Speaker 1: You're listenings KFI AM six forty the Bill Handle show
Speaker 1: on demand on the iHeartRadio f KFI.
Speaker 2: It is handled here in the morning crew. It is Tuesday,
Speaker 2: February eleventh.
Speaker 1: As we continue on with the program, now a little
Speaker 1: bit about the fires, and we talk about the history
Speaker 1: of these fires. Do you know that fires in southern
Speaker 1: California go back, I don't know, thousands of years. How
Speaker 1: is that possible. It really started with a conquistadoris and
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about that in a moment, but let's talk.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to nineteen sixty one. I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you a little history of fires in southern California. So
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, you had a trash pile up in
Speaker 1: the Mulholland Drive area and a fire broke out, picked
Speaker 1: up by the Santa Ana Wins and then went as
Speaker 1: the canyons and.
Speaker 2: It was apocalyptic.
Speaker 1: And what made that one pretty interesting is how many
Speaker 1: celebrities lived in that area. And this is why I
Speaker 1: caught the world Tension actor Kim Novak. And by the way,
Speaker 1: these names may not be very important or you don't
Speaker 1: know them, but this in nineteen sixty one, these were
Speaker 1: a List actors, actor Kim Novak, her home was destroyed.
Speaker 2: Well, she was actually took a hose out to home
Speaker 2: to save it.
Speaker 1: A guy by the name of Richard Nixon who had
Speaker 1: lost the presidential as you know, in nineteen sixty and
Speaker 1: then ran for governor and was killed by Pat Brown,
Speaker 1: the governor, the father of Jerry Brown.
Speaker 2: So he went to practice law in California.
Speaker 1: Well, his home that was about to go, and there
Speaker 1: he is with a garden hose trying to soak the
Speaker 1: wooden roof shingles.
Speaker 2: Fred McMurray who starred.
Speaker 1: In My Three Sons at the time and big television
Speaker 1: series in the sixties or early sixties, he had to
Speaker 1: evacuate his family and he took worker studio workers from
Speaker 1: the set to help evacuate his family.
Speaker 2: So the fire reaches bell Air.
Speaker 1: The mansions of bell Air where a lot of very
Speaker 1: high end people live. Thermal heat which we've seen before
Speaker 1: with the embers that just happened, lifted the wood shingles.
Speaker 1: They were all of wood at that time, high end
Speaker 1: of the air. Fifty mile an hour winds hurled them
Speaker 1: more than a mile over Brentwood by nightfall. The bell
Speaker 1: Air fire destroyed four hundred and eighty four homes, including
Speaker 1: homes of Burt Lancaster, huge actor, comedian Joey Brown, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've never heard of, but massive star Nobel
Speaker 1: Laureate who Willard Libby, which is a fairly big news.
Speaker 1: So firefighters extinguished the flames. And there was Jajah Gabor
Speaker 1: dressed up in well in Jaja Gaborland and she is
Speaker 1: with a shovel going through the lumber of her or
Speaker 1: the rubble of her home, looking for a safe that
Speaker 1: was there with her jewels in it.
Speaker 2: And she had a zillion dollars.
Speaker 1: Worth of jewels. That's that's who she was. So the
Speaker 1: bell airfire became known as the big one. Back then,
Speaker 1: four hundred and eighty four homes, that was the big one.
Speaker 1: It forced everyone in La to reckon with the dangers
Speaker 1: of fire.
Speaker 2: They really dealt with it now.
Speaker 1: They realize that people in La realized, okay, fires in
Speaker 1: the canyons are no small deal. So l officials in
Speaker 1: response put in a bunch of new fire safety measures,
Speaker 1: more firefighting helicopters, new fire stations, a new reservoir, and
Speaker 1: no more.
Speaker 2: Untreated wood shingles.
Speaker 1: They had to be treated later on, it was no
Speaker 1: more wood shingles of any kind. And you will see
Speaker 1: today you will not see wood shingles on a house.
Speaker 1: A roof lasts about thirty years, and we're already about
Speaker 1: fifty years into an ordinance of no more wood shingles.
Speaker 1: So now we have concrete and tile and that's fire proof,
Speaker 1: actually not only just fire resistant, so also in high
Speaker 1: risk fire areas, a brush clearance program. And so this
Speaker 1: is what they're doing now. But I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: they didn't do is they didn't stop building in the canyons.
Speaker 2: That they didn't do.
Speaker 1: So there was no measure push to radically rethink of building.
Speaker 1: It just disappeared new housing tracks all over the place.
Speaker 1: And then larger and more deadly fires swept through the region.
Speaker 1: And all the fire the safety improvements improvements prompted by
Speaker 1: the bel Air fire, well they were there, but they
Speaker 1: couldn't outpace the new development and climate change.
Speaker 2: It's that simple.
Speaker 1: So now we have the Eton and the Palasages fire,
Speaker 1: probably the big one, sixteen thousand structures, twenty nine people dead,
Speaker 1: and once again new reckoning. How many LA homes came
Speaker 1: to be built on land that is so vulnerable to fire,
Speaker 1: and the question.
Speaker 2: Is should they even be rebuilt? And at this point
Speaker 2: we're grappling with that.
Speaker 1: Stephen Pine, it was a fire historian Professor Meredith Arizona
Speaker 1: State University studies this.
Speaker 2: He said, straight out. California is built to burn straight out.
Speaker 1: So the way the topography is the way the climate
Speaker 1: works in California, it is built. So what happened and
Speaker 1: this really got crazy more than a century ago.
Speaker 2: So what happened one hundred years ago?
Speaker 1: Well, the building on hillsides really started with a venge vengeance.
Speaker 1: So Los Angeles begins to overtake San Francisco as the
Speaker 1: most populated city on the West coast, and real estate
Speaker 1: developers begin their eye begin to look up to the
Speaker 1: foothills of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains. There's
Speaker 1: a nineteen twenty three ad that showed renderings of the
Speaker 1: Spanish Revival houses that we have in southern California, and
Speaker 1: there they were over steep hillsides, over bluffs. The ad read,
Speaker 1: the future of Los Angeles is in the hills right
Speaker 1: there billboards. Matter of fact, that's when Hollywood Land, the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Sign was first built, and it was Hollywood Land
Speaker 1: and it was advertising a tract, a real estate track
Speaker 1: in the hills. And then the land part dropped out,
Speaker 1: And of course now we have the world famous Hollywood
Speaker 1: sign that was nineteen twenty three. You know what the
Speaker 1: lots cost in those days two thousand bucks. You know
Speaker 1: what that is today, thirty six thousand dollars. Now can
Speaker 1: you imagine a lot for thirty six thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: the hills. So in the twenties, now it was boom
Speaker 1: time for La the whole country. It started to go
Speaker 1: crazy before that the nineteen thirteen construction of the La Aqueduct.
Speaker 1: This is William Mulholland who engineered that Mullholland Drive at
Speaker 1: the top of the hill, and that paved the way
Speaker 1: for one hundred thousand people to move into the city
Speaker 1: each year because there wasn't.
Speaker 2: Water before that.
Speaker 1: And when that aqueduct came down the mountain, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the San Fernando Valley became a fertile landscape.
Speaker 2: For growing particularly oranges. Before that it was desert.
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, if you go up
Speaker 1: to the north valley right off Fornaldi, you can see
Speaker 1: where the aqueduct spills into the area that fills up
Speaker 1: the San Fernando Valley and the reservoirs. Bell Air marketed
Speaker 1: itself as the exclusive residential park.
Speaker 2: Of the West.
Speaker 1: There were lavish real estate ads, sales brochures, and bell
Speaker 1: Air was so exclusive. Not only did the area, the
Speaker 1: owner of the bel Air Tract and others not sell
Speaker 1: to blacks or Hispanics, not that they had money anyway,
Speaker 1: because we're talking in the twenties, but also no Jews.
Speaker 2: Of course that's a given.
Speaker 1: Nobody in the motion picture industry was allowed to buy
Speaker 1: because that was considered less.
Speaker 2: Than today bell Air. Well, you tell me, huh.
Speaker 1: The bell Air count Country Club started because of the discrimination.
Speaker 2: Okay, So here we go.
Speaker 1: Californians are drawn to the woodlands, the base of the mountains.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to live down in the canyons. They
Speaker 1: wanted views. So there they are at the top of
Speaker 1: the mount on all these hillsides. Perfect place for a fire,
Speaker 1: absolutely perfect.
Speaker 2: This all started.
Speaker 1: When the Spanish colonizer that can kiss the daughters came
Speaker 1: in the fifteen hundreds. The natives, the Indians as they
Speaker 1: were known the Native Americans, would use burn. They did
Speaker 1: controlled burns. That's been going on for hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of years. So the Spanish go kiss, the daughters come.
Speaker 2: By, and they stop it cold. That continues.
Speaker 1: On eighteen fifty, legislators passed the Act for the Government
Speaker 1: and Protection of Indians. No intentional burning anymore. So the
Speaker 1: move to suppress fire, that's what that was about. Magnified
Speaker 1: the risk of fire, the destructive fires. And in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty three, the Fire Chief one an ordnance prohibiting wood shingles.
Speaker 2: It went down that far, that early. But what happened.
Speaker 1: Wood shingles weren't made illegal until the nineteen seventies. Well,
Speaker 1: the lumber industry, how powerful do you think the lumber
Speaker 1: industry was shut that down. We're not going to lose
Speaker 1: manufacturing wood shingles, especially with a growing population like that.
Speaker 1: How about that lobbyists changing a law. Well, you had
Speaker 1: a whole bunch more fires, and then the population exploded.
Speaker 1: After World War Two, you had all of these young
Speaker 1: men move into Los Angeles, which was a staging ground
Speaker 1: for the Pacific Fight, and they realized, wow, look at
Speaker 1: this land, Look at these places.
Speaker 2: It's cheap, it's a great place to live.
Speaker 1: I remember my parents' home that they bought in the
Speaker 1: mid fifties twenty six thousand dollars. Today that would be
Speaker 1: I don't know, two fifty three hundred thousand dollars North Hollywood,
Speaker 1: beautiful three bedroom, two bath house, gorgeous, decent sized lot.
Speaker 1: So this went on and on with half a dozen fires.
Speaker 1: Now maybe they're getting serious about retrofitting your home.
Speaker 2: I don't know. We'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1: I think people are looking pretty serious now about it.
Speaker 1: And the easy stuff is easy, putting in those vents
Speaker 1: that stopped from embers from coming in, pulling back brush
Speaker 1: fire resistant, fire resistant trees. At the Persian Palace, I
Speaker 1: had big palm trees right next to the house. Those
Speaker 1: ignite which is very which are very easy to ignite
Speaker 1: and burn, would burn down the house. And the fire
Speaker 1: was very close. And people were saying, but weren't you
Speaker 1: worried about the fires? I go, no, I've already sold
Speaker 1: the house, so I don't care. Okay, here's the big story.
Speaker 1: And Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: Is he crazy? Who the hell knows?
Speaker 1: So open Ai Elon Musk is trying to buy now.
Speaker 2: He started open Ai.
Speaker 1: It's obviously an artificial intelligence company with Sam Altman, and
Speaker 1: he is out of it, but he's filed a lawsuit
Speaker 1: against the company and Altman. And here's why, because Altman
Speaker 1: misrepresented open Ai. And here's the fascinating part of it.
Speaker 1: Altman and the other co founders were so frightened of
Speaker 1: what AI could do that they established the company as
Speaker 1: a non profit and gave its code out. It was
Speaker 1: open source code. You can do people can do whatever
Speaker 1: we want you want with it, which is basically the
Speaker 1: company becomes worthless at that point, and there were investors
Speaker 1: that were allowed into the company. How it got started.
Speaker 1: You know what investors want. They do not want a nonprofit.
Speaker 1: They want a for profit. You don't pour hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars into a company and say, okay, it's worthless.
Speaker 1: That it's not making any money because it is a nonprofit.
Speaker 1: So they had to switch at least a part of
Speaker 1: it to a for profit. Musk is suing saying, you lied,
Speaker 1: you lied, You said that it was a nonprofit. Now
Speaker 1: you have most of it as a profit, and now
Speaker 1: it's valued at one hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 2: That's how big a deal AI is. And so what's
Speaker 2: going on with this is Musk wants to buy it.
Speaker 1: He has his own company, x XAI and artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: intelligence company. Major companies are investing billions and billions of
Speaker 1: dollars into AI. So he says, I'll buy it for
Speaker 1: one hundred billion dollars the for profit part because.
Speaker 2: Now we've got some money.
Speaker 1: Allman posts on x no, thank you, but we'll buy
Speaker 1: Twitter for nine point seven four.
Speaker 2: Billion dollars ten billion dollars. Musk bought Twitter for forty
Speaker 2: four billion dollars.
Speaker 1: It was worth twenty five billion dollars at the time.
Speaker 1: Think you overpaid, and now it's valued at about ten
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Now that's not to say Musk is the
Speaker 1: richest man in the world, the richest person in the world.
Speaker 1: So between SpaceX and Tenes and a few other things,
Speaker 1: he has Tesla batteries and a bunch of other companies,
Speaker 1: he's doing just fine. But the Twitter issue is it's
Speaker 1: more of a yuts is what it is from Altman.
Speaker 1: Altman and Musk are now enemies, I mean real enemies,
Speaker 1: and they're suing each other, going going crazy.
Speaker 2: And so here is the issue. A company with big.
Speaker 1: Backers like Microsoft when it started venture capital, well, it
Speaker 1: has an obligation to grow its business and to make money,
Speaker 1: and investors from Silicon Valley want a turnover very quickly.
Speaker 1: They are not patient about their return. They come in
Speaker 1: by a company, want to grow it, and out they go.
Speaker 1: So the first time must sues open AIS in June
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty four. The emails show Musk acknowledge the
Speaker 1: need for the company to make large sums of money.
Speaker 2: He originally invested in it, he is now out of it.
Speaker 1: He wants to buy it, and he's filing a lawsuit
Speaker 1: because they.
Speaker 2: Breach their charter that it's going to be a nonprofit.
Speaker 1: So let me get this right, all right, part of
Speaker 1: is a nonprofit, Musk issuing it has to stay a nonprofit,
Speaker 1: but he's willing to buy it for one hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars because it's worth so much money and makes money,
Speaker 1: or at least it's about to make money. And so
Speaker 1: which one do you want?
Speaker 2: No money?
Speaker 1: Because that's what it's worth zero if it stays a nonprofit.
Speaker 1: My guess is if he were to keep it a
Speaker 1: nonprofit and pay off all the investors that they're insane
Speaker 1: wins on this their profit.
Speaker 2: You know what, he can have a nonprofit and make
Speaker 2: no money on it. Okay, is he going to do that? No?
Speaker 2: So what does open ai do well?
Speaker 1: It accuses Musk of being jealous that he was no
Speaker 1: longer involved in the startup.
Speaker 2: It's that simple, and it has become a personal fight.
Speaker 1: So now AI companies are well, can you imagine what
Speaker 1: altman is worth?
Speaker 2: He started?
Speaker 1: There was a first company started actually chat GPT open
Speaker 1: Ai think is the company.
Speaker 2: Is that owns it.
Speaker 1: And the only downside about AI now because it AI
Speaker 1: takes massive amounts of energy, takes very high end, very
Speaker 1: expensive chips, and the Chinese have been able to do it.
Speaker 1: A couple of guys have been able to do it
Speaker 1: with cheap with chips that barely power your refrigerator or
Speaker 1: you're old, Atari far far cheaper, quicker, better.
Speaker 2: We'll see what happens. That's up in the air.
Speaker 1: How unusual the Chinese producing products at a much much
Speaker 1: lower cost but at the same time having the tech.
Speaker 1: Great story I want to share with you. The owner
Speaker 1: of Sony, right after World War two, had started manufacturing
Speaker 1: tape recorder super scope and he had just started was
Speaker 1: and he met with an American CEO of a company
Speaker 1: that was looking at distribution, and he said maybe this
Speaker 1: even before Sony started it was just a startup, and
Speaker 1: the Americans sitting down with him this is in Japan,
Speaker 1: said the only thing Japanese business can do is make
Speaker 1: those little paper umbrellas that you put in drinks like
Speaker 1: my ties. Well, the Japanese so certainly showed him, didn't they.
Speaker 1: And the same thing as happening with China, where they
Speaker 1: are ahead of the game. They're able to produce great
Speaker 1: ev cars at about the third of the cost that.
Speaker 2: We pay for him here.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating stuff, the way life is going. There is
Speaker 1: a story about the Altadena fire in which a one
Speaker 1: hundred year old woman was left in a senior home. Now,
Speaker 1: if there's a fire anywhere near where I am and
Speaker 1: I'm one hundred years old, to be rescued, you would
Speaker 1: have to pull me out of the ground, which is
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 2: With most of us. She was alive, still is.
Speaker 1: Alive, and she wasn't rescued until two firefighters went in
Speaker 1: and we're looking for people, and they found her down
Speaker 1: the hall and they were able to rescue her. And
Speaker 1: therein lies a big issue because her son said, if
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a question of luck, she wouldn't be around,
Speaker 1: and so he has called for total reform. I think
Speaker 1: the reform is pretty easy, and it has to do
Speaker 1: with that the authorities have every senior home, they have
Speaker 1: it on record, and as soon as anything near a
Speaker 1: fire burns out and that's the risk, they go in
Speaker 1: and clean the place out, making sure that everybody who
Speaker 1: needs to get out gets out.
Speaker 2: So that is fairly easy.
Speaker 1: But I think this goes beyond that and talking about
Speaker 1: how elderly people, how important elderly people are in.
Speaker 2: Our lives, not much. Do you know?
Speaker 1: There are countries that the senior homes don't exist because the.
Speaker 2: Culture is old people live at home.
Speaker 1: Most homes in those countries are multi generational. You've got
Speaker 1: the kids leaving with their living with their parents, living
Speaker 1: with their parents parents, and they can even go beyond that.
Speaker 1: And if you go to Japan, you go to certain
Speaker 1: places in Europe, one hundred year old great grandmother.
Speaker 2: Yess, her great great grandmother would be at home.
Speaker 1: She'd be wrinkled and old and barely able to function.
Speaker 1: This woman walked down the hall, she walked out a walker.
Speaker 2: The other day, I was in a restaurant with a
Speaker 2: woman who yeah, it was what restaurant was that, I
Speaker 2: don't remember, but she was.
Speaker 1: I was sitting down and her family with a walker.
Speaker 1: It was awaiting. We were waiting. Her family with a
Speaker 1: walker comes by, she's with a walker, and says, do
Speaker 1: you mind if she sits down?
Speaker 2: I go, yeah, I mind. You know, I'm sitting here.
Speaker 1: And literally they said she's one hundred years old, and
Speaker 1: she knew she was one hundred years old. So she
Speaker 1: looked down at me and said, I'm one hundred years old,
Speaker 1: not in therefore I should sit down. And she was
Speaker 1: just very proud of it and said I'm one hundred
Speaker 1: years old. And I said, I don't care how old
Speaker 1: you are, you're not taking this seat. Now, that part
Speaker 1: is not really the way it happened, but I'm one
Speaker 1: hundred years.
Speaker 2: Old and moving with a walker.
Speaker 1: Everybody who heard that went over there and congratulated her
Speaker 1: and said that is a wonderful thing. A centenarian who
Speaker 1: is coming into a restaurant to eat with her family.
Speaker 1: Did you I thought that was Did you see the
Speaker 1: video of the one hundred year old woman that they
Speaker 1: that they found.
Speaker 2: Yeah I did. I just like, she's like, don't lose me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's perfectly lucid. She goes, I'm here, don't lose me.
Speaker 1: Don't lose me.
Speaker 2: By the way, the joking, the joking I did.
Speaker 1: About telling that one hundred year old woman that you
Speaker 1: couldn't sit in my seat, and that's really not much
Speaker 1: of a joke.
Speaker 2: You guys have a lot to talk about the day
Speaker 2: he's the buggy whip. No, not a lot, did you guys?
Speaker 1: Although they called you know what they did, They called
Speaker 1: her first before me, even though I was there first,
Speaker 1: And I'm screaming at the hostess, yelling, hey, I was
Speaker 1: here first. It's like when my kids were born. There
Speaker 1: was a DJ from and this is absolutely true. There
Speaker 1: was a DJ from some minor rock station and his
Speaker 1: wife was pregnant and she was delivering as Marjorie was delivering,
Speaker 1: and we were waiting for an o R. It was
Speaker 1: pretty crowded, we were waiting for the R to be cleaned,
Speaker 1: and she went in first, and I'm screaming, has anybody
Speaker 1: looked at the ratings? What is she doing first? That
Speaker 1: actually happened, By the way.
Speaker 2: Oh, do you hear any of us giving pushback? No? Oh,
Speaker 2: I can't believe it. That didn't happen. All right, you've
Speaker 2: been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1: Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
Speaker 1: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app