January 9, 2025 • 35 mins
More on the fires burning across the Southland. Mayor Karen Bass was questioned about the lack of response and lack of preparedness. Alex Stone comes on the show to talk about the Eaton Fire burning in Altadena.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't find Am sixty. You're listening to the John Cobel
podcast on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome again. We're on from
one until four this afternoon and every afternoon and then
after four o'clock. If you missed any part of the show,
you could go to the iHeart app for John Cobelt
Show on demand. It's the podcast version of it, and
(00:21):
again that's posted right after four o'clock. We were on
last night, me and Eric and Ray Deborah slept.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Sorry. We tried. We tried well not waking you, but
we said text to see if we could rouse you up.
So we did. We did from midnight to three am
last night, which was which was fun.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I'm glad you had a good time.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I got home well yesterday from our normal show and
then I put myself to bed at eight o'clock. Slept
three hours. Put yourself to bed, yes, yes, I just
I tucked myself in, sung myself lullabye, and uh, I
was out for three hours. I had a good thing,
I said in alarm, and that woke me up. I
(01:06):
might have been sleeping all night. And then come in here.
We did our thing, went back home three point thirty
was out again right away, got another four hours of sleep.
I'm going to teach you how to do.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah, I want to know, because last night I did
get maybe a few hours of sleep, but it wasn't consistent.
So I kept waking up because I wanted to see
if the winds have picked up. I wanted to see
if I can see any flames out my window. So
I wasn't you know, it wasn't RESTful. Yeah, Well, the
key empty mind, next them mind.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I have an empty mind. You have a very cluttered,
busy mind. I do right. See, you'd have to go empty,
just delete everything. How do you do that? Huh? You
stop thinking?
Speaker 4 (01:46):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Do you ever try to stop thinking?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, John, I have tried meditation. I have tried breathing
exercises that I learned at that that.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yes, in Arizona.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
When I say nothing works, I'm not kidding. Nothing except
prescription sleep medication that I take once a week. And
I can't even take that right now because I don't
want to. I don't want to be in a deep
sleep in case I have to evacuate.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
And and the fire was headed up through to Pega
Canyons towards your your area. Yes, all right, so that's
that was freaky. Well someday that's that's gonna be what
you should choot for a totally blank mind, an empty head.
That's where I live. I understand that I live in emptiness. Uh.
(02:35):
This morning I turned on Fox eleven, which really has
had great coverage, and uh, they had their pilot flying
over Pacific Palisades and one thing we had seen uh,
I mean, there was some drone footage that I saw online,
but this was this was quite stunning.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
He was over Pacific Palisades, the residential areas north of Sunset,
and it was a scene unlike anything I've ever witnessed
in my life. I noticed a lot of the reporters
and anchors on TV were growing frustrated because they were
catching themselves repeating the same cliche lines like it looks
(03:20):
like a war zone, it looks like a bomb went off.
But watching that, I realized there there are no English
language words to describe this sort of thing, because this
sort of thing is never seen. I mean, even in
a war, you don't have everything flattened and bulldozed I
mean to the ground. You know, you have large chunks
(03:42):
of building and it'll have a big hole in it,
but inside the building you could probably find furniture and
wall standing right, And it's only a fire produces complete
wipeout where every single object in the house, the walls,
all the furniture, I'm every object is reduced to the
(04:06):
same gray ash on the bottom on the floor there,
and then the wind starts whipping it up and it's
floating through the air. There's there's nothing like that. There's
no bomb that does that. There's no war zone that
produces that. Look where everything is gone.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Well, you know, we take such pride in our homes, right,
it's the American dream to own your own home. And
you think about that, these these people, I mean, this
was all their stuff, their memories, and of course obviously
our lives are the most important. But when you when
you paint that picture of everything being reduced to ash,
(04:46):
it's it's so sad, and then it makes me kind
of think, you know, maybe it's just not worth it.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It's not around here. It may it may not be.
And you know, now the insurance companies aren't going to
I want to ensure these homes.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Now, something needs to be done about that. There, we
have an insurance crisis. I mean, first with the earthquake
insurance and the fire insurance, what is the insurance commissioner
doing because this should not be allowed.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
I don't know what to do. You can't force companies
to do business if they say we're going bankrupt insuring
the Palisades. I think at this point the insurance companies
are saying, you people shouldn't be building here. It's too dangerous.
There's too many threats from earthquakes to fires, to landslides.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
This is where all over the country you have tornadoes,
you have hurricanes, right, I mean you have I mean yes,
here we have the mud slides, and we have the earthquakes,
and we have the fires.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
But I heard somebody this morning on Fox say, how
many times do you hear the headlines a fire in Malibu? Right,
homes destroyed in Malibu, Celebrity homes destroyed in Malibu. He goes,
how many times have there been devastating fires in Malibu?
He goes to expect the insurance companies to bail everyone
(06:04):
out every single year? It seems they just had a
Malibu fire a few months ago, and there was a
lot of damage in Malibu. It got a little overshadowed
by the complete devastation of Pacific Palisades, but there are
a lot of homes along the beach that were destroyed.
And you know, if I had an insurance company executive
(06:26):
here and he says, well, we can't afford this. This
payout in all right, the first preliminary number they came
up for Pacific Palisades is minimum fifty billion dollars and
that's at today's prices. And that's just a very rough
estimate that I think Acuweather came up with. It's probably
way more than that. So if there's an insurance company executive,
(06:49):
he goes, Okay, John, where are we going to get
the fifty billion? Here? You want to see my balance sheet?
It just doesn't exist.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I can kind of understand that when you start canceling
policies across the board for numerous places in California because
of earthquakes. I mean, we don't knock on wood. We
don't have one now because I'm saying this, but I mean,
we don't have earthquakes, devastating earthquakes as much as.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
We do fires.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
And they still they cancel, and then there's everybody's left
scrambling me, So what are we going to do. No
one's going to be able to afford to live in California.
You forget the nice expensive area like Malibu, but I
mean California.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, that's where it goes. Then only the super wealthy
who can pay for their own damages, who can insure themselves,
are going to be left because I mean, you could
create a government fund, and I know we have the
fair plan, but those government funds tend to go bankrupt
(07:49):
and then people get upset because it's a money pit,
it's a money hole. The damages are excessive, no matter
who's paying off the insurance, whether it's a government and
the government insurance place is going to be run badly.
It's let let's say we created some kind of super
new fair plan. It's being run by Newsom's crowd. Well
(08:11):
what if it's run by Los Angeles. Well that's Karen
Bass and the city council. I mean, you know, these
people are disasters. They can't they cannot run a lemonade stand.
They cannot run anything properly, as we found out. And
I know there's a smarter group of people out there
to run government. And the Trump experiment is going to
(08:33):
be interesting because he's got mostly billionaire CEOs. He's got
super intelligent, big brains like Elon Musk and favek Ramaswami.
And for all the people squawking at that, it's like, hey,
the traditional politicians have completely failed us. We might as
well take a run with the business guys, with the
(08:53):
super brains. It's gonna be worse. I mean, look what
we've got from top to bottom, the Biden administration, Newso administration,
Bass administration. I man, this is bad stuff. These are
bad policies and failed execution. It's one thing to fight
about political policies from one side or the other, but
(09:15):
when it comes down to it, it's execution that matters.
And Karen Bass failed us miserably. Newsome failed us miserably
this week. There's no sugarcoating it. I am not putting
up if it looks like just about everybody in the
media finally is agreeing because this was so blatant, This
was so egregious, the way the Palisades fire completely got
(09:40):
out of control. And let me see what time is it?
Speaker 6 (09:43):
That?
Speaker 1 (09:43):
All right? Wait, come back, I want to play you
a cliff. Because the CBS News reporter Joseph Vigliotti questioned
Mayor Bass at the big press conference this morning about
the lack of preparedness and the lack of response. And
what's interesting in this is what she doesn't say. That's
(10:06):
often more fascinating than what these political hacks says. What
did they omit in their answer? After one thirty, we
got Alex Stone ABC News CAFI in Alta Dina reporting
on that flyer and that that Altta Dina. It's called
the eaton fire. It's moved onto Mount Wilson in where
(10:27):
the Mount Wilson Observatory is, and also most of the
radio and television antennas for the Los Angeles Marketer up there.
So it's possible your favorite radio television station could disappear suddenly,
and there are backups, but the backups don't cover the
same amount of area, so we'll see if that happens.
(10:49):
But everybody's in the broadcast industry out here is nervously
watching the firefront moving its way up Mount Wilson. There's
a lot to talk about, obviously, a lot to do.
We'll get to it.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
On from one until four and then after four o'clock
John Cobelt's show on demand on the iHeart app. You
got something to say eight seven seven moist eighty six,
you call them the Moistlide eight seven seven moist eighty six.
Or go to the talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app.
You know what to do. So, Karen Bass, the whole
world's coming down on her because she really did something
(11:29):
unforgivable and inexcusable. She abandoned the city of Los Angeles
well after she was warned that we could have a
deadly fire storm. And this timeline is what you really
need to know here, because it's always an endless game
between these lying hack politicians, these incompetent boobs, and to
(11:52):
some extent the news media. You know, much of the
news media will immediately do cheerleading and go into protective
mode for a progressive politician like Bass or Newsom, but
others will will try to get at the truth, and
(12:15):
they play a game. And the game is well, now's
not the time for finger pointing. Now's not the time
to make it political. Now's not the time to look back.
Let's look ahead. And I hear those cliches and I
just want to vomit. What they're doing is dodging responsibility,
hope that the daily flow of news pushes the current
(12:41):
problem back in people's minds, and then you start to
forget about it, you stop caring about it, and then
if somebody brings it up, oh that's old news. That's
the game they play. And every stupid bastard media operator
who works for a bass or a newsom and you
people I know are listening and you know what you do.
(13:01):
But we're onto it, and we're going to relentlessly try
to expose what the decision making process was that led
up to the Palisades disaster. I'm not letting go of this,
and we're never going to let go of this. Like
so many other things, they hope just to hunker down
and wait you out, and I'm going to give you well.
(13:23):
It's like Muhammad Ali many years ago, had what was
called the rope adope strategy, and his rope adope strategy
in a fight was just to put up his put
up his arms and let the opponent exhaust himself. The
opponent would throw repeated body blows over and over and over.
(13:46):
He couldn't reach Ali's head because Ali protected his head
and he absorbed the body blows and he just danced around,
made the opponent chase him, and eventually the opponent would
tire out and Ali he would issue a devastating knockout punch.
The whole purpose these hacked politicians have and their stupid
(14:08):
media staffs and their public relations people and their crisis
managers is to exhaust the media. And the media generally
has the attention span of a gnat or a hummingbird.
They just quickly look, poke their beacon maybe once, and
then they fly away. Now, we don't do that. Let
me tell you the timeline and then I'm going to
(14:30):
play you a clip. Timeline is this. On Thursday, the
National Weather Service in Los Angeles started warming of extreme
fire weather conditions. That's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Oh, Saturday. Karen
Bass decides to fly to Ghana to celebrate the election
(14:54):
of the new president of Ghana. She was part of
a part of a group that president it was sending
and she thought, yeah, this is cool, junket to Ghana.
Why should I stay in miserable Los Angeles place by
burned down this weekend? I don't want to be around
that and by the way, absolute fact National Weather Service.
(15:14):
You can check it extreme fire weather conditions. By Sunday
that she'd already taken off and landed in Ghana, the
warnings turned into rapid fire growth and extreme behavior with
any fire that starts well, you know, thanks to Karen
Vass and Newsome, the brush areas in la are all
(15:39):
populated with vagrants, drug addicts, and mental patients, and they're
cooking their food there, or they have a campfire trying
to keep warm, or they drop their crack pipe and
that ignites brush. Or you have the pyromaniacs who love
to run out during fire season, start a fire and
then go home, sit in their lounge chairs, watch the
(16:01):
coverage on TV while pleasuring themselves. That's the world we
live in. But why would pass want to be part
of that? She pushed it her first warning on X
about the windstorm on Monday. She was already in Ghana.
Her office didn't send out a news release until eleven
am Tuesday morning, half hour after the Pacific Palisades fire
(16:27):
had already broken out, So clearly there was and there's
a resident in the Palisades who's quoted in the New
York Times of all places. Michael Gonzales, he lost his
home in the Palisades, family of five. He said, there
was zero preparation. There was zero thought here. Yes, zero preparation,
(16:50):
zero thought, which leads me to this clip from the
press conference this morning. CBS News reporter Jonathan Vigliotti asked
Bass about lack of preparation and lack of response.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Mayor La County is in a panic state. It began
two days ago with the Palisades fire. My crew and
I arrived shortly after it started, and for several hours
we watched as hundreds of homes in a neighborhood burned
to the ground. We did not see a single fire engine.
We watched as Good Samaritans guided traffic. There was fear
(17:25):
and there was a lot of confusion. You were out
of the country at the time. Shortly after the fire started,
a press release was put out warning of this fire behavior.
My question to you is what explains this lack of
preparation and rapid response.
Speaker 7 (17:42):
Let me just say, first and foremost, here we go.
My number one focus, and I think the focus of
all of us here with one voice, is that we
have to protect lives. We have to save lives and
we have to save homes. Rest assured, Then sured, let
me finish. Rest assured when that is done, when we
(18:04):
are safe, when lives have been saved and homes have
been saved, we will absolutely do an evaluation to look
at what worked, what didn't work, and to correct or
to hold accountable any body, department, individual, et cetera. But
my focus right now is on the lives and on
(18:25):
the homes.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Do you think your leadership was effective while responding to
this disaster?
Speaker 7 (18:30):
I just said what I believe is the most important
thing for us to do right now, and that is
going to continue to be my focus. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Total evasion of the question, a little bit of scolding
in there, dismissiveness. You already failed. She already failed. There's
thousands of homes that burned, thousands, you already failed. There
are a number of people dead. What the hell are
(19:01):
you talking about? You know how many bodies they're going
to find when they find or not bodies, they're just
going to find the ash of victims who their families
can't find right now, and their ashes are now mixed
with the ashes of all the debris inside the home.
It's astonishing that she said that not even a drop
(19:25):
of humility and remorse because there was no plan. Yes,
she put out the tweet warning of bad fire conditions
after the fire had already broken out. She didn't even
know it had. And what that reporter said, and that's
the first reporter who was on the scene and explained
(19:48):
what he saw, is that they were there for hours,
his crew, and didn't see any fire response for hours
while homes were burning down. So there was nobody prepositioned.
Remember you kept hearing that from BASSTKNW someone It's like, well, wait,
we had personnel and resources prepositioned. Well, I guess they
(20:09):
weren't in the Palisades, because if what Jonathan Vigliotti is
saying is true, he read the situation accurately. The homes
were burning for hours, no wonder it got out of
control and ended up burning over a thousand, maybe two thousand,
No wonder, it got out of control. Nobody showed up.
(20:33):
There was no plan, there was no preparedness, there was
no mayor, there was no nothing. And now you ask,
how the hell did this happen? Well, you know, my
goal is to save lives and property. Too late on
that people are dead and thousands of homes have burned.
The hell are you talking about? Lady? We come back
(20:57):
Alex Stone, Uh in Altadena on the eating fire.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Let's get out to Alex Stone. Alex is back in Altadena,
the each and fire. That fire has been threatening all
the broadcast radio intellivision towers on Mount Wilson. So let's
talk to Alex and see what the latest is. Alex.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
How are you hey there, John?
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Here ian Altadena itself, it has actually been pretty calm
today that. Yes, there are the issues with up in
the mountains, getting near Mount Wilson, and all day today
the flames threatening the observatory up there and the antenna
that are so important to radio and TV communications in
La and the La County Sheriff's Department and Fire Department,
(21:47):
many others. But here in Altadena it is you know,
it's cliche, John to use apocalyptic or you know, a
moonscape or any of those, but it really is this
colorless gray ash neighborhood after neighborhood, and in many of
these homes that we were at as they were burning yesterday,
(22:08):
today they are kind of smoking and smoldering, and a
sign that progress is being made here in that Southern
California Edison is coming in and beginning to remove down
power lines and clean up the lines that have come down.
That now Southern California Edison is able to get in.
We're seeing a lot of help coming in as well.
We've seen Marine County Fire, San Jose Fire, all different
(22:32):
agencies in Northern California. I guess later tonight we're going
to begin to see we know Phoenix fire is on
its way Las Vegas, they're on their way as well,
that those coming from a longer distance that they're going
to begin arriving as well. But they're coming in. They're
waving to us as they come in, and it's like
help has arrived. That these firefighters are so exhausted and
(22:53):
so outmanned from the Southern California agencies that to see
these fresh firefighters coming in from Northern California, it is
a huge relief to the fire crews here, to those
who have not evacuated, who are still around and wanting
to make sure that their homes don't burn. But there's
still a lot of active fire in many of these homes.
(23:15):
I'm looking right now what was a chiropractic office and
then homes next door to it, where all the cars
are burned. And there's still active fire in the remains
of these buildings, and some gas lines that are continuing
to spew gas that are on fire as well, so
there's still with the fear of the winds kicking up
again tonight, there is still quite a bit of fire
(23:36):
even here in Altadena. The buildings aren't actively burning right now,
but they could if things begin to whip up again.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
And I suppose they know what started the fire.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
No, they have no idea. The fire chief and others
who been saying that they'll get to that they'll try
to figure that out, but right now they have no clue.
They don't even really know the death toll that they
believe it's at least five, but it's gonna take And
we saw this in Santa Rosa, we saw this in
(24:09):
Chico on what was called the Car Fire a number
of years ago. We saw it in Paradise, and it's
been elsewhere but up and down California where they've got
to bring in the cadaver dogs to really know what
the death count is, because not to get too graphic,
but it's not apparent that somebody was in these buildings
the remains that remain because they burned so hot that
(24:31):
it's going to take dogs to come in and say
somebody was here, and they'll begin when family members start
reporting people missing in and here's where they lived, and
then send dogs into those areas. When we got when
we got into this area yesterday, the wind was like
nothing I've ever experienced. Early early yesterday morning. The flames
(24:53):
were everywhere, the down trees and things hitting the car.
You could not see five feet in front of your
your car because of the thick smoke. People just could
not get out. The elderly, those who didn't get going
in time, You didn't know where the flames were. All
of a sudden, there would be flames all around you
and there weren't am allent Ago. So it was a
(25:13):
recipe for people being unable to get out. And that's why,
unfortunately we know that people have died. They just don't
know a total yet and it's going to take some time.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, what time at the start of the fire did
did did it move through these neighborhoods? Was it the
middle of it?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
No? Yeah, I mean, it was the middle of the night,
just from my experience of it, that it really got going.
In the neighborhoods of Altadena, some that were closer to
the mountain, it was earlier in the night, you know,
nine ten o'clock, But in the heart of Altadena it
was like three four o'clock.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
In the morning.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
We're on onlike Lake Avenue right now, like Boulevard, Lake Avenue,
and in this area. I mean I was here as
this was starting to ignite, and that was about three
four o'clock in the morning, as these homes began going up.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
So when people are in the deepest part of their
sleep cycle, that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
If they were, if they were able to sleep, and
I'm sure that there were people who did go to
bed thinking, you know what, the fire is up, you
know quite a way, it's in the hills, We're going
to be fine down here. And then in the wind,
and yeah, the wind. I've covered hurricanes before, and it
was very similar to standing in a hurricane where it
(26:29):
was so forceful that you could not stand and there
was so much stuff, you know, pieces of buildings and
trees just flying in the air, and then the hot
embers rolling down the hill that it pushed. If there
were some wind gusts that were calculated at one hundred
miles an hour and one hundred miles an hour, the
fire is running at one hundred miles an hour, and
(26:52):
that's when people just cannot get out those embers. That
that fire is moving in that wind at that same speed,
and they were likely either asleep or in their homes
deciding that they were going to go. I talked to
one guy today. He was showing me right where we
are that his home is gone, and he told me
at around five am yesterday he decided he had to go,
(27:12):
that he was trying to wait it out. He thought
he would use his garden hose, and that he was
able to save his home. At around five am, he
said that all dets are off and he ran and
he ran out of here, and he said, look, I'm alive.
That he's devastated about losing his home, but he's alive.
So people tried to stick around. There were some even
all day yesterday as we watched some of these neighborhoods burn,
(27:35):
where they were up on their roofs with their garden hoses,
trying everything they could. Some were successful, some were not.
You know, firefighters do that. Your garden hose is never
going to compete. But everybody wants to try to save
their home. It's totally understandable, but you're never going to
compete with what a firefighter's hose can do, but also
with what the wall of flames is doing. But still
(27:55):
people they want to try and and it did work
for some, but it didn't work forever about it.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
So the front of the fire is where now? Is
it threatening other developments?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
It's really up in the mountains. It's really the area
around Mount Wilson. There's no real front in Altadena anymore.
I mean, you know, hopefully things don't kick up tonight
and then that changes. We've seen a couple of homes
go up today, mainly from embers that were still active
in the buildings, and then they took off today because
(28:28):
there's still so much active fire and as more crews
come in from elsewhere, they'll be able to get in
and try to knock down the parts of buildings that
are still kind of burning that they can take off again.
But yeah, the La County Fire said today Chief Maroney
that they really didn't have much growth overnight on this fire.
(28:48):
Now I think today the growth is going to go
up because of what's going on in the mountains around
Mount Wilson. But that will be growth. But in the
last you know, since last night, they really didn't have
a ton of growth, and especially year in Altadena and
in parts of Pasadena that they there wasn't much new
activity that was going on. But this is really going
to be about the overnight hours tonight getting through what
(29:11):
the forecast says is going to be another round of
Santa Ana wins and then we should get a little
bit of a break until early next week and then
we're going to go through it again. But the challenge
is going to be when the next round, and hopefully
it does not materialize, but if it does tonight, then
using Saturday and Sunday to try to really button up
this and Pacific Palisades so that when we get the
(29:33):
next round early next week the things don't take off again.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
All Right, Alex, stay safe, Thank you, great reporting, You.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Got it, Thanks Sean.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
All Right, Alex Stone reporting for KFI ABC News. We
will continue with our fire coverage.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
You're listening to John Cobel on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
After Debra's News. At two o'clock, we're going to have
bar president of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles Local
one twelve. He's got thirty five years of experience. He's
been on with us previously to talk about whether Karen
Bass's budget cuts, the staffing shortages, the water issues, what
effect they had on the Pacific Palisades situation. And he's
(30:20):
going to tell us what he knows coming up right
after two o'clock, because we are going to try to
find out what happened in the hours leading up to
the fire and in the hours afterwards, in the next
two days that it was certainly a horrific natural situation,
well natural. I don't know who set the fire. Was
(30:44):
it a homeless guy. Was it a homeless guy that
the government should have had removed? Was did he start
fire and brush that should have been paired back by
the government, by Karen Bass's administration. See, there's a lot
of questions here, and because there's so many of them,
and it encompasses so many different agencies, so many different responsibilities,
(31:06):
and nobody wants to talk again. What they want to
do is just weigh everyone out. But they can't because
everyone woke up in the palace. Every resident who is
in the Palisades woke up today, and those who had
homes that burned to the ground, those homes are still gone.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
By John, it looks like President Biden right now is
getting an update from Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Dip into this all right.
Speaker 8 (31:35):
When I will also make a note of the fact
that sadly, many insurance companies have canceled insurance for a
lot of the families who have been affected and will
be affected, which is only going to delay or place
an added burden on their ability to recover. And I
think that is an important look at him must be
(31:56):
raised and hopefully there can be It looks like address
that issue because these fa them otherwise will not have Look.
Speaker 9 (32:05):
He's completely stiff and his eyes are playing nodding, and
many of them have lost everything in the midst However,
of all of the trauma that has occurred, we have
seen extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Acts of heroism.
Speaker 8 (32:19):
I'm hearing countless stories of strangers helping strangers.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Okay, people who.
Speaker 8 (32:24):
Are opening their homes are intact.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
And have not how about how about demanding that Karen
Bass be investigated by the way Bass was the other choice.
Spiden had for the vice presidency if if Kamala didn't
take the role. But he is sitting there and he's sleeping,
I swear to God, I'm not kidding. And his mouth
has opened a little bit, his eyes are closed, and
(32:49):
he's perfectly still.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
He's tired, he's had to deal.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
With a lot. But doesn't it look like we've been briefed.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
A lot about all the fires going on in US
in California For.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
A second, I'm not kidding.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
His eyes are open.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
They're open now, they flickered open.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Now they well, yeah, they open and close.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
All right. Maybe maybe that's how he listens best, John.
Maybe maybe my channel is on a bit of delay. Right.
That guy looks asleep. Oh now he's leaning forward. Okay,
he's moving again. That was a nice little mini nap
he took while Kamelo was drowning on Wow. Is he
going to talk? I don't know. He's raising his hand. Oh,
(33:33):
let's let's dip in. Let me say he's going to
say something.
Speaker 6 (33:37):
A lot of electrics fists included the senators, some of
the congress persons in the region, as well as the
vice presidents as well.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
And I want to be clear that one.
Speaker 6 (33:49):
Of the reasons I've asked this larger group to get
together is because they control the very agencies that are
needed from a federal level to get things done. And UH,
you know, we're in a situation where the US Forest
Service Chief Randy Morris here and you're going to provide
an update in the fire situation Los Angers to discuss
how the US Fire Service for the US Forest Service
(34:13):
is the sisty Los Angeles in the state of California
with fighting the wildfire, including the Actions Team is taken
to suppress new fire stars. So, Chief, why don't you
fire away?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Thank you as the president.
Speaker 10 (34:28):
Madame Vice President, it's great to see you.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I too, Let's see stays away.
Speaker 10 (34:33):
Yes, and so it's it's great to be here to
talk about this dramatic situation that we have. So the
Force Service and the Department of Interior are actively engaged
in supporting the response to the wildfires in southern California,
and there are four major fires that we currently have
going on.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
The Force Services in.
Speaker 10 (34:52):
Unify command with UH with the LA County as well
as other local city.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Age. I don't hear anything. I don't hear anything newsworthy there,
but that's the way it goes, and you know what
they should be calling for is an investigation as to
how all this got so bad. That's what ought to happen.
When we come back after Deborah's news, Freddy Escobar, president
(35:21):
of the United Firefighters in Los Angeles Local one twelve.
It's been around thirty five years. He's seen everything and
he's gonna give us his opinion on whether there were cuts,
staffing issues, water problems. See what he knows, what he
doesn't know yet. All Ahead and Debra bark Is live
in the CAFI twenty four our newsroom. Hey, you've been
listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always
(35:44):
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 sixty. You're listening to the John Cobel
podcast on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome again. We're on from
one until four this afternoon and every afternoon and then
after four o'clock. If you missed any part of the show,
you could go to the iHeart app for John Cobelt
Show on demand. It's the podcast version of it, and
(00:21):
again that's posted right after four o'clock. We were on
last night, me and Eric and Ray Deborah slept.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Sorry. We tried. We tried well not waking you, but
we said text to see if we could rouse you up.
So we did. We did from midnight to three am
last night, which was which was fun.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I'm glad you had a good time.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I got home well yesterday from our normal show and
then I put myself to bed at eight o'clock. Slept
three hours. Put yourself to bed, yes, yes, I just
I tucked myself in, sung myself lullabye, and uh, I
was out for three hours. I had a good thing,
I said in alarm, and that woke me up. I
(01:06):
might have been sleeping all night. And then come in here.
We did our thing, went back home three point thirty
was out again right away, got another four hours of sleep.
I'm going to teach you how to do.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah, I want to know, because last night I did
get maybe a few hours of sleep, but it wasn't consistent.
So I kept waking up because I wanted to see
if the winds have picked up. I wanted to see
if I can see any flames out my window. So
I wasn't you know, it wasn't RESTful. Yeah, Well, the
key empty mind, next them mind.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I have an empty mind. You have a very cluttered,
busy mind. I do right. See, you'd have to go empty,
just delete everything. How do you do that? Huh? You
stop thinking?
Speaker 4 (01:46):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Do you ever try to stop thinking?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, John, I have tried meditation. I have tried breathing
exercises that I learned at that that.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yes, in Arizona.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
When I say nothing works, I'm not kidding. Nothing except
prescription sleep medication that I take once a week. And
I can't even take that right now because I don't
want to. I don't want to be in a deep
sleep in case I have to evacuate.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
And and the fire was headed up through to Pega
Canyons towards your your area. Yes, all right, so that's
that was freaky. Well someday that's that's gonna be what
you should choot for a totally blank mind, an empty head.
That's where I live. I understand that I live in emptiness. Uh.
(02:35):
This morning I turned on Fox eleven, which really has
had great coverage, and uh, they had their pilot flying
over Pacific Palisades and one thing we had seen uh,
I mean, there was some drone footage that I saw online,
but this was this was quite stunning.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
He was over Pacific Palisades, the residential areas north of Sunset,
and it was a scene unlike anything I've ever witnessed
in my life. I noticed a lot of the reporters
and anchors on TV were growing frustrated because they were
catching themselves repeating the same cliche lines like it looks
(03:20):
like a war zone, it looks like a bomb went off.
But watching that, I realized there there are no English
language words to describe this sort of thing, because this
sort of thing is never seen. I mean, even in
a war, you don't have everything flattened and bulldozed I
mean to the ground. You know, you have large chunks
(03:42):
of building and it'll have a big hole in it,
but inside the building you could probably find furniture and
wall standing right, And it's only a fire produces complete
wipeout where every single object in the house, the walls,
all the furniture, I'm every object is reduced to the
(04:06):
same gray ash on the bottom on the floor there,
and then the wind starts whipping it up and it's
floating through the air. There's there's nothing like that. There's
no bomb that does that. There's no war zone that
produces that. Look where everything is gone.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Well, you know, we take such pride in our homes, right,
it's the American dream to own your own home. And
you think about that, these these people, I mean, this
was all their stuff, their memories, and of course obviously
our lives are the most important. But when you when
you paint that picture of everything being reduced to ash,
(04:46):
it's it's so sad, and then it makes me kind
of think, you know, maybe it's just not worth it.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It's not around here. It may it may not be.
And you know, now the insurance companies aren't going to
I want to ensure these homes.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Now, something needs to be done about that. There, we
have an insurance crisis. I mean, first with the earthquake
insurance and the fire insurance, what is the insurance commissioner
doing because this should not be allowed.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
I don't know what to do. You can't force companies
to do business if they say we're going bankrupt insuring
the Palisades. I think at this point the insurance companies
are saying, you people shouldn't be building here. It's too dangerous.
There's too many threats from earthquakes to fires, to landslides.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
This is where all over the country you have tornadoes,
you have hurricanes, right, I mean you have I mean yes,
here we have the mud slides, and we have the earthquakes,
and we have the fires.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
But I heard somebody this morning on Fox say, how
many times do you hear the headlines a fire in Malibu? Right,
homes destroyed in Malibu, Celebrity homes destroyed in Malibu. He goes,
how many times have there been devastating fires in Malibu?
He goes to expect the insurance companies to bail everyone
(06:04):
out every single year? It seems they just had a
Malibu fire a few months ago, and there was a
lot of damage in Malibu. It got a little overshadowed
by the complete devastation of Pacific Palisades, but there are
a lot of homes along the beach that were destroyed.
And you know, if I had an insurance company executive
(06:26):
here and he says, well, we can't afford this. This
payout in all right, the first preliminary number they came
up for Pacific Palisades is minimum fifty billion dollars and
that's at today's prices. And that's just a very rough
estimate that I think Acuweather came up with. It's probably
way more than that. So if there's an insurance company executive,
(06:49):
he goes, Okay, John, where are we going to get
the fifty billion? Here? You want to see my balance sheet?
It just doesn't exist.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I can kind of understand that when you start canceling
policies across the board for numerous places in California because
of earthquakes. I mean, we don't knock on wood. We
don't have one now because I'm saying this, but I mean,
we don't have earthquakes, devastating earthquakes as much as.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
We do fires.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
And they still they cancel, and then there's everybody's left
scrambling me, So what are we going to do. No
one's going to be able to afford to live in California.
You forget the nice expensive area like Malibu, but I
mean California.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, that's where it goes. Then only the super wealthy
who can pay for their own damages, who can insure themselves,
are going to be left because I mean, you could
create a government fund, and I know we have the
fair plan, but those government funds tend to go bankrupt
(07:49):
and then people get upset because it's a money pit,
it's a money hole. The damages are excessive, no matter
who's paying off the insurance, whether it's a government and
the government insurance place is going to be run badly.
It's let let's say we created some kind of super
new fair plan. It's being run by Newsom's crowd. Well
(08:11):
what if it's run by Los Angeles. Well that's Karen
Bass and the city council. I mean, you know, these
people are disasters. They can't they cannot run a lemonade stand.
They cannot run anything properly, as we found out. And
I know there's a smarter group of people out there
to run government. And the Trump experiment is going to
(08:33):
be interesting because he's got mostly billionaire CEOs. He's got
super intelligent, big brains like Elon Musk and favek Ramaswami.
And for all the people squawking at that, it's like, hey,
the traditional politicians have completely failed us. We might as
well take a run with the business guys, with the
(08:53):
super brains. It's gonna be worse. I mean, look what
we've got from top to bottom, the Biden administration, Newso administration,
Bass administration. I man, this is bad stuff. These are
bad policies and failed execution. It's one thing to fight
about political policies from one side or the other, but
(09:15):
when it comes down to it, it's execution that matters.
And Karen Bass failed us miserably. Newsome failed us miserably
this week. There's no sugarcoating it. I am not putting
up if it looks like just about everybody in the
media finally is agreeing because this was so blatant, This
was so egregious, the way the Palisades fire completely got
(09:40):
out of control. And let me see what time is it?
Speaker 6 (09:43):
That?
Speaker 1 (09:43):
All right? Wait, come back, I want to play you
a cliff. Because the CBS News reporter Joseph Vigliotti questioned
Mayor Bass at the big press conference this morning about
the lack of preparedness and the lack of response. And
what's interesting in this is what she doesn't say. That's
(10:06):
often more fascinating than what these political hacks says. What
did they omit in their answer? After one thirty, we
got Alex Stone ABC News CAFI in Alta Dina reporting
on that flyer and that that Altta Dina. It's called
the eaton fire. It's moved onto Mount Wilson in where
(10:27):
the Mount Wilson Observatory is, and also most of the
radio and television antennas for the Los Angeles Marketer up there.
So it's possible your favorite radio television station could disappear suddenly,
and there are backups, but the backups don't cover the
same amount of area, so we'll see if that happens.
(10:49):
But everybody's in the broadcast industry out here is nervously
watching the firefront moving its way up Mount Wilson. There's
a lot to talk about, obviously, a lot to do.
We'll get to it.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
On from one until four and then after four o'clock
John Cobelt's show on demand on the iHeart app. You
got something to say eight seven seven moist eighty six,
you call them the Moistlide eight seven seven moist eighty six.
Or go to the talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app.
You know what to do. So, Karen Bass, the whole
world's coming down on her because she really did something
(11:29):
unforgivable and inexcusable. She abandoned the city of Los Angeles
well after she was warned that we could have a
deadly fire storm. And this timeline is what you really
need to know here, because it's always an endless game
between these lying hack politicians, these incompetent boobs, and to
(11:52):
some extent the news media. You know, much of the
news media will immediately do cheerleading and go into protective
mode for a progressive politician like Bass or Newsom, but
others will will try to get at the truth, and
(12:15):
they play a game. And the game is well, now's
not the time for finger pointing. Now's not the time
to make it political. Now's not the time to look back.
Let's look ahead. And I hear those cliches and I
just want to vomit. What they're doing is dodging responsibility,
hope that the daily flow of news pushes the current
(12:41):
problem back in people's minds, and then you start to
forget about it, you stop caring about it, and then
if somebody brings it up, oh that's old news. That's
the game they play. And every stupid bastard media operator
who works for a bass or a newsom and you
people I know are listening and you know what you do.
(13:01):
But we're onto it, and we're going to relentlessly try
to expose what the decision making process was that led
up to the Palisades disaster. I'm not letting go of this,
and we're never going to let go of this. Like
so many other things, they hope just to hunker down
and wait you out, and I'm going to give you well.
(13:23):
It's like Muhammad Ali many years ago, had what was
called the rope adope strategy, and his rope adope strategy
in a fight was just to put up his put
up his arms and let the opponent exhaust himself. The
opponent would throw repeated body blows over and over and over.
(13:46):
He couldn't reach Ali's head because Ali protected his head
and he absorbed the body blows and he just danced around,
made the opponent chase him, and eventually the opponent would
tire out and Ali he would issue a devastating knockout punch.
The whole purpose these hacked politicians have and their stupid
(14:08):
media staffs and their public relations people and their crisis
managers is to exhaust the media. And the media generally
has the attention span of a gnat or a hummingbird.
They just quickly look, poke their beacon maybe once, and
then they fly away. Now, we don't do that. Let
me tell you the timeline and then I'm going to
(14:30):
play you a clip. Timeline is this. On Thursday, the
National Weather Service in Los Angeles started warming of extreme
fire weather conditions. That's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Oh, Saturday. Karen
Bass decides to fly to Ghana to celebrate the election
(14:54):
of the new president of Ghana. She was part of
a part of a group that president it was sending
and she thought, yeah, this is cool, junket to Ghana.
Why should I stay in miserable Los Angeles place by
burned down this weekend? I don't want to be around
that and by the way, absolute fact National Weather Service.
(15:14):
You can check it extreme fire weather conditions. By Sunday
that she'd already taken off and landed in Ghana, the
warnings turned into rapid fire growth and extreme behavior with
any fire that starts well, you know, thanks to Karen
Vass and Newsome, the brush areas in la are all
(15:39):
populated with vagrants, drug addicts, and mental patients, and they're
cooking their food there, or they have a campfire trying
to keep warm, or they drop their crack pipe and
that ignites brush. Or you have the pyromaniacs who love
to run out during fire season, start a fire and
then go home, sit in their lounge chairs, watch the
(16:01):
coverage on TV while pleasuring themselves. That's the world we
live in. But why would pass want to be part
of that? She pushed it her first warning on X
about the windstorm on Monday. She was already in Ghana.
Her office didn't send out a news release until eleven
am Tuesday morning, half hour after the Pacific Palisades fire
(16:27):
had already broken out, So clearly there was and there's
a resident in the Palisades who's quoted in the New
York Times of all places. Michael Gonzales, he lost his
home in the Palisades, family of five. He said, there
was zero preparation. There was zero thought here. Yes, zero preparation,
(16:50):
zero thought, which leads me to this clip from the
press conference this morning. CBS News reporter Jonathan Vigliotti asked
Bass about lack of preparation and lack of response.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Mayor La County is in a panic state. It began
two days ago with the Palisades fire. My crew and
I arrived shortly after it started, and for several hours
we watched as hundreds of homes in a neighborhood burned
to the ground. We did not see a single fire engine.
We watched as Good Samaritans guided traffic. There was fear
(17:25):
and there was a lot of confusion. You were out
of the country at the time. Shortly after the fire started,
a press release was put out warning of this fire behavior.
My question to you is what explains this lack of
preparation and rapid response.
Speaker 7 (17:42):
Let me just say, first and foremost, here we go.
My number one focus, and I think the focus of
all of us here with one voice, is that we
have to protect lives. We have to save lives and
we have to save homes. Rest assured, Then sured, let
me finish. Rest assured when that is done, when we
(18:04):
are safe, when lives have been saved and homes have
been saved, we will absolutely do an evaluation to look
at what worked, what didn't work, and to correct or
to hold accountable any body, department, individual, et cetera. But
my focus right now is on the lives and on
(18:25):
the homes.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Do you think your leadership was effective while responding to
this disaster?
Speaker 7 (18:30):
I just said what I believe is the most important
thing for us to do right now, and that is
going to continue to be my focus. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Total evasion of the question, a little bit of scolding
in there, dismissiveness. You already failed. She already failed. There's
thousands of homes that burned, thousands, you already failed. There
are a number of people dead. What the hell are
(19:01):
you talking about? You know how many bodies they're going
to find when they find or not bodies, they're just
going to find the ash of victims who their families
can't find right now, and their ashes are now mixed
with the ashes of all the debris inside the home.
It's astonishing that she said that not even a drop
(19:25):
of humility and remorse because there was no plan. Yes,
she put out the tweet warning of bad fire conditions
after the fire had already broken out. She didn't even
know it had. And what that reporter said, and that's
the first reporter who was on the scene and explained
(19:48):
what he saw, is that they were there for hours,
his crew, and didn't see any fire response for hours
while homes were burning down. So there was nobody prepositioned.
Remember you kept hearing that from BASSTKNW someone It's like, well, wait,
we had personnel and resources prepositioned. Well, I guess they
(20:09):
weren't in the Palisades, because if what Jonathan Vigliotti is
saying is true, he read the situation accurately. The homes
were burning for hours, no wonder it got out of
control and ended up burning over a thousand, maybe two thousand,
No wonder, it got out of control. Nobody showed up.
(20:33):
There was no plan, there was no preparedness, there was
no mayor, there was no nothing. And now you ask,
how the hell did this happen? Well, you know, my
goal is to save lives and property. Too late on
that people are dead and thousands of homes have burned.
The hell are you talking about? Lady? We come back
(20:57):
Alex Stone, Uh in Altadena on the eating fire.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Let's get out to Alex Stone. Alex is back in Altadena,
the each and fire. That fire has been threatening all
the broadcast radio intellivision towers on Mount Wilson. So let's
talk to Alex and see what the latest is. Alex.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
How are you hey there, John?
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Here ian Altadena itself, it has actually been pretty calm
today that. Yes, there are the issues with up in
the mountains, getting near Mount Wilson, and all day today
the flames threatening the observatory up there and the antenna
that are so important to radio and TV communications in
La and the La County Sheriff's Department and Fire Department,
(21:47):
many others. But here in Altadena it is you know,
it's cliche, John to use apocalyptic or you know, a
moonscape or any of those, but it really is this
colorless gray ash neighborhood after neighborhood, and in many of
these homes that we were at as they were burning yesterday,
(22:08):
today they are kind of smoking and smoldering, and a
sign that progress is being made here in that Southern
California Edison is coming in and beginning to remove down
power lines and clean up the lines that have come down.
That now Southern California Edison is able to get in.
We're seeing a lot of help coming in as well.
We've seen Marine County Fire, San Jose Fire, all different
(22:32):
agencies in Northern California. I guess later tonight we're going
to begin to see we know Phoenix fire is on
its way Las Vegas, they're on their way as well,
that those coming from a longer distance that they're going
to begin arriving as well. But they're coming in. They're
waving to us as they come in, and it's like
help has arrived. That these firefighters are so exhausted and
(22:53):
so outmanned from the Southern California agencies that to see
these fresh firefighters coming in from Northern California, it is
a huge relief to the fire crews here, to those
who have not evacuated, who are still around and wanting
to make sure that their homes don't burn. But there's
still a lot of active fire in many of these homes.
(23:15):
I'm looking right now what was a chiropractic office and
then homes next door to it, where all the cars
are burned. And there's still active fire in the remains
of these buildings, and some gas lines that are continuing
to spew gas that are on fire as well, so
there's still with the fear of the winds kicking up
again tonight, there is still quite a bit of fire
(23:36):
even here in Altadena. The buildings aren't actively burning right now,
but they could if things begin to whip up again.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
And I suppose they know what started the fire.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
No, they have no idea. The fire chief and others
who been saying that they'll get to that they'll try
to figure that out, but right now they have no clue.
They don't even really know the death toll that they
believe it's at least five, but it's gonna take And
we saw this in Santa Rosa, we saw this in
(24:09):
Chico on what was called the Car Fire a number
of years ago. We saw it in Paradise, and it's
been elsewhere but up and down California where they've got
to bring in the cadaver dogs to really know what
the death count is, because not to get too graphic,
but it's not apparent that somebody was in these buildings
the remains that remain because they burned so hot that
(24:31):
it's going to take dogs to come in and say
somebody was here, and they'll begin when family members start
reporting people missing in and here's where they lived, and
then send dogs into those areas. When we got when
we got into this area yesterday, the wind was like
nothing I've ever experienced. Early early yesterday morning. The flames
(24:53):
were everywhere, the down trees and things hitting the car.
You could not see five feet in front of your
your car because of the thick smoke. People just could
not get out. The elderly, those who didn't get going
in time, You didn't know where the flames were. All
of a sudden, there would be flames all around you
and there weren't am allent Ago. So it was a
(25:13):
recipe for people being unable to get out. And that's why,
unfortunately we know that people have died. They just don't
know a total yet and it's going to take some time.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, what time at the start of the fire did
did did it move through these neighborhoods? Was it the
middle of it?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
No? Yeah, I mean, it was the middle of the night,
just from my experience of it, that it really got going.
In the neighborhoods of Altadena, some that were closer to
the mountain, it was earlier in the night, you know,
nine ten o'clock, But in the heart of Altadena it
was like three four o'clock.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
In the morning.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
We're on onlike Lake Avenue right now, like Boulevard, Lake Avenue,
and in this area. I mean I was here as
this was starting to ignite, and that was about three
four o'clock in the morning, as these homes began going up.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
So when people are in the deepest part of their
sleep cycle, that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
If they were, if they were able to sleep, and
I'm sure that there were people who did go to
bed thinking, you know what, the fire is up, you
know quite a way, it's in the hills, We're going
to be fine down here. And then in the wind,
and yeah, the wind. I've covered hurricanes before, and it
was very similar to standing in a hurricane where it
(26:29):
was so forceful that you could not stand and there
was so much stuff, you know, pieces of buildings and
trees just flying in the air, and then the hot
embers rolling down the hill that it pushed. If there
were some wind gusts that were calculated at one hundred
miles an hour and one hundred miles an hour, the
fire is running at one hundred miles an hour, and
(26:52):
that's when people just cannot get out those embers. That
that fire is moving in that wind at that same speed,
and they were likely either asleep or in their homes
deciding that they were going to go. I talked to
one guy today. He was showing me right where we
are that his home is gone, and he told me
at around five am yesterday he decided he had to go,
(27:12):
that he was trying to wait it out. He thought
he would use his garden hose, and that he was
able to save his home. At around five am, he
said that all dets are off and he ran and
he ran out of here, and he said, look, I'm alive.
That he's devastated about losing his home, but he's alive.
So people tried to stick around. There were some even
all day yesterday as we watched some of these neighborhoods burn,
(27:35):
where they were up on their roofs with their garden hoses,
trying everything they could. Some were successful, some were not.
You know, firefighters do that. Your garden hose is never
going to compete. But everybody wants to try to save
their home. It's totally understandable, but you're never going to
compete with what a firefighter's hose can do, but also
with what the wall of flames is doing. But still
(27:55):
people they want to try and and it did work
for some, but it didn't work forever about it.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
So the front of the fire is where now? Is
it threatening other developments?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
It's really up in the mountains. It's really the area
around Mount Wilson. There's no real front in Altadena anymore.
I mean, you know, hopefully things don't kick up tonight
and then that changes. We've seen a couple of homes
go up today, mainly from embers that were still active
in the buildings, and then they took off today because
(28:28):
there's still so much active fire and as more crews
come in from elsewhere, they'll be able to get in
and try to knock down the parts of buildings that
are still kind of burning that they can take off again.
But yeah, the La County Fire said today Chief Maroney
that they really didn't have much growth overnight on this fire.
(28:48):
Now I think today the growth is going to go
up because of what's going on in the mountains around
Mount Wilson. But that will be growth. But in the
last you know, since last night, they really didn't have
a ton of growth, and especially year in Altadena and
in parts of Pasadena that they there wasn't much new
activity that was going on. But this is really going
to be about the overnight hours tonight getting through what
(29:11):
the forecast says is going to be another round of
Santa Ana wins and then we should get a little
bit of a break until early next week and then
we're going to go through it again. But the challenge
is going to be when the next round, and hopefully
it does not materialize, but if it does tonight, then
using Saturday and Sunday to try to really button up
this and Pacific Palisades so that when we get the
(29:33):
next round early next week the things don't take off again.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
All Right, Alex, stay safe, Thank you, great reporting, You.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Got it, Thanks Sean.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
All Right, Alex Stone reporting for KFI ABC News. We
will continue with our fire coverage.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
You're listening to John Cobel on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
After Debra's News. At two o'clock, we're going to have
bar president of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles Local
one twelve. He's got thirty five years of experience. He's
been on with us previously to talk about whether Karen
Bass's budget cuts, the staffing shortages, the water issues, what
effect they had on the Pacific Palisades situation. And he's
(30:20):
going to tell us what he knows coming up right
after two o'clock, because we are going to try to
find out what happened in the hours leading up to
the fire and in the hours afterwards, in the next
two days that it was certainly a horrific natural situation,
well natural. I don't know who set the fire. Was
(30:44):
it a homeless guy. Was it a homeless guy that
the government should have had removed? Was did he start
fire and brush that should have been paired back by
the government, by Karen Bass's administration. See, there's a lot
of questions here, and because there's so many of them,
and it encompasses so many different agencies, so many different responsibilities,
(31:06):
and nobody wants to talk again. What they want to
do is just weigh everyone out. But they can't because
everyone woke up in the palace. Every resident who is
in the Palisades woke up today, and those who had
homes that burned to the ground, those homes are still gone.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
By John, it looks like President Biden right now is
getting an update from Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Dip into this all right.
Speaker 8 (31:35):
When I will also make a note of the fact
that sadly, many insurance companies have canceled insurance for a
lot of the families who have been affected and will
be affected, which is only going to delay or place
an added burden on their ability to recover. And I
think that is an important look at him must be
(31:56):
raised and hopefully there can be It looks like address
that issue because these fa them otherwise will not have Look.
Speaker 9 (32:05):
He's completely stiff and his eyes are playing nodding, and
many of them have lost everything in the midst However,
of all of the trauma that has occurred, we have
seen extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Acts of heroism.
Speaker 8 (32:19):
I'm hearing countless stories of strangers helping strangers.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Okay, people who.
Speaker 8 (32:24):
Are opening their homes are intact.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
And have not how about how about demanding that Karen
Bass be investigated by the way Bass was the other choice.
Spiden had for the vice presidency if if Kamala didn't
take the role. But he is sitting there and he's sleeping,
I swear to God, I'm not kidding. And his mouth
has opened a little bit, his eyes are closed, and
(32:49):
he's perfectly still.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
He's tired, he's had to deal.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
With a lot. But doesn't it look like we've been briefed.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
A lot about all the fires going on in US
in California For.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
A second, I'm not kidding.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
His eyes are open.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
They're open now, they flickered open.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Now they well, yeah, they open and close.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
All right. Maybe maybe that's how he listens best, John.
Maybe maybe my channel is on a bit of delay. Right.
That guy looks asleep. Oh now he's leaning forward. Okay,
he's moving again. That was a nice little mini nap
he took while Kamelo was drowning on Wow. Is he
going to talk? I don't know. He's raising his hand. Oh,
(33:33):
let's let's dip in. Let me say he's going to
say something.
Speaker 6 (33:37):
A lot of electrics fists included the senators, some of
the congress persons in the region, as well as the
vice presidents as well.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
And I want to be clear that one.
Speaker 6 (33:49):
Of the reasons I've asked this larger group to get
together is because they control the very agencies that are
needed from a federal level to get things done. And UH,
you know, we're in a situation where the US Forest
Service Chief Randy Morris here and you're going to provide
an update in the fire situation Los Angers to discuss
how the US Fire Service for the US Forest Service
(34:13):
is the sisty Los Angeles in the state of California
with fighting the wildfire, including the Actions Team is taken
to suppress new fire stars. So, Chief, why don't you
fire away?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Thank you as the president.
Speaker 10 (34:28):
Madame Vice President, it's great to see you.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
I too, Let's see stays away.
Speaker 10 (34:33):
Yes, and so it's it's great to be here to
talk about this dramatic situation that we have. So the
Force Service and the Department of Interior are actively engaged
in supporting the response to the wildfires in southern California,
and there are four major fires that we currently have
going on.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
The Force Services in.
Speaker 10 (34:52):
Unify command with UH with the LA County as well
as other local city.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Age. I don't hear anything. I don't hear anything newsworthy there,
but that's the way it goes, and you know what
they should be calling for is an investigation as to
how all this got so bad. That's what ought to happen.
When we come back after Deborah's news, Freddy Escobar, president
(35:21):
of the United Firefighters in Los Angeles Local one twelve.
It's been around thirty five years. He's seen everything and
he's gonna give us his opinion on whether there were cuts,
staffing issues, water problems. See what he knows, what he
doesn't know yet. All Ahead and Debra bark Is live
in the CAFI twenty four our newsroom. Hey, you've been
listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always
(35:44):
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
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John Kobylt
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