The quote above is from an interview with Adam Baron, a You Witness contributor, whose powerful images form a part of citizen journalists’ documentation of the raging fires in Southern California and their aftermath. Reuters readers have provided pictures to You Witness News from when the fires began in Malibu to the ruins in Fallbrook. Here is a selection of the best images.

Baron, who works at Pepperdine University, Malibu, and is responsible for students who stay on campus, gives us an insight into what it was like living and working with the fires ravaging areas nearby.

Around the world there are certain places that awaken our imagination and serve as symbols of everything we associate with a particular region of our world. Southern California and particularly Malibu, California is that kind of place for many people. It is America’s paradise hub and the place where many of Western culture’s creative elite make their residence. Therefore when fires ran through “Shangri-La” this week and ran through greater Southern California, something of a sobering and sublime mood also laid claim on its people and pristine landscape.

The unbiased weather did not discriminate where the winds would blow or where burning embers would land. The result led to the spectacular reality and images of Mother Nature’s continuing reminder that wealth, power, beauty, and fame cannot protect us. Rather we have been humbled and are simply grateful to the brave men and women who fought these fires from land and air to preserve something of our way of life here. We now begin the task of counting our losses and rebuilding.

On the campus of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California students have returned to classes and the tasks of writing papers and preparing for exams. Here everyone is indebted to the university leadership and emergency contingency plans they prepared in advance for such an occasion. Many students chose to leave campus, but for those who heeded the council of administration to stay, they witnessed nature’s fury and humanity’s best instinct to preserve and protect.

There are many moving parts when something so daunting strikes at such a large area. No doubt there will be armchair editors ready to explain what and how things could have been handled better. In my view such questions miss the main point. If these questioned raised by the media or residence affected by the fires aim to get at improving response time and governmental engagement, those are fair questions.

However, we must also consider the human element and how ‘we the people’ use the land. I don’t mean to say that we caused the fires or get into a discussion about global warming. All I am saying is that paradise was here, along with the Santa Ana winds and the beautiful landscape, long before the people. We’ve learned how to split an atom and fly a man to the moon, but we haven’t learned how to manage the weather, and I am not sure we ever will or that we are supposed to.

I am confident that we must continue to explore our place on this small planet and our indebted relationship to it. It is a slippery task but the reason I taking photographs like these is to somehow grab hold of this relationship and honor it.

I had mixed feelings as the unmarked, white-painted, Royal Jordania airline flight from Amman approached Baghdad international airport. After a tight turn and in order to lose height quickly, a nosedive, it touched down on the runway. What could I expect this time, six months after my last embed with U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital?

The conflict in Iraq is a familiar everyday story in our mass media world. Here a suicide bombing with dozens of dead , there a car bomb that kills and maims dozens. The pictures of life in a war zone have become familiar and similar scenes are shown again and again. For viewers a world away from the conflict these images are nevertheless unreal, far from their everyday experiences – but this is daily life in Iraq, for every Iraqi.

During my last stay in Baghdad in March I was confronted with the reality of the inconceivable, cruelty of this war. Corpses, bound and tortured lying in the roads; the dismembered bodies of Iraqi soldiers; children, women and men trying to live their everyday lives constantly afraid of becoming victims of the next bomb attack.

US servicemen often ask me what I expected to find in Iraq? My answer is always, “I don’t expect anything. I just witness what I see”. And I can see everything I want to see.
After three weeks in the city I can see that a little progress has been made.

The embedded journalist program is the only way a western journalist can operate with a degree of safety. Even so you have to take care every step you walk for fear of triggering a roadside device or being ambushed.

You live with the military 24/7, sleep in the same tents and eat the same food. They talk freely, openly and often controversially about their circumstances. They are a friendly bunch, usually happy to meet a German photographer as many have been stationed in Germany and have good memories of their time there.

For a foreign journalist there is no other way to work in an environment that is all to often lethal for even seasoned locals. Of course my report is just a window on events there but hopefully adds to a balanced picture overall.

Even from an armoured Humvees, wearing heavy body armour and a kevelar helmet, the small “baby steps” are apparent. The “concerned citizen” program, where local groups cooperate with US troops and provide limited security in their neighbourhoods has seen life return to the streets – small shops are open again and butchers are back in business.

I spent some time with a Blackhawk helicopter MEDEVAC unit, called the “Witchdoctors”. These are the medics who rush to the scene of roadside explosions and the number of emergency calls has diminished markedly in the past few months.

Today, patrolling through Baghdad’s Haifa Street – one of the most embattled hotspots between insurgents and U.S. soldiers -  apart from the Iraqi army checkpoints, some sort of stable existence seemed to be returning and people were out and about doing their daily shopping, there even new street lights.

Of course this is still miles away from peace, but the small changes, the “baby steps”, I have witnessed give me some hope for the future in Baghdad and if not for this generation, then the next, their children.