

10:20 our neighbors, our communities.

10:22 Together, we can rebuild Los Angeles, better and more resilient.

10:29 Thank you.

10:30 (Applause)