High School Students Pitch In to Clean Up Site Scorched by Firestorm : Environment: They came from Van Nuys, Compton and East Los Angeles. They cleared debris left at Topanga’s Red Rock Canyon Park.

Surveying the mountain landscape left wasted by a devastating wildfire, Danyelle Robinson, a 16-year-old from Compton, couldn’t help but compare that fire to the ones that engulfed much of her own neighborhood last year.

“This is different because the person that set this fire had no good reason,” she said. “During the riots, people started fires because they thought they were being treated unfairly. It’s totally different.”

Different, perhaps, but just as sad. So here they were, trying to rebuild and set things right. So Danyelle, wearing thick work gloves, picked up a charred tree branch and added it to pile of other debris she had collected that morning.

On Saturday, Danyelle and about 20 other high school students from schools in Van Nuys, Compton and East Los Angeles came to Topanga’s Red Rock Canyon Park to help clean up the scorched rubble left by the firestorm that swept through the area this month. The student volunteers--all in work clothes, some with masks to block out flying ash--cleared debris from a creek bed and surrounding slopes.

“This is nice because we are getting the chance to help the people here out,” said Danyelle, wiping soot from her face. “If it rains, the creeks will back up and the houses could flood and get even more damaged. By helping out, we can do it faster.”

The cleanup effort was arranged by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which manages the parkland, and Youth Task Force LA, a group of student volunteers, for the benefit of both groups, organizers said. Originally, the outing was to have been a hike.

“We were planning on having some students come out here, but when the fire happened things got delayed,” said Viki Goto, manager of the youth task force. “So when we found out about all the work that needed to be done out here, we decided it was the perfect combination.”

Many of the students had participated in Outward Bound activities in the area in the past, but the park they remembered was hidden under a coat of thick black ash. Even the red sandstone walls that give the park its name were charred a dull gray in some places.

“On the way up here, one of the girls asked, ‘Is this really the same place we went hiking?’ She didn’t even recognize it,” said the conservancy’s Tina Johann.

And as they made their way in and out of the creek bed collecting brush and keeping an eye peeled for the rattlesnakes a park official warned them about, they reveled in having a chance to work with other high school students on a worthwhile project. And being outdoors, they said, made it even better.

“The fire was really sad,” said Noora Elkoussy, a senior at Grant High School in Van Nuys. “But the good thing is that now it’s allowing us to work together.”