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    Welcome to the site for the La Costa Canyon High School Fire study. We are currently in the middle of a Project known as "Project Phoenix". This is a study that shows what the environment is like in a post fire region. The fire that we speak of is the horrible Carlsbad fires that came through the area of our school on October, 10th 1996. This is not just another scientific study. We bring our study into the human aspect and show how fire affects our community and our environment.

This is the site that most students saw before they left school on that windy, Santa Anna October day. No one suspected what events would take place later that afternoon and deep into the night.

This was one of the pictures that were watched by many residents in near by temporary shelters as they saw their own houses on the News, burning down.

This is a picture submitted by one of the students in Ms. O'Neil's class. This horrid picture of destruction was taken right before the student and her family evacuated.

The fire spread over thousands of acres of land and when morning finally came after the night of roaring fires all that was to be heard was silence.

Fire was not the only damage done to the homes unfortunately, also smoke damage and fire retardant damage was done to many of the homes.

Although some were not lucky enough to come home and find a home left. This picture summarizes why we did this study...no one deserves to go through this kind of tragedy...We want to make you the every day person more aware of what affect the environment and fire can have on you. Everyone is part of the ecosystem whether they like it or not.

This is a picture of our site, the day after the fire, that we are studying right now. We are going to test many factors and collect ample data to show us exactly how this type of environment reacts to a fire.

The class that ran this study was Anna O'Neil's Integrated 2 Science class...This included a lot of field work and time on weekends by the students...and as we know for most High Schoolers the weekend is a pretty big thing to give up...The real miracle worker of this project was Anna O'Neil herself...after countless hours of struggling with people to get the equipment we needed and funds that were necessary finally we pulled it all together.