We occasionally see burned side-blotch lizards, the commonest lizard here. If they are not able to get down into a ground-squirrel burrow, they can certainly perish. But most survive, and afterwards, when the ground is black, you can see them too, like the hawks, foraging for insects. The flame front passes any point in a field so quickly that it's probably not cooking anything down in a squirrel burrow. I suspect squirrels, toads, darkling beetles, garter snakes, whatever else is down in there, are doing pretty well.
Life goes on immediately after a fire.
Within just minutes or hours, lots of animals are out foraging and carrying out their regular activities. Harvester ants, for instance, are back again, just pulling out seeds and gathering and packing them around their little ant colony entrance. At the time Western settlers got here, the Yokuts were doing most of the burning or had a hand in it. So when we set fires now, we're not looking at fire as a means to restore the natural fire regime to some pre-human period. We're bringing back fire primarily to encourage native species, to give them some edge against the European exotics that arrived with cattle and sheep, and that otherwise leave the natives so little space.