With the California budget crisis, natural disasters are just that — a disaster. Shown here are two images taken of the Southern California wildfires. In the course of this fierce batte two firemen have died, animals and wildlife killed, homes destroyed. Yet, the indomitable spirit of survival begins with another kind of a spark — a positive spark that comes from knowing that one has survived such a tragedy, and now it's time to begin again . . .and they will.

An image of smoke from California wildfires captured on Sunday by NASA’s Terra satellite. The Station Fire began last week in the Angeles National Forest, close to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This image was recorded on Sunday by a satellite camera managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is located in Pasadena, not far from the Angeles National Forest where one of the fires started. Ongoing the firefighters in California are still trying to get wildfires that started last week under control.

The area covered by the image is 245 kilometers (152 miles) wide. Several pyrocumulus clouds, created by the Station Fire, are visible above the smoke plumes rising from the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles in the left-center of the image. Smoke from the Station fire is seen covering the interior valleys along the south side of the San Gabriel Mountains, along with parts of the City of Los Angeles and Orange County, and can be seen drifting for hundreds of kilometers to the east over the Mojave Desert.

Here is an image from the second satellite on Monday Since last week, scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center have also been uploading images of the smoke plumes above Southern California each day they capture with a camera on another NASA satellite.