There was not a flame in sight when a team of firefighters, newly arrived from Mexico, set out on Tuesday to search through the brush-covered land above the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles.
But their mission was essential: to look for traces of smoke and embers left behind by the Palisades fire, which had already burned through the area where they were searching but was still less than 20 percent contained.
It is meticulous work.
The firefighters, part of a Mexican delegation that included soldiers and civil protection officers, were the first international team to join the firefighting efforts in the Los Angeles area this week.
After a briefing with their American counterparts, which was translated into Spanish, they set off in sport-utility vehicles for the hills and ridges above Topanga Canyon, a sliver of a valley above the Pacific Palisades.
The firefighters’ mission was to follow the rough path carved out by a bulldozer through native shrub that could ignite and burn easily, transforming the terrain into a dirt fireline devoid of fuel for any flames.
Their primary task was to clear scorched and unburied brush from the containment line, and extinguish any hot spots.
With the prospect that winds could pick up again, the firefighters looked for places where the fires could reignite and spread once again. They searched for, cut and cleared sections of brush that had not totally burned.
When they came across patches of dirt and charred vegetation that was still emitting puffs of smoke, they used their hand tools to dig up these “hot spots,” mixing water into the dirt until it was no longer hot to the touch.
The men searched the ground as they walked. If they could put a bare hand on the dirt for at least 10 seconds, they could move on.
The cause of the Palisades fire, which continued to burn on Wednesday after scorching nearly 24,000 acres, was not yet clear. But with strong wind gusts and dangerously low humidity in the forecast this week, the Mexican team was there to keep it from getting worse.