Speaker 1: This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2: A bunch of stuff going on.
Speaker 3: At eleven o'clock, we'll talk about a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: going on in DC today, specifically some of the cabinet
Speaker 3: appointees that are now being confirmed. Senate confirmed RFK Junior
Speaker 3: as Health and Human Services Secretary today. They also confirm
Speaker 3: Brooke Rollins to serve as the Secretary of Agriculture. On
Speaker 3: a seventy two to twenty eight vote, the Judiciary Committee
Speaker 3: voted along party lines to advance the nomination of Cash
Speaker 3: Ptel for FBI Director, and then Linda McMahon. President Trump's
Speaker 3: choice for Education Secretary is undergoing some of her confirmation
Speaker 3: hearings today. New York's Governor Kathy Hochel has postponed a
Speaker 3: meeting that was supposed to take place today with the
Speaker 3: President because the Justice Department revealed it was suing New
Speaker 3: York State over this sanctuary status. Kathy Hokel had planned
Speaker 3: to meet Trump for lunch, but is a rescheduled for
Speaker 3: sometime next week. According to CBS, comes just hours after
Speaker 3: the DOJ sued the entire New York State with a
Speaker 3: lawsuit over its policy of limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Speaker 3: And this is a new sanctuary city I'd never heard
Speaker 3: of before. Worcester, Massachusetts. Worcester, Massachusetts City Council has approved
Speaker 3: a petition to declare the second largest city in Massachusetts
Speaker 3: a sanctuary for transgender and gender diverse people after hearing
Speaker 3: from residents. Footage from the public comments session of this
Speaker 3: week's meeting went viral across social media, clips showing people
Speaker 3: speaking passionately about the need for Worcester to become a
Speaker 3: sanctuary city for transgender people and suggesting that people in
Speaker 3: the administration are Nazis. So there is a sanctuary city
Speaker 3: in Worcester, Massachusetts. Rain, the biggest punch from this storm
Speaker 3: is expected this afternoon, sometimes say between four o'clock and
Speaker 3: nine o'clock for La County. If you get into Orange
Speaker 3: County Inland Empire, in parts south like San Diego County,
Speaker 3: it's going to be shifted a little bit later than that,
Speaker 3: by a couple of hours. But the potential for mudslides
Speaker 3: is serious, to the point that they have called for
Speaker 3: evacuation warnings in several of the burn areas, whether it's
Speaker 3: Palisades fire, the eaten fire over an Altadena and other
Speaker 3: places as well. Now we are expecting an update from
Speaker 3: President Trump at the White House.
Speaker 2: He's holding a news conference.
Speaker 3: One of the things that he's going to talk about
Speaker 3: is some of the work that the Department of Government
Speaker 3: Efficiency has been doing, but also the reciprocal tariffs that
Speaker 3: he had been talking about for the last couple of days.
Speaker 3: So when that happens, we'll bring that to you. But
Speaker 3: Elon Musk was busy today. We've told you about Elon
Speaker 3: Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. He's going in
Speaker 3: and looking for what he calls the worst of government
Speaker 3: waste and fraud and abuse.
Speaker 2: And he was on a video call today to the.
Speaker 3: World Government's summit in Dubai and described the priorities of
Speaker 3: the Trump administration. He actually was using because of the
Speaker 3: way he speaks. It's kind of a stilted a very
Speaker 3: smart guy, but it's kind of a stilted way that
Speaker 3: he uses language. Discussed thermonuclear warfare. He also talked about
Speaker 3: the dangers of artificial intelligence, but got back to a
Speaker 3: theme that he mentioned on Tuesday when he was at
Speaker 3: the Oval office. Remember that the image of him with
Speaker 3: his son standing next to President Trump at the resolute desk.
Speaker 3: He referred to the need for us to actually live
Speaker 3: in a democracy and not a bureaucracy. That when the
Speaker 3: bureaucracy holds all of the power, or an outsized amount
Speaker 3: of the power, we are a bureaucracy and not a democracy.
Speaker 3: He also talked about the need to cut government agencies.
Speaker 3: In fact, use the term delete entire agencies.
Speaker 4: This is roughly four and fifty federal agencies of one
Speaker 4: kind or another. That's more agencies. That's almost that's almost
Speaker 4: an average of two agencies per year since the formation
Speaker 4: of the United States. So, I mean, how many agencies
Speaker 4: do you really need to run a country? I'm ninety nine,
Speaker 4: not four hundred and fifty, that's for sure. It's kind
Speaker 4: of like if leaving a weed, if you don't remove
Speaker 4: the roots of the weed, then it's easy for the
Speaker 4: weed to grow back. But if you remove the roots
Speaker 4: of the weed, it doesn't stop weeds from ever going back,
Speaker 4: but it makes it harder.
Speaker 3: So there has been a lot of discussion about what
Speaker 3: is going on with dose. It seems like at the
Speaker 3: beginning of the week there was security concerns about whether
Speaker 3: or not the computer programmers that he's brought in, these
Speaker 3: coders that are looking through government code, whether it's Department
Speaker 3: of Treasury, Department of Defense, Medicare, Medicaid, any of these
Speaker 3: different agencies. There was concern that those guys were going
Speaker 3: to have access to things like social security numbers, healthcare
Speaker 3: information that should remain private. Pension information for example, that
Speaker 3: should remain private. And there has been concern about it,
Speaker 3: but no evidence that that's actually taking place. And there's
Speaker 3: a difference between the two of them. Yeah, I'd be
Speaker 3: concerned too if I was afraid that these guys had
Speaker 3: access to all of my personal information or my family's
Speaker 3: personal information. But there's no evidence that it's actually happening.
Speaker 3: There's just people saying that it might happen. Another thing
Speaker 3: that he talked about in this meeting today was the
Speaker 3: focus on eliminating DEI work, at one point linking it
Speaker 3: to artificial intelligence. Elon said, if hypothetically artificial intelligence is
Speaker 3: designed for DEI diversity at all costs as the ultimate thing,
Speaker 3: it could decide that there's too many men in power
Speaker 3: and execute them. Now, he's been one of those guys
Speaker 3: who has said AI is an existential threat to the
Speaker 3: survival of humans. He also said he believed that X's
Speaker 3: newly updated AI chatbot because he owned he owns Twitter,
Speaker 3: He's put together an AI chat bought like chatch ept.
Speaker 3: His is called Groc. The newest version of it, GROC three,
Speaker 3: he said, would be ready in about two weeks. He
Speaker 3: said at one point, it's kind of scary. That's not good.
Speaker 3: He also went on to talk about some of the
Speaker 3: business ventures that he's got in Dubai, like the boring company,
Speaker 3: Boring like boring a hole. He announced plans for a
Speaker 3: Dubai loop project, digging tunnels along the company, and then
Speaker 3: a later statement from Dubai's Crown Prince said that they
Speaker 3: are looking at the development of about a ten mile
Speaker 3: underground network of stations that could transport about twenty thousand
Speaker 3: passengers an hour. All of this is, I mean, that's
Speaker 3: all hypothetical, way up high in the sky kind of
Speaker 3: stuff at this point, and a little bit out of character.
Speaker 3: If you're going to be the Department of Government Efficiency,
Speaker 3: be that. Don't be the guy who starts talking about
Speaker 3: your business ventures in Dubai. You got one thing on
Speaker 3: your plate right now. And that's what you should be
Speaker 3: paying attention to. All Right, a little bit more about
Speaker 3: this limestone mind. Did you hear that he talked about
Speaker 3: a limestone mine where the government keeps all of its
Speaker 3: files on retired federal personnel. It's a real thing, and
Speaker 3: everybody is whatever fact checking has gone on has said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: Alon's talking about a real place. We'll talk about that
Speaker 3: limestone mine we come back.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty.
Speaker 3: We will at eleven thirty talk about how AI could
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Speaker 5: Every year about this time we always hear about this
Speaker 5: what we need to do for Valentine's Day. Now we
Speaker 5: have AI telling us.
Speaker 2: What to do.
Speaker 5: You know, we have an organ in our body that
Speaker 5: if we used it maybe we could get somewhere. It's
Speaker 5: called the heart. What does your heart tell you what
Speaker 5: to do? Not your little pea brain or the amount
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Speaker 5: heart guide you. And to quote that famous commentator, take
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Speaker 2: I forgot that one there. Pull up your pants, take
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Speaker 3: Our friend, Kevin Harlan, Okay, So we were talking about
Speaker 3: Elon Musk and the Department of Government efficiency. One of
Speaker 3: the things that he pointed out that he has found.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not a big secret, it's not like
Speaker 3: it was covered up or anything. But one of the
Speaker 3: issues is that there is a limestone mine where the
Speaker 3: federal government keeps hard copies of records of employees who
Speaker 3: have or will be soon retiring there's.
Speaker 4: A limestone mine where we stole all the retirement paperwork.
Speaker 4: This mine looks like something out of the fifties because
Speaker 4: it was started in nineteen fifty five, so it looks
Speaker 4: like it's like a time warp. And then the speed,
Speaker 4: then the limiting factor is the speed at which the
Speaker 4: mind the shaft elevator can move determines how many people
Speaker 4: can retire from the federal from the federal government, and
Speaker 4: the elevator breaks down, and then I set them sometimes
Speaker 4: and then you can't. Nobody can retire. Doesn't that sound crazy.
Speaker 4: There's like a thousand people that work on this.
Speaker 3: He described it as being obviously it's very low tech
Speaker 3: because it's a limestone mine, and they're they're literally carrying
Speaker 3: folders of papers down to this giant filing system.
Speaker 4: Instead of working in a mind shaft and carrying manilla
Speaker 4: envelopes to you know, boxes. In a mind shaft, you
Speaker 4: can do practically anything else, and you would add to
Speaker 4: the goods and services of the United States in a
Speaker 4: more useful way.
Speaker 3: Yes, practically anything else. I mean, think about the digitization
Speaker 3: of that kind of record keeping. And he said that
Speaker 3: they've been trying to since the late eighties digitize all
Speaker 3: of this stuff.
Speaker 2: There's got to be a listen.
Speaker 3: The technology has changed quite a bit in the last
Speaker 3: forty years, and there's got to be a way to
Speaker 3: do this. The mine itself is located in just north
Speaker 3: of Pittsburgh and Butler County. It's called Cherry Township. Is
Speaker 3: the cool is the little place. It's got very cool
Speaker 3: temperatures and low humidity levels inside the mine. That's optimal
Speaker 3: when it comes to preserving items like this. And the
Speaker 3: Government Office of Personnel Management OPM does use Iron Mountain
Speaker 3: is what they call it, to process and store paperwork
Speaker 3: if federal workers retire. And he said the most number
Speaker 3: of people who could retire, possibly in a month, is
Speaker 3: ten thousand. This is what he's said on Tuesday, and
Speaker 3: he asked, why is that?
Speaker 2: Why is that possible?
Speaker 3: I mean, look at the number of people who signed
Speaker 3: up for this deferred retirement thing, this offer of eight
Speaker 3: months of pay. Seventy five thousand people over the course
Speaker 3: of a few days who signed up for this program. Now,
Speaker 3: he said in this news conference on Tuesday, the retirement
Speaker 3: paperwork is manual. It's on paper, it's manually calculated, it's
Speaker 3: written down and then it goes to this limestone mine
Speaker 3: and the speed at which the mind shaft elevator can
Speaker 3: move determines how many people could retire from the federal government. Now,
Speaker 3: there are plenty of people who said they don't actually
Speaker 3: have an elevator. The processing of this retirement paperwork varies
Speaker 3: case by case. No two retirements are the same, and
Speaker 3: it's going to change depending on the agency that they
Speaker 3: worked for, the position, and a bunch of different factors.
Speaker 3: So it's not as easy as saying it's just calculated
Speaker 3: and then stuck in an elevator. And they said that
Speaker 3: it's more than just federal paperwork. There there are treasures
Speaker 3: from they said, priceless treasures. Studios from Hollywood could rent
Speaker 3: out space and store the original master copies of classic movies.
Speaker 3: There are multiple places they can do that. It doesn't
Speaker 3: have to be in this mind but historical photographs, glass negatives,
Speaker 3: they said. There are even things like original recordings by
Speaker 3: Elton John. Businesses organizations also use the affility facility to
Speaker 3: store their digital data on servers that do exist down there.
Speaker 3: So the possibility does exist for the United States Retirement
Speaker 3: the Office of Personnel Management to use a more updated
Speaker 3: system and still do it at Iron Mountain. They don't
Speaker 3: need to sit there with minila folders and shove this
Speaker 3: stuff like they did, like it's, you know, God forbid
Speaker 3: the mid eighties. But it's one of those things that
Speaker 3: he has pointed out that is, yes, we've done it
Speaker 3: this way for a very long time, and yes it's
Speaker 3: possible to continue doing it that way, but just making
Speaker 3: some minor changes could potentially save lots and lots of money.
Speaker 3: So again, President Trump is expected to hold a news
Speaker 3: conference sometime soon from the White House about all of this,
Speaker 3: about reciprocal tariffs that have supposed to be coming up.
Speaker 3: But I figured this is a good day to talk
Speaker 3: about fire because it's kind of far from our minds
Speaker 3: because the amount of rain coming in. But the Army
Speaker 3: Corps of Engineer said that it's not going to order
Speaker 3: soil testing at the sites of the Eton and Palisades
Speaker 3: fire after they've been cleaned up. For one thing, it
Speaker 3: removes a giant hurdle for those people who want to
Speaker 3: get back and start rebuilding their lives in those areas.
Speaker 3: But there are some people who are concerned about the
Speaker 3: lack of soil testing. We'll talk about all of that
Speaker 3: we come back.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty.
Speaker 3: The President's cabinet is being filled out. Specifically, the Senate
Speaker 3: confirmed RFK Junior is Health and Human Services Secretary today
Speaker 3: a he along with Tulsea Gabbard and then Cash Bettel,
Speaker 3: the three considered to be the most tenuous nominations that
Speaker 3: they were not expected to make it through, and at
Speaker 3: least two of the three have. Senate Judiciary Committee did
Speaker 3: vote along party lines to advance the nomination of Cash Betel.
Speaker 2: For FBI directors who he's closer to.
Speaker 3: A confirmation vote, Brooke Rollins is going to serve as
Speaker 3: Secretary of Agriculture. But one of the issues specifically with
Speaker 3: RFK and then also with Telsey gabbertist Director of National Intelligence,
Speaker 3: was Mitch McConnell. Eighty two year old guy, former leader
Speaker 3: of the minority leader when the Democrats had control, but
Speaker 3: also majority leader when his Republicans had control. This guy
Speaker 3: is old as dirt. He's been in a wheelchair in
Speaker 3: the last couple of times. He's the guy that used
Speaker 3: to freeze in these news conferences. He's literally been carried
Speaker 3: from wheelchair to car in the last few days, and
Speaker 3: it looks like he's just flipping double birds at Donald
Speaker 3: Trump on the way out. So we'll talk about what
Speaker 3: Mitch McConnell has been doing, specifically when comes to the
Speaker 3: cabinet picks and trying to but unsuccessfully, trying to put
Speaker 3: a speed bump in front of Trump's administration. So we
Speaker 3: are keeping an eye on the White House. President Trump
Speaker 3: is expected to hold a news conference from the White
Speaker 3: House here pretty soon. Among other things, he's going to
Speaker 3: be signing some executive orders. He's expected to talk about
Speaker 3: elon Musk and doge and also reciprocal tariffs. Well, now's
Speaker 3: as good time as any to talk about the fires
Speaker 3: because we're not worried about the fires today. We are
Speaker 3: worried about the potential for atmospheric river and the storms
Speaker 3: that are coming to bring some mud slides to those areas.
Speaker 2: But speaking of.
Speaker 3: The mud and the dirt that exists in those fire areas,
Speaker 3: the Army Corps of Engineer said that it's not going
Speaker 3: to order soil testing at the properties that have been
Speaker 3: damaged by the Eat and the Palisades fire after they've
Speaker 3: been cleared off by the private federal contractors, which is
Speaker 3: different than what they would do, different than what the
Speaker 3: Army Corp of Engineers is done in the past. They said,
Speaker 3: it's a way this soil testing the safeguard to ensure
Speaker 3: that there's no lingering contamination that's left after the cleanup.
Speaker 3: Federal and state officials have called for soil samples to
Speaker 3: be collected and analyzed at homes and schools cleaned by
Speaker 3: the work crews. It's called conformation sampling is the word
Speaker 3: the term that they use. It's intended to verify that
Speaker 3: the soil at these properties doesn't have any more toxic
Speaker 3: chemicals in it that would be above the state's legal
Speaker 3: limit for cleanup standards. Once the ash and rubble are
Speaker 3: removed along with six inches of topsoil. The standard practice
Speaker 3: is that that's six inches of top soil once it's
Speaker 3: removed from these properties that have burned most of the
Speaker 3: most of the most toxic chemicals would go with that
Speaker 3: top soil and then that's disposed of. But Army Corps
Speaker 3: officials said that taking the six inches of topsoil should
Speaker 3: be enough. They don't need to go back and test
Speaker 3: because it is so commonly believed that that six inch
Speaker 3: top soil removal is enough. At a news conference just yesterday,
Speaker 3: the Army Corps Colonel Eric Swinzon explain this decision. Said,
Speaker 3: the state does when the state does a request for
Speaker 3: direct federal assistance, they make it a FEMA and we
Speaker 3: get brought on to do a specific scope. And so
Speaker 3: these are the limits of what we can do under
Speaker 3: this disaster. And he says, these are our instructions and guidelines,
Speaker 3: and we have to stick to those guidelines. Now, county
Speaker 3: officials have said that that's probably not a great idea.
Speaker 3: They want to make sure that everybody is safe once
Speaker 3: they go back and start to rebuild. Catherine Barger, for example,
Speaker 3: said that we don't want to discount it. We're going
Speaker 3: to have to regroup and figure this one out. The
Speaker 3: executive director of California Communities Against Toxics, Jane Williams, says,
Speaker 3: if you're not willing to do confirmatory test sampling, that
Speaker 3: tells us they're willing to leave the properties contaminated. It
Speaker 3: also means that there is a desire to get back
Speaker 3: to these communities. There's a desire to start the rebuilding
Speaker 3: process as soon as possible because of the danger of
Speaker 3: dragging your feet and yes, you do want to make
Speaker 3: sure that it is safe enough for you to go back.
Speaker 3: As an example, the campfire in twenty eighteen up in Paradise,
Speaker 3: there was a company called Tetra Tech hired to test
Speaker 3: the soil on more than twelve thousand properties. After the
Speaker 3: cleanup cruise did that standard practice removing all the rebbel
Speaker 3: and then taking six inches of top soil, and about
Speaker 3: a third of those properties still had enough toxic chemicals
Speaker 3: in them that they were in excess of the cleanup standards,
Speaker 3: including things like lead and arsenic, And in light of
Speaker 3: the soil testing, workers did go back to those properties,
Speaker 3: in one case as many as five times to dig
Speaker 3: out more contaminated soil so that then they would meet
Speaker 3: the clean up standards set by the state. Without the
Speaker 3: soil testing, the army courses, they will not be going
Speaker 3: back to do any additional soil removal in the Palisades
Speaker 3: fire area or the Eaten fire area. So I mean,
Speaker 3: Barbara Ferrara says, that's a bad idea. So far, about
Speaker 3: seventy three hundred property owners and those two fires have
Speaker 3: filled out the forms to say they seventy three hundred,
Speaker 3: about ninety nine percent of them have opted for the
Speaker 3: Army Corps of Engineer to remove the debris and the
Speaker 3: contaminated soil rather than pay what's probably going to be
Speaker 3: a much more expensive route, albeit quicker, to have a
Speaker 3: private contractor come in and do it. So they've been
Speaker 3: supervising so far as these federal cleanup crews have been
Speaker 3: going in. They have been using excavators. They've been pulling
Speaker 3: large objects. Think about just think about it, the burned
Speaker 3: out cars, the washing machines, the big appliances, the water heaters,
Speaker 3: I mean, all these things that exist in these homes
Speaker 3: that have burned out and are just sitting on these properties.
Speaker 3: So they've tossed the debris into these freight containers. The
Speaker 3: crews that are wearing hazmat suits have been shoveling the
Speaker 3: ash into plastic garbage bags. And then of course they
Speaker 3: go in and, like we said, remove that six inches
Speaker 3: of top soil to try to get rid of most
Speaker 3: of the heavy metals.
Speaker 2: Or other contaminus that would pose a risk.
Speaker 3: But at this point the Army Corps of Engineer is
Speaker 3: not planning on doing it because they're not planning. They
Speaker 3: are going to remove the soil, but they are not
Speaker 3: going to do the testing. Then after that it's just
Speaker 3: it's probably just too much. There's too many properties that
Speaker 3: would be involved with all of it. The other issue
Speaker 3: is we had a brush with catastrophe. There were hundreds
Speaker 3: of jail inmates at a county facility up in the
Speaker 3: Castaic area that may have had to have been evacuated
Speaker 3: at one point during the hues fire that came out
Speaker 3: up near Lake Casteak. That would have been an absolute mess.
Speaker 3: Describe how close we got to just unlock on the
Speaker 3: doors for those guys.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty.
Speaker 3: Is it possible that a human body would able would
Speaker 3: be even able to endure a voyage all the way
Speaker 3: to Mars and back question mark. There's some discussion about
Speaker 3: the limits of space travel and just how far we
Speaker 3: might be able to go, So we'll talk about that
Speaker 3: when we get to Strange Science coming up at twelve thirty.
Speaker 3: Swamp Watch at the top of the hour, more about
Speaker 3: the cabinet picks that are now being implemented and if
Speaker 3: President Trump announces these tariff plans, the Reciprocal Tariff Plan
Speaker 3: and starts a news conference from the White house. The
Speaker 3: expectation was that it was going to be at about
Speaker 3: ten o'clock hour time, it hasn't started yet. Also a
Speaker 3: wellness segment next hour. The difference between running for a
Speaker 3: long time and running fast is there a difference in
Speaker 3: which one is going to be healthier for you. In
Speaker 3: terms of the fires, people are watching the fire areas
Speaker 3: today because of the rain that's going to be coming in.
Speaker 3: This afternoon is when it's going to get pretty heavy.
Speaker 3: The huge fire is the fire that broke out near
Speaker 3: Castaic Lake on January twenty second. You heard it here
Speaker 3: on the show. I don't know why fires start during
Speaker 3: our show, It's just a gift. But the fire started
Speaker 3: about five miles away from the Pitches Detention Center North.
Speaker 3: That's one of four lock up facilities that exists in
Speaker 3: the jail complex up in Castaic, the County Jail complex.
Speaker 3: And as the day went on, it grew quickly to
Speaker 3: five hundred acres to five thousand acres. It came so
Speaker 3: close to the facilities there in the Castaic Jail that
Speaker 3: about forty seven hundred inmates, three hundred guards inside all
Speaker 3: were within the evacuation zone. And what they didn't do
Speaker 3: was evacuate. Sheriff's Department did move a few hundred of
Speaker 3: the inmates from barracks outside not outside, but barracks to
Speaker 3: a sturdier concrete building, and then they were scrambling to
Speaker 3: find or borrow or steal or whatever they were going
Speaker 3: to do more transport buses in the event that they
Speaker 3: needed to organize a large scale evacuation. I mean a bus.
Speaker 3: You've seen those La County buses that are transporting guys
Speaker 3: back and forth A lot of times. I see them
Speaker 3: transporting guys back and forth from the jail complex downtown
Speaker 3: at to downtown LA and other places. A lot of
Speaker 3: those buses were out of commission that day, and at
Speaker 3: one point the flames of the Hughes fire were within
Speaker 3: about a mile of the jail before the wind died
Speaker 3: down before crews were able to fight back. The Sheriff's
Speaker 3: Department did not empty out the jails. They did not evacuate.
Speaker 3: They said after they evaluated the strategic options, the life
Speaker 3: safety risks, the defensible space around the jails, which there
Speaker 3: is plenty, they said it was better for them to
Speaker 3: shelter in place. And they described the Franklin fire, which
Speaker 3: was over in the Malibu area. Just last year, the
Speaker 3: Pepperdine University students, you remember they were told to stay
Speaker 3: on campus, stay take refuge in the library, for example,
Speaker 3: instead of running off campus into the fire, that they
Speaker 3: were safer to stay in the fire resistant buildings like
Speaker 3: the library. The students survived, obviously, the cast take inmates survived, obviously.
Speaker 3: But there are people who really pissed off that this
Speaker 3: didn't have a plan, that the Sheriff's department didn't have
Speaker 3: a plan in the event that the fire got any closer.
Speaker 3: A deputy director of the ACLU's National Prison Project said,
Speaker 3: but for the wind blowing in a different direction, there
Speaker 3: could have been a catastrophe that would have been unrivaled
Speaker 3: in terms of car cereal carcerol car carcerole deaths. And
Speaker 3: she also said this is nothing like Pepperdine. The college
Speaker 3: students are not locked in their dorm rooms by university
Speaker 3: officials like bad guys are when they go to county jail.
Speaker 3: She didn't say the bad guy's part, because she wouldn't.
Speaker 3: The Sheriff's department admits they haven't done any air quality
Speaker 3: testing in the jails, but the air filters that exist
Speaker 3: in the circulation system, the ac HVAC. They have been inspected,
Speaker 3: they have been serviced since the fire. They routinely test
Speaker 3: the water anyway to make sure that it's state guidelines.
Speaker 2: They have to do that. There was the La Times
Speaker 2: talks with one guy who was there. He was carcarole.
Speaker 3: He was justice aligned, no justice involved, that's what he was.
Speaker 3: And he was talking about eleven o'clock that morning. He's
Speaker 3: reading a book. He glances up at the TV and
Speaker 3: the most of the time it's on sports or movies
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 4: The TV.
Speaker 3: He doesn't control the channels, obviously, the guards do. He
Speaker 3: loses in in his book. He takes a shower, sits
Speaker 3: down and waits for lunch. And at one o'clock it's
Speaker 3: a little later than usual, and at that time the
Speaker 3: fires at about five thousand acres. The La County Public
Speaker 3: Defenders Union put out a call at about one o'clock
Speaker 3: that day for the jail to be evacuated. And it
Speaker 3: wasn't until mid afternoon that this inmate and some other
Speaker 3: guys in the dorm caught sight of the fire itself
Speaker 3: on the TV screen, and as soon as they did,
Speaker 3: they start calling out. They start calling home trying to
Speaker 3: get information because apparently they said the guards weren't giving
Speaker 3: them information. As the day went on, more disruptions, commissary
Speaker 3: orders didn't arrive. The smoke was growing thicker in and
Speaker 3: around the buildings nearby. At the high security North County
Speaker 3: Correctional Facility, they said black clouds loomed outside the little
Speaker 3: tiny windows. The jail officials locked down that facility, shut
Speaker 3: down the air circulation system to keep out the smoke.
Speaker 3: Other people started in this is inside the jail. They
Speaker 3: started figuring out, is there any way for us to
Speaker 3: break the windows and get out of here if the
Speaker 3: flames come too close? And rather than evacuating everybody from
Speaker 3: the jails there the four different facilities, they moved more
Speaker 3: people into the concrete areas they were outside of the
Speaker 3: Pitches Detention Center South because those are more exposed, and
Speaker 3: they moved them into the more hardened concrete structures that
Speaker 3: are going to be a lot more fire resistant. And again,
Speaker 3: it's pretty defensible, is the term I would use in
Speaker 3: terms of the spaceists that exists around there.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: They did run into an issue when they were trying
Speaker 3: to beg, steal and borrow whatever buses they could they
Speaker 3: knew that there were going to be a bunch of
Speaker 3: transport buses that were out of commission. It wasn't until
Speaker 3: ten pm, head count that this inmate realized that there
Speaker 3: were going to be no evacuations, and he said, that's
Speaker 3: when I started to worry. What if the building catches
Speaker 3: on fire. A little before midnight he goes to bed.
Speaker 3: He covered his face with an extra shirt to try
Speaker 3: to keep out the smoke, and by the time he
Speaker 3: woke up, obviously the worst of the danger had passed.
Speaker 3: The flames were seated. The Hughes fire, a few days later,
Speaker 3: was fully contained. In the Sheriff's department, they said, in
Speaker 3: the end they were able to find about one hundred buses.
Speaker 3: Some of them were going to be borrowed from neighboring counties,
Speaker 3: whether it's Current County to the north and Tura to
Speaker 3: the west, Orange and Riverside, etc. In San Bernardino, they said,
Speaker 3: the state prison system, the local public transit system also
Speaker 3: had buses that they were willing to offer up this week.
Speaker 3: Said in a budget presentation, the sheriff's officials said they're
Speaker 3: asking the county for eleven million dollars to buy eleven
Speaker 3: more buses next year, in addition to the twenty new
Speaker 3: buses that are covered in the current budget, because at
Speaker 3: this point they've got eighty two buses, but even those
Speaker 3: numbers will not cover the difference between the eighty two
Speaker 3: buses that we're supposed to have in La County and
Speaker 3: the eighty two buses that most of them or a
Speaker 3: lot of them are currently out of commission because they
Speaker 3: need to be worked on.
Speaker 2: But in the end, everybody's fine. There was not a problem.
Speaker 3: They did not have to they did not have to
Speaker 3: evacuate the jail, and the fire itself calmed down, so
Speaker 3: that's good news. In the twelve o'clock hour at twelve twenty,
Speaker 3: rebuilding after these fires is going to be a massive issue,
Speaker 3: and there are at least two recent fires that can
Speaker 3: teach us lessons about how and when we're going to
Speaker 3: be able to rebuild the Palisades area and Altadena after
Speaker 3: the Eaton fire, the Tubs fire out of Santa Rosa
Speaker 3: up in northern California, and then the Maui fires as well.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about those coming up at twelve twenty and
Speaker 3: what lessons we can learn about rebuilding.
Speaker 2: Swamp Watch is on the other side.
Speaker 3: You miss any part of the show, go back and
Speaker 3: check out the podcast anywhere you find your favorite podcast.
Speaker 2: To type in the words Gary and Shannon, We'll be
Speaker 2: right back after this. You've been listening to The Gary
Speaker 2: and Shannon Show.
Speaker 3: You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
Speaker 3: forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
Speaker 3: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.