Plant communities on harsh soils such as serpentine appear to be less sensitive to climate change. However, although disturbance from fire is an important part of grassland, chaparral, and forest communities, the resistance of these serpentine communities has primarily been studied in an undisturbed context. We compared two fires that burned fifteen years apart in a Mediterranean chaparral system to test whether shifting climate patterns—including a historically severe drought—had the same negative impacts on diversity of post-fire communities as it has on unburned communities, and whether those impacts varied by soil type. Our results thus far indicate that disturbance-following communities on harsh soils may be resilient to climate change, but slower recruitment from woody species may lead to eventual type conversion even on harsher soils.