January 7, 2025 • 35 mins
A resident from Pacific Palisades comes on the show to talk about having to evacuate the area due to a fire. Listener calls from people evacuating Pacific Palisades because of a fire. More on the fire in Pacific Palisades. Nancy Loo from News Nation comes on the show to talk about the fire in Pacific Palisades.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't find 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 then after four
o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand. That's the podcast version
on the iHeart app and it's the same as the
radio show, so if you miss stuff in the next
three hours, you can pick up on it after four o'clock.
(00:22):
Pacific Palisades in the Highlands area on fire, huge brush
fire burning has been burning now for what about.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Since about ten thirty this morning.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Just two and a half hours, and the video on
television is spectacular, huge clouds of black smoke and walls
of flame shooting very high into the sky. It's really
bad and most of Pacific Palisades is evacuating. They don't
(00:53):
even have to be told to get out. You just
look up and you know it's time to go. And
people are jamming the roadways to the point where some
people are abandoning their cars and running off. We're going
to talk to a woman now who's trying to get
out of the Palisades. Kelly. Are you there, Kelly, Yes,
(01:17):
can you hear me? Yeah? Thanks for coming.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
On Oh yeah, no problem. Right now, I'm on Sunset
and Palisades Drive and it's completely you can't even move.
And as I'm sitting here on the corner of Palisades Drive,
there's a palm tree on fire, so like we're kind
of all sitting here in the car and watching. I
(01:41):
mean it's like fifty feet away.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I think, oh, that's really frightening.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
It's really frightening. It's really really frightening.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
And you can't get away from.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
It, no, because we're locked in. It's kind of like,
you know, we see those terrible movies where everybody's running
from something and all the cars are stuck. That's kind
of how it is. Yeah, oh my gosh, Yeah, this
tree is.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Really it's on the corner or on the in the median.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
On Palisades Drive and Sunset directly on the corner there's
a and I don't know if you can hear all
the honking.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I can. Yeah, I saw on TV there was a
palm tree in the median that was.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, it's right now. I just I just don't know,
Like people are getting out of their cars. Now, what
if you say yes, yes, forget out of the car,
all right, go Okay, okay, Oh.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
My god, that's terrifying.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Wow, all right, that's uh Kelly. She's actually a friend
of a friend to my wife and had had sent
some peace some video this morning of what was going on,
and so we contacted her and you just heard what
she's dealing with. You know. A couple other people are
(03:08):
also in the traffic and had to run off from
their car. That seems to be widespread because I live
in the next town over from the Palisades and my
wife and I go there frequently. We were there just
this morning. Actually took a walk in one of the
canyons that's where we usually go for a walk, and
(03:29):
the wind was blowing pretty hard and you could just
feel it. It's like we looked at each other like
it feels like something bad is going to happen. It's
like the opening moments of a movie.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Well, we knew when these life threatening wind forecast was
forecast for today, we knew we were going to have
some serious fires today.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, the slightest spark would blow us up quickly. I
mean it was they say two hundred acres. It's probably
more than that, but that's only in two and a
half hours.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Well, also, we haven't we haven't had an update from
any of the fire officials, and it's a good thing
because they're pretty busy right now, right we want them
to save homes and lives before updating us. So I'm
sure that there will probably be some kind of a
news conference later this afternoon, and it will be well
over two hundred acres burned.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
The flames are really close to neighborhoods there, and it's
huge flames, totally out of control over a widespread area.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
There are reports that some homes have burned.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
H they would have had to. I heard that that
homes were, I mean, backyards were already burning, and I'm
looking to see what road they're on here on TV.
I mean, I'm just trying to read the scroll I
at channel five and seven and eleven on and the
(04:49):
scroll has something about there trying to get a guy
out who's in a wheelchair. This happened so fast that
there wasn't time, Like, there wasn't time to put out evacuation.
More it was it's overwhelming the town before people had
a chance to react, and so everybody left at the
same time. I mean that which you just heard, you
(05:12):
heard all the hanking right, people are panicking.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, earlier there was a stall.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
John, there was a stall, so all these people got
out of there. I think five people were pushing this
car to get it out of the way because because
it's so chaotic and people are really running for their lives,
and then you have a car that is just stalled
in the middle of the street.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
So Pacific Palisades is this really cute village which is
just to the west of Brentwood and just to the
east of Malibu, and Sunset Boulevard winds through the main
downtown part of Palisades where they have all the commerce,
and then there's one road that goes to the north
(05:52):
to Pacific Highlands. So we know a few people who
live there and go it goes to the north. Uh,
It's it's very hilly. There's a lot of beautiful homes
up there, but it's the only way in and out,
Like if you live in that Pacific Highlands area. I
think the neighborhood is called the Summit. If something happens,
I'm looking at a map just to confirm my impression. Yeah,
(06:15):
there's virtually no other way to go but to the
south and pick up Sunset and then you get the sunset.
You can't go to the east because they've closed everything
to the east. You can I'm sorry, to the west.
You can't go to the west. You can only go east.
And then people down below the hills, in the main
area of Palisades, they can't go north, and they can't
(06:39):
go to the west. They can only go east and south.
And so everybody's leaving it once and what you get
is now, peep, you know, with the embers flying and
setting the palm trees on fire, that that's horrific. So
you have to do what Kelly just did and just
take off. If there's if there's anybody else listening right now,
(07:02):
and you want to call in and describe what's going on,
the numbers eight hundred five to two oh one five
three four, eight hundred five to two oh one five
three four and.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Virtually John, the whole city of Pacific Palisades has been
told to evacuate. There is an evacuation center which is
at the Westwood Recreation Center on sepulvit A Boulevard.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
There's gridlock on Pacific Coast Highway. They've closed PCH last
I heard it Tapanga and all these details are going
to change from minute to minute. I already saw I
left Brentwit at about eleven thirty, which is the next
town over, and getting on the four or five. Well,
first of all, going New Sunset Boulevard, endless string of
(07:45):
fire trucks. Fire trucks were coming in from all over
the city in county, so about six of them in
a row, just blew by me, all the sirens blaring,
all the fire horns honking. And then get on the
four or five. It was already jamming up, especially uh
going southbound on the four h five because they you
know there as we found out during you know, some
(08:06):
of the other disasters, the mud slides and landslides that
they have to Panga Canyon Road. If that gets shut down,
it's it's difficult to get in and out of the region,
and you have to end up looping around a series
of other roads and you end up on the four
or five. Well, you know this because you live right
over the hills from Malibu and from Pacific Palace.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Iright in Topango was closed for a really long time
and it was ridiculous on the freeways.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah, so it's going to be ridiculous all over the
west Side today and the parade probably, I guess, yeah,
about ten thirty, I'm trying to think, but I started
hearing the sirens, and about ten thirty I started hearing
lots of sirens, and by eleven thirty, yeah, there was
there were long lines of trucks coming in. I mean,
(08:55):
they got hundreds and hundreds of firefighters already there, and
they did have some some trucks in personnel already prepositioned
for the Palisades. It's the worst conditions because the wind
was expected to blow in the passes and canyons about
sixty to eighty miles an hour and in some places
(09:16):
guts up to one hundred miles an hour. So now
you're getting into serious hurricane territory. The winds are strong,
and the vegetation is very dry. We haven't had any
rain probably in about ten months. The only thing you're
missing is the heat of summer, or the heat of
September and October, but that doesn't really matter much when
(09:40):
you have this kind of dryness, low humidity, Santa and
the winds blowing. Well.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
You know, the winds are supposed to pick up around
three this afternoon, and they're supposed to really intensify overnight.
So this wind event really hasn't even gotten started.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yet and it's going to go on all day tomorrow.
But yeah, the night time winds can be the worst.
We're going to take a break and we come back
and we'll keep you updated on this. If any of
you are in Pacific Palisades, are in your car and
you want to tell us what's going on right in
front of you or what your experience has been, we'll
(10:17):
put you on the air and we'll also cover some
other things as needed. John COBALT's Show.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
You're listening to John Coblt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
We're on from one until four. And by far the
top story out here is this huge fire in the
Pacific Palisades and it is gigantic. It is causing massive evacuations,
people trying to flee the Palisades all at once. Huge
traffic jam going down Palisades drive out of the hills
(10:51):
from north to south to Sunset Boulevard. Pch is closed
to Panga Canyon Boulevard is closed. Evacuation orders are in
place from Merrimack Road in the northeast west to Tapanga
Canyon south to pch and if you're outside the evacuation,
they're telling you to stay inside. They do have an
(11:13):
evacuation center open in Westwood at the Westwood Recreation Center,
which is thirteen fifty South supulvit Of Boulevard. And as
we told you before, the flames are incredibly high, fierce,
the winds are blowing at an extreme level, lots of
(11:33):
very thick smoke that can be seen from miles and miles,
and a lot of people. We had a woman on
Kelly We were talking to her. She was in her
car trying to get down Palisades Drive and a palm
tree was on fire just fifty feet away on the
corner of Sunset and Palisades, and she had to jump
out of her car and run off right in the
(11:54):
middle of the call.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
And you heard the I don't know if it was
her dog barking or somebody else's dog. I mean, you've
got people with an animals too, that you have to
go and try and get out. I mean, really, the
whole area of Pacific Palisades has pretty much been told
to evacuate, and I'm sure a lot of those people
are trying to figure out what to do with their pets.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
All right, we got other people who are there. Dominic, welcome.
You're on kfive. What's going on, Ben John?
Speaker 6 (12:20):
Thanks for having me on. I think I was probably
a couple of cars ahead of your last Callar, because
my car was the one that the burning palm tree
was falling on at the corner of Palisades and Sunset
a couple of minutes ago. I thankfully got through there,
terrifying for a number of reasons, but mentioning small pets.
(12:41):
I also have my small dog with me, and everyone
in the cars near me was being ordered to get
out of their cars because the flames work too close,
and I was really concerned. The smoke is so thick here.
I've actually shut off the AC in my car, even
with the recycled function, to keep as much of it
out as I can. But both myself and my small
(13:03):
dog are having some trouble breathing, the burning eyes all
the other stuff. But it's total bedlam here. You can
hear the sirens going by. As you reported a few
minutes ago. The fire has jump Palisades Drive and spread
towards the old Getty Villa and the neighborhood there. And
(13:24):
I just saw probably conservatively twenty five or thirty full
sized fire engines going westbound on PCH passed Sunset towards
the Getty villa to get that under control. But in
the last I would say twenty minutes or so, the
wind feels to have shifted a little bit and the
(13:46):
whole area is just covered in smoke and ash to
the point where the fire engines have large floodlights on
top of the engines so that they can see. That's
how dark it is here at one twenty three in
the afternoon, really really onerous conditions.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Where are you right now?
Speaker 6 (14:06):
I was able to get through that intersection, and so
I'm pulled over near the corner of Sunset and PCH
near the vands there and a little bit closer to
the water. I see people going by me right now
walking with small animals. Everybody is trying to help everyone
out as much as they can. People are wearing the
(14:27):
old COVID masks, but now it's to keep the smoke out.
And you know, even if everything else were to work
out okay, which it sounds terrifying right now, the smoking
relation is going to be a problem. I think for
a lot of the folks here smoke has been hugging
the ground.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
You said people were getting ordered out of their cars.
Who's doing the ordering?
Speaker 6 (14:49):
LAPD and the fire department? So what happened with this
palm tree? It started to smolder and we could tell
that it was going to catch fire. I heard you
ask the other caller was it in the center median?
It actually was not. This one was on the Sunset
Boulevard side towards the Lake Shrine Temple, which is across
(15:12):
the street there at the Tea intersection where Palisades Drive
hit Sunset Boulevard, and so, as the callers reported, it
is gridlocked. The fire engines literally could not move or
get in place in order to put out this spot fire,
and so there was no choice but to start to
order people out of their cars for fear that they
(15:34):
were in serious danger. I'll be honest, having open flame,
things on fire, falling on top of my car and
having nowhere to be able to go to because I'm stuck,
It's terrifying.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
That's unbelievably frightening. So what made you decide to evacuate?
What did you see or what did you hear that
you decide to get in the car and bring your
dog and get away.
Speaker 6 (16:03):
Yeah. So here's a little bit more explanation to the story.
So I was in my office in Santa Monica when
the fire started. And my home, where I've lived with
my wife and kids for the last fifteen years, is
in the Palatate Highlands, which is the neighborhood that's in question.
So I had started immediately getting text messages from friends
(16:25):
in the area that something was afoot And of course
it started as small vegetation fire, but a bee. As
I looked out my window from Santa Monica and saw
how thick and big the black smoke was, I felt
compelled to try and get some of our papers and
documents out of the house. I was not able to
(16:48):
do that. I tried to get into the neighborhood. I
could not, and in contact with our neighbors who have
been ordered to evacuate as we have, they have been
unable to get down Palisades Drive due to the traffic.
So they have now been ordered in the Highlands to
shelter in place because they can't get out. And there's
(17:10):
a lot of concern with the flames jumping over Palisades Drive,
and you know, a whole line of cars there like
sitting ducks. You fear the worst happening if the flames
get out of control. You know, what was going through
my mind was a repeat of the Maui situation where
people were trying to evacuate and couldn't get out in time. So,
(17:31):
you know, I'm still on a full adrenaline rush from that,
you know, not a positive one, but a fight or
flight adrenaline rush. I'm praying for the safety of everyone involved.
I have personally seen a few houses go up in flames,
large ones, expensive ones. It's this is going to be
(17:55):
really devastating, I think before it's all said and done,
particularly with the weather.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Just just this morning, you saw that the flames.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
Within Yeah, within the last hour.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Jeez, your wife and kids, where are they?
Speaker 6 (18:11):
Oh? Thankfully my daughter is a sophomore. If she sees
me a freshman at Palsades High and she's thankfully still
off on spring break, e sees me winter break. So
she's at work with my wife in downtown LA and
thankfully I have the dog. And our other daughter is
back at U c l A as a sophomore. She
just started class yesterday. Otherwise folks would have been home
(18:35):
and you know, if anyone out there is a parent
separated from their kids who are in danger, you know
how scary that can go.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
In this situation where it's impossible to leave it, it's
impossible to go up and rescue. Yeah, you're you're actually
in a good place right now, your whole family. Dominic,
thank you very much for calling and telling us this.
That's quite quite descriptive and quite frightening.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
I appreciate you taking the call, and I hope everyone
out there is able to get out of harm's way.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, yeah, all right, Dominic, thank you very much. We
are going to continue. If you are in the Palisades
right now and you're in a situation like Dominic has been,
and you see things, you know things you're trying to
get out and you can't, you're in some kind of danger,
give us a call and we'll put you on the air.
So people going to a really first hand view of
(19:30):
just how frightening the whole thing is.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI. A
six forty.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Evacuation order now in place for just about the entire
town of Pacific Palisades, and looking at a map, it
stretches from the ocean all the way down Sunset Boulevard
to twenty sixth Street, which is actually in Brentwood, actually
(20:00):
covers a small piece of Santa Monica to the south,
Brentwood to the east, all of Pacific Palisades all the
way west to Panga Canyon Boulevard, and then to the
north encompassing to Panga State Park. So everybody in that region,
(20:20):
in the Pacific Palisades and some neighborhoods leaking into Santa
Monica and in Brentwood around the Riviera Country Club are
in the red zone mandatory evacuation. I'm looking at a
map online from KTLA and they posted it on x
and one of the responses is somebody who posted a
(20:45):
video and wrote, unbelievable. I'm literally fighting with a homeless
person who is lighting fires. And they've got video of
this person on the beach setting a fire. It's a
woman and she told the poster that she's doing a
good thing.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
She's doing a good thing.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Yeah, well, it's a lunatic. And you know there are
a lot of those people who wander around in the hillsides. Yeah,
I know, in the Palisades, that's where they live. And
certainly on the beaches in Santa Monica and walk in
the streets. I see them every day. And what about the.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
People flicking their cigarettes, you know, out the window or
when they're walking along and they just they just throw
their lit cigarettes out.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
There's one hundred ways that these things can start. And
you know, most days out of the year it doesn't matter.
And then you have the Santa Ana days with the
sixty mile an hour winds, and you could have a
whole town burned down. It's just unbelievable. Of course, you know,
if we had a mayor who and county supervisors who
(21:52):
made sure that every lunatic, homeless person was off the streets,
no excuses, then you wouldn't have crazy people setting fires
in the middle of a Santa Ana red flag warning day.
But we don't have that mayor, and we don't have
that those county supervisors, and now god knows what kind
(22:13):
of damage we're going to have the Palisades down. There
are homes on fire, there have homes been destroyed from
the accounts that I'm reading. If you are in that
red zone and you don't know where to go, they're
having an evacuation center established at the Westwood Recreation Center,
thirteen fifty South Suppulvita Boulevard, And like I said, the
(22:36):
mandatory zone has expanded to cover just about the entire
town of Pacific Palisades and even some neighborhoods in Brentwood
and south of Sunset into Santa Monica all the way
to Topanga Canyon Road, and all the camera shots I'm
(22:58):
looking at it's it's very bad, thick smoke, gigantic flames.
We just heard from Dominic a few minutes ago, one
of our listeners. He was in his car. In fact,
we've had two people who were trapped in their cars,
one of them Kelly. She jumped out of the car
(23:20):
and ran and lapd From what Dominic said was going
from car to car, I guess banging on the window
and saying get out now, because this palm tree was
burning and it could be falling on one of the cars.
That's what Dominic was afraid of. Smoke is very thick,
it's hard to breathe. People are trying to bring their animals.
You can't go back. If you do live in the
(23:42):
area and you think you're going to sneak back in,
it's impossible. The gridlock is in both directions. Nobody's going
to let you in, and if you are trapped inside
your house, they're just telling you to stay there. And
you got to just keep watching and if you see
the flames coming, you're gonna have to run. I mean,
this is basic, primal survival mode. Now, there is no magic,
(24:06):
There is no good answer here.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
And the awful part is that the winds are going
to kick up later tonight and last through tomorrow. The
red flag warning is an effect until Thursday, but really
the winds are going to peak tonight and tomorrow morning,
so it's going to be the winds are going to
be so awful. I mean, the winds have already been awful,
so imagine they're.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Going to be worse.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah. I mean the forecast was in the passes and canyons,
and I mean that's the area we're talking about here
in the Palisades was sixty to eighty miles an hour,
possibly eighty to one hundred miles an hour with gusts
and the I'm just looking at some of the posts
online from people who are there, and the wind has
(24:50):
been changing direction. They're telling everybody goes south generally Santa Ana.
Winds blow from the north and northeast to this south
and southwest. And so what you want to do is
go south, uh and and or or to the east
and get out of there because the winds are the
(25:13):
sant ane winds only work from the north in the northeast.
That they just the way that the meteorology is. It's
not going to come from the other direction. Of course,
you can have the local conditions where the winds swirl
and it may seem like it's changed direction.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Channel eleven. Uh, this is according to your wife.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
She just texted me that the fire is close to
condos at p h and sun sunset.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah, I'm looking at looking at Channel eleven right now. Yes,
I could see that all these all these shots are
very familiar to me because we're in the next town
over about five miles away, and so we're in the
palisades all the time. So this is this is like
close to our backyard. Here. They've got TV reporters wearing
looks like gas masks because it would be impossible to breathe.
(26:02):
We're in a few minutes without giving yourself permanent lung damage.
And this is now and you know I'm not there's
not showing a lot of aerial drops from helicopters or planes.
I'm not seeing much of that. I wonder if the
conditions are so severe that the planes can't fly because
(26:23):
the winds, or they can't see anything because of the
thick smoke.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Well, I know that there were some water dropping, yeah, earlier,
but I haven't seen any. But again, we can't see because,
as you said, the smoke is so so thick, but
it is so windy.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
How dangerous that would be, right.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, And I heard one firefighter earlier say that, you know,
most you see the planes and the helicopters, and and
they're good to have, but the real action is down
on the ground. I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds
of firefighters in the middle of this right now, walls
of flame, thick smoke, impossible winds. There are many many
firefighters inside this inferno now. And we've had a couple
(27:04):
of people on the air say that they saw homes burning.
But it's impossible really to get a good sense of
what's going on. I mean, even the television reporters can't
get inside the fire. You can only report what you
see on the outside. And everybody you know in the
fire department is really busy now, so we haven't had
(27:24):
a formal news conference to explain this in a while,
we will the number one eight hundred and five to
oh one KFI. If you are in the Palisades or
nearby and you're seeing things, you're trying to escape, you're
you're you're you're trapped inside this mandatory evacuation zone and
you can't get out, call us and we'll put you
(27:47):
on the air and you could tell us what's going on,
because you could you could be the eyes and ears
of of what's going on and explain to the rest
of us what's happening in the Palisade in traffic, whether
you're fleeing or you're trying to get back, you shouldn't
try to get back. You're not going to make it.
One eight hundred five to oh one KFI. One eight
(28:10):
hundred five to oh one KFI.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Pacific Palisades brush fire is enormous and it's probably burning
a number of homes right now. As best as we
can tell, they have hundreds and hundreds of firefighters on
the scene. The entire town of Pacific Palisades and some
bordering neighborhoods are under a mandatory evacuation order. There are
(28:41):
multiple reports of structures burning throughout the fire area. Hey, John, Yes,
we got Nancy Lou from a news nation on if
you want to talk to her. All right, let's get
Nancy on right now. Nancy, how are you?
Speaker 7 (28:51):
I'm good, bet, John. I can confirm I am watching
right now a home that is burning here in Pacific Palace.
It's ominous looking the skies, it's so dark, but I
am sadly watching a home burn. I believe I'm on
Los Lomas, right in the heart of Pacific Palisades. It's
(29:15):
very smoky, but I have personally seen at least three
or four structures on fire. There are embers flying around,
and we have seen at least two or three instances
of new fire starting from those embers, and we personally
stomped out a couple of them just to prevent spread.
(29:38):
But yes, I'm right now watching home burn sadly.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah. Are there firefighters in the neighborhood.
Speaker 7 (29:45):
No, but I've heard just incessant, you know, sirens around me.
I know they're on the move. I know hundreds are
you know descending on Pacific Palisades right now. But this
is just a assive emergency situation, and clearly there are
many spots that they need to hit. And in the
(30:08):
past half hour or so, I've seen far less of
an air fight, and I don't know if that's because
it's too smoky, too windy, but you know, or when
I first arrived on the scene, which was you know,
about an hour after the fire broke out, we did
see more of an air attack, some retardant going down.
(30:28):
But now we're not seeing as many aircraft in the sky,
but just a very smoky situation. And as you know,
the winds are picking up. I mean, it is really
gusty out here, and at times it feels like it's
probably forty miles an hour or something like that.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, that's what it was supposed to be. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (30:51):
Yeah, it's a horrible combination of factors out here. We've
just got smoke and wind and as you know, very
dry conditions here in southern California. So it's not just
specific polsage. You know, they're under all areas under threat
here in southern California.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, I can confirm what you're not seeing in the skies,
because I'm looking at four different television stations and they
don't have any aerial shots of the fire, nor are
there any shots of fire helicopters or planes in the air,
And it just seems like visually the conditions are so awful.
(31:31):
Visibility is so bad, and the wind so strong. I'm
not sure they can do too much from the air
right now exactly.
Speaker 7 (31:39):
And also the winds keep shifting around, so sometimes you know,
we're in daylight and then twenty seconds later we're in
complete darkness with black smoke. And it's really a volatile
situation out here. And as I stand here and watch
more of this home burn.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Did how did you get up there? Because of all
the traffic and the gridlock? How were you able to
get into We came in.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
Yeah, we came in from the south. We came up
Pacific pch and it was starting to build. We hit
the road probably you know, within an hour of the
fire starting. I saw the smoke from Afar and I
said we should move, so we immediately started heading towards
Pacific Palisades. The traffic is just horrendous. We've seen John
(32:32):
just cars backed up, people trying to get out and
I've been talking to residents here in Pacific Palisades. You
mentioned that the mandatory evacuation is now in place, and
people were torn. I mean, do we stay, do we go?
What do we take? And you know, I'm in a neighborhood.
A couple of the neighbors told me they've never evacuated before,
(32:53):
so this is something you know, they've never done. And
so but the two that I spoke with, they're leaving.
One man though, came back around and said the traffic
is so bad, she goes, I'm not going to go anywhere.
So I'm just going to come back home and hope
for the best.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
It's a frightening set of choices. Thanks very much for coming.
Speaker 7 (33:15):
On, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
All Right, Pacific Palisades is on fire. I'm looking at
several television news feeds and they have different homes burning
on different stations. I see one home just starting to burn.
There's a wall of flames in the backyard, wall of
(33:39):
flames in the backyard of the neighbor's house. And you
just you just picked the channel and you've got a
different horrific video. I'm looking. I'm looking at what is
this channel eleven? And just a gigantic wall of flame
(34:01):
behind this really beautiful home. All the backdrops or it's
orange or or black black smoke mixed with an orange
glow from from the fires. Shots of people jammed on
in roads. Uh, you know they they made the roads.
I guess one way like Palisades Avenue, one way coming
(34:25):
from the north to the south, and didn't help much.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
And where are those people going to run to?
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Well, that's the thing. If there there's flames all around you,
if there's flames in the palm trees over you, Uh,
what's your choice here? You could stay in the house
and there's flames coming up the hillside. You could you
could jump in a car.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
But when you have to leave your car in the
middle of the street, where are you going?
Speaker 1 (34:47):
I don't know. You just run, You run downhill. It's
the only choice. Run downhill, run south. Try to try
to get to sunset, Try to get to p h
Try to get to an open space where the air is,
you know, not not the too overwhelming to breathe.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
You didn't even even see because the smoke is so thick.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
No, no, I mean this is it's like in the
in the woods. You know when there's a fire and
you see all the animals just running, running, running. That's
now where that's what you're reduced right, it's people now
because there aren't any options. We will continue this with
the fire coverage in Pacific Palisades. Debor Mark is live
(35:26):
in 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 find 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 then after four
o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand. That's the podcast version
on the iHeart app and it's the same as the
radio show, so if you miss stuff in the next
three hours, you can pick up on it after four o'clock.
(00:22):
Pacific Palisades in the Highlands area on fire, huge brush
fire burning has been burning now for what about.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Since about ten thirty this morning.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Just two and a half hours, and the video on
television is spectacular, huge clouds of black smoke and walls
of flame shooting very high into the sky. It's really
bad and most of Pacific Palisades is evacuating. They don't
(00:53):
even have to be told to get out. You just
look up and you know it's time to go. And
people are jamming the roadways to the point where some
people are abandoning their cars and running off. We're going
to talk to a woman now who's trying to get
out of the Palisades. Kelly. Are you there, Kelly, Yes,
(01:17):
can you hear me? Yeah? Thanks for coming.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
On Oh yeah, no problem. Right now, I'm on Sunset
and Palisades Drive and it's completely you can't even move.
And as I'm sitting here on the corner of Palisades Drive,
there's a palm tree on fire, so like we're kind
of all sitting here in the car and watching. I
(01:41):
mean it's like fifty feet away.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I think, oh, that's really frightening.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
It's really frightening. It's really really frightening.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
And you can't get away from.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
It, no, because we're locked in. It's kind of like,
you know, we see those terrible movies where everybody's running
from something and all the cars are stuck. That's kind
of how it is. Yeah, oh my gosh, Yeah, this
tree is.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Really it's on the corner or on the in the median.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
On Palisades Drive and Sunset directly on the corner there's
a and I don't know if you can hear all
the honking.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I can. Yeah, I saw on TV there was a
palm tree in the median that was.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, it's right now. I just I just don't know,
Like people are getting out of their cars. Now, what
if you say yes, yes, forget out of the car,
all right, go Okay, okay, Oh.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
My god, that's terrifying.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Wow, all right, that's uh Kelly. She's actually a friend
of a friend to my wife and had had sent
some peace some video this morning of what was going on,
and so we contacted her and you just heard what
she's dealing with. You know. A couple other people are
(03:08):
also in the traffic and had to run off from
their car. That seems to be widespread because I live
in the next town over from the Palisades and my
wife and I go there frequently. We were there just
this morning. Actually took a walk in one of the
canyons that's where we usually go for a walk, and
(03:29):
the wind was blowing pretty hard and you could just
feel it. It's like we looked at each other like
it feels like something bad is going to happen. It's
like the opening moments of a movie.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Well, we knew when these life threatening wind forecast was
forecast for today, we knew we were going to have
some serious fires today.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, the slightest spark would blow us up quickly. I
mean it was they say two hundred acres. It's probably
more than that, but that's only in two and a
half hours.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Well, also, we haven't we haven't had an update from
any of the fire officials, and it's a good thing
because they're pretty busy right now, right we want them
to save homes and lives before updating us. So I'm
sure that there will probably be some kind of a
news conference later this afternoon, and it will be well
over two hundred acres burned.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
The flames are really close to neighborhoods there, and it's
huge flames, totally out of control over a widespread area.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
There are reports that some homes have burned.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
H they would have had to. I heard that that
homes were, I mean, backyards were already burning, and I'm
looking to see what road they're on here on TV.
I mean, I'm just trying to read the scroll I
at channel five and seven and eleven on and the
(04:49):
scroll has something about there trying to get a guy
out who's in a wheelchair. This happened so fast that
there wasn't time, Like, there wasn't time to put out evacuation.
More it was it's overwhelming the town before people had
a chance to react, and so everybody left at the
same time. I mean that which you just heard, you
(05:12):
heard all the hanking right, people are panicking.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, earlier there was a stall.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
John, there was a stall, so all these people got
out of there. I think five people were pushing this
car to get it out of the way because because
it's so chaotic and people are really running for their lives,
and then you have a car that is just stalled
in the middle of the street.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
So Pacific Palisades is this really cute village which is
just to the west of Brentwood and just to the
east of Malibu, and Sunset Boulevard winds through the main
downtown part of Palisades where they have all the commerce,
and then there's one road that goes to the north
(05:52):
to Pacific Highlands. So we know a few people who
live there and go it goes to the north. Uh,
It's it's very hilly. There's a lot of beautiful homes
up there, but it's the only way in and out,
Like if you live in that Pacific Highlands area. I
think the neighborhood is called the Summit. If something happens,
I'm looking at a map just to confirm my impression. Yeah,
(06:15):
there's virtually no other way to go but to the
south and pick up Sunset and then you get the sunset.
You can't go to the east because they've closed everything
to the east. You can I'm sorry, to the west.
You can't go to the west. You can only go east.
And then people down below the hills, in the main
area of Palisades, they can't go north, and they can't
(06:39):
go to the west. They can only go east and south.
And so everybody's leaving it once and what you get
is now, peep, you know, with the embers flying and
setting the palm trees on fire, that that's horrific. So
you have to do what Kelly just did and just
take off. If there's if there's anybody else listening right now,
(07:02):
and you want to call in and describe what's going on,
the numbers eight hundred five to two oh one five
three four, eight hundred five to two oh one five
three four and.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Virtually John, the whole city of Pacific Palisades has been
told to evacuate. There is an evacuation center which is
at the Westwood Recreation Center on sepulvit A Boulevard.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
There's gridlock on Pacific Coast Highway. They've closed PCH last
I heard it Tapanga and all these details are going
to change from minute to minute. I already saw I
left Brentwit at about eleven thirty, which is the next
town over, and getting on the four or five. Well,
first of all, going New Sunset Boulevard, endless string of
(07:45):
fire trucks. Fire trucks were coming in from all over
the city in county, so about six of them in
a row, just blew by me, all the sirens blaring,
all the fire horns honking. And then get on the
four or five. It was already jamming up, especially uh
going southbound on the four h five because they you
know there as we found out during you know, some
(08:06):
of the other disasters, the mud slides and landslides that
they have to Panga Canyon Road. If that gets shut down,
it's it's difficult to get in and out of the region,
and you have to end up looping around a series
of other roads and you end up on the four
or five. Well, you know this because you live right
over the hills from Malibu and from Pacific Palace.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Iright in Topango was closed for a really long time
and it was ridiculous on the freeways.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah, so it's going to be ridiculous all over the
west Side today and the parade probably, I guess, yeah,
about ten thirty, I'm trying to think, but I started
hearing the sirens, and about ten thirty I started hearing
lots of sirens, and by eleven thirty, yeah, there was
there were long lines of trucks coming in. I mean,
(08:55):
they got hundreds and hundreds of firefighters already there, and
they did have some some trucks in personnel already prepositioned
for the Palisades. It's the worst conditions because the wind
was expected to blow in the passes and canyons about
sixty to eighty miles an hour and in some places
(09:16):
guts up to one hundred miles an hour. So now
you're getting into serious hurricane territory. The winds are strong,
and the vegetation is very dry. We haven't had any
rain probably in about ten months. The only thing you're
missing is the heat of summer, or the heat of
September and October, but that doesn't really matter much when
(09:40):
you have this kind of dryness, low humidity, Santa and
the winds blowing. Well.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
You know, the winds are supposed to pick up around
three this afternoon, and they're supposed to really intensify overnight.
So this wind event really hasn't even gotten started.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yet and it's going to go on all day tomorrow.
But yeah, the night time winds can be the worst.
We're going to take a break and we come back
and we'll keep you updated on this. If any of
you are in Pacific Palisades, are in your car and
you want to tell us what's going on right in
front of you or what your experience has been, we'll
(10:17):
put you on the air and we'll also cover some
other things as needed. John COBALT's Show.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
You're listening to John Coblt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
We're on from one until four. And by far the
top story out here is this huge fire in the
Pacific Palisades and it is gigantic. It is causing massive evacuations,
people trying to flee the Palisades all at once. Huge
traffic jam going down Palisades drive out of the hills
(10:51):
from north to south to Sunset Boulevard. Pch is closed
to Panga Canyon Boulevard is closed. Evacuation orders are in
place from Merrimack Road in the northeast west to Tapanga
Canyon south to pch and if you're outside the evacuation,
they're telling you to stay inside. They do have an
(11:13):
evacuation center open in Westwood at the Westwood Recreation Center,
which is thirteen fifty South supulvit Of Boulevard. And as
we told you before, the flames are incredibly high, fierce,
the winds are blowing at an extreme level, lots of
(11:33):
very thick smoke that can be seen from miles and miles,
and a lot of people. We had a woman on
Kelly We were talking to her. She was in her
car trying to get down Palisades Drive and a palm
tree was on fire just fifty feet away on the
corner of Sunset and Palisades, and she had to jump
out of her car and run off right in the
(11:54):
middle of the call.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
And you heard the I don't know if it was
her dog barking or somebody else's dog. I mean, you've
got people with an animals too, that you have to
go and try and get out. I mean, really, the
whole area of Pacific Palisades has pretty much been told
to evacuate, and I'm sure a lot of those people
are trying to figure out what to do with their pets.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
All right, we got other people who are there. Dominic, welcome.
You're on kfive. What's going on, Ben John?
Speaker 6 (12:20):
Thanks for having me on. I think I was probably
a couple of cars ahead of your last Callar, because
my car was the one that the burning palm tree
was falling on at the corner of Palisades and Sunset
a couple of minutes ago. I thankfully got through there,
terrifying for a number of reasons, but mentioning small pets.
(12:41):
I also have my small dog with me, and everyone
in the cars near me was being ordered to get
out of their cars because the flames work too close,
and I was really concerned. The smoke is so thick here.
I've actually shut off the AC in my car, even
with the recycled function, to keep as much of it
out as I can. But both myself and my small
(13:03):
dog are having some trouble breathing, the burning eyes all
the other stuff. But it's total bedlam here. You can
hear the sirens going by. As you reported a few
minutes ago. The fire has jump Palisades Drive and spread
towards the old Getty Villa and the neighborhood there. And
(13:24):
I just saw probably conservatively twenty five or thirty full
sized fire engines going westbound on PCH passed Sunset towards
the Getty villa to get that under control. But in
the last I would say twenty minutes or so, the
wind feels to have shifted a little bit and the
(13:46):
whole area is just covered in smoke and ash to
the point where the fire engines have large floodlights on
top of the engines so that they can see. That's
how dark it is here at one twenty three in
the afternoon, really really onerous conditions.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Where are you right now?
Speaker 6 (14:06):
I was able to get through that intersection, and so
I'm pulled over near the corner of Sunset and PCH
near the vands there and a little bit closer to
the water. I see people going by me right now
walking with small animals. Everybody is trying to help everyone
out as much as they can. People are wearing the
(14:27):
old COVID masks, but now it's to keep the smoke out.
And you know, even if everything else were to work
out okay, which it sounds terrifying right now, the smoking
relation is going to be a problem. I think for
a lot of the folks here smoke has been hugging
the ground.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
You said people were getting ordered out of their cars.
Who's doing the ordering?
Speaker 6 (14:49):
LAPD and the fire department? So what happened with this
palm tree? It started to smolder and we could tell
that it was going to catch fire. I heard you
ask the other caller was it in the center median?
It actually was not. This one was on the Sunset
Boulevard side towards the Lake Shrine Temple, which is across
(15:12):
the street there at the Tea intersection where Palisades Drive
hit Sunset Boulevard, and so, as the callers reported, it
is gridlocked. The fire engines literally could not move or
get in place in order to put out this spot fire,
and so there was no choice but to start to
order people out of their cars for fear that they
(15:34):
were in serious danger. I'll be honest, having open flame,
things on fire, falling on top of my car and
having nowhere to be able to go to because I'm stuck,
It's terrifying.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
That's unbelievably frightening. So what made you decide to evacuate?
What did you see or what did you hear that
you decide to get in the car and bring your
dog and get away.
Speaker 6 (16:03):
Yeah. So here's a little bit more explanation to the story.
So I was in my office in Santa Monica when
the fire started. And my home, where I've lived with
my wife and kids for the last fifteen years, is
in the Palatate Highlands, which is the neighborhood that's in question.
So I had started immediately getting text messages from friends
(16:25):
in the area that something was afoot And of course
it started as small vegetation fire, but a bee. As
I looked out my window from Santa Monica and saw
how thick and big the black smoke was, I felt
compelled to try and get some of our papers and
documents out of the house. I was not able to
(16:48):
do that. I tried to get into the neighborhood. I
could not, and in contact with our neighbors who have
been ordered to evacuate as we have, they have been
unable to get down Palisades Drive due to the traffic.
So they have now been ordered in the Highlands to
shelter in place because they can't get out. And there's
(17:10):
a lot of concern with the flames jumping over Palisades Drive,
and you know, a whole line of cars there like
sitting ducks. You fear the worst happening if the flames
get out of control. You know, what was going through
my mind was a repeat of the Maui situation where
people were trying to evacuate and couldn't get out in time. So,
(17:31):
you know, I'm still on a full adrenaline rush from that,
you know, not a positive one, but a fight or
flight adrenaline rush. I'm praying for the safety of everyone involved.
I have personally seen a few houses go up in flames,
large ones, expensive ones. It's this is going to be
(17:55):
really devastating, I think before it's all said and done,
particularly with the weather.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Just just this morning, you saw that the flames.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
Within Yeah, within the last hour.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Jeez, your wife and kids, where are they?
Speaker 6 (18:11):
Oh? Thankfully my daughter is a sophomore. If she sees
me a freshman at Palsades High and she's thankfully still
off on spring break, e sees me winter break. So
she's at work with my wife in downtown LA and
thankfully I have the dog. And our other daughter is
back at U c l A as a sophomore. She
just started class yesterday. Otherwise folks would have been home
(18:35):
and you know, if anyone out there is a parent
separated from their kids who are in danger, you know
how scary that can go.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
In this situation where it's impossible to leave it, it's
impossible to go up and rescue. Yeah, you're you're actually
in a good place right now, your whole family. Dominic,
thank you very much for calling and telling us this.
That's quite quite descriptive and quite frightening.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
I appreciate you taking the call, and I hope everyone
out there is able to get out of harm's way.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, yeah, all right, Dominic, thank you very much. We
are going to continue. If you are in the Palisades
right now and you're in a situation like Dominic has been,
and you see things, you know things you're trying to
get out and you can't, you're in some kind of danger,
give us a call and we'll put you on the air.
So people going to a really first hand view of
(19:30):
just how frightening the whole thing is.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI. A
six forty.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Evacuation order now in place for just about the entire
town of Pacific Palisades, and looking at a map, it
stretches from the ocean all the way down Sunset Boulevard
to twenty sixth Street, which is actually in Brentwood, actually
(20:00):
covers a small piece of Santa Monica to the south,
Brentwood to the east, all of Pacific Palisades all the
way west to Panga Canyon Boulevard, and then to the
north encompassing to Panga State Park. So everybody in that region,
(20:20):
in the Pacific Palisades and some neighborhoods leaking into Santa
Monica and in Brentwood around the Riviera Country Club are
in the red zone mandatory evacuation. I'm looking at a
map online from KTLA and they posted it on x
and one of the responses is somebody who posted a
(20:45):
video and wrote, unbelievable. I'm literally fighting with a homeless
person who is lighting fires. And they've got video of
this person on the beach setting a fire. It's a
woman and she told the poster that she's doing a
good thing.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
She's doing a good thing.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Yeah, well, it's a lunatic. And you know there are
a lot of those people who wander around in the hillsides. Yeah,
I know, in the Palisades, that's where they live. And
certainly on the beaches in Santa Monica and walk in
the streets. I see them every day. And what about the.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
People flicking their cigarettes, you know, out the window or
when they're walking along and they just they just throw
their lit cigarettes out.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
There's one hundred ways that these things can start. And
you know, most days out of the year it doesn't matter.
And then you have the Santa Ana days with the
sixty mile an hour winds, and you could have a
whole town burned down. It's just unbelievable. Of course, you know,
if we had a mayor who and county supervisors who
(21:52):
made sure that every lunatic, homeless person was off the streets,
no excuses, then you wouldn't have crazy people setting fires
in the middle of a Santa Ana red flag warning day.
But we don't have that mayor, and we don't have
that those county supervisors, and now god knows what kind
(22:13):
of damage we're going to have the Palisades down. There
are homes on fire, there have homes been destroyed from
the accounts that I'm reading. If you are in that
red zone and you don't know where to go, they're
having an evacuation center established at the Westwood Recreation Center,
thirteen fifty South Suppulvita Boulevard, And like I said, the
(22:36):
mandatory zone has expanded to cover just about the entire
town of Pacific Palisades and even some neighborhoods in Brentwood
and south of Sunset into Santa Monica all the way
to Topanga Canyon Road, and all the camera shots I'm
(22:58):
looking at it's it's very bad, thick smoke, gigantic flames.
We just heard from Dominic a few minutes ago, one
of our listeners. He was in his car. In fact,
we've had two people who were trapped in their cars,
one of them Kelly. She jumped out of the car
(23:20):
and ran and lapd From what Dominic said was going
from car to car, I guess banging on the window
and saying get out now, because this palm tree was
burning and it could be falling on one of the cars.
That's what Dominic was afraid of. Smoke is very thick,
it's hard to breathe. People are trying to bring their animals.
You can't go back. If you do live in the
(23:42):
area and you think you're going to sneak back in,
it's impossible. The gridlock is in both directions. Nobody's going
to let you in, and if you are trapped inside
your house, they're just telling you to stay there. And
you got to just keep watching and if you see
the flames coming, you're gonna have to run. I mean,
this is basic, primal survival mode. Now, there is no magic,
(24:06):
There is no good answer here.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
And the awful part is that the winds are going
to kick up later tonight and last through tomorrow. The
red flag warning is an effect until Thursday, but really
the winds are going to peak tonight and tomorrow morning,
so it's going to be the winds are going to
be so awful. I mean, the winds have already been awful,
so imagine they're.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Going to be worse.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah. I mean the forecast was in the passes and canyons,
and I mean that's the area we're talking about here
in the Palisades was sixty to eighty miles an hour,
possibly eighty to one hundred miles an hour with gusts
and the I'm just looking at some of the posts
online from people who are there, and the wind has
(24:50):
been changing direction. They're telling everybody goes south generally Santa Ana.
Winds blow from the north and northeast to this south
and southwest. And so what you want to do is
go south, uh and and or or to the east
and get out of there because the winds are the
(25:13):
sant ane winds only work from the north in the northeast.
That they just the way that the meteorology is. It's
not going to come from the other direction. Of course,
you can have the local conditions where the winds swirl
and it may seem like it's changed direction.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Channel eleven. Uh, this is according to your wife.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
She just texted me that the fire is close to
condos at p h and sun sunset.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah, I'm looking at looking at Channel eleven right now. Yes,
I could see that all these all these shots are
very familiar to me because we're in the next town
over about five miles away, and so we're in the
palisades all the time. So this is this is like
close to our backyard. Here. They've got TV reporters wearing
looks like gas masks because it would be impossible to breathe.
(26:02):
We're in a few minutes without giving yourself permanent lung damage.
And this is now and you know I'm not there's
not showing a lot of aerial drops from helicopters or planes.
I'm not seeing much of that. I wonder if the
conditions are so severe that the planes can't fly because
(26:23):
the winds, or they can't see anything because of the
thick smoke.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Well, I know that there were some water dropping, yeah, earlier,
but I haven't seen any. But again, we can't see because,
as you said, the smoke is so so thick, but
it is so windy.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
How dangerous that would be, right.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, And I heard one firefighter earlier say that, you know,
most you see the planes and the helicopters, and and
they're good to have, but the real action is down
on the ground. I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds
of firefighters in the middle of this right now, walls
of flame, thick smoke, impossible winds. There are many many
firefighters inside this inferno now. And we've had a couple
(27:04):
of people on the air say that they saw homes burning.
But it's impossible really to get a good sense of
what's going on. I mean, even the television reporters can't
get inside the fire. You can only report what you
see on the outside. And everybody you know in the
fire department is really busy now, so we haven't had
(27:24):
a formal news conference to explain this in a while,
we will the number one eight hundred and five to
oh one KFI. If you are in the Palisades or
nearby and you're seeing things, you're trying to escape, you're
you're you're you're trapped inside this mandatory evacuation zone and
you can't get out, call us and we'll put you
(27:47):
on the air and you could tell us what's going on,
because you could you could be the eyes and ears
of of what's going on and explain to the rest
of us what's happening in the Palisade in traffic, whether
you're fleeing or you're trying to get back, you shouldn't
try to get back. You're not going to make it.
One eight hundred five to oh one KFI. One eight
(28:10):
hundred five to oh one KFI.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Pacific Palisades brush fire is enormous and it's probably burning
a number of homes right now. As best as we
can tell, they have hundreds and hundreds of firefighters on
the scene. The entire town of Pacific Palisades and some
bordering neighborhoods are under a mandatory evacuation order. There are
(28:41):
multiple reports of structures burning throughout the fire area. Hey, John, Yes,
we got Nancy Lou from a news nation on if
you want to talk to her. All right, let's get
Nancy on right now. Nancy, how are you?
Speaker 7 (28:51):
I'm good, bet, John. I can confirm I am watching
right now a home that is burning here in Pacific Palace.
It's ominous looking the skies, it's so dark, but I
am sadly watching a home burn. I believe I'm on
Los Lomas, right in the heart of Pacific Palisades. It's
(29:15):
very smoky, but I have personally seen at least three
or four structures on fire. There are embers flying around,
and we have seen at least two or three instances
of new fire starting from those embers, and we personally
stomped out a couple of them just to prevent spread.
(29:38):
But yes, I'm right now watching home burn sadly.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah. Are there firefighters in the neighborhood.
Speaker 7 (29:45):
No, but I've heard just incessant, you know, sirens around me.
I know they're on the move. I know hundreds are
you know descending on Pacific Palisades right now. But this
is just a assive emergency situation, and clearly there are
many spots that they need to hit. And in the
(30:08):
past half hour or so, I've seen far less of
an air fight, and I don't know if that's because
it's too smoky, too windy, but you know, or when
I first arrived on the scene, which was you know,
about an hour after the fire broke out, we did
see more of an air attack, some retardant going down.
(30:28):
But now we're not seeing as many aircraft in the sky,
but just a very smoky situation. And as you know,
the winds are picking up. I mean, it is really
gusty out here, and at times it feels like it's
probably forty miles an hour or something like that.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, that's what it was supposed to be. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (30:51):
Yeah, it's a horrible combination of factors out here. We've
just got smoke and wind and as you know, very
dry conditions here in southern California. So it's not just
specific polsage. You know, they're under all areas under threat
here in southern California.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, I can confirm what you're not seeing in the skies,
because I'm looking at four different television stations and they
don't have any aerial shots of the fire, nor are
there any shots of fire helicopters or planes in the air,
And it just seems like visually the conditions are so awful.
(31:31):
Visibility is so bad, and the wind so strong. I'm
not sure they can do too much from the air
right now exactly.
Speaker 7 (31:39):
And also the winds keep shifting around, so sometimes you know,
we're in daylight and then twenty seconds later we're in
complete darkness with black smoke. And it's really a volatile
situation out here. And as I stand here and watch
more of this home burn.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Did how did you get up there? Because of all
the traffic and the gridlock? How were you able to
get into We came in.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
Yeah, we came in from the south. We came up
Pacific pch and it was starting to build. We hit
the road probably you know, within an hour of the
fire starting. I saw the smoke from Afar and I
said we should move, so we immediately started heading towards
Pacific Palisades. The traffic is just horrendous. We've seen John
(32:32):
just cars backed up, people trying to get out and
I've been talking to residents here in Pacific Palisades. You
mentioned that the mandatory evacuation is now in place, and
people were torn. I mean, do we stay, do we go?
What do we take? And you know, I'm in a neighborhood.
A couple of the neighbors told me they've never evacuated before,
(32:53):
so this is something you know, they've never done. And
so but the two that I spoke with, they're leaving.
One man though, came back around and said the traffic
is so bad, she goes, I'm not going to go anywhere.
So I'm just going to come back home and hope
for the best.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
It's a frightening set of choices. Thanks very much for coming.
Speaker 7 (33:15):
On, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
All Right, Pacific Palisades is on fire. I'm looking at
several television news feeds and they have different homes burning
on different stations. I see one home just starting to burn.
There's a wall of flames in the backyard, wall of
(33:39):
flames in the backyard of the neighbor's house. And you
just you just picked the channel and you've got a
different horrific video. I'm looking. I'm looking at what is
this channel eleven? And just a gigantic wall of flame
(34:01):
behind this really beautiful home. All the backdrops or it's
orange or or black black smoke mixed with an orange
glow from from the fires. Shots of people jammed on
in roads. Uh, you know they they made the roads.
I guess one way like Palisades Avenue, one way coming
(34:25):
from the north to the south, and didn't help much.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
And where are those people going to run to?
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Well, that's the thing. If there there's flames all around you,
if there's flames in the palm trees over you, Uh,
what's your choice here? You could stay in the house
and there's flames coming up the hillside. You could you
could jump in a car.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
But when you have to leave your car in the
middle of the street, where are you going?
Speaker 1 (34:47):
I don't know. You just run, You run downhill. It's
the only choice. Run downhill, run south. Try to try
to get to sunset, Try to get to p h
Try to get to an open space where the air is,
you know, not not the too overwhelming to breathe.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
You didn't even even see because the smoke is so thick.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
No, no, I mean this is it's like in the
in the woods. You know when there's a fire and
you see all the animals just running, running, running. That's
now where that's what you're reduced right, it's people now
because there aren't any options. We will continue this with
the fire coverage in Pacific Palisades. Debor Mark is live
(35:26):
in 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
The John Kobylt Show News
Host
John Kobylt
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