March 4, 2025 • 30 mins
2021 marked the premiere of Lucy Walker’s documentary film “Bring Your Own Brigade” which unpacked the catastrophic California wildfires of 2018, The Camp Fire and The Woolsey Fire. Now four years after the film was released, Southern California recently experienced even more devastating wildfires in January 2025. The most damaging fires were the Eaton Fire and the Palisades Fire. For Lucy Walker, history is repeating itself at an even larger scale and her 2021 film is even more relevant today. It’s a traumatic revisiting of difficult subject matter, and here Lucy shares what she has learned about wildfires since making her film and what she thinks can be done to prevent wildfires from becoming even more catastrophic.
Listen to Alec’s 2021 conversation with Lucy Walker here.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
the Thing from iHeart Radio. In twenty twenty one, I
spoke with documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker about her film Bringing
Your Own Brigade, which focuses on the two La wildfires
in twenty eighteen, the Campfire, which nearly destroyed the town
(00:23):
of Paradise and killed eighty five people, and the Woolsey Fire,
which erupted on the same day and destroyed large parts
of Malibu. At the time, those wildfires were the largest
in California's history. You can find a link to that
conversation with Lucy Walker in the show notes of this episode.
In January of this year, Los Angeles suffered more devastation
(00:46):
from out of control wildfires that destroyed the Pacific Palisades
areas of Altadena and killed twenty nine people. Incredibly, the
recent fires eclipsed the size and devastation of the two.
I was eighteen disaster and have left all of Los
Angeles in mourning. I asked Lucy Walker to join me
(01:06):
again to see how she's doing and to ask if
anything can be done to try to prevent this part
of the country from burning so predictably on a regular basis.
For Walker, it's been a traumatic revisiting of recent history.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It was horrifying watching it happen to my friends in
my town and knowing so much but feeling so powerless
to stop it. And that was such a terrifying couple
of days. And I was supposed to go I was
here when it happened, and then I had to go
straight to New York and go straight to an award show.
I was supposed to be on stage, and I actually
felt so panicked and upset I actually couldn't go on stage.
(01:44):
It really was such an upsetting time to be in
Los Angeles, and for everyone who loves the city and
who has friends involved.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
In your film, bringing your own brigade, and you see,
of course that infamous section where they bring in the
advisor and they give them the very simple boilerplate of
things they needed to do to likely avoid at least
that level of severity again, and they refuse. What did
you understand was the reason why did they refuse? I mean,
(02:11):
it was something as vital as that. What was that
element of human nature as far as you were concerned.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, I think the simple answer is that you know
The fabulous thing about this country and what I chose
to immigrate from the UK, is that this is a
country of people striking out on their own and doing
their own thing and not sort of bound by old
community sort of get togethers, and really excited to kind
(02:37):
of progress and do their own thing. And the bad
news about that is when you try to get people
together to kind of rain in their individuality and you know,
for example, not have fammable plants, you know, three feet
from the house, or not have gutters or something like
that which are kind of low cost or no cost
anti fire measures, the instinctive reaction is I don't want
(02:59):
to be told what to do. But I think there's
a deeper issue, which is that the fire issue is
really counterintuitive. I went in such a learning journey when
I made the movie, and it wasn't intuitive. You know.
It's so when I've watched my dear beloved friends go
through this, it's so obvious that it's the fault of
the firefighters, or the fault of the water or the
(03:20):
mayor or something like that, right, the evacuation system. And
yet it's really hard to take in this bigger picture
because it is a layered story. Yes, it's climate change,
but it's also where we're building, and it's also how
we're building, and it's just kind of a complicated picture.
And you know, I've seen the same sort of things
(03:41):
kick in with my smart friends here in Los Angeles,
sort of seeing a part of the picture very clearly,
but not the whole picture. And so I really was
so grateful through this that I'd had financiers and colleagues
when I was making my film that actually supported me
to go on this kind of hard journey of finding
out the whole story because it's inconvenient and it's complicated.
(04:05):
But now in a situation like this, this is exactly
why I made the film with all the rigor and
work so so hard, and our team worked so hard
because I wanted, I felt a responsibility to get it right.
I felt like lives are at stake, homes are at stake,
and I felt like if I didn't get it right,
it would you know, I don't want to be grand
(04:27):
and said in danger lives, but I really felt like, gosh,
I just want to get the story right so that
people can understand, because it isn't easy to I knew
for myself when I started making the film, I had
this naive I did just put out the fires and
another simple idea, Oh it must be just climate change,
And neither of them are quite true and understanding now
as I do when I looked at the fire in
(04:48):
Los Angeles and all the dreadful things that have happened,
if you understand what's going on, I can understand everything
that's happened in this dreadful last few weeks. I can
see when someone opens their mouth, I can almost tell
you what they're going to say, because I know this
story so well, and I think it's hopefully going to
be a real resource and help to people that if
(05:08):
they do watch the film. I think it is hopefully
clear information that really gives you a three sixty picture.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
When I live there, I got absorbed in southern California living,
and when you told me this happened in this area
of this can't be true, so much of it being gone,
and I'm wondering, do you think these people will be
different from the people in the campfire and they'll adhere
to some new code of how that might be restored.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I've been reflecting deeply on this and have some absolutely
some of my favorite closest friends who've lost their homes
and their animals and of their kids' schools and just
so profoundly impacted. And I'm hearing something a little bit different.
And I guess my prayer is that this is an
(05:59):
opportunity for some really well informed and well resourced people
to have this hard, hard conversation that I do believe
we're going to have to have sort of one way
or the other. This conversation is pressing up against us,
is are we going to do something a little bit differently,
Because I do think that the fundamental proposition of living
(06:21):
in the wildland urban interface in Los Angeles and perhaps
more broadly in California has changed. And part of that
is going to be the insurance companies, which in the
short term are going to be prevented from pulling out
and changing coverage and things like that. But I don't
think that's going to last very long. I don't think
you can kind of force insurance companies to, you know, expose.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Themselves for these changes for risks for them.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, it's a change of circumstances and it's been kind
of creeping up, but I think this has really changed
things with the amount of money, and yeah, so I
think that the hope is that we will have less
of these in future, and we might build back smarter
and have opportunities to live in a way that will
(07:09):
have less of these just devastations moving forward, because it's
not just I can't even say it's not just because
we're just in the middle of this horrific shock where
it seems so overwhelming and everything that we've lost. But
we've lost animals, we've lost homes, all my neighborhoods.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
If people only knew that area how it is, I
mean California living among many things involved. You know, if
you've got two acres and a paddock in a Goa
or North Hills, you've got a horse, you know, people,
animals or a big part of people's lives out there
because of the weather in a way they can't be
other places.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Exactly. It's not just that people have lost so much
in the short term. In the long term, it's also
these neighborhoods are not going to go back quickly. The
trauma can really last a long time. People have health
impacts actually after, you know, because you imagine the shock
and the stress of being homeless and finding new places
(08:04):
and moving around and just having to cope. You know,
will continue to see people have health problems that are
not actually they won't be traced to the fire. But
I remember, you know, to be absolutely brutal about it,
but let me say that two of the people I
was following in the aftermath of the Paradise fire died
of causes that you wouldn't recognize connected with the fire
(08:28):
in the year following as we kept filming heart attacks
in particular stress from the stress. Absolutely, you can never
kind of pin those things, right, but it did seem
like a lot of people, you know, it makes absolute sense, right.
So the thing I've been really praying is that the
people impacted can really try to sort of really take
care of their health and really prioritize just trying to
(08:49):
recover themselves because it's kind of a long haul.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Filmmaker Lucy Walker. Listen to our twenty twenty one conversation
for more in depth discussion about the LA fires and
Walker's documentary film, Bring Your Own Brigade. The title is
a reference to wealthy residents who hire their own private
firefighters to protect property during wildfires.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
What I want to understand is, well, how are we
stopping it, and why are people living in these areas
and building these houses that burn over and over and
over again. Could we do better? So you would think
that when people look at developing an area for housing,
they would think about fire safety, but nobody's actually thinking about,
(09:38):
well are they going to be able to ensure these
homes and who's going to pay if these homes burn down.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
To hear more of my conversation with Lucy Walker, go
to Here's Thething dot org. After the break, Lucy Walker
details why she believes residents who choose to rebuild in
fire prone areas are taking on enormous risk to both
their financial stability and their lives. I'm Alec Baldwin, and
(10:14):
this is Here's the Thing. I first spoke with filmmaker
Lucy Walker in twenty twenty one. I was curious if
she stayed in touch with any of the subjects that
she was acquainted with while making her film.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, I absolutely. The film came out and it really
followed not just the fires, and it sort of talked
about fires in general and actually, if anything, it was
specific about could Los Angeles burn? Because that's where I
live and that was my sort of naive question that
I kind of sparked the conversation into the movie with.
But the Fire looked at those twin events that happened
in November twenty eighteen, but it didn't come out till
(10:49):
twenty twenty one, so I was filming a couple of
years after the events and put that in the movie.
But actually, you get really close with people when you
film with them, so I have absolutely kept in touch.
And it's a really slow journey back, and these neighborhoods
don't recover all at once. And what we're seeing now
is people have to live or make that decision, and
it's toxic for a very long time, and these are
(11:12):
going to be very slow, hard decisions about building. And
then it's a very slow process.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So what's it like there now in your campfire area?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
In the campfire area, it's coming back in that neighborhood.
The spirit was just rebuild back as fast as possible.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
In the same exact way.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yes, there's a strange thing that happens where real estate
goes up. They call it fire gentrification because you get
a lot of displaced people and so it's kind of
like things actually kind of escalate. What cuts off this
is the insurance. What people are up against is that
the insurance companies are really pulling out of these areas.
(11:49):
And there is this thing called the California Fair Plan,
which is, you know, the state gives you this option
of getting very expensive and very restrictive. You have to
sort of trim and do certain things to get your
fire insurance. But it does give people a backup option
to get insurance rather than not be insured at all.
But it's increasingly true that I think in that area
people are choosing to go without insurance. And of course
(12:12):
going without insurance is a nice affordable strategy until it
all goes wrong. I think some people there are individually
choosing to build back in a more fire safe way.
And what we've seen as these stories have emerged from
these New Los Angeles fires is there are stories that
the home that was fire hardened has survived. Now that's
not fool proof. My understanding is that even if you
(12:34):
have a far hardened home, it's not sort of impossible
that it'll burn, but it's way less likely. And so
I think these stories they did get through to some
people in Paradise, and some people did build back in
a more sort of hardened way, and they had a
fire that came through already I think it was two
summers ago, and they managed to put it out so
it wasn't a huge, uncontrollable one, but that area is
(12:58):
likely to burn again very soon.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Again. I'm very curious also as to what comes back afterward,
where the campfire people were like, well, no, we don't
want to change a thing. And I'm wondering, do we
wind up in a situation where you almost have to
have an AI capacity to develop what the next palisades
will be? Like the road you drove up to go
to your house, that road doesn't exist anymore. Do they
(13:21):
replan the whole thing, every square foot of it as
to access density, vegetation, building materials. This is an opportunity
to have, like an almost lab experiment. Do you agree absolutely?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
What the movie showed was that the town leadership, the
town council, and the firefighters in that town in Paradise leadership,
the firefighters in the town, and all the organizations involved
really came together and had this really good process of
imagining how they could rebuild back differently and presenting it
(13:58):
to the town, and the town actually voted it down.
The town pressured the town council to vote down these
initiatives one by one, which was very disheartening to watch.
In the movie, however, they did have that dream. But
I think that exactly what you've described will happen in
these areas in Los Angeles that I think that people
are going to come together and say, how can we
do it a little bit differently? And I don't think
(14:20):
it'll be as radical as in the movie. There's a
section where Mike Davis, who's since passed away but wrote
a lot about fires, and he talks in the movie
about how when Los Angeles was designed, the most famous
sort of town planners of Los Angeles were these guys
called the Olmsted Brothers, and their vision was that these
(14:41):
areas that were burned repeatedly, such as Malibu, but that
were so beautiful that we wanted to be there, let's
be there, but let's only build sort of carefree cabins
where we can let it things burn, not keep our
great treasures there and not sort of disposable homes and
to enjoy for as long as they might be there.
(15:01):
But if the winds line up and the rains haven't come,
just get out of the way and let nature take
care of cleaning up, and then come back and build
another cabin again once that's past. And of course that's
not what we've done. These areas are so beautiful. We've
built these absolute palaces of homes within great artworks and
so forth there, and then of course we get terribly attached.
(15:22):
And then we've got also all this fantastic you know,
shrubberry and all these quite flammable plants and other flammable stuff,
and so we've kind of built up this huge problem
for ourselves. But I think now there is sort of
a blank slate about how we come back. I don't
expect that we'll get the carefree cabins, but I do
hold out hope that there will be positive conversation about
(15:45):
doing things a little bit differently so that we don't
have our hearts broken to this extent.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Again, at what point, in terms of public policy, to
people in every area like this, if you're building in
flood zones and the East Coast, and you're building in
fire zones on the West coast, how much do you
say to people you're on your own. You're going to
have to take care of all your costs, no insurance,
don't ask the federal government to come in and you know,
save your neighborhood the more important. Yes, save it on
(16:12):
a safety level, but not to pay for it to
rebuild it.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
That's right. One thing that I heard from people, particularly
in Paradise, I think because it is this quite rugged,
anti big government area, was like, Oh, we don't want
to pay taxes, we don't want government. What does government
give us? But in the same conversation they say, oh,
I'm waiting for my FEMA money. I wish my FEMA
money was more, and not making that connection that FEMA
(16:38):
was a great gift of the government really and that
is what government can provide. And yet what is that
question about wanting to sort of pay into this kind
of common resource and pay out, you know. And now
we're dealing with insurance, it's like, well, this is a
very expensive incident. And moving forward, now that we are
(16:59):
starting to know more, are other policyholders who live in
safer areas going to want to subsidize these homes in
less dangerous areas? And are insurer is going to be
able to even afford to ensure homes in safer areas
if they keep being exposed to these incidents in more
dangerous areas. What I hope, and maybe that sounds naive
of me, but what I hope is that people can
(17:20):
be really helped through this really complicated change because it's
really not intuitive, and it's really new, and we love
these areas. I mean, what a gorgeous landscape, and it
is heartbreaking to think that we're not safe in this
place that we think of as the most beautiful home, imaginable,
full of nature and inspiration. And to sort of really
(17:44):
fundamentally change our relationship with how we think about risk there.
We're not very good at that human beings, and that's
before you add in commercial pressures like the realtors. I
remember I started out my project, as I remember telling you,
during the terrible months slides in Montecito and the terrible
what was at the time the worst fire in California,
(18:04):
which was the Thomas Fire around the Santa Barbara and
Ohai area. I had a shocking experience during that when
I saw a realtor selling the property to a new
customer who wasn't aware that the previous residents had been
killed in this mud slide and this property was really
where it was situated geographically because of the potential for
(18:27):
slides in certain you know, Santa Barbara being under very
steep sort of mountains that go down to the ocean,
and that after a fire, these hillsides can really collapse
in quite predictable sort of places. And so this property
was really very dangerous.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Boulders sliding down hills.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Absolutely, yes, exactly, it does have these predictable slides. After
the vegetation that kind of holds the hillside together gets
burned off when the rains come, the boulders can kind
of get loose and really land on houses and sweep
them all the way down to the ocean. It's absolutely horrifying.
So I think that the way they're kind of you know,
(19:05):
the way that it all works because people have property
values and they want to keep things going. And obviously
everyone understandably is in this. But I think that we're
going to need some help, you know, so that individuals
are helped who are involved and impacted to really get
with this new reality that there are really dangerous places
to live that unfortunately the risk is perhaps just too
(19:27):
high now and too expensive to live in the way
that they might want to live right there. And there's
also another problem but the other opposite end of the
economic spectrum, which is it's not just the well resourced
people who have this choice of living in this most
spectacular part of Los Angeles, that's the hilly part that's
very far prone. It's also true that the cheaper areas
(19:48):
that California is building into, and not just California, you know,
looking at other states too. It's not just California, many
states and Canada and Maui and other countries certainly, especially
in Mediterranean countries, are really being impacted by these increasing fires.
So what we're seeing is that actually affordable housing further
(20:10):
out of town is also being built in these areas
that are hilly and fire prone. This wildland urban interface.
And we saw for example during COVID, where a lot
of people were moving further out of the cities into
places with more space, they were almost all moving into
these areas that are very fire prone. So you've kind
of got more rich people living in these spectacular areas
(20:31):
that are fire prone, and you've also got a lot
of people who are much less wealthy. For example, Paradise
communities or some of the communities that are much further
out of Los Angeles where a lot of the more
affordable homes are being built, and developers are building huge
amounts of homes there because there's a lot of people
that want homes in California. But unfortunately that development is
into exactly the areas that might be affordable now but
(20:55):
aren't going to be ensurable and are really prone to
burning soon. So I really hope that we can get
our heads around this, because unfortunately the fires are not.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Going to stop. Filmmaker Lucy Walker. If you're enjoying this conversation,
tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the
Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts. When we come back, Lucy Walker discusses the
most recent devastation to befall Los Angeles and why she
(21:27):
feels the twenty twenty five fires feel like LA's own
nine to eleven. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Here's the Thing. After the most recent twenty twenty five
(21:48):
fires devastated huge parts of Greater Los Angeles, I was
curious how individual communities had been impacted. I asked Lucy
Walker if she's noticed they shared sense of grief among
residents across LA.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
I have never felt this city more united and that
spirit of nine to eleven. Actually it was ironic because
sort of after the fires, I had to go to
New York for this awards show and they gave me
hotel room number nine to eleven, and I looked at
them and I thought, that is exactly what I feel like.
This is Los Angeles is nine to eleven. And what's beautiful,
(22:25):
I do think, and may it last, is this really
open hearted feeling of just infinite kindness and compassion for
those caught up in it. So many people affected, so
many people know, so many people affected. It's absolutely overwhelming.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Almost like everybody knows somebody. Are you on the east
side of the West side.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I'm in sort of southern Santa Monica on the Venice
border and an area I never thought could burn Ocean flats. Yes,
I'm exactly in Ocean Park, So I'm a good sort
of five miles from where the far perimeter in the
Palisades was. But my experience that first night when the
fires erupted and I'd been watching them, and I'd been
(23:06):
like five hours ahead of the news because I was
looking at the winds and I knew what we're up
against and nobody could get planes in the air to
see it. But just from following X and radio traffic
and looking at the winds, and I just knew what
I was looking at, and my firefighter friends just this
horrifying feeling of knowing what we were in for and
(23:29):
watching an unfold. But there was this moment that night
when I looked out of my window and it was
orange and I smelled smoke, and the wind was knocking
you flat if you walked outside your door. And I
found myself for the first time in that position of thinking,
oh grief, I'm going to have to figure out what
I need to take. And I am in the opposite.
If there was an area in Los Angeles that would
(23:50):
be the lowest fire risk, that's where I live. And
I'm a good you know, four or five miles from
the hills here, and yet even here because these sort
of ember driven windstorm type events, you know, once those
embers get going and those kinds of winds, you know,
there's kind of no stopping it. And I was sort
of paranoid and traumatized to sort of be afraid of thinking.
(24:11):
I didn't really think it would get this far, because
if it got this far, you know, it'd been sort
of the whole city would have been at risk, but
to actually have to go through for the first time,
for myself that situation, and I think most people in
Los Angeles had that experience, was like, oh God, could
it get here? And how many people do I know?
And so many people have friends living with them now
(24:34):
who are helping people. So many people have stepped into
that role. And that's obviously what's beautiful about these disasters,
and that my prayer is that there are gifts in
this for people. And I did film people not just
during the fires and the immediate horrific aftermath, but on
the long term for the next couple of years following,
(24:55):
and have kept following up with them even since filming.
And the beautiful thing of course humans being resilient. You know,
our movie ends with the wedding of two people who
would not have come together had it not been for
their fire. And so I hope that there will be
gifts in this, even for the people that at this
point just feel so overwhelmed with the grief of what
they've lost.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Are people out there are their beliefs that the power
authority was indeed involved in this in terms of the
arcing and the where the origin of the fire was.
Do they think that that might be a suspect? Is
that still being discussed.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I think that it does seem like that's being discussed.
And I will say from my observations is that the
learnings about, you know, what causes the fires and what
went wrong, sometimes they're really slow to come out, and
that can be frustrating for people who you know, in
their anger and grief, very natural, but you know, the
(25:50):
impulse is to point fingers sooner. And what I've observed
is that the firefighters and especially are very good at
being incredibly accountable and responsible, and even when it's tough
to sort of realize mistakes were made and to discuss failings,
they do it unflinchingly, and they do it because their
(26:12):
own lives are at stake.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
I'm not even referring to the fire. I'm talking about
the electric company.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
The electric companies are slower. I would say, to get
into it, but I hope that it does seem like
the story, even with the electric companies, is that they
will be held to the fire. I guess can I
use that pun I do think that you know, it
does seem like people are going through the evidence pretty thoroughly.
The one thing that I'll say that's kind of a
(26:36):
bigger point, though, is that things will burn even if
we had no electric companies, no matter what you do,
no matter what you do. When the European the first
European boat sailed up to the coast of Los Angeles,
and it's kind of how I opened my movie. It
was on fire. They called it the Bay of Smoke
because it was a fire. Now, there weren't any electric
(26:57):
companies here when the Europeans first sales out. Obviously that
would have been a lightning strike probably right.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
It's meant to burn.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
It's meant to burn. It is a fire landscape, whether
it's a firework or a cigarette butt, or just the
way that the sun magnifies through somebody's discarded glasses. You know,
there's a gender reveal party that winds up setting a
big at fire and killing somebody that we show in
the movie, And so there's always going to be something.
And the other thing that I observed, which is kind
(27:25):
of hard to get your brain around, but true, is
that it's a disaster and things are going to go wrong,
and that might be a water reservoir, or it might
be an evacuation system. It might be a bad call
that in retrospect turned out to be not the right one,
but was made under juress by a firefighter who had
to just go one way or the other in the
moment and has to make decisions that in our jobs,
(27:47):
you know, I'm not faced with those kind of life
and death decisions in the course of my work. Right,
So it's a disaster, and things will sometimes go awry
even when they're pretty well set up. And ironically, they
had a really robust evacuation plan that they'd worked on
and rehearsed that you kind of if the fire hadn't
come through and killed eighty six people, you would have
(28:09):
textbooks and they'd point at paradise and say they were
well prepared. But things go wrong. That's actually the nature
of accidents and disasters. And so I sort of had
this bigger picture where, yes, there's going to be failings,
Yes we definitely need to learn from them, but we
also perhaps need to face into the very challenging reality.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Do you have animals.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I don't because I travel the time as a documentary
because but I love animals, and my heart's been absolutely
broken for my friends that have lost their animals, but
I feel lucky to be surrounded by these people with
great spirit. I was just at physical therapy and I
saw a friend of mine who lost everything in the
Palisades and has three kids and has this great stoic attitude,
(28:51):
you know. But he said to me, I don't think
we're going to rebuild in the Palisades. I kind of
like Venice now. I don't think we can do it
the same way anymore. And I do think that this
could be the moment which when my film came out
in twenty twenty one, I don't think we were there yet,
but I think this episode has been so hallacious. I'm
(29:13):
really glad for you for having the vision to have
this conversation four years ago and then to revisit it now.
And I think more people may be actually looking for
this kind of information and conversation, and it may be
time to have a conversation that we really don't want
to have. And I get it, but I think that
we will be better off the sooner that we can
get our heads around it.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
My thoughts are with you and stay safe.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
I'm so grateful for this outpouring of love for Los
Angeles and for you for highlighting the hopefully good information
that the film contains. And it's really that's the sweetest
thing about this is to feel your support and I
really really appreciate doing this.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Thank you. My thanks to Lucy Walker. Her documentary about
the California wildfires, Bring Your Own Brigade, is streaming on
Paramount Plus. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in
New York City. Were produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice,
(30:08):
and Victoria De Martin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial and
our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
the Thing from iHeart Radio. In twenty twenty one, I
spoke with documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker about her film Bringing
Your Own Brigade, which focuses on the two La wildfires
in twenty eighteen, the Campfire, which nearly destroyed the town
(00:23):
of Paradise and killed eighty five people, and the Woolsey Fire,
which erupted on the same day and destroyed large parts
of Malibu. At the time, those wildfires were the largest
in California's history. You can find a link to that
conversation with Lucy Walker in the show notes of this episode.
In January of this year, Los Angeles suffered more devastation
(00:46):
from out of control wildfires that destroyed the Pacific Palisades
areas of Altadena and killed twenty nine people. Incredibly, the
recent fires eclipsed the size and devastation of the two.
I was eighteen disaster and have left all of Los
Angeles in mourning. I asked Lucy Walker to join me
(01:06):
again to see how she's doing and to ask if
anything can be done to try to prevent this part
of the country from burning so predictably on a regular basis.
For Walker, it's been a traumatic revisiting of recent history.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It was horrifying watching it happen to my friends in
my town and knowing so much but feeling so powerless
to stop it. And that was such a terrifying couple
of days. And I was supposed to go I was
here when it happened, and then I had to go
straight to New York and go straight to an award show.
I was supposed to be on stage, and I actually
felt so panicked and upset I actually couldn't go on stage.
(01:44):
It really was such an upsetting time to be in
Los Angeles, and for everyone who loves the city and
who has friends involved.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
In your film, bringing your own brigade, and you see,
of course that infamous section where they bring in the
advisor and they give them the very simple boilerplate of
things they needed to do to likely avoid at least
that level of severity again, and they refuse. What did
you understand was the reason why did they refuse? I mean,
(02:11):
it was something as vital as that. What was that
element of human nature as far as you were concerned.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, I think the simple answer is that you know
The fabulous thing about this country and what I chose
to immigrate from the UK, is that this is a
country of people striking out on their own and doing
their own thing and not sort of bound by old
community sort of get togethers, and really excited to kind
(02:37):
of progress and do their own thing. And the bad
news about that is when you try to get people
together to kind of rain in their individuality and you know,
for example, not have fammable plants, you know, three feet
from the house, or not have gutters or something like
that which are kind of low cost or no cost
anti fire measures, the instinctive reaction is I don't want
(02:59):
to be told what to do. But I think there's
a deeper issue, which is that the fire issue is
really counterintuitive. I went in such a learning journey when
I made the movie, and it wasn't intuitive. You know.
It's so when I've watched my dear beloved friends go
through this, it's so obvious that it's the fault of
the firefighters, or the fault of the water or the
(03:20):
mayor or something like that, right, the evacuation system. And
yet it's really hard to take in this bigger picture
because it is a layered story. Yes, it's climate change,
but it's also where we're building, and it's also how
we're building, and it's just kind of a complicated picture.
And you know, I've seen the same sort of things
(03:41):
kick in with my smart friends here in Los Angeles,
sort of seeing a part of the picture very clearly,
but not the whole picture. And so I really was
so grateful through this that I'd had financiers and colleagues
when I was making my film that actually supported me
to go on this kind of hard journey of finding
out the whole story because it's inconvenient and it's complicated.
(04:05):
But now in a situation like this, this is exactly
why I made the film with all the rigor and
work so so hard, and our team worked so hard
because I wanted, I felt a responsibility to get it right.
I felt like lives are at stake, homes are at stake,
and I felt like if I didn't get it right,
it would you know, I don't want to be grand
(04:27):
and said in danger lives, but I really felt like, gosh,
I just want to get the story right so that
people can understand, because it isn't easy to I knew
for myself when I started making the film, I had
this naive I did just put out the fires and
another simple idea, Oh it must be just climate change,
And neither of them are quite true and understanding now
as I do when I looked at the fire in
(04:48):
Los Angeles and all the dreadful things that have happened,
if you understand what's going on, I can understand everything
that's happened in this dreadful last few weeks. I can
see when someone opens their mouth, I can almost tell
you what they're going to say, because I know this
story so well, and I think it's hopefully going to
be a real resource and help to people that if
(05:08):
they do watch the film. I think it is hopefully
clear information that really gives you a three sixty picture.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
When I live there, I got absorbed in southern California living,
and when you told me this happened in this area
of this can't be true, so much of it being gone,
and I'm wondering, do you think these people will be
different from the people in the campfire and they'll adhere
to some new code of how that might be restored.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I've been reflecting deeply on this and have some absolutely
some of my favorite closest friends who've lost their homes
and their animals and of their kids' schools and just
so profoundly impacted. And I'm hearing something a little bit different.
And I guess my prayer is that this is an
(05:59):
opportunity for some really well informed and well resourced people
to have this hard, hard conversation that I do believe
we're going to have to have sort of one way
or the other. This conversation is pressing up against us,
is are we going to do something a little bit differently,
Because I do think that the fundamental proposition of living
(06:21):
in the wildland urban interface in Los Angeles and perhaps
more broadly in California has changed. And part of that
is going to be the insurance companies, which in the
short term are going to be prevented from pulling out
and changing coverage and things like that. But I don't
think that's going to last very long. I don't think
you can kind of force insurance companies to, you know, expose.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Themselves for these changes for risks for them.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, it's a change of circumstances and it's been kind
of creeping up, but I think this has really changed
things with the amount of money, and yeah, so I
think that the hope is that we will have less
of these in future, and we might build back smarter
and have opportunities to live in a way that will
(07:09):
have less of these just devastations moving forward, because it's
not just I can't even say it's not just because
we're just in the middle of this horrific shock where
it seems so overwhelming and everything that we've lost. But
we've lost animals, we've lost homes, all my neighborhoods.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
If people only knew that area how it is, I
mean California living among many things involved. You know, if
you've got two acres and a paddock in a Goa
or North Hills, you've got a horse, you know, people,
animals or a big part of people's lives out there
because of the weather in a way they can't be
other places.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Exactly. It's not just that people have lost so much
in the short term. In the long term, it's also
these neighborhoods are not going to go back quickly. The
trauma can really last a long time. People have health
impacts actually after, you know, because you imagine the shock
and the stress of being homeless and finding new places
(08:04):
and moving around and just having to cope. You know,
will continue to see people have health problems that are
not actually they won't be traced to the fire. But
I remember, you know, to be absolutely brutal about it,
but let me say that two of the people I
was following in the aftermath of the Paradise fire died
of causes that you wouldn't recognize connected with the fire
(08:28):
in the year following as we kept filming heart attacks
in particular stress from the stress. Absolutely, you can never
kind of pin those things, right, but it did seem
like a lot of people, you know, it makes absolute sense, right.
So the thing I've been really praying is that the
people impacted can really try to sort of really take
care of their health and really prioritize just trying to
(08:49):
recover themselves because it's kind of a long haul.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Filmmaker Lucy Walker. Listen to our twenty twenty one conversation
for more in depth discussion about the LA fires and
Walker's documentary film, Bring Your Own Brigade. The title is
a reference to wealthy residents who hire their own private
firefighters to protect property during wildfires.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
What I want to understand is, well, how are we
stopping it, and why are people living in these areas
and building these houses that burn over and over and
over again. Could we do better? So you would think
that when people look at developing an area for housing,
they would think about fire safety, but nobody's actually thinking about,
(09:38):
well are they going to be able to ensure these
homes and who's going to pay if these homes burn down.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
To hear more of my conversation with Lucy Walker, go
to Here's Thething dot org. After the break, Lucy Walker
details why she believes residents who choose to rebuild in
fire prone areas are taking on enormous risk to both
their financial stability and their lives. I'm Alec Baldwin, and
(10:14):
this is Here's the Thing. I first spoke with filmmaker
Lucy Walker in twenty twenty one. I was curious if
she stayed in touch with any of the subjects that
she was acquainted with while making her film.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, I absolutely. The film came out and it really
followed not just the fires, and it sort of talked
about fires in general and actually, if anything, it was
specific about could Los Angeles burn? Because that's where I
live and that was my sort of naive question that
I kind of sparked the conversation into the movie with.
But the Fire looked at those twin events that happened
in November twenty eighteen, but it didn't come out till
(10:49):
twenty twenty one, so I was filming a couple of
years after the events and put that in the movie.
But actually, you get really close with people when you
film with them, so I have absolutely kept in touch.
And it's a really slow journey back, and these neighborhoods
don't recover all at once. And what we're seeing now
is people have to live or make that decision, and
it's toxic for a very long time, and these are
(11:12):
going to be very slow, hard decisions about building. And
then it's a very slow process.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So what's it like there now in your campfire area?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
In the campfire area, it's coming back in that neighborhood.
The spirit was just rebuild back as fast as possible.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
In the same exact way.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yes, there's a strange thing that happens where real estate
goes up. They call it fire gentrification because you get
a lot of displaced people and so it's kind of
like things actually kind of escalate. What cuts off this
is the insurance. What people are up against is that
the insurance companies are really pulling out of these areas.
(11:49):
And there is this thing called the California Fair Plan,
which is, you know, the state gives you this option
of getting very expensive and very restrictive. You have to
sort of trim and do certain things to get your
fire insurance. But it does give people a backup option
to get insurance rather than not be insured at all.
But it's increasingly true that I think in that area
people are choosing to go without insurance. And of course
(12:12):
going without insurance is a nice affordable strategy until it
all goes wrong. I think some people there are individually
choosing to build back in a more fire safe way.
And what we've seen as these stories have emerged from
these New Los Angeles fires is there are stories that
the home that was fire hardened has survived. Now that's
not fool proof. My understanding is that even if you
(12:34):
have a far hardened home, it's not sort of impossible
that it'll burn, but it's way less likely. And so
I think these stories they did get through to some
people in Paradise, and some people did build back in
a more sort of hardened way, and they had a
fire that came through already I think it was two
summers ago, and they managed to put it out so
it wasn't a huge, uncontrollable one, but that area is
(12:58):
likely to burn again very soon.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Again. I'm very curious also as to what comes back afterward,
where the campfire people were like, well, no, we don't
want to change a thing. And I'm wondering, do we
wind up in a situation where you almost have to
have an AI capacity to develop what the next palisades
will be? Like the road you drove up to go
to your house, that road doesn't exist anymore. Do they
(13:21):
replan the whole thing, every square foot of it as
to access density, vegetation, building materials. This is an opportunity
to have, like an almost lab experiment. Do you agree absolutely?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
What the movie showed was that the town leadership, the
town council, and the firefighters in that town in Paradise leadership,
the firefighters in the town, and all the organizations involved
really came together and had this really good process of
imagining how they could rebuild back differently and presenting it
(13:58):
to the town, and the town actually voted it down.
The town pressured the town council to vote down these
initiatives one by one, which was very disheartening to watch.
In the movie, however, they did have that dream. But
I think that exactly what you've described will happen in
these areas in Los Angeles that I think that people
are going to come together and say, how can we
do it a little bit differently? And I don't think
(14:20):
it'll be as radical as in the movie. There's a
section where Mike Davis, who's since passed away but wrote
a lot about fires, and he talks in the movie
about how when Los Angeles was designed, the most famous
sort of town planners of Los Angeles were these guys
called the Olmsted Brothers, and their vision was that these
(14:41):
areas that were burned repeatedly, such as Malibu, but that
were so beautiful that we wanted to be there, let's
be there, but let's only build sort of carefree cabins
where we can let it things burn, not keep our
great treasures there and not sort of disposable homes and
to enjoy for as long as they might be there.
(15:01):
But if the winds line up and the rains haven't come,
just get out of the way and let nature take
care of cleaning up, and then come back and build
another cabin again once that's past. And of course that's
not what we've done. These areas are so beautiful. We've
built these absolute palaces of homes within great artworks and
so forth there, and then of course we get terribly attached.
(15:22):
And then we've got also all this fantastic you know,
shrubberry and all these quite flammable plants and other flammable stuff,
and so we've kind of built up this huge problem
for ourselves. But I think now there is sort of
a blank slate about how we come back. I don't
expect that we'll get the carefree cabins, but I do
hold out hope that there will be positive conversation about
(15:45):
doing things a little bit differently so that we don't
have our hearts broken to this extent.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Again, at what point, in terms of public policy, to
people in every area like this, if you're building in
flood zones and the East Coast, and you're building in
fire zones on the West coast, how much do you
say to people you're on your own. You're going to
have to take care of all your costs, no insurance,
don't ask the federal government to come in and you know,
save your neighborhood the more important. Yes, save it on
(16:12):
a safety level, but not to pay for it to
rebuild it.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
That's right. One thing that I heard from people, particularly
in Paradise, I think because it is this quite rugged,
anti big government area, was like, Oh, we don't want
to pay taxes, we don't want government. What does government
give us? But in the same conversation they say, oh,
I'm waiting for my FEMA money. I wish my FEMA
money was more, and not making that connection that FEMA
(16:38):
was a great gift of the government really and that
is what government can provide. And yet what is that
question about wanting to sort of pay into this kind
of common resource and pay out, you know. And now
we're dealing with insurance, it's like, well, this is a
very expensive incident. And moving forward, now that we are
(16:59):
starting to know more, are other policyholders who live in
safer areas going to want to subsidize these homes in
less dangerous areas? And are insurer is going to be
able to even afford to ensure homes in safer areas
if they keep being exposed to these incidents in more
dangerous areas. What I hope, and maybe that sounds naive
of me, but what I hope is that people can
(17:20):
be really helped through this really complicated change because it's
really not intuitive, and it's really new, and we love
these areas. I mean, what a gorgeous landscape, and it
is heartbreaking to think that we're not safe in this
place that we think of as the most beautiful home, imaginable,
full of nature and inspiration. And to sort of really
(17:44):
fundamentally change our relationship with how we think about risk there.
We're not very good at that human beings, and that's
before you add in commercial pressures like the realtors. I
remember I started out my project, as I remember telling you,
during the terrible months slides in Montecito and the terrible
what was at the time the worst fire in California,
(18:04):
which was the Thomas Fire around the Santa Barbara and
Ohai area. I had a shocking experience during that when
I saw a realtor selling the property to a new
customer who wasn't aware that the previous residents had been
killed in this mud slide and this property was really
where it was situated geographically because of the potential for
(18:27):
slides in certain you know, Santa Barbara being under very
steep sort of mountains that go down to the ocean,
and that after a fire, these hillsides can really collapse
in quite predictable sort of places. And so this property
was really very dangerous.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Boulders sliding down hills.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Absolutely, yes, exactly, it does have these predictable slides. After
the vegetation that kind of holds the hillside together gets
burned off when the rains come, the boulders can kind
of get loose and really land on houses and sweep
them all the way down to the ocean. It's absolutely horrifying.
So I think that the way they're kind of you know,
(19:05):
the way that it all works because people have property
values and they want to keep things going. And obviously
everyone understandably is in this. But I think that we're
going to need some help, you know, so that individuals
are helped who are involved and impacted to really get
with this new reality that there are really dangerous places
to live that unfortunately the risk is perhaps just too
(19:27):
high now and too expensive to live in the way
that they might want to live right there. And there's
also another problem but the other opposite end of the
economic spectrum, which is it's not just the well resourced
people who have this choice of living in this most
spectacular part of Los Angeles, that's the hilly part that's
very far prone. It's also true that the cheaper areas
(19:48):
that California is building into, and not just California, you know,
looking at other states too. It's not just California, many
states and Canada and Maui and other countries certainly, especially
in Mediterranean countries, are really being impacted by these increasing fires.
So what we're seeing is that actually affordable housing further
(20:10):
out of town is also being built in these areas
that are hilly and fire prone. This wildland urban interface.
And we saw for example during COVID, where a lot
of people were moving further out of the cities into
places with more space, they were almost all moving into
these areas that are very fire prone. So you've kind
of got more rich people living in these spectacular areas
(20:31):
that are fire prone, and you've also got a lot
of people who are much less wealthy. For example, Paradise
communities or some of the communities that are much further
out of Los Angeles where a lot of the more
affordable homes are being built, and developers are building huge
amounts of homes there because there's a lot of people
that want homes in California. But unfortunately that development is
into exactly the areas that might be affordable now but
(20:55):
aren't going to be ensurable and are really prone to
burning soon. So I really hope that we can get
our heads around this, because unfortunately the fires are not.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Going to stop. Filmmaker Lucy Walker. If you're enjoying this conversation,
tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the
Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts. When we come back, Lucy Walker discusses the
most recent devastation to befall Los Angeles and why she
(21:27):
feels the twenty twenty five fires feel like LA's own
nine to eleven. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Here's the Thing. After the most recent twenty twenty five
(21:48):
fires devastated huge parts of Greater Los Angeles, I was
curious how individual communities had been impacted. I asked Lucy
Walker if she's noticed they shared sense of grief among
residents across LA.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
I have never felt this city more united and that
spirit of nine to eleven. Actually it was ironic because
sort of after the fires, I had to go to
New York for this awards show and they gave me
hotel room number nine to eleven, and I looked at
them and I thought, that is exactly what I feel like.
This is Los Angeles is nine to eleven. And what's beautiful,
(22:25):
I do think, and may it last, is this really
open hearted feeling of just infinite kindness and compassion for
those caught up in it. So many people affected, so
many people know, so many people affected. It's absolutely overwhelming.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Almost like everybody knows somebody. Are you on the east
side of the West side.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I'm in sort of southern Santa Monica on the Venice
border and an area I never thought could burn Ocean flats. Yes,
I'm exactly in Ocean Park, So I'm a good sort
of five miles from where the far perimeter in the
Palisades was. But my experience that first night when the
fires erupted and I'd been watching them, and I'd been
(23:06):
like five hours ahead of the news because I was
looking at the winds and I knew what we're up
against and nobody could get planes in the air to
see it. But just from following X and radio traffic
and looking at the winds, and I just knew what
I was looking at, and my firefighter friends just this
horrifying feeling of knowing what we were in for and
(23:29):
watching an unfold. But there was this moment that night
when I looked out of my window and it was
orange and I smelled smoke, and the wind was knocking
you flat if you walked outside your door. And I
found myself for the first time in that position of thinking,
oh grief, I'm going to have to figure out what
I need to take. And I am in the opposite.
If there was an area in Los Angeles that would
(23:50):
be the lowest fire risk, that's where I live. And
I'm a good you know, four or five miles from
the hills here, and yet even here because these sort
of ember driven windstorm type events, you know, once those
embers get going and those kinds of winds, you know,
there's kind of no stopping it. And I was sort
of paranoid and traumatized to sort of be afraid of thinking.
(24:11):
I didn't really think it would get this far, because
if it got this far, you know, it'd been sort
of the whole city would have been at risk, but
to actually have to go through for the first time,
for myself that situation, and I think most people in
Los Angeles had that experience, was like, oh God, could
it get here? And how many people do I know?
And so many people have friends living with them now
(24:34):
who are helping people. So many people have stepped into
that role. And that's obviously what's beautiful about these disasters,
and that my prayer is that there are gifts in
this for people. And I did film people not just
during the fires and the immediate horrific aftermath, but on
the long term for the next couple of years following,
(24:55):
and have kept following up with them even since filming.
And the beautiful thing of course humans being resilient. You know,
our movie ends with the wedding of two people who
would not have come together had it not been for
their fire. And so I hope that there will be
gifts in this, even for the people that at this
point just feel so overwhelmed with the grief of what
they've lost.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Are people out there are their beliefs that the power
authority was indeed involved in this in terms of the
arcing and the where the origin of the fire was.
Do they think that that might be a suspect? Is
that still being discussed.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I think that it does seem like that's being discussed.
And I will say from my observations is that the
learnings about, you know, what causes the fires and what
went wrong, sometimes they're really slow to come out, and
that can be frustrating for people who you know, in
their anger and grief, very natural, but you know, the
(25:50):
impulse is to point fingers sooner. And what I've observed
is that the firefighters and especially are very good at
being incredibly accountable and responsible, and even when it's tough
to sort of realize mistakes were made and to discuss failings,
they do it unflinchingly, and they do it because their
(26:12):
own lives are at stake.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
I'm not even referring to the fire. I'm talking about
the electric company.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
The electric companies are slower. I would say, to get
into it, but I hope that it does seem like
the story, even with the electric companies, is that they
will be held to the fire. I guess can I
use that pun I do think that you know, it
does seem like people are going through the evidence pretty thoroughly.
The one thing that I'll say that's kind of a
(26:36):
bigger point, though, is that things will burn even if
we had no electric companies, no matter what you do,
no matter what you do. When the European the first
European boat sailed up to the coast of Los Angeles,
and it's kind of how I opened my movie. It
was on fire. They called it the Bay of Smoke
because it was a fire. Now, there weren't any electric
(26:57):
companies here when the Europeans first sales out. Obviously that
would have been a lightning strike probably right.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
It's meant to burn.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
It's meant to burn. It is a fire landscape, whether
it's a firework or a cigarette butt, or just the
way that the sun magnifies through somebody's discarded glasses. You know,
there's a gender reveal party that winds up setting a
big at fire and killing somebody that we show in
the movie, And so there's always going to be something.
And the other thing that I observed, which is kind
(27:25):
of hard to get your brain around, but true, is
that it's a disaster and things are going to go wrong,
and that might be a water reservoir, or it might
be an evacuation system. It might be a bad call
that in retrospect turned out to be not the right one,
but was made under juress by a firefighter who had
to just go one way or the other in the
moment and has to make decisions that in our jobs,
(27:47):
you know, I'm not faced with those kind of life
and death decisions in the course of my work. Right,
So it's a disaster, and things will sometimes go awry
even when they're pretty well set up. And ironically, they
had a really robust evacuation plan that they'd worked on
and rehearsed that you kind of if the fire hadn't
come through and killed eighty six people, you would have
(28:09):
textbooks and they'd point at paradise and say they were
well prepared. But things go wrong. That's actually the nature
of accidents and disasters. And so I sort of had
this bigger picture where, yes, there's going to be failings,
Yes we definitely need to learn from them, but we
also perhaps need to face into the very challenging reality.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Do you have animals.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I don't because I travel the time as a documentary
because but I love animals, and my heart's been absolutely
broken for my friends that have lost their animals, but
I feel lucky to be surrounded by these people with
great spirit. I was just at physical therapy and I
saw a friend of mine who lost everything in the
Palisades and has three kids and has this great stoic attitude,
(28:51):
you know. But he said to me, I don't think
we're going to rebuild in the Palisades. I kind of
like Venice now. I don't think we can do it
the same way anymore. And I do think that this
could be the moment which when my film came out
in twenty twenty one, I don't think we were there yet,
but I think this episode has been so hallacious. I'm
(29:13):
really glad for you for having the vision to have
this conversation four years ago and then to revisit it now.
And I think more people may be actually looking for
this kind of information and conversation, and it may be
time to have a conversation that we really don't want
to have. And I get it, but I think that
we will be better off the sooner that we can
get our heads around it.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
My thoughts are with you and stay safe.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
I'm so grateful for this outpouring of love for Los
Angeles and for you for highlighting the hopefully good information
that the film contains. And it's really that's the sweetest
thing about this is to feel your support and I
really really appreciate doing this.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Thank you. My thanks to Lucy Walker. Her documentary about
the California wildfires, Bring Your Own Brigade, is streaming on
Paramount Plus. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in
New York City. Were produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice,
(30:08):
and Victoria De Martin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial and
our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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