After many years of devastating wildfires in California, the latest blazes hit Altadena and Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, the first to hit a major city, causing thousands to flee. In the wildfire-prone landscape, it was only a matter of time before one reached the city, echoeing @PerthshireMagsce’s description in the (now deleted) 2022 viral tweet. The term pyrocene, proposed in 2015 to describe an epoch “characterised by the influence of human-caused fire activity on Earth”, is becoming increasingly apt. The widely shared photos by Ethan Swope (Instagram) show the terrifying scenes of burning landscapes and cityscapes, but at the same time have a beauty that calls into question the adequacy of these photos.