January 8, 2025 • 34 mins
Michael Monks comes on the show to talk about the latest regarding the fires burning across the Southland. More on the fires burning across the Southland. LA City Councilwoman Traci Park comes on the show to talk about the fire burning in Pacific Palisades. More on the fires.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
We're on every day from one until four and then
after four o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand on the
iHeart app. Posted shortly after four o'clock, we have not
only the Palisades Fire, the Eating fire, but a number
of fires all over the place. It seems every few
(00:26):
minutes something else pops up. Michael Monks from KFI News
has run down of the latest information.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, this is every time you turn around, there's another
alert coming across with a different part of the county
that is burning. At this point, it's just a strange,
terrible day. The latest little ones, and I say little
with an asterisk because they're early, they are early started.
They blow up fast if they don't get them. So
this one we just heard mention the traffic report close
to act and it's been dubbed the Lydia fire. Right now,
(00:55):
it's about fifty acres right now, which is small potatoes
compared to these big ones we've been dealing with. But again,
the winds are still blowing a little bit out there,
so that could that could be a problem at some point.
They've they've stopped some service on MetroLink's Antelope Valley line.
If we're headed home from anywhere, that may be a problem.
We got one called the Freddie Fire, and that is
Freddy Fire.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Was that your band in the eighties were doing Freddie Fire?
Were Freddie Fire?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yeah, this one is a small one that they've apparently
stopped the spread of in Malibu near the Ventura County line.
So Freddy is is deady, He's deady. They are well done. Yeah,
that's exactly right. And the Riverside County Fire Department and
Cruise there have deployed to a spot that's burning underneath
the Pomona sixty Freeway. That's at Ediwanda Avenue and Van
(01:42):
Buren Boulevard in Harupa Valley. So we're keeping an eye
on the Ediwandah as well. Now, the big ones, the
big one that we've been dealing with all that, that's
just the warm up there. That's the warm up act
right there. Freddie Fire is the opening act. The Palisades
fires clearly the most devastating one that we've dealt with today,
and it's just continued to grow. The latest estimate of
sixteen thousand acres set of burn. We see the images.
(02:05):
It's just tragic.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Twenty four hours ago. When it first started, it was
it was like two thousand.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It happens fast. Yeah, And I got off the air yesterday,
was filling in for Amy King. I finished at you know,
ten fifteen's the last time you do the news. Ten
thirty walking out the door. A little fire, a little
fire over there that we thought, Okay, we're gonna keep
an eye on it because we've been talking, as you've
noted all so long, we had warnings that this stuff
was coming. So this little patch fire starts and like, okay,
(02:35):
well we'll be watching that. And here we are, what
twenty four thirty six, not even thirty hours later, and
that is zero percent contained. Last I heard it, it's
still zero percent contained. All of them are. For the
most part. This is just a big They don't have
their stretch thin. They're deploying firefighters from all over the
place to come in and help out. But the Palisades
(02:56):
is sixteen thousand acres at this point, and when you
see them, it's just, I mean, it's gone.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I know that area very well. I cannot because I
was there twenty four hours before the fire started, and
we piked there, take walks, go to all the stores,
in the restaurants, drove through there yesterday morning. And now
the photos I'm seeing online completely flattened, total devastation, nothing left.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
My brain can't even process that's going on.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I can't imagine what's going through, what these people are
going through. We know some families there. I just it's
overwhelming to see your entire world just disappear.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
You just talked to Rick Caruso, and he mentioned that
not everybody in the Palisades is wealthy, and that's something
that I learned firsthand today. I went to one of
the evacuation centers in Westwood, that's for the folks who
fled the Palisades, and I talked to a lady who
lived in one of the mobile home parks there. She's
been there for decades, loves living in the Palisades, and
had no idea this morning what the status of her
(03:57):
home was, and was questioning what she should have been
living in the Palisades all these years. She says, it's
close to Malibu, you know, Malibu burns a lot. Should
have known better. Maybe I should have moved to Compton,
she said, instead, as sort of a joke. But I mean,
a lot of the people that were at that evacuation
center are seniors. They were using walkers and wheelchairs. Some
of them seemed confused about the situation. It was really
(04:20):
eye opening because the idea of the Palisades is is
wealth and celebrities and all that, but there are a
lot of small folks that live there as well.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, there's a lot of apartments, there's mobile homes, there's condos,
there's elderly people on service workers. Yeah, there's there's a
there's a whole mix of people, and everybody's gotten wiped
out though. It's just it's a it's I can't there's
no words to describe it because the description is emotional,
like the feeling is emotional. There aren't words to convey
(04:49):
these emotions. And it goes deeper than the ordinary emotions
that you can experience and talk about.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean we you know, somebody's
house burns down, that's tragic enough. Somebody city burns down.
What happens after that? How do you rebuild the Palisades?
Your neighbors are gone, your friends are gone, everything is gone. Yeah,
all the businesses you went to your kid's school. In
some cases is gone.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Just wipes off the fence.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
So your entire life has been destroyed completely in a
matter of minutes.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
But I guess having your life is the most important thing.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
It looks like most people heated the warning to evacuate
when they told them to. We didn't hear about a
lot of injuries, and that one, we did hear about
some injuries and deaths in the what they've called the
eat and fire, the one in Altadena, Pasadena, in that area,
and that's the one close to here. And yeah, the windows,
this window, it's it's such a strange stay because the
window outside your studio here it looks like a beautiful
(05:44):
southern California winter day, ny skies and the mountains in
the background. And then you walk down the hall to
the newsroom and it's hell. I mean, the smoke is
just coming up over the horizon there. And this is
a bad one too. It's it's now over ten thousand
acres destroying homes, two people dead. That started in an
Altadena last night. Zero percent contained they say right now
as well, so that one is still burning like crazy.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
They've got evacuation and is that burning in all directions
or is it going I guess with the Santa Ana
winds generally go from the northeast to the southwest.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
No, I'm thinking that those winds are supposed to be
calming down at some point soon.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
So they I mean, they've at least gotten some of
the firefighters back.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
In the air. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
They were supposed to peak this.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Morning, Yeah, and then gradually subside tomorrow calm, and then
they kicked back up on Saturday, and then next week
there could be another round of an I just stepped outside.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It still feels quite windy and the wind is cold.
I mean it's a cold wind that you're feeling out
there as well. We also have the one in Silmar.
This has spread to about seven hundred acres. No containment
there as well. Started late last night, exploded to about
one hundred acres within a half an hour. That's how
quickly these things can change. Twelve hours later it hit
that seven hundred acre mark. They got some evacuations going
(06:54):
on there as well. We'll continue to watch.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
And war could pop up at any moments, all right.
Michael Monks, caff I News, thank you for all that.
We have lots of coverage to go on and we're
going to continue. Well, you know what I want to
get to next is Karen Bass, who started the day
in Ghana. Yeah, while Pacific Palisades was burning down a
(07:18):
thousand structures, Karen Bass partying in Ghana celebrating the inauguration
of the new president who has inaugurated.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Can you believe this?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
How many days a warning did we have about this firestorm?
This windstorm? And she went to Ghana and stayed in
Ghana and sent out a lot of tweets. And now
we've got some details about how much funding she cut
to the La Fire Department and how much money we've
decided to spend on homeless people instead of the fire department.
(07:51):
If you put up with this, don't complain when your
house burns down and there's no water to put out
the fire, because you vote for people who would rather
fund the homeless who start the fires. If this doesn't
change people's voting habits, then it's totally a lost cause.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
On every day from one until four and after four
o'clock John Cobelt Show on Demand. That's the podcast We've
got Tracy Park coming up after Devers two thirty news.
Tracy Park, who's the councilwoman for the West side of
Los Angeles. Pacific Palisades is part of her territory, and
she's going to talk about the devastation of the fire
and the fire hydrants running out of water. Unbelievable in
(08:43):
the city of Los Angeles, that we can only have
about seventeen hours worth of water for one fire. Just overwhelming.
And at the time the mayor was in Ghana. Let's
pull this all together. The according to city budget documents,
(09:06):
Karen Bass And by the way, maybe she should go
and run to be the president of Ghana or a
mayor of one of God's major cities if she finds
it so fascinating to be there during a time of
crisis here. But the city budget documents show that the
fire department had their budget cut by seventeen million dollars.
(09:33):
Patrick soon Shiong, the owner of the La Times, put
out a tweet that it was twenty three million.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I don't know the reason for the discrepancy, but you
get the idea.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So somehow, so yeah, how many times Newsom said this yesterday?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It's not just fire month or fire season, it's fire year.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Now with climate change, you know where there's going to
be more fires and hotter fires and a logger.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Well, if that's true, if you really believe what you're saying,
why would you cut the fire department budget by seventeen million?
And she did. Politico dot Com has the story, quoting
the La Times owner. I also have a document from
(10:18):
the Board of Fire Commissioners from twenty twenty three, and.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Look at this comparison.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Here, Los Angeles allocated one point three billion dollars for
homelessness in twenty twenty four, one point three billion. In comparison,
the fire department received twenty five percent less funding than
(10:56):
the homelessness department. That we spend significantly more money on
homelessness than we do on the fire department. How is
it that the fire department gets twenty five percent less
(11:16):
funding than the homelessness bureaucrats, who, by the way, all
they do is increase homelessness with all their stupid, failed,
fake policies.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Homelessness goes up.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Hey, now we've got thousands of people homeless. How about that,
Now we've got thousands of more homeless people from Pacific
Palisades because they couldn't They couldn't keep the water supply
fully stocked. The money for homelessness. This has got to stop.
(11:57):
Newsom spend twenty four billion and has no idea where
the money went, has no idea if anything worked. We
are spending billions in the city of Ala. Same thing
doesn't work. Karen Bass gives the homeless beast more money
than she gives the fire department. Meantime, she's in Ghana.
(12:22):
We keep going back to that. Son Chiang said. Fires
in La sadly no surprise yet the mayor cut La
Fire Department's budget by twenty three million. Reports of empty
fire hydrants raise serious questions competence matters. They at the
(12:44):
Politico and the La Times was trying to get Bass.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
To respond to this issue, but she was in Ghana.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
The mayor's office on Monday night posted that an expected
destructive and potentially life threating windstorm will be starting Tuesday
morning and lasting through Wednesday afternoon. Yes, but as of
this morning, Bass was still not in Los Angeles. She
(13:14):
didn't even fly back right away after posting the warning.
We are gonna potentially lose our lives because of the
wind and fire. She's in Ghana. Even progressive nuts criticized her.
(13:34):
Some guy named Tommy Viator who used to be an
OBAMA staff member and hosts Podsave America, which is a
popular left wing podcast. Inexplicable decision to not come back earlier.
Maybe if she was here then she would have found
(13:58):
out that they were running out of water rapidly. Because
according to Genice Quinonez, you know, the CEO of the LEDWP.
We played her clip before she makes seven hundred and
fifty thousand dollars a year. The first tank went empty
at four forty five yesterday. That's a million gallons of
(14:19):
water was gone in less than six hours. We ran
out of water on the second tank at eight thirty
and the third tank at three am this morning. And
that's it. No more water. They had three million gallon tanks.
One got at four forty five, one at eight thirty,
third one at three am. They didn't even get eighteen
(14:41):
hours worth of water, and then they had no And
then I'm watching I'm watching TV last night and I'm
watching neighborhoods, burn homes, burn schools, burned businesses, burn no
water in some cases, no fire department personnel, and I thought, well,
if they're not defending a school, what are they defending?
(15:01):
And it looks like I couldn't defend anything. They were
out of water. How in God's name, with the Pacific
Ocean at our doorstep, we don't have a water supply.
We've had two record enormous rainy seasons. Billions and billions
(15:25):
and billions and billions of gallons of water fell on California,
much of it flushed out to see. I have to
get to that coming up because Trump is posting about
Gavin Newsom's water policies. In fact, Trump talked about Newsom's
water policies when he came on our show in October.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I'm going to play that back as well. That's later
in the hour.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
But first we're going to talk with Tracy Park and
Pacific Palisades is her district on the West side. She's
the LA City council person, and she'll come on our
show next.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
You're listening to John Cobel's on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Any minute now, we're going to get Tracy Park on.
She's the councilwoman for the eleventh District, the West side
of Los Angeles. She's my councilman, and her territory covers
Pacific Palisades, so she's right in the middle of what's
going on there with all the destruction the fire, and
(16:26):
it's that fire still burning. I mean it's not been contained,
not even one percent. It's still spreading. She's got cell
phone issues, but we're going to have her on momentarily.
Another story in the La Times this morning. Local fire
officials admitted today they were overwhelmed by the power and
size of the three major fires burning in La County.
(16:52):
There are nine thousand firefighters in La County, according to
the La County Fire Chief Anthony Murrie. That's when you
add up all the county fire departments, not only the
county fire department, built all the twenty nine other fire agencies.
Local agencies and Maroney said it's not enough to address
all the fires that started across the region, so they
(17:15):
asked for mutual aid from other counties, other crews and
trucks from California's Office of Emergency Services. They're all on
the way, but they said they had a game plan
for the life threatening windstorm. Maroney said firefighters from northern
California were pre positioned in places known for bad fires,
(17:38):
Santa Clara Valley and the Santa Monica Mountains, but the
fires broke out in different areas Palisades, Alta Den in Silmar,
La County, and all twenty nine fire departments in our
county are not prepared for this type of widespread disaster,
The La Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley said, together, these
fires are stretching the capacity of egency services to the
(18:01):
maximum limits. Well, especially if you have the mayor Los
Angeles cutting the fire budget in order to increase the
homeless budget. The homeless people start a lot of the fires.
We spend a tremendous amount of manpower and money putting
out many, many fires every day in La City and County.
(18:24):
I got to look up the number again. It's a
staggering number of fires that the homeless people start. And
all Karen Vass does, and the county legislators, the county supervisors,
they create programs that apparently attract more homeless, more vagrants,
more bumps, more drug addicts, more mental patients. I always forget,
(18:47):
let's forget the words were supposed to use. Let's get
Tracy on Tracy.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Hi, John, how are.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
You I'm good.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I feel like everybody else does about the fireires. I
cannot believe the fire department ran out of water that quickly.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That's just stunning here, you know, it's I.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
Was pretty upset to learn that information myself this morning.
Apparently the demand on DWP services in the area was
about four times the normal load. As people were leaving,
they were leaving hoses and faucets on in their homes
and that was straining the load. And then we had
(19:36):
firefighters doing fire suppression. Wildfire suppression with fire hydrants. That's
not how you fight wildfire, but because of the dangerous
wind conditions, air assets were unable to do the water
drops and so all of that was a perfect storm
that led to this absolute devastation in the Palacey.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Rick Russoe was on last hour, said, this is a
lack of competence among those who manage the city. It's
been going on for years. The infrastructure is not available
planning here. Whatever their plan was, that obviously failed badly.
I mean, there's got to be a huge remake revision
(20:22):
and how the city approaches these fire situations. We know
these things are going to happen, They've happened many times
in the past. I really don't understand getting caught this
flat footed.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Well, and frankly, what has happened in many ways is predictable.
You know. I am standing right now at the corner
of Fifth and Carrie in the Pacific Palisades, and what
I am looking at are apocalyptic scenes in every direction.
This is just absolute devastation, and it's still going to
(20:56):
be some days ahead until we can even begin to
get our heads around the scope and the scale of
the lot that John, you are right. This is about
years of chronic under investment in our critical infrastructure and
disinvestment in our public safety partners. Our own fire department
(21:17):
has had a budget cut by tens of millions of dollars,
Its calls for surface have tripled, and yet its staffing
levels remain what they were forty fifty sixty years ago.
We just recently received a standards of cover report that
I went to Fire Commission to speak about at the
(21:38):
end of December. We already know based on that report
that our emergency response times in some cases are double
the national standards, and the report recommends the addition of
sixty two new fire stations just to meet basic demand
(21:59):
in this City of Los Angeles, not twenty five sixty two.
And this is chronic under investment. They wiled out this
since before I took office. How did I have never
been so devastated to see what we are looking at today?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
How did we end up.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
In a city where we're spending one point three billion
dollars on homeless programs that do not work and only
eight hundred million dollars on the fire department and even
that was cut by seventeen million.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I mean, man, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 5 (22:34):
I wish I could make this make sense, but it absolutely.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And many the homeless part of you go ahead, Well,
I was going to say, you.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
Know, this is impartant left relaxed staffing from the financial
crisis all the way back in two thousand and eight.
Our fire department has never been made a whole since
the cut state took back then, and it's because of
many things.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Are your signals your signals getting really messed up? Tracy?
Speaker 5 (23:13):
You know what, John, I am so sorry, but the
wind is shifting that I am actually right in the
middle of an act fire situation. If you don't mind,
I'm actually going to get out of here. But I
would love to go to connect with you a little
bit later.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, yeah, a call back later. We'll put you on
during the three o'clock hour. Yeah, because there's a lot
to cover here. Yeah, get out of there. Yeah, because
the fire is still blazing in all directions and she's
walking around and it's total devastation. But what we've got
here is a city, and this is this is starts
with Karen Bass and Eric Carcetti, uh for the last
(23:47):
I don't know, twelve thirteen years. You know, they go
around beating their chests about being the great leaders of
the city. Well, you are responsible creating a situation where
it's one point three billion dollars on vagrants. These same
vagrants are starting fires every day. The fire department spends
much of their time running around putting out bumpfires, right,
(24:12):
that's what they do. That's in reality, what they do
is they put out and then when the big fire
comes that threatens the taxpayers, the citizens, the people who work,
who actually go to work and pay bills and pay
a lot of taxes. When the big fire comes for them,
they're out of water. They're out of water. They never
(24:33):
run out of water. When the homeless fires are blazing
and again, this is not a knock on the firefighters themselves,
who are just endangering themselves every day working impossible situations.
It's the management. It's the politicians and the bureaucrats. It
(24:53):
starts with Karen Bass and the collection of clowns and
bozos on the city council, everybody running these departments.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
And there just has to come a point where everybody says,
all right, that's it. This is it.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
You run out of water seventeen hours into a fire
and stop it. We know that there's big fires in
La La County all of a sudden, California happens frequently.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Everybody knows what wildfires are like.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Everybody knows that the residents put on hoses and they
leave water running.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Of course they do.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
They don't have any faith anyone's gonna come and wet
down the roofs, wet down the homes themselves, so they
try to do it. They try to water their grass,
what are the land around their home, hoping it might
slow the fire down because they don't have any faith
that anybody in government's going to show up, and in
this case they didn't because the fire department's out of water.
(25:51):
I don't care what their excuses are. Well, here's what happened.
We know what happened.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
You screwed up.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
You shouldn't have your job. These people should be fired,
starting with the mayor. They should all resign. They should
all resign. Just admit it. You don't know what you're doing.
You're in over your head. You botch this up. There's
a thousand buildings that are burned. You've destroyed billions of
(26:19):
dollars worth of property. Go, please go, You've done enough. Okay,
you're gonna leave behind what seventy five eighty thousand vagrants
dying in the streets and you're not helping those people either.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Go all of you out, Good lord.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
This is the worst crew of politicians the world has
ever seen. Look around, Look around what the place has become.
It's their fault, your fault for lifting them.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
You're listening to John Cobelt on Demand from KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
And after four o'clock, John Cobelt's show on demand on
the iHeart app Coming up next hour, We're gonna tell
tell you what Trump wrote about Newsom's water policy in
the state of California, and play a clip of Trump
on our show talking about it. From October. We're also
going to replay our interview with Rick Caruso, who he
(27:13):
had earlier in the program, who talked about the incompetence
of the Los Angeles City government. He used to be
a commissioner for LEDWP. And now we have a seven
hundred and fifty thousand dollars named seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars CEO named Genisa Canonez Seve hundred and fifty
(27:37):
thousand dollars, who got up at a press conference today to
tell us so it's like, yeah, we ran out of water.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
We ran out of water.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Turns out that we spent about eight hundred million dollars
on a home on the LA City Fire Department, but
we spend one point three billion on the homeless department.
You got that, we spent one point three billion on
homeless and look at the dramatic increase, and we spent
(28:10):
only eight hundred million on the fire department. And now
thousands of people in the Palisades are homeless. And you know,
you know what many of the homeless do all day?
They start fires. You might think that's an exaggeration, hyperably, No,
listen to this. The Iteam on Channel four did a
(28:31):
story twenty twenty three. In twenty twenty three, there were
thirteen thousand, nine hundred and nine homeless fires in Los Angeles.
Thirteen thousand, nine hundred and nine in a single year.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
This is what the fire department does all day.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Thirteen thousand, nine hundred and nine times a fire truck
went flying down the road to a fire started by
a bunch of bums, a bunch of vagrants that Karen
Bass allows to live out in the open, and they
start fires. And she cut the fire budget by seventeen
(29:16):
million dollars. She cut the fire budget, and much of
that money is spent on homeless fires. And then when
the big fire comes to the people who pay the
taxes and work for a living, we're.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Out of water.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
And then you call the mayor up. Oh, I'm sorry,
she's not in Where is she Ghana? She's in Africa.
Somebody's being inaugurated in the Ghana, so she's there, not
here with all the I mean, I can't get over
this one. I can't get over this one. Karen Bass
ought to be removed from office. She ought to have
(29:52):
the decency to resign the head of the DWP. Get
her name right, jeniz Kinani resign gone. If you can't
get enough water for the first big fire of the year.
And by the way, that fire, you know, what they're
saying now is like, well, you know we got stretched then,
(30:14):
and there there were three.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Four fires at the same time.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
No, that Pacific Palisades fire was the only fire going on.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
At first. It wasn't like there were cruis at three
other fires. It was the first.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
One and it got out of hand and they ran
out of water. Well, you know, we had three tanks,
but you didn't prepare. You had a bad plan. It failed.
No good. Go to the New York Post. Go to
the New York Post online. Look at the aerial photos
of what the Palisades looks like looks like now and
(30:49):
Altadena too. And I'm sorry to people in Altadena that
were focusing so much on the Palisades. But it's just
that we've got this incredible story of the mayor hiding
out in Africa, not coming back after she sends out
a tweet that a deadly storm is coming. Oh thanks
for the tweet. That tweet, yeah, twenty three tweets. There's
(31:15):
no excuse for this. You have to get to the
point where you say there is no excuse for any
of this none. You don't want to hear their explanations,
their reasons you failed out gone. There's got to be
somebody better to be there, somebody better to be run
the DWP. There's got to be somebody who secure is
an adequate water supply, somebody who's going to fund the
(31:36):
fire department. Why don't you take away, oh I don't know,
take away three quarters of the homeless money and give
it to the fire and police department out way under
staff You heard Tracy Park We have staffing levels from
fifty sixty years ago?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
What the hell is going on for homeless?
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Everything about homeless people and illegal aliens, criminals almost people,
legal aliens and criminals. That is the holy trinity of
the progressive movement. And you you had a bunch of
dumb clocks. You're busy working for a living and paying taxes. Well,
you know we used to have a fire department. Well
(32:16):
no they don't, I guess, huh. Or if the fire
department shows up, they weren't given any water?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Why? Well, you know we heard a plan. This is it,
This should be the it.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
I mean, I don't want to hear from Karen Bass
unless she's saying I resign. If she's not saying I resign,
I don't want to hear from her. And everybody ought
to feel that way.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Stop voting for these people. Good lord, all right, we
come back.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
But by the way, Trump, Biden was in town yesterday,
Newsom was in town yesterday. They were supposed to go
to some dopey ceremony and they got waylaid by the fire.
What have they done it since? What happened to all
the CalFire people? What happened to the state, Because the
threat of fires was all in southern California. They've had
plenty of rain in northern California, right, big sant Ana
(33:10):
wins were here. The ten months of drought is here.
So where were all the troops for cal fire? Where
was the federal help? Now you're bringing it. You had
days of warnings, You knew this was going to happen.
So we'll play you well, I'll read to you Trump's
(33:32):
ranting on social media about Newsom and his water policy,
and we'll play you a clip because Trump's right on this. Sorry,
we flushed billions of gallons into the Pacific Ocean and
it's all to save some stupid fish. And that's another
stupid thing that's got to end. Deborah Mark live in
the KFI twenty four hour news Room. Hey, you've been
listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always
(33:53):
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
I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
We're on every day from one until four and then
after four o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand on the
iHeart app. Posted shortly after four o'clock, we have not
only the Palisades Fire, the Eating fire, but a number
of fires all over the place. It seems every few
(00:26):
minutes something else pops up. Michael Monks from KFI News
has run down of the latest information.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, this is every time you turn around, there's another
alert coming across with a different part of the county
that is burning. At this point, it's just a strange,
terrible day. The latest little ones, and I say little
with an asterisk because they're early, they are early started.
They blow up fast if they don't get them. So
this one we just heard mention the traffic report close
to act and it's been dubbed the Lydia fire. Right now,
(00:55):
it's about fifty acres right now, which is small potatoes
compared to these big ones we've been dealing with. But again,
the winds are still blowing a little bit out there,
so that could that could be a problem at some point.
They've they've stopped some service on MetroLink's Antelope Valley line.
If we're headed home from anywhere, that may be a problem.
We got one called the Freddie Fire, and that is
Freddy Fire.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Was that your band in the eighties were doing Freddie Fire?
Were Freddie Fire?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yeah, this one is a small one that they've apparently
stopped the spread of in Malibu near the Ventura County line.
So Freddy is is deady, He's deady. They are well done. Yeah,
that's exactly right. And the Riverside County Fire Department and
Cruise there have deployed to a spot that's burning underneath
the Pomona sixty Freeway. That's at Ediwanda Avenue and Van
(01:42):
Buren Boulevard in Harupa Valley. So we're keeping an eye
on the Ediwandah as well. Now, the big ones, the
big one that we've been dealing with all that, that's
just the warm up there. That's the warm up act
right there. Freddie Fire is the opening act. The Palisades
fires clearly the most devastating one that we've dealt with today,
and it's just continued to grow. The latest estimate of
sixteen thousand acres set of burn. We see the images.
(02:05):
It's just tragic.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Twenty four hours ago. When it first started, it was
it was like two thousand.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It happens fast. Yeah, And I got off the air yesterday,
was filling in for Amy King. I finished at you know,
ten fifteen's the last time you do the news. Ten
thirty walking out the door. A little fire, a little
fire over there that we thought, Okay, we're gonna keep
an eye on it because we've been talking, as you've
noted all so long, we had warnings that this stuff
was coming. So this little patch fire starts and like, okay,
(02:35):
well we'll be watching that. And here we are, what
twenty four thirty six, not even thirty hours later, and
that is zero percent contained. Last I heard it, it's
still zero percent contained. All of them are. For the
most part. This is just a big They don't have
their stretch thin. They're deploying firefighters from all over the
place to come in and help out. But the Palisades
(02:56):
is sixteen thousand acres at this point, and when you
see them, it's just, I mean, it's gone.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I know that area very well. I cannot because I
was there twenty four hours before the fire started, and
we piked there, take walks, go to all the stores,
in the restaurants, drove through there yesterday morning. And now
the photos I'm seeing online completely flattened, total devastation, nothing left.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
My brain can't even process that's going on.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I can't imagine what's going through, what these people are
going through. We know some families there. I just it's
overwhelming to see your entire world just disappear.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
You just talked to Rick Caruso, and he mentioned that
not everybody in the Palisades is wealthy, and that's something
that I learned firsthand today. I went to one of
the evacuation centers in Westwood, that's for the folks who
fled the Palisades, and I talked to a lady who
lived in one of the mobile home parks there. She's
been there for decades, loves living in the Palisades, and
had no idea this morning what the status of her
(03:57):
home was, and was questioning what she should have been
living in the Palisades all these years. She says, it's
close to Malibu, you know, Malibu burns a lot. Should
have known better. Maybe I should have moved to Compton,
she said, instead, as sort of a joke. But I mean,
a lot of the people that were at that evacuation
center are seniors. They were using walkers and wheelchairs. Some
of them seemed confused about the situation. It was really
(04:20):
eye opening because the idea of the Palisades is is
wealth and celebrities and all that, but there are a
lot of small folks that live there as well.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, there's a lot of apartments, there's mobile homes, there's condos,
there's elderly people on service workers. Yeah, there's there's a
there's a whole mix of people, and everybody's gotten wiped
out though. It's just it's a it's I can't there's
no words to describe it because the description is emotional,
like the feeling is emotional. There aren't words to convey
(04:49):
these emotions. And it goes deeper than the ordinary emotions
that you can experience and talk about.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean we you know, somebody's
house burns down, that's tragic enough. Somebody city burns down.
What happens after that? How do you rebuild the Palisades?
Your neighbors are gone, your friends are gone, everything is gone. Yeah,
all the businesses you went to your kid's school. In
some cases is gone.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Just wipes off the fence.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
So your entire life has been destroyed completely in a
matter of minutes.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
But I guess having your life is the most important thing.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
It looks like most people heated the warning to evacuate
when they told them to. We didn't hear about a
lot of injuries, and that one, we did hear about
some injuries and deaths in the what they've called the
eat and fire, the one in Altadena, Pasadena, in that area,
and that's the one close to here. And yeah, the windows,
this window, it's it's such a strange stay because the
window outside your studio here it looks like a beautiful
(05:44):
southern California winter day, ny skies and the mountains in
the background. And then you walk down the hall to
the newsroom and it's hell. I mean, the smoke is
just coming up over the horizon there. And this is
a bad one too. It's it's now over ten thousand
acres destroying homes, two people dead. That started in an
Altadena last night. Zero percent contained they say right now
as well, so that one is still burning like crazy.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
They've got evacuation and is that burning in all directions
or is it going I guess with the Santa Ana
winds generally go from the northeast to the southwest.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
No, I'm thinking that those winds are supposed to be
calming down at some point soon.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
So they I mean, they've at least gotten some of
the firefighters back.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
In the air. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
They were supposed to peak this.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Morning, Yeah, and then gradually subside tomorrow calm, and then
they kicked back up on Saturday, and then next week
there could be another round of an I just stepped outside.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It still feels quite windy and the wind is cold.
I mean it's a cold wind that you're feeling out
there as well. We also have the one in Silmar.
This has spread to about seven hundred acres. No containment
there as well. Started late last night, exploded to about
one hundred acres within a half an hour. That's how
quickly these things can change. Twelve hours later it hit
that seven hundred acre mark. They got some evacuations going
(06:54):
on there as well. We'll continue to watch.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
And war could pop up at any moments, all right.
Michael Monks, caff I News, thank you for all that.
We have lots of coverage to go on and we're
going to continue. Well, you know what I want to
get to next is Karen Bass, who started the day
in Ghana. Yeah, while Pacific Palisades was burning down a
(07:18):
thousand structures, Karen Bass partying in Ghana celebrating the inauguration
of the new president who has inaugurated.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Can you believe this?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
How many days a warning did we have about this firestorm?
This windstorm? And she went to Ghana and stayed in
Ghana and sent out a lot of tweets. And now
we've got some details about how much funding she cut
to the La Fire Department and how much money we've
decided to spend on homeless people instead of the fire department.
(07:51):
If you put up with this, don't complain when your
house burns down and there's no water to put out
the fire, because you vote for people who would rather
fund the homeless who start the fires. If this doesn't
change people's voting habits, then it's totally a lost cause.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
On every day from one until four and after four
o'clock John Cobelt Show on Demand. That's the podcast We've
got Tracy Park coming up after Devers two thirty news.
Tracy Park, who's the councilwoman for the West side of
Los Angeles. Pacific Palisades is part of her territory, and
she's going to talk about the devastation of the fire
and the fire hydrants running out of water. Unbelievable in
(08:43):
the city of Los Angeles, that we can only have
about seventeen hours worth of water for one fire. Just overwhelming.
And at the time the mayor was in Ghana. Let's
pull this all together. The according to city budget documents,
(09:06):
Karen Bass And by the way, maybe she should go
and run to be the president of Ghana or a
mayor of one of God's major cities if she finds
it so fascinating to be there during a time of
crisis here. But the city budget documents show that the
fire department had their budget cut by seventeen million dollars.
(09:33):
Patrick soon Shiong, the owner of the La Times, put
out a tweet that it was twenty three million.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I don't know the reason for the discrepancy, but you
get the idea.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So somehow, so yeah, how many times Newsom said this yesterday?
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It's not just fire month or fire season, it's fire year.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Now with climate change, you know where there's going to
be more fires and hotter fires and a logger.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Well, if that's true, if you really believe what you're saying,
why would you cut the fire department budget by seventeen million?
And she did. Politico dot Com has the story, quoting
the La Times owner. I also have a document from
(10:18):
the Board of Fire Commissioners from twenty twenty three, and.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Look at this comparison.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Here, Los Angeles allocated one point three billion dollars for
homelessness in twenty twenty four, one point three billion. In comparison,
the fire department received twenty five percent less funding than
(10:56):
the homelessness department. That we spend significantly more money on
homelessness than we do on the fire department. How is
it that the fire department gets twenty five percent less
(11:16):
funding than the homelessness bureaucrats, who, by the way, all
they do is increase homelessness with all their stupid, failed,
fake policies.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Homelessness goes up.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Hey, now we've got thousands of people homeless. How about that,
Now we've got thousands of more homeless people from Pacific
Palisades because they couldn't They couldn't keep the water supply
fully stocked. The money for homelessness. This has got to stop.
(11:57):
Newsom spend twenty four billion and has no idea where
the money went, has no idea if anything worked. We
are spending billions in the city of Ala. Same thing
doesn't work. Karen Bass gives the homeless beast more money
than she gives the fire department. Meantime, she's in Ghana.
(12:22):
We keep going back to that. Son Chiang said. Fires
in La sadly no surprise yet the mayor cut La
Fire Department's budget by twenty three million. Reports of empty
fire hydrants raise serious questions competence matters. They at the
(12:44):
Politico and the La Times was trying to get Bass.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
To respond to this issue, but she was in Ghana.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
The mayor's office on Monday night posted that an expected
destructive and potentially life threating windstorm will be starting Tuesday
morning and lasting through Wednesday afternoon. Yes, but as of
this morning, Bass was still not in Los Angeles. She
(13:14):
didn't even fly back right away after posting the warning.
We are gonna potentially lose our lives because of the
wind and fire. She's in Ghana. Even progressive nuts criticized her.
(13:34):
Some guy named Tommy Viator who used to be an
OBAMA staff member and hosts Podsave America, which is a
popular left wing podcast. Inexplicable decision to not come back earlier.
Maybe if she was here then she would have found
(13:58):
out that they were running out of water rapidly. Because
according to Genice Quinonez, you know, the CEO of the LEDWP.
We played her clip before she makes seven hundred and
fifty thousand dollars a year. The first tank went empty
at four forty five yesterday. That's a million gallons of
(14:19):
water was gone in less than six hours. We ran
out of water on the second tank at eight thirty
and the third tank at three am this morning. And
that's it. No more water. They had three million gallon tanks.
One got at four forty five, one at eight thirty,
third one at three am. They didn't even get eighteen
(14:41):
hours worth of water, and then they had no And
then I'm watching I'm watching TV last night and I'm
watching neighborhoods, burn homes, burn schools, burned businesses, burn no
water in some cases, no fire department personnel, and I thought, well,
if they're not defending a school, what are they defending?
(15:01):
And it looks like I couldn't defend anything. They were
out of water. How in God's name, with the Pacific
Ocean at our doorstep, we don't have a water supply.
We've had two record enormous rainy seasons. Billions and billions
(15:25):
and billions and billions of gallons of water fell on California,
much of it flushed out to see. I have to
get to that coming up because Trump is posting about
Gavin Newsom's water policies. In fact, Trump talked about Newsom's
water policies when he came on our show in October.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I'm going to play that back as well. That's later
in the hour.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
But first we're going to talk with Tracy Park and
Pacific Palisades is her district on the West side. She's
the LA City council person, and she'll come on our
show next.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
You're listening to John Cobel's on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Any minute now, we're going to get Tracy Park on.
She's the councilwoman for the eleventh District, the West side
of Los Angeles. She's my councilman, and her territory covers
Pacific Palisades, so she's right in the middle of what's
going on there with all the destruction the fire, and
(16:26):
it's that fire still burning. I mean it's not been contained,
not even one percent. It's still spreading. She's got cell
phone issues, but we're going to have her on momentarily.
Another story in the La Times this morning. Local fire
officials admitted today they were overwhelmed by the power and
size of the three major fires burning in La County.
(16:52):
There are nine thousand firefighters in La County, according to
the La County Fire Chief Anthony Murrie. That's when you
add up all the county fire departments, not only the
county fire department, built all the twenty nine other fire agencies.
Local agencies and Maroney said it's not enough to address
all the fires that started across the region, so they
(17:15):
asked for mutual aid from other counties, other crews and
trucks from California's Office of Emergency Services. They're all on
the way, but they said they had a game plan
for the life threatening windstorm. Maroney said firefighters from northern
California were pre positioned in places known for bad fires,
(17:38):
Santa Clara Valley and the Santa Monica Mountains, but the
fires broke out in different areas Palisades, Alta Den in Silmar,
La County, and all twenty nine fire departments in our
county are not prepared for this type of widespread disaster,
The La Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley said, together, these
fires are stretching the capacity of egency services to the
(18:01):
maximum limits. Well, especially if you have the mayor Los
Angeles cutting the fire budget in order to increase the
homeless budget. The homeless people start a lot of the fires.
We spend a tremendous amount of manpower and money putting
out many, many fires every day in La City and County.
(18:24):
I got to look up the number again. It's a
staggering number of fires that the homeless people start. And
all Karen Vass does, and the county legislators, the county supervisors,
they create programs that apparently attract more homeless, more vagrants,
more bumps, more drug addicts, more mental patients. I always forget,
(18:47):
let's forget the words were supposed to use. Let's get
Tracy on Tracy.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Hi, John, how are.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
You I'm good.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I feel like everybody else does about the fireires. I
cannot believe the fire department ran out of water that quickly.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That's just stunning here, you know, it's I.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
Was pretty upset to learn that information myself this morning.
Apparently the demand on DWP services in the area was
about four times the normal load. As people were leaving,
they were leaving hoses and faucets on in their homes
and that was straining the load. And then we had
(19:36):
firefighters doing fire suppression. Wildfire suppression with fire hydrants. That's
not how you fight wildfire, but because of the dangerous
wind conditions, air assets were unable to do the water
drops and so all of that was a perfect storm
that led to this absolute devastation in the Palacey.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Rick Russoe was on last hour, said, this is a
lack of competence among those who manage the city. It's
been going on for years. The infrastructure is not available
planning here. Whatever their plan was, that obviously failed badly.
I mean, there's got to be a huge remake revision
(20:22):
and how the city approaches these fire situations. We know
these things are going to happen, They've happened many times
in the past. I really don't understand getting caught this
flat footed.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Well, and frankly, what has happened in many ways is predictable.
You know. I am standing right now at the corner
of Fifth and Carrie in the Pacific Palisades, and what
I am looking at are apocalyptic scenes in every direction.
This is just absolute devastation, and it's still going to
(20:56):
be some days ahead until we can even begin to
get our heads around the scope and the scale of
the lot that John, you are right. This is about
years of chronic under investment in our critical infrastructure and
disinvestment in our public safety partners. Our own fire department
(21:17):
has had a budget cut by tens of millions of dollars,
Its calls for surface have tripled, and yet its staffing
levels remain what they were forty fifty sixty years ago.
We just recently received a standards of cover report that
I went to Fire Commission to speak about at the
(21:38):
end of December. We already know based on that report
that our emergency response times in some cases are double
the national standards, and the report recommends the addition of
sixty two new fire stations just to meet basic demand
(21:59):
in this City of Los Angeles, not twenty five sixty two.
And this is chronic under investment. They wiled out this
since before I took office. How did I have never
been so devastated to see what we are looking at today?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
How did we end up.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
In a city where we're spending one point three billion
dollars on homeless programs that do not work and only
eight hundred million dollars on the fire department and even
that was cut by seventeen million.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I mean, man, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 5 (22:34):
I wish I could make this make sense, but it absolutely.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And many the homeless part of you go ahead, Well,
I was going to say, you.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
Know, this is impartant left relaxed staffing from the financial
crisis all the way back in two thousand and eight.
Our fire department has never been made a whole since
the cut state took back then, and it's because of
many things.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Are your signals your signals getting really messed up? Tracy?
Speaker 5 (23:13):
You know what, John, I am so sorry, but the
wind is shifting that I am actually right in the
middle of an act fire situation. If you don't mind,
I'm actually going to get out of here. But I
would love to go to connect with you a little
bit later.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, yeah, a call back later. We'll put you on
during the three o'clock hour. Yeah, because there's a lot
to cover here. Yeah, get out of there. Yeah, because
the fire is still blazing in all directions and she's
walking around and it's total devastation. But what we've got
here is a city, and this is this is starts
with Karen Bass and Eric Carcetti, uh for the last
(23:47):
I don't know, twelve thirteen years. You know, they go
around beating their chests about being the great leaders of
the city. Well, you are responsible creating a situation where
it's one point three billion dollars on vagrants. These same
vagrants are starting fires every day. The fire department spends
much of their time running around putting out bumpfires, right,
(24:12):
that's what they do. That's in reality, what they do
is they put out and then when the big fire
comes that threatens the taxpayers, the citizens, the people who work,
who actually go to work and pay bills and pay
a lot of taxes. When the big fire comes for them,
they're out of water. They're out of water. They never
(24:33):
run out of water. When the homeless fires are blazing
and again, this is not a knock on the firefighters themselves,
who are just endangering themselves every day working impossible situations.
It's the management. It's the politicians and the bureaucrats. It
(24:53):
starts with Karen Bass and the collection of clowns and
bozos on the city council, everybody running these departments.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
And there just has to come a point where everybody says,
all right, that's it. This is it.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
You run out of water seventeen hours into a fire
and stop it. We know that there's big fires in
La La County all of a sudden, California happens frequently.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Everybody knows what wildfires are like.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Everybody knows that the residents put on hoses and they
leave water running.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Of course they do.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
They don't have any faith anyone's gonna come and wet
down the roofs, wet down the homes themselves, so they
try to do it. They try to water their grass,
what are the land around their home, hoping it might
slow the fire down because they don't have any faith
that anybody in government's going to show up, and in
this case they didn't because the fire department's out of water.
(25:51):
I don't care what their excuses are. Well, here's what happened.
We know what happened.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
You screwed up.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
You shouldn't have your job. These people should be fired,
starting with the mayor. They should all resign. They should
all resign. Just admit it. You don't know what you're doing.
You're in over your head. You botch this up. There's
a thousand buildings that are burned. You've destroyed billions of
(26:19):
dollars worth of property. Go, please go, You've done enough. Okay,
you're gonna leave behind what seventy five eighty thousand vagrants
dying in the streets and you're not helping those people either.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Go all of you out, Good lord.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
This is the worst crew of politicians the world has
ever seen. Look around, Look around what the place has become.
It's their fault, your fault for lifting them.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
You're listening to John Cobelt on Demand from KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
And after four o'clock, John Cobelt's show on demand on
the iHeart app Coming up next hour, We're gonna tell
tell you what Trump wrote about Newsom's water policy in
the state of California, and play a clip of Trump
on our show talking about it. From October. We're also
going to replay our interview with Rick Caruso, who he
(27:13):
had earlier in the program, who talked about the incompetence
of the Los Angeles City government. He used to be
a commissioner for LEDWP. And now we have a seven
hundred and fifty thousand dollars named seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars CEO named Genisa Canonez Seve hundred and fifty
(27:37):
thousand dollars, who got up at a press conference today to
tell us so it's like, yeah, we ran out of water.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
We ran out of water.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Turns out that we spent about eight hundred million dollars
on a home on the LA City Fire Department, but
we spend one point three billion on the homeless department.
You got that, we spent one point three billion on
homeless and look at the dramatic increase, and we spent
(28:10):
only eight hundred million on the fire department. And now
thousands of people in the Palisades are homeless. And you know,
you know what many of the homeless do all day?
They start fires. You might think that's an exaggeration, hyperably, No,
listen to this. The Iteam on Channel four did a
(28:31):
story twenty twenty three. In twenty twenty three, there were
thirteen thousand, nine hundred and nine homeless fires in Los Angeles.
Thirteen thousand, nine hundred and nine in a single year.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
This is what the fire department does all day.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Thirteen thousand, nine hundred and nine times a fire truck
went flying down the road to a fire started by
a bunch of bums, a bunch of vagrants that Karen
Bass allows to live out in the open, and they
start fires. And she cut the fire budget by seventeen
(29:16):
million dollars. She cut the fire budget, and much of
that money is spent on homeless fires. And then when
the big fire comes to the people who pay the
taxes and work for a living, we're.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Out of water.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
And then you call the mayor up. Oh, I'm sorry,
she's not in Where is she Ghana? She's in Africa.
Somebody's being inaugurated in the Ghana, so she's there, not
here with all the I mean, I can't get over
this one. I can't get over this one. Karen Bass
ought to be removed from office. She ought to have
(29:52):
the decency to resign the head of the DWP. Get
her name right, jeniz Kinani resign gone. If you can't
get enough water for the first big fire of the year.
And by the way, that fire, you know, what they're
saying now is like, well, you know we got stretched then,
(30:14):
and there there were three.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Four fires at the same time.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
No, that Pacific Palisades fire was the only fire going on.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
At first. It wasn't like there were cruis at three
other fires. It was the first.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
One and it got out of hand and they ran
out of water. Well, you know, we had three tanks,
but you didn't prepare. You had a bad plan. It failed.
No good. Go to the New York Post. Go to
the New York Post online. Look at the aerial photos
of what the Palisades looks like looks like now and
(30:49):
Altadena too. And I'm sorry to people in Altadena that
were focusing so much on the Palisades. But it's just
that we've got this incredible story of the mayor hiding
out in Africa, not coming back after she sends out
a tweet that a deadly storm is coming. Oh thanks
for the tweet. That tweet, yeah, twenty three tweets. There's
(31:15):
no excuse for this. You have to get to the
point where you say there is no excuse for any
of this none. You don't want to hear their explanations,
their reasons you failed out gone. There's got to be
somebody better to be there, somebody better to be run
the DWP. There's got to be somebody who secure is
an adequate water supply, somebody who's going to fund the
(31:36):
fire department. Why don't you take away, oh I don't know,
take away three quarters of the homeless money and give
it to the fire and police department out way under
staff You heard Tracy Park We have staffing levels from
fifty sixty years ago?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
What the hell is going on for homeless?
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Everything about homeless people and illegal aliens, criminals almost people,
legal aliens and criminals. That is the holy trinity of
the progressive movement. And you you had a bunch of
dumb clocks. You're busy working for a living and paying taxes. Well,
you know we used to have a fire department. Well
(32:16):
no they don't, I guess, huh. Or if the fire
department shows up, they weren't given any water?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Why? Well, you know we heard a plan. This is it,
This should be the it.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
I mean, I don't want to hear from Karen Bass
unless she's saying I resign. If she's not saying I resign,
I don't want to hear from her. And everybody ought
to feel that way.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Stop voting for these people. Good lord, all right, we
come back.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
But by the way, Trump, Biden was in town yesterday,
Newsom was in town yesterday. They were supposed to go
to some dopey ceremony and they got waylaid by the fire.
What have they done it since? What happened to all
the CalFire people? What happened to the state, Because the
threat of fires was all in southern California. They've had
plenty of rain in northern California, right, big sant Ana
(33:10):
wins were here. The ten months of drought is here.
So where were all the troops for cal fire? Where
was the federal help? Now you're bringing it. You had
days of warnings, You knew this was going to happen.
So we'll play you well, I'll read to you Trump's
(33:32):
ranting on social media about Newsom and his water policy,
and we'll play you a clip because Trump's right on this. Sorry,
we flushed billions of gallons into the Pacific Ocean and
it's all to save some stupid fish. And that's another
stupid thing that's got to end. Deborah Mark live in
the KFI twenty four hour news Room. Hey, you've been
listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always
(33:53):
hear the show live on KFI Am six forty from
one to four pm every Monday through Friday, and of course,
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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