January 31, 2025 • 33 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (01/31) - Mark Thompson fills in for John. More on the aftermath of the airline crash in DC. The Fire Aid concert happened last night in LA to raise money for Palisades and Eaton Fire victims. Perry Russom comes on the show to talk about the latest regarding the airline crash in DC. Rain is on the way.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can'f I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Mark Thompson here for John Cobelt today and we are
awaiting the briefing from the NTSB. It will come now
at two thirty and they will at that point give
us information that we're getting a little bit piecemealed. They're
fragments of information coming out of the FAA, they are
fragments of information coming out of analysts, they're coming out
(00:28):
of journalists, sources, et cetera. But there does appear to
be certain clues to what's going on that are all
against the backdrop when it comes to this accident at
Washington's National Reagan National Airport.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
They're all against the backdrop.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Of what is now openly being discussed, which is something
that was quietly being discussed for decades, and that is
the volume of air traffic in and out of Washington.
I mean DCA. I grew up in Washington, Okay, so
I and I was a little kid when they built
this Dulles. I'm chuckling because I guess that's how old
(01:07):
I am. But I mean Dulles was this modern airport,
very cool looking in Virginia and so just outside, if
you will, suburban Washington. And the idea behind the building
of Dulles was that it would take pressure off of
Reagan National and you'd begin to see more and more
flights in and out of Dulles while the workload was
(01:29):
reduced at DCA at National now Reagan National Airport, the
scene of this tragedy. So what happened was a lot
of traffic went to Dulles, but there was a reluctance
to really go to Dulles as commuter flights and others
that wanted quick access to the downtown area seemed to
(01:51):
just favor Washington's Reagan National Airport. And the other thing,
and this is huge. The other thing that happened with
Reagan National Airport was it was recommended that they reduced
traffic for safety reasons, but instead of reducing traffic, they
(02:12):
responded to lobbying. Political lobbying on the part of many legislators, senators,
congress people, other support staff who wanted to fly back
to their districts from Washington and from their districts back
to Washington, and they didn't want to be inconvenience to
have to go out to Virginia. Now Dulles, as modern
(02:33):
as it is, is an hour probably outside of Washington.
I mean, think you're in Santa Clarita and you've got
to go to lax So depending on the traffic, it
could you know, it could take you a couple of hours.
And that's kind of what legislators and those with real
juice in Washington, politicians with real leverage, were able to
(02:58):
press when it came aim to closing or reducing Reagan
National Airport's workloaded when it came to aviation. And the
other thing that now everybody's talking about out loud that
before they were just whispering about, was the proximity of
this insanely busy airport, which by the way, was made
(03:22):
more busy instead of reducing volume, and in response to
the pressure that I just described, they actually increased the
number of flights.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
They opened a new runway there.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So the other thing that's being discussed is that this
incredibly busy airport exists where it exists in between all
this restricted airspace, So pilots coming in and out of
National have to navigate around the White House where there
is obviously no airspace that you can be part of.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
There is also the Pentagon.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
There are a number of other official buildings and military
installations that are embedded in all of this. So as
a pilot approaching Reagan National Airport, you have a somewhat
intense flight path that you have to hit. And now
again a third thing is being spoken up out loud
(04:22):
that was maybe whispered or spoken of in soft tones
that never really made national media, and that is the
Army helicopters who are in regular maneuvers through that area.
I mean, it seems incredible, doesn't it. And this helicopter,
as we've learned, flew outside its approved flight path. So
(04:44):
the American Airlines pilots probably did not see the helicopter
close by as they made that turn toward the runway,
and the air traffic controller was juggling two jobs at
the same time. That person was unable to keep the
helicopter and the plane separated, and you know what happened.
So again we're going to get a live press conference.
(05:06):
We'll carry it live here at KFI at two thirty.
But this catastrophe really appears to confirm what pilots and
air traffic controllers and safety experts have been warning about
for years. That this aviation system and holes in it
could lead to the kind of crash that left sixty
seven people dead in the Potomac River. And when you
(05:29):
talk about problems with air traffic control, you can go
back to the Reagan era. It's ironic or eerily coincidental
that this crash would happen at an airport named for
Ronald Reagan. Because you younger boys and girls may not remember,
but let me just tell you that the I think
(05:49):
most of us would recall that there was a standoff
between Ronald Reagan and striking air traffic controllers during the
Reagan administration. The thing that Reagan pointed to was, hey,
you guys can't strike your federal workers, and you're bound
contractually to go back to the office. So in the
middle of this labor dispute, those air traffic controllers didn't
(06:12):
really legally, was the argument from the Reagan administration, have
the power to walk off the job. But they did,
and Reagan said, well, here's what's going to happen. You
guys are going to go back to work or you're
all fired. And they didn't go back to work, and
they were all fired, and that really handicapped their organization.
(06:33):
But to be fair, that was many decades ago. By
now they have built back the air traffic control community,
but they're still shy of where they want to be.
One of the goals of the last administration was to
bring that up to speed, and so there's still a
feeling and a conversation around air traffic control and aviation
(06:56):
safety in this country. That goes all the way back
to what I'm talking talking about, which is that Reagan moment. Again,
it's not a party specific thing. This has nothing to
do with Republicans and Democrats. This has everything to do
with the management of the FAA and how they are
managing their relationship with aviation. And the last thing I
(07:19):
would say about the FAA is something that we all know,
which is that the industry that they're supposed to regulate,
and we always hear about regulations and regularly there are
too many regulations. Well, I mean, this is the kind
of thing, life and death stuff. You want regulations, you
want protections. They have to exist in this area, with food,
with aviation, with public safety.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
It has to be there.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
But what's happened at the FAA is they've been taken
over by a lot of these aviation companies. Boeing as
the classic example, right. It's called regulatory capture. It's when
the corporation that you're supposed to be regulating grows so
big that it takes over your agency. That's what happened
(08:03):
with Boeing with the max Jets, the max Jet incidents,
as you know, two crashed killed everybody on board those
max jets. And the changes and engineering changes that Boeing
was lobbying for they got and they self policed. And
the only reason we know they sell policed is because
(08:23):
of what happened after the crashes. Then whistleblowers came forward
and then we got a lot of FAA documents and
you saw the way Boeing was just allowed to run wild.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
So the FAA troubled.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I'd suggest government agency charged with regulatory strategies when it
comes to aviation in America, and yet they've compromised some
of their regulatory power because of the power of the
very industries they're regulating.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
We'll take the.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Live press conference at two point thirty from the NTSB
as more comes to the surface about this terrible accident,
just disastrous. It's a John Cobelt, Joe Mark Thompson sitting
in for John KFI AM six.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Forty Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I was looking to see that the FAA has indefinitely
closed copter roots near.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
The crash site.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
So the helicopters that normally very much punctuate the scene
there around Washington's Reagan National Airport, they are not punctuating
that scene, and there may be some serious policy decisions
made about helicopter traffic in that area. We're talking a
bit about that deadly crash. I mean it's hard. We've
(09:52):
just been through so much as a region, devastating. Anybody
watched the or listen to I listened on Actually KFI.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
We ran some of the music last night.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Moe Kelly ran some of the music at the fire
Aid concert, and then I flipped over to I Think
I Think Doctor Dre was on stage and Moe was
concerned that the language might be a little too salty.
That was what my sense was, and so I flipped
over to just to check out the coverage Kiss FM
(10:27):
and ALT and it was really great.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I mean, it was super great. I hadn't really.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Set it aside as something that I wanted to devote
time to. And then the minute it started I started
listening to it. I actually had to hear the whole thing.
It was terrific.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Billie Eilish was great, I thought. I thought Pink was
really amazing. And then did you catch Billy Crystal when
he no, he was talking about that he was wearing
the clothes that he was wearing the day that he
had to just run from his home when the fire
broke out.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, he lost everything in that fire. Now I didn't
see that part.
Speaker 5 (11:03):
Yeah, that was and then of course he made jokes. Yeah,
but I mean he was great. I mean he was
so raw and real.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
It was an interesting thing was the I was trying
to figure out, was the thing hosted by somebody. I
saw Valentine was kind of woven through, and there were
a couple of other I thought there were some women
who were hosting along the way, and then and then
on stage you had musicians sort of hosting their chunk.
They were throwing to their introduce to the next act.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Right, Yeah, there wasn't just one host. It's funny because
my husband and I were talking about that as well,
and so it was just different people.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
It was super cool and apparently before any note was sung,
they'd already raised sixty million dollars. So I don't know
what the total is or if they have any estimates,
we'll try to get them for you. But I think
it was wildly successful and really innovative, you know, the
two different venues going simultaneously, And as Deborah says, it
(12:03):
was just a murderous row of great, incredible performers who
all show up. I mean, legendary performers, everybody from Joni
Mitchell to Stevie Nicks to doctor Dre I mean, my god,
Billie Eilish.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It was crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Gwen Stefani, they got the whole No Doubt crew back together.
It was super impressive.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
Lady Gaga, Lady.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Gaga, Stevie, Wonder, Earth Wind and Fire, thank you exactly,
my go. It was really great.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
And now I'm unclear it'll be up on Is it
up on the iHeartRadio app indefinitely or for a while,
or is it on Hulu indefinitely?
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Anybody know? Can? I watched it on Prime last night?
Oh you did? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah, I think it should be up there. I would
think it would be watchable, but it's definitely worth a watch,
so check it out if you missed any of it.
The twenty four hours that horrible collision between the military
helicopter and the regional jet at Reagan National Airport, a
(13:08):
different passenger jet coming in for a landing at the
airport that same runway alerted the tower that it had
to abort, and the reason was the risk of a
possible collision with a helicopter.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
It played out.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Less than a week earlier, a flight from Charlotte suddenly
pulled out of its approach at National. The captain told
passengers that he was tracking a helicopter and needed to
abort the landing. The two scrubbed landings within a week
really point a finger at the heightened danger that's been
(13:48):
talked about four years posed by frequent military helicopter flights
that are happening right alongside an insanely busy airport. There
have been close calls and worries about crashes four years.
They used to talk about it when I was a kid.
The US Army Blackhawk that crashed into this regional jet
(14:12):
killed sixty four people and the three Army crew members
on the helicopter have been flying along the east bank
of the Potomac, and it's a flight corridor designated for
low flying helicopters. But this is a narrow lane that
keeps these helicopters away from the jet flight paths. It
(14:33):
does intersect, though, with the path of aircraft on this
approach to Runway thirty three. That's the runway involved in
the accident. So as they look at policy, something's got
to change. There is a lot of military training and
other flights around this airport. It is in Washington, DC,
(14:55):
and you can imagine there are a lot of different
federal agencies and military services that are interlocking right around
that airport, and so managing those hazards is hard. And
then you get to the control tower right that staffing
levels were not what they called normal.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Inside the tower, they broke somebody early.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
You're supposed to be down to one person in that
tower handling both helicopters and those commuter flights after nine thirty,
but it's supposed to be two people.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Before nine thirty.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Well, one person was allowed to go home early, and
the crash occurred around eight point fifty, ten minutes before
nine o'clock. So the job of managing the helicopters was
being handled by a controller who was also managing other
air traffic. And had it been a normal night of
normal staffing, that wouldn't have been the case. It would
(15:54):
have been two different people. So you can see there's
a lot going on here and a few moving parts.
When we come back, I do want to hear one
last thing before we go to the NTSB press conference.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Will take it live later. It said, was it thirty?
Thank you?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
When we come back, I want to hear from black
Hawk pilot Lieutenant Colonel Darren gow. He was on Fox
News talking about a lot of aspects and details of
the black Hawk shoppers, why they don't have black boxes,
why they don't have collision warning systems, and he can
just maybe shed some light on this. We'll do that
(16:38):
next as we continue, and as I say, we'll handle
that NTSB press conference when it happens, we'll carry it live.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Mark Toobson for John Cobalt.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
We're KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM six.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Forty John Cobelts Show. Mark Thompson just sitting in for
the afternoon, and the DC plane crash continues to dominate
our attention. Such a thorough tragedy and all sorts of
details being revealed about air traffic in that area and
concerns in that area. FAA knowing that it was problematic
(17:16):
much of the helicopter traffic coexisting with commuter plane traffic.
And Parry Russell from ABC News is in Washington with
more high Perry, see how are you.
Speaker 6 (17:27):
Yeah, Well, I'm looking right now at the Potelmac where
it appears that there is a crane in the water
that is working on lifting the Blackhawk helicopter. We knew
that cranes were going to be arriving today to start
work what we were told earlier in a news conference
that they would start tomorrow on the airplanes. And this
is kind of catching a lot of reporters by surprise
(17:48):
right now that it appears they are starting to lift
the Blackhawk helicopter out of the water. We know one
soldier has already been recovered and we know that two
more are believed to be inside. So that what's happening
to you right now?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
There is going to be a press conference I think
in about an hour at which they'll the NTSB officials,
I assume, will give us what details they are comfortable sharing.
I mean, I guess these investigators wild take a very
long time, but we get a sort of piece miller
along the way.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
Yeah, So the NTFP is we're expecting a full preliminary
report from them within thirty days. They had that news
conference yesterday basically setting everything up for their first day
on the job. We know that today they have both
black boxes from the airplane. One is a voice recorder,
other one is a data recorder. So for the voice
recorder records everything that was being said between the pilots
(18:39):
and what other noises were happening inside, whether it's a
ping or a boom or a scratch of any kind.
But multiple people have to listen to that audio recording.
They call it being auditioned, So multiple people listen to that.
The investigators right down what they hear that they match
up transcripts. I'm not sure what we're going to hear
today from the NTFP in just about an hour from
(18:59):
the out. It's a very evolving situation. But there was
a news conference held by DC Fire not too long
ago where they told us that forty one victims have
been recovered so far, twenty eight have been positively idd.
And my question for them was, you know, forty one
is not sixty seven. We know sixty seven people were
killed in this, and that number there's a large difference
(19:21):
there with twenty six. And they said that they believe
they know where the other twenty six are. But what
the chief told me was, quote, we think we know
where they are, we won't know until we are done.
So this is an evolving situation here in the next
couple of days, and.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
That's a pretty grim task having to well fish those
bodies out, those sweet souls who lost their lives in
all this. The FAA telling you this morning that they're
not giving permission for the low altitude helicopter roots around
DCA for the time being. I saw that ABC was
reporting that, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
That's correct. So the FAA is essentially stopping all of
these low flying Blackhawk he copters that go up and
down the Potomacs. Theer's essentially like a grid of a
no flies on some capacity for these helicopters around DCA.
It's not clear how long that is going to last.
You know that the FAA is saying that they're going
to wait for the ntsd's preliminary report to be complete
(20:17):
before they decide to reopen, so that could happen within
the next thirty days, but there really is no date
on when that decision is going to be made.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I mean, it is the case, isn't it, Perry That
increasingly they're talking about something that has been talked about
in Washington for a while. Now you're really getting some
oxygen to this issue of helicopters coexisting with the commuter
flights and passenger jets at that same airport, which saw
so many of these regular training maneuvers going on.
Speaker 6 (20:47):
Yeah, it's a really busy airport for people who aren't
too familiar with how DCA works. You have helicopters that
are flying around, you have planes that are landing, and
some you know, senators have raised the question of is
DCA too busy. I was talking with Senator Tim Kane
from Virginia yesterday. He has kind of been ringing the
bell on that for a few years now, and he
(21:08):
told me he wanted to be cautious and you know,
before jumping to conclusions on blaming too much work for DCA,
too much volume for this being the exact cause you know,
it's just something they're going to be looking at. You know,
air traffic control and flying over DCA in and out
of DCA will never be the same after this.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
I think that's a very well put Harry RUSSELM. Thank you,
ABC News correspondent in Washington.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Again.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
The NTSB schedule to hold up media briefing. It'll be
four o'clock today. Oh, I'm sorry, It'll be two thirty
is the revised time. I'm laughing because they keep changing
the time. But it's a you can understand why. It's
a fluid situation. So now two thirty will carry it live.
One of the things that was interesting along the way,
just to put a button on it, is these black
(21:58):
Hawk helicopters, what they have and what they don't have
and well being interviewed on Fox News retired to Aeutenant
Colonel Darren gobb And he's a former black Hawk pilot.
I was talking about why Blackhawks don't have black boxes
and collision warning systems.
Speaker 7 (22:16):
We can't rule out pilot error, we can't rule out
air traffic control error. The collision warning system. Why don't
the black Hawks have that? And why don't they have
a black box. Is it because in times of war
we don't want to leave anything behind.
Speaker 8 (22:27):
Well, one of them is this model of aircraft is
quite a bit over and to put something like that
in it would have had been part of the initial package,
and that just that didn't really exist when they started
making these, and it was It's a risk calculation too
for what you install for the space you have.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Second of all, it put.
Speaker 8 (22:44):
Into collision avoidance and warning systems at a black hawk.
Most of the time when blackhawks fly. When I ran
in the Salt battalion, you put ten aircraft in formation
flying close together, close to the ground. If you have
a collision avoidance system, it's going to be constantly going
off because you're always close to something. So it just
doesn't make any sense to put in this model of
(23:04):
helicopter in the first place.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
They also talk about, and this is shilling. I think
that when you're flying in an area with a lot
of city lights in that black Hawk, it's hard to
differentiate between an aircraft and street lights.
Speaker 8 (23:18):
One of the biggest mitigating circumstances to that in this
environment is the fact that when you fly in an
environment that is so lit up with city lights, and
you also then blend in aircraft lights and many aircraft flying,
it can actually all kind of blend together, and at
certain altitudes you actually can have a difficult time differentiating
(23:40):
between an aircraft with its lights on and cars on
the streets and street lights and things like that. I've
had that happen to me in Korea where I had
a near miss from seven forty seven because you couldn't
see it. It was just lights moving. We thought they
were cars on the streets. So all of these are
hypotheticals that could factor into a final conclusion someday in
(24:03):
the future.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
That's the tenant Colonel Darren Galvin, a former black Hawk pilot,
talking about some of the challenges.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
It's super scary.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
And I'll tell you when you're in Washington, I go
back there all the time, and I still my mother's
still We've lost my dad this past year, but I
used to go back there all the time to see
both of them. Now I used to go back to
see my mom, of course. And where you want to
fly is Reagan National because it's close to the house,
it's close to the city. Everybody wants it. Okay, Many
flights go in and out of Dulles, but the more
(24:31):
convenient place to fly is Reagan National and for that reason,
as I was mentioning to you about a half hour ago,
there's a lot of political pressure because politicians and their
support staff that they want also to fly out of
that airport. So instead of pulling back on civilian traffic,
they've actually increased civilian traffic over the last decade. And
it's good to see Tim Kane talking about something he's
(24:54):
been talking about for a couple of years, which is
there has to be some renewed f to change the
strategies when it comes to the number of flights, volume
of flights that coexist with these military training exercises going
on alongside. We're learning so much and there will be
changes at DCA after all of this. It's The Cobalt Show,
(25:15):
Mark Thompson sitting in on KFI AM six forty live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
You're listening to John cobelts on demand from KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
John Cobelt's Show. Mark Thompson just sitting in for John
this afternoon. Still to come, We're going to talk to
Alex Stone about the arrest and the charging of that
drone pilot that flew into the firefighting airplane.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Remember that.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I mean that was just as the weather conditions were
permitting airborne traffic to get in and fight this fire.
I mean it was prohibitive for the first what would
you say, thirty hours something like that. I mean, wind
velocities were just too high. Finally got the super scoopers
(26:01):
up and one was hit by a drone flight. Well,
that guy was identified and has been charged, and Alex
Stone is going to give us the latest on that.
That is still to come later in the show. We'll
take the NTSB live press conference at two thirty. There
is an atmospheric river storm coming at least one, maybe two.
(26:25):
It's been an extraordinarily dry start of the year, but
they say that three atmospheric river storms in total are
expected to hit California over the next week. I think
one of them is primarily hitting northern parts of the state.
And they don't think that there is so much of
(26:47):
a risk of intense rain that there'd be debris flows
started from it in mudslide. So they see that risk
at least current forecasts as sort of not as great as,
for example, the situation up north. They're going to have
a powerful and intense kind of atmospheric river brush up north.
(27:12):
But they're saying rain totals here will exceed an inch maybe,
but not over an inch and a half for much
of LA County. Some areas may not even see an inch.
So that would help a lot of vegetation that has
been affected by this historically dry start to the year.
And I'm talking about to the water year, so all
the way back to June. I mean, there's been as
(27:33):
you know, it's widely talked about it no measurable precipitation
since you know, in ten months or whatever it's been.
But now we've had our first rush with a sizable
weather system and storm, and now the latest forecasting models
are saying that there'll be two more soakings. And the
last one dropped a half an inch, about an inch
(27:55):
and a half across the La basein that was last weekend.
We could get close to that Meteorologist of the Nation
Whether Service are saying, and what does that do to
the drought situation?
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Not much. I mean.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
It's going to take a lot more than an inch
and a half. In another inch and a half and
another inch and a half to make up for a
season where you haven't had any rainfall at all. So
even as we get this, it looks as though it
may not put much of a dent in things. Certainly
better than nothing, But again, next week storms might help
(28:34):
establish a pattern. You know, you get some rain for
many hours in sort of intervals that the region can accept,
and you get what might be some relief to this
drought situation. Meantime, as you know, it's against all of
this is against the backdrop of the cleanup that has
(28:56):
been controversial, the idea that you move a lot of
these toxic materials, materials that have been toxified by the fires,
that you move them through areas that a lot of
people live in and may not be happy with. You
have to move them. They have to clear these areas
(29:17):
for a rebuild, to reassess. But all these materials that
are being moved, as I say, they've been toxified, if
you will, they've become dangerous. And so those who are
dealing with the materials that are in the masks and those
who are helping to transfer and transport the materials are
also wearing masks and protective gear. But the route along
(29:39):
the way is controversial. So these controversies continue, and I
don't know really if there is a resolution except for
the fact that they've got to move them out. So
notwithstanding all of the issues that might be provoked by
the fact that a lot of this stuff is toxified.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
The stuff still has to be moved. The other thing that's.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Happening is that schools are reopening, and that continues to
be an issue as well, because parents are worried about
their kids being in situations where they might be too
close to areas of the palisades and eaten fire zones.
For kids to really be in a healthy environment, it's
(30:25):
pretty tough. You want kids to resume their learning, resume
the social structure that's there at school, but there are
questions about health and safety. Should kids return to class
I mean, public health visuals are assuring families that the
schools have been cleaned, that they're safe, but campuses that
(30:46):
are close to these areas burned do raise questions, right.
I mean the schools themselves, they have been cleaned, and
they're staff by people who've been committed to cleaning their classrooms.
A lot of the teachers cleaned the classrooms themselves, but
that Canyon Charter Elementary School and Paul Revere Charter Middle
(31:08):
School and Pacific Palisades they have two thousand kids. They've
already welcomed those kids back, and there are other schools
there near the Palisades that haven't open. So as the
region and I just mean all of us deal with
the emotion with the loss. Just coming off that hugely
(31:31):
successful iHeart benefit the fire aid show from last night.
The destruction has been absolute and complete. I mean that
eat and fire. It burned out five campuses in the
Pepacady in the area, and the fire in the Palisades
burned out two elementary schools, damaged that Palisades Charter High School.
(31:56):
So judgments have to be made and decisions have to
be made about what areas are safe, what can be rebuilt,
and what strategies can be employed moving forward. All of
that continues to be an issue when we come back.
Brian Suits is going to join us to talk about
these black Hawk helicopters and these military maneuvers that seem
(32:17):
to be the thing that plagued this situation in Washington,
and not only plagued it to the point that this
accident happened, but plagued it as an issue that was
an evolving issue year after year, alongside passenger flights in Washington.
(32:37):
Brian Suits talks about all of that as we continue.
It's The John Coblt Show. Mark Thompson sitting in on
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Hey you've been listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast.
You can always hear the show live on KFI AM
six forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Can'f I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Mark Thompson here for John Cobelt today and we are
awaiting the briefing from the NTSB. It will come now
at two thirty and they will at that point give
us information that we're getting a little bit piecemealed. They're
fragments of information coming out of the FAA, they are
fragments of information coming out of analysts, they're coming out
(00:28):
of journalists, sources, et cetera. But there does appear to
be certain clues to what's going on that are all
against the backdrop when it comes to this accident at
Washington's National Reagan National Airport.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
They're all against the backdrop.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Of what is now openly being discussed, which is something
that was quietly being discussed for decades, and that is
the volume of air traffic in and out of Washington.
I mean DCA. I grew up in Washington, Okay, so
I and I was a little kid when they built
this Dulles. I'm chuckling because I guess that's how old
(01:07):
I am. But I mean Dulles was this modern airport,
very cool looking in Virginia and so just outside, if
you will, suburban Washington. And the idea behind the building
of Dulles was that it would take pressure off of
Reagan National and you'd begin to see more and more
flights in and out of Dulles while the workload was
(01:29):
reduced at DCA at National now Reagan National Airport, the
scene of this tragedy. So what happened was a lot
of traffic went to Dulles, but there was a reluctance
to really go to Dulles as commuter flights and others
that wanted quick access to the downtown area seemed to
(01:51):
just favor Washington's Reagan National Airport. And the other thing,
and this is huge. The other thing that happened with
Reagan National Airport was it was recommended that they reduced
traffic for safety reasons, but instead of reducing traffic, they
(02:12):
responded to lobbying. Political lobbying on the part of many legislators, senators,
congress people, other support staff who wanted to fly back
to their districts from Washington and from their districts back
to Washington, and they didn't want to be inconvenience to
have to go out to Virginia. Now Dulles, as modern
(02:33):
as it is, is an hour probably outside of Washington.
I mean, think you're in Santa Clarita and you've got
to go to lax So depending on the traffic, it
could you know, it could take you a couple of hours.
And that's kind of what legislators and those with real
juice in Washington, politicians with real leverage, were able to
(02:58):
press when it came aim to closing or reducing Reagan
National Airport's workloaded when it came to aviation. And the
other thing that now everybody's talking about out loud that
before they were just whispering about, was the proximity of
this insanely busy airport, which by the way, was made
(03:22):
more busy instead of reducing volume, and in response to
the pressure that I just described, they actually increased the
number of flights.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
They opened a new runway there.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So the other thing that's being discussed is that this
incredibly busy airport exists where it exists in between all
this restricted airspace, So pilots coming in and out of
National have to navigate around the White House where there
is obviously no airspace that you can be part of.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
There is also the Pentagon.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
There are a number of other official buildings and military
installations that are embedded in all of this. So as
a pilot approaching Reagan National Airport, you have a somewhat
intense flight path that you have to hit. And now
again a third thing is being spoken up out loud
(04:22):
that was maybe whispered or spoken of in soft tones
that never really made national media, and that is the
Army helicopters who are in regular maneuvers through that area.
I mean, it seems incredible, doesn't it. And this helicopter,
as we've learned, flew outside its approved flight path. So
(04:44):
the American Airlines pilots probably did not see the helicopter
close by as they made that turn toward the runway,
and the air traffic controller was juggling two jobs at
the same time. That person was unable to keep the
helicopter and the plane separated, and you know what happened.
So again we're going to get a live press conference.
(05:06):
We'll carry it live here at KFI at two thirty.
But this catastrophe really appears to confirm what pilots and
air traffic controllers and safety experts have been warning about
for years. That this aviation system and holes in it
could lead to the kind of crash that left sixty
seven people dead in the Potomac River. And when you
(05:29):
talk about problems with air traffic control, you can go
back to the Reagan era. It's ironic or eerily coincidental
that this crash would happen at an airport named for
Ronald Reagan. Because you younger boys and girls may not remember,
but let me just tell you that the I think
(05:49):
most of us would recall that there was a standoff
between Ronald Reagan and striking air traffic controllers during the
Reagan administration. The thing that Reagan pointed to was, hey,
you guys can't strike your federal workers, and you're bound
contractually to go back to the office. So in the
middle of this labor dispute, those air traffic controllers didn't
(06:12):
really legally, was the argument from the Reagan administration, have
the power to walk off the job. But they did,
and Reagan said, well, here's what's going to happen. You
guys are going to go back to work or you're
all fired. And they didn't go back to work, and
they were all fired, and that really handicapped their organization.
(06:33):
But to be fair, that was many decades ago. By
now they have built back the air traffic control community,
but they're still shy of where they want to be.
One of the goals of the last administration was to
bring that up to speed, and so there's still a
feeling and a conversation around air traffic control and aviation
(06:56):
safety in this country. That goes all the way back
to what I'm talking talking about, which is that Reagan moment. Again,
it's not a party specific thing. This has nothing to
do with Republicans and Democrats. This has everything to do
with the management of the FAA and how they are
managing their relationship with aviation. And the last thing I
(07:19):
would say about the FAA is something that we all know,
which is that the industry that they're supposed to regulate,
and we always hear about regulations and regularly there are
too many regulations. Well, I mean, this is the kind
of thing, life and death stuff. You want regulations, you
want protections. They have to exist in this area, with food,
with aviation, with public safety.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
It has to be there.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
But what's happened at the FAA is they've been taken
over by a lot of these aviation companies. Boeing as
the classic example, right. It's called regulatory capture. It's when
the corporation that you're supposed to be regulating grows so
big that it takes over your agency. That's what happened
(08:03):
with Boeing with the max Jets, the max Jet incidents,
as you know, two crashed killed everybody on board those
max jets. And the changes and engineering changes that Boeing
was lobbying for they got and they self policed. And
the only reason we know they sell policed is because
(08:23):
of what happened after the crashes. Then whistleblowers came forward
and then we got a lot of FAA documents and
you saw the way Boeing was just allowed to run wild.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
So the FAA troubled.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I'd suggest government agency charged with regulatory strategies when it
comes to aviation in America, and yet they've compromised some
of their regulatory power because of the power of the
very industries they're regulating.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
We'll take the.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Live press conference at two point thirty from the NTSB
as more comes to the surface about this terrible accident,
just disastrous. It's a John Cobelt, Joe Mark Thompson sitting
in for John KFI AM six.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Forty Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I was looking to see that the FAA has indefinitely
closed copter roots near.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
The crash site.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
So the helicopters that normally very much punctuate the scene
there around Washington's Reagan National Airport, they are not punctuating
that scene, and there may be some serious policy decisions
made about helicopter traffic in that area. We're talking a
bit about that deadly crash. I mean it's hard. We've
(09:52):
just been through so much as a region, devastating. Anybody
watched the or listen to I listened on Actually KFI.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
We ran some of the music last night.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Moe Kelly ran some of the music at the fire
Aid concert, and then I flipped over to I Think
I Think Doctor Dre was on stage and Moe was
concerned that the language might be a little too salty.
That was what my sense was, and so I flipped
over to just to check out the coverage Kiss FM
(10:27):
and ALT and it was really great.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I mean, it was super great. I hadn't really.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Set it aside as something that I wanted to devote
time to. And then the minute it started I started
listening to it. I actually had to hear the whole thing.
It was terrific.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Billie Eilish was great, I thought. I thought Pink was
really amazing. And then did you catch Billy Crystal when
he no, he was talking about that he was wearing
the clothes that he was wearing the day that he
had to just run from his home when the fire
broke out.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, he lost everything in that fire. Now I didn't
see that part.
Speaker 5 (11:03):
Yeah, that was and then of course he made jokes. Yeah,
but I mean he was great. I mean he was
so raw and real.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
It was an interesting thing was the I was trying
to figure out, was the thing hosted by somebody. I
saw Valentine was kind of woven through, and there were
a couple of other I thought there were some women
who were hosting along the way, and then and then
on stage you had musicians sort of hosting their chunk.
They were throwing to their introduce to the next act.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Right, Yeah, there wasn't just one host. It's funny because
my husband and I were talking about that as well,
and so it was just different people.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
It was super cool and apparently before any note was sung,
they'd already raised sixty million dollars. So I don't know
what the total is or if they have any estimates,
we'll try to get them for you. But I think
it was wildly successful and really innovative, you know, the
two different venues going simultaneously, And as Deborah says, it
(12:03):
was just a murderous row of great, incredible performers who
all show up. I mean, legendary performers, everybody from Joni
Mitchell to Stevie Nicks to doctor Dre I mean, my god,
Billie Eilish.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It was crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Gwen Stefani, they got the whole No Doubt crew back together.
It was super impressive.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
Lady Gaga, Lady.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Gaga, Stevie, Wonder, Earth Wind and Fire, thank you exactly,
my go. It was really great.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
And now I'm unclear it'll be up on Is it
up on the iHeartRadio app indefinitely or for a while,
or is it on Hulu indefinitely?
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Anybody know? Can? I watched it on Prime last night?
Oh you did? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah, I think it should be up there. I would
think it would be watchable, but it's definitely worth a watch,
so check it out if you missed any of it.
The twenty four hours that horrible collision between the military
helicopter and the regional jet at Reagan National Airport, a
(13:08):
different passenger jet coming in for a landing at the
airport that same runway alerted the tower that it had
to abort, and the reason was the risk of a
possible collision with a helicopter.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
It played out.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Less than a week earlier, a flight from Charlotte suddenly
pulled out of its approach at National. The captain told
passengers that he was tracking a helicopter and needed to
abort the landing. The two scrubbed landings within a week
really point a finger at the heightened danger that's been
(13:48):
talked about four years posed by frequent military helicopter flights
that are happening right alongside an insanely busy airport. There
have been close calls and worries about crashes four years.
They used to talk about it when I was a kid.
The US Army Blackhawk that crashed into this regional jet
(14:12):
killed sixty four people and the three Army crew members
on the helicopter have been flying along the east bank
of the Potomac, and it's a flight corridor designated for
low flying helicopters. But this is a narrow lane that
keeps these helicopters away from the jet flight paths. It
(14:33):
does intersect, though, with the path of aircraft on this
approach to Runway thirty three. That's the runway involved in
the accident. So as they look at policy, something's got
to change. There is a lot of military training and
other flights around this airport. It is in Washington, DC,
(14:55):
and you can imagine there are a lot of different
federal agencies and military services that are interlocking right around
that airport, and so managing those hazards is hard. And
then you get to the control tower right that staffing
levels were not what they called normal.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Inside the tower, they broke somebody early.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
You're supposed to be down to one person in that
tower handling both helicopters and those commuter flights after nine thirty,
but it's supposed to be two people.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Before nine thirty.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Well, one person was allowed to go home early, and
the crash occurred around eight point fifty, ten minutes before
nine o'clock. So the job of managing the helicopters was
being handled by a controller who was also managing other
air traffic. And had it been a normal night of
normal staffing, that wouldn't have been the case. It would
(15:54):
have been two different people. So you can see there's
a lot going on here and a few moving parts.
When we come back, I do want to hear one
last thing before we go to the NTSB press conference.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Will take it live later. It said, was it thirty?
Thank you?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
When we come back, I want to hear from black
Hawk pilot Lieutenant Colonel Darren gow. He was on Fox
News talking about a lot of aspects and details of
the black Hawk shoppers, why they don't have black boxes,
why they don't have collision warning systems, and he can
just maybe shed some light on this. We'll do that
(16:38):
next as we continue, and as I say, we'll handle
that NTSB press conference when it happens, we'll carry it live.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Mark Toobson for John Cobalt.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
We're KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM six.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Forty John Cobelts Show. Mark Thompson just sitting in for
the afternoon, and the DC plane crash continues to dominate
our attention. Such a thorough tragedy and all sorts of
details being revealed about air traffic in that area and
concerns in that area. FAA knowing that it was problematic
(17:16):
much of the helicopter traffic coexisting with commuter plane traffic.
And Parry Russell from ABC News is in Washington with
more high Perry, see how are you.
Speaker 6 (17:27):
Yeah, Well, I'm looking right now at the Potelmac where
it appears that there is a crane in the water
that is working on lifting the Blackhawk helicopter. We knew
that cranes were going to be arriving today to start
work what we were told earlier in a news conference
that they would start tomorrow on the airplanes. And this
is kind of catching a lot of reporters by surprise
(17:48):
right now that it appears they are starting to lift
the Blackhawk helicopter out of the water. We know one
soldier has already been recovered and we know that two
more are believed to be inside. So that what's happening
to you right now?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
There is going to be a press conference I think
in about an hour at which they'll the NTSB officials,
I assume, will give us what details they are comfortable sharing.
I mean, I guess these investigators wild take a very
long time, but we get a sort of piece miller
along the way.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
Yeah, So the NTFP is we're expecting a full preliminary
report from them within thirty days. They had that news
conference yesterday basically setting everything up for their first day
on the job. We know that today they have both
black boxes from the airplane. One is a voice recorder,
other one is a data recorder. So for the voice
recorder records everything that was being said between the pilots
(18:39):
and what other noises were happening inside, whether it's a
ping or a boom or a scratch of any kind.
But multiple people have to listen to that audio recording.
They call it being auditioned, So multiple people listen to that.
The investigators right down what they hear that they match
up transcripts. I'm not sure what we're going to hear
today from the NTFP in just about an hour from
(18:59):
the out. It's a very evolving situation. But there was
a news conference held by DC Fire not too long
ago where they told us that forty one victims have
been recovered so far, twenty eight have been positively idd.
And my question for them was, you know, forty one
is not sixty seven. We know sixty seven people were
killed in this, and that number there's a large difference
(19:21):
there with twenty six. And they said that they believe
they know where the other twenty six are. But what
the chief told me was, quote, we think we know
where they are, we won't know until we are done.
So this is an evolving situation here in the next
couple of days, and.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
That's a pretty grim task having to well fish those
bodies out, those sweet souls who lost their lives in
all this. The FAA telling you this morning that they're
not giving permission for the low altitude helicopter roots around
DCA for the time being. I saw that ABC was
reporting that, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
That's correct. So the FAA is essentially stopping all of
these low flying Blackhawk he copters that go up and
down the Potomacs. Theer's essentially like a grid of a
no flies on some capacity for these helicopters around DCA.
It's not clear how long that is going to last.
You know that the FAA is saying that they're going
to wait for the ntsd's preliminary report to be complete
(20:17):
before they decide to reopen, so that could happen within
the next thirty days, but there really is no date
on when that decision is going to be made.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I mean, it is the case, isn't it, Perry That
increasingly they're talking about something that has been talked about
in Washington for a while. Now you're really getting some
oxygen to this issue of helicopters coexisting with the commuter
flights and passenger jets at that same airport, which saw
so many of these regular training maneuvers going on.
Speaker 6 (20:47):
Yeah, it's a really busy airport for people who aren't
too familiar with how DCA works. You have helicopters that
are flying around, you have planes that are landing, and
some you know, senators have raised the question of is
DCA too busy. I was talking with Senator Tim Kane
from Virginia yesterday. He has kind of been ringing the
bell on that for a few years now, and he
(21:08):
told me he wanted to be cautious and you know,
before jumping to conclusions on blaming too much work for DCA,
too much volume for this being the exact cause you know,
it's just something they're going to be looking at. You know,
air traffic control and flying over DCA in and out
of DCA will never be the same after this.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
I think that's a very well put Harry RUSSELM. Thank you,
ABC News correspondent in Washington.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Again.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
The NTSB schedule to hold up media briefing. It'll be
four o'clock today. Oh, I'm sorry, It'll be two thirty
is the revised time. I'm laughing because they keep changing
the time. But it's a you can understand why. It's
a fluid situation. So now two thirty will carry it live.
One of the things that was interesting along the way,
just to put a button on it, is these black
(21:58):
Hawk helicopters, what they have and what they don't have
and well being interviewed on Fox News retired to Aeutenant
Colonel Darren gobb And he's a former black Hawk pilot.
I was talking about why Blackhawks don't have black boxes
and collision warning systems.
Speaker 7 (22:16):
We can't rule out pilot error, we can't rule out
air traffic control error. The collision warning system. Why don't
the black Hawks have that? And why don't they have
a black box. Is it because in times of war
we don't want to leave anything behind.
Speaker 8 (22:27):
Well, one of them is this model of aircraft is
quite a bit over and to put something like that
in it would have had been part of the initial package,
and that just that didn't really exist when they started
making these, and it was It's a risk calculation too
for what you install for the space you have.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Second of all, it put.
Speaker 8 (22:44):
Into collision avoidance and warning systems at a black hawk.
Most of the time when blackhawks fly. When I ran
in the Salt battalion, you put ten aircraft in formation
flying close together, close to the ground. If you have
a collision avoidance system, it's going to be constantly going
off because you're always close to something. So it just
doesn't make any sense to put in this model of
(23:04):
helicopter in the first place.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
They also talk about, and this is shilling. I think
that when you're flying in an area with a lot
of city lights in that black Hawk, it's hard to
differentiate between an aircraft and street lights.
Speaker 8 (23:18):
One of the biggest mitigating circumstances to that in this
environment is the fact that when you fly in an
environment that is so lit up with city lights, and
you also then blend in aircraft lights and many aircraft flying,
it can actually all kind of blend together, and at
certain altitudes you actually can have a difficult time differentiating
(23:40):
between an aircraft with its lights on and cars on
the streets and street lights and things like that. I've
had that happen to me in Korea where I had
a near miss from seven forty seven because you couldn't
see it. It was just lights moving. We thought they
were cars on the streets. So all of these are
hypotheticals that could factor into a final conclusion someday in
(24:03):
the future.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
That's the tenant Colonel Darren Galvin, a former black Hawk pilot,
talking about some of the challenges.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
It's super scary.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
And I'll tell you when you're in Washington, I go
back there all the time, and I still my mother's
still We've lost my dad this past year, but I
used to go back there all the time to see
both of them. Now I used to go back to
see my mom, of course. And where you want to
fly is Reagan National because it's close to the house,
it's close to the city. Everybody wants it. Okay, Many
flights go in and out of Dulles, but the more
(24:31):
convenient place to fly is Reagan National and for that reason,
as I was mentioning to you about a half hour ago,
there's a lot of political pressure because politicians and their
support staff that they want also to fly out of
that airport. So instead of pulling back on civilian traffic,
they've actually increased civilian traffic over the last decade. And
it's good to see Tim Kane talking about something he's
(24:54):
been talking about for a couple of years, which is
there has to be some renewed f to change the
strategies when it comes to the number of flights, volume
of flights that coexist with these military training exercises going
on alongside. We're learning so much and there will be
changes at DCA after all of this. It's The Cobalt Show,
(25:15):
Mark Thompson sitting in on KFI AM six forty live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
You're listening to John cobelts on demand from KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
John Cobelt's Show. Mark Thompson just sitting in for John
this afternoon. Still to come, We're going to talk to
Alex Stone about the arrest and the charging of that
drone pilot that flew into the firefighting airplane.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Remember that.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I mean that was just as the weather conditions were
permitting airborne traffic to get in and fight this fire.
I mean it was prohibitive for the first what would
you say, thirty hours something like that. I mean, wind
velocities were just too high. Finally got the super scoopers
(26:01):
up and one was hit by a drone flight. Well,
that guy was identified and has been charged, and Alex
Stone is going to give us the latest on that.
That is still to come later in the show. We'll
take the NTSB live press conference at two thirty. There
is an atmospheric river storm coming at least one, maybe two.
(26:25):
It's been an extraordinarily dry start of the year, but
they say that three atmospheric river storms in total are
expected to hit California over the next week. I think
one of them is primarily hitting northern parts of the state.
And they don't think that there is so much of
(26:47):
a risk of intense rain that there'd be debris flows
started from it in mudslide. So they see that risk
at least current forecasts as sort of not as great as,
for example, the situation up north. They're going to have
a powerful and intense kind of atmospheric river brush up north.
(27:12):
But they're saying rain totals here will exceed an inch maybe,
but not over an inch and a half for much
of LA County. Some areas may not even see an inch.
So that would help a lot of vegetation that has
been affected by this historically dry start to the year.
And I'm talking about to the water year, so all
the way back to June. I mean, there's been as
(27:33):
you know, it's widely talked about it no measurable precipitation
since you know, in ten months or whatever it's been.
But now we've had our first rush with a sizable
weather system and storm, and now the latest forecasting models
are saying that there'll be two more soakings. And the
last one dropped a half an inch, about an inch
(27:55):
and a half across the La basein that was last weekend.
We could get close to that Meteorologist of the Nation
Whether Service are saying, and what does that do to
the drought situation?
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Not much. I mean.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
It's going to take a lot more than an inch
and a half. In another inch and a half and
another inch and a half to make up for a
season where you haven't had any rainfall at all. So
even as we get this, it looks as though it
may not put much of a dent in things. Certainly
better than nothing, But again, next week storms might help
(28:34):
establish a pattern. You know, you get some rain for
many hours in sort of intervals that the region can accept,
and you get what might be some relief to this
drought situation. Meantime, as you know, it's against all of
this is against the backdrop of the cleanup that has
(28:56):
been controversial, the idea that you move a lot of
these toxic materials, materials that have been toxified by the fires,
that you move them through areas that a lot of
people live in and may not be happy with. You
have to move them. They have to clear these areas
(29:17):
for a rebuild, to reassess. But all these materials that
are being moved, as I say, they've been toxified, if
you will, they've become dangerous. And so those who are
dealing with the materials that are in the masks and those
who are helping to transfer and transport the materials are
also wearing masks and protective gear. But the route along
(29:39):
the way is controversial. So these controversies continue, and I
don't know really if there is a resolution except for
the fact that they've got to move them out. So
notwithstanding all of the issues that might be provoked by
the fact that a lot of this stuff is toxified.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
The stuff still has to be moved. The other thing that's.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Happening is that schools are reopening, and that continues to
be an issue as well, because parents are worried about
their kids being in situations where they might be too
close to areas of the palisades and eaten fire zones.
For kids to really be in a healthy environment, it's
(30:25):
pretty tough. You want kids to resume their learning, resume
the social structure that's there at school, but there are
questions about health and safety. Should kids return to class
I mean, public health visuals are assuring families that the
schools have been cleaned, that they're safe, but campuses that
(30:46):
are close to these areas burned do raise questions, right.
I mean the schools themselves, they have been cleaned, and
they're staff by people who've been committed to cleaning their classrooms.
A lot of the teachers cleaned the classrooms themselves, but
that Canyon Charter Elementary School and Paul Revere Charter Middle
(31:08):
School and Pacific Palisades they have two thousand kids. They've
already welcomed those kids back, and there are other schools
there near the Palisades that haven't open. So as the
region and I just mean all of us deal with
the emotion with the loss. Just coming off that hugely
(31:31):
successful iHeart benefit the fire aid show from last night.
The destruction has been absolute and complete. I mean that
eat and fire. It burned out five campuses in the
Pepacady in the area, and the fire in the Palisades
burned out two elementary schools, damaged that Palisades Charter High School.
(31:56):
So judgments have to be made and decisions have to
be made about what areas are safe, what can be rebuilt,
and what strategies can be employed moving forward. All of
that continues to be an issue when we come back.
Brian Suits is going to join us to talk about
these black Hawk helicopters and these military maneuvers that seem
(32:17):
to be the thing that plagued this situation in Washington,
and not only plagued it to the point that this
accident happened, but plagued it as an issue that was
an evolving issue year after year, alongside passenger flights in Washington.
(32:37):
Brian Suits talks about all of that as we continue.
It's The John Coblt Show. Mark Thompson sitting in on
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Hey you've been listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast.
You can always hear the show live on KFI AM
six forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
The John Kobylt Show News
Host
John Kobylt
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