January 10, 2025 • 36 mins
Martin Adams, former GM of the LADWP comes on the show to talk about the Santa Ynez reservoir being empty and offline when the fire in Pacific Palisades broke out. More on the fires burning and the lack of preparedness and lack of response by officials.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't. I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We are on every
day from one until four and after four o'clock John
Cobelt's show on demand on the iHeart app. And that's
the podcast same as the radio show. So whatever you missed,
you can listen to it. There. We we are beyond
loaded today. I'm going to get right into it. Los
(00:23):
Angeles Times had a story they broke at about eight
thirty this morning, and the story is that there is
a large reservoir in Pacific Palisades, a one hundred and
seventeen million gallon water storage complex in the heart of
Pacific Palisades. It was dry, it was closed for repairs.
(00:47):
It's called the Santa Inez Reservoir one hundred and seventeen
million galler water storage. Give you an idea how huge
that is. When the fire happened, there were three storage tanks.
Firefighters were using. The three storage tanks. Each held a
million gallons each, that's three million gallons total. And in
(01:10):
seventeen hours, those three tanks ran dry and they couldn't
be refilled fast enough to be useful, and fire hydrants
were dry and that's part of the reason that the
fire burned so furiously out of control. The firefighters didn't
have water as a weapon to douse the fire. And
then we find out now three days later there was
(01:33):
one hundred and seventeen million gallon storage complex. They had
three million, and it ran dry in a day. One
hundred and seventeen million. It's hard to believe. We're going
to talk now with Martin Adams. He's the former general
manager of the DWP and an expert on the water system.
(01:54):
And Martin, welcome to the show. How are you.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Thank you, John glanting to talk.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
To you, well, thank you, thank you for coming on.
At first glance, this looks so outrageous, unbelievable. How could
this be.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So it?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
You know, it's a it's unfortunate that Standing As Reservoir
was was out for a maintenance at this time. But
I'll tell you it's it's been out before and it's
the water coming for for the to fight the fire
of the Palisades. All originates in our Stone Canyon Conflex,
which is up in bel Air behind UCLA, and that
pushes the water west on sunset and the very end
(02:34):
of that line is the sandy As reservoir. It's more
than one hundred feet below the other reservoir, and so
a lot of times it could use to help with
high summertime demands, or maybe if there's a pipe break,
so to make sure there's water in the community. But
with it out of service, the systems been functioning very
well without anyone knowing any difference at all. In this case,
(02:56):
what you saw was this about a three or four
fold incre in the peak demand ever experienced on the pipeline,
and basically the so much water moving in the pipe
that it dropped the pressure. If standing hasn't been there,
we might have had a little bit of pressure relief
for a while. But the reality is that out of
one hundred and seventeen million gallons, a lot of that
(03:18):
is dead storage and the bottom of the canyon because
of the shape of the canyon that's in and there
probably would have been, you know, some amount of usable water.
It would have helped for some time, but it wouldn't
have saved the day, not compared to the fire flows
that were pulled out of that pipeline.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
About how many millions of gallons could you have gotten
out of that reservoir if it was functioning well, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
I was just doing some rough calculations. Do you assume
it probably if you assumed the third of the reservoir
was what we call dead storage because it's basically filling
up the bottom of the canyon. If the reservoir had
been the rest of it, maybe half have been full,
even which I don't know that would have been the number.
But that was a good start, especially in the winter time,
because they would have had to make sure that reservoir
is fluctuating, not have water quality problems in the Palisades
(04:02):
because water sitting for a long time and storage is
a bad thing. You know, you could have maybe you
could have had thirty or forty million goallns. It'd be usable.
Recognizing then of the fire, they were pulling probably fifty
or sixty million gallons a day into the systems.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, I mean, I know, but they only had three
million in those tanks, and that lasted seventeen hours, So
it seems like thirty million, thirty million whin the last
ten times seventeen hours.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
It would it would help to refill the tanks and
so the tanks, you know, the tanks are higher elevation
than the reservoir. So there's three different tanks that and
they kind of steer step up into the palisades as
more homes are developed, and the tanks for size to
fight a home fire or a couple of houses on fire,
you know, based on how a water system is constructed,
so they had that storage capability to do that. They
(04:47):
would never have had the capability no matter how big.
You know, those tanks are even refilling to fight the
number of hydrants in those upper systems that were being
demanded on, even with the pumps running full trying to
keep those tanks up to speed. There's just never that
kind of water put into the system to fight, you know,
for fires using that many hydros at one time.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
The bel air fire would help, would help, It had
to help. If you would have you know, ten times
as much water available, it must it would have had
a major impact at least time wise.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
It would help. It would it would. It would give
you some water and some more pressure for some period
of time until that ran out as well. And and
there's also because of the elevated tanks, you're limited by
the pumps that can pump to them, so it's not
you can't move forty million gallons into into those three
million gallons. You can only move as fast as those
pumps can keep up, and and the fire and the
(05:42):
flows and the demands would have exceeded even what those
pump stations could do. So it would have made it.
It would have made some difference early on, but it
would not have made a difference in the long run.
You still would end up in the same situation and
not have enough water in those elevations, just because the
system was never designed to handle the wildfire.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
That gets to the next area I want to discuss.
There was a huge, huge fires you probably know in
Bela Are in nineteen sixty one. Seems like similar to
this Palisades fire.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
And the largest fire.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's gigantic. Why in sixty three years
has the city, the DWP, the county have they not
developed a better water distribution system for fires. You keep
kept saying several times that, well, what we have isn't
designed for wildfires. But after that huge wildfire in bal
(06:33):
A bell Air, which was so terribly destructive, why didn't
they built a system to handle wildfires because it was
guaranteed to happen again, Well, it's.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
A good question. I mean, you know, and there's been
fires in the Palisades area almost every year, and all
those fires have been put out successfully. And so typically
your wildfire's combination of protaking structures on the ground as
well as using aircraft, because that's really where you're fighting,
the wildfire boundary. And you know, the city has such
things as brush clearance regulations and other things all to
(07:04):
reduce the incidents of a number of homes catching fire.
And those things came out of the Bell Air Fire
brush clearance, safe boundaries and those sort of things. So
it is a kind of a group effort not just
providing more water, but providing also a safe barrier for
the communities. And those have been successful all the way
until we got a ninety mile an hour wind blowing
(07:25):
inversideways to the community and just catching structure out of structure.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Do the government agencies they do? They do the commuter
like computer modeling, like what would happen if we got
the mother of all Santa Ana wins and it would
be blowing ninety miles an hour, how quickly the fire
would spread? What could we do to mitigate things? It's
the preparation aspect to this that I think is what's
angering and frustrating a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, and you know, when they do modeling, they look
at aircraft's refilling of water, how far away the turnaround time? Again,
defensible borders, you know, what is that interface between wildland
and urban setting and and those things are planned for,
but there's not a water system built anywhere that would
put out an entire community on fire at once. And uh,
(08:16):
you know, part part of it is, you know, how
much infrasturgery could you build on the thought that this
may happen? And no one's ever really envisioned a fire
like this, this kind of scope happening before. And it's
probably something that's changed and changing that we have to
address now, but it's that it's never been part.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Of That's what I'm saying is if you do the
computer modeling, uh, you eventually one of the answers would be, well,
here's the worst case scenario, here's what could happen, and
what would it cost to build a system that would
reason reasonably combat it.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, and you and you'd see you know, modeling of
fire paths and and where where the fire department would
look to attack it, you know, and the resources that
they would need. You know, practically speaking, it would be
it would be extremely difficult to provide an infinite amount
of water to any one location, and knowing that that's
the right location in the city, you know you have
(09:09):
large reservoirs, but you know the pipes and infrastructure to
take to get in there. Frankly speaking, you probably you
probably wouldn't be able to afford to live in the
palacet ads because because to provide for the entire comuity
catching on fire at once would be astronomical And it's
just something Nelready ever visioned happening in your.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Time as general manager, though. Did were you part of
any meetings, any think tank style discussions what if? What
could we do? What what are we going to do
with the worst case scenario? Because I think to a
lot of people it seems like the response was, hey,
can't do anything about this, we just have to let
it burn.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Well, And I don't think that's you know, I mean,
I know maybe what it appears to people, but you know,
there's there's there's finite resources of everything, where there's water,
where there's firefighting apparatus, firefighters themselves, and and and that's
always the question, how do you deploy when you have
this kind of catastrophic situations, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
We do do planning.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
We do when we look at at Sinna's reservoir and
helicopter sites. We did a lot of planning on where
things would be reselled, what turnaround time, what resources would
assist the fire department. But again, I think it's it
was hard to predict a fire like this with with
the winds We've never seen you know, coming to me
(10:26):
actually sweeping through a neighborhood and texting structure after structure.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, but Santa Ana. Santa Ana wins happen every year,
and they happen often at predictable times. They frequently do
happen in January, and we do have dry drought years
We've had We've had a number of them, and I've
looked at the records going back one hundred and fifty years.
This is not unusual. Periodically you do get a year
like this. So why would a water storage unit that
(10:55):
could hold one hundred and seventeen million gallons, why would
it be shut down for maintenance during a possible fire
during this drought during the Santa Ana win season. This
seems like the worst time to have it shut down.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Right. Well, it's it's not a good time to get
shut down, although typically if you have work to you
try to do it in the winter time when your
regular demands are low. And it wasn't just routine maintenance
they had. They had to do a cover repair for
water quality reasons. And so my understanding is it was
down to facilitate repair of the cover, you know, so
(11:31):
that it could be put back in service. Otherwise it
wouldn't be able to continue to deserve drinking water to
the community. So that's why it had to be out
of service and be maintained. There's no great time a
year to have any and out of service, but the
winter time is typically the best time because you know,
that's when you have lower demands overall and the water
system in any water system.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
All right, Martin Adams, former GWP general manager, thank you
for coming on.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Thank you, John, my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
All right, We've got plenty to do.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
We just finished talking with Martin Adams, the former d
WP general manager. He was the one before this current
lady Genis Quinonez and they Ali Times had an exclusive
story this morning that there was there is a one
hundred and seventeen million gallon reservoir in the Palisades that
(12:33):
they closed for maintenance and it's city empty right now.
That really one hundred and seventeen million gallons, To give
you a perspective. The water storage that they did have
available were three million gallon storage tanks, so total of
three million gallons. And then they ran out of water
(12:55):
in seventeen hours. And Martin Adams was saying, well, probably
the only usable part of this storage facility might have
been thirty to forty million gallons. Well, okay, and that
means it would be ten to twelve times as much
water available. It should last another ten to twelve days.
(13:16):
He didn't think the end it would matter. I don't
agree with that, because if you have ten times as
much water available and full water pressure, it's got to
have an effect having all the fire hydrants dry and
having very low water pressure and eventually running out within
a day. If having an extra forty million gallons isn't
(13:39):
going to help, then we the fire department shouldn't even
show up then, right. And I understand that this was
an unusual Santa Anna, But what I find a lot
of public officials are doing. You know, the Newsome Bass
crowd is, they're preying on people's ignorance. I've gone out
(13:59):
of my way to look up weather records around here
because I'm so fed up with the lies and the
bs that Newsom and Bass tell.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Hey John, yes, so Newsome. He just posted on x
I'm calling for an independent investigation into the loss of
water pressure to local fire hydrants and the reported unavailability
of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir. We need
answers to ensure this does not happen again, and we
have every resource available to fight these catastrophic fires.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
They should have known in advance. That's what I was
trying to get at with Martin Adams. You know when
the Santa Ana wins blow, when they're coming back next week.
John Newsom is the one who runs around saying, oh,
you don't have a fire season anymore. It's a fire air. Ah,
you know, because of climate change, a fire ear runs
all year. Okay, if that's true, then why aren't we
(14:55):
at a high alert all year? They certainly come in
Jai January. I know this for sure. I know this
for sure. There are always high winds, and they're usually
around Martin Luther King Day. I've actually tracked this over
the years. When I first got to Los Angeles in
November of ninety two, I came in the middle of
(15:16):
a Santa Ana wind event. We were staying in Burbank,
just down the road at the old Oakwood Apartments. That's
where they put us up temporarily. Wake up in November.
Now I'm coming from New York City. I wake up
in November and it's ninety degrees and the wind is
blowing at like forty miles an hour, and I felt
like I'd stepped on the onto the planet Venus. And
that was my first I'm here less than a day,
(15:37):
and I figured out the Santa Anna's. Oh wow, it's
really hot and the winds blow really hard, and they
come in the fall, and they come in January. And
that's why if you look, I looked at a list
of fires generally October, November and into January. I looked
up once all the fires in Malibu. Look it up
(15:59):
on Wikipedia. There's a long, long list of Malibu fires.
So what I'm getting at here is how come the
La City Fire Department is severely underfunded? How come. They
haven't done the computer modelings and spent the money so
(16:22):
that they would have a force and they'd have resources,
and they'd have reservoirs for a worst case scenario, because
whatever would cost, it'd be way cheaper and than know
what's coming now. Acuweather has an estimate that it's gonna
this is going to cost one hundred and fifty billion dollars.
I am sure we could have installed a water storage
(16:44):
system for less than one hundred and fifty billion.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
So now the big question is are they going to
Are they going to make any changes before next week?
Because the red flag warning is going to be here
on Tuesday. We're expecting high winds and you know what,
there's a chance a ten percent chance of rain on Thursday.
So we have no rain for that red flag morning.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And the place and we have Santa Ana wins. They
go from the northeast to the southwest. They go through
the mountainous areas. All right, you're not going to get
a massive wildfire in Torrents, for example, or in Venice.
You're going to get it in the Foothills, Palisades, Brentwood,
(17:27):
bel Air, Westwood, into Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Hollywood Hills
on this side of the on that side of the mountain,
and that's where you're going to get it. Then on
this side of the mountain. But you know it's different
because it's on a different side of the mountain. But
it's obvious it's Tresanna and Sino Studio City. There's a
(17:48):
limited number of places that could have this. You have
all these city and county resources. They have been underfunded,
they've had their budgets cut. Why how much money have
we spent on a legal aliens, homeless people, criminals, drug addicts, vagrants,
high speed rail, fifty billion dollars to fraudulent criminals during
(18:14):
the COVID unemployment scam, and the list goes on and on.
Hundreds of billions of dollars. We've spent crap on the
fire system. And now Gavin Newsom wants to do an investigation.
You know why, he's got somebody monitoring our show. That's
what he's got. Now they're running scared by the way,
(18:41):
has Bass and Newsom resigned yet? And do they need
any help packing up their offices? Because I think I
could put a posse together and we could be in
downtown LA in less than an hour to help Karen
Bass out of her office and we could be in Sacramento.
What about three hours. They should be removed from office.
(19:03):
They should both resign. This is a career ending fatal injury.
The two of them and their characters came out, and
I'm going to talk about the two incidents coming up
sometime soon. How because pressure high pressure reveals a person's character,
(19:24):
and we found out Bass's character, and we found out
Newsom's character and it matched exactly what I always thought
about them. I also want to play we have this here, Yes,
I want to play Gigi Grassiett's interview Fox eleven. She
was pressing the fire department chief Kristin Crowley, and Crowley
(19:45):
was trying to defend herself by saying that the fire
department's underfunded.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
You're listening to John Cobel's on demand from KFI AM.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Six forty John Cobelt chok I AM six forty Live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. We've just been telling you
about the Santa Ynez Reservoir in Pacific Palisades. They had
a reservoir on Pacific Palisades that holds one hundred and
seventeen million gallons of water. I'm not making this up.
(20:15):
This is one of the lead stories in the La Times.
It sits empty right now because it's been under maintenance.
They're repairing the cover. I don't know how long they've
been repairing it, and I don't know why they would
do the maintenance during fire season. During the Santa Ana
wins season, Droughts happen frequently in southern California. Santa Ana
(20:39):
winds blow every year several times a year. Fires happen
every year in California, a number of them. This was
not at a character. The only thing unprecedented was the
lack of preparation and the lack of response by our city, county,
and state government. That's why this damage is beyond all reason.
(21:03):
Because even though we've had thousands of Santa Ana wind events,
dozens of droughts, hundreds of fires, nobody at the city, county,
or state government level was prepared to put out the
effing fire. That's the truth. Karen Bass was in Africa.
(21:25):
She's told on Thursday, Thursday, extreme fire danger. On Saturday,
she goes to Africa. The fires start on Tuesday. She
doesn't come back till Wednesday, six days after the first warning,
and now she's acting all petulant and angry and condescending.
(21:48):
You notice how nice Karen Bass has disappeared miss smiley face,
because she's under pressure now and how you're finding out.
I told you this when she was running against Rick Caruso.
She's never run anything before. She was a legislator. She
chaired committees and commissions. She never ran anything, never ran
(22:10):
a level of government, never ran a business, never ran
even a girl Scout troop. She's in over her head
and now she's getting angry because she doesn't know what
to do. It's like the homeless situation. She doesn't know
what to do. She stuffed a few in some old
motels and then the shields a parade for herself every week.
(22:32):
Now I'm gonna play Gigi Grossi at from Fox eleven.
She's been a great reporter for a long time. We
clipped five minutes out of a much longer interview that
she did with the Los Angeles Fire Department chief Kristin Crowley.
This is really good. We're gonna play it about five minutes,
(22:53):
and I imagine you get the longer version online at
Fox eleven. But let's roll.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
What is your message to city administrator, starting with Mayor Bass.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded,
and it's not. It's not at this point, and we've
got the justification. We know where our gaps and service are.
We know we need sixty two new fire stations. We
need to double the size of our firefighters. The growth
of this city since nineteen sixty has doubled and we
have less fire stations.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Let's repeat that, because those numbers are a little jarring.
You know, twenty years ago you had more fire stations
than you had now.
Speaker 6 (23:28):
We had one hundred and twelve fire stations. Now we
have one hundred and six. And since twenty ten, we've
had an increase, doubled our call volume, which is firefighters
responding to calls, fifty five percent increase with sixty eight
less firefighters.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
So the city funding is not keeping up with the
city's means in real time.
Speaker 6 (23:47):
No, and that's what our firefighters need.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
I'm going to ask you again, I'm going to continue
pressing you on this. In your mind, what were you
thinking when you hear all those city leaders say I.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Did an effect, everything was great?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
You know, we do you.
Speaker 5 (23:59):
Know it's unprecedented and a la lah and yes, the
sant Ana winds are unprecedented. We don't have them in January.
We all know that what was going through your heart.
Speaker 6 (24:07):
What's going through my heart is that our firefighters, the
communities firefighters, LAFD firefighters need to be properly funded. We
need to be supported so that they can do their jobs.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
And let me show you real quick, photographer, Tony b
you tit. I'm going to ask you to pan over
to that table. Tell me what I'm looking at. This
is memo after memo after memo, including to the Board
of Fire Commissioners.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Will you pointed.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Out you're concerned that you were not going to adequately,
adequately be able to respond to a wildfire, an earthquake,
everything that we see precisely in the city.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
That's my job as a chief is to take a
big step back and understand where and how can we
better serve the community as a community needs more. We
need to have more to make sure that our firefighters
can serve them. I identified early, My team identified early,
Labor identified early that.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
We have service gaps.
Speaker 6 (25:02):
So when you talk about sounding the alarm and asking
and requesting budgets that are easily justifiable based off of
the data.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Real data shows.
Speaker 6 (25:12):
What the fire Department needs to serve this beautiful city,
in the beautiful community that we swore that we would.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
That's what that is about.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
It is the follow up. It's showing and justifying where
our gaps are, and it's raising and sounding the alarm
that the fire department is underfunded, understaffed, and utter resourced.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
Do you believe had your budget concerns been properly addressed
in the new fiscal year, would we have seen the
same outcome that we are seeing now with thousands and
thousands unprecedented numbers of structures, homes, businesses lost. Would the
outcome had been different if they had listened to you.
Speaker 6 (25:53):
I do believe if we would have set ourselves up
appropriately over the past three years, we would have been
in a better position position of what had happened here
in the city where we lost homes and we lost lives.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
That has to be very emotional for you. This is
your job, but this has to be emotional.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
This is more than a job does This is who
we are, This is our duty.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And when you.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
Don't have that ability and people don't listen, that's why
I'm talking to you right now. The fire department needs
to be funded appropriately so that I can look any
community member in the eye and say your lafd's.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Got your back, and right now you can't. Right now, no,
And that's why I'm here. And how does that make
you feel?
Speaker 6 (26:37):
This is the burden of command as the far chief
of the greatest apartment in the world that I've wholeheartedly
raised my hand to say, yes, i will represent the
amazing men and women of the LAFD and when they're
not getting what they need to do their jobs, it's enough.
And that's why I'm here.
Speaker 5 (26:55):
And you have injured firefighters too, And you see those
homes that have burned to the ground.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
There is so much lost. People are out of jobs.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
What goes through your heart when you see that the community.
Speaker 6 (27:05):
Is our community. Our firefighters stand with the community. We
live in the communities that burned. So if anybody says
anything in regard to our firefighters not doing everything that
they can to protect our neighbors, our community, I will
stand up and defend every action that our members went
through and are still actively fighting fire.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
I don't think anybody is criticizing the firefighters. I think
the criticism has been lobbed and maybe eighty percent of
the City of Los Angeles and maybe twenty percent at
the administration here.
Speaker 6 (27:37):
Well, again, I'm here to make sure that we are
garnering the support to get our LFD firefighters what they
need to do their jobs.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Period.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
Did the City of Los Angeles fail you and your
department and our city.
Speaker 6 (27:49):
It's my job to stand up as a chief and
exactly say justifiably what the fire department needs to operate
to meet the demands of the community.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Did they fail you?
Speaker 6 (28:00):
That is our job, and I tell you that's why
I'm here. So let's get us what we need so
firefighters can do their jobs.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Did they fail you?
Speaker 6 (28:08):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
That is Kristin Crowley, the Los Angeles fire chief, said
that LA city government failed the Los Angeles Fire Department
for many years, not funding the fire department properly. We
have sixty two fewer stations than is necessary. We had
(28:35):
a union chief come on with us a few days
ago who said the same thing that we had fewer
fire stations now than we did sixty years ago. We
have almost double the population and we have fewer fire stations.
(29:01):
We're short hundreds of firefighters. You saw what happened in
the Palisades on Tuesday. You saw that they ran out
of water. We just told you. According to the La Times,
there was an empty one hundred and seventeen million gallon
reservoir in the heart of the Palisades, empty because they're
(29:22):
doing maintenance. Now, this is on Karen Bess, this is
on the city council. They should all resign. They should
all go except for Tracy Park. The rest of them
should go. This is horrible, deadly, tragic mismanagement. They have
(29:44):
poured all their money into what you know what, homeless people,
drug addicts and mental patients who don't work, who commit
crimes all day, who start fires all day. Do you
know how many fires the homeless start? For teen thousand
a year, But we gave the homeless one point three
(30:05):
billion dollars in funding. We gave the fire department less
than eight hundred million. All these people have got to go.
No more arguing with them, no more debate.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
You're listening to John Cobbels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I haven't gotten into like even five percent of what
I want to talk about today. I normally don't get
all whipped up about petitions because jay generally don't go anywhere.
Petitions and boycotts are very often useless. But I'm going
to make an exception here because I am so personally
pissed off. There is a petition on change dot org
(30:44):
and it's called demand the Immediate Resignation of Mayor Karen Bass.
Demand the immediate resignation of Mayor Karen Bass. It's already
got thirty six thousand, eight hundred and forty one verified signatures.
I'll read you quickly what it said, as we, the
undersigned residents of Los Angeles urgently call for the immediate
(31:05):
recall of Mayor Karen Bass due to her gross mismanagement
and failure to effectively respond to the devastating twenty twenty fires.
In the wake of these catastrophic fires, our city has
been left in crisis. Water supplies have been severely strained,
billions of taxpayer dollars have been misallocated or left unaccounted for,
(31:26):
and countless lives have been lost. Families have been displaced,
homes destroyed, livelihood shattered. Yet Mayor Bass has been absent
from the front lines, choosing to travel abroad while her
constituents suffer despite the tireless efforts of our first responders,
the city has been woefully unprepared to ensure the safety
and well being of its residents. Basic resources such as
(31:48):
water and emergency services have been inadequate, and leadership has
been nowhere to be found when it was needed most.
We demand the immediate resignation of Mayor Karen Bass due
to her failure to lead during this unprecedented crisis. It
goes on. I'm signing the position right now during the
commercial break, and let's put a link on our website
(32:09):
for it, because I think everybody. It's not only for
residents of LA. It's residents of Los Angeles and concerned citizens,
So everybody living in the area. You need a healthy, vibrant,
well run Los Angeles otherwise, as you know, all of
lli's problems spill everywhere else. You know, because Los Angeles
(32:30):
has embraced vagrants and mental patients in the streets. Now
there are vagrants and mental patients in lots of towns
and cities. You know. The crime spilled out of LA
because we stopped arresting people, we stopped prosecuting people. There
are Now let me tell you something. I'm wondering, and
(32:50):
i'm't the only one wondering this. This is sometimes I
wonder if we're under attack because what's happened here and
I know this firsthand. On my side of town, you
have the fire that's destroyed the palisades. You have huge
swaths that are under meditatory evacuations. Looters have been pouring in.
(33:11):
We're connected to various apps, and these apps are lighting
up all night long. People are reporting all kinds of burglaries, robberies, thefts.
That's why Nathan Hockman was yelling this morning at the
press conference that everyone's going to get arrested and prosecuted.
I sure hope. So oh what I like Sheriff Luna
is saying, and it's like, Yo, we're not going to
(33:33):
cite and release, which means up until today, that's what
they were doing with people who burglarized private homes. They
were citing them and releasing them. Now all of a sudden,
we're going to be enforcing the laws. Well this is great,
but I'm telling you there's looters running around all over
the place. We're supposed to evacuate. Our homes were ordered
(33:55):
to evacuate, and then the looters come in and the
city doesn't provide protection to our properties. We're told to
evacuate and not stay in an active fire area, but
they didn't equip and finance the fire department to put
out the fire. People are trying to do it themselves.
(34:17):
They don't have the funding and the authority to enforce
criminal laws, so people have to do it for themselves.
We're looking at the disintegration of civilization after ten plus
years of insanely stupid progressive politics. It had to end
(34:38):
this way, it had to. It's all crumbling down now.
All of this woke, progressive, stupid politics of the last
ten years has all come together now. So now we
got fires, We've got evacuations, We've got criminals and looters
running amok. I got a photo in a neighborhood. Somebody's
(35:02):
leaving gas cans around. Gas cans. These fires, I think
are started by arsonists. The arsonists are having field day.
They start a fire, people running fleet and then they
loot our homes and we don't everybody anybody's stopping them.
That's the world we're living in Los Angeles. We had
(35:23):
our progressive party for ten years. Now look anyway, change
dot Org. I am signing this thing. I think everybody
this should get millions of signatures. She should be gone,
and I don't want her replaced by another one, by
another progressive. She's incompetent. It's not going to get any better.
(35:46):
You think she's going to handle the rebuilding of the
Pacific Palisades, You think she's going to handle it? I
mean she would screw up making breakfast. She's not capable
of running things, don't you see? And she knows it.
That's why she's so angry and bullheaded and defensive and
(36:09):
condescending and rude to the reporters, because she knows. She
fed up and she's not going to be able to
fix it. I hope the weather was really nice and
Ghana Deborah Mark live in the KFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey,
you've been listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI Am six
(36:31):
forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Can't. I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We are on every
day from one until four and after four o'clock John
Cobelt's show on demand on the iHeart app. And that's
the podcast same as the radio show. So whatever you missed,
you can listen to it. There. We we are beyond
loaded today. I'm going to get right into it. Los
(00:23):
Angeles Times had a story they broke at about eight
thirty this morning, and the story is that there is
a large reservoir in Pacific Palisades, a one hundred and
seventeen million gallon water storage complex in the heart of
Pacific Palisades. It was dry, it was closed for repairs.
(00:47):
It's called the Santa Inez Reservoir one hundred and seventeen
million galler water storage. Give you an idea how huge
that is. When the fire happened, there were three storage tanks.
Firefighters were using. The three storage tanks. Each held a
million gallons each, that's three million gallons total. And in
(01:10):
seventeen hours, those three tanks ran dry and they couldn't
be refilled fast enough to be useful, and fire hydrants
were dry and that's part of the reason that the
fire burned so furiously out of control. The firefighters didn't
have water as a weapon to douse the fire. And
then we find out now three days later there was
(01:33):
one hundred and seventeen million gallon storage complex. They had
three million, and it ran dry in a day. One
hundred and seventeen million. It's hard to believe. We're going
to talk now with Martin Adams. He's the former general
manager of the DWP and an expert on the water system.
(01:54):
And Martin, welcome to the show. How are you.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Thank you, John glanting to talk.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
To you, well, thank you, thank you for coming on.
At first glance, this looks so outrageous, unbelievable. How could
this be.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So it?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
You know, it's a it's unfortunate that Standing As Reservoir
was was out for a maintenance at this time. But
I'll tell you it's it's been out before and it's
the water coming for for the to fight the fire
of the Palisades. All originates in our Stone Canyon Conflex,
which is up in bel Air behind UCLA, and that
pushes the water west on sunset and the very end
(02:34):
of that line is the sandy As reservoir. It's more
than one hundred feet below the other reservoir, and so
a lot of times it could use to help with
high summertime demands, or maybe if there's a pipe break,
so to make sure there's water in the community. But
with it out of service, the systems been functioning very
well without anyone knowing any difference at all. In this case,
(02:56):
what you saw was this about a three or four
fold incre in the peak demand ever experienced on the pipeline,
and basically the so much water moving in the pipe
that it dropped the pressure. If standing hasn't been there,
we might have had a little bit of pressure relief
for a while. But the reality is that out of
one hundred and seventeen million gallons, a lot of that
(03:18):
is dead storage and the bottom of the canyon because
of the shape of the canyon that's in and there
probably would have been, you know, some amount of usable water.
It would have helped for some time, but it wouldn't
have saved the day, not compared to the fire flows
that were pulled out of that pipeline.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
About how many millions of gallons could you have gotten
out of that reservoir if it was functioning well, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
I was just doing some rough calculations. Do you assume
it probably if you assumed the third of the reservoir
was what we call dead storage because it's basically filling
up the bottom of the canyon. If the reservoir had
been the rest of it, maybe half have been full,
even which I don't know that would have been the number.
But that was a good start, especially in the winter time,
because they would have had to make sure that reservoir
is fluctuating, not have water quality problems in the Palisades
(04:02):
because water sitting for a long time and storage is
a bad thing. You know, you could have maybe you
could have had thirty or forty million goallns. It'd be usable.
Recognizing then of the fire, they were pulling probably fifty
or sixty million gallons a day into the systems.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, I mean, I know, but they only had three
million in those tanks, and that lasted seventeen hours, So
it seems like thirty million, thirty million whin the last
ten times seventeen hours.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
It would it would help to refill the tanks and
so the tanks, you know, the tanks are higher elevation
than the reservoir. So there's three different tanks that and
they kind of steer step up into the palisades as
more homes are developed, and the tanks for size to
fight a home fire or a couple of houses on fire,
you know, based on how a water system is constructed,
so they had that storage capability to do that. They
(04:47):
would never have had the capability no matter how big.
You know, those tanks are even refilling to fight the
number of hydrants in those upper systems that were being
demanded on, even with the pumps running full trying to
keep those tanks up to speed. There's just never that
kind of water put into the system to fight, you know,
for fires using that many hydros at one time.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
The bel air fire would help, would help, It had
to help. If you would have you know, ten times
as much water available, it must it would have had
a major impact at least time wise.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
It would help. It would it would. It would give
you some water and some more pressure for some period
of time until that ran out as well. And and
there's also because of the elevated tanks, you're limited by
the pumps that can pump to them, so it's not
you can't move forty million gallons into into those three
million gallons. You can only move as fast as those
pumps can keep up, and and the fire and the
(05:42):
flows and the demands would have exceeded even what those
pump stations could do. So it would have made it.
It would have made some difference early on, but it
would not have made a difference in the long run.
You still would end up in the same situation and
not have enough water in those elevations, just because the
system was never designed to handle the wildfire.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
That gets to the next area I want to discuss.
There was a huge, huge fires you probably know in
Bela Are in nineteen sixty one. Seems like similar to
this Palisades fire.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
And the largest fire.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's gigantic. Why in sixty three years
has the city, the DWP, the county have they not
developed a better water distribution system for fires. You keep
kept saying several times that, well, what we have isn't
designed for wildfires. But after that huge wildfire in bal
(06:33):
A bell Air, which was so terribly destructive, why didn't
they built a system to handle wildfires because it was
guaranteed to happen again, Well, it's.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
A good question. I mean, you know, and there's been
fires in the Palisades area almost every year, and all
those fires have been put out successfully. And so typically
your wildfire's combination of protaking structures on the ground as
well as using aircraft, because that's really where you're fighting,
the wildfire boundary. And you know, the city has such
things as brush clearance regulations and other things all to
(07:04):
reduce the incidents of a number of homes catching fire.
And those things came out of the Bell Air Fire
brush clearance, safe boundaries and those sort of things. So
it is a kind of a group effort not just
providing more water, but providing also a safe barrier for
the communities. And those have been successful all the way
until we got a ninety mile an hour wind blowing
(07:25):
inversideways to the community and just catching structure out of structure.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Do the government agencies they do? They do the commuter
like computer modeling, like what would happen if we got
the mother of all Santa Ana wins and it would
be blowing ninety miles an hour, how quickly the fire
would spread? What could we do to mitigate things? It's
the preparation aspect to this that I think is what's
angering and frustrating a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, and you know, when they do modeling, they look
at aircraft's refilling of water, how far away the turnaround time? Again,
defensible borders, you know, what is that interface between wildland
and urban setting and and those things are planned for,
but there's not a water system built anywhere that would
put out an entire community on fire at once. And uh,
(08:16):
you know, part part of it is, you know, how
much infrasturgery could you build on the thought that this
may happen? And no one's ever really envisioned a fire
like this, this kind of scope happening before. And it's
probably something that's changed and changing that we have to
address now, but it's that it's never been part.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Of That's what I'm saying is if you do the
computer modeling, uh, you eventually one of the answers would be, well,
here's the worst case scenario, here's what could happen, and
what would it cost to build a system that would
reason reasonably combat it.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, and you and you'd see you know, modeling of
fire paths and and where where the fire department would
look to attack it, you know, and the resources that
they would need. You know, practically speaking, it would be
it would be extremely difficult to provide an infinite amount
of water to any one location, and knowing that that's
the right location in the city, you know you have
(09:09):
large reservoirs, but you know the pipes and infrastructure to
take to get in there. Frankly speaking, you probably you
probably wouldn't be able to afford to live in the
palacet ads because because to provide for the entire comuity
catching on fire at once would be astronomical And it's
just something Nelready ever visioned happening in your.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Time as general manager, though. Did were you part of
any meetings, any think tank style discussions what if? What
could we do? What what are we going to do
with the worst case scenario? Because I think to a
lot of people it seems like the response was, hey,
can't do anything about this, we just have to let
it burn.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Well, And I don't think that's you know, I mean,
I know maybe what it appears to people, but you know,
there's there's there's finite resources of everything, where there's water,
where there's firefighting apparatus, firefighters themselves, and and and that's
always the question, how do you deploy when you have
this kind of catastrophic situations, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
We do do planning.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
We do when we look at at Sinna's reservoir and
helicopter sites. We did a lot of planning on where
things would be reselled, what turnaround time, what resources would
assist the fire department. But again, I think it's it
was hard to predict a fire like this with with
the winds We've never seen you know, coming to me
(10:26):
actually sweeping through a neighborhood and texting structure after structure.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, but Santa Ana. Santa Ana wins happen every year,
and they happen often at predictable times. They frequently do
happen in January, and we do have dry drought years
We've had We've had a number of them, and I've
looked at the records going back one hundred and fifty years.
This is not unusual. Periodically you do get a year
like this. So why would a water storage unit that
(10:55):
could hold one hundred and seventeen million gallons, why would
it be shut down for maintenance during a possible fire
during this drought during the Santa Ana win season. This
seems like the worst time to have it shut down.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Right. Well, it's it's not a good time to get
shut down, although typically if you have work to you
try to do it in the winter time when your
regular demands are low. And it wasn't just routine maintenance
they had. They had to do a cover repair for
water quality reasons. And so my understanding is it was
down to facilitate repair of the cover, you know, so
(11:31):
that it could be put back in service. Otherwise it
wouldn't be able to continue to deserve drinking water to
the community. So that's why it had to be out
of service and be maintained. There's no great time a
year to have any and out of service, but the
winter time is typically the best time because you know,
that's when you have lower demands overall and the water
system in any water system.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
All right, Martin Adams, former GWP general manager, thank you
for coming on.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Thank you, John, my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
All right, We've got plenty to do.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
We just finished talking with Martin Adams, the former d
WP general manager. He was the one before this current
lady Genis Quinonez and they Ali Times had an exclusive
story this morning that there was there is a one
hundred and seventeen million gallon reservoir in the Palisades that
(12:33):
they closed for maintenance and it's city empty right now.
That really one hundred and seventeen million gallons, To give
you a perspective. The water storage that they did have
available were three million gallon storage tanks, so total of
three million gallons. And then they ran out of water
(12:55):
in seventeen hours. And Martin Adams was saying, well, probably
the only usable part of this storage facility might have
been thirty to forty million gallons. Well, okay, and that
means it would be ten to twelve times as much
water available. It should last another ten to twelve days.
(13:16):
He didn't think the end it would matter. I don't
agree with that, because if you have ten times as
much water available and full water pressure, it's got to
have an effect having all the fire hydrants dry and
having very low water pressure and eventually running out within
a day. If having an extra forty million gallons isn't
(13:39):
going to help, then we the fire department shouldn't even
show up then, right. And I understand that this was
an unusual Santa Anna, But what I find a lot
of public officials are doing. You know, the Newsome Bass
crowd is, they're preying on people's ignorance. I've gone out
(13:59):
of my way to look up weather records around here
because I'm so fed up with the lies and the
bs that Newsom and Bass tell.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Hey John, yes, so Newsome. He just posted on x
I'm calling for an independent investigation into the loss of
water pressure to local fire hydrants and the reported unavailability
of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir. We need
answers to ensure this does not happen again, and we
have every resource available to fight these catastrophic fires.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
They should have known in advance. That's what I was
trying to get at with Martin Adams. You know when
the Santa Ana wins blow, when they're coming back next week.
John Newsom is the one who runs around saying, oh,
you don't have a fire season anymore. It's a fire air. Ah,
you know, because of climate change, a fire ear runs
all year. Okay, if that's true, then why aren't we
(14:55):
at a high alert all year? They certainly come in
Jai January. I know this for sure. I know this
for sure. There are always high winds, and they're usually
around Martin Luther King Day. I've actually tracked this over
the years. When I first got to Los Angeles in
November of ninety two, I came in the middle of
(15:16):
a Santa Ana wind event. We were staying in Burbank,
just down the road at the old Oakwood Apartments. That's
where they put us up temporarily. Wake up in November.
Now I'm coming from New York City. I wake up
in November and it's ninety degrees and the wind is
blowing at like forty miles an hour, and I felt
like I'd stepped on the onto the planet Venus. And
that was my first I'm here less than a day,
(15:37):
and I figured out the Santa Anna's. Oh wow, it's
really hot and the winds blow really hard, and they
come in the fall, and they come in January. And
that's why if you look, I looked at a list
of fires generally October, November and into January. I looked
up once all the fires in Malibu. Look it up
(15:59):
on Wikipedia. There's a long, long list of Malibu fires.
So what I'm getting at here is how come the
La City Fire Department is severely underfunded? How come. They
haven't done the computer modelings and spent the money so
(16:22):
that they would have a force and they'd have resources,
and they'd have reservoirs for a worst case scenario, because
whatever would cost, it'd be way cheaper and than know
what's coming now. Acuweather has an estimate that it's gonna
this is going to cost one hundred and fifty billion dollars.
I am sure we could have installed a water storage
(16:44):
system for less than one hundred and fifty billion.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
So now the big question is are they going to
Are they going to make any changes before next week?
Because the red flag warning is going to be here
on Tuesday. We're expecting high winds and you know what,
there's a chance a ten percent chance of rain on Thursday.
So we have no rain for that red flag morning.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And the place and we have Santa Ana wins. They
go from the northeast to the southwest. They go through
the mountainous areas. All right, you're not going to get
a massive wildfire in Torrents, for example, or in Venice.
You're going to get it in the Foothills, Palisades, Brentwood,
(17:27):
bel Air, Westwood, into Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Hollywood Hills
on this side of the on that side of the mountain,
and that's where you're going to get it. Then on
this side of the mountain. But you know it's different
because it's on a different side of the mountain. But
it's obvious it's Tresanna and Sino Studio City. There's a
(17:48):
limited number of places that could have this. You have
all these city and county resources. They have been underfunded,
they've had their budgets cut. Why how much money have
we spent on a legal aliens, homeless people, criminals, drug addicts, vagrants,
high speed rail, fifty billion dollars to fraudulent criminals during
(18:14):
the COVID unemployment scam, and the list goes on and on.
Hundreds of billions of dollars. We've spent crap on the
fire system. And now Gavin Newsom wants to do an investigation.
You know why, he's got somebody monitoring our show. That's
what he's got. Now they're running scared by the way,
(18:41):
has Bass and Newsom resigned yet? And do they need
any help packing up their offices? Because I think I
could put a posse together and we could be in
downtown LA in less than an hour to help Karen
Bass out of her office and we could be in Sacramento.
What about three hours. They should be removed from office.
(19:03):
They should both resign. This is a career ending fatal injury.
The two of them and their characters came out, and
I'm going to talk about the two incidents coming up
sometime soon. How because pressure high pressure reveals a person's character,
(19:24):
and we found out Bass's character, and we found out
Newsom's character and it matched exactly what I always thought
about them. I also want to play we have this here, Yes,
I want to play Gigi Grassiett's interview Fox eleven. She
was pressing the fire department chief Kristin Crowley, and Crowley
(19:45):
was trying to defend herself by saying that the fire
department's underfunded.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
You're listening to John Cobel's on demand from KFI AM.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Six forty John Cobelt chok I AM six forty Live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. We've just been telling you
about the Santa Ynez Reservoir in Pacific Palisades. They had
a reservoir on Pacific Palisades that holds one hundred and
seventeen million gallons of water. I'm not making this up.
(20:15):
This is one of the lead stories in the La Times.
It sits empty right now because it's been under maintenance.
They're repairing the cover. I don't know how long they've
been repairing it, and I don't know why they would
do the maintenance during fire season. During the Santa Ana
wins season, Droughts happen frequently in southern California. Santa Ana
(20:39):
winds blow every year several times a year. Fires happen
every year in California, a number of them. This was
not at a character. The only thing unprecedented was the
lack of preparation and the lack of response by our city, county,
and state government. That's why this damage is beyond all reason.
(21:03):
Because even though we've had thousands of Santa Ana wind events,
dozens of droughts, hundreds of fires, nobody at the city, county,
or state government level was prepared to put out the
effing fire. That's the truth. Karen Bass was in Africa.
(21:25):
She's told on Thursday, Thursday, extreme fire danger. On Saturday,
she goes to Africa. The fires start on Tuesday. She
doesn't come back till Wednesday, six days after the first warning,
and now she's acting all petulant and angry and condescending.
(21:48):
You notice how nice Karen Bass has disappeared miss smiley face,
because she's under pressure now and how you're finding out.
I told you this when she was running against Rick Caruso.
She's never run anything before. She was a legislator. She
chaired committees and commissions. She never ran anything, never ran
(22:10):
a level of government, never ran a business, never ran
even a girl Scout troop. She's in over her head
and now she's getting angry because she doesn't know what
to do. It's like the homeless situation. She doesn't know
what to do. She stuffed a few in some old
motels and then the shields a parade for herself every week.
(22:32):
Now I'm gonna play Gigi Grossi at from Fox eleven.
She's been a great reporter for a long time. We
clipped five minutes out of a much longer interview that
she did with the Los Angeles Fire Department chief Kristin Crowley.
This is really good. We're gonna play it about five minutes,
(22:53):
and I imagine you get the longer version online at
Fox eleven. But let's roll.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
What is your message to city administrator, starting with Mayor Bass.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded,
and it's not. It's not at this point, and we've
got the justification. We know where our gaps and service are.
We know we need sixty two new fire stations. We
need to double the size of our firefighters. The growth
of this city since nineteen sixty has doubled and we
have less fire stations.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Let's repeat that, because those numbers are a little jarring.
You know, twenty years ago you had more fire stations
than you had now.
Speaker 6 (23:28):
We had one hundred and twelve fire stations. Now we
have one hundred and six. And since twenty ten, we've
had an increase, doubled our call volume, which is firefighters
responding to calls, fifty five percent increase with sixty eight
less firefighters.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
So the city funding is not keeping up with the
city's means in real time.
Speaker 6 (23:47):
No, and that's what our firefighters need.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
I'm going to ask you again, I'm going to continue
pressing you on this. In your mind, what were you
thinking when you hear all those city leaders say I.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Did an effect, everything was great?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
You know, we do you.
Speaker 5 (23:59):
Know it's unprecedented and a la lah and yes, the
sant Ana winds are unprecedented. We don't have them in January.
We all know that what was going through your heart.
Speaker 6 (24:07):
What's going through my heart is that our firefighters, the
communities firefighters, LAFD firefighters need to be properly funded. We
need to be supported so that they can do their jobs.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
And let me show you real quick, photographer, Tony b
you tit. I'm going to ask you to pan over
to that table. Tell me what I'm looking at. This
is memo after memo after memo, including to the Board
of Fire Commissioners.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Will you pointed.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Out you're concerned that you were not going to adequately,
adequately be able to respond to a wildfire, an earthquake,
everything that we see precisely in the city.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
That's my job as a chief is to take a
big step back and understand where and how can we
better serve the community as a community needs more. We
need to have more to make sure that our firefighters
can serve them. I identified early, My team identified early,
Labor identified early that.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
We have service gaps.
Speaker 6 (25:02):
So when you talk about sounding the alarm and asking
and requesting budgets that are easily justifiable based off of
the data.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Real data shows.
Speaker 6 (25:12):
What the fire Department needs to serve this beautiful city,
in the beautiful community that we swore that we would.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
That's what that is about.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
It is the follow up. It's showing and justifying where
our gaps are, and it's raising and sounding the alarm
that the fire department is underfunded, understaffed, and utter resourced.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
Do you believe had your budget concerns been properly addressed
in the new fiscal year, would we have seen the
same outcome that we are seeing now with thousands and
thousands unprecedented numbers of structures, homes, businesses lost. Would the
outcome had been different if they had listened to you.
Speaker 6 (25:53):
I do believe if we would have set ourselves up
appropriately over the past three years, we would have been
in a better position position of what had happened here
in the city where we lost homes and we lost lives.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
That has to be very emotional for you. This is
your job, but this has to be emotional.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
This is more than a job does This is who
we are, This is our duty.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And when you.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
Don't have that ability and people don't listen, that's why
I'm talking to you right now. The fire department needs
to be funded appropriately so that I can look any
community member in the eye and say your lafd's.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Got your back, and right now you can't. Right now, no,
And that's why I'm here. And how does that make
you feel?
Speaker 6 (26:37):
This is the burden of command as the far chief
of the greatest apartment in the world that I've wholeheartedly
raised my hand to say, yes, i will represent the
amazing men and women of the LAFD and when they're
not getting what they need to do their jobs, it's enough.
And that's why I'm here.
Speaker 5 (26:55):
And you have injured firefighters too, And you see those
homes that have burned to the ground.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
There is so much lost. People are out of jobs.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
What goes through your heart when you see that the community.
Speaker 6 (27:05):
Is our community. Our firefighters stand with the community. We
live in the communities that burned. So if anybody says
anything in regard to our firefighters not doing everything that
they can to protect our neighbors, our community, I will
stand up and defend every action that our members went
through and are still actively fighting fire.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
I don't think anybody is criticizing the firefighters. I think
the criticism has been lobbed and maybe eighty percent of
the City of Los Angeles and maybe twenty percent at
the administration here.
Speaker 6 (27:37):
Well, again, I'm here to make sure that we are
garnering the support to get our LFD firefighters what they
need to do their jobs.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Period.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
Did the City of Los Angeles fail you and your
department and our city.
Speaker 6 (27:49):
It's my job to stand up as a chief and
exactly say justifiably what the fire department needs to operate
to meet the demands of the community.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Did they fail you?
Speaker 6 (28:00):
That is our job, and I tell you that's why
I'm here. So let's get us what we need so
firefighters can do their jobs.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Did they fail you?
Speaker 6 (28:08):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
That is Kristin Crowley, the Los Angeles fire chief, said
that LA city government failed the Los Angeles Fire Department
for many years, not funding the fire department properly. We
have sixty two fewer stations than is necessary. We had
(28:35):
a union chief come on with us a few days
ago who said the same thing that we had fewer
fire stations now than we did sixty years ago. We
have almost double the population and we have fewer fire stations.
(29:01):
We're short hundreds of firefighters. You saw what happened in
the Palisades on Tuesday. You saw that they ran out
of water. We just told you. According to the La Times,
there was an empty one hundred and seventeen million gallon
reservoir in the heart of the Palisades, empty because they're
(29:22):
doing maintenance. Now, this is on Karen Bess, this is
on the city council. They should all resign. They should
all go except for Tracy Park. The rest of them
should go. This is horrible, deadly, tragic mismanagement. They have
(29:44):
poured all their money into what you know what, homeless people,
drug addicts and mental patients who don't work, who commit
crimes all day, who start fires all day. Do you
know how many fires the homeless start? For teen thousand
a year, But we gave the homeless one point three
(30:05):
billion dollars in funding. We gave the fire department less
than eight hundred million. All these people have got to go.
No more arguing with them, no more debate.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
You're listening to John Cobbels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I haven't gotten into like even five percent of what
I want to talk about today. I normally don't get
all whipped up about petitions because jay generally don't go anywhere.
Petitions and boycotts are very often useless. But I'm going
to make an exception here because I am so personally
pissed off. There is a petition on change dot org
(30:44):
and it's called demand the Immediate Resignation of Mayor Karen Bass.
Demand the immediate resignation of Mayor Karen Bass. It's already
got thirty six thousand, eight hundred and forty one verified signatures.
I'll read you quickly what it said, as we, the
undersigned residents of Los Angeles urgently call for the immediate
(31:05):
recall of Mayor Karen Bass due to her gross mismanagement
and failure to effectively respond to the devastating twenty twenty fires.
In the wake of these catastrophic fires, our city has
been left in crisis. Water supplies have been severely strained,
billions of taxpayer dollars have been misallocated or left unaccounted for,
(31:26):
and countless lives have been lost. Families have been displaced,
homes destroyed, livelihood shattered. Yet Mayor Bass has been absent
from the front lines, choosing to travel abroad while her
constituents suffer despite the tireless efforts of our first responders,
the city has been woefully unprepared to ensure the safety
and well being of its residents. Basic resources such as
(31:48):
water and emergency services have been inadequate, and leadership has
been nowhere to be found when it was needed most.
We demand the immediate resignation of Mayor Karen Bass due
to her failure to lead during this unprecedented crisis. It
goes on. I'm signing the position right now during the
commercial break, and let's put a link on our website
(32:09):
for it, because I think everybody. It's not only for
residents of LA. It's residents of Los Angeles and concerned citizens,
So everybody living in the area. You need a healthy, vibrant,
well run Los Angeles otherwise, as you know, all of
lli's problems spill everywhere else. You know, because Los Angeles
(32:30):
has embraced vagrants and mental patients in the streets. Now
there are vagrants and mental patients in lots of towns
and cities. You know. The crime spilled out of LA
because we stopped arresting people, we stopped prosecuting people. There
are Now let me tell you something. I'm wondering, and
(32:50):
i'm't the only one wondering this. This is sometimes I
wonder if we're under attack because what's happened here and
I know this firsthand. On my side of town, you
have the fire that's destroyed the palisades. You have huge
swaths that are under meditatory evacuations. Looters have been pouring in.
(33:11):
We're connected to various apps, and these apps are lighting
up all night long. People are reporting all kinds of burglaries, robberies, thefts.
That's why Nathan Hockman was yelling this morning at the
press conference that everyone's going to get arrested and prosecuted.
I sure hope. So oh what I like Sheriff Luna
is saying, and it's like, Yo, we're not going to
(33:33):
cite and release, which means up until today, that's what
they were doing with people who burglarized private homes. They
were citing them and releasing them. Now all of a sudden,
we're going to be enforcing the laws. Well this is great,
but I'm telling you there's looters running around all over
the place. We're supposed to evacuate. Our homes were ordered
(33:55):
to evacuate, and then the looters come in and the
city doesn't provide protection to our properties. We're told to
evacuate and not stay in an active fire area, but
they didn't equip and finance the fire department to put
out the fire. People are trying to do it themselves.
(34:17):
They don't have the funding and the authority to enforce
criminal laws, so people have to do it for themselves.
We're looking at the disintegration of civilization after ten plus
years of insanely stupid progressive politics. It had to end
(34:38):
this way, it had to. It's all crumbling down now.
All of this woke, progressive, stupid politics of the last
ten years has all come together now. So now we
got fires, We've got evacuations, We've got criminals and looters
running amok. I got a photo in a neighborhood. Somebody's
(35:02):
leaving gas cans around. Gas cans. These fires, I think
are started by arsonists. The arsonists are having field day.
They start a fire, people running fleet and then they
loot our homes and we don't everybody anybody's stopping them.
That's the world we're living in Los Angeles. We had
(35:23):
our progressive party for ten years. Now look anyway, change
dot Org. I am signing this thing. I think everybody
this should get millions of signatures. She should be gone,
and I don't want her replaced by another one, by
another progressive. She's incompetent. It's not going to get any better.
(35:46):
You think she's going to handle the rebuilding of the
Pacific Palisades, You think she's going to handle it? I
mean she would screw up making breakfast. She's not capable
of running things, don't you see? And she knows it.
That's why she's so angry and bullheaded and defensive and
(36:09):
condescending and rude to the reporters, because she knows. She
fed up and she's not going to be able to
fix it. I hope the weather was really nice and
Ghana Deborah Mark live in the KFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey,
you've been listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI Am six
(36:31):
forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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