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Southern California fire left scar that's 'easily visible from space'

The Woolsey Fire has burned more than 96,000 acres of the Golden State.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper

The Woolsey Fire in Southern California destroyed more than 1,500 structures, killed three people, and injured three firefighters. As of Wednesday, it had burned more than 96,000 acres.

In fact, the devastating fire left a scar on the Golden State landscape so large that it is "easily visible from space," NASA tweeted on Tuesday.

The bleak image was taken by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer  on NASA's Terra satellite. The image's colors have been enhanced by NASA to appear more natural, with burned vegetation appearing brown, unburned vegetation green, and buildings, roads, and other developed areas appearing light gray and white.

"Poor Earth, poor us," wrote one Twitter user in response to the image.

The Camp Fire in Northern California, which as of Wednesday morning had burned 153,336 acres and was 80 percent contained, also produced disturbing images, including a Terra satellite photo showing the mass of smoke covering the state earlier this month. Eighty-one people have died in the fire and that number is expected to grow as hundreds are still reported missing. 

NASA images are being provided to California fire managers to offer information about road, vegetation, topography, streams, and other data.