January 15, 2025 • 37 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (01/15) - More on the lack of preparedness show by city and county officials regarding the fires burning across the LA area. Rich McHugh comes on the show to talk about speaking with a Pacific Palisades resident who was able to film the beginning of the Palisades Fire.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't. I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobelt Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Strap yourself in.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're on every day from one until four after four
o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand on the iHeart app.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We have obviously a lot to do.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Los Angeles Times has another story about the lack of
fire response in the Palisades before the fire took off.
Yesterday we brought you the writings of Michael Schellenberger. In fact,
we had Michael on the air in the two o'clock
(00:40):
hour and it's still worth listening to that. On the
podcast from yesterday, Michael had talked to a forty year
veteran of an LA He's an LA County firefighter. Had
to remain anonymous, so don't know exactly which agency he
worked for, but he said clearly a lot could have
(01:01):
been done to position fire engines and fire personnel in
the Palisades and other threatened areas. And he went into
great detail. And here on second day in a row,
a similar story from the Los Angeles Times. They have
three writers. I'll read you the first paragraph. As the
(01:24):
Los Angeles Fire Department faced extraordinary warnings of life threatening wins.
Top commanders decided not to assign for emergency deployment a
thousand available firefighters and about forty water carrying engines in
(01:46):
advance of the fire that destroyed much of the Pacific Palisades.
I think we have to remember as you hear all
the excuses and the lies coming from various officials, and
that's all they are excuses and lies. They're covering up
their ass. They don't want to be publicly vilified, they
don't want to be forced out of their jobs. They
(02:09):
don't want to end up in a criminal indictment. So
you understand what's going on here. They're not telling the truth,
and they may never tell the truth themselves.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
So it is up.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
This is where it's good to see the Ally Time
snack back into action as a normal newspaper instead of
some left wing propaganda rag. This is what the Times
always should have been doing. This is what Michael Schellenberger does.
There was a thousand firefighters and about forty engines they
could have sent in advance, but fire officials chose not
(02:44):
to the way it would have worked is you order
the firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift
last Tuesday as the winds were building. Remember we got
the first extreme fire warnings from an aptional weather Service
on the Thursday previous on the second, and then the
(03:10):
National Weather Service kept increasing the intensity of the warnings
until they were out of descriptive words extreme fire danger.
We'll just leave it at that, but that they added
more superlatives on top, trying to get everyone's attention. And
as we know, Karen Bass responded to an extreme fire
(03:31):
danger warning by packing your bags and hopping on a
plane to Africa. Well, fire officials responded by not putting
one thousand available firefighters into action and not putting forty
engines available into action. They staffed only five of the
(03:56):
forty engines that are available to help help in battling wildfires.
This is according to records obtained by The Times. So
this is in writing black and white and interviews with
fire department officials and former chiefs who know how the
city operates. The department only started calling up more firefighters
(04:19):
and deploying those extra engines after the Palisades fire was
burning out of control. And the writers on this are
Paul Pringle, Dakota Smith, and Aline check Midian. So credit
to them for doing this investigation. No extra engines had
(04:40):
been placed in the Palisades when the fire broke out
at ten thirty. The department had pre possessioned nine engines
to the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood because those engines
were already on duty and for some reason they thought
that fires might break out there, but not in the Palisades.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I don't understand.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Obviously they should have engines in Hollywood and the Valley,
but they should have been in the Palisades too, and
other places. We told you yesterday that the La Fire Department,
and this is criminal, is severely understaffed and underfunded. We
(05:23):
only have half the firefighters that we should for our population. Half.
We have fifty percent of a fire department. And this
has been going on forever. You look at the last
twenty years under Viragos, Garcetti and Bass, and it's been
(05:48):
twenty years of absolute mismanagement and stupidity and neglect. You
do it long enough and this happens. There were forty
engines that existed, they put out five. There were one
thousand available firefighters. They put out none of those. We
were warned repeatedly that Karen Bash's handling things from Africa, right,
(06:14):
and Gavin Newsom was constantly lying to us saying we
have our assets, our resources prepositioned. No you didn't, you
big you liar, bald faced, pathological cycle liar Gavin Newsom.
Fire department officials keep saying, well, we had cuts in
(06:37):
the budget, low water levels. That leads us to the
Department of Water and Power, which left the one hundred
and seventeen million gallon reservoir empty in the Palisades. Now
there's a lawsuit in that regard, and we are going
to talk to Patrick McNicholas next hour from the law
(06:59):
firm of mc nicholas and McNicholas, and they are filing
a lawsuit along with other law firms. And no, is
this the one against the utilities? What about the one
against the Palisades? All right, this is the one against utilities,
So take that back. But there's another there's a lawsuit
against the Palisades and they're claiming that the city was
(07:21):
criminally was negligent here and that they kept the they
kept the reservoir empty as a cost cutting move.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
I'll get to that in a minute. Now, back to the.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Forty engines that weren't sent out and the thousand firefighters
that weren't sent out for the second shift on Tuesday.
The fire chief Kristin Crowley, and I'm starting to wonder
about her. I haven't said much about her because I
wait to get the evidence, but there's something not right
here either. She defended the agency's decisions, saying that the
(07:59):
command had to be strategic with limited resources while continuing
to handle regular nine to one one calls. She said
the number of calls doubled from a typical day because
you had high winds downing trees and power lines. By
the way, half the calls, half the fire calls are
for homeless people starting fires. So this leads back to
(08:24):
Karen Baths. The homeless people should have been swept off
all public lands many years ago because they start a
lot of fires, and the firefighters time and energy and
money is consumed by putting out all the bumfires, by
putting out the fire set by drug addicts and mental patients.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
You see how all this is intertwined.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
It's like how Prop forty seven caused a tremendous amount
of homelessness, a tremendous amount of theft, a tremendous amount
of public drug addiction, well, here another vicious circle. All
the homeless fires occupy the time and the money that
the fire department needs for other things, and they're only
given half the money that they that they need to
(09:11):
begin with. And then out of that fifty percent that
they're given by the idiots that run the city, they
got to spend a lot of.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
It putting out bump fires.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Several former chiefs with deep experience in LAFT tactics said
of the more than forty available engines said most of
the most of the more than forty available engines could
have been pre deployed to the fire zones before the
Palisades blaze started, and others could be kept at stations
(09:51):
to help with the increase in none to one one calls.
That's the answer. See Kristin Crowley gave a bad answer.
I don't know if it's truthful or notough, but it's bad.
If the nine to one to one calls are increasing,
all the more reason to keep the firefighters on a
second shift and send them out to the fire prone areas.
(10:15):
Do we have to have a degree in fire science
to figure that out? LAFDE Battalion Chief former Battalion Chief
Rick Crawford said, the plan that you're using now for
the fire, you should have used before the fire. And
(10:37):
now this is intriguing. Over the past several days, Crowley
and other officials have given The Los Angeles Times varying
accounts of how many engines were available. Oh, when you
start getting into changing stories, now you know you're onto something, right.
An internal document obtained by The Times, a planning document
(10:58):
from a source, showed that the apartment had said no
to deploying an additional nine engines to fire prone areas.
They're known as ready reserve engines. So they actually have
a document where someone in the fire department said no,
would asked to send nine more engines out. These are
(11:18):
nine engines that would be different than the ones already
positioned in the Valley and Hollywood. So there were people
in the fire department who thought that the Palisades and
other areas were exposed and maybe we ought to send
all these engines out there and firefighters to staff them.
And fire officials said no. I don't know if it's Crowley,
(11:40):
I don't know if it's lieutenants of hers, but we'll
find out. Crowley initially told the LA Times that most
of the reserve engines were inoperable or otherwise unavailable. Later,
a spokesperson for Crowley said, well, four of the nine
were unavailable. Then a third official producder document that said
(12:04):
seven we're put into service after the fire ignited three
stories about one group of nine fire engines.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Who's lying here? Why are they lying? They're lying.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
That's why everybody in the palisade said. We were standing
there for hours, no fire engine showed up. We got
so much more.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
I am telling you we are going to get this
full story out, no matter what it takes. And the
latest is the La Times, and I can't tell you
this is head snapping. These are the same writers and
editors that we're putting out woke nonsense propaganda up until
election day. And then Patrick soun she Young woke up
(12:57):
and realized that his La Times was an embarrassment and
an abomination. Same writers and editors now all of a sudden,
they're doing investigative journalism very quickly. They've got all kinds
of sources, all kinds of documents. If you're just joining us.
The fire department had one thousand firefighters and forty engines
(13:19):
that they could have deployed in advance of the fire
and put it in the high risk zones and chose
not to. That's the story of the Times has today.
They could have had the firefighters and stay on for
a second shift. They only staffed five of more than
forty engines that are available, so there was no extra
(13:41):
engines in the Palisades. They had put a few in
the San Fernando Valley in Hollywood. Now, certainly those areas
deserve to have fire engines too, but why just there
since you had forty extras. And yes, they're way understaffed
and underfunded, but they still had these They had these
(14:02):
firefighters available, and they had these engines available. And Christine
Crowley said, well, we had to deal with regular nine
to one one calls. There's no nine to one one
call that's as overwhelming as what happened in the Palisades.
And again, what are you chasing homeless fires?
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Again?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
However, other people are talking former chiefs in the LA
Fire Department.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Rick Crawford is one of them.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
A battalion chief said, the plan you're using now for
the fire, you should have used before the fire and now,
as I told you, Crowley and other officials are telling
all kinds of different stories. First they said that most
of those engines were inoperable or unavailable, and there was
(14:52):
a particular collection of nine reserve engines. They said, no, no,
they weren't operating, not available. I had a spokesperson for
Crowley said four of them were available. And then another
official had a document that said seven were actually put
into service, but after the fire was ignited.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
So that tells me they were lying.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
They were available, they weren't used. They talked to a
deputy chief, a current deputy chief, Richard Fields. He's in
charge of staffing and equipment decisions ahead of the fire,
and he said that his plan, okay, so Fields is
taking ownership of this plan was appropriate for immediate response. Well,
(15:37):
with all due respect, it wasn't because much of Pacific
Palisades burned flat, so it was not appropriate. How could
you say it was appropriate? Look at the results. Clearly
you missed by ten thousand miles. It's very easy to
(16:00):
Monday morning quarterback and sit on the couch and tell
us what we should have done now that the thing
has happened. Yeah, when you have I think anybody could
figure out that if you had a thousand firefighters and
you had forty other engines and you put none of
them into the palisades, this is what these guys do. Wow,
you know you're finger pointing. You're you're playing the blame game.
You're Monday Morning quarterbacking. Yes we are, because when the
(16:25):
quarterback blows the Super Bowl and gets pummeled ninety five
to nothing, then yeah, there's gonna be there's gonna be blamed.
There's gonna be finger pointing because we've got to find
out who screwed up, and.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
These people have to be removed.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
And this has to be aired out, exposed, publicized, and
it has to be done now. It has to be
done now before documents get shredded, files get deleted, memories
get hazy people lawyer up. This is the moment you
have to get this information out. Jason Hing and a
(17:04):
department to he's the department chief of Department's chief deputy
of Emergency Operations said the resources pre deployed were not enough,
but more may not have made a difference.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Well, could we stop with that. They left a one.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Hundred and seventeen million gallon reservoir dry Oh, that wouldn't
have made a difference. You had forty more engines and
a thousand more firefighters. Ah, that wouldn't have made a difference.
Karen Bass was in Africa. Oh, that wouldn't have made
a difference. How about this. If Karen Bass and all
the rest of the officials were all in a room together,
(17:42):
and they sent out the thousand firefighters, the forty engines,
and they had one hundred and seventeen million gallons.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Of water, I say that would have made a big difference.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
If it wouldn't have made a difference, then why do
we have reservoirs?
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Why do we bother the fire department? Why do we
bother with the mayor?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
If none of these people and none of these resources matter.
If having a thousand firefighters doesn't Matt wouldn't have made
a difference, then why do we have them. If forty
engines wouldn't have made a difference, why do we have them.
We've never had a loss. I don't think any city
in the history of the country has ever had a
loss from fire like this one. Wow, that's the way
(18:25):
I can do about it? Oh, yes, there's a plenty
you could do about it. You chose not to. You
chose not to.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
I'm not gonna let up on this.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Nobody should because this is gonna happen again, could happen
next week.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
We're on the air from one until four, and after
four o'clock the whole show gets posted as a podcast.
John Cobelt Show on demand on the iHeart apps. We
could listen to what you missed. We continue, uh, looking
for the truth here in this Palisades fire not easy
to get.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
We're going to have on now. Rich McHugh from News
Nation and Rich did an interview with Michelle Valentine. Says,
you're a former US attorney for Vice President Kamala Harris.
He lives high up in the Palisades. He saw the
fire in its earliest stages, and uh he told in
(19:38):
detail how he saw things developed. Let's let's get Rich
mcew on who talked to Valentine. Rich, how are you?
Speaker 4 (19:46):
I'm good, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
And it's Michelle or Michael.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
Michael Michael Michael, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Okay, all right, So what did Michael Valentine tell you?
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Well, uh, initially he told me reluctantly, you know, but
basically he was he lives up there, up near the
very top of the Palisades, and I don't know if
I've ever been up there, but yes, there's a rig
line up there called Skull It's like an area called
Skull Rock. And there was a previous fire there a
week a week earlier on New Year's Eve, and he said, look,
(20:20):
the response to that was overwhelming. There was dozens of
fire trucks. There's a lot of celebrities that live up there,
et cetera. And it was they had the fire out.
He said that lulled us into a little bit of
a sense of security. His wife saw smoke around ten
twenty eight or ten twenty nine. She called nine one one.
(20:41):
She was out walking her dogs. She saw smoke on
the ridge. Line called nine one one. Turns out, I
believe that was the first call to nine one one.
He started filming a few minutes later, and he documented
in a series of videos the progression of this thing.
The first video he took that he shared with News
at ten thirty four am. And you look at the
(21:03):
it's almost like a cone of smoke. It's it's very
kind of isolated. You don't see the fire, but you
see the smoke, and it's definitely not massive. At that
point ten thirty six, fire's grown a little bit. There's
a little bit of wind. It's not these one hundred
mile an hour winds that people are talking about. Those
came later, and that's important. Ten point fifty his video
(21:26):
shows overhead there's a chopper looks to be surveying the scene.
I zoomed in on the video. It looks like at
La City fire helicopter. So not cal fire, which will
ultimately become important in the conversation later. We don't see
another We don't see water being dropped till either about
(21:48):
eleven thirteen or eleven twenty three. I saw that same
chopper come through the smoke at eleven thirteen and then
eleven twenty three his video shows at actually dropping water.
By that point, the fire is fantastasized. It's doubled and
tripled in sized in that time. And I asked, you know,
(22:08):
Los Angeles Fire Department when the first call came in,
They said ten twenty nine. I said, when did you guys,
have you know, fire fire presence up there. They have
yet to respond to that request, so I've asked for
even more data.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
The key will be, that's.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
What will be. When did they get air support up
there first? And when were they dropping water on it?
And did they have enough? Those are the questions that
this is ultimately going to come down to, and it's
all going to be in the data, the incident commander's reports,
and it's all going to be detailed. Did they did
they throw enough at this? Given that you know over
(22:46):
the scanner you can hear the person in the chopper
I believe at ten forty or ten forty five say, look,
this is a ten acre fire. This will be two
hundred acres and in twenty minutes and threatening structures. It's
going to be a pivotal part of this going forward.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
And Wins were still manageable to fly aircraft.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
They were manageable to fly. I mean, you can see
the choppers up in the sky. You can see it's windy.
But I don't believe, and I'm not a weather person
by any means, so somebody's gonna have to check this,
But like, I don't believe that the real serious winds
came until later that evening when we saw I think, no,
(23:28):
when the fire was out of control and the members
were flying eighty mile an hour.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Because what drive me a little nuts all the people
who always it's a reflex to defend whoever's in power,
the governor, the mayor, fire chief, whoever. They're saying, well,
there was one hundred mile an hour winds. No, there
wasn't one hundred mile an hour winds when this thing
started when it needed attention from the fire department. It
(23:52):
wasn't anywhere near that. It wasn't a fraction of.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
That, correct. I think the conversation once that that all
kind of fades away once they oh, how do you
fight a fire and eighty mile an hour wins? Well,
that's like a red herring that the winds were not
that strong at that point, and so it's going to
be about did they do everything that they could to
contain this. I've spoken to some former fire fighters here
in Los Angeles and they say, look, they're not one
(24:17):
to bash the fire the fireman, or the or the
Los Angeles Fire Department at all. They don't want to
because they're doing they've done that work. But they were
saying they lay the blame, you know on Karen Bass say,
this is a this is a management Uh.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah, this is it's not the firefires, it's management maybe
some in the fire departments, certainly Karen Bass. Uh And
and that's what's got to be unraveled and quickly before
all their denials take root in people's minds, because there's
a lot of officials that are not not telling the
(24:51):
truth or not being forthcoming.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah. There's also the question of water, and you have
Gavin Newsom coming out and saying he's gonna do an
investigation into the why the Santinez Reservoir wasn't online. Well,
you know that's like if Los Angeles Power and Water
is doing the investigation, that's like the fox starting the henhouse.
You need third party, independent investigation into this period.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
The thing is, in my naivete, I thought there was
a command center where it knew some Bass, the fire
chief and every other official in government, and they would
have in front of them all the reservoirs, how full
they were, all the firefighting equipment available where it's deployed.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And I never heard of this reservoir.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
And I never heard they haven't exposed. I'm not sure
knew something evennew about it. I don't you know. The
Bass note was empty.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Did anyone ever tell her? Did she ever ask?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Do they have regular meetings where they go through the
reservoirs and they go through the resources available. Everybody's acting
like they this was all sprung out of nowhere. They
they had an extreme fire warning five days in advance.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
If they're yet because of those warnings in preparation for this,
And this comes from former firefires. This isn't just me speculating.
They would have they would have known where are we
getting our water? They would have said, Okay, if there's
a Palisades fire up, tie, we're going to be getting
our water from those three million gallon tanks. But those
are fed by the Santaez reservoir, which I was looking
(26:30):
at just one hour ago, and it's it's empty. It's
it's hard to believe.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
It's been empty for eleven months.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
There's some speculation that's been several years. Talking to former firefighters. Well,
I've heard that of that too.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah, no, I've heard that too. H all right, Rich
mceue from News Nation, thanks very much, And you guys
are doing a great job on that on that on
that network.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
Thank you very much, really are all right.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Thanks thanks for coming on, Rich McHugh News Nation. It's
a good one to watch because it gives you the news.
Let's I know, it's shocking, isn't it. You have to
stop and think, what is that? There's a news channel
that gives you news.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Go.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, you're speechless, my speechless.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
We have the audio of Rich mccu's report talking with
Michael Valentine, the former US attorney and how he filmed
the first minutes of the fire, and Valentine's thinks Bass
bears responsibility for this failure.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
She does.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
We'll play you the TV report coming up so you
could understand further what Rich was discussing.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
If you're just joining us, just a quick review. We're
talking about this hour because I'm connecting dots. We are
the Department of Dot connecting here. So the LA Time
says the top commanders at the LA Fire Department had
a thousand available fire fire fighters and forty water carrying
engines and chose not to deploy them in the high
(28:06):
fire zones such as Pacific Palisades. They had one hundred.
I mean, I'm sorry they had They had one thousand
firefighters and forty engines, and a former LA battalion chief,
Rick Crawford said, the plan they're using now for the
fire they should have used before the fire. There's a
(28:29):
document showing that the fire department said no to deploying
as little as nine engines, and three different stories were
given out by Christine Crowley's staff over how many were available.
And now you have the Deputy Chief, Richard Fields, who's
in charge of staffing and equipment decisions, saying, well, all,
(28:51):
let's say Monday morning cornerbacking, telling us what we should
have done down that it's happened. What we did was
based on many years of experience. We had no experience
with a fire that destroyed over five thousand structures.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
We were told everything was.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Pre deployed, they had five days of warning, and there
was no mayor to enforce proper decision making policies. We
will get to her in a little while, but now
let's play. We just had rich mcew on from newsdation
and he talked with Michael Valentine, who's identified as a
(29:32):
former US attorney for Vice President Kamala Harris, and he
lives way up in the Palisades, and he and his
wife saw the fire unfold from the early minutes. So
let's listen to this interview that Rich did.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
At is ten thirty four am Tuesday, January seventh. These
are some of the first images of the start of
the Palisades fire.
Speaker 6 (29:54):
Describe what you saw, an intense plume of smoke that
was rising and moving very fast. It was black in
some areas and white in other areas, but you could
see it.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Was moving quickly.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Two minutes later, the smoke plume grows. No sign of
anyone fighting the fire. At this point, the fire isolated
on the ridge behind the home of longtime Pacific Palisades
resident Michael Valentine. He documented it all on video, giving
News Nation an exclusive look of where it started and
how quickly it grew. By ten point fifty the plume
(30:29):
had spread considerably twice as large. Eight minutes later, the
size of the fire seems to have doubled yet again,
still nobody fighting the fire. At eleven thirteen am, nearly
forty five minutes after Michael's wife called in the fire,
you see a chopper come through. At eleven twenty three,
a helicopter comes in begins to dump water on it.
(30:50):
But at this point the fire is massive and moving
quickly down this ridge line.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
That was the first time we saw them drop water.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Is that right correct?
Speaker 5 (30:58):
And then did you ever see any firefighters up there?
Speaker 6 (31:02):
I did not see any firefighters up there.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Why do you think there is?
Speaker 1 (31:07):
That's the question.
Speaker 6 (31:08):
I don't know. I wish I knew the answer to that.
I have no idea. I have no idea why that is.
It could have been confined, it wouldn't have touched any
of the homes. I don't believe that for one second.
You're talking to somebody that's been up in this community
for forty years, and I've seen fires. I've seen fires
during those forty years, and there's always been a good response.
I don't know what happened this time.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
What we know happened this time is this. We know
the Santa Ynez Reservoir near where the fire began was empty,
and the head of LEDWP confirmed they ran.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
Out of water.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
There's a lot we could do, though even the.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
President seemed to shrug off the concerns over lack of water.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
I know you've getting a bad wrap about with these fire.
Hydrants don't have enough water and them give me a bridge.
Speaker 6 (31:51):
In my opinion, as a former prosecutor, this verges on
negligent criminal negligence.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
I say it's just wrong. A lot of people are
at fault.
Speaker 6 (32:03):
I think Mayor bass Bear is the ultimate responsibility for
this failure, and I think she should be held accountable.
There's no way that I could trust her again as
my mayor in light of this tragedy.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
There's no way now.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
I asked Los Angeles Fire Department what time the first
call came in. They said it came in at ten
twenty nine am, which corresponds with her call to nine
one one.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
I asked when.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
Was the first time they had firefighters on scene. They
have yet to respond to that now. I spoke to
Michael Valentine earlier and he said he has yet to
hear from investigators. He even called the ATF and the FBI,
who were in front of his home, but he couldn't
get through.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Well.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Of course, he's one of the first guys to see it,
actually recorded it on video. Wife calls in the complaint
ten twenty nine. He's got video at ten thirty four.
Of course, the investigators haven't talked to him. He knows
too much. He saw too much. He has proof. That's
why he's giving the video to News Nation. I guess
(33:08):
nobody in government is interested, right. I don't think Karen
Bass's office wants to see this video. Boh it is
and criminal negligence. That's a really good word. That is
a great legal phrase to describe what's going on here.
So here you have a US attorney saying this looks
like criminal negligence, and they see you notice that little
(33:28):
clip of Joe Biden. Oh, you guys are getting a
bad rap for not having water in the hydrants. Well,
he's in full soinility mode, isn't he. You got a one
hundred and seventeen million gallon reservoir just in the neighborhood,
right in the heart of the Palisades. You have fire
hydrants that are dry. You have firefighters that show up
(33:51):
and they quickly run out of water. So they're standing
around telling the residents we have no water. Plus they
showed up, they shout up at a eleven twenty three. That's
fifty four minutes after the fire was reported. Fifty four
minutes and there's one helicopter with water. Now, imagine had
they done what they've done in other areas and other
(34:12):
fires which they could have done.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Here.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
They had one thousand firefighters that they could have called
in extended their second shift. They had forty fire engines.
Imagine if a few of them were prepositioned up at
the top of the hills where all the brush is,
and then they had the planes ready to take off
from whatever airstrip they take off from.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
But the communication would have been boom, boom, boom.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Wouldn't have taken an hour, the fire wouldn't have doubled
and tripled in size. Last night, I was listening to
Conway in the afternoon and there was a fire that
blew up at Hansoon Dam. Homeless fire, bum fire. It
blew up, But because they're organized now, it seemed like
in about ten minutes the thing was put out. It
(35:00):
could have happened very quickly up in the Palisades, but
we had no leadership from Karen Bass and Kristin Crowley
and her staff are given ten different stories on what
happened here. And then you have the guy who created
the plan of attack and he's going, well, you're Monday
morning wire backing. I'm looking at one hundred and seventeen
(35:25):
million gallon reservoir bone dry, fire hydrants run dry, forty
available engines not used, a thousand firefighters not held over.
I'm crazy, and I hope everybody in the Palisades learns
about this, because you guys have had your lives destroyed
(35:50):
in part because of this unbelievable, abominable government response. And no,
the winds were not blowing at one hundred miles an out.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Hear that.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
I want to punch the television. You know, the winds
were blowing at one hundred miles an hour. Nobody's gonna
stopped it. The winds were not blowing at one hundred
miles an hour at ten thirty in the morning. They
actually had one helicopter do a water drop at eleven twenty.
If everybody was prepositioned and talking to each other and
not flying from Africa, maybe a lot more could have
been done. Don't fall for the lies. They are all
(36:22):
lying to you. We're gonna tell you what's what after
two o'clock. We're gonna talk to Patrick McNicholas. He's an
attorney at McNicholas and McNicholas. His law firm and other
law firms are filing lawsuits against Southern California Edison because
of the Altadena fire known as the Eachin Fire, and
(36:44):
also the one I believe in Silmour, the Hurst fire,
because it's the same old story from a few years ago,
Southern California Edison's equipment. And you know there's something to
this story because already the CEO has been on Good
Morning America on ABC trying to pre defend himself. He
like pre positioned himself on a big network morning show
(37:07):
because he knows what's coming. Get his story out first,
Debora Mark Live the KFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey,
you've been listening to the John Covelt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI AM six
forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Can't. I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobelt Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Strap yourself in.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're on every day from one until four after four
o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand on the iHeart app.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We have obviously a lot to do.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Los Angeles Times has another story about the lack of
fire response in the Palisades before the fire took off.
Yesterday we brought you the writings of Michael Schellenberger. In fact,
we had Michael on the air in the two o'clock
(00:40):
hour and it's still worth listening to that. On the
podcast from yesterday, Michael had talked to a forty year
veteran of an LA He's an LA County firefighter. Had
to remain anonymous, so don't know exactly which agency he
worked for, but he said clearly a lot could have
(01:01):
been done to position fire engines and fire personnel in
the Palisades and other threatened areas. And he went into
great detail. And here on second day in a row,
a similar story from the Los Angeles Times. They have
three writers. I'll read you the first paragraph. As the
(01:24):
Los Angeles Fire Department faced extraordinary warnings of life threatening wins.
Top commanders decided not to assign for emergency deployment a
thousand available firefighters and about forty water carrying engines in
(01:46):
advance of the fire that destroyed much of the Pacific Palisades.
I think we have to remember as you hear all
the excuses and the lies coming from various officials, and
that's all they are excuses and lies. They're covering up
their ass. They don't want to be publicly vilified, they
don't want to be forced out of their jobs. They
(02:09):
don't want to end up in a criminal indictment. So
you understand what's going on here. They're not telling the truth,
and they may never tell the truth themselves.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
So it is up.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
This is where it's good to see the Ally Time
snack back into action as a normal newspaper instead of
some left wing propaganda rag. This is what the Times
always should have been doing. This is what Michael Schellenberger does.
There was a thousand firefighters and about forty engines they
could have sent in advance, but fire officials chose not
(02:44):
to the way it would have worked is you order
the firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift
last Tuesday as the winds were building. Remember we got
the first extreme fire warnings from an aptional weather Service
on the Thursday previous on the second, and then the
(03:10):
National Weather Service kept increasing the intensity of the warnings
until they were out of descriptive words extreme fire danger.
We'll just leave it at that, but that they added
more superlatives on top, trying to get everyone's attention. And
as we know, Karen Bass responded to an extreme fire
(03:31):
danger warning by packing your bags and hopping on a
plane to Africa. Well, fire officials responded by not putting
one thousand available firefighters into action and not putting forty
engines available into action. They staffed only five of the
(03:56):
forty engines that are available to help help in battling wildfires.
This is according to records obtained by The Times. So
this is in writing black and white and interviews with
fire department officials and former chiefs who know how the
city operates. The department only started calling up more firefighters
(04:19):
and deploying those extra engines after the Palisades fire was
burning out of control. And the writers on this are
Paul Pringle, Dakota Smith, and Aline check Midian. So credit
to them for doing this investigation. No extra engines had
(04:40):
been placed in the Palisades when the fire broke out
at ten thirty. The department had pre possessioned nine engines
to the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood because those engines
were already on duty and for some reason they thought
that fires might break out there, but not in the Palisades.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I don't understand.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Obviously they should have engines in Hollywood and the Valley,
but they should have been in the Palisades too, and
other places. We told you yesterday that the La Fire Department,
and this is criminal, is severely understaffed and underfunded. We
(05:23):
only have half the firefighters that we should for our population. Half.
We have fifty percent of a fire department. And this
has been going on forever. You look at the last
twenty years under Viragos, Garcetti and Bass, and it's been
(05:48):
twenty years of absolute mismanagement and stupidity and neglect. You
do it long enough and this happens. There were forty
engines that existed, they put out five. There were one
thousand available firefighters. They put out none of those. We
were warned repeatedly that Karen Bash's handling things from Africa, right,
(06:14):
and Gavin Newsom was constantly lying to us saying we
have our assets, our resources prepositioned. No you didn't, you
big you liar, bald faced, pathological cycle liar Gavin Newsom.
Fire department officials keep saying, well, we had cuts in
(06:37):
the budget, low water levels. That leads us to the
Department of Water and Power, which left the one hundred
and seventeen million gallon reservoir empty in the Palisades. Now
there's a lawsuit in that regard, and we are going
to talk to Patrick McNicholas next hour from the law
(06:59):
firm of mc nicholas and McNicholas, and they are filing
a lawsuit along with other law firms. And no, is
this the one against the utilities? What about the one
against the Palisades? All right, this is the one against utilities,
So take that back. But there's another there's a lawsuit
against the Palisades and they're claiming that the city was
(07:21):
criminally was negligent here and that they kept the they
kept the reservoir empty as a cost cutting move.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
I'll get to that in a minute. Now, back to the.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Forty engines that weren't sent out and the thousand firefighters
that weren't sent out for the second shift on Tuesday.
The fire chief Kristin Crowley, and I'm starting to wonder
about her. I haven't said much about her because I
wait to get the evidence, but there's something not right
here either. She defended the agency's decisions, saying that the
(07:59):
command had to be strategic with limited resources while continuing
to handle regular nine to one one calls. She said
the number of calls doubled from a typical day because
you had high winds downing trees and power lines. By
the way, half the calls, half the fire calls are
for homeless people starting fires. So this leads back to
(08:24):
Karen Baths. The homeless people should have been swept off
all public lands many years ago because they start a
lot of fires, and the firefighters time and energy and
money is consumed by putting out all the bumfires, by
putting out the fire set by drug addicts and mental patients.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
You see how all this is intertwined.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
It's like how Prop forty seven caused a tremendous amount
of homelessness, a tremendous amount of theft, a tremendous amount
of public drug addiction, well, here another vicious circle. All
the homeless fires occupy the time and the money that
the fire department needs for other things, and they're only
given half the money that they that they need to
(09:11):
begin with. And then out of that fifty percent that
they're given by the idiots that run the city, they
got to spend a lot of.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
It putting out bump fires.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Several former chiefs with deep experience in LAFT tactics said
of the more than forty available engines said most of
the most of the more than forty available engines could
have been pre deployed to the fire zones before the
Palisades blaze started, and others could be kept at stations
(09:51):
to help with the increase in none to one one calls.
That's the answer. See Kristin Crowley gave a bad answer.
I don't know if it's truthful or notough, but it's bad.
If the nine to one to one calls are increasing,
all the more reason to keep the firefighters on a
second shift and send them out to the fire prone areas.
(10:15):
Do we have to have a degree in fire science
to figure that out? LAFDE Battalion Chief former Battalion Chief
Rick Crawford said, the plan that you're using now for
the fire, you should have used before the fire. And
(10:37):
now this is intriguing. Over the past several days, Crowley
and other officials have given The Los Angeles Times varying
accounts of how many engines were available. Oh, when you
start getting into changing stories, now you know you're onto something, right.
An internal document obtained by The Times, a planning document
(10:58):
from a source, showed that the apartment had said no
to deploying an additional nine engines to fire prone areas.
They're known as ready reserve engines. So they actually have
a document where someone in the fire department said no,
would asked to send nine more engines out. These are
(11:18):
nine engines that would be different than the ones already
positioned in the Valley and Hollywood. So there were people
in the fire department who thought that the Palisades and
other areas were exposed and maybe we ought to send
all these engines out there and firefighters to staff them.
And fire officials said no. I don't know if it's Crowley,
(11:40):
I don't know if it's lieutenants of hers, but we'll
find out. Crowley initially told the LA Times that most
of the reserve engines were inoperable or otherwise unavailable. Later,
a spokesperson for Crowley said, well, four of the nine
were unavailable. Then a third official producder document that said
(12:04):
seven we're put into service after the fire ignited three
stories about one group of nine fire engines.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Who's lying here? Why are they lying? They're lying.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
That's why everybody in the palisade said. We were standing
there for hours, no fire engine showed up. We got
so much more.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
I am telling you we are going to get this
full story out, no matter what it takes. And the
latest is the La Times, and I can't tell you
this is head snapping. These are the same writers and
editors that we're putting out woke nonsense propaganda up until
election day. And then Patrick soun she Young woke up
(12:57):
and realized that his La Times was an embarrassment and
an abomination. Same writers and editors now all of a sudden,
they're doing investigative journalism very quickly. They've got all kinds
of sources, all kinds of documents. If you're just joining us.
The fire department had one thousand firefighters and forty engines
(13:19):
that they could have deployed in advance of the fire
and put it in the high risk zones and chose
not to. That's the story of the Times has today.
They could have had the firefighters and stay on for
a second shift. They only staffed five of more than
forty engines that are available, so there was no extra
(13:41):
engines in the Palisades. They had put a few in
the San Fernando Valley in Hollywood. Now, certainly those areas
deserve to have fire engines too, but why just there
since you had forty extras. And yes, they're way understaffed
and underfunded, but they still had these They had these
(14:02):
firefighters available, and they had these engines available. And Christine
Crowley said, well, we had to deal with regular nine
to one one calls. There's no nine to one one
call that's as overwhelming as what happened in the Palisades.
And again, what are you chasing homeless fires?
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Again?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
However, other people are talking former chiefs in the LA
Fire Department.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Rick Crawford is one of them.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
A battalion chief said, the plan you're using now for
the fire, you should have used before the fire and now,
as I told you, Crowley and other officials are telling
all kinds of different stories. First they said that most
of those engines were inoperable or unavailable, and there was
(14:52):
a particular collection of nine reserve engines. They said, no, no,
they weren't operating, not available. I had a spokesperson for
Crowley said four of them were available. And then another
official had a document that said seven were actually put
into service, but after the fire was ignited.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
So that tells me they were lying.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
They were available, they weren't used. They talked to a
deputy chief, a current deputy chief, Richard Fields. He's in
charge of staffing and equipment decisions ahead of the fire,
and he said that his plan, okay, so Fields is
taking ownership of this plan was appropriate for immediate response. Well,
(15:37):
with all due respect, it wasn't because much of Pacific
Palisades burned flat, so it was not appropriate. How could
you say it was appropriate? Look at the results. Clearly
you missed by ten thousand miles. It's very easy to
(16:00):
Monday morning quarterback and sit on the couch and tell
us what we should have done now that the thing
has happened. Yeah, when you have I think anybody could
figure out that if you had a thousand firefighters and
you had forty other engines and you put none of
them into the palisades, this is what these guys do. Wow,
you know you're finger pointing. You're you're playing the blame game.
You're Monday Morning quarterbacking. Yes we are, because when the
(16:25):
quarterback blows the Super Bowl and gets pummeled ninety five
to nothing, then yeah, there's gonna be there's gonna be blamed.
There's gonna be finger pointing because we've got to find
out who screwed up, and.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
These people have to be removed.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
And this has to be aired out, exposed, publicized, and
it has to be done now. It has to be
done now before documents get shredded, files get deleted, memories
get hazy people lawyer up. This is the moment you
have to get this information out. Jason Hing and a
(17:04):
department to he's the department chief of Department's chief deputy
of Emergency Operations said the resources pre deployed were not enough,
but more may not have made a difference.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Well, could we stop with that. They left a one.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Hundred and seventeen million gallon reservoir dry Oh, that wouldn't
have made a difference. You had forty more engines and
a thousand more firefighters. Ah, that wouldn't have made a difference.
Karen Bass was in Africa. Oh, that wouldn't have made
a difference. How about this. If Karen Bass and all
the rest of the officials were all in a room together,
(17:42):
and they sent out the thousand firefighters, the forty engines,
and they had one hundred and seventeen million gallons.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Of water, I say that would have made a big difference.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
If it wouldn't have made a difference, then why do
we have reservoirs?
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Why do we bother the fire department? Why do we
bother with the mayor?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
If none of these people and none of these resources matter.
If having a thousand firefighters doesn't Matt wouldn't have made
a difference, then why do we have them. If forty
engines wouldn't have made a difference, why do we have them.
We've never had a loss. I don't think any city
in the history of the country has ever had a
loss from fire like this one. Wow, that's the way
(18:25):
I can do about it? Oh, yes, there's a plenty
you could do about it. You chose not to. You
chose not to.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
I'm not gonna let up on this.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Nobody should because this is gonna happen again, could happen
next week.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
We're on the air from one until four, and after
four o'clock the whole show gets posted as a podcast.
John Cobelt Show on demand on the iHeart apps. We
could listen to what you missed. We continue, uh, looking
for the truth here in this Palisades fire not easy
to get.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
We're going to have on now. Rich McHugh from News
Nation and Rich did an interview with Michelle Valentine. Says,
you're a former US attorney for Vice President Kamala Harris.
He lives high up in the Palisades. He saw the
fire in its earliest stages, and uh he told in
(19:38):
detail how he saw things developed. Let's let's get Rich
mcew on who talked to Valentine. Rich, how are you?
Speaker 4 (19:46):
I'm good, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
And it's Michelle or Michael.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
Michael Michael Michael, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Okay, all right, So what did Michael Valentine tell you?
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Well, uh, initially he told me reluctantly, you know, but
basically he was he lives up there, up near the
very top of the Palisades, and I don't know if
I've ever been up there, but yes, there's a rig
line up there called Skull It's like an area called
Skull Rock. And there was a previous fire there a
week a week earlier on New Year's Eve, and he said, look,
(20:20):
the response to that was overwhelming. There was dozens of
fire trucks. There's a lot of celebrities that live up there,
et cetera. And it was they had the fire out.
He said that lulled us into a little bit of
a sense of security. His wife saw smoke around ten
twenty eight or ten twenty nine. She called nine one one.
(20:41):
She was out walking her dogs. She saw smoke on
the ridge. Line called nine one one. Turns out, I
believe that was the first call to nine one one.
He started filming a few minutes later, and he documented
in a series of videos the progression of this thing.
The first video he took that he shared with News
at ten thirty four am. And you look at the
(21:03):
it's almost like a cone of smoke. It's it's very
kind of isolated. You don't see the fire, but you
see the smoke, and it's definitely not massive. At that
point ten thirty six, fire's grown a little bit. There's
a little bit of wind. It's not these one hundred
mile an hour winds that people are talking about. Those
came later, and that's important. Ten point fifty his video
(21:26):
shows overhead there's a chopper looks to be surveying the scene.
I zoomed in on the video. It looks like at
La City fire helicopter. So not cal fire, which will
ultimately become important in the conversation later. We don't see
another We don't see water being dropped till either about
(21:48):
eleven thirteen or eleven twenty three. I saw that same
chopper come through the smoke at eleven thirteen and then
eleven twenty three his video shows at actually dropping water.
By that point, the fire is fantastasized. It's doubled and
tripled in sized in that time. And I asked, you know,
(22:08):
Los Angeles Fire Department when the first call came in,
They said ten twenty nine. I said, when did you guys,
have you know, fire fire presence up there. They have
yet to respond to that request, so I've asked for
even more data.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
The key will be, that's.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
What will be. When did they get air support up
there first? And when were they dropping water on it?
And did they have enough? Those are the questions that
this is ultimately going to come down to, and it's
all going to be in the data, the incident commander's reports,
and it's all going to be detailed. Did they did
they throw enough at this? Given that you know over
(22:46):
the scanner you can hear the person in the chopper
I believe at ten forty or ten forty five say, look,
this is a ten acre fire. This will be two
hundred acres and in twenty minutes and threatening structures. It's
going to be a pivotal part of this going forward.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
And Wins were still manageable to fly aircraft.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
They were manageable to fly. I mean, you can see
the choppers up in the sky. You can see it's windy.
But I don't believe, and I'm not a weather person
by any means, so somebody's gonna have to check this,
But like, I don't believe that the real serious winds
came until later that evening when we saw I think, no,
(23:28):
when the fire was out of control and the members
were flying eighty mile an hour.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Because what drive me a little nuts all the people
who always it's a reflex to defend whoever's in power,
the governor, the mayor, fire chief, whoever. They're saying, well,
there was one hundred mile an hour winds. No, there
wasn't one hundred mile an hour winds when this thing
started when it needed attention from the fire department. It
(23:52):
wasn't anywhere near that. It wasn't a fraction of.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
That, correct. I think the conversation once that that all
kind of fades away once they oh, how do you
fight a fire and eighty mile an hour wins? Well,
that's like a red herring that the winds were not
that strong at that point, and so it's going to
be about did they do everything that they could to
contain this. I've spoken to some former fire fighters here
in Los Angeles and they say, look, they're not one
(24:17):
to bash the fire the fireman, or the or the
Los Angeles Fire Department at all. They don't want to
because they're doing they've done that work. But they were
saying they lay the blame, you know on Karen Bass say,
this is a this is a management Uh.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah, this is it's not the firefires, it's management maybe
some in the fire departments, certainly Karen Bass. Uh And
and that's what's got to be unraveled and quickly before
all their denials take root in people's minds, because there's
a lot of officials that are not not telling the
(24:51):
truth or not being forthcoming.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah. There's also the question of water, and you have
Gavin Newsom coming out and saying he's gonna do an
investigation into the why the Santinez Reservoir wasn't online. Well,
you know that's like if Los Angeles Power and Water
is doing the investigation, that's like the fox starting the henhouse.
You need third party, independent investigation into this period.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
The thing is, in my naivete, I thought there was
a command center where it knew some Bass, the fire
chief and every other official in government, and they would
have in front of them all the reservoirs, how full
they were, all the firefighting equipment available where it's deployed.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And I never heard of this reservoir.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
And I never heard they haven't exposed. I'm not sure
knew something evennew about it. I don't you know. The
Bass note was empty.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Did anyone ever tell her? Did she ever ask?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Do they have regular meetings where they go through the
reservoirs and they go through the resources available. Everybody's acting
like they this was all sprung out of nowhere. They
they had an extreme fire warning five days in advance.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
If they're yet because of those warnings in preparation for this,
And this comes from former firefires. This isn't just me speculating.
They would have they would have known where are we
getting our water? They would have said, Okay, if there's
a Palisades fire up, tie, we're going to be getting
our water from those three million gallon tanks. But those
are fed by the Santaez reservoir, which I was looking
(26:30):
at just one hour ago, and it's it's empty. It's
it's hard to believe.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
It's been empty for eleven months.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
There's some speculation that's been several years. Talking to former firefighters. Well,
I've heard that of that too.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah, no, I've heard that too. H all right, Rich
mceue from News Nation, thanks very much, And you guys
are doing a great job on that on that on
that network.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
Thank you very much, really are all right.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Thanks thanks for coming on, Rich McHugh News Nation. It's
a good one to watch because it gives you the news.
Let's I know, it's shocking, isn't it. You have to
stop and think, what is that? There's a news channel
that gives you news.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Go.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, you're speechless, my speechless.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
We have the audio of Rich mccu's report talking with
Michael Valentine, the former US attorney and how he filmed
the first minutes of the fire, and Valentine's thinks Bass
bears responsibility for this failure.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
She does.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
We'll play you the TV report coming up so you
could understand further what Rich was discussing.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
If you're just joining us, just a quick review. We're
talking about this hour because I'm connecting dots. We are
the Department of Dot connecting here. So the LA Time
says the top commanders at the LA Fire Department had
a thousand available fire fire fighters and forty water carrying
engines and chose not to deploy them in the high
(28:06):
fire zones such as Pacific Palisades. They had one hundred.
I mean, I'm sorry they had They had one thousand
firefighters and forty engines, and a former LA battalion chief,
Rick Crawford said, the plan they're using now for the
fire they should have used before the fire. There's a
(28:29):
document showing that the fire department said no to deploying
as little as nine engines, and three different stories were
given out by Christine Crowley's staff over how many were available.
And now you have the Deputy Chief, Richard Fields, who's
in charge of staffing and equipment decisions, saying, well, all,
(28:51):
let's say Monday morning cornerbacking, telling us what we should
have done down that it's happened. What we did was
based on many years of experience. We had no experience
with a fire that destroyed over five thousand structures.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
We were told everything was.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Pre deployed, they had five days of warning, and there
was no mayor to enforce proper decision making policies. We
will get to her in a little while, but now
let's play. We just had rich mcew on from newsdation
and he talked with Michael Valentine, who's identified as a
(29:32):
former US attorney for Vice President Kamala Harris, and he
lives way up in the Palisades, and he and his
wife saw the fire unfold from the early minutes. So
let's listen to this interview that Rich did.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
At is ten thirty four am Tuesday, January seventh. These
are some of the first images of the start of
the Palisades fire.
Speaker 6 (29:54):
Describe what you saw, an intense plume of smoke that
was rising and moving very fast. It was black in
some areas and white in other areas, but you could
see it.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Was moving quickly.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Two minutes later, the smoke plume grows. No sign of
anyone fighting the fire. At this point, the fire isolated
on the ridge behind the home of longtime Pacific Palisades
resident Michael Valentine. He documented it all on video, giving
News Nation an exclusive look of where it started and
how quickly it grew. By ten point fifty the plume
(30:29):
had spread considerably twice as large. Eight minutes later, the
size of the fire seems to have doubled yet again,
still nobody fighting the fire. At eleven thirteen am, nearly
forty five minutes after Michael's wife called in the fire,
you see a chopper come through. At eleven twenty three,
a helicopter comes in begins to dump water on it.
(30:50):
But at this point the fire is massive and moving
quickly down this ridge line.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
That was the first time we saw them drop water.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Is that right correct?
Speaker 5 (30:58):
And then did you ever see any firefighters up there?
Speaker 6 (31:02):
I did not see any firefighters up there.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Why do you think there is?
Speaker 1 (31:07):
That's the question.
Speaker 6 (31:08):
I don't know. I wish I knew the answer to that.
I have no idea. I have no idea why that is.
It could have been confined, it wouldn't have touched any
of the homes. I don't believe that for one second.
You're talking to somebody that's been up in this community
for forty years, and I've seen fires. I've seen fires
during those forty years, and there's always been a good response.
I don't know what happened this time.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
What we know happened this time is this. We know
the Santa Ynez Reservoir near where the fire began was empty,
and the head of LEDWP confirmed they ran.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
Out of water.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
There's a lot we could do, though even the.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
President seemed to shrug off the concerns over lack of water.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
I know you've getting a bad wrap about with these fire.
Hydrants don't have enough water and them give me a bridge.
Speaker 6 (31:51):
In my opinion, as a former prosecutor, this verges on
negligent criminal negligence.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
I say it's just wrong. A lot of people are
at fault.
Speaker 6 (32:03):
I think Mayor bass Bear is the ultimate responsibility for
this failure, and I think she should be held accountable.
There's no way that I could trust her again as
my mayor in light of this tragedy.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
There's no way now.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
I asked Los Angeles Fire Department what time the first
call came in. They said it came in at ten
twenty nine am, which corresponds with her call to nine
one one.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
I asked when.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
Was the first time they had firefighters on scene. They
have yet to respond to that now. I spoke to
Michael Valentine earlier and he said he has yet to
hear from investigators. He even called the ATF and the FBI,
who were in front of his home, but he couldn't
get through.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Well.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Of course, he's one of the first guys to see it,
actually recorded it on video. Wife calls in the complaint
ten twenty nine. He's got video at ten thirty four.
Of course, the investigators haven't talked to him. He knows
too much. He saw too much. He has proof. That's
why he's giving the video to News Nation. I guess
(33:08):
nobody in government is interested, right. I don't think Karen
Bass's office wants to see this video. Boh it is
and criminal negligence. That's a really good word. That is
a great legal phrase to describe what's going on here.
So here you have a US attorney saying this looks
like criminal negligence, and they see you notice that little
(33:28):
clip of Joe Biden. Oh, you guys are getting a
bad rap for not having water in the hydrants. Well,
he's in full soinility mode, isn't he. You got a one
hundred and seventeen million gallon reservoir just in the neighborhood,
right in the heart of the Palisades. You have fire
hydrants that are dry. You have firefighters that show up
(33:51):
and they quickly run out of water. So they're standing
around telling the residents we have no water. Plus they
showed up, they shout up at a eleven twenty three. That's
fifty four minutes after the fire was reported. Fifty four
minutes and there's one helicopter with water. Now, imagine had
they done what they've done in other areas and other
(34:12):
fires which they could have done.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Here.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
They had one thousand firefighters that they could have called
in extended their second shift. They had forty fire engines.
Imagine if a few of them were prepositioned up at
the top of the hills where all the brush is,
and then they had the planes ready to take off
from whatever airstrip they take off from.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
But the communication would have been boom, boom, boom.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Wouldn't have taken an hour, the fire wouldn't have doubled
and tripled in size. Last night, I was listening to
Conway in the afternoon and there was a fire that
blew up at Hansoon Dam. Homeless fire, bum fire. It
blew up, But because they're organized now, it seemed like
in about ten minutes the thing was put out. It
(35:00):
could have happened very quickly up in the Palisades, but
we had no leadership from Karen Bass and Kristin Crowley
and her staff are given ten different stories on what
happened here. And then you have the guy who created
the plan of attack and he's going, well, you're Monday
morning wire backing. I'm looking at one hundred and seventeen
(35:25):
million gallon reservoir bone dry, fire hydrants run dry, forty
available engines not used, a thousand firefighters not held over.
I'm crazy, and I hope everybody in the Palisades learns
about this, because you guys have had your lives destroyed
(35:50):
in part because of this unbelievable, abominable government response. And no,
the winds were not blowing at one hundred miles an out.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Hear that.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
I want to punch the television. You know, the winds
were blowing at one hundred miles an hour. Nobody's gonna
stopped it. The winds were not blowing at one hundred
miles an hour at ten thirty in the morning. They
actually had one helicopter do a water drop at eleven twenty.
If everybody was prepositioned and talking to each other and
not flying from Africa, maybe a lot more could have
been done. Don't fall for the lies. They are all
(36:22):
lying to you. We're gonna tell you what's what after
two o'clock. We're gonna talk to Patrick McNicholas. He's an
attorney at McNicholas and McNicholas. His law firm and other
law firms are filing lawsuits against Southern California Edison because
of the Altadena fire known as the Eachin Fire, and
(36:44):
also the one I believe in Silmour, the Hurst fire,
because it's the same old story from a few years ago,
Southern California Edison's equipment. And you know there's something to
this story because already the CEO has been on Good
Morning America on ABC trying to pre defend himself. He
like pre positioned himself on a big network morning show
(37:07):
because he knows what's coming. Get his story out first,
Debora Mark Live the KFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey,
you've been listening to the John Covelt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI AM six
forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
The John Kobylt Show News
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John Kobylt
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