Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty.
Speaker 2: And this is KFI AM six forty. You'll handle here
Speaker 2: in the morning crew on a Thursday. Unfortunately, very hot,
Speaker 2: not only well hot in terms of the fires that
Speaker 2: are going around.
Speaker 1: It is September twelfth.
Speaker 2: Later on Mo Kelly at eight fifty and then Joel
Speaker 2: Larsgard eight o'clock with how to money. All right, we've
Speaker 2: got to have well, we are having our reporters from
Speaker 2: all over southern California, Blake Trolly, matter of fact, we'll
Speaker 2: start with him and the Bridge fire because that.
Speaker 1: Is the big one.
Speaker 2: Then we'll go to Amy to report on the other
Speaker 2: fires that are happening around the south land. Blake, what's
Speaker 2: going on with the Bridge fire because that's the big
Speaker 2: one that we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So in the latest update that we got Bill, we
Speaker 3: got this a few hours ago. We actually got some
Speaker 3: positive news on this Bridge fire. Keep in mind, this
Speaker 3: is a fire that exploded massively, started on this side
Speaker 3: of the hill here in La County, spread into Rightwood
Speaker 3: over into sam Bernardino County. We are told that the
Speaker 3: fire's behavior has moderated, and this is because humidity has
Speaker 3: raised and temperatures have fallen. They say that firefighters yesterday
Speaker 3: and I was in there with them, Bill, they were
Speaker 3: making really good progress on the ground, not only establishing
Speaker 3: containment lines, but also providing structural defense for some homes
Speaker 3: that flames were still burning right up on. Well, we're
Speaker 3: told they made good progress. They also were able to
Speaker 3: get air resources, including four helicopters into the area, continuing
Speaker 3: water drops. And so today the real focus is continue
Speaker 3: trying to get those containment lines down, put retardant in
Speaker 3: those containment lines, and continue structure defense. I mean, there
Speaker 3: are still structures that are being threatened. We don't have
Speaker 3: an exact number. We're waiting to get our morning update.
Speaker 3: But that said, they say fire crews are still actively
Speaker 3: engaged in structural defense. And Bill, I saw this take
Speaker 3: place on one particular home yesterday. The La Times has
Speaker 3: a photo of this same exact home. It's right off
Speaker 3: Highway too, kind of in between right Wood and Big Pine.
Speaker 1: And what we saw yesterday was just big.
Speaker 3: Orange flames, black smoke coming off this fire, a lot
Speaker 3: of vegetation right behind this home burning up, and firefighters
Speaker 3: just continued to hammer it with water. Also carve out lines,
Speaker 3: and I believe they were able to save that home.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have to get an update on that later
Speaker 3: this morning, but I went back through about two hours
Speaker 3: later and the home was still there from when I
Speaker 3: saw them originally fighting.
Speaker 2: That's great, that actually is good news. And we talked
Speaker 2: to a firefighter yesterday, Blake, Thank you, because I'm going
Speaker 2: to go on we're going to report on the other fire.
Speaker 2: So we'll probably talk to you more this morning and
Speaker 2: should certainly be you'll be reporting on the bridge fire.
Speaker 2: Thanks much, Amy. Before we get to the airport fire
Speaker 2: and the line fire is just a quick word. Yesterday
Speaker 2: we had my friend Chuck Lover, who was with County
Speaker 2: of LA for thirty years firefighting, and he had mentioned,
Speaker 2: when you see that water and the fire retardant, they're
Speaker 2: not putting out the fire. What they're doing is they're
Speaker 2: going in front or to the side of the fire,
Speaker 2: cooling down that area so the crews can establish those
Speaker 2: fire lines.
Speaker 1: That's what that's about. And I had known that until he.
Speaker 2: Had said that, because I asked, I mean, how do
Speaker 2: you put out fires like that? He goes, we don't
Speaker 2: even try. What we want to do is contain the fires. So, Amy,
Speaker 2: what's happening the latest of the airport and the line fire.
Speaker 4: Okay, So the airport fire is the one that started
Speaker 4: in Tribuco Canyon on Monday, and it started in Orange County.
Speaker 4: It has since spread over into Riverside County and it
Speaker 4: has burned some homes in Lake Elsin Or. It's about
Speaker 4: twenty three thousand acres now a little bit over that
Speaker 4: and is five percent surrounded, so they're starting to build
Speaker 4: some lines around it.
Speaker 5: That's good.
Speaker 4: And then the line fire is the one in the
Speaker 4: San Bernardino County Mountains. It's thirty six thousand plus acres
Speaker 4: and is eighteen percent which is up for me yesterday,
Speaker 4: so they are again eighteen percent surrounded.
Speaker 1: It is the part that is really rough.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're going to be able to take these
Speaker 2: out obviously as the weather.
Speaker 1: Cools down and we're done.
Speaker 2: Amy, you had reported that the heat wave is basically over,
Speaker 2: and we could feel that it's cooler, it's.
Speaker 1: A little bit more humidity.
Speaker 2: I mean, when it's one hundred and fifteen degrees out
Speaker 2: there like it was with the virtually no humidity, that's
Speaker 2: not good news for firefighters or the rest of us.
Speaker 2: But what the climatologist the weather people are telling us
Speaker 2: is this is just the tip that we are looking
Speaker 2: at the beginning. This is the beginning of fire season,
Speaker 2: and it is going to be very, very rough this year.
Speaker 2: And even though the acreage, well, I think the biggest
Speaker 2: fire we've ever had in California was north of a
Speaker 2: million acres that burned up in northern California where two
Speaker 2: massive fires joined up and just destroyed a huge amount.
Speaker 2: So we're looking at the acreage here, fifty thousand for
Speaker 2: the Bridge fire. Do we know the acreage of the
Speaker 2: airport and the Line fire. I'm just throwing that at you, Amy, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, twenty three thousand for the airport fire and thirty
Speaker 4: six thousand for the line fire. So it's right about
Speaker 4: just over one hundred thousand airs total.
Speaker 2: And that's if you put those two together, those three together,
Speaker 2: that is a massive, massive fire. The other thing that
Speaker 2: is the fairly good news in terms of the firefighting capabilities,
Speaker 2: when it was nighttime. As soon as it got dark,
Speaker 2: all air resources had to cease. They could not fly
Speaker 2: at night. Now with the technology, helicopters can fly at night.
Speaker 2: You still have aircraft that can't and don't, but the
Speaker 2: helicopters can. And again keep in mind when you say
Speaker 2: they don't have that much water, it's not about put
Speaker 2: out the fire as it's moving. It's about the containment area,
Speaker 2: letting the firefighters dig around. And that's what as yesterday
Speaker 2: Chuck Lover said, containment is about setting up these fire
Speaker 2: breaks where the fire is going to only burn within
Speaker 2: those fire lines that are established. So we'll be reporting
Speaker 2: all through the day. We've got Blake and who else
Speaker 2: is out there, and we've.
Speaker 5: Got Porman out yesterday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if yeah, we had virtually everybody out there.
Speaker 2: So at this point the fire that's the most out
Speaker 2: of control is still the Bridge fire, I'm assuming, but
Speaker 2: it's getting better.
Speaker 1: It's getting better all the way around. All right.
Speaker 2: Now, this has to do with a report that just
Speaker 2: came out commissioned by Congress, released this week that NASA
Speaker 2: is in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: Aging infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Short term thinking ambitions far outstrip the money that's being spent.
Speaker 1: Why, First of all.
Speaker 2: It's not being funded because it wasn't so exciting. It's
Speaker 2: getting more exciting now now that we're talking about missions
Speaker 2: to Mars. The problem is Everything that NASA is involved
Speaker 2: with is falling apart. The only thing that's really working
Speaker 2: a SpaceX and it's going to be Elon Musk that's
Speaker 2: going to make it, if anybody's going to make it
Speaker 2: to Mars. In the meantime, what the federal government is spending,
Speaker 2: the money that they do spend is on the web,
Speaker 2: the Hubble satellites. They're going with space missions for scientific endeavors,
Speaker 2: and there's just not enough money that's being spent, and
Speaker 2: a lot of it is just maintenance. And that's the
Speaker 2: point of nobody cares. Maintenance is not exciting. So let's
Speaker 2: go back to when the space program was as exciting
Speaker 2: as it ever got and ever will get.
Speaker 1: And that was the Apollo mission that went to the Moon.
Speaker 2: And how did we get to the point where four
Speaker 2: hundred thousand people were working on the Apollo missions that
Speaker 2: in July July twentieth, nineteen sixty nine, you had Americans
Speaker 2: walking on the Moon.
Speaker 1: I mean, that excitement level was just insane.
Speaker 2: Two reasons why we hit the high point for the
Speaker 2: Apollo the Apollo program. Number one, that statement that JFK
Speaker 2: made in nineteen sixty one, we're going to put on
Speaker 2: a man on the moon and bring him back safely
Speaker 2: to Earth. Not because it's easy, but because it's hard.
Speaker 2: That took everybody for a loop. No one knew he
Speaker 2: was saying that. No one knew he was going to
Speaker 2: say that, so NASA had no idea that they were
Speaker 2: going to do that.
Speaker 1: He was going to call for that, no idea how
Speaker 1: they were going to do it.
Speaker 2: When he said that the US experience in spacecraft and
Speaker 2: space and in the space program and putting man into space,
Speaker 2: we had exactly fifteen minutes of an American in space,
Speaker 2: one spaceflight, Alan Shepard.
Speaker 1: That was it, and JFK called for putting a man
Speaker 1: on the moon. Actually there are three reasons.
Speaker 2: Reason number two was we're just at the beginning of
Speaker 2: the space race. In the Cold War, Russia and the
Speaker 2: United States were going.
Speaker 1: Balls to the wall.
Speaker 2: Here's a little fact that very few people know about
Speaker 2: is that Kennedy, as money was being spent, said, you know,
Speaker 2: we're spending way too much money on this.
Speaker 1: This is costing us a fortune. No one reports that.
Speaker 2: There's actually audio that was recorded in which he says
Speaker 2: that that way, maybe we ought to slow this down
Speaker 2: because the efforts and the money that's being spent is astronomical.
Speaker 2: So now what's solidified the race to the moon. What
Speaker 2: put it in ink? That could not be a race
Speaker 2: that was even beyond that, that was etched in stone,
Speaker 2: and that's JFK being assassinated. And what ended up happening
Speaker 2: was once that happened, this became and we were going
Speaker 2: to put someone on the moon in honor of our
Speaker 2: dead president. This is what he called for and this
Speaker 2: is a memory of JFK. And it went full blast
Speaker 2: after that. You could not get out of that. We
Speaker 2: could not get out of that. He called for it,
Speaker 2: he died, and we are going to honor We were
Speaker 2: going to honor our assassinated president. At that point, there
Speaker 2: was no going back, and there was no budget limitation.
Speaker 2: The amount of money that was spent on the Apollo
Speaker 2: program was just astronomical.
Speaker 1: And by the way, what did we.
Speaker 2: Get by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking along the Moon?
Speaker 1: What did we get? We brought back some moon rocks?
Speaker 2: Was there any more understanding of the universe? Probably not now.
Speaker 2: Spacecraft that goes to other planets, that's scientific achievement. Spacecraft
Speaker 2: that go and circle the Sun, or go beyond the
Speaker 2: Solar system. We actually get information for understanding our universe.
Speaker 2: Did we get a lot of understanding from the space
Speaker 2: program where man walked on the moon?
Speaker 1: Now, I mean we.
Speaker 2: Got a lot of political help on that. I mean
Speaker 2: the whole world was watching the figure. A third of
Speaker 2: the world was watching the moon landing. And at that
Speaker 2: moment there was probably more good good will to the
Speaker 2: United States, and humanity felt more together and in tune
Speaker 2: with each other than ever in the history of the world.
Speaker 2: And it'll never happen again, maybe when the first sky
Speaker 2: walks on Mars and Arnold Schwarzenegger is too old for that,
Speaker 2: and so I don't know that's going to happen. That's
Speaker 2: a reference to that movie, by the way, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: forgot the name of the movie. But other than what's
Speaker 2: going on now, we don't have a dead president that
Speaker 2: we are honoring.
Speaker 1: We don't have a space.
Speaker 2: Program, a cold war that we are fighting the Russians
Speaker 2: to see who's going to be first.
Speaker 1: On the moon. Oh.
Speaker 2: The other thing that very few people know about the Russians,
Speaker 2: It was a matter of weeks before the Russians were
Speaker 2: going to land someone on the Moon. They were working
Speaker 2: so hard and as a matter of fact, as the
Speaker 2: astronauts were on the way to the Moon, the Russians
Speaker 2: launched a vehicle that was going to go to the Moon,
Speaker 2: pick up moon rocks and pick up moon soil and
Speaker 2: return it to Earth. They were going to make a
Speaker 2: political move to undermine our walk on the Moon, and
Speaker 2: that mission failed. So we're in a very different place.
Speaker 2: Just not I give you a little history of what's
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 1: All right. I just love this stuff, you know.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many documentaries I've been watching because
Speaker 2: I got so excited about this moon race. I talked
Speaker 2: to Rod anyway, because he knows his stuff better than anybody.
Speaker 1: All right, So much for that. Okay, while we.
Speaker 2: Were just going to break, an earthquake hit a few
Speaker 2: minutes ago, and Amy and Neil and I think, and
Speaker 2: they were experiencing the shaking. Amy said, oh, we're shaking
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 6: What it's pretty good here on the eastern side of
Speaker 6: Los Angeles. And I'm still getting texts and monitor X
Speaker 6: a bunch of people saying that they felt it at Northridge.
Speaker 6: So far, felt it pretty big. It says it was
Speaker 6: out of Malibu.
Speaker 1: Is that right, Amy?
Speaker 5: That is correct?
Speaker 6: Five point one downgraded to a four point six.
Speaker 4: I think no, it's been upgraded then back to four
Speaker 4: point seven. And then it was followed a couple of
Speaker 4: minutes later by a two point eight, which we probably
Speaker 4: didn't feel.
Speaker 1: Sounds like our ratings, doesn't it. Oh boy? Focus? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: all right. I did not feel it.
Speaker 2: And I'm in Orange County, as Amy pointed out, and
Speaker 2: I didn't even get a shake alert.
Speaker 4: Well I think that might be you, though, because Chris
Speaker 4: Adler just texted me and she's in Orange County and
Speaker 4: she said she felt it.
Speaker 2: Now, I just got a pop up ad that Dominoes
Speaker 2: has thirty percent off their pan pizza that I got,
Speaker 2: but I did not get the shake alert, which and
Speaker 2: I'm on shake Alert and I'm on the other one.
Speaker 2: I'm on both program ms that we have that go.
Speaker 1: Ba, it wasn't a Shaky's pizza. Oh yeah, that was that?
Speaker 1: Would you know what? That's even better? You know what,
Speaker 1: that's even a better line. You know. I hate when
Speaker 1: you do that. I hate it when you do that.
Speaker 1: It's it's not me, it's you.
Speaker 6: Okay, So now, but if we heard of any damage
Speaker 6: or anything like that, because I it started setting off
Speaker 6: car alarms here, which is pretty rare.
Speaker 2: It's no, that's people stealing our cars. Yeah yeah, but
Speaker 2: you I noticed that probably for around ten seconds. You
Speaker 2: kept on saying, we're still feeling it, We're still feeling it.
Speaker 6: It rolled on for a bit, and I know that
Speaker 6: in the studio there as well. The building is on wheels.
Speaker 6: And if you've never experienced an earthquake at there at Burbank,
Speaker 6: it's at the studio.
Speaker 1: It's very weird. And it continued. It's just it's bizarre.
Speaker 1: Just the building is on the way. Our building is
Speaker 1: on wheels. Yeah, oh yeah, I did not know that. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Where now it's studio city.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's why. Yeah, there's another one. Guys, stop it.
Speaker 1: Stop being clever. I hate it when you're more clever
Speaker 1: than I am. I cannot stand it.
Speaker 6: It's not that we're more clever than you, it's that
Speaker 6: you're less clever than everyone else.
Speaker 2: Okay, take a page onto the handle you know the handlebook,
Speaker 2: all right, So the bottom line is what is the
Speaker 2: final as of right now?
Speaker 1: And it changed literally within ten minutes.
Speaker 2: It was a five point one, it dropped to what
Speaker 2: a four point one, and then now it's up to
Speaker 2: a four point eight or nine.
Speaker 4: It's a four point seven officially from the US Geological
Speaker 4: Survey right now, and then a two point eight.
Speaker 5: They've changed that one.
Speaker 4: It hit at seven thirty and then a two point
Speaker 4: four after shock at seven thirty one, all about three
Speaker 4: and a half miles northwest of Malibu and just under
Speaker 4: five miles southwest of Agora Hills.
Speaker 1: Okay, did any of you feel the after shock?
Speaker 5: No, you probably don't feel something under three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't.
Speaker 2: And when we're looking at a four point seven, and
Speaker 2: Neil had asked, is that enough for any damage whatsoever?
Speaker 1: And I don't know. You see cracks in the walls.
Speaker 6: Well, it depends way where you're you know where it hits.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing things.
Speaker 6: Rich Yourmuro originally said that it might have been out
Speaker 6: near one thousand Oaks. I know a lot of people
Speaker 6: in the Egura thousand Oaks, Westlake Newbury Park area said
Speaker 6: they felt it.
Speaker 1: Pretty significantly. Yeah, if you're on top of it, you're
Speaker 1: gonna feel four point seven.
Speaker 6: Sobardino felt it, so says Kno.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm wondering why in Orange County? And were
Speaker 2: you getting any text from Orange County at all? Because
Speaker 2: I did not feel it, and I did not get
Speaker 2: an alert on my phone.
Speaker 4: Chris Adler is in Orange County. She said that she
Speaker 4: felt it, and you know that we got the shake
Speaker 4: alert here. I got it on my phone, but I
Speaker 4: didn't get it until after the shaking started, Like.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's not good.
Speaker 5: No, come up like thirty seconds before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's supposed to be like a heads up type thing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it didn't work this time for me.
Speaker 1: I got my pop up ad on time.
Speaker 6: All right, I'm on a raised foundation, and it almost
Speaker 6: like it almost started at the other end of the house,
Speaker 6: and like somebody was walking towards my studio and then
Speaker 6: and then it started happening. So it was kind of
Speaker 6: an odd sensation, this one.
Speaker 1: All right, here's what's going on.
Speaker 2: And I always bring up by LA Unified because I
Speaker 2: grew up in the l LA Unified school district. I
Speaker 2: started in kindergarten and I finished at high school. So
Speaker 2: there's the K through twelve. I am one of the
Speaker 2: poster children of LA Unified, and LA Unified is one
Speaker 2: of the poster children of let's just say a public
Speaker 2: school system that has dropped dramatically in its ability to
Speaker 2: graduate students. I mean with a huge number of Latino students,
Speaker 2: and the dropout rate.
Speaker 1: Is unfortunately astronomical.
Speaker 2: And is it because LA Unified in and of itself
Speaker 2: is so poorly run? Well, I am convinced that it
Speaker 2: is ungovernable simply because of its size. New York is
Speaker 2: the only school system that is bigger than ours.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: What reputation it has because I concentrate on LA Unified. Well,
Speaker 2: here is the latest, okay, because there's never enough money,
Speaker 2: and that is air conditioning. Now, when I went to school,
Speaker 2: air conditioning wasn't an issue. We never thought of air
Speaker 2: conditioning in schools. It was hot, but you knew it
Speaker 2: was going to cool down. And of course climate change
Speaker 2: has changed everything.
Speaker 1: And now you have students that.
Speaker 2: Are really in a lot of trouble. Schools are in
Speaker 2: a lot of trouble. How many stories has Amy done
Speaker 2: in the last during the hot spell where schools were
Speaker 2: just shut down, didn't let students into schools, they couldn't
Speaker 2: let students outside.
Speaker 1: Football practice had.
Speaker 2: To be eliminated or suspended because the heat was so great.
Speaker 2: And so we have an aging infrastructure here in an
Speaker 2: LA Unified and it's the only place private schools have
Speaker 2: a ton of air conditioning. But private schools, well, if
Speaker 2: you look at the tuition these days in private schools,
Speaker 2: so aging facilities, not enough money to buy air conditioning,
Speaker 2: not enough money to maintain air conditioning that in and
Speaker 2: of itself may be decades old.
Speaker 1: When there is a new school being.
Speaker 2: Built, granted, air conditioning is put in and has for
Speaker 2: a number of years, but how many new schools are
Speaker 2: being built? They're not Why because the number of kids
Speaker 2: going to school is actually dropping and the schools are scrambling,
Speaker 2: and charter schools have increased, and the politics of it.
Speaker 2: Teachers and administrators particularly fight like crazy to make sure
Speaker 2: that vouchers. Private schools simply either a don't exist or
Speaker 2: have a hard time even being created. And at the
Speaker 2: same time there isn't money, and the kids suffer. The
Speaker 2: kids suffer.
Speaker 1: Do you know when I went to school, you ready
Speaker 1: for this?
Speaker 2: They used to hand out crayons, they would give pencils,
Speaker 2: they would give book covers, they would give those rulers,
Speaker 2: you know, those twelve inch rulers. I don't even think
Speaker 2: they have them anymore, but they were perfect for the
Speaker 2: teachers to smack you in the head with them and
Speaker 2: they had corporal punishment. That's a different issue. But imagine
Speaker 2: that we've gone from the schools having enough money so
Speaker 2: the kids have equipment and they have enough tools. It's
Speaker 2: a very different animal today, unfortunately. And you're going to
Speaker 2: see the issue of air conditioning becoming more and more prominent.
Speaker 2: Why is that, Well, look at the temperatures in our
Speaker 2: last heat spell that just ended a few days ago
Speaker 2: when the fire started. Now the last couple of days
Speaker 2: it's being helped. Wait till next summer and see how
Speaker 2: many students are affected.
Speaker 1: It is horrible. You know, it's a shame too because.
Speaker 2: Actually, at the time that I went through LA Unified,
Speaker 2: you actually got a pretty good education. You actually came
Speaker 2: out of the LA Unified school district in good shape.
Speaker 1: Today it is much much more difficult.
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