February 3, 2025 • 35 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (02/03) - Details on Pacific Palisades re-opening. The LA Times is finally starting to do some real reporting on stuff that matters. More on what went wrong during the fires in the LA area. David Howard comes on the show to talk about how insurance companies knew the Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty and that was one of the reasons they cancelled policies.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I Am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Canf I Am six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
We're on again every day from one until four o'clock,
and then after four o'clock. Whatever you missed you could
listen to John Cobelt's show on demand. It's the podcast
also on the iHeart app. Tremendous amount to cover today.
How are we on, Tracy? She ready yet?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Her?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Okay, They're going to let me know whatever. Tracy Park
is ready to come on. She's probably the busiest person
in the city of Los Angeles, the council woman for
the eleventh district along the West side, including Pacific Palisades.
I couldn't believe what was unfolding over the weekend. And
I can tell you having a as I mentioned, knowing
(00:52):
a fair number of people in the Pacific Palisades area
who are suffering from this. Everyone is if you could
be angry and depressed at the same time, they're angry
and depressed. And what's intensifying the anger and the depression.
It seems to be a complete lack of anybody in
government outside of Tracy knowing what the hell they're doing.
(01:13):
I mean, on Friday, I'm sorry, on Saturday night, Karen
bess Well, let me back up. On Friday, she said
that they were going to get rid of the checkpoints
leading to Pacific Palisades and they were going to open
pch into Malibu.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
That was on Friday.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
By Saturday night, she reversed her decision because everybody spent
about thirty hours screaming and yelling and waving their arms
that this would be the nuttiest thing to do. I mean,
absolutely insane idea to take away really the California National Guard,
which had been banning the checkpoints, because if you take
away the checkpoints, the whole world could enter the palisides.
(01:54):
And we've got thousands of criminals here in Los Angeles
who like to enter the Palisades and pick over whatever
treasures you're left and break into whatever homes haven't been
burned to the ground. I mean, if you saw this idea,
you're thinking, why are you completely out of your mind?
Do you know what's out there? Does she have any
idea how many criminals live in the city and have
(02:18):
lived in the city under her protection the last two years,
because her buddy George Gascone wouldn't prosecute anybody. Well, Tracy
Park and see Steve Soberoff, who was appointed by Bass
two weeks ago to lead the recovery. Both of them
said the same thing that opening the checkpoints was premature. Premature,
(02:43):
which is the polite political word for are you e
fing crazy?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Now.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I'm not gonna put words in anybody's mouth, but that
was my reaction. The Bass actually made Gavin Newsom look
like a hero, if you could believe it, because he
offend the city to keep the National Guard going and
the California Highway Patrol LPD simply doesn't have enough officers
(03:12):
on a good day to govern Los Angeles normally.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
There.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
From what I've heard, they're about sixteen hundred officers short
of what they wanted to have. They have eighty six
hundred to man the city. They need ten thousand, two hundred,
which is what they had before Eric Carceti started taking
a knee in front of the Black Lives Matter protesters,
And they actually need about twelve thousand to handle the
(03:41):
Olympics coming up in three years, so they're way way
under staffed. If you want to hit that twelve thousand
officer mark. You have to increase the.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
The staff by forty.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
And now they've been on tactical alert since January seventh,
which means everybody is working long shifts without days off,
and I imagine every single officer is completely exhausted. But
if you're going to give them a break, you got
to replace him with somebody. And Bass just simply didn't
(04:19):
think this through. I understand she blurted this out during
one of those god awful Zoom meetings to the Palisades
residents who thought just went into shock. Look, I told
you I'd lived through some of this, these instant crime spreees.
Because when they shut the power off to my neighborhood,
(04:40):
and I'm about four or five miles from where the
fire hit. When they shut the power off to my neighborhood,
the looters took over. Within a couple of days, we
had seven robberies on my block. Seven robberies on my
block because it was completely dark, there was zero lighting,
(05:02):
there was no police presence, and some looters started breaking
into homes. A lot of the homes were empty because
people had evacuated since they shut off the power.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
We were in a voluntary warning zone.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
And that's that's the only reason we stayed behind in
the dark for eight days, is to to to keep
looters from breaking in. Well in the Palisades, there's since
the most of the homes are burned down, what are
people supposed to do? You can't even hide in your
house to try to ward off the looters. And not
(05:38):
every item in every home is been burned or melted.
There is a few treasures that can be recovered for
some of the homes. Some of the homes are partially burned.
Some of the homes not burned at all, but there's
massive smoke damage in the like.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
But you can't have looters running through there.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
In Los Angeles is filled with looters because we have
a government that won't put them away. Now, I don't
know what are you doing to us? What are they
doing to us? And does Karen Bess have anything left
in her head?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Anything? Any what would compel you to take out the
National Guard? Right now?
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I just want to know how she came to that decision.
What was that conversation? Is everybody drinking? Why would you
take out the.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
National Guard when there's no power?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I am totally astonished and this is what's terribly depressing
because clearly she's not going to lead LA to the
rebuilt promised land. That's not going to happen. And we
got we got two more years of this. There are
some people and I worked for a person like this
and all said, somebody in my family was like this. Somehow,
(06:52):
some way, they always make the wrong decision.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I don't even know how they do it, you know,
not even you think.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
You know fifty to fifty odds, even if you flip
a coin, fifty percent of the time you ought to
make the right decision. They just consistently make the wrong decision.
And Karen Bass is one of those people. And I
do not understand. You know what I think it is.
I think she just wanted a headline to say, hey,
look at that La, But what's the stupid phrase they have?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
LA strong?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
That's right, La strong, and we're back on track in
four weeks. How about that four weeks, we've already lifted
the checkpoints and people go back to the Palisades and rebuild.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
That's what she wanted.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
It's kind of like the reason Joe Biden abruptly pulled
out of Afghanistan because he wanted to have a ceremony
in the twentieth anniversary of nine to eleven to say, well,
you're that well, you know, we've pulled out of Afghanistan
and it was a big success, and that's why he
removed the troops so quickly, and it ended up being
a fiasco.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
It's the same thing here.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
They want some quick wicky headline to erase the memory
of all the things that have gone wrong. Which I'll
talk about this in the next segment. The Los Angeles
Times suddenly is aiming for Pulitzer Prizes after all these years.
I cannot believe how they've snapped back and done real
(08:22):
investigative reporting. Honestly, I haven't seen this in many years
on something that matters, not on one of their weirdo
progressive projects, but on something that really matters. And suddenly
they're doing brilliant stuff. You know they want to get
they want to get an award. Well, fine, get an award.
I'll tell you though, what I read today is that well,
(08:46):
to some of the la whether it was the fire department,
the police department, the emergency, the emergency command, they had
the city itself had zero plan for something like this.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Zero. I don't know what people do all day.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I don't think a wildfire is that shocking to have
in Los Angeles or in southern California. But Los Angeles
was completely not only not prepared, just they've never given
a thought to it. They they there was there was
no system to say, Okay, uh, it's it's fire emergency.
(09:28):
Let's go to System A or System B or whatever
the manual say nothing. They had never planned for anything,
and if they did, they're keeping it a secret because
nobody's talking. So I'm assuming the I'm assuming the worst. Uh,
we'll continue with this coming up.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from kf I
AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Tracy Park is gonna be on with us as soon
as she's can, as soon as she can. She's in
an emergency eating now about this very situation, very serious
situation here. This seems to be chaos in Karen Bass's office,
in Karen Bass's head because over the weekend she decided
(10:15):
that she was going to reopen the Pacific Palisades and
get rid of the checkpoints. This was on Friday. By
Saturday she did a one to eighty and said no, no,
we'll keep the checkpoints. Governor Newsom had to actually step
in and say, no, no, keep the checkpoints. We'll give you
the National Guard to carry on. I mean, they've been
(10:37):
here a while. They can just stay for a further
period of time and the CHP will continue staying as well.
But to pull out, to pull out of the checkpoints
because the police are over burn and need a break,
There's got to be another solution to that. I mean,
you can't just send the police home because the bad
(10:58):
guys are going to steal every thing that hasn't burned
in the Palisades. And I cannot believe she didn't think
that through, and every everybody was screaming at her from
Tracy Park, you know, in their polite political way. Rick
Caruso weighed in and we're going to talk about more
about him and what he's doing temper Europe in the mountains.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Are you aware of.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Any evacuation system that goes on in the neighborhood, like
what roots.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
To take out? No? Nope, like this, has there ever
been a meeting?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Has there ever been some kind of like zoom something
to say, hey, if we have really bad fire, here's
how we're getting out.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Of the No.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
In fact, no, in fact, a group of neighbors. I
think I mentioned this to you when the when the
fires were going on, we started our own kind of
notification system, alerting everybody in this chat if we've heard anything.
But no, there was nothing. There was no formal, any
kind of notification system for our area.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Well except for.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
The water story, right, the watch Duty, which is an
outside app which was collecting information that it was getting
from the radio broadcast, the fire radio, and the police
radio that they were monitoring. Because reading this this La
Times story today, it turns out everybody's on their own
(12:20):
if you're in the city of Los Angeles. And I
can't speak for the other cities, but in Los Angeles
you do not have And I don't mean this as hyperbole.
I don't mean this as a mister talk show host
going crazy here. I mean this literally, you have nobody
who's going to help you out. You're you're you're totally
(12:40):
on your own. And it looks like it's been this
way for decades, which is the time.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I know this was.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Going to happen one day, with with all the bad
decisions and all so much of the infrastructure ignored for
so long, this was going to happen, and you know,
January seventh, twenty twenty five ended up being the day.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
But man, the more I read.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
According to Times today, they got an article by Melody
Gutierrez Nathan Fenno page Saint John. It's very, very long,
but I'll give you the most important parts. They wrote
that decades of warnings that the Palisades three major roads
coming out of the Highlands, which is that development north
(13:34):
of Sunset Boulevard, the three major roads were inadequate escape
routes for the thousands of people living in the upper
reaches of the Palisades. Streets were gridlocked forty minutes before
the first widespread evacuation order. People looked at their windows
and saw the smoke and the wind, and to care
(13:57):
for themselves, they jumped in their car and got out. Now,
the people who lived up there had been lobbying literally
for decades that there's got to be a better evacuation
route than this. Roads had to be built a plan,
and for decades the city, all the mayors and the
(14:22):
city council ignored them. That's why when you hear somebody
like Karen Basco, well, you know, public safety is our
first priority.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Stopped the lying. It was zero priority.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
It wasn't even the top ten or top twenty issues
of importance. It was non existent. It didn't make the list.
As flames approached, firefighters and police told motorists to get
out of their cars and.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
Run, which we saw on live TV.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And we had a woman on the air with us
who jumped out of her car while she was talking
to us because the cop was banging on her door,
woman named Kelly. She jumped out and she ran away.
The abandoned cars worsened the jam, so now the firefighters
couldn't get through, and the residents trapped by the blocked
(15:24):
roads said they were forced to shelter in their homes,
which of course isn't a real good idea. And I'm
reading just that was a paragraph, and I'm thinking, well,
in that what paragraph it encapsulated a complete total breakdown
of planning and execution for something that was bound to happen.
(15:47):
They've got they've got stories here about individuals or families
and how they were threatened in how they got out.
They look at the Schwartz family. The Swartz family has
(16:08):
lived for eleven years in Santa Ynez Canyon, and you
know there was a fire on New Year's Day, which
may have been the precursor to the big one. There
was the twenty twenty one Palisades Fire, the twenty nineteen
Getty and Palisades fires, the twenty eighteen Woolseley fire, and
the Palisades were also hit. Going back to nineteen seventy
(16:30):
eight by the Mandeville Canyon fire. The Ally Times called
that fire Black Monday. Their house is two blocks from
the edge of the nineteen thirty eight wildfire that gutted
this canyon and other canyons. It says a long history
of fires in the region and a long history of
(16:51):
the residents saying, hey, we have no way to get out.
Of course, I don't think it ever in a place
like that.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Where I live up at the hills.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
John There's maybe well. And my husband and I were
having conversations about this during during the wildfires, because I said,
if we have to go, we can't go this way,
which is one way, because there's no way.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
It would be so.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
Everybody would go that way, we'd never get out, and
then the other way. Because we live up in the hills,
they're they're very narrow roads. But we kind of devised
a plan Okay, this is the street we're going to
go to because most people are going to go here.
And I think that's what you have to do. Like
you said, you're on your own. You've got to figure
out this stuff because you're you're You can't you can't
(17:41):
depend on anybody.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
No, no, because nobody in government cares for all the
millions and millions and billions and billions of tax dollars
everybody pays. When it came down to it, Karen Best
never bothered to put a plan together. Neither did that
fire chief Kristen Crowley. Neither did the city city council,
or the police chief or anybody. Nobody put a plan
(18:05):
together to rescue you. You were left to burn and
die in the Palisades, and it could happen to any
of us. Just know that the city their plan is
to let you burn and die.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I mean, this is astonishing.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Here.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
We'll do more when we come back.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI A
six forty.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
We're on from one.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Until four every day and then after four o'clock John Cobelt's.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Show on demand on the iHeart app.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
All right, we're going through in La Times another investigative
peace on everything that went wrong, the reaction.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
It's fair to say that the City.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Of La the La Fire Department, the La City well,
the police department, everybody had no plan for this, even
though on January second they started getting extreme fire warnings
from the National Weather Service. There is absolutely not a
whiff of a plan to deal with a potential fire.
(19:13):
And it's actually, really it's really depressing because there never
was a plan.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
So The Times kind of, well The Times.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
What they did is went through a minute by minute
analysis of what happened. Because the fire was first noticed
about ten twenty five, ten twenty nine, the first emergency
call goes in on nine to one one by eleven twelve,
so we're talking about now about forty five minutes. Forty
(19:45):
five minutes later. Many residents are already packing cars. They're
a step ahead of the Palisades Incident Command. This is
the central nerve center set up at the bottom of
the canyon on Palisades Drive. What I read is like
three SUVs. That's what the incident command center is. Three
(20:08):
SUVs drive up and they have all the communications equipment
and they keep moving depending on where the flames are going.
And they can see what's happening on the slopes.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Now, whatever planning.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Documents they have call for LAPD to take charge of
disaster evacuations. The police supposed to alert the residents, drive
up and down the street with the loudspeakers on or
bang on doors if they have to, and then to
route the traffic and convert congested rows roads to one
way flow.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
To keep people moving.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
But when there's a raging brush fire, and if you're
within thirty minutes of danger, it's the fire department that's
supposed to take over evacuation. You follow this, it's the
police department. Unless the fire is moving really fast, then
it's the fire department.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
But nobody evacuated these people.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Forty seven minutes after the fire had started, and nine
minutes after warning the residents that they might have to leave,
they sent a phone message. The command post tells dispatchers
that there are no orders to leave. We are not
evacuating residents at this time. We're in the process of
putting that piece together. But people aren't waiting. They're packing
(21:32):
their cars and getting out. Can you imagine the fire
officials at the command post are going, you know, yeah,
we're gonna have a meeting on this, and you know,
but way all get on zoom together and see meantime,
everybody's spreaking out and grabbing whatever stuff they can and
(21:53):
their family members and their pets, and they're jumping in
cars and they're all trying to come down the hill
at the same time. But there's no official evacuation notice yet.
People are using their own eyes. They're not waiting for
the bureaucracy. Since the nineteen seventies, the Pacific Palisades Community Council.
(22:14):
Community councils are made up of local residents and business owners.
Every section of town has one of these. They have
no direct power, they're an advisory committee. So since the
seventies we're talking now, fifty years, the council has repeatedly
warned lawmakers and planning departments that the strangled evacuation routes
(22:38):
in the Palisades are a serious risk to lives in
public safety. Fifty freaking years, these people have been telling
the blockheads that run this city, hey, there's no way
out of here. And they've had repeated fires. Even after
(23:00):
a nineteen seventy eight firestorm, this was the Mendeville fire
swept the same canyon burned thirty homes. News accounts and
campaign contribution records show that housing developers used influence with
state lawmakers and the la City Council to negotiate exemptions
(23:22):
to growth limits.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
You had to translate that.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
The housing developers bribed state legislators and bribed city council
members so that they could keep building in high fire
danger zones. And they did, and people bought the homes.
So you had the council saying, hey, this is really dangerous,
(23:47):
there's no way out of here, and the council men
and women at the time go, oh, yeah, you're right,
you know this is really dangerous. We've got to do something. Meantime,
they're getting cash like crazy from the developers. Nobody at
the city council ever looked out for you, and nobody
in the state legislature ever looked out for you. What
(24:11):
they did is they took money so that you can
remain in danger in your neighborhood. Development is a political thing,
a fire chief told the residents' council in twenty sixteen,
and listen to this advice.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
In twenty sixteen, he said Palisades residents should.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Stay put during an emergency once fire engines arrived, because
evacuees on the roads would only compromise the official plan.
I mean he did know that everybody was going to
evacuate at once and the firefighters couldn't get up there.
But telling you to stay in your house. How many
(24:56):
people would have died if they'd listened to this guy
because he neglected to mention that the fire hydrants weren't
going to work and that the reservoir would be bone
dry empty. You imagine this, The reservoir is empty, the
fire hydrants don't work, and in twenty sixteen, this fire
(25:18):
chief is saying, hey, I better stay in your home.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
You don't want to clog up the roots. Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
In twenty twenty three, there was a city traffic officer
who told the residence council, how'd you love that they've
had all these meetings for fifty years and all the
warnings have been given out. Everybody knows exactly what's gone wrong. Well.
In twenty twenty three, the city traffic officer said, the
bottom roads are so congested that the police department can't
(25:44):
even run speed traps on them. Yeah, that's why we
have a police department to run speed traps. They looked
at the meeting minutes, and this traffic officer assured the
board that in the event of an evacuation, motorcycle officers
would be used in great to direct people out in
the safest manner to avoid the traffic snarls. It's like,
don't worry, we got a whole fleet of motorcycle officers
(26:07):
and they'll take you on.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
A route somehow somewhere.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
There were no motorcycle escorts for the residents during the
Palisades fire. Disaster planning software that they developed at Old
Dominion University. This software analyzes roads, populations, and traffic patterns
to estimate the time needed to get people safely out.
And they calculated evacuation time for the Palisades Highlands to
(26:36):
be five hours and ten minutes. And that's without a
fire cutting off the exit routes. And that's with half
the main roads converted to one way flow. In reality,
in the Palisades on January seventh, the people had less
than an hour before the evacuation routes became impassable and
(26:58):
people had to flee their cars so they wouldn't roast
alive inside them. Yeah, but the planning software said you
got five hours, wow, total disaster Theena. They've been wrong,
and they've been wrong consistently on everything for fifty years.
(27:20):
And we haven't even gotten to the fire, hydrants being
broken and no water in the reservoir, which we'll get
to at another time, not right now, coming up after
two o'clock. What I got coming up after two o'clock.
I know, I know we've got something really good coming.
(27:44):
And Oh Vianueva, right, Alex Vianueva is going to come
on to talk about Well, here's more about ungovernable, lawless
Los Angeles. We've got thousands of people in downtown LA
yesterday shutting down the one on one illegal immigration.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Nobody did anything about it.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
sixty Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
The city without laws yesterday over the weekend. Rather, yes,
this was on Sunday, thousands of people shut down the
one on one to protest Trump and his deportations. Seems
like that would have been fertile ground for ice and
talk to Alex being away. Then I understand there was
(28:32):
another demonstration today as well, So please didn't do anything yesterday.
Let's get I was talking about the Only Times had
a story today a complete failure by the city of
Los Angeles for fifty years to prepare an evacuation process
(28:53):
for those who live in the Palisades and the Palisades Highlands.
Since the nineteen seventies, the local town, the local community council,
has been begging the police and the fire department in
the city for a plan and have gotten nothing. And
the morning of the big fire on on January seventh,
(29:13):
it was just chaos. David Howard's a sales manager here
at KFI and for iHeart and we had him on
a few weeks ago because he he lost his whole house,
he and his family, and uh, he's been in the mix,
in the in the thick of things in the Palisades
to try to see what's going on.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
David, are there?
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Hey, John, how are you?
Speaker 1 (29:36):
I'm doing all right? How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
We're doing okay, you know, day of time. But you know,
just listening to you, you know, it just gets me
so fired up, no pun intended, because everything that you're
sharing with our all the listeners is to see it
happen on the ground in our neighborhoods. It's just really
hard to comprehend the the lack of any kind of
(30:01):
leadership and any kind of plan put in place. On
Saturday when when Bass ordered the palisades to open up,
the amount of people that came out and just I
mean the firestorm again, I'm going to use these words
of dissent was massive and we went into action, and
(30:22):
thank god, we were able to have enough influence that
we stopped the bad guys from coming into town. There's
people that they haven't even seen their homes yet, and they're.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Like, what in God's name was she thinking of?
Speaker 2 (30:33):
What was she thinking to lift the security checks? That
that's insane, literally insane, not sure.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
The only good news about it is whenever these things
happen in these miss she makes these decisions, all it
does is bring everybody together that much more. And it
was evident by the result that happened. And I can
tell you about sharing names, but you can probably figure
out who some of these people are. There was a
lot of pressure put on the state because the city
(31:04):
is just not capable of handling this event. They're just
not And there's a lot going on behind the scenes,
and we're going to continue to do the right thing
to make sure that people are protected and safe and
the property and you know that it just doesn't get
into the wrong hands.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
It's awfully difficult when you don't have anybody to rely
on in city government.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Here.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
You know, I have a story for you and this
is the God's honest truth. The day after the fire,
on the eighth of January, I shared with my wife.
I said, you know, my biggest concern is not the
fact that our house burned down. I was very concerned
that our town burnt down. But my biggest concern, and
it's coming, it's happening as we speak, was that the
(31:47):
local city government under Karen Bass's leadership, would not be
able to handle this. And it doesn't put anybody in
a position of any kind of confidence or because it's
not there, not there, and it's you know, we pay
a very disapportioning amount of Texas, which I'm happy to
pay all day long, but I'm not happy to pay
(32:09):
it if we get no services as part of that payment.
Another thing I just wanted to show with you real quick.
I heard the story that the insurance companies and you
know which ones, have been canceling people for you know,
literally people are getting canceled. The month of January, the
insurance companies had actuaries visiting the Palisades in twenty twenty four.
(32:32):
The insurance companies knew that there was no water in
the reservoirs. They knew that the brush was completely overgrown,
so they started doing, you know, to protect their business, like,
we can't afford to ensure people here. It's just not
a good business decision. And it makes sense. How does
the insurance companies send actuaries and know that that's the case,
(32:52):
but the city can't get ahead of it to put
water back in the reservoirs.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
How is that possible?
Speaker 2 (33:01):
That's astonishing that the actuaries knew there was no water
in the reservoirs, and so that's why the insurance was
being cut to so many people.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I guess, oh my god, all you need to.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Do is do a fly, fly a drone over the brush,
and fly a drone over the reservoirs and boom, there
you go. We can't afford to ensure this stuff. And
then the other thing I just want to share and
get up my chest because nowhere on a limited time
here is if you remember the town hall that Trump
had at fire Station sixty nine one, of the residents
brought up the fact that they were very concerned that
(33:38):
the federal money being issued to help with the disaster relief,
both for Altadena and for Pacific Halisades could possibly end
up in the wrong hands. You remember that, and Trump's reaction,
which was the right reaction, said that they were going
to name somebody to make sure that there's oversight on that.
We have still yet to hear. I have not heard
who that person is, but I can tell you that
(34:00):
the residents are very concerned that that money gets put
in the wrong bucket and doesn't go to what it's
supposed to go to.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Well, we're gonna stay on top of that, I promise you,
because you need we need the money.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Yeah, the money. You help me.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
You let me know what you hear, because I have
seen nothing on on who was going to be I
think they called it a special master, uh and and
have that money put in the hands of some independent
person who uh can can protect it from being stolen
basically by the city city and misspent.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
That's right, or general nobody, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, oh yeah, the general fund. That's a that's a
black hole. It's just get sucked a win. All right, yeah,
all right, David, I got to doing the news. Thank
you for coming on again and and anything you know,
let us know and put you on anytime.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
All right.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Well, h well, John, talk to you soon. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
David Howard, he's sales manager here at KFI and iHeart.
All right, well we come back, get alex Vina Wava
on the former sheriff thousand. Meantime, thousands of people who
are not American citizens shut down the one on one
yesterday and nobody stopped them. Angry that all the illegal
aliens are getting deported by Trump. That's next. Deborah Marcus
(35:22):
live in the KFI twenty for our newsroom. 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
I Am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Canf I Am six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
We're on again every day from one until four o'clock,
and then after four o'clock. Whatever you missed you could
listen to John Cobelt's show on demand. It's the podcast
also on the iHeart app. Tremendous amount to cover today.
How are we on, Tracy? She ready yet?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Her?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Okay, They're going to let me know whatever. Tracy Park
is ready to come on. She's probably the busiest person
in the city of Los Angeles, the council woman for
the eleventh district along the West side, including Pacific Palisades.
I couldn't believe what was unfolding over the weekend. And
I can tell you having a as I mentioned, knowing
(00:52):
a fair number of people in the Pacific Palisades area
who are suffering from this. Everyone is if you could
be angry and depressed at the same time, they're angry
and depressed. And what's intensifying the anger and the depression.
It seems to be a complete lack of anybody in
government outside of Tracy knowing what the hell they're doing.
(01:13):
I mean, on Friday, I'm sorry, on Saturday night, Karen
bess Well, let me back up. On Friday, she said
that they were going to get rid of the checkpoints
leading to Pacific Palisades and they were going to open
pch into Malibu.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
That was on Friday.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
By Saturday night, she reversed her decision because everybody spent
about thirty hours screaming and yelling and waving their arms
that this would be the nuttiest thing to do. I mean,
absolutely insane idea to take away really the California National Guard,
which had been banning the checkpoints, because if you take
away the checkpoints, the whole world could enter the palisides.
(01:54):
And we've got thousands of criminals here in Los Angeles
who like to enter the Palisades and pick over whatever
treasures you're left and break into whatever homes haven't been
burned to the ground. I mean, if you saw this idea,
you're thinking, why are you completely out of your mind?
Do you know what's out there? Does she have any
idea how many criminals live in the city and have
(02:18):
lived in the city under her protection the last two years,
because her buddy George Gascone wouldn't prosecute anybody. Well, Tracy
Park and see Steve Soberoff, who was appointed by Bass
two weeks ago to lead the recovery. Both of them
said the same thing that opening the checkpoints was premature. Premature,
(02:43):
which is the polite political word for are you e
fing crazy?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Now.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I'm not gonna put words in anybody's mouth, but that
was my reaction. The Bass actually made Gavin Newsom look
like a hero, if you could believe it, because he
offend the city to keep the National Guard going and
the California Highway Patrol LPD simply doesn't have enough officers
(03:12):
on a good day to govern Los Angeles normally.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
There.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
From what I've heard, they're about sixteen hundred officers short
of what they wanted to have. They have eighty six
hundred to man the city. They need ten thousand, two hundred,
which is what they had before Eric Carceti started taking
a knee in front of the Black Lives Matter protesters,
And they actually need about twelve thousand to handle the
(03:41):
Olympics coming up in three years, so they're way way
under staffed. If you want to hit that twelve thousand
officer mark. You have to increase the.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
The staff by forty.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
And now they've been on tactical alert since January seventh,
which means everybody is working long shifts without days off,
and I imagine every single officer is completely exhausted. But
if you're going to give them a break, you got
to replace him with somebody. And Bass just simply didn't
(04:19):
think this through. I understand she blurted this out during
one of those god awful Zoom meetings to the Palisades
residents who thought just went into shock. Look, I told
you I'd lived through some of this, these instant crime spreees.
Because when they shut the power off to my neighborhood,
(04:40):
and I'm about four or five miles from where the
fire hit. When they shut the power off to my neighborhood,
the looters took over. Within a couple of days, we
had seven robberies on my block. Seven robberies on my
block because it was completely dark, there was zero lighting,
(05:02):
there was no police presence, and some looters started breaking
into homes. A lot of the homes were empty because
people had evacuated since they shut off the power.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
We were in a voluntary warning zone.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
And that's that's the only reason we stayed behind in
the dark for eight days, is to to to keep
looters from breaking in. Well in the Palisades, there's since
the most of the homes are burned down, what are
people supposed to do? You can't even hide in your
house to try to ward off the looters. And not
(05:38):
every item in every home is been burned or melted.
There is a few treasures that can be recovered for
some of the homes. Some of the homes are partially burned.
Some of the homes not burned at all, but there's
massive smoke damage in the like.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
But you can't have looters running through there.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
In Los Angeles is filled with looters because we have
a government that won't put them away. Now, I don't
know what are you doing to us? What are they
doing to us? And does Karen Bess have anything left
in her head?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Anything? Any what would compel you to take out the
National Guard? Right now?
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I just want to know how she came to that decision.
What was that conversation? Is everybody drinking? Why would you
take out the.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
National Guard when there's no power?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I am totally astonished and this is what's terribly depressing
because clearly she's not going to lead LA to the
rebuilt promised land. That's not going to happen. And we
got we got two more years of this. There are
some people and I worked for a person like this
and all said, somebody in my family was like this. Somehow,
(06:52):
some way, they always make the wrong decision.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I don't even know how they do it, you know,
not even you think.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
You know fifty to fifty odds, even if you flip
a coin, fifty percent of the time you ought to
make the right decision. They just consistently make the wrong decision.
And Karen Bass is one of those people. And I
do not understand. You know what I think it is.
I think she just wanted a headline to say, hey,
look at that La, But what's the stupid phrase they have?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
LA strong?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
That's right, La strong, and we're back on track in
four weeks. How about that four weeks, we've already lifted
the checkpoints and people go back to the Palisades and rebuild.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
That's what she wanted.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
It's kind of like the reason Joe Biden abruptly pulled
out of Afghanistan because he wanted to have a ceremony
in the twentieth anniversary of nine to eleven to say, well,
you're that well, you know, we've pulled out of Afghanistan
and it was a big success, and that's why he
removed the troops so quickly, and it ended up being
a fiasco.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
It's the same thing here.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
They want some quick wicky headline to erase the memory
of all the things that have gone wrong. Which I'll
talk about this in the next segment. The Los Angeles
Times suddenly is aiming for Pulitzer Prizes after all these years.
I cannot believe how they've snapped back and done real
(08:22):
investigative reporting. Honestly, I haven't seen this in many years
on something that matters, not on one of their weirdo
progressive projects, but on something that really matters. And suddenly
they're doing brilliant stuff. You know they want to get
they want to get an award. Well, fine, get an award.
I'll tell you though, what I read today is that well,
(08:46):
to some of the la whether it was the fire department,
the police department, the emergency, the emergency command, they had
the city itself had zero plan for something like this.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Zero. I don't know what people do all day.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I don't think a wildfire is that shocking to have
in Los Angeles or in southern California. But Los Angeles
was completely not only not prepared, just they've never given
a thought to it. They they there was there was
no system to say, Okay, uh, it's it's fire emergency.
(09:28):
Let's go to System A or System B or whatever
the manual say nothing. They had never planned for anything,
and if they did, they're keeping it a secret because
nobody's talking. So I'm assuming the I'm assuming the worst. Uh,
we'll continue with this coming up.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from kf I
AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Tracy Park is gonna be on with us as soon
as she's can, as soon as she can. She's in
an emergency eating now about this very situation, very serious
situation here. This seems to be chaos in Karen Bass's office,
in Karen Bass's head because over the weekend she decided
(10:15):
that she was going to reopen the Pacific Palisades and
get rid of the checkpoints. This was on Friday. By
Saturday she did a one to eighty and said no, no,
we'll keep the checkpoints. Governor Newsom had to actually step
in and say, no, no, keep the checkpoints. We'll give you
the National Guard to carry on. I mean, they've been
(10:37):
here a while. They can just stay for a further
period of time and the CHP will continue staying as well.
But to pull out, to pull out of the checkpoints
because the police are over burn and need a break,
There's got to be another solution to that. I mean,
you can't just send the police home because the bad
(10:58):
guys are going to steal every thing that hasn't burned
in the Palisades. And I cannot believe she didn't think
that through, and every everybody was screaming at her from
Tracy Park, you know, in their polite political way. Rick
Caruso weighed in and we're going to talk about more
about him and what he's doing temper Europe in the mountains.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Are you aware of.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Any evacuation system that goes on in the neighborhood, like
what roots.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
To take out? No? Nope, like this, has there ever
been a meeting?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Has there ever been some kind of like zoom something
to say, hey, if we have really bad fire, here's
how we're getting out.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Of the No.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
In fact, no, in fact, a group of neighbors. I
think I mentioned this to you when the when the
fires were going on, we started our own kind of
notification system, alerting everybody in this chat if we've heard anything.
But no, there was nothing. There was no formal, any
kind of notification system for our area.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Well except for.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
The water story, right, the watch Duty, which is an
outside app which was collecting information that it was getting
from the radio broadcast, the fire radio, and the police
radio that they were monitoring. Because reading this this La
Times story today, it turns out everybody's on their own
(12:20):
if you're in the city of Los Angeles. And I
can't speak for the other cities, but in Los Angeles
you do not have And I don't mean this as hyperbole.
I don't mean this as a mister talk show host
going crazy here. I mean this literally, you have nobody
who's going to help you out. You're you're you're totally
(12:40):
on your own. And it looks like it's been this
way for decades, which is the time.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I know this was.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Going to happen one day, with with all the bad
decisions and all so much of the infrastructure ignored for
so long, this was going to happen, and you know,
January seventh, twenty twenty five ended up being the day.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
But man, the more I read.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
According to Times today, they got an article by Melody
Gutierrez Nathan Fenno page Saint John. It's very, very long,
but I'll give you the most important parts. They wrote
that decades of warnings that the Palisades three major roads
coming out of the Highlands, which is that development north
(13:34):
of Sunset Boulevard, the three major roads were inadequate escape
routes for the thousands of people living in the upper
reaches of the Palisades. Streets were gridlocked forty minutes before
the first widespread evacuation order. People looked at their windows
and saw the smoke and the wind, and to care
(13:57):
for themselves, they jumped in their car and got out. Now,
the people who lived up there had been lobbying literally
for decades that there's got to be a better evacuation
route than this. Roads had to be built a plan,
and for decades the city, all the mayors and the
(14:22):
city council ignored them. That's why when you hear somebody
like Karen Basco, well, you know, public safety is our
first priority.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Stopped the lying. It was zero priority.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
It wasn't even the top ten or top twenty issues
of importance. It was non existent. It didn't make the list.
As flames approached, firefighters and police told motorists to get
out of their cars and.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
Run, which we saw on live TV.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And we had a woman on the air with us
who jumped out of her car while she was talking
to us because the cop was banging on her door,
woman named Kelly. She jumped out and she ran away.
The abandoned cars worsened the jam, so now the firefighters
couldn't get through, and the residents trapped by the blocked
(15:24):
roads said they were forced to shelter in their homes,
which of course isn't a real good idea. And I'm
reading just that was a paragraph, and I'm thinking, well,
in that what paragraph it encapsulated a complete total breakdown
of planning and execution for something that was bound to happen.
(15:47):
They've got they've got stories here about individuals or families
and how they were threatened in how they got out.
They look at the Schwartz family. The Swartz family has
(16:08):
lived for eleven years in Santa Ynez Canyon, and you
know there was a fire on New Year's Day, which
may have been the precursor to the big one. There
was the twenty twenty one Palisades Fire, the twenty nineteen
Getty and Palisades fires, the twenty eighteen Woolseley fire, and
the Palisades were also hit. Going back to nineteen seventy
(16:30):
eight by the Mandeville Canyon fire. The Ally Times called
that fire Black Monday. Their house is two blocks from
the edge of the nineteen thirty eight wildfire that gutted
this canyon and other canyons. It says a long history
of fires in the region and a long history of
(16:51):
the residents saying, hey, we have no way to get out.
Of course, I don't think it ever in a place
like that.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Where I live up at the hills.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
John There's maybe well. And my husband and I were
having conversations about this during during the wildfires, because I said,
if we have to go, we can't go this way,
which is one way, because there's no way.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
It would be so.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
Everybody would go that way, we'd never get out, and
then the other way. Because we live up in the hills,
they're they're very narrow roads. But we kind of devised
a plan Okay, this is the street we're going to
go to because most people are going to go here.
And I think that's what you have to do. Like
you said, you're on your own. You've got to figure
out this stuff because you're you're You can't you can't
(17:41):
depend on anybody.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
No, no, because nobody in government cares for all the
millions and millions and billions and billions of tax dollars
everybody pays. When it came down to it, Karen Best
never bothered to put a plan together. Neither did that
fire chief Kristen Crowley. Neither did the city city council,
or the police chief or anybody. Nobody put a plan
(18:05):
together to rescue you. You were left to burn and
die in the Palisades, and it could happen to any
of us. Just know that the city their plan is
to let you burn and die.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I mean, this is astonishing.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Here.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
We'll do more when we come back.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI A
six forty.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
We're on from one.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Until four every day and then after four o'clock John Cobelt's.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Show on demand on the iHeart app.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
All right, we're going through in La Times another investigative
peace on everything that went wrong, the reaction.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
It's fair to say that the City.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Of La the La Fire Department, the La City well,
the police department, everybody had no plan for this, even
though on January second they started getting extreme fire warnings
from the National Weather Service. There is absolutely not a
whiff of a plan to deal with a potential fire.
(19:13):
And it's actually, really it's really depressing because there never
was a plan.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
So The Times kind of, well The Times.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
What they did is went through a minute by minute
analysis of what happened. Because the fire was first noticed
about ten twenty five, ten twenty nine, the first emergency
call goes in on nine to one one by eleven twelve,
so we're talking about now about forty five minutes. Forty
(19:45):
five minutes later. Many residents are already packing cars. They're
a step ahead of the Palisades Incident Command. This is
the central nerve center set up at the bottom of
the canyon on Palisades Drive. What I read is like
three SUVs. That's what the incident command center is. Three
(20:08):
SUVs drive up and they have all the communications equipment
and they keep moving depending on where the flames are going.
And they can see what's happening on the slopes.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Now, whatever planning.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Documents they have call for LAPD to take charge of
disaster evacuations. The police supposed to alert the residents, drive
up and down the street with the loudspeakers on or
bang on doors if they have to, and then to
route the traffic and convert congested rows roads to one
way flow.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
To keep people moving.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
But when there's a raging brush fire, and if you're
within thirty minutes of danger, it's the fire department that's
supposed to take over evacuation. You follow this, it's the
police department. Unless the fire is moving really fast, then
it's the fire department.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
But nobody evacuated these people.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Forty seven minutes after the fire had started, and nine
minutes after warning the residents that they might have to leave,
they sent a phone message. The command post tells dispatchers
that there are no orders to leave. We are not
evacuating residents at this time. We're in the process of
putting that piece together. But people aren't waiting. They're packing
(21:32):
their cars and getting out. Can you imagine the fire
officials at the command post are going, you know, yeah,
we're gonna have a meeting on this, and you know,
but way all get on zoom together and see meantime,
everybody's spreaking out and grabbing whatever stuff they can and
(21:53):
their family members and their pets, and they're jumping in
cars and they're all trying to come down the hill
at the same time. But there's no official evacuation notice yet.
People are using their own eyes. They're not waiting for
the bureaucracy. Since the nineteen seventies, the Pacific Palisades Community Council.
(22:14):
Community councils are made up of local residents and business owners.
Every section of town has one of these. They have
no direct power, they're an advisory committee. So since the
seventies we're talking now, fifty years, the council has repeatedly
warned lawmakers and planning departments that the strangled evacuation routes
(22:38):
in the Palisades are a serious risk to lives in
public safety. Fifty freaking years, these people have been telling
the blockheads that run this city, hey, there's no way
out of here. And they've had repeated fires. Even after
(23:00):
a nineteen seventy eight firestorm, this was the Mendeville fire
swept the same canyon burned thirty homes. News accounts and
campaign contribution records show that housing developers used influence with
state lawmakers and the la City Council to negotiate exemptions
(23:22):
to growth limits.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
You had to translate that.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
The housing developers bribed state legislators and bribed city council
members so that they could keep building in high fire
danger zones. And they did, and people bought the homes.
So you had the council saying, hey, this is really dangerous,
(23:47):
there's no way out of here, and the council men
and women at the time go, oh, yeah, you're right,
you know this is really dangerous. We've got to do something. Meantime,
they're getting cash like crazy from the developers. Nobody at
the city council ever looked out for you, and nobody
in the state legislature ever looked out for you. What
(24:11):
they did is they took money so that you can
remain in danger in your neighborhood. Development is a political thing,
a fire chief told the residents' council in twenty sixteen,
and listen to this advice.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
In twenty sixteen, he said Palisades residents should.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Stay put during an emergency once fire engines arrived, because
evacuees on the roads would only compromise the official plan.
I mean he did know that everybody was going to
evacuate at once and the firefighters couldn't get up there.
But telling you to stay in your house. How many
(24:56):
people would have died if they'd listened to this guy
because he neglected to mention that the fire hydrants weren't
going to work and that the reservoir would be bone
dry empty. You imagine this, The reservoir is empty, the
fire hydrants don't work, and in twenty sixteen, this fire
(25:18):
chief is saying, hey, I better stay in your home.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
You don't want to clog up the roots. Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
In twenty twenty three, there was a city traffic officer
who told the residence council, how'd you love that they've
had all these meetings for fifty years and all the
warnings have been given out. Everybody knows exactly what's gone wrong. Well.
In twenty twenty three, the city traffic officer said, the
bottom roads are so congested that the police department can't
(25:44):
even run speed traps on them. Yeah, that's why we
have a police department to run speed traps. They looked
at the meeting minutes, and this traffic officer assured the
board that in the event of an evacuation, motorcycle officers
would be used in great to direct people out in
the safest manner to avoid the traffic snarls. It's like,
don't worry, we got a whole fleet of motorcycle officers
(26:07):
and they'll take you on.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
A route somehow somewhere.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
There were no motorcycle escorts for the residents during the
Palisades fire. Disaster planning software that they developed at Old
Dominion University. This software analyzes roads, populations, and traffic patterns
to estimate the time needed to get people safely out.
And they calculated evacuation time for the Palisades Highlands to
(26:36):
be five hours and ten minutes. And that's without a
fire cutting off the exit routes. And that's with half
the main roads converted to one way flow. In reality,
in the Palisades on January seventh, the people had less
than an hour before the evacuation routes became impassable and
(26:58):
people had to flee their cars so they wouldn't roast
alive inside them. Yeah, but the planning software said you
got five hours, wow, total disaster Theena. They've been wrong,
and they've been wrong consistently on everything for fifty years.
(27:20):
And we haven't even gotten to the fire, hydrants being
broken and no water in the reservoir, which we'll get
to at another time, not right now, coming up after
two o'clock. What I got coming up after two o'clock.
I know, I know we've got something really good coming.
(27:44):
And Oh Vianueva, right, Alex Vianueva is going to come
on to talk about Well, here's more about ungovernable, lawless
Los Angeles. We've got thousands of people in downtown LA
yesterday shutting down the one on one illegal immigration.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Nobody did anything about it.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
sixty Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
The city without laws yesterday over the weekend. Rather, yes,
this was on Sunday, thousands of people shut down the
one on one to protest Trump and his deportations. Seems
like that would have been fertile ground for ice and
talk to Alex being away. Then I understand there was
(28:32):
another demonstration today as well, So please didn't do anything yesterday.
Let's get I was talking about the Only Times had
a story today a complete failure by the city of
Los Angeles for fifty years to prepare an evacuation process
(28:53):
for those who live in the Palisades and the Palisades Highlands.
Since the nineteen seventies, the local town, the local community council,
has been begging the police and the fire department in
the city for a plan and have gotten nothing. And
the morning of the big fire on on January seventh,
(29:13):
it was just chaos. David Howard's a sales manager here
at KFI and for iHeart and we had him on
a few weeks ago because he he lost his whole house,
he and his family, and uh, he's been in the mix,
in the in the thick of things in the Palisades
to try to see what's going on.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
David, are there?
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Hey, John, how are you?
Speaker 1 (29:36):
I'm doing all right? How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
We're doing okay, you know, day of time. But you know,
just listening to you, you know, it just gets me
so fired up, no pun intended, because everything that you're
sharing with our all the listeners is to see it
happen on the ground in our neighborhoods. It's just really
hard to comprehend the the lack of any kind of
(30:01):
leadership and any kind of plan put in place. On
Saturday when when Bass ordered the palisades to open up,
the amount of people that came out and just I
mean the firestorm again, I'm going to use these words
of dissent was massive and we went into action, and
(30:22):
thank god, we were able to have enough influence that
we stopped the bad guys from coming into town. There's
people that they haven't even seen their homes yet, and they're.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Like, what in God's name was she thinking of?
Speaker 2 (30:33):
What was she thinking to lift the security checks? That
that's insane, literally insane, not sure.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
The only good news about it is whenever these things
happen in these miss she makes these decisions, all it
does is bring everybody together that much more. And it
was evident by the result that happened. And I can
tell you about sharing names, but you can probably figure
out who some of these people are. There was a
lot of pressure put on the state because the city
(31:04):
is just not capable of handling this event. They're just
not And there's a lot going on behind the scenes,
and we're going to continue to do the right thing
to make sure that people are protected and safe and
the property and you know that it just doesn't get
into the wrong hands.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
It's awfully difficult when you don't have anybody to rely
on in city government.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Here.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
You know, I have a story for you and this
is the God's honest truth. The day after the fire,
on the eighth of January, I shared with my wife.
I said, you know, my biggest concern is not the
fact that our house burned down. I was very concerned
that our town burnt down. But my biggest concern, and
it's coming, it's happening as we speak, was that the
(31:47):
local city government under Karen Bass's leadership, would not be
able to handle this. And it doesn't put anybody in
a position of any kind of confidence or because it's
not there, not there, and it's you know, we pay
a very disapportioning amount of Texas, which I'm happy to
pay all day long, but I'm not happy to pay
(32:09):
it if we get no services as part of that payment.
Another thing I just wanted to show with you real quick.
I heard the story that the insurance companies and you
know which ones, have been canceling people for you know,
literally people are getting canceled. The month of January, the
insurance companies had actuaries visiting the Palisades in twenty twenty four.
(32:32):
The insurance companies knew that there was no water in
the reservoirs. They knew that the brush was completely overgrown,
so they started doing, you know, to protect their business, like,
we can't afford to ensure people here. It's just not
a good business decision. And it makes sense. How does
the insurance companies send actuaries and know that that's the case,
(32:52):
but the city can't get ahead of it to put
water back in the reservoirs.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
How is that possible?
Speaker 2 (33:01):
That's astonishing that the actuaries knew there was no water
in the reservoirs, and so that's why the insurance was
being cut to so many people.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I guess, oh my god, all you need to.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Do is do a fly, fly a drone over the brush,
and fly a drone over the reservoirs and boom, there
you go. We can't afford to ensure this stuff. And
then the other thing I just want to share and
get up my chest because nowhere on a limited time
here is if you remember the town hall that Trump
had at fire Station sixty nine one, of the residents
brought up the fact that they were very concerned that
(33:38):
the federal money being issued to help with the disaster relief,
both for Altadena and for Pacific Halisades could possibly end
up in the wrong hands. You remember that, and Trump's reaction,
which was the right reaction, said that they were going
to name somebody to make sure that there's oversight on that.
We have still yet to hear. I have not heard
who that person is, but I can tell you that
(34:00):
the residents are very concerned that that money gets put
in the wrong bucket and doesn't go to what it's
supposed to go to.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Well, we're gonna stay on top of that, I promise you,
because you need we need the money.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Yeah, the money. You help me.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
You let me know what you hear, because I have
seen nothing on on who was going to be I
think they called it a special master, uh and and
have that money put in the hands of some independent
person who uh can can protect it from being stolen
basically by the city city and misspent.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
That's right, or general nobody, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, oh yeah, the general fund. That's a that's a
black hole. It's just get sucked a win. All right, yeah,
all right, David, I got to doing the news. Thank
you for coming on again and and anything you know,
let us know and put you on anytime.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
All right.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Well, h well, John, talk to you soon. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
David Howard, he's sales manager here at KFI and iHeart.
All right, well we come back, get alex Vina Wava
on the former sheriff thousand. Meantime, thousands of people who
are not American citizens shut down the one on one
yesterday and nobody stopped them. Angry that all the illegal
aliens are getting deported by Trump. That's next. Deborah Marcus
(35:22):
live in the KFI twenty for our newsroom. 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
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