Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty.
Speaker 2: KFI Handle here on a Monday morning, January thirteenth, as
Speaker 2: a result of the fires. Oh Amy, during the break, Amy,
Speaker 2: you want to correct what's happening that we talked about
Speaker 2: where I think I was wrong.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you were wrong.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think either one of us were wrong.
Speaker 3: We're just clarifying a little bit. We mentioned that the
Speaker 3: red flag warnings are still in effect, so that's the winds.
Speaker 3: The low humidity makes fire danger higher. We've got the
Speaker 3: Santa Ana wins coming in. They're expected to intensify tonight.
Speaker 3: We will have some windy conditions this afternoon. Could see
Speaker 3: gus up to fifty miles prior, but the winds are
Speaker 3: expected to intensify tonight and then be the worst tomorrow
Speaker 3: and Wednesday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from eighty mile an hour winds down to fifty
Speaker 2: mile an hour winds. Obviously it's a better situation, but
Speaker 2: it's still really dangerous, and the fear is that all
Speaker 2: these fires are going to kip kick up again, particularly
Speaker 2: the Palisades fire.
Speaker 1: It's rough, it really is. Hey. One of the stories
Speaker 1: that is coming.
Speaker 2: Out of these fires is the story of private firefighters.
Speaker 2: You can buy insurance that provides private firefighters. You can
Speaker 2: have your own that'll go past the burning building and
Speaker 2: then go to your place of business or your home
Speaker 2: and fight the fire where you are, and you're paying
Speaker 2: for that. Obviously is for the wealthy people, and strangely enough,
Speaker 2: a lot of insurance companies hire private firefighters. As a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, Palisades Village, which is one of these
Speaker 2: outdoor shopping malls owned by Paul Caruso, who ran for mayor.
Speaker 2: He's a billionaire developer. You saw if you were looking
Speaker 2: or a video in it, large water trucks that should
Speaker 2: stood century ready for action. They weren't fighting the fires
Speaker 2: because Palisades Village was being left alone for the most.
Speaker 1: Part, and there they were ready to go.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, private firefighters.
Speaker 1: Is that offensive or not? Well, it gets kind of
Speaker 1: interesting to say the least.
Speaker 2: First of all, a central question is whether the city
Speaker 2: and county fire departments could have used firefighters private firefighters,
Speaker 2: which they don't. The extent of the role of firefighters
Speaker 2: private firefighters still emerging now. When we talk about private firefighters, Okay,
Speaker 2: they bring their own equipment, their own trucks, their own
Speaker 2: water supply in big trucks so as not to use
Speaker 2: any city or county services or equipment. Now they will
Speaker 2: connect to the fire hydrants, and I don't know if
Speaker 2: any of them did. Certainly with low water pressure, it
Speaker 2: didn't have. And they're not allowed to use sirens or
Speaker 2: flashing lights or any insignia on their trucks or equipment
Speaker 2: that looks like they're part of the fire fighting apparatus
Speaker 2: of the city or county. So what ended up happening
Speaker 2: in the Palisades on Friday? Teams of private firefighters were
Speaker 2: riding around in white pickup trucks keeping watch on the
Speaker 2: individual homes that they were to cover under a private contract. Well,
Speaker 2: you know how offensive is that that some people can
Speaker 2: afford private firefighters who ignore streets that were on fire,
Speaker 2: homes that were on fire.
Speaker 1: Well, let me give you.
Speaker 2: Their answer is, first of all, they don't get in
Speaker 2: the way of the city or the county. They are
Speaker 2: protecting homes that the city or county would otherwise be.
Speaker 2: They're putting out their own fires, of their own insured
Speaker 2: And the argument they can help the situation.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's one argument. The other argument is.
Speaker 2: Of course, only the wealthy can afford it. Hey, I
Speaker 2: got news for you.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this.
Speaker 2: Forty five percent of the firefighters in the country are
Speaker 2: private firefighters, and usually it's a matter of fact, they
Speaker 2: don't do much home, especially here in California, because of
Speaker 2: the expense and because of the California rules.
Speaker 1: That they have to bring their own equipment.
Speaker 2: They have to they can't connect with fire hydrants for
Speaker 2: the most part, so they come out and their pumps
Speaker 2: go to swimming.
Speaker 1: Pools or reservoirs.
Speaker 2: And they bring or get their own water, which is
Speaker 2: critical here in this situation because of the story of
Speaker 2: the lower pressure.
Speaker 1: Of the hydrants.
Speaker 2: And how are forty five percent of the fire fighting
Speaker 2: the private contractors are the firefighters. Well, usually they're talking
Speaker 2: about firefighters in the mountainous region where they are.
Speaker 1: Contracted by government to be there.
Speaker 2: Because government firefighters aren't enough out there, and they're the
Speaker 2: municipalities that contract with firefighters. Because they don't have the infrastructure,
Speaker 2: it is easier, it's cheaper to.
Speaker 1: Go to private companies that do this.
Speaker 2: They outsource firefighting because they don't have.
Speaker 1: The infrastructure, the training, the equipment.
Speaker 2: Because it costs a lot of money to create and
Speaker 2: maintain a fire department. So insurance companies also hire them.
Speaker 2: Why because insurance companies are ensuring very high value properties
Speaker 2: and it's cheaper for them to hire these private companies
Speaker 2: that it is to replace the homes or businesses themselves.
Speaker 2: It's just one of those things that just make sense
Speaker 2: financially for the insurance company. For the communities that have
Speaker 2: to hire, I have to outsource.
Speaker 1: And so rich people. Do you know that people that
Speaker 1: are wealthy just do better in life.
Speaker 2: They eat better, they have nicer cars, they have nicer homes.
Speaker 2: They can hire, for example, private security guards. Has anybody
Speaker 2: bitch about that? Where you have these very wealthy homes
Speaker 2: that are gated and you have private security. Private communities
Speaker 2: have better security where they drive. You have security officers,
Speaker 2: their officers, security people driving around their community. So here
Speaker 2: we go. Do they have the right to do that?
Speaker 1: Of course?
Speaker 2: Do the firefighters get in the way of the community firefighters? Well,
Speaker 2: for the most part, no, we have not heard that
Speaker 2: complaint yet. This all came out of that story that
Speaker 2: one of the homeowners in Palisades went to and posted
Speaker 2: a did a post saying, if there are anybody out
Speaker 2: there private firefighters, I will pay any amount of money to.
Speaker 1: Spare my home.
Speaker 2: By the way, do you know whether or not Amy
Speaker 2: that guy's home was spared.
Speaker 1: That story didn't go beyond him posting.
Speaker 3: I do not know.
Speaker 1: I don't think that has been posted. By the way,
Speaker 1: just to let you know what it costs you.
Speaker 2: A two person private firefighting crew with a small truck
Speaker 2: three thousand dollars a day. A larger crew with twenty
Speaker 2: firefighters in four trucks can run to ten thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a day. And most private firms will not deal with homeowners.
Speaker 2: It's either government or insurance companies. I found that fascinating.
Speaker 2: Alex Stone, ABC News correspondent, we have gone to many
Speaker 2: many times. Alex lives in southern California, so he is
Speaker 2: one of us that is dealing with this story, not
Speaker 2: only on a national scale because ABC National Corps respondent.
Speaker 1: But also.
Speaker 2: Right here up close. Alex, Good morning and thanks for
Speaker 2: taking the time. What's the latest from your view?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I think the big headline over the weekend
Speaker 4: was how good everything was looking.
Speaker 1: I spent all day yesterday on.
Speaker 4: The Altadena fire and the Palisades fire was the same thing.
Speaker 4: Where really with the winds that we saw calm down
Speaker 4: over the weekend, and all of this help arriving, and
Speaker 4: I mean we're seeing fire engines from everywhere where you go.
Speaker 4: They drive by and it's got some name of some
Speaker 4: city in Colorado or Texas on the side of any
Speaker 4: where's that And yeah, there's so much help coming in
Speaker 4: that it's really helping out. But we got this next
Speaker 4: cycle to go through here, and not just a red
Speaker 4: flag but a PDS red flag, a particularly dangerous situation
Speaker 4: red flag, which bill they issue those every five to
Speaker 4: ten years. And this will be two in a week,
Speaker 4: three in the last month, I believe, and when the
Speaker 4: other one was up the Malibu fire took off. That
Speaker 4: when they issue these typically we have something bad. This
Speaker 4: will probably be more Ventura Santa Barbara County area. But
Speaker 4: if we get another big fire or two or three
Speaker 4: running with people having to get out of it, it's
Speaker 4: just yeah, they're gonna have to pull resources off of
Speaker 4: Altadena and off of Pacific Palisades and then move them
Speaker 4: up there. It's gonna get really tough, or if it
Speaker 4: flares these back up again. But overall, I mean, the
Speaker 4: devastation is incredible and just neighborhood after neighborhood. But overall
Speaker 4: the fires themselves, there's no real active flame. They look
Speaker 4: pretty good this morning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully they're not going to increase, but the chances
Speaker 2: are pretty good they're going to.
Speaker 1: And a couple things about this fire.
Speaker 2: When you talk about the devastation, you look at photos
Speaker 2: of Hiroshima right after the bombing, or you look at
Speaker 2: photos of neighborhoods in Gaza that have just been decimated.
Speaker 2: That's what it reminds us of. And you think this
Speaker 2: wouldn't happen in anywhere in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: The other interesting part of this story is, as you said,
Speaker 2: the various jurisdictions that are sending in firefighting crews, not
Speaker 2: only Canada, Mexico is bringing in and Zolensky has offered
Speaker 2: to bring in Ukrainian firefighters, which I mean, that's a
Speaker 2: bizarre one. And it's one of those things where I'm
Speaker 2: assuming that the authorities here in southern California saying anybody
Speaker 2: that can help, will take it, please help us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Zelenski's saying that his teams are ready to
Speaker 4: go and that they're ready to come in. You know,
Speaker 4: it is it's unimaginable. When you go and you drive
Speaker 4: through the neighborhoods. We talked to a fire captain yesterday
Speaker 4: who he was in from Bakersfield. He's been a firefighter
Speaker 4: for twenty nine years. He says he's never seen anything
Speaker 4: like this. But at the same time, it is very
Speaker 4: similar to what we saw in Lahina and in Santa
Speaker 4: and in Paradise and in Chico where they had the
Speaker 4: car carr It was the name of it fire a
Speaker 4: number of years ago, where you know it's the strong
Speaker 4: winds that come in and then this is the result
Speaker 4: and those winds, and we were talking about it last week,
Speaker 4: but those winds on Wednesday morning were like something I
Speaker 4: have never experienced. And the one hundred mile an hour
Speaker 4: winds with the flames running in, those people just couldn't
Speaker 4: get out and that's why the number of dead is
Speaker 4: going up right now. It's going to continue to go up. Unfortunately.
Speaker 4: We saw the medical examiner driving around yesterday in the
Speaker 4: neighborhood that we were in, and you kind of stand
Speaker 4: there and wait to see where they're going to pull up.
Speaker 4: And they were checking on some homes down the street
Speaker 4: and firefighters are going through and they're looking for any
Speaker 4: human remains. They're going to be doing that today, but
Speaker 4: just incredible loss. And you got to remember in Altadena,
Speaker 4: it's not Pacific palisades are both terrible, but it's not
Speaker 4: a wealthy enclave. Altadena is bungalow style homes for the
Speaker 4: most part, close together built I would guess maybe nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 4: nineteen fifties. Many of them have the brick fireplaces, the
Speaker 4: older appliances in them, and people have lost everything. It's gone.
Speaker 2: And a couple of stories that we never reported on before,
Speaker 2: and that is as fire crews. I mean that's fairly new,
Speaker 2: the extent and the technology used in aircraft, which is
Speaker 2: obviously a very good thing, and the problem is the
Speaker 2: winds were so high that they couldn't be used for
Speaker 2: a couple of days, and the fire fighters rely on
Speaker 2: aircraft so much as part of the fire fighting policy and.
Speaker 1: How they deal with it. And then these cockroaches with
Speaker 1: the drones.
Speaker 2: Took out one super super Scooper and hopefully that airplane
Speaker 2: is going to come back today. And when drones are
Speaker 2: actually seen, it shuts down the aerial combating of the
Speaker 2: fires completely. I mean, it is crazy and it's what
Speaker 2: is it a misdemeanor or something to fly home.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well maybe not because it's federal. The FBI is
Speaker 4: investigating where that drone they hit the Superscooper came from.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so, first of all, in the air attack,
Speaker 4: not only is it not safe, but when it's blowing
Speaker 4: like that, it's ineffective because the water or the fiery tardant,
Speaker 4: depending on the aircraft, as it comes out, it just
Speaker 4: does a ninety degree turn and goes with the wind.
Speaker 4: It never hits the ground, so they can not only
Speaker 4: are you putting pilots in danger, but when they drop,
Speaker 4: it doesn't do any good. It just blows off and evaporates,
Speaker 4: so they can't drop at that time. But yeah, and
Speaker 4: then you got the looters on top of this, and
Speaker 4: the arrest that Sheriff Luna talked about yesterday. If somebody
Speaker 4: dressed up like a firefighter who was caught. And all
Speaker 4: of these, for the most part, have been people from
Speaker 4: outside of the area who have come in and decided
Speaker 4: this is their time to go in, mainly to evacuated neighborhoods.
Speaker 4: It didn't burn where they can go into homes and
Speaker 4: still find things. Not a lot to find in the
Speaker 4: burned out neighborhoods, but that it's the first time I've
Speaker 4: ever heard of somebody pressing up like a firefighter or
Speaker 4: member of the media, because we have to wear all
Speaker 4: that gear in there as well, so try to blend
Speaker 4: in with all of us who are in there to
Speaker 4: then go and begin to loot.
Speaker 1: All right, Alex, who.
Speaker 2: Is going to be covering this and unfortunately, probably for
Speaker 2: another several days is the fire hopefully doesn't expand and build,
Speaker 2: but it probably is going to Alex.
Speaker 1: Thank you, you got it. Thanks, we'll talk again, all right.
Speaker 2: One of the things that people are wondering and worrying
Speaker 2: about is rebuilding.
Speaker 1: Where we're going to get the money. That's one.
Speaker 2: Governmental help has to be involved. State federal help has
Speaker 2: to come down. And also California and southern California particularly
Speaker 2: has building codes that are completely insane.
Speaker 1: Not codes per se, but environmental rules.
Speaker 2: For example, we have the joys of the Coastal Commission,
Speaker 2: which you have to go through if you're building, and
Speaker 2: if you're building within five miles of the coast, the
Speaker 2: Coastal Commission kicks in and they make it close to
Speaker 2: impossible to build. It can take years between local government
Speaker 2: and the Coastal Commission and near for example, the Santa
Speaker 2: Monica Reserve.
Speaker 1: It is very, very difficult a.
Speaker 2: Developer building a multi story dwelling, dwelling we're talking about
Speaker 2: our multi unit eight units, ten units, it can take.
Speaker 1: Five years to get the permitting. Five years.
Speaker 2: Well, can you imagine taking five years to rebuild the Palisades.
Speaker 2: So what the governor has done is suspending many of
Speaker 2: those rules, the environmental laws for the victims of the fire,
Speaker 2: the homes and the businesses. And so you've got the
Speaker 2: California Quad, the California Environmental Quality Act, California Coastal Act,
Speaker 2: which developers, and that's going to be changed, at least
Speaker 2: for the fires temporarily.
Speaker 1: In terms of rebuilding.
Speaker 2: The governor said, California leaves the nation environmental stewardship. But
Speaker 2: I'm not going to give that up. But what one
Speaker 2: thing I won't give into is delay. Delay is denial
Speaker 2: for people for their lives, traditions, places torn apart, torn asunder. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I got a question is we're at the head of
Speaker 2: environmental protections here in California, which means that there's delay,
Speaker 2: and he won't take delay.
Speaker 1: So something's got to give.
Speaker 2: And the good news is at this point, it looks
Speaker 2: like the environmental rules are going to give simply because
Speaker 2: you've got to rebuild, and the builders, developers, the people
Speaker 2: that are rebuilding their homes, the individuals, it would take
Speaker 2: forever to get the permits and those are going to
Speaker 2: be gone. So waivers of the Environmental Quality Act are happening,
Speaker 2: the Coastal Act waivers are happening, and the developers saying,
Speaker 2: we need that, we need that. So what Newsom says
Speaker 2: is that new permitting rules would allow approvals to be
Speaker 2: issued within thirty days instead of years. And Mayor Karen
Speaker 2: Bass has also acknowledged the problem, and she said that
Speaker 2: the building permitting process which I have gone through is
Speaker 2: kind of crazy. Well, that takes forever, except it's not
Speaker 2: going to anymore. And of course members of the GOP
Speaker 2: now we have the Republicans, including Donald Trump, has said
Speaker 2: that it's mainly Gavin Newsom who's at fault. Wildfire victims
Speaker 2: to deserve much more from Gavin Newsom when his track
Speaker 2: record includes lying about underfunding wildlife prevention. He owes Angelino's
Speaker 2: answers on how he and local Democrat leaders could have
Speaker 2: been so un prepared for these devastating wildfires. So you see,
Speaker 2: it is not really the Santa Ana wins. It's newsome
Speaker 2: and it's the Democratic leaders that in fact were completely
Speaker 2: unprepared by the way we were unprepared.
Speaker 1: And why were we unprepared? Because these fires were so insane.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is on a level that virtually all
Speaker 2: the preparation in the world would not have helped. We
Speaker 2: would have needed thousands more firefighters ready to go, We
Speaker 2: would have needed twice the reservoirs, three times the reservoirs,
Speaker 2: and more aircraft just standing there, sitting there at airports
Speaker 2: ready to fly and attack these fires. And you want
Speaker 2: to know something that wouldn't have helped. When you have
Speaker 2: one hundred mile an hour winds that are moving the
Speaker 2: fire at well not at one hundred miles an hour,
Speaker 2: but certainly moving the fire. I can ask someone about that.
Speaker 2: How quickly does a fire move up a hill when
Speaker 2: the wind is one hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 3: They were saying that it was moving like five football
Speaker 3: fields a minute.
Speaker 1: How do you fight that?
Speaker 2: And you can't put aircraft up because the winds are
Speaker 2: moving at such incredible rates that you have no firefighting
Speaker 2: aircraft available.
Speaker 1: That's it. You're done.
Speaker 2: And yet this, of course is the fault of the
Speaker 2: Democrats who have done this. Okay, And of course President
Speaker 2: Trump is called newsome incompetent by the way. He calls
Speaker 2: him new scum, and he says they should resign. And
Speaker 2: also the President made statements about water being redirected to
Speaker 2: protect small fish.
Speaker 1: That's where the water went during this fire.
Speaker 2: Okay, why not when it's all said and done, By
Speaker 2: the way, that Bill SEQUA was signed into law by
Speaker 2: Governor Ronald Reagan in nineteen seventy and the Coastal LAC
Speaker 2: created the Coastal Commission in nineteen seventy two, so that's
Speaker 2: been going.
Speaker 1: Around for a while, to say the least.
Speaker 2: All right, here, some of the questions that are being
Speaker 2: asked because are a lot of hindsight goes on, and
Speaker 2: that is how come the fire hydrants ran out of pressure?
Speaker 2: Why did they not have water? Well, it's because the
Speaker 2: water systems and the way we fight fires. Never I
Speaker 2: anticipated winds like this one hundred mile an hour guts.
Speaker 2: There isn't enough water on this planet that can be
Speaker 2: put on a fire that would put out something like this.
Speaker 2: It just doesn't happen. So the attacks on the city
Speaker 2: water supply, and by the way, the cities it's not
Speaker 2: just one city water supply, it's many different little jurisdictions
Speaker 2: in addition to the DWP that supply water.
Speaker 1: And what we're finding out.
Speaker 2: The bottom line is that the ability to fight these fires,
Speaker 2: the design of the water system is not made for
Speaker 2: fires that go across entire communities that are spreading light.
Speaker 1: Where the fires are spreading.
Speaker 2: Light wildfire, and so the way our system works is
Speaker 2: single building, small number of buildings where there's plenty of
Speaker 2: water pressure. And even to the point where you've seen
Speaker 2: these large tanks, I mean massive tanks on top of
Speaker 2: hills or on hillsides in various communities. Those are filled
Speaker 2: with water to fight fires. And the water was used
Speaker 2: so quickly and there was so much of it the
Speaker 2: system couldn't just couldn't uphold what was needed.
Speaker 1: They just couldn't meet the need. It's that simple.
Speaker 2: The analogy I make is when we have earthquakes, we
Speaker 2: have codes building codes that are probably the most stringent
Speaker 2: in the world, and we can deal with a Richter
Speaker 2: scale seven point one seven point five that's a pretty
Speaker 2: solid earthquake. If a nine point one or two hits
Speaker 2: our area. By the way, that did happen in Alaska
Speaker 2: in the sixties and I think San Francisco in nineteen
Speaker 2: oh four.
Speaker 1: There's nothing you can do about that. It just doesn't.
Speaker 1: You can't.
Speaker 2: It's just overwhelming. There is no ability to deal with that.
Speaker 2: And that's what happened with this fire. There's simply no ability.
Speaker 2: Had there been more firefighters, had Karen Bass not cut
Speaker 2: seventeen million dollars from the LA Fire Department, it wouldn't
Speaker 2: have done a damn thing on this fire.
Speaker 1: I mean nothing.
Speaker 2: If you're going to fight wildfires of this magnitude, the
Speaker 2: entire system has.
Speaker 1: To be rebuilt.
Speaker 2: We need tons more reservoirs, We need hundreds of firefighters
Speaker 2: ready to go, just ready to go, just sitting there
Speaker 2: aircraft parked. In this case, it would have been at
Speaker 2: van Ey's Airport, just parked, ready to fly. Helicopters just
Speaker 2: sitting there, ready to go. The costs would be astronomical. Now,
Speaker 2: those Superscooper Super Scoopers, those yellow airplanes, and we have
Speaker 2: two of them, one of them taken out by that
Speaker 2: cockroad of a drone operator. Those are leased by La
Speaker 2: County and they do are parked at Vannay's airport during
Speaker 2: the entire fire season, which of course now is every minute.
Speaker 2: And it's a Quebec company that does this, Montreal Quebec Montreal.
Speaker 2: They fly in and those are parked at van Ey's
Speaker 2: and usually they're enough to do the job. The new
Speaker 2: philosophy of firefighting is that even a small fire is
Speaker 2: immediately attacked by aircraft and ground crew so it doesn't
Speaker 2: go that's sort of a brand new philosophy that was
Speaker 2: developed the last few years. But even with all of that,
Speaker 2: if that were happening, this fire would not have been
Speaker 2: put out, not with wind like this, not with this event.
Speaker 2: I mean, we knew two three days in advance it
Speaker 2: was going to be a life threatening red flag warning situation.
Speaker 1: It was going to happen.
Speaker 2: And of course when it's this scary, arsonists come out.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine arsonists dealing with this? And you've got
Speaker 2: it this point, twenty four people dead, fifty billion in damage,
Speaker 2: thousands of people losing everything, they have everything, and you've
Speaker 2: got some guy who is starting a fire and they
Speaker 2: don't know, they think most of it is arson.
Speaker 1: And then they're looking at the water, the power people,
Speaker 1: was it a power line that fell during the wind
Speaker 1: and ignited a fire. What was that?
Speaker 2: Just heard yesterday that eighty five percent of the wildfires
Speaker 2: are caught are man made, either by arson or by negligence,
Speaker 2: a campfire, a cigarette, Even a couple of them were
Speaker 2: mufflers that were hitting the ground. You ever seen a
Speaker 2: car with a muffler hitting around? You see the sparks
Speaker 2: flying off, even those All right, this is KFI.
Speaker 1: I am six point forty. You've been listening to the
Speaker 1: Bill Handle Show.
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