Speaker 1: You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2: I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is La Fires,
Speaker 2: A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
Speaker 2: what happens next. ELI Mayor Karen Bass is said to
Speaker 2: expect a thorough review of the preparedness and the response.
Speaker 2: She's faced considerable criticism for being halfway across the world
Speaker 2: in Ghana as the fires broke out, despite days of
Speaker 2: weather forecasting suggesting something disastrous could happen. In her second
Speaker 2: live news conference after returning, she discounted questions about people
Speaker 2: calling for her resignation and.
Speaker 3: Let me just say because I answered some questions like
Speaker 3: that in the morning, and let me just state now,
Speaker 3: number one, these fires are burning now. Our job is
Speaker 3: to make sure that people stay alive, that we save lives,
Speaker 3: that we save homes, that we save property. And I
Speaker 3: also said that when the fires are out, we will
Speaker 3: do a deep dive. We will look at what worked,
Speaker 3: we will look at what didn't work, and we will
Speaker 3: let you know. Until then, my focus is on the
Speaker 3: TV screens behind you that are showing devastation that has continued.
Speaker 3: Thank you answered it in the morning, answered it now,
Speaker 3: won't answer it again.
Speaker 2: A week and a half later, Mayor Bass appointed the
Speaker 2: city's recoveries are Steve Silberoff. He's got a long history
Speaker 2: with civic, business and philanthropic groups, including the Dodgers and
Speaker 2: the city's Police Commission.
Speaker 4: And what we need is and what I hope people
Speaker 4: will start with is today is hope there is an
Speaker 4: A to Z for each one of us, and a
Speaker 4: is today, and we're going to get there step by step,
Speaker 4: and the city is going to help to the extent
Speaker 4: that can, and we will have to outsource to the
Speaker 4: extent it can't. That there's going to be a bus
Speaker 4: to yes, and if people want to get on the
Speaker 4: bus with us, get on them. If they want to
Speaker 4: spend their time throwing embers right now next Tuesday when
Speaker 4: it's windy, by spending their time on that kind of stuff,
Speaker 4: just don't get on our bus.
Speaker 2: But that ended up causing more political fallout for the
Speaker 2: mayor because Soberoff's bus was set to lead to half
Speaker 2: a million dollars for him for three months of work.
Speaker 2: The outcry was strong and swift, and now he's working
Speaker 2: for free, the preparedness, the response, and now the aftermath
Speaker 2: will continue to raise questions and stakes for local government.
Speaker 2: LA County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath represents Pacific Palisades a supervisor. Obviously,
Speaker 2: this has just been a terrible disaster that LA County
Speaker 2: has experienced in multiple spots. At the same time, I'm
Speaker 2: curious as a government official, what have you learned about
Speaker 2: local government specifically in LA County as we've dealt with this.
Speaker 5: I think LA County has a commitment to emergency preparedness
Speaker 5: and investing in keeping people safe, and they're given the
Speaker 5: climate hazards and risks that we face in our region.
Speaker 5: My district, the third District of Los Angeles County, is
Speaker 5: the most disaster prone district of any county, of any
Speaker 5: district in any county in the entire country. So not
Speaker 5: only is it something that we must continue to invest in,
Speaker 5: it must be a way of life for all of us.
Speaker 2: The supervisor, I'll note whether it's reopening pch or getting
Speaker 2: people back to their properties, just to inspect or how
Speaker 2: the repermitting process is going to go. It seems like
Speaker 2: there are different speeds that people want, regardless of which
Speaker 2: side they're on. Maybe they're a politician, elected official, maybe
Speaker 2: they're a resident. This is too fast, this is too slow.
Speaker 2: What has it been like trying to find that perfect
Speaker 2: goldilocks temperature? As we the rebuilding phase.
Speaker 5: Well, I think there's no question we want to move
Speaker 5: with a sense of urgency because, especially in this debris
Speaker 5: removal phase, the household hazardous materials in an uncontrolled environment
Speaker 5: are just not safe for anyone. So we absolutely want
Speaker 5: to move quicker. And I'm glad to see that so
Speaker 5: many teams have been deployed by the us EPA on
Speaker 5: the ground to move Phase one faster than was originally predicted.
Speaker 5: We're doing so because of all the teams that have
Speaker 5: been deployed. We're doing so without cutting corners, which is
Speaker 5: incredibly important because we don't just want to move quickly,
Speaker 5: we want to move safely, and so we're doing both
Speaker 5: at a pace that's never been seen before. And it's
Speaker 5: because of the number of teams that are on the ground.
Speaker 5: It's because of the kind of expertise that's on the ground.
Speaker 5: We have folks who were involved in some of the
Speaker 5: fires in Northern California and now we and some of
Speaker 5: the disasters that we've seen throughout the country. So we
Speaker 5: are bringing the best thinking to this effort, which allows
Speaker 5: us to do both. We can move quickly but also
Speaker 5: do so safely, and by working with people who are
Speaker 5: informed and who have experience on the ground, we're able
Speaker 5: to help people have certainty around what these milestones are.
Speaker 5: And I know, when the world is swirling around you
Speaker 5: and things feel uncertain, the thing that you're really holding
Speaker 5: onto is information that's verified, that's trusted, and that allows
Speaker 5: you to start putting together what looks like and you
Speaker 5: know what the journey is going to look like for
Speaker 5: you to get back home. And that's really what we're
Speaker 5: trying to do.
Speaker 2: This is really going to put local government to the
Speaker 2: test in a lot of ways, and already has in fact.
Speaker 2: But I'm wondering, big picture, what do you see going
Speaker 2: forward being the relationship between local government and the people
Speaker 2: of your district the Palisades specifically based on the experience
Speaker 2: they had here, whether it was related to the amount
Speaker 2: of time they had to get out, the response to
Speaker 2: the fires, and here in the aftermath as we move
Speaker 2: towards rebuilding, do you see any loss of trust or
Speaker 2: any opportunities to build trust or rebuild any loss trust.
Speaker 5: You always think that this, uh, this experience teaches people
Speaker 5: what they can count on us for how we will
Speaker 5: work together in that rebuilding process.
Speaker 6: UH.
Speaker 5: They're watching to see if we clearly answer their questions,
Speaker 5: which is why I'm committed to an after action process
Speaker 5: that helps us learn from this experience not only as
Speaker 5: a practice of good government, but because people want answers.
Speaker 5: They deserve answers, and that is how you continue to
Speaker 5: build trust. I think you know, the work that we
Speaker 5: have to do is among government agencies and making sure
Speaker 5: that you know, in a time of crisis, we know
Speaker 5: how to you know, check logos at the door and
Speaker 5: really just get to work and assigning tasks and making
Speaker 5: sure that we are all focused on that that shared
Speaker 5: vision of serving our constituents to the best of our ability.
Speaker 5: And I know that on the county side, we have
Speaker 5: experienced doing that among our departments from the many crises
Speaker 5: we've faced, and that is the experience we've we've brought
Speaker 5: to the fires that we're now recovering from, and we
Speaker 5: will continue to use that expertise to inform how we
Speaker 5: serve our constituents going forward.
Speaker 2: The cost of the wildfires has been staggering. Property losses
Speaker 2: alone have been estimated at more than one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty billion dollars, but the cost doesn't stop there and
Speaker 2: may hit all of us in different ways. That's next
Speaker 2: when LA Fires A Path Forward continues after this report
Speaker 2: from the KFI twenty four hour News Rum.
Speaker 1: You're listening to KFI AM six forty on.
Speaker 2: Demand AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2: I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is LA Fires
Speaker 2: A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
Speaker 2: what happens now. The losses in Altadena and Pacific Palisades
Speaker 2: are staggering. More than sixteen thousand structures burned to ash,
Speaker 2: including homes, churches, schools, libraries, as strong Santa Ana winds
Speaker 2: fueled fires across nearly forty thousand acres in just those
Speaker 2: two parts of LA County. The property and capital losses
Speaker 2: alone have been estimated to be between ninety five and
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty four billion dollars, with insured losses
Speaker 2: estimated at seventy five billion dollars. That's according to the
Speaker 2: latest research by the UCLA Anderson School of Management. The
Speaker 2: losses are crippling here, but they're so big they would
Speaker 2: completely wipe out smaller cities.
Speaker 7: I feel compared you to with other cities, so you
Speaker 7: will look at older Colorado is a small city that
Speaker 7: is for a pole, six buildings like annual GDP for
Speaker 7: that small city, so it's almost a destroyed, like reduced
Speaker 7: the gb GDP of that small city.
Speaker 2: Julian Lee is an economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast.
Speaker 2: Her research, along with william U, suggests the wildfires have
Speaker 2: cost La County nearly half a percent of its gross
Speaker 2: domestic product. It's not just private or public buildings that
Speaker 2: were lost. Roads, bridges, utilities were also erased by the flames.
Speaker 2: Those repairs and replacements will come in a significant cost.
Speaker 2: On top of that, there are environmental concerns the labor market.
Speaker 2: The UCLA study shows there were about one thousand businesses
Speaker 2: in three zip codes burned by the Palisades and Eaten fires,
Speaker 2: with a total of between five thousand and eighty five
Speaker 2: hundred employees with total wages over a billion dollars. The
Speaker 2: loss of productive income over a year is estimated at
Speaker 2: twenty five, fifty and seventy two percent in those three areas.
Speaker 7: For example, during the wildfires, there may be some evacuation,
Speaker 7: so our employees cannot work at the effective areas. Then
Speaker 7: they influence the labor productivity. And also it also has
Speaker 7: some impacts of example, government expenditure and their revenue because
Speaker 7: of that. So yeah, so that could be that the
Speaker 7: GDP number, the half percent reduction in GDP can incorporate
Speaker 7: those kinds of things during the economic production process like
Speaker 7: labor productivity, capital productivity, and something like that.
Speaker 2: The home insurance market is also expected to take a
Speaker 2: hit along with your wallets. The state has already struggled
Speaker 2: with keeping insurers in the marketplace at affordable rates. That's
Speaker 2: because the threat of fires or other natural disasters has
Speaker 2: been deemed too much for some companies to bear. Thousands
Speaker 2: of policies have been canceled and others have been refused
Speaker 2: to be issued. And the fires broke out in Alta,
Speaker 2: Dina and the Palisades just days after the state announced
Speaker 2: its sustainable insurance strategy, which could cost everyone with the policy.
Speaker 7: This is because in the beginning of this year, in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty five, the California Department of Insurance implement a
Speaker 7: new regulation. So because of this new regulation, first, it
Speaker 7: allows insurers to they can transfer the risk of those
Speaker 7: natural disasters to local residents. So this is the first
Speaker 7: time they are allowed to do this, so they can
Speaker 7: file application for increasing their premium premium rates. So because
Speaker 7: of the welfare's insurers are going to file applications for
Speaker 7: increasing their insurance rates more than before. So California, local
Speaker 7: California residents, I mean all the California evidence homeowners are
Speaker 7: going to face increasing insurance rate.
Speaker 2: The regulation allows insurers to take a look at forward
Speaker 2: looking probabilistic models to set their premiums, including reinsurance costs
Speaker 2: in their rates, and they can also seek approval to
Speaker 2: assess all policyholders in the state if claims exceed the
Speaker 2: program's capacity. The state has required insurers to increase their
Speaker 2: number of policies by five percent each year until eighty
Speaker 2: five percent of the state in wildfire areas is covered.
Speaker 2: UCLA predicts that all homeowner insurance policies are likely to
Speaker 2: see a rise in price, but the study also says
Speaker 2: the state plan is supposed to introduce more insurers in
Speaker 2: the market, which could eventually lead to more competitive policies,
Speaker 2: but the cost of housing itself in an already expensive
Speaker 2: county could also go up.
Speaker 7: The loss of properties reduces the housing supply, which could
Speaker 7: also boost the demand, particularly for rental units in the regions.
Speaker 7: On years the affector the rages, so it predicts that
Speaker 7: the housing offer the housing market that if housing prices
Speaker 7: will still increased in the long term. Of Based on
Speaker 7: our study for the historical wildfires over.
Speaker 2: The past ten years, there have been permits issued in
Speaker 2: La County for around twenty to twenty five thousand new
Speaker 2: housing units each year, but the fires took out between
Speaker 2: two thirds and three quarters of the yearly housing supply.
Speaker 2: The study suggests price hikes in the housing market could
Speaker 2: be expected in the long term, especially if more building
Speaker 2: doesn't take place quickly. The UCLA researchers say California's most
Speaker 2: pressing issue should be to invest in wildfire mitigation strategies,
Speaker 2: noting that newer buildings had a better survival rate. Newer
Speaker 2: regulations like using artificial intelligence and drones to detect and
Speaker 2: put out wildfires could be helpful, they say, along with
Speaker 2: managing forests and brush upgrading utilities and controlling homeless camps,
Speaker 2: strengthening building codes, and subsidizing what they call home hardening.
Speaker 7: There are studies showing that the buildings that are built
Speaker 7: after two thousand and eight are less likely to be
Speaker 7: destroyed in a websare. That is because California implement regulation
Speaker 7: in two thousand and eight requiring new buildings to adopt
Speaker 7: mitigation strategies. However, most of the majority of the housing
Speaker 7: stock in California are older buildings. They were built before
Speaker 7: two thousand and eight, so a government might need to
Speaker 7: expand their grant for repro food in those old homes.
Speaker 7: In effect, I mean in high risk areas, so that
Speaker 7: may be active. There's a need for more investment in that.
Speaker 2: Even as La County's emergency alert text messages went awry
Speaker 2: during the fire, sending evacuation scared to everyone, one piece
Speaker 2: of technology was a must have during the disaster. We
Speaker 2: talk with the man behind the Watch Duty app when
Speaker 2: La Fires. A Path Forward continues next after this update
Speaker 2: from the KFI twenty four hour newsroom.
Speaker 1: You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2: I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is La Fires
Speaker 2: A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
Speaker 2: what happens now. As the flames blew closer to homes
Speaker 2: and Pacific Palisades and Altadena, more and more people found
Speaker 2: themselves turning not to government alerts but to their phones
Speaker 2: and the watch Duty app. It was a lifeline for many,
Speaker 2: especially as the La County alert system suffered mistake sending
Speaker 2: alerts to everyone in the county even if they weren't
Speaker 2: affected the big fires in January. We're not the first
Speaker 2: time people counted on this app. John Mills is the
Speaker 2: founder and CEO of Watch Duty. John, this app has
Speaker 2: not just been popular, it's been a lifeline for a
Speaker 2: lot of people. And you wrote an editorial for the
Speaker 2: La Times that said, it really shouldn't be that it's
Speaker 2: sort of a failure of government.
Speaker 8: Tell us what you mean, Yeah, that was I started
Speaker 8: this out of frustration that this is not how the
Speaker 8: world works. I would have assumed that, you know, the
Speaker 8: same folks who build roads and schools and infrastructure were
Speaker 8: going to be building alerting systems to keep us informed.
Speaker 8: And although they exist, they're not really properly used. They
Speaker 8: leave a lot to the imagination, as you probably saw
Speaker 8: on the Palisades fire specifically, and also the delays in
Speaker 8: the Eden, fire alerts went out to the wrong areas
Speaker 8: at the wrong times with some of the wrong information,
Speaker 8: and it ends up causing even more panic.
Speaker 9: And I feel like.
Speaker 8: Until you go through the situation, you don't really quite
Speaker 8: understand it.
Speaker 9: But like the user experience of disaster is something we
Speaker 9: really think about.
Speaker 8: And so what I can tell you from going through
Speaker 8: it and being around people is cognitive ability goes down
Speaker 8: when you're panicked, and then when you get lackluster information
Speaker 8: that leads you to ask more questions.
Speaker 9: You don't know what to do, and it makes the
Speaker 9: situation worse.
Speaker 8: And so after living through that several times and realizing
Speaker 8: that no one was going to fix it in any
Speaker 8: reasonable timeframe, I decided to do something about it.
Speaker 2: You saw a popularity spike for this app Watch Duty
Speaker 2: last fall when we had some wildfires in southern California,
Speaker 2: so you knew well at advance of what happened in
Speaker 2: the Palisades, what happened in Altadena, that the government was
Speaker 2: not living up to its potential, let's say, in the
Speaker 2: way that it notifies people about these looming disasters, especially
Speaker 2: as the unfold. I want to know when those alerts
Speaker 2: went out from the government from La County to every
Speaker 2: body in the county, no matter where you live, that
Speaker 2: the time to evacuate was now, and that was obviously
Speaker 2: a mistake of failure. What were your thoughts in that moment.
Speaker 9: Well, it's a great question. I mean, I mean a
Speaker 9: couple of things.
Speaker 8: I mean, first of all, we've been around for three years,
Speaker 8: a little over three years, and so this is not
Speaker 8: the first time we've seen these types of problems. It's
Speaker 8: not just specific to any any government per se. So
Speaker 8: I'd rather spread the blame on us as taxpayers and
Speaker 8: voters as well as them, as we all need to
Speaker 8: get better.
Speaker 9: It just we saw something.
Speaker 8: Really bad in LA which obviously we saw the Franklin
Speaker 8: and the mountain fire before that, which I think is
Speaker 8: what you're referring to.
Speaker 9: And then actually before that was the line, the bridge
Speaker 9: and the airport fire.
Speaker 8: I'm surprised I can remember all these off the top
Speaker 8: of my head, but it's kind of how we live
Speaker 8: there are back to your question there. Right now, we
Speaker 8: only have one or two reporters who are living in
Speaker 8: LA so they got the alerts and then we have
Speaker 8: ways to scrape in mind that day, but what we
Speaker 8: saw first was actually an incredible spike in traffic. We
Speaker 8: started receiving about one hundred thousand requests a second, about
Speaker 8: three million or so a minute, and our service began melting. Luckily,
Speaker 8: we were able to keep everything online. But that's how
Speaker 8: I knew something really bad. It happened, and then we
Speaker 8: quickly realized, oh my goodness. They send out a WILLA,
Speaker 8: a wireless burdency alert which goes to all the active
Speaker 8: cell phone towers in the area and the neighboring area
Speaker 8: as well, because cell towers reach over borders, and so
Speaker 8: you know, something like twelve million people got an errant
Speaker 8: emergency alert, and so we knew because again our servers
Speaker 8: were just going haywire.
Speaker 9: And luckily we didn't have any outages, but it was
Speaker 9: harrowing for the whole team.
Speaker 2: You mentioned reporters there, John, How does the watch Duty
Speaker 2: app work?
Speaker 8: Yeah, so, Watch Duty, simply put, is really a service,
Speaker 8: not an app. So people interact with an app, but
Speaker 8: behind the scene there are dozens and dozens of active
Speaker 8: and retired first responders, radio operators, dispatchers, reporters, and people
Speaker 8: who have experienced listening to wildland fire on the emergency
Speaker 8: radios meaning we hear them talk to each other on
Speaker 8: the fire ground. And so those folks we call them reporters,
Speaker 8: have really been reporting on this activity for years.
Speaker 9: Right when we found them all they.
Speaker 8: Had their own Facebook and Twitter pages and different regions
Speaker 8: like you know, like Cole Yukon in Lake County and
Speaker 8: Maureene up in Reading.
Speaker 9: They had the voice of their community.
Speaker 8: Already, and they were doing this job well before Frankly
Speaker 8: I moved into Sonoma County.
Speaker 1: But once I.
Speaker 8: Moved here and I realized what these people were doing,
Speaker 8: I thought to myself, Man, if we could ban them
Speaker 8: all together, imagine how powerful they would all be. And
Speaker 8: so that's how Watch Study was born, and that's how
Speaker 8: it operates.
Speaker 2: We've heard from La County officials that they planned to
Speaker 2: investigate what went wrong with their own emergency alert notification system.
Speaker 1: They reached out to you at all.
Speaker 2: Have you been approached by this government or really any
Speaker 2: government on how to improve their own efficiencies?
Speaker 8: Absolutely, I mean we work with so many including La
Speaker 8: County Emergency Operations Center.
Speaker 9: You know, they're really trying.
Speaker 8: Everyone's trying to do better and we want to be
Speaker 8: of service, and so we do work with many governments
Speaker 8: and many governments give us information in real time because
Speaker 8: they know that we have more users than anybody else.
Speaker 8: Users are residents, right, and so they they're starting to
Speaker 8: embrace it and ask us for help, and we are
Speaker 8: here to serve them.
Speaker 2: We think about apps, we think about Silicon Valley, we
Speaker 2: think about how rich people can get even if an
Speaker 2: app is a flash in the pan and very short lived.
Speaker 2: That's not the case with this one. This was started
Speaker 2: as a volunteer funded nonprofit. Is that Is that still
Speaker 2: the case even after all this popularity.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I don't see. If it ain't broke, don't fix it,
Speaker 8: you know. But I mean back to the point earlier.
Speaker 8: It is like, you know, I want better for my community.
Speaker 8: I want better roads, better schools, better infrastructure like this
Speaker 8: is this is a public benefit, right, this is a
Speaker 8: life and death It's kind of hard to imagine profiteering
Speaker 8: off of something that's so viscerally important and frankly extremely dangerous.
Speaker 9: So we have no plans of changing anything soon.
Speaker 8: And luckily we've had many donors come to our rescue.
Speaker 8: Google dot org is one of our largest donors, and
Speaker 8: many people paying twenty five dollars for the extra services
Speaker 8: in the app makes a huge difference. Right, This all
Speaker 8: this money, even though it's a small amount compared to
Speaker 8: how many users we have, helps to keep our free
Speaker 8: service free. Like it's like remind people, you know, we've
Speaker 8: been doing this for a long time. Right, it just
Speaker 8: becomes more and more valuable. There's really not I don't say,
Speaker 8: not much to learn. I'm just so used to the devastation.
Speaker 8: This one happened to be incredibly deadly and a lot
Speaker 8: of structures were lost, But we see the loss of
Speaker 8: our habitats, our forests, our communities, and so you know,
Speaker 8: it's just the mission gets stronger.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 8: We didn't all of a sudden like flip the table,
Speaker 8: raise a bunch of money, go to get some private
Speaker 8: equity capital and start running a different business. You know,
Speaker 8: our roadmap is the same, our hiring strategy is the same.
Speaker 8: Exactly what we thought was gonna happen is happening, and
Speaker 8: so for us, it's just if business as usual. Unfortunately
Speaker 8: I wish it wasn't a business, but I guess it is.
Speaker 2: The wildfires have been destructive, they've been tragic, but they've
Speaker 2: also given LA the opportunity to show its softer side,
Speaker 2: helping neighbors in need.
Speaker 6: It's unbelievable. It's almost like a big old city has
Speaker 6: become a small town.
Speaker 2: That's next when La Fires. A Path Forward continues after
Speaker 2: this report from the KFI twenty four hour newsroom.
Speaker 1: You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2: I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is La Fires
Speaker 2: A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
Speaker 2: what happens now. The tragic loss of Pacific Palisades and
Speaker 2: Alta Dina to wildfires has led to an outpouring of sympathy,
Speaker 2: offers to help, and cash lots of money. La is
Speaker 2: a city of very rich and very poor. It's home
Speaker 2: to some of the world's most recognizable celebrities, and Hollywood
Speaker 2: has shown up here in the early days of the recovery.
Speaker 2: Fundraising efforts at the Grammys and a special star studded
Speaker 2: fire aid concert brought in one hundred twenty five million dollars,
Speaker 2: But regular La folks are also stepping up, showering their
Speaker 2: neighbors with love, support and money. They're also volunteering. A
Speaker 2: lot parts of La are notoriously disconnected, maybe by culture,
Speaker 2: maybe by traffic, but the wildfires have brought southern California
Speaker 2: together in an unprecedented way. I spoke with Pastor Matthew
Speaker 2: Barnett of the Dream Center to talk about it. He
Speaker 2: says his organization has helped people through serious difficulties in
Speaker 2: recas and years, especially COVID.
Speaker 6: Then we get to twenty twenty five and I was
Speaker 6: just kind of giving a little prayer and I said, God,
Speaker 6: can twenty twenty five just be the year of peace?
Speaker 6: And then Wow, I mean, we're faced with this just
Speaker 6: unbelievable thing that's happened. I never dreamed that, you know,
Speaker 6: we would just once again make ourselves available at the
Speaker 6: Dream Center and you know, put our food trucks out
Speaker 6: there in the parking lot and say if anybody wants
Speaker 6: to come by and get take care of your need
Speaker 6: and feed you and help you. And I didn't realize
Speaker 6: that that thirty days would literally change our life, as
Speaker 6: you know, thousands of cars would come through and get
Speaker 6: food and resource and drop off supplies and things that
Speaker 6: would really become the foundation of all that we're doing
Speaker 6: with the fires here in now Sadena and all that
Speaker 6: work that's going on, and the daily distributions and our
Speaker 6: lives have changed forever.
Speaker 2: What are you seeing from the families who come down
Speaker 2: and need these days?
Speaker 6: You know, when we when we started the food line,
Speaker 6: it was interesting because we were seventeen minutes or so
Speaker 6: away from Altadena in downtown area, and I thought, well,
Speaker 6: I don't know if really people will come here. But
Speaker 6: once we set up that ground floor, that staging ground
Speaker 6: for what was going on, people were showing up. And
Speaker 6: sometimes they were showing up and they were just they
Speaker 6: were just getting out of their car in line and
Speaker 6: they would go up to people and hug them and
Speaker 6: they would just cry and they would mourn. It was
Speaker 6: just really like a staging ground of generosity and kindness
Speaker 6: but also incredible grief, and you know, it was a
Speaker 6: place for people on his shoulder to cry on. And
Speaker 6: so when all this started to happen, you know, the
Speaker 6: needs started to kind of determine what the what the
Speaker 6: call was for the day, and we began to realize
Speaker 6: people were looking through you know, bins define things and
Speaker 6: specific things, and we took all those donated clothes and
Speaker 6: turn them into a like a store for people to
Speaker 6: come in and get specialty items and and all that,
Speaker 6: and so you know when you were walking. We're working
Speaker 6: with seven hundred and eighty families right now to try
Speaker 6: to help them unbelievable. And the thing that we're dealing
Speaker 6: with the most is people just really want them to
Speaker 6: walk them help them through life, you know, whether it
Speaker 6: be some finances that we've been able to give to
Speaker 6: help people in this bridge period between now and you know,
Speaker 6: trying to rebuild their lives. They're all faced with unbelievable
Speaker 6: rent hikes, or face with housing issues and expiring vouchers
Speaker 6: and and so a lot of people have gone through
Speaker 6: unbelievable grief and trauma and now a lot of tears
Speaker 6: have wiped away, and now they're just finding a lot
Speaker 6: of closed doors in front of them that we're just
Speaker 6: trying to help them navigate.
Speaker 2: I imagine that a lot of people who are in need
Speaker 2: of charity are often living on the edge, as it is,
Speaker 2: living in housing and security, food and security, money and security.
Speaker 2: But for a lot of the folks, maybe all of
Speaker 2: the folks who've been displaced by these fires, this was
Speaker 2: so sudden. What can you tell us about those differences
Speaker 2: and experiences?
Speaker 6: You know, you know, we do ash outs every day,
Speaker 6: you know, we help people find their possessions. I think
Speaker 6: we one of the first ones actually in outfit of
Speaker 6: doing that. And you get a chance to talk to
Speaker 6: a lot of people, you know, you're standing on their
Speaker 6: lot and they're watching you go through their valuables and
Speaker 6: and things like that, and you realize really quickly that
Speaker 6: people are they don't have as much money sitting around
Speaker 6: as most people are saying, even with secure homes, I mean,
Speaker 6: everything has gone into you know, the mortgage. They live
Speaker 6: in a very expensive city where it's very hard to
Speaker 6: survive and it's very hard to just do anything, and
Speaker 6: the cost of living. And so I was really really
Speaker 6: surprised to find out, you know, because I've worked with
Speaker 6: people in downtown in La most of my life, and
Speaker 6: you know, people that aren't paycheck to paycheck their moment
Speaker 6: by moment. But I realized so many of these people,
Speaker 6: just their whole heart and soul went into that one
Speaker 6: you know, generational investment to give down to their kids,
Speaker 6: to their house. That they were really si wife, like
Speaker 6: you said, with unbelievable level of surprise and just the
Speaker 6: inability to really have a lot lying around to bridge
Speaker 6: that gap of how having a house to nothing and
Speaker 6: then going all the way back the into rebuilding. And
Speaker 6: so that's what we're finding is that there's just a
Speaker 6: lot of people that if they had a little bit
Speaker 6: of resource in their hand, I believe they can really
Speaker 6: build back again. There's some great coaching and help and
Speaker 6: people on side of them. But I was just surprised
Speaker 6: to find the level of how difficult it is to
Speaker 6: survive in a city of Los Angeles. And just to
Speaker 6: make it, I think more people are living paycheck to
Speaker 6: paycheck than anyone could ever possibly imagine. That's why I've
Speaker 6: discovered through all this, this.
Speaker 2: Is a city of immense poverty and immense wealth living
Speaker 2: side by side each other. It's also a city that
Speaker 2: may be disconnected from one another depending on which side
Speaker 2: of town you live in. What do you see from
Speaker 2: your perspective in all of the years you've worked in
Speaker 2: charitable giving about LA right now, has the city risen
Speaker 2: to the occasion?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: That's the wild thing. You know, when we just we
Speaker 6: just said everyone come to service on the food line,
Speaker 6: you know, COVID was hard because there's people had you know,
Speaker 6: barriers and things that you know that were there. But
Speaker 6: this thing has just been unbelievable. I mean, we had
Speaker 6: at one time we had twelve hundred volunteers in one
Speaker 6: day on our campus. We found a way to mobilize
Speaker 6: all of them, which is incredible. And there's people crossing
Speaker 6: freeways to say, I've never been in this area of
Speaker 6: LA before. How far do you live? Five miles? You know,
Speaker 6: It's it's unbelievable. It's it's almost like a big old
Speaker 6: city has become a small town. You know, people come
Speaker 6: to this city, you know, they're dreamers, they have a
Speaker 6: lot of ideas about what life can be. And then
Speaker 6: if you just open up a door and let them
Speaker 6: come and serve, you'll find they're just like anybody else.
Speaker 6: They have a tremendous heart of generosity and they want
Speaker 6: to give. And I was just laughing at just the
Speaker 6: unbelievable cross section of people that were there serving, you know,
Speaker 6: through the tragedy of all this, and it really is
Speaker 6: mostly tragedy, but there is a silver lining through this.
Speaker 6: It's that LA has been really mobilized to where we've
Speaker 6: seen the best of our city and that's rally together
Speaker 6: and it's kind of beyond I've been here for thirty years,
Speaker 6: and this is beyond my comprehension anything I thought was
Speaker 6: ever possible to see this many people cross the three
Speaker 6: Ways and go to other neighborhoods, and then people would
Speaker 6: get so excited about serving they would just show up
Speaker 6: and they would next day we would have to direct them.
Speaker 6: They would just go right to their post, and they
Speaker 6: just continue to do it for a week upon week,
Speaker 6: and so it's really exciting to see.
Speaker 2: And as the recovery continues, as the reviews and investigations unfold,
Speaker 2: KFI News will be there to tell you about it.
Speaker 2: This has been la fires a path forward. If you
Speaker 2: miss any part of it or want to hear it
Speaker 2: again or share it, find it at KFIAM six forty
Speaker 2: dot com or on the iHeartRadio app. For producer Matthew Soffler,
Speaker 2: I'm Michael Monks.
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty on demand