March 25, 2025 • 34 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (03/25) - There is new lawsuit that says LADWP covered up a second ignition site that enhanced the severity of the Palisades Fire. More on this new lawsuit. More on LA City Council wanting to ban the N word and C word from public comment. Update on the fire recovery and rebuilding efforts after the fire .
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't. I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt Podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We are on every
day from one until four o'clock and after four o'clock.
If you missed any or all of the show, go
to the iHeart app for the John Cobelt Podcast John
Cobelt on demand and it's got the whole radio show
there and you can access that and scroll around and
(00:26):
listen to anything you missed. And lots of people do this.
Hundreds of thousands of people do this. Millions actually millions. Wow,
that's right, You're so popular. We cover the stuff that
matters to people in their lives and one of the
(00:47):
well I would say the biggest story of the year
was the fire in the Palisades, and there has been
several hanging questions. Number one is what started the fire?
Now coming up in the two o'clock hour, and I'm
going to get into that in just a minute. But
I originally we were just going to start this at
(01:09):
two o'clock with the attorney Roger Bailey has been on
our show before, and Roger is representing many Palisades residents
who are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city, and
I have the legal filing that Roger and his partners
(01:32):
have produced. And while this doesn't directly answer what started
the Palisades fire at the beginning, they do have some
stunning news in here about a second source of ignition
at ten thirty that night, which may have bolstered the
(01:53):
fire considerably. It was caused by downed power lines from
a broken power pole created a second source of ignition
at ten thirty above the ladwp's Temescal water tank on
the Tamescal Canyon trail, and that quickly consumed the homes
(02:13):
in the Summit neighborhood and spread quickly through the Palisades
in Malibu. Remember that's when the winds were We're blowing
extremely high. And what Roger Bailey is saying on behalf
of his clients, the law LEDWP lied and covered up
(02:37):
this story for quite some time.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Cover up.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Doesn't this break your heart? Now? Remind you, Genie Kinonez
is the one that runs LADWP. This is the same
agency that didn't fill the reservoirs, and this lawsuit addresses
that in great detail. So just sit down. There's a
lot to do here. And like I said, Roger Bailey's
going to come on next hour, but I wanted to
(03:03):
start right with this because I was reading this for
the last half hour and I couldn't believe what I
was reading. According to the lawsuit, when asked if the
downed power lines from the broken power pole above the
(03:23):
ladwps to Mescal water tank were energized on the day
of the fire, LADWP told a reporter from The Washington
Post that those lines had been abandoned and deenergized for
the past five years and were not energized at the
time of the fire, And according to the plaintiffs, the
(03:47):
LADWP stood by this false statement for months until their
attorney finally admitted on March twentieth, just a few days ago.
It was buried in a footnote on the last page
of a letter the following stunning admission. According to the
(04:09):
LEDWP attorney, you also asked about a statement in the
Washington Post that the sub transmission line in the area
was not energized. That statement was the result of a misunderstanding.
The line had been de energized for several years before
the fire, but as we said in prior correspondence, it
was energized at the time the fire ignited. There were
(04:32):
no faults on the line around the time that the
fire ignited, so they told the Washington Post one thing,
and that statement stood for quite a while. But Bailey
says there is no misunderstanding. He says this is a
massive cover up by the LEDWP to conceal from the
(04:53):
public that its electrical equipment was the source of several
several additional ignitions of the fire. And they have photos
from LADWP surveillance camera to capture the start of the
second ignition above the Summit neighborhood at ten thirty PM. Remember,
(05:14):
the original fire started at ten thirty AM. And Les
Lassiard claims that the LADWP statement that there were no
faults around the time the fire ignited was a despicable
attempt to conceal its knowledge that there was a fault
at ten thirty when an h frame poll snapped in
(05:36):
half and that sent energized power lines crashing to the ground.
Such a failure would have produced a ground fault on
the monitoring system. LADWP never disclosed the true facts nor
corrected its false statement that the downed power lines were
(05:58):
de energized. They were energized. Also in the lawsuit about
the Centienez reservoir. It was empty, one hundred and seventeen
million gallons empty, which meant that the Palisades only had
two and a half percent of its total water storage
capacity available. Ninety seven and a half percent of its
(06:20):
normal available water storage was unavailable, and fire hydrants started
losing water pressure. The water level in its trailer tank
began dropping at two twenty just four hours after the fire.
Six hours later, it was entirely empty. Two of the
(06:43):
three water storage tanks had run dry. Then that h
frame of two wood power poles collapsed. They broke because
of the wind, and those energized power lines fell into
the heavy vegetation below, igniting a fire. So there was
a secondary fire that happened that night. Those power lines
(07:08):
were Can you believe the power lines were not turned
off even though the fire was raging for twelve hours,
so they were in turned off. The canyons were completely dry.
I'm sorry the reservoirs were completely dry and that the
LADWP lied about it. And to this day, nobody's addressed
(07:29):
any of these issues in public. They have plenty of
LEDWP meetings.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Well, the only thing we have heard is Kenyonias has
said that a bunch of those fire hydrants that were
not working are fixed.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
But they don't work without water exactly, and that's the
reason a lot of these a lot of these fire
hydrants were failing. In the lawsuit, they believe that the
LADWP water reservoirs failed during the fire. Their failure was
the result of the LADWP decision to four go proper
(08:07):
maintenance and repair the cover of the reservoir. It was
a cost savings decision, a cost savings decision. They didn't
want to spend one hundred and thirty thousand dollars on
a water cover, a reservoir cover that you don't even need.
You don't need that to operate the system. The Centienaz
(08:33):
Reservoir and the neighboring Chautakar Reservoir were both empty at
the time the Palisades fire erupted, so fire crews had
little to know water to fight the fire. This Centienaz
Reservoir was built to provide a critical public use fire protection.
That's true, built in nineteen sixty four after the nineteen
(08:55):
sixty one Bell Air fire that burned five hundred homes,
and according to the LEDWP, then chief water engineer Gerald
Jones told the LA times in nineteen seventy two that
the sant Inez Reservoir and a pumping station was to
increase fire protection, and it's still empty, and here comes
(09:26):
a fire season, here comes extreme fire warnings. They started
warning us on January twod and nothing was done. They
had nothing to fight the fire with. And for the
people in the Palisades who've told me personally, and I've
seen a lot of stories and testimony about it on
(09:47):
various sites on the internet, the reason the firefighters didn't
show up in your neighborhood is they didn't have any weapons,
they didn't have any water. Within a span of twelve hours,
hydrants and the Palisades failed. The three million gallon tanks
went dry. First tank went dried four forty five. Second
(10:09):
tank ran empty at eight thirty third was dry by
three am the next morning. Back in April of twenty
twenty four, LADWP saw bids to repair the Santiadez Reservoir
at a cost of eighty nine thousand, but it wasn't
until November that they entered into a contract to repair
(10:30):
it for one hundred and thirty thousand. But nobody repaired
it and nobody filled up the nobody filled up the
reservoir and the La Fire Department Captain Eric Scott acknowledged
that lack of water impacted the ability to fight the fire,
saying there were challenges with water pressure while battling the
Palisades fire. The water pressure wasn't quite what we needed.
(10:53):
It affected some fire hydrants. Wasn't quite what we needed.
They didn't have any pressure. It affected a lot of
the fire hydrant. I'll tell you more because they've got
a quote from Mark Pistrella, the director of the La
County Public Works Department, who's trying to claim, well, the
system was never built to fight fires. Well, why not
(11:19):
tell you about that when we come back. That's not
a defense, that's an admission of extreme stupidity and incompetence.
Explain more when we come back. This is from a
lawsuit that's been filed on behalf of Palisades residents, and
we're going to talk to the attorney, Roger Bailey coming
up after two o'clock.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Later on at two o'clock, we're going to have Roger
Bailey on. He's an attorney whose firm is representing Pacific
Palisades residents over the fire, and they have a filed lawsuit,
and I have some of the legal documents here that
I and reading on the air because there's a there's
some stunning news in this lawsuit. The la ed WP
(12:12):
apparently had power lines that were energized up in the
hills north of the Summit neighborhood, and these power lines
they did not turn off the energy. Twelve hours after
the fire broke out, there was a second ignition site
(12:37):
just above the Summit neighborhoods, and you had two wooden
fire poles it's called an H pole that snapped, brought
down these power lines and started a new fire. Basically,
(12:57):
I can't believe that that the power line were not
turned off, but they weren't. The LEDWP lied to the
Washington Post claiming that those lines were abandoned and de
energized five years ago, and then five days ago they
admitted in a footnote on the last page of a
(13:19):
letter to the plaintiff's attorneys that well, there was a misunderstanding.
It was energized, and so you had this this H
pole snapping bringing the power lines down. It's called an
H frame pole. Stepped in half. Now we told you
(13:42):
that it went to detail about how the reservoir wasn't
filled even though the reservoir was designed to fight fires,
that was its purpose, and with the lack of water.
Ninety seven percent of the stored water didn't exist at
the time of the fire because Santinez Reservoir was empty,
(14:06):
and so is another reservoir, the Chatakar Reservoir that also
was empty. Mark Pistrella Is, the director of the La
County Public Works, said the fire hydrant system was not
designed to fight wildfires well. In the lawsuit, the attorney's
(14:28):
point out that the LEDWP deliberately designed and maintained this
water supply system for ninety years, despite it being located
in a fire prone area. In the last ninety years,
there's been more than thirty wildfires that have burned parts
(14:49):
of Malibu, which is next door. The most recent the
Franklin Fire from December the ninth, a month before the
Palisades Fire. Was the Franklin Fire. The Woolsey Fire, which
is November twenty eighteen, burned almost ninety seven thousand acres,
(15:13):
and other government officials have acknowledged the deficiencies of the
water supply system knowing that the state, noting that the
storage tanks that hold water up in the highlands and
the pumping systems that feed them could not keep pace
with the demand. They talked to a man named Amano Laal,
(15:34):
director of the Water Institute of Arizona State, and said
the lack of water availability in water pressure was because
of these said to z reservoir being empty. Without water
from the reservoir, the firefighters had to rely primarily on
water tanks, which were not designed to fight such a
large fire. So those of you in the Palisades, you
(15:54):
were left utterly defenseless by the LEDWP and the city
of Los Angeles. And then you have this mark Forristrella saying, well,
the hydrant system was not designed to fight what Well, then,
why ninety years didn't you build one that does? What
did you do with all the tax money? What did
(16:15):
you do with all the ratepayer money if you didn't
design a water system to fight fires in a high
fire prone area, that the city allowed a massive amount
of housing development. God, this is crazy. Lawton also says
(16:36):
LEDWP failed to de energize its distribution and transmission electrical facilities,
its distribution equipment experience to arcing, exploding transformers, sending showers
of sparks and molten metal raining down into homes, businesses,
and vegetation, which started additional spot fires that accelerated the
(17:00):
red of the Palisades fire. And they have screenshots because
some of this stuff happened on live television. They just
took this off the TV. So the LEDWP destroyed the Palisades.
They destroyed thousands of homes, and they killed people. And
(17:24):
Jennie Kennionia still has a job. Nobody's been fired at LEDWP.
Nobody's been even questioned publicly. There's been no hearings, there's
been no explanations. Karen Bass hasn't mentioned them, Gavin Newsom
hasn't mentioned them. They all are just gonna go quiet
and know that maybe a few years down the road
(17:45):
some other mayor and some other governor are gonna pay
is gonna pay out the settlement. Well, they are disgusting people.
Let me tell you, this crowd is disgusting. They had
ninety years to build a water system of a firefighting
system and they chose not to right up to defunding
(18:06):
the fire department it's only half funded, and refusing to
spend one hundred and thirty thousand dollars to fill the
reservoir with water while they're paying the DWP chief Kenonia's
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Do you know they
spent an extra three hundred thousand on her compared to
(18:26):
the last chief, But they wouldn't spend one hundred and
thirty thousand dollars cost issues. So that's why they never
filled the water, never filled the reservoir and built a
new cover. All right, we're going to talk to Roger
Bailey Atturning that's leading this lawsuit coming up after two o'clock.
(18:51):
This is so disgusting. I mean, this is sickening, sickening.
And every day Kenonias and Bass wake up and they
still jobs. Wow, and the city council not a word
uh oh. And later we're going to play what goes
on at city council. Right, they don't they don't discuss
(19:12):
the lack of water, and they don't discuss the uh,
the fact that nobody turned off the energy into the
power lines and all the rest of the sins. But
here here's what go well, you know, when we'll come back,
I'll play you, I'll play a few clips. We played
some of this last week, and you'll see what happens
at the La City council meetings. Crazy people line up
and start cursing at the councilmen who don't even pay attention.
(19:36):
This this is how the city's run. We'll tell you
about we covect.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty moist line.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
We'll return on Friday eight seven seven moist eighty six.
You have anything to say, anything pointed, any analysis eight
seven seven moist eighty six or eight seven seven sixty
six four seven eight eight six. You can use the
feature on the iHeartRadio app. I gave you a half
an hour. This lawsuit that the Palisades residents are filing.
(20:07):
We're going to talk to the attorney, Roger Bailey coming
up after two o'clock. Went through a lot of the
lawsuit centering around a second ignition of the fire up
in the north of the Summit neighborhood up up in
the highlands there, and it looks like the DWP had
their electrical lines energized and an h frame pole snapped,
(20:31):
fell to the ground brought the power lines with it.
And started a second fire that blew up real fast
because that's when the winds were blowing at eighty miles
an hour and there was a lot of arcing and
transmission explosions going on. They never turned off the power
and then they lied about it when reporters asked them.
(20:53):
The LEDWP lied about it and claimed that the lines
were de energized. Now all this is really discussed and
angering and damning, and you think the La City Council
would be holding public hearings and putting a Genie Quinonez
and all the rest of these characters and rust them right,
(21:15):
That's what a responsible council would do. Instead. Marquise Harris
Dawson is who's the council president and was acting mayor
the day of the fire. You know what his big
issue is is that crazy people show up at the
meeting and start cursing and calling him and the other
council members' names all kinds of vulgar profanity, including the
(21:39):
N word, the C word, and he wants to try
to find some way to stop it. Of course you can't.
It's a public meeting, and there's they've had cases like
this before. In the First Amendment wins so, but by
going public to show how upset he is, these people
are now lining up and they're getting even wilder in
their language. But this is the battle, Marquise Harris Dawson
(22:02):
is fighting language, foul language by lunatics. There's no anger
about the DWP lying, keeping the reservoir empty, not turning
off the electricity so the power lines could fall and
start even bigger fires along the way. But you can't
(22:24):
get it rend. You can't get around the lack of
water in the reservoir. I mean, I mean, I cannot
believe these people are going to survive that. How the hell?
That was ninety seven percent of the water supply used
for fires in the Palisades and it was bone dry,
and there was a second reservoir dry. But here's what
goes on at a city council meeting, and this is
(22:47):
thanks to the reporter Daniel Gus. We're going to play
you some clips. This is for real. I hope you
bleeped out everything that's supposed to be bleeped out. I
hope so too. Okay, so you may want to stick around.
Who knows what we're going to hear. We'll start with
some character named mister Herman, this is LA City Council
public comic got seven.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Now into my general public comment.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Now, I, a.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Disabled person, is having my rights a free speech censored
or shut off and finding out that this motion declared
by monkey Dawson up there who finds it offensive of
these efficits. But again, ladies and gentlemen, I read into
the record my view about Los Angeles being dirty. I
(23:36):
talked about Los Angeles being dirty. I set it throughout
my life. HHH.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
But forty five.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Of you don't understand that I got your attention.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Now I'm in.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
The news and I haven't used the N word or
the C word.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
So brandon Burg versus Ohio USC.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
Ninety five over four, nineteen sixty nine a dirty La.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
He has a point about La being dirty. Maybe that's
the only way to get the get their attention is
to start screaming cursing at him. I don't know, maybe
he's onto something.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Maybe you need to go in there, John, and.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Uh, maybe I should just start to start start cursing, screaming.
Here's more public comment, LA City Council. And let's be clear.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
On Friday, our city attorney taught me how to spell
two words. I wasn't sure bob is spelled and and
I didn't know this Bob is spelled c.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Now, how come Heather Hunt.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Didn't sign the motion? She's been called both me and
she didn't sign the motion. How come only seventy you
gang members signed the motion to ban these words?
Speaker 1 (24:56):
The laughing at you all over then laughing.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
But why am I dressed as Santa Claus? Why because
my first Amendment attorney already started racking up his eight
hundred and forty.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Four dollars an hour.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
Face we're getting ready.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
For the lawsuit.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
I want my emotion today, Way about out a committee
so we could all start getting paid for being I
want to be paid.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Is it? He was really dressed as Santa Yeah, he
was wearing a Santa hat and a red shirt. And
the council people they sit there or they wander away.
Uh So I was watching the lectern and while everybody's speaking,
the council people are just having conversations with themselves. They're
(25:45):
not even paying attention to any of the public comment
that's going on, whether it's relevant or not, because they
don't care. But it's funny that Marquise Harrys Dawson has
now created a bigger problem because they're they're baiting him
to get dude, that's what they're doing. They're going to
pile on more vulgarity, more profanity, more obscenity, and come
(26:07):
up with every banned word possible to get a rise
out of him, to get a lawsuit going. All right,
got another clip another man during public comment. This is
about wanting to fund the LAPD and the budget shortfall.
Speaker 6 (26:23):
Now I see in CD five, you guys want to
increase police funding again again. Like I just said, you
increased police funding by one hundred and twenty six million
dollars last year, while you cut the fire department by
eighteen and cut street services by twenty two and cut
sanitation by twenty and then you're going to ask for
additional funding for policing outside of what they already have,
(26:45):
outside of the fact that they've already overspent by one
hundred and something million, outside of the fact that their
liabilities are pushing between one hundred and two hundred million.
As a hugo over there who did vote for the
police budget two years ago using your priorities As far.
Speaker 7 (27:01):
As public comment, I gotta tell you guys, you guys
really up the budget. We are one billion dollars in
the hole right because of you. It is not outside
forces that caused these problems.
Speaker 8 (27:13):
You guys did it.
Speaker 9 (27:14):
Kenneth Mahea warned every single one of you every step
of the way.
Speaker 8 (27:20):
Now you disregarded him, you said the mayor said that
it was theatrical exaggerations, his projections, and he was dead on.
She's a shame on all of you who sat there
and voted for these budgets.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
Three of you get to pass Unises, Nthia and that
piece of Hugo you gotta pass.
Speaker 9 (27:41):
The rest of you voted for that, and now we
are in crisis. Eighteen months ago we had record general
fund reserves. Now we are in fiscal emergency eighteen months later.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Great job, all of you.
Speaker 7 (27:57):
You guys have run the city into the ground.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
I think he needs to come in one day.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
You know what.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
I'm going to take a week off and let those
three take over. We'll have more we come back.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Coming up after two o'clock, we're going to talk with
Roger Bailey, and he's the lead attorney in a lawsuit
representing Palisades owners against the city against over the fire.
And there he's got a lot of new stunning information
which I went through earlier last hour. If you missed it,
(28:42):
stick around Roger Bailey's coming on. It looks like there
was problems with the electrical transmission lines and there may
have been a major second ignition point at ten thirty
that night because they never turn the power off on
the lines, and eventually a paul snapped, the lines went
(29:04):
to the ground and there was a big blow up
of the fire twelve hours later when the winds were
at their height. So we'll get into that with Roger
Bailey coming up. Whenever the natural disaster happens and people say,
well how long is it going to take to rebuild?
How long is it going to take to recover? And
you talk to a vegetable like Karen Bass and she'll
(29:26):
go la strong, We go forward, we keep fighting. Then
you check recent history and the last big fire was
in Maui. Remember Maui in the summer twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
How can we forget that one.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Two thousand homes burned. Take a guess you can play first,
how many homes do you think have been rebuilt in
Mali since the fires were put out twenty two hundred,
two hundred. The answer is six. What six?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
You know, I really was going to say five, and
I thought that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Well it is. It is ridiculous. There are so many
zoning restrictions. What are your regulations, historical preservation requirements, environmental
preservation requirements. You have to have separate applications and schedules
for electrical plumbing, grading, and driveway work. They also have
very few people working in the permit office, so it
(30:31):
takes the county two hundred and six days to issue
a single building permit. Two hundred and six days. That's
about seven months. That's for one permit, and you need
several of them to build a house from scratch. They
tried to pass a bill to speed up the process
(30:55):
and it didn't work. They even opened a recovery permitting
center and they hired private contractors to process the permit.
It still took over fifty days, and if you have
a householder than five years, you had to apply for
a new permit. The governor issued an emergency exemption sparing
(31:19):
multifamily homes from special reviews involving the coastal environmental issues
because that would have been an extra year, so they
actually tried to streamline the process and it still took
seven months. So see, the kind of people who get
(31:42):
into government are about. They're about controlling and restricting. They're
not about creating freedoms. Every restrictive control freak in a
population ends up in government where they spend all day
saying no, and they come up with all kinds of complicated,
(32:04):
nonsense rules because that's what they like doing. It makes
them feel powerful, and they are powerful, and now they
have control, they can tell people how to live. And
here you have two thousand homes burned and Maui and
one nine hundred and ninety four haven't been rebuilt yet
because of the power freak stupid vegetables that work in government.
(32:32):
You know what we have is we have almost like
two separate species. We have a species that works in
the private sector and creates wealth and innovation and progress.
And then we have the incompetent species that is attracted
to government, which creates rules, regulations, obstacles.
Speaker 6 (32:54):
And.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Anything that stops progress, anything that versus progress, any kind
of bureaucratic mechanism is created by the people in these bureaucracies.
People like to blame something generic. Well, that's government, that's
the bureaucracy. No, it's the people in the bureaucracy, the
people in the government who get taxpayer paid paychecks. They
(33:19):
created this this swap. We come back. Roger Bailey, he's
the attorney leading the lawsuit against the city over the
Palisades fire. He's got some stunning revelations in the lawsuit
in the paperwork. Read some of them last hour. If
(33:40):
you didn't hear it, you know, listen to Roger Bailey
coming up. It's going to make you crazy. Deborah Mark
Live the KFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey, you've been
listening to the John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always
hear the show live on KFI Am six forty from
one to four pm every Monday through Friday, and of course,
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Can't. I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt Podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We are on every
day from one until four o'clock and after four o'clock.
If you missed any or all of the show, go
to the iHeart app for the John Cobelt Podcast John
Cobelt on demand and it's got the whole radio show
there and you can access that and scroll around and
(00:26):
listen to anything you missed. And lots of people do this.
Hundreds of thousands of people do this. Millions actually millions. Wow,
that's right, You're so popular. We cover the stuff that
matters to people in their lives and one of the
(00:47):
well I would say the biggest story of the year
was the fire in the Palisades, and there has been
several hanging questions. Number one is what started the fire?
Now coming up in the two o'clock hour, and I'm
going to get into that in just a minute. But
I originally we were just going to start this at
(01:09):
two o'clock with the attorney Roger Bailey has been on
our show before, and Roger is representing many Palisades residents
who are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city, and
I have the legal filing that Roger and his partners
(01:32):
have produced. And while this doesn't directly answer what started
the Palisades fire at the beginning, they do have some
stunning news in here about a second source of ignition
at ten thirty that night, which may have bolstered the
(01:53):
fire considerably. It was caused by downed power lines from
a broken power pole created a second source of ignition
at ten thirty above the ladwp's Temescal water tank on
the Tamescal Canyon trail, and that quickly consumed the homes
(02:13):
in the Summit neighborhood and spread quickly through the Palisades
in Malibu. Remember that's when the winds were We're blowing
extremely high. And what Roger Bailey is saying on behalf
of his clients, the law LEDWP lied and covered up
(02:37):
this story for quite some time.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Cover up.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Doesn't this break your heart? Now? Remind you, Genie Kinonez
is the one that runs LADWP. This is the same
agency that didn't fill the reservoirs, and this lawsuit addresses
that in great detail. So just sit down. There's a
lot to do here. And like I said, Roger Bailey's
going to come on next hour, but I wanted to
(03:03):
start right with this because I was reading this for
the last half hour and I couldn't believe what I
was reading. According to the lawsuit, when asked if the
downed power lines from the broken power pole above the
(03:23):
ladwps to Mescal water tank were energized on the day
of the fire, LADWP told a reporter from The Washington
Post that those lines had been abandoned and deenergized for
the past five years and were not energized at the
time of the fire, And according to the plaintiffs, the
(03:47):
LADWP stood by this false statement for months until their
attorney finally admitted on March twentieth, just a few days ago.
It was buried in a footnote on the last page
of a letter the following stunning admission. According to the
(04:09):
LEDWP attorney, you also asked about a statement in the
Washington Post that the sub transmission line in the area
was not energized. That statement was the result of a misunderstanding.
The line had been de energized for several years before
the fire, but as we said in prior correspondence, it
was energized at the time the fire ignited. There were
(04:32):
no faults on the line around the time that the
fire ignited, so they told the Washington Post one thing,
and that statement stood for quite a while. But Bailey
says there is no misunderstanding. He says this is a
massive cover up by the LEDWP to conceal from the
(04:53):
public that its electrical equipment was the source of several
several additional ignitions of the fire. And they have photos
from LADWP surveillance camera to capture the start of the
second ignition above the Summit neighborhood at ten thirty PM. Remember,
(05:14):
the original fire started at ten thirty AM. And Les
Lassiard claims that the LADWP statement that there were no
faults around the time the fire ignited was a despicable
attempt to conceal its knowledge that there was a fault
at ten thirty when an h frame poll snapped in
(05:36):
half and that sent energized power lines crashing to the ground.
Such a failure would have produced a ground fault on
the monitoring system. LADWP never disclosed the true facts nor
corrected its false statement that the downed power lines were
(05:58):
de energized. They were energized. Also in the lawsuit about
the Centienez reservoir. It was empty, one hundred and seventeen
million gallons empty, which meant that the Palisades only had
two and a half percent of its total water storage
capacity available. Ninety seven and a half percent of its
(06:20):
normal available water storage was unavailable, and fire hydrants started
losing water pressure. The water level in its trailer tank
began dropping at two twenty just four hours after the fire.
Six hours later, it was entirely empty. Two of the
(06:43):
three water storage tanks had run dry. Then that h
frame of two wood power poles collapsed. They broke because
of the wind, and those energized power lines fell into
the heavy vegetation below, igniting a fire. So there was
a secondary fire that happened that night. Those power lines
(07:08):
were Can you believe the power lines were not turned
off even though the fire was raging for twelve hours,
so they were in turned off. The canyons were completely dry.
I'm sorry the reservoirs were completely dry and that the
LADWP lied about it. And to this day, nobody's addressed
(07:29):
any of these issues in public. They have plenty of
LEDWP meetings.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Well, the only thing we have heard is Kenyonias has
said that a bunch of those fire hydrants that were
not working are fixed.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
But they don't work without water exactly, and that's the
reason a lot of these a lot of these fire
hydrants were failing. In the lawsuit, they believe that the
LADWP water reservoirs failed during the fire. Their failure was
the result of the LADWP decision to four go proper
(08:07):
maintenance and repair the cover of the reservoir. It was
a cost savings decision, a cost savings decision. They didn't
want to spend one hundred and thirty thousand dollars on
a water cover, a reservoir cover that you don't even need.
You don't need that to operate the system. The Centienaz
(08:33):
Reservoir and the neighboring Chautakar Reservoir were both empty at
the time the Palisades fire erupted, so fire crews had
little to know water to fight the fire. This Centienaz
Reservoir was built to provide a critical public use fire protection.
That's true, built in nineteen sixty four after the nineteen
(08:55):
sixty one Bell Air fire that burned five hundred homes,
and according to the LEDWP, then chief water engineer Gerald
Jones told the LA times in nineteen seventy two that
the sant Inez Reservoir and a pumping station was to
increase fire protection, and it's still empty, and here comes
(09:26):
a fire season, here comes extreme fire warnings. They started
warning us on January twod and nothing was done. They
had nothing to fight the fire with. And for the
people in the Palisades who've told me personally, and I've
seen a lot of stories and testimony about it on
(09:47):
various sites on the internet, the reason the firefighters didn't
show up in your neighborhood is they didn't have any weapons,
they didn't have any water. Within a span of twelve hours,
hydrants and the Palisades failed. The three million gallon tanks
went dry. First tank went dried four forty five. Second
(10:09):
tank ran empty at eight thirty third was dry by
three am the next morning. Back in April of twenty
twenty four, LADWP saw bids to repair the Santiadez Reservoir
at a cost of eighty nine thousand, but it wasn't
until November that they entered into a contract to repair
(10:30):
it for one hundred and thirty thousand. But nobody repaired
it and nobody filled up the nobody filled up the
reservoir and the La Fire Department Captain Eric Scott acknowledged
that lack of water impacted the ability to fight the fire,
saying there were challenges with water pressure while battling the
Palisades fire. The water pressure wasn't quite what we needed.
(10:53):
It affected some fire hydrants. Wasn't quite what we needed.
They didn't have any pressure. It affected a lot of
the fire hydrant. I'll tell you more because they've got
a quote from Mark Pistrella, the director of the La
County Public Works Department, who's trying to claim, well, the
system was never built to fight fires. Well, why not
(11:19):
tell you about that when we come back. That's not
a defense, that's an admission of extreme stupidity and incompetence.
Explain more when we come back. This is from a
lawsuit that's been filed on behalf of Palisades residents, and
we're going to talk to the attorney, Roger Bailey coming
up after two o'clock.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Later on at two o'clock, we're going to have Roger
Bailey on. He's an attorney whose firm is representing Pacific
Palisades residents over the fire, and they have a filed lawsuit,
and I have some of the legal documents here that
I and reading on the air because there's a there's
some stunning news in this lawsuit. The la ed WP
(12:12):
apparently had power lines that were energized up in the
hills north of the Summit neighborhood, and these power lines
they did not turn off the energy. Twelve hours after
the fire broke out, there was a second ignition site
(12:37):
just above the Summit neighborhoods, and you had two wooden
fire poles it's called an H pole that snapped, brought
down these power lines and started a new fire. Basically,
(12:57):
I can't believe that that the power line were not
turned off, but they weren't. The LEDWP lied to the
Washington Post claiming that those lines were abandoned and de
energized five years ago, and then five days ago they
admitted in a footnote on the last page of a
(13:19):
letter to the plaintiff's attorneys that well, there was a misunderstanding.
It was energized, and so you had this this H
pole snapping bringing the power lines down. It's called an
H frame pole. Stepped in half. Now we told you
(13:42):
that it went to detail about how the reservoir wasn't
filled even though the reservoir was designed to fight fires,
that was its purpose, and with the lack of water.
Ninety seven percent of the stored water didn't exist at
the time of the fire because Santinez Reservoir was empty,
(14:06):
and so is another reservoir, the Chatakar Reservoir that also
was empty. Mark Pistrella Is, the director of the La
County Public Works, said the fire hydrant system was not
designed to fight wildfires well. In the lawsuit, the attorney's
(14:28):
point out that the LEDWP deliberately designed and maintained this
water supply system for ninety years, despite it being located
in a fire prone area. In the last ninety years,
there's been more than thirty wildfires that have burned parts
(14:49):
of Malibu, which is next door. The most recent the
Franklin Fire from December the ninth, a month before the
Palisades Fire. Was the Franklin Fire. The Woolsey Fire, which
is November twenty eighteen, burned almost ninety seven thousand acres,
(15:13):
and other government officials have acknowledged the deficiencies of the
water supply system knowing that the state, noting that the
storage tanks that hold water up in the highlands and
the pumping systems that feed them could not keep pace
with the demand. They talked to a man named Amano Laal,
(15:34):
director of the Water Institute of Arizona State, and said
the lack of water availability in water pressure was because
of these said to z reservoir being empty. Without water
from the reservoir, the firefighters had to rely primarily on
water tanks, which were not designed to fight such a
large fire. So those of you in the Palisades, you
(15:54):
were left utterly defenseless by the LEDWP and the city
of Los Angeles. And then you have this mark Forristrella saying, well,
the hydrant system was not designed to fight what Well, then,
why ninety years didn't you build one that does? What
did you do with all the tax money? What did
(16:15):
you do with all the ratepayer money if you didn't
design a water system to fight fires in a high
fire prone area, that the city allowed a massive amount
of housing development. God, this is crazy. Lawton also says
(16:36):
LEDWP failed to de energize its distribution and transmission electrical facilities,
its distribution equipment experience to arcing, exploding transformers, sending showers
of sparks and molten metal raining down into homes, businesses,
and vegetation, which started additional spot fires that accelerated the
(17:00):
red of the Palisades fire. And they have screenshots because
some of this stuff happened on live television. They just
took this off the TV. So the LEDWP destroyed the Palisades.
They destroyed thousands of homes, and they killed people. And
(17:24):
Jennie Kennionia still has a job. Nobody's been fired at LEDWP.
Nobody's been even questioned publicly. There's been no hearings, there's
been no explanations. Karen Bass hasn't mentioned them, Gavin Newsom
hasn't mentioned them. They all are just gonna go quiet
and know that maybe a few years down the road
(17:45):
some other mayor and some other governor are gonna pay
is gonna pay out the settlement. Well, they are disgusting people.
Let me tell you, this crowd is disgusting. They had
ninety years to build a water system of a firefighting
system and they chose not to right up to defunding
(18:06):
the fire department it's only half funded, and refusing to
spend one hundred and thirty thousand dollars to fill the
reservoir with water while they're paying the DWP chief Kenonia's
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Do you know they
spent an extra three hundred thousand on her compared to
(18:26):
the last chief, But they wouldn't spend one hundred and
thirty thousand dollars cost issues. So that's why they never
filled the water, never filled the reservoir and built a
new cover. All right, we're going to talk to Roger
Bailey Atturning that's leading this lawsuit coming up after two o'clock.
(18:51):
This is so disgusting. I mean, this is sickening, sickening.
And every day Kenonias and Bass wake up and they
still jobs. Wow, and the city council not a word
uh oh. And later we're going to play what goes
on at city council. Right, they don't they don't discuss
(19:12):
the lack of water, and they don't discuss the uh,
the fact that nobody turned off the energy into the
power lines and all the rest of the sins. But
here here's what go well, you know, when we'll come back,
I'll play you, I'll play a few clips. We played
some of this last week, and you'll see what happens
at the La City council meetings. Crazy people line up
and start cursing at the councilmen who don't even pay attention.
(19:36):
This this is how the city's run. We'll tell you
about we covect.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty moist line.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
We'll return on Friday eight seven seven moist eighty six.
You have anything to say, anything pointed, any analysis eight
seven seven moist eighty six or eight seven seven sixty
six four seven eight eight six. You can use the
feature on the iHeartRadio app. I gave you a half
an hour. This lawsuit that the Palisades residents are filing.
(20:07):
We're going to talk to the attorney, Roger Bailey coming
up after two o'clock. Went through a lot of the
lawsuit centering around a second ignition of the fire up
in the north of the Summit neighborhood up up in
the highlands there, and it looks like the DWP had
their electrical lines energized and an h frame pole snapped,
(20:31):
fell to the ground brought the power lines with it.
And started a second fire that blew up real fast
because that's when the winds were blowing at eighty miles
an hour and there was a lot of arcing and
transmission explosions going on. They never turned off the power
and then they lied about it when reporters asked them.
(20:53):
The LEDWP lied about it and claimed that the lines
were de energized. Now all this is really discussed and
angering and damning, and you think the La City Council
would be holding public hearings and putting a Genie Quinonez
and all the rest of these characters and rust them right,
(21:15):
That's what a responsible council would do. Instead. Marquise Harris
Dawson is who's the council president and was acting mayor
the day of the fire. You know what his big
issue is is that crazy people show up at the
meeting and start cursing and calling him and the other
council members' names all kinds of vulgar profanity, including the
(21:39):
N word, the C word, and he wants to try
to find some way to stop it. Of course you can't.
It's a public meeting, and there's they've had cases like
this before. In the First Amendment wins so, but by
going public to show how upset he is, these people
are now lining up and they're getting even wilder in
their language. But this is the battle, Marquise Harris Dawson
(22:02):
is fighting language, foul language by lunatics. There's no anger
about the DWP lying, keeping the reservoir empty, not turning
off the electricity so the power lines could fall and
start even bigger fires along the way. But you can't
(22:24):
get it rend. You can't get around the lack of
water in the reservoir. I mean, I mean, I cannot
believe these people are going to survive that. How the hell?
That was ninety seven percent of the water supply used
for fires in the Palisades and it was bone dry,
and there was a second reservoir dry. But here's what
goes on at a city council meeting, and this is
(22:47):
thanks to the reporter Daniel Gus. We're going to play
you some clips. This is for real. I hope you
bleeped out everything that's supposed to be bleeped out. I
hope so too. Okay, so you may want to stick around.
Who knows what we're going to hear. We'll start with
some character named mister Herman, this is LA City Council
public comic got seven.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Now into my general public comment.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Now, I, a.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Disabled person, is having my rights a free speech censored
or shut off and finding out that this motion declared
by monkey Dawson up there who finds it offensive of
these efficits. But again, ladies and gentlemen, I read into
the record my view about Los Angeles being dirty. I
(23:36):
talked about Los Angeles being dirty. I set it throughout
my life. HHH.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
But forty five.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Of you don't understand that I got your attention.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Now I'm in.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
The news and I haven't used the N word or
the C word.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
So brandon Burg versus Ohio USC.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
Ninety five over four, nineteen sixty nine a dirty La.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
He has a point about La being dirty. Maybe that's
the only way to get the get their attention is
to start screaming cursing at him. I don't know, maybe
he's onto something.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Maybe you need to go in there, John, and.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Uh, maybe I should just start to start start cursing, screaming.
Here's more public comment, LA City Council. And let's be clear.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
On Friday, our city attorney taught me how to spell
two words. I wasn't sure bob is spelled and and
I didn't know this Bob is spelled c.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Now, how come Heather Hunt.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Didn't sign the motion? She's been called both me and
she didn't sign the motion. How come only seventy you
gang members signed the motion to ban these words?
Speaker 1 (24:56):
The laughing at you all over then laughing.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
But why am I dressed as Santa Claus? Why because
my first Amendment attorney already started racking up his eight
hundred and forty.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Four dollars an hour.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
Face we're getting ready.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
For the lawsuit.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
I want my emotion today, Way about out a committee
so we could all start getting paid for being I
want to be paid.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Is it? He was really dressed as Santa Yeah, he
was wearing a Santa hat and a red shirt. And
the council people they sit there or they wander away.
Uh So I was watching the lectern and while everybody's speaking,
the council people are just having conversations with themselves. They're
(25:45):
not even paying attention to any of the public comment
that's going on, whether it's relevant or not, because they
don't care. But it's funny that Marquise Harrys Dawson has
now created a bigger problem because they're they're baiting him
to get dude, that's what they're doing. They're going to
pile on more vulgarity, more profanity, more obscenity, and come
(26:07):
up with every banned word possible to get a rise
out of him, to get a lawsuit going. All right,
got another clip another man during public comment. This is
about wanting to fund the LAPD and the budget shortfall.
Speaker 6 (26:23):
Now I see in CD five, you guys want to
increase police funding again again. Like I just said, you
increased police funding by one hundred and twenty six million
dollars last year, while you cut the fire department by
eighteen and cut street services by twenty two and cut
sanitation by twenty and then you're going to ask for
additional funding for policing outside of what they already have,
(26:45):
outside of the fact that they've already overspent by one
hundred and something million, outside of the fact that their
liabilities are pushing between one hundred and two hundred million.
As a hugo over there who did vote for the
police budget two years ago using your priorities As far.
Speaker 7 (27:01):
As public comment, I gotta tell you guys, you guys
really up the budget. We are one billion dollars in
the hole right because of you. It is not outside
forces that caused these problems.
Speaker 8 (27:13):
You guys did it.
Speaker 9 (27:14):
Kenneth Mahea warned every single one of you every step
of the way.
Speaker 8 (27:20):
Now you disregarded him, you said the mayor said that
it was theatrical exaggerations, his projections, and he was dead on.
She's a shame on all of you who sat there
and voted for these budgets.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
Three of you get to pass Unises, Nthia and that
piece of Hugo you gotta pass.
Speaker 9 (27:41):
The rest of you voted for that, and now we
are in crisis. Eighteen months ago we had record general
fund reserves. Now we are in fiscal emergency eighteen months later.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Great job, all of you.
Speaker 7 (27:57):
You guys have run the city into the ground.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
I think he needs to come in one day.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
You know what.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
I'm going to take a week off and let those
three take over. We'll have more we come back.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Coming up after two o'clock, we're going to talk with
Roger Bailey, and he's the lead attorney in a lawsuit
representing Palisades owners against the city against over the fire.
And there he's got a lot of new stunning information
which I went through earlier last hour. If you missed it,
(28:42):
stick around Roger Bailey's coming on. It looks like there
was problems with the electrical transmission lines and there may
have been a major second ignition point at ten thirty
that night because they never turn the power off on
the lines, and eventually a paul snapped, the lines went
(29:04):
to the ground and there was a big blow up
of the fire twelve hours later when the winds were
at their height. So we'll get into that with Roger
Bailey coming up. Whenever the natural disaster happens and people say,
well how long is it going to take to rebuild?
How long is it going to take to recover? And
you talk to a vegetable like Karen Bass and she'll
(29:26):
go la strong, We go forward, we keep fighting. Then
you check recent history and the last big fire was
in Maui. Remember Maui in the summer twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
How can we forget that one.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Two thousand homes burned. Take a guess you can play first,
how many homes do you think have been rebuilt in
Mali since the fires were put out twenty two hundred,
two hundred. The answer is six. What six?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
You know, I really was going to say five, and
I thought that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Well it is. It is ridiculous. There are so many
zoning restrictions. What are your regulations, historical preservation requirements, environmental
preservation requirements. You have to have separate applications and schedules
for electrical plumbing, grading, and driveway work. They also have
very few people working in the permit office, so it
(30:31):
takes the county two hundred and six days to issue
a single building permit. Two hundred and six days. That's
about seven months. That's for one permit, and you need
several of them to build a house from scratch. They
tried to pass a bill to speed up the process
(30:55):
and it didn't work. They even opened a recovery permitting
center and they hired private contractors to process the permit.
It still took over fifty days, and if you have
a householder than five years, you had to apply for
a new permit. The governor issued an emergency exemption sparing
(31:19):
multifamily homes from special reviews involving the coastal environmental issues
because that would have been an extra year, so they
actually tried to streamline the process and it still took
seven months. So see, the kind of people who get
(31:42):
into government are about. They're about controlling and restricting. They're
not about creating freedoms. Every restrictive control freak in a
population ends up in government where they spend all day
saying no, and they come up with all kinds of complicated,
(32:04):
nonsense rules because that's what they like doing. It makes
them feel powerful, and they are powerful, and now they
have control, they can tell people how to live. And
here you have two thousand homes burned and Maui and
one nine hundred and ninety four haven't been rebuilt yet
because of the power freak stupid vegetables that work in government.
(32:32):
You know what we have is we have almost like
two separate species. We have a species that works in
the private sector and creates wealth and innovation and progress.
And then we have the incompetent species that is attracted
to government, which creates rules, regulations, obstacles.
Speaker 6 (32:54):
And.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Anything that stops progress, anything that versus progress, any kind
of bureaucratic mechanism is created by the people in these bureaucracies.
People like to blame something generic. Well, that's government, that's
the bureaucracy. No, it's the people in the bureaucracy, the
people in the government who get taxpayer paid paychecks. They
(33:19):
created this this swap. We come back. Roger Bailey, he's
the attorney leading the lawsuit against the city over the
Palisades fire. He's got some stunning revelations in the lawsuit
in the paperwork. Read some of them last hour. If
(33:40):
you didn't hear it, you know, listen to Roger Bailey
coming up. It's going to make you crazy. Deborah Mark
Live the KFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey, you've been
listening to the John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always
hear the show live on KFI Am six forty from
one to four pm every Monday through Friday, and of course,
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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