January 7, 2026 • 35 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 2 (01/07) - An interview with Ann & Joe Juliano, L.A. City Councilwoman Traci Park, and Josh Lederer from the "They Let Us Burn" Rally. Plus, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is lashing out at the people who dare criticize her.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am six forty.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
We're going to play you some more clips from the
They Let Us Burn rally in the Palisades a year
since the fire. Other things that we are going to
cover along the way. Well, Deverra's gonna have constant updates
on what happened in Minnesota. An ice agent shot a
(00:23):
woman to death.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
She was.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Driving a car and the ice agent was standing in
front of the car and it looks as if he
felt that she was trying to run him over, and
so he fired a shot through the windshield and she
ended up dead. There's more to the story, but that's
the basics. A lot of people are gathering in Minneapolis
(00:52):
and a lot of people are angry, and we are
just watching to see if that turns into some kind
of some kind of riot. And then secondly, Nick Reiner
appeared in court today for an arraignment and the big
shock was his high profile attorney, Alan Jackson quit the case.
Said he had to, but didn't explain, and so now
(01:14):
Nick Reiner has been assigned to a public defender. We'll
had more on that with Royal Oaks, our legal analyst.
Next hour. I want to continue, though, so that you
can hear and feel what these palis Age residents have
been going through for the last year. And I'm going
to start with I talked with a sister and a brother,
(01:37):
Ann and Joe Giuliano, and they lost their childhood home.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
And they.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
And especially went on at length with all the things
that have gone wrong in the city's response, well, the preparation,
the lack of preparation, the lack of response, and the
difficulty that since then as the city tries to rebuild,
the neighborhood tries to rebuild.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Let's uh, let's.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Play this cut number six And and Joe Giuliana, all right,
we're gonna talk with the woman here. She's got a
sign that says, stop the propaganda. We need a boss,
not bess. I like that sign. What's your name?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
And Juliano?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And and did you lose a home here?
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yes, we did. It's the childhood home my brother and
I grew up in.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
What what's the thing that makes you the craziest? I
know there's probably twenty five things, But what's the stuff
that you repeatedly go back to?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
There's a lot that day when we evacuated, you know,
I smelt the smoke. I went outside, I saw it.
We were very close to the start of the fire,
and we just left immediately. And at that point I
said to myself, I'll be back tonight. We have the
best fire department in the world. And you know two
(03:03):
days later our house burned down. Two days later, Yeah,
that does not make sense. I have video footage from
an off duty fire department official of our house when
it caught on fire. Not one fire chop is on
that street.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
So for two days nobody showed up on your block.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Well, I don't know what happened that day our ring
camera went off, but I know the day of the
house burned down, there was not one fire truck on
our street.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
When you hear the stories this week in the Times
about how there were seven rewrites of the investigative report,
this morning they found out that it was sent to
Karen Bass and she wanted more refinements.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, we knew that this is not this is not
a mistake and not just bad management. That's why I
say this is propaganda. They call it a wildfire, they
call it a natural fire. This was not wild This
was not natural. This was not one day. This was
an entire month of decisions made to destroy this community.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I don't know why I was going to ask you why.
I mean a lot of people feel the way you do. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I don't discount anything anymore, but it seemed, well, you're
in the slogan of this whole rally.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
They let it burn. Why would they let it burn?
Speaker 3 (04:19):
I don't know, but I think that the report from
on the fire department is tip of the iceberg. Were
you here that day that week when it went on fire.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
I live in Brentwood.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, so you remember the media conferences every morning they
all stood up thanked themselves for the great job they
were doing. I have tons of video footage where there
are just fire trucks that are not there. You have
a friend who in New York asked to come and help.
They were told not to come. They were told not
to help. We have volunteer firefighters, over one thousand called in.
(04:52):
They were told not to come. Why Why wouldn't you
put every resource and the amount of effort that was
given to the city and to this town to be
able to save it, and it wasn't given. And days
and days went by where nothing happened and they refuse
that help. That's not a mistake. I don't understand why
(05:13):
you would do that. Is not a mistake. It's on purpose.
And I really think we need to be treated with respect,
We need to be told the truth. But if you
don't want to tell me the truth, fun, don't tell
me the truth. But don't call it a natural fire.
Don't call it a wildfire. There's just completely man made.
And I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
The part where the State Parks reps throughout the LA
Fire Department and they actually left in order to save
the milkfitch plant for being trampled on.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
That one will stick in my head forever.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
There's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Things about what happened in January of last year that
needs to be questioned.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
There's a lot of things. Do you think you're ever
going to get yourself in?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
It's why is a reservoir still empty? Why haven't they
filled that up?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
They're still homes in the highlands?
Speaker 1 (06:03):
A little bit idea, Thank you very much? Your name
again and Juliano and now this is your brother? Yeah,
all right, so we're gonna talk to Anne's brother now,
who's holding a sign Fixed Sale Services yeah, just about
all of them. What's your name, Joe, Joe, Juliana, Joe.
We just talked to your sister there. What are your
feelings about all of it?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (06:27):
So it's very complicated. I think the sense of loss
is enormous because it's not just a house. It's losing
the whole, so much of the community, all the schools
that we went to growing up, the library, the just
where we used to play, the grocery stores, everything, and
so it's it's just massive. And it should have never happened.
And that was always our thought, is it should it
(06:49):
never happened.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
You're just through a list of things that they didn't
do or that they botched, and at the end, she goes,
it makes me wonder, you know it was it on purpose?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Why would they do this? What do you think?
Speaker 5 (07:03):
I can't understand it either, because I can't understand why
when you know you have a reservoir that it's meant
for backup firefighting purposes and you've left it empty for
so long and it was so cheap to put water
in there, and they didn't do it, and why would
you do that? You don't drive around town on an
empty tank of gas and wait for your car to
(07:24):
putter out, you go to the fill station, you fill
it up. So why didn't they do that? And so,
And it's not a short period of time, it's not
a week or a month.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
It was.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Yeah, so it's very difficult to not think that that
was not just negligence, not just recklessness, but intentional.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
And then they tell you, well, it wouldn't have mattered,
that's a lie.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
Why did they tell the firefighters to stand down? Didn't
they say they did that because there was no water?
So yeah, I don't believe any of that. And we've
had our family has lived here for fifty years, and
we've seen fires throughout those fifty years, and they've always
been caught before there have been any structure fires or
very few structure fires, having this many structures burned down,
(08:10):
having right here in this building, right here, that was
what nineteen ten or something like that, over one hundred
years old, caught on fire. I mean, come on, it's
very difficult to to say that these mistakes were inconsequential.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
What do you want done now? Fix LA services?
Speaker 5 (08:28):
You know, the water department should provide water, the fire
department should fight fires. The LAPD screwed up too, because
they screwed up on evacuation, told people to abandon their cars.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
We almost had a.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
Bunch of people, you know, burn and running from their
part cars on Palisades drives. They screwed up on that.
There's nobody here fighting any fires. We couldn't even come
back to our house to save their replaceables. You know
what was that for?
Speaker 2 (08:51):
LAPD?
Speaker 5 (08:51):
So all the LA services failed us and all of
them need to be fixed.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
All right, thanks very much, all right, brother and sister
Anne and Joe Juliano. The firefighters were loitering around on
a beach off of PCH at the very time that
homes were burning. They were sitting around, eating lunch, playing cards.
(09:20):
Multiple reports, but this went on. Why did the fire
department stand down? How could you have the biggest fire
in Los Angeles history?
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And the fire department Remember.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
A lot of guys were sent home, but the ones
that were not sent home were standing around, and we're
told not to go to work, not to do anything.
Why would you do that? Who told them not to
put out the fire?
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And that question hangs in the air over every conversation
I had today and many many others that I've had
off the air with people.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
We got more coming up.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
We spent this morning at in the Pacific Palisades. The
rally They Let Us Burn was the title of it,
and it was put on by Spencer Pratt, the reality
show star, and Jeremy Patdower, And then you had Karen
Bass smearing them, claiming they were there for profit, and
Padower said, no, I spent forty thousand dollars of my
(10:26):
own money. There was no profit, there was no income,
nobody was charged for anything. So she's very frustrated because
people don't believe her lies anymore, and believe me, there's
not one resident there, and there's well over a thousand,
not one person who believes anything.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Karen Bass says.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
In fact, they would be happy if she just if
she would just move away. They don't want to hear
her voice anymore. They don't believe anything, and they don't
believe because they've been lied to. They don't believe anything.
Avenusman says, they don't believe anything from the Los Angeles
Fire Department. Everybody's blown their credibility to smithereens and this week,
(11:08):
we find out that there were seven versions, seven different
drafts of it. After action report, which is supposed to
be nothing but facts. It's supposed to just state what
happened and what could be done better next time. When
you rewrite something seven times, it means you're covering things up,
you're lying. And they found out that one of the
(11:30):
versions actually went to Karen Bass and she demanded changes.
And that's even upset the Fire Commissioner or the President
of the Fire Commission, Janethia Hudley Hayes, who up to
this point said that she really didn't pay attention, just
gave it a read through and really had no further questions.
(11:51):
She was just going to accept the report as is.
Then found out that there was all kinds of shenanigans
going on, and now she's speaking out against us.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So there's something really rotten.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And Karen Bass is now lashing out at the victims,
lashing out at the people who dare criticize her. No
wonder she fired Kristin Crowley, who by the way, is
her own back of problems because she was horrifically incompetent,
(12:24):
and I mean I mean her hires. Her hires have
been awful, Karen Bess, Geniseez, the good crazy lady who
ran the homeless agency of Valicia Adams Gallum and Rob
(12:47):
Sorry these this is all DEI hiring, is what it is,
and and their disasters. They weren't hired for their intelligence,
that weren't hired for their competence. And I think what
I'm struggling with a lot of people are struggling with
is how can so many people botch the job in
(13:11):
so many different ways for so long? Literally nobody did
anything right. And that is not an overstatement, That is
not hyperbole or any kind of exaggeration. Literally every key
person in the chain, every agency in the chain, screwed
up very badly.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Now is that possible?
Speaker 1 (13:34):
At what point when you look at dozens of people
doing stupid things do you start to wonder? Was this
some kind of a wacky plot? I mean, imagine kicking
the fire department out of a hotspot and nobody went
back there. They got kicked out I think on January
(13:56):
first or second, and nobody went back even after the
National Weather Service set out all the morning. It's like
I'm supposed, I mean, really was benign?
Speaker 7 (14:08):
Is this?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Everybody went stupid at the same time, everybody went stupid.
Everybody who's constantly compulsively scrolling and scrolling and scrolling got
all these National Weather Service warnings and they all looked
at them and no reaction. Hey, maybe we should go
look at that hotspot that still was smoldering, because strong
(14:29):
winds could kick that up in a matter of minutes. Nobody,
nobody in the fire department. That's just not possible. So
you're asking me and everyone else to believe something that
doesn't seem possible. Now, I don't exactly know what the
evil conspiracy theory would be, and I don't know what
the upside of this would be. But the other conclusion
(14:51):
is is that everybody's that stupid, that incompetent, that lazy,
that dense.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I a.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Completely flummoxed by this, and so is everybody there. And
that's why somebody like Spencer Pratt can stand up there
and announce he's running for mayor and the whole place
goes crazy. Everybody starts screaming. And before you say, oh,
that can't happen, that's impossible.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
He's a reality star. He's crazy, He's this and that.
Just watch it. That's what they said about Trump.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
When people get really really fed up, really disgusted, when
they're at the end of the line where they've disrespected
and kicked and spit on and condescended to something crazy
could happen. Maybe something crazy needs to happen. You can't
actually wake up in twenty twenty seven and Karen bass
(15:56):
is being sworn in as the mayor again, can you
have that? Or at the end of twenty twenty six,
can't go on this way? And for people in other
parts of the city, eight you're next next time? Something bad,
In fact, something bad is happening every day in all
(16:16):
parts of the city. Witness the tens of thousands of
homeless people that she's lying about. All her numbers are fake.
Her numbers are fake, the crime numbers are fake. They
perfected the art of fake numbers, fake reports, getting the
media to regurgitate the fake nonsense.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
And they figure.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
They're a bulletproof. Nobody's going to run against them, or
if they run, nobody's gonna beat them. They got the
unions in the bag to provide the to provide the
money for their lying, stinking commercials. There get out the
vote operations. Be very careful when you have that many
(16:57):
people screaming for Spencer Pratt become mayor.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Don't dismiss this anymore.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
I think we're generally in a period of dramatic change
across the country. Obviously in California, maybe the last domino
to fall, but it's gonna fall. People can't live this
way and they shouldn't live this way now. The only person, well,
one of the few people that has made any sense
(17:27):
and has really poured her heart and all her time
and energy into trying to make things better is the
La City councilwoman Tracy Park, who would make a great mayor,
by the way, and she's the councilwoman on the West side. Well,
I talked with her at the event. When we come back,
I'm going to play our conversation and try to imagine,
(17:47):
like I tell you, imagine Rick Russa being the mayor.
Try to imagine somebody like Tracy Park being the mayor.
Speaker 6 (17:53):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Weistein is seven moist eighty six for Friday eight seven
seven moist eighty six or dial the numbers eight seven
seven sixty six four seven eight eighty six. Leave your
message all your righteous anger and fury. You can use
the talkback feature in the iHeart app and we'll record
everything and play back the best stuff coming up on Friday.
This morning, we recorded a number of interviews in the Palisades,
(18:21):
Spencer Pratt and Jeremy Paauer were hosting a rally called
they let Us Burn.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
And it's hard to argue with it that the the.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
What they proposed here is they meaning the government let
us the Palisades Park?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Why did they let us burn?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Everything they did would leave you to leave that that
title is accurate. That's the premise that they let us spurn.
They didn't put out the fire, and they intentionally decided
not to put out the fire. They kept the fire
department far away, and we're told to stand down, and
(19:04):
nothing worked anyway.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And all their reports that's supposed to explain all this
are fully their lies.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
There's seven six rewrites of the fire departments after action report.
Now it turns out Karen Bass demanded changes, big cover up,
big lie. It's got to be busted wide open here.
There's a lot of people who know and they're afraid
of getting fired. This has to be busted wide open. Enough,
(19:38):
isn't enough.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Now I want to focus on a positive for a moment.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
It's La City Council in Tracy Park. She just does
superhuman stuff trying to make people's lives better on the
West Side. She was at the rally and I spoke
with her. Play cut number nine. All right, we're here
at the councilwoman for the eleven district covering the Palace
sas Tracy Park, who's been on with us frequently.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Tracy, I've been.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Talking to people for an hour here and people are
still at the highest level of anger over everything. How
can after a year none of the major questions be
answered and every piece of news is another bombshell. How
nobody understands what's been going on and it's still going on.
Speaker 7 (20:24):
Yeah, John, it's a really good question. And I don't
know how to account for this. You know, I was
very very clear in the immediate aftermath of the fire
that the LAFD absolutely, under no circumstances, should be investigating itself.
I called for, and the council approved and outside independent inquiry.
That is one of several that are either underway or.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Have been completed.
Speaker 7 (20:49):
But watching this information trickle out headline by headline, detailed
by detail, when we haven't had a full accounting and
reckoning of the events that occurred and didn't occur on
January seventh. In the lead up has compounded the anger
and the frustration.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
When you see seven different versions of the report, and
we found out this morning it had been sent to
the Mayor's office, and the mayor's office wanted further refinements.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Well, nobody's going to believe anything.
Speaker 7 (21:17):
Well, and there in lies the problem. Whether the revisions
or the changes that were made were intended to hide
or mislead, it doesn't even really matter. The perception of
it is that it wasn't accurate, and it wasn't transparent,
and we walk away from it wholly unsatisfying. So I
(21:38):
want to actually thank Chief more for his remarks yesterday
at Fire Commission acknowledging finally the mistakes that were made,
because really that is the first step in the accountability,
which is fixing the circumstances that allowed this to happen.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
One thing I hear from talking to people, no one
can believe that every level of.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
God rim it failed and it's continued to fail for
a year, and nobody wants to own up or explain anything.
Speaker 7 (22:06):
Well, you know, very well, maybe the case that the
lawsuit is the only way that people are going to
get answers. And I've said this before, you know, the
consolidated complaint actually seems to be one of the most
comprehensive recitation of the events of that day. But a
crying shame that that's what it takes. I mean, the
reality is there is enough blame to go around. There
(22:27):
are layers of responsibility, and there are layers based on
decades of failure that lined up in a collision course
for the catastrophe on January seventh.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, I just it's hard.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
To believe that everything went wrong and that everybody like
screwed up at the same time and continuously ever since.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
It's just hard to fathom. And I'm telling you a lot.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Of people are wondering if there's some darker issue here
because you see the title of this event, they let
us Burn.
Speaker 7 (22:55):
Well, you know, I understand the sentiment and the frustration
behind it. You know, literally, you know, you talk about
how did everything fail? Literally everything the evacuation routes, the
water system, the communications, the timeliness, literally catastrophic systems failure.
But it was decades of bad management and failure to
(23:17):
invest taxpayer dollars in adequate infrastructure and public safety that
we're going to be necessary to keep this or any
community safe.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
The State Parks rep Park reps kicking out the LA
Fire Department at the hotspot where the fire reignited to
save the milk Vetch plan for being trampled.
Speaker 7 (23:37):
You know, I don't even think the milk Vetch read
is still there. So I think there's a very very
important and painful lesson to be learned. These policies have
to be balanced against the potentially catastrophic outcomes like we
saw here.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Do you have many allies on the city Council to
help fix all this because most of the council is
very quiet at best.
Speaker 7 (24:03):
I have been very grateful for the support that I
have had from a number of my colleagues over the
last year. But yes, as the news cycles shift, as
other crises and emergencies emerge, attention spans are short, and
you know, unfortunately for ninety nine percent of Los Angeles,
life has moved on, and my job as our local
(24:27):
council member who represents the Palisades and other communities impacted
by this is to make sure these stories stay in
the headlines and that government is held accountable.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
You're going to run for re election, You're going to
keep at it. I am, I am.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
My work here is not done.
Speaker 7 (24:42):
The sense of responsibility and obligation that I feel to
help the Palisades community get further on their journey home.
I've got to see Venice through the Olympics, and the
incredible progress that we've made already on homelessness isn't finished.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
I have more to.
Speaker 7 (24:59):
Do, and I have more to do right here on
the West Side.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Thank you for coming on with us, Tracy.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Always, John so Soon.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, she's made a lot of progress on almostness on
the West Side, but to other districts, no, they have not.
You know, when we come back, I'm gonna play a
clip from a guy named Josh Lederer who really got
life was just turned upside down, shook up. He's got
a wife and a kid, and the whole experience has
(25:29):
sent him into therapy and he talked at length on
how everyone let him down.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
You had.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Tracy Park mentioned how the news cycle moved on and
implied that some of the council people became less interested.
What was really telling is when the ice raids happened
in downtown LA. And you saw how angry and animated
Karen Bass got because some illegal aliens were getting deported.
I mean, she just lost it. So much emotion, so
(26:01):
much energy, so much anger. And she's getting illegal alien
activist groups and citing them to riot funded by taxpayers,
of course, more of those nonprofit organizations. And that's the
Karen Bass. And I don't understand why anybody would want
(26:22):
a woman who has turned her back and abandoned the
palisades filled with tens of thousands of taxpayers and families,
and she's got ice cold on that issue. But boy,
she sees some video online on TV of legal aliens
(26:43):
getting arrested, and she's back to her old cashtro roots.
She's full of fire and anger and vigor and screaming
and demanding two completely different Karen Basses. One you have
American citizens and taxpayers suffering a horrific tragedy, the other
(27:04):
a bunch of illegal aliens, and she's egging on the
taxpayer paid nonprofit groups who then started a riot.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
In fact, I'll tell you a big difference between the
illegal alien protesters and the people who are at the
rally today. The organization that put on the rally huge
difference in how they were treated by Karen Bass's la
I'll tell you when we come back.
Speaker 6 (27:34):
You're listening to John Cobelts on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Follow us to John Cobelt Radio on social media.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
We're going to be posting or have posting stuff about
our trip to the Palisades today talking with the residents.
You could also subscribe on YouTube and see our videos.
We're gonna be putting videos of all the interviews sometime today.
YouTube dot com. Slash at John Cobelt's show. YouTube dot
com slash at John Cobelt's show. Let me play for
(28:03):
you now, this guy got to me.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
His name is Josh Letterer, lost his home, his whole
life was upended.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
He's got a wife and a child, and he feels
he was just devastated. He was holding a big sign,
completely let down by all the idiocy here in Los
Angeles and the government. So let's play cut number is
that cut number three? We're talking to a man here.
He's got a large vinyl banner. While he's holding they
(28:33):
let us burn written big bold black and red letters,
your name, Josh Letterer Josh, I've heard you talk to
some reporters here about how everybody in government let you down.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Talk about that.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
Go through the list.
Speaker 8 (28:49):
Let's talk about our fire department, the closest fire department
on the day the fires, when we got high wind alerts,
being forty five minutes away on training. They didn't get
to the fire until an hour after the fire started.
Talk about the fire commissioner not being in service because
of doing a fake bomb threat.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
We can talk about our mayor being in Ghana and
not helping, they said.
Speaker 8 (29:10):
Newsom said there were resources all over the state. I
was here for six hours that day. I didn't see anyone.
I didn't see one firefighter fighting the fire. There was
nobody helping us.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
We were left to evacuate the elderly. There was nobody.
Speaker 8 (29:22):
You think when there's a major disaster, there's gonna be
people to support you, especially when you have that much time,
and they didn't.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Do their jobs. Nobody did their jobs that day.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
What did you lose? Did you lose your whole house.
Speaker 8 (29:33):
Or I lost my life? My house is partially there.
I'm the only one on my block. I'm the only
one on my street, not just my block. I don't
want to say exactly where my house is, but I
stayed that day.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
I prepared my house for the fire.
Speaker 8 (29:46):
I prepared a few other houses for the fire on
Timescal and those were the only houses on Timescal.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
Out of about one hundred houses, we kept.
Speaker 8 (29:52):
About five of them and about three of the ones
we were working on.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
What did you do?
Speaker 8 (29:56):
We turned off the gas. We threw things in pools
that could have burned. We watered down the areas the
fire was coming from, any areas we thought could burn.
We took away vegetation or chairs that were close to
the house.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
I mean we too.
Speaker 8 (30:11):
We prevented the fires for several houses that day that
should have happened throughout the neighbor.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
So you watered down these properties that it helped prevent
them from being burned. And then we hear from the
government that having a one hundred and seventeen million gallon
reservoir empty, the reservoir would have had no effect.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
On fighting the fire had it been full. What do
you say to that?
Speaker 8 (30:31):
Okay, so there are two reservoirs that were empty, right,
there was two reservoirs, And yeah, that's another part of
the incompetence. Here is the biggest part of the fire.
I was watching the fire that day from ten thirty on.
I had a very good few of the fire. We
had two planes trying to fight the fire that had
to travel very long distance to do their water drops.
If we had five planes that were able to go
to the reservoirs and pick up water, that would have
(30:52):
been able to extinguish the fire or at least stop
eighty percent of the fire. The big issue is when
the fire doubled back across the Mescal Canyon took out
the entire city. That happened at about three PM, within
the span of ten minutes when the wind changed.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
They had four hours to fight the fire and to
get it out with air drops before the wind got
too bad, and.
Speaker 8 (31:11):
The city didn't do it. The city wasn't prepared and
they didn't get They didn't protect us.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Talk about what your life's been like for the last year.
You have a family, You've moved a lot. Go through
those details.
Speaker 8 (31:24):
I'm forty three. Last year was by far the most
difficult year of my life. We moved five times, we
evacuated from four different houses.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Dealing with our insurance company.
Speaker 8 (31:33):
He won't give us any information dealing with banks that
slow down the process. It's just a I have three
jobs now, trying to deal with my insurance comp company
and then fix my house while I'm trying to support
my family that just went through this disaster.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
It's everything just keeps piling up.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I mean, that's got to be so draining physically and emotionally.
I mean, as it if you felt like you're near
a breakdown at times.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
All the time.
Speaker 8 (31:58):
I've had forty three I've never seen therapists before this year.
I would love to send the city my therapy bill.
We all need a lot of support here. It's been
very difficult for us.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
What's the thing that infuriates you most? All levels of
government failed us. You know, we found out recently that
the state Parks Reps kicked out the LA Fire Department
so they couldn't tamp down the lock Right fire exactly.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
Yeah, they could have put out the fire.
Speaker 8 (32:23):
They were there two days after there were videos it
was still smoldering. I Mean, what bothers me is the
people now saying they did a good job and that
things are going well and they're helping.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
Us, and they're not. Nobody helped us.
Speaker 8 (32:34):
They screwed everything up and now they're acting like they're
doing a great job. They're not Mayor Pass, Governor Knewsom.
They're doing a terrible job. There's no help for us.
There was no help for us that day, and there's
been no help for us since then. They said they're
going to help wave fees, they're gonna help rebuild. I
mean you can see around here. About two months ago
it was one in twenty houses. Now it's about three
or four and twenty houses that are being rebuilt.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
We're nowhere near we should be. And it's the fault
of the city.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
What do you want done? Do you want fast? Do
some new? Some's going to be out in a year.
What are you looking for in government? To people? New
people are going to be.
Speaker 8 (33:10):
Elected, Accountability, people who can do their jobs, not people
who are here to give us lip service and say
they're going to do a great job. There's two kinds
of people. There are people who do and there are
people that talk. We got a lot of talkers right now.
We got we need people who do, people who put
the right people in place to be prepared for disasters.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
We're not prepared.
Speaker 8 (33:26):
What's gonna happen when we've an earthquake. What's gonna happen
when we've another disaster. We're not prepared and we need
people who are prepared, people who are have been trained
to protect us from disasters.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
All right, your name again, Josh Letterer, Josh Leederer, Josh,
thanks very much.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Are when we come back, we're gonna have Royal Oaks
on to talk about, Uh, take a break from the
fire for just a moment, because Robin Michelle Reiner's son
and killer Nick Reiner, was in court today and the
big story is his lawyer, quit Alan jack and Jackson
(34:03):
is a big name attorney who's defended celebrities like Harvey
Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, and he got out and he
won't explain why, says he's not allowed to explain why.
So we're going to have Royal Oaks on see what
he can figure out. And then we've got more interviews
to play for you from our attendance in the Palisades today.
(34:23):
They let us burn rally, including the former La County
Sheriff Alexi Viennaweva, who'll set some light on the Alta
Dina fiasco because that was another big botch up by
government in Altadena and.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
We're also going to talk to.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
A woman who went through the lengthy list of fallops
and she was aware of all of it as it
was happening. That's next. 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 and on the iHeartRadio app.
Can't.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am six forty.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
We're going to play you some more clips from the
They Let Us Burn rally in the Palisades a year
since the fire. Other things that we are going to
cover along the way. Well, Deverra's gonna have constant updates
on what happened in Minnesota. An ice agent shot a
(00:23):
woman to death.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
She was.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Driving a car and the ice agent was standing in
front of the car and it looks as if he
felt that she was trying to run him over, and
so he fired a shot through the windshield and she
ended up dead. There's more to the story, but that's
the basics. A lot of people are gathering in Minneapolis
(00:52):
and a lot of people are angry, and we are
just watching to see if that turns into some kind
of some kind of riot. And then secondly, Nick Reiner
appeared in court today for an arraignment and the big
shock was his high profile attorney, Alan Jackson quit the case.
Said he had to, but didn't explain, and so now
(01:14):
Nick Reiner has been assigned to a public defender. We'll
had more on that with Royal Oaks, our legal analyst.
Next hour. I want to continue, though, so that you
can hear and feel what these palis Age residents have
been going through for the last year. And I'm going
to start with I talked with a sister and a brother,
(01:37):
Ann and Joe Giuliano, and they lost their childhood home.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
And they.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
And especially went on at length with all the things
that have gone wrong in the city's response, well, the preparation,
the lack of preparation, the lack of response, and the
difficulty that since then as the city tries to rebuild,
the neighborhood tries to rebuild.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Let's uh, let's.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Play this cut number six And and Joe Giuliana, all right,
we're gonna talk with the woman here. She's got a
sign that says, stop the propaganda. We need a boss,
not bess. I like that sign. What's your name?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
And Juliano?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And and did you lose a home here?
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yes, we did. It's the childhood home my brother and
I grew up in.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
What what's the thing that makes you the craziest? I
know there's probably twenty five things, But what's the stuff
that you repeatedly go back to?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
There's a lot that day when we evacuated, you know,
I smelt the smoke. I went outside, I saw it.
We were very close to the start of the fire,
and we just left immediately. And at that point I
said to myself, I'll be back tonight. We have the
best fire department in the world. And you know two
(03:03):
days later our house burned down. Two days later, Yeah,
that does not make sense. I have video footage from
an off duty fire department official of our house when
it caught on fire. Not one fire chop is on
that street.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
So for two days nobody showed up on your block.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Well, I don't know what happened that day our ring
camera went off, but I know the day of the
house burned down, there was not one fire truck on
our street.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
When you hear the stories this week in the Times
about how there were seven rewrites of the investigative report,
this morning they found out that it was sent to
Karen Bass and she wanted more refinements.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah, we knew that this is not this is not
a mistake and not just bad management. That's why I
say this is propaganda. They call it a wildfire, they
call it a natural fire. This was not wild This
was not natural. This was not one day. This was
an entire month of decisions made to destroy this community.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I don't know why I was going to ask you why.
I mean a lot of people feel the way you do. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I don't discount anything anymore, but it seemed, well, you're
in the slogan of this whole rally.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
They let it burn. Why would they let it burn?
Speaker 3 (04:19):
I don't know, but I think that the report from
on the fire department is tip of the iceberg. Were
you here that day that week when it went on fire.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
I live in Brentwood.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, so you remember the media conferences every morning they
all stood up thanked themselves for the great job they
were doing. I have tons of video footage where there
are just fire trucks that are not there. You have
a friend who in New York asked to come and help.
They were told not to come. They were told not
to help. We have volunteer firefighters, over one thousand called in.
(04:52):
They were told not to come. Why Why wouldn't you
put every resource and the amount of effort that was
given to the city and to this town to be
able to save it, and it wasn't given. And days
and days went by where nothing happened and they refuse
that help. That's not a mistake. I don't understand why
(05:13):
you would do that. Is not a mistake. It's on purpose.
And I really think we need to be treated with respect,
We need to be told the truth. But if you
don't want to tell me the truth, fun, don't tell
me the truth. But don't call it a natural fire.
Don't call it a wildfire. There's just completely man made.
And I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
The part where the State Parks reps throughout the LA
Fire Department and they actually left in order to save
the milkfitch plant for being trampled on.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
That one will stick in my head forever.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
There's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Things about what happened in January of last year that
needs to be questioned.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
There's a lot of things. Do you think you're ever
going to get yourself in?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
It's why is a reservoir still empty? Why haven't they
filled that up?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
They're still homes in the highlands?
Speaker 1 (06:03):
A little bit idea, Thank you very much? Your name
again and Juliano and now this is your brother? Yeah,
all right, so we're gonna talk to Anne's brother now,
who's holding a sign Fixed Sale Services yeah, just about
all of them. What's your name, Joe, Joe, Juliana, Joe.
We just talked to your sister there. What are your
feelings about all of it?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (06:27):
So it's very complicated. I think the sense of loss
is enormous because it's not just a house. It's losing
the whole, so much of the community, all the schools
that we went to growing up, the library, the just
where we used to play, the grocery stores, everything, and
so it's it's just massive. And it should have never happened.
And that was always our thought, is it should it
(06:49):
never happened.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
You're just through a list of things that they didn't
do or that they botched, and at the end, she goes,
it makes me wonder, you know it was it on purpose?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Why would they do this? What do you think?
Speaker 5 (07:03):
I can't understand it either, because I can't understand why
when you know you have a reservoir that it's meant
for backup firefighting purposes and you've left it empty for
so long and it was so cheap to put water
in there, and they didn't do it, and why would
you do that? You don't drive around town on an
empty tank of gas and wait for your car to
(07:24):
putter out, you go to the fill station, you fill
it up. So why didn't they do that? And so,
And it's not a short period of time, it's not
a week or a month.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
It was.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Yeah, so it's very difficult to not think that that
was not just negligence, not just recklessness, but intentional.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
And then they tell you, well, it wouldn't have mattered,
that's a lie.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
Why did they tell the firefighters to stand down? Didn't
they say they did that because there was no water?
So yeah, I don't believe any of that. And we've
had our family has lived here for fifty years, and
we've seen fires throughout those fifty years, and they've always
been caught before there have been any structure fires or
very few structure fires, having this many structures burned down,
(08:10):
having right here in this building, right here, that was
what nineteen ten or something like that, over one hundred
years old, caught on fire. I mean, come on, it's
very difficult to to say that these mistakes were inconsequential.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
What do you want done now? Fix LA services?
Speaker 5 (08:28):
You know, the water department should provide water, the fire
department should fight fires. The LAPD screwed up too, because
they screwed up on evacuation, told people to abandon their cars.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
We almost had a.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
Bunch of people, you know, burn and running from their
part cars on Palisades drives. They screwed up on that.
There's nobody here fighting any fires. We couldn't even come
back to our house to save their replaceables. You know
what was that for?
Speaker 2 (08:51):
LAPD?
Speaker 5 (08:51):
So all the LA services failed us and all of
them need to be fixed.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
All right, thanks very much, all right, brother and sister
Anne and Joe Juliano. The firefighters were loitering around on
a beach off of PCH at the very time that
homes were burning. They were sitting around, eating lunch, playing cards.
(09:20):
Multiple reports, but this went on. Why did the fire
department stand down? How could you have the biggest fire
in Los Angeles history?
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And the fire department Remember.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
A lot of guys were sent home, but the ones
that were not sent home were standing around, and we're
told not to go to work, not to do anything.
Why would you do that? Who told them not to
put out the fire?
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And that question hangs in the air over every conversation
I had today and many many others that I've had
off the air with people.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
We got more coming up.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
We spent this morning at in the Pacific Palisades. The
rally They Let Us Burn was the title of it,
and it was put on by Spencer Pratt, the reality
show star, and Jeremy Patdower, And then you had Karen
Bass smearing them, claiming they were there for profit, and
Padower said, no, I spent forty thousand dollars of my
(10:26):
own money. There was no profit, there was no income,
nobody was charged for anything. So she's very frustrated because
people don't believe her lies anymore, and believe me, there's
not one resident there, and there's well over a thousand,
not one person who believes anything.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Karen Bass says.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
In fact, they would be happy if she just if
she would just move away. They don't want to hear
her voice anymore. They don't believe anything, and they don't
believe because they've been lied to. They don't believe anything.
Avenusman says, they don't believe anything from the Los Angeles
Fire Department. Everybody's blown their credibility to smithereens and this week,
(11:08):
we find out that there were seven versions, seven different
drafts of it. After action report, which is supposed to
be nothing but facts. It's supposed to just state what
happened and what could be done better next time. When
you rewrite something seven times, it means you're covering things up,
you're lying. And they found out that one of the
(11:30):
versions actually went to Karen Bass and she demanded changes.
And that's even upset the Fire Commissioner or the President
of the Fire Commission, Janethia Hudley Hayes, who up to
this point said that she really didn't pay attention, just
gave it a read through and really had no further questions.
(11:51):
She was just going to accept the report as is.
Then found out that there was all kinds of shenanigans
going on, and now she's speaking out against us.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So there's something really rotten.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And Karen Bass is now lashing out at the victims,
lashing out at the people who dare criticize her. No
wonder she fired Kristin Crowley, who by the way, is
her own back of problems because she was horrifically incompetent,
(12:24):
and I mean I mean her hires. Her hires have
been awful, Karen Bess, Geniseez, the good crazy lady who
ran the homeless agency of Valicia Adams Gallum and Rob
(12:47):
Sorry these this is all DEI hiring, is what it is,
and and their disasters. They weren't hired for their intelligence,
that weren't hired for their competence. And I think what
I'm struggling with a lot of people are struggling with
is how can so many people botch the job in
(13:11):
so many different ways for so long? Literally nobody did
anything right. And that is not an overstatement, That is
not hyperbole or any kind of exaggeration. Literally every key
person in the chain, every agency in the chain, screwed
up very badly.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Now is that possible?
Speaker 1 (13:34):
At what point when you look at dozens of people
doing stupid things do you start to wonder? Was this
some kind of a wacky plot? I mean, imagine kicking
the fire department out of a hotspot and nobody went
back there. They got kicked out I think on January
(13:56):
first or second, and nobody went back even after the
National Weather Service set out all the morning. It's like
I'm supposed, I mean, really was benign?
Speaker 7 (14:08):
Is this?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Everybody went stupid at the same time, everybody went stupid.
Everybody who's constantly compulsively scrolling and scrolling and scrolling got
all these National Weather Service warnings and they all looked
at them and no reaction. Hey, maybe we should go
look at that hotspot that still was smoldering, because strong
(14:29):
winds could kick that up in a matter of minutes. Nobody,
nobody in the fire department. That's just not possible. So
you're asking me and everyone else to believe something that
doesn't seem possible. Now, I don't exactly know what the
evil conspiracy theory would be, and I don't know what
the upside of this would be. But the other conclusion
(14:51):
is is that everybody's that stupid, that incompetent, that lazy,
that dense.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I a.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Completely flummoxed by this, and so is everybody there. And
that's why somebody like Spencer Pratt can stand up there
and announce he's running for mayor and the whole place
goes crazy. Everybody starts screaming. And before you say, oh,
that can't happen, that's impossible.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
He's a reality star. He's crazy, He's this and that.
Just watch it. That's what they said about Trump.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
When people get really really fed up, really disgusted, when
they're at the end of the line where they've disrespected
and kicked and spit on and condescended to something crazy
could happen. Maybe something crazy needs to happen. You can't
actually wake up in twenty twenty seven and Karen bass
(15:56):
is being sworn in as the mayor again, can you
have that? Or at the end of twenty twenty six,
can't go on this way? And for people in other
parts of the city, eight you're next next time? Something bad,
In fact, something bad is happening every day in all
(16:16):
parts of the city. Witness the tens of thousands of
homeless people that she's lying about. All her numbers are fake.
Her numbers are fake, the crime numbers are fake. They
perfected the art of fake numbers, fake reports, getting the
media to regurgitate the fake nonsense.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
And they figure.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
They're a bulletproof. Nobody's going to run against them, or
if they run, nobody's gonna beat them. They got the
unions in the bag to provide the to provide the
money for their lying, stinking commercials. There get out the
vote operations. Be very careful when you have that many
(16:57):
people screaming for Spencer Pratt become mayor.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Don't dismiss this anymore.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
I think we're generally in a period of dramatic change
across the country. Obviously in California, maybe the last domino
to fall, but it's gonna fall. People can't live this
way and they shouldn't live this way now. The only person, well,
one of the few people that has made any sense
(17:27):
and has really poured her heart and all her time
and energy into trying to make things better is the
La City councilwoman Tracy Park, who would make a great mayor,
by the way, and she's the councilwoman on the West side. Well,
I talked with her at the event. When we come back,
I'm going to play our conversation and try to imagine,
(17:47):
like I tell you, imagine Rick Russa being the mayor.
Try to imagine somebody like Tracy Park being the mayor.
Speaker 6 (17:53):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Weistein is seven moist eighty six for Friday eight seven
seven moist eighty six or dial the numbers eight seven
seven sixty six four seven eight eighty six. Leave your
message all your righteous anger and fury. You can use
the talkback feature in the iHeart app and we'll record
everything and play back the best stuff coming up on Friday.
This morning, we recorded a number of interviews in the Palisades,
(18:21):
Spencer Pratt and Jeremy Paauer were hosting a rally called
they let Us Burn.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
And it's hard to argue with it that the the.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
What they proposed here is they meaning the government let
us the Palisades Park?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Why did they let us burn?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Everything they did would leave you to leave that that
title is accurate. That's the premise that they let us spurn.
They didn't put out the fire, and they intentionally decided
not to put out the fire. They kept the fire
department far away, and we're told to stand down, and
(19:04):
nothing worked anyway.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And all their reports that's supposed to explain all this
are fully their lies.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
There's seven six rewrites of the fire departments after action report.
Now it turns out Karen Bass demanded changes, big cover up,
big lie. It's got to be busted wide open here.
There's a lot of people who know and they're afraid
of getting fired. This has to be busted wide open. Enough,
(19:38):
isn't enough.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Now I want to focus on a positive for a moment.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
It's La City Council in Tracy Park. She just does
superhuman stuff trying to make people's lives better on the
West Side. She was at the rally and I spoke
with her. Play cut number nine. All right, we're here
at the councilwoman for the eleven district covering the Palace
sas Tracy Park, who's been on with us frequently.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Tracy, I've been.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Talking to people for an hour here and people are
still at the highest level of anger over everything. How
can after a year none of the major questions be
answered and every piece of news is another bombshell. How
nobody understands what's been going on and it's still going on.
Speaker 7 (20:24):
Yeah, John, it's a really good question. And I don't
know how to account for this. You know, I was
very very clear in the immediate aftermath of the fire
that the LAFD absolutely, under no circumstances, should be investigating itself.
I called for, and the council approved and outside independent inquiry.
That is one of several that are either underway or.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Have been completed.
Speaker 7 (20:49):
But watching this information trickle out headline by headline, detailed
by detail, when we haven't had a full accounting and
reckoning of the events that occurred and didn't occur on
January seventh. In the lead up has compounded the anger
and the frustration.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
When you see seven different versions of the report, and
we found out this morning it had been sent to
the Mayor's office, and the mayor's office wanted further refinements.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Well, nobody's going to believe anything.
Speaker 7 (21:17):
Well, and there in lies the problem. Whether the revisions
or the changes that were made were intended to hide
or mislead, it doesn't even really matter. The perception of
it is that it wasn't accurate, and it wasn't transparent,
and we walk away from it wholly unsatisfying. So I
(21:38):
want to actually thank Chief more for his remarks yesterday
at Fire Commission acknowledging finally the mistakes that were made,
because really that is the first step in the accountability,
which is fixing the circumstances that allowed this to happen.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
One thing I hear from talking to people, no one
can believe that every level of.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
God rim it failed and it's continued to fail for
a year, and nobody wants to own up or explain anything.
Speaker 7 (22:06):
Well, you know, very well, maybe the case that the
lawsuit is the only way that people are going to
get answers. And I've said this before, you know, the
consolidated complaint actually seems to be one of the most
comprehensive recitation of the events of that day. But a
crying shame that that's what it takes. I mean, the
reality is there is enough blame to go around. There
(22:27):
are layers of responsibility, and there are layers based on
decades of failure that lined up in a collision course
for the catastrophe on January seventh.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, I just it's hard.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
To believe that everything went wrong and that everybody like
screwed up at the same time and continuously ever since.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
It's just hard to fathom. And I'm telling you a lot.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Of people are wondering if there's some darker issue here
because you see the title of this event, they let
us Burn.
Speaker 7 (22:55):
Well, you know, I understand the sentiment and the frustration
behind it. You know, literally, you know, you talk about
how did everything fail? Literally everything the evacuation routes, the
water system, the communications, the timeliness, literally catastrophic systems failure.
But it was decades of bad management and failure to
(23:17):
invest taxpayer dollars in adequate infrastructure and public safety that
we're going to be necessary to keep this or any
community safe.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
The State Parks rep Park reps kicking out the LA
Fire Department at the hotspot where the fire reignited to
save the milk Vetch plan for being trampled.
Speaker 7 (23:37):
You know, I don't even think the milk Vetch read
is still there. So I think there's a very very
important and painful lesson to be learned. These policies have
to be balanced against the potentially catastrophic outcomes like we
saw here.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Do you have many allies on the city Council to
help fix all this because most of the council is
very quiet at best.
Speaker 7 (24:03):
I have been very grateful for the support that I
have had from a number of my colleagues over the
last year. But yes, as the news cycles shift, as
other crises and emergencies emerge, attention spans are short, and
you know, unfortunately for ninety nine percent of Los Angeles,
life has moved on, and my job as our local
(24:27):
council member who represents the Palisades and other communities impacted
by this is to make sure these stories stay in
the headlines and that government is held accountable.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
You're going to run for re election, You're going to
keep at it. I am, I am.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
My work here is not done.
Speaker 7 (24:42):
The sense of responsibility and obligation that I feel to
help the Palisades community get further on their journey home.
I've got to see Venice through the Olympics, and the
incredible progress that we've made already on homelessness isn't finished.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
I have more to.
Speaker 7 (24:59):
Do, and I have more to do right here on
the West Side.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Thank you for coming on with us, Tracy.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Always, John so Soon.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, she's made a lot of progress on almostness on
the West Side, but to other districts, no, they have not.
You know, when we come back, I'm gonna play a
clip from a guy named Josh Lederer who really got
life was just turned upside down, shook up. He's got
a wife and a kid, and the whole experience has
(25:29):
sent him into therapy and he talked at length on
how everyone let him down.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
You had.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Tracy Park mentioned how the news cycle moved on and
implied that some of the council people became less interested.
What was really telling is when the ice raids happened
in downtown LA. And you saw how angry and animated
Karen Bass got because some illegal aliens were getting deported.
I mean, she just lost it. So much emotion, so
(26:01):
much energy, so much anger. And she's getting illegal alien
activist groups and citing them to riot funded by taxpayers,
of course, more of those nonprofit organizations. And that's the
Karen Bass. And I don't understand why anybody would want
(26:22):
a woman who has turned her back and abandoned the
palisades filled with tens of thousands of taxpayers and families,
and she's got ice cold on that issue. But boy,
she sees some video online on TV of legal aliens
(26:43):
getting arrested, and she's back to her old cashtro roots.
She's full of fire and anger and vigor and screaming
and demanding two completely different Karen Basses. One you have
American citizens and taxpayers suffering a horrific tragedy, the other
(27:04):
a bunch of illegal aliens, and she's egging on the
taxpayer paid nonprofit groups who then started a riot.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
In fact, I'll tell you a big difference between the
illegal alien protesters and the people who are at the
rally today. The organization that put on the rally huge
difference in how they were treated by Karen Bass's la
I'll tell you when we come back.
Speaker 6 (27:34):
You're listening to John Cobelts on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Follow us to John Cobelt Radio on social media.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
We're going to be posting or have posting stuff about
our trip to the Palisades today talking with the residents.
You could also subscribe on YouTube and see our videos.
We're gonna be putting videos of all the interviews sometime today.
YouTube dot com. Slash at John Cobelt's show. YouTube dot
com slash at John Cobelt's show. Let me play for
(28:03):
you now, this guy got to me.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
His name is Josh Letterer, lost his home, his whole
life was upended.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
He's got a wife and a child, and he feels
he was just devastated. He was holding a big sign,
completely let down by all the idiocy here in Los
Angeles and the government. So let's play cut number is
that cut number three? We're talking to a man here.
He's got a large vinyl banner. While he's holding they
(28:33):
let us burn written big bold black and red letters,
your name, Josh Letterer Josh, I've heard you talk to
some reporters here about how everybody in government let you down.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Talk about that.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
Go through the list.
Speaker 8 (28:49):
Let's talk about our fire department, the closest fire department
on the day the fires, when we got high wind alerts,
being forty five minutes away on training. They didn't get
to the fire until an hour after the fire started.
Talk about the fire commissioner not being in service because
of doing a fake bomb threat.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
We can talk about our mayor being in Ghana and
not helping, they said.
Speaker 8 (29:10):
Newsom said there were resources all over the state. I
was here for six hours that day. I didn't see anyone.
I didn't see one firefighter fighting the fire. There was
nobody helping us.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
We were left to evacuate the elderly. There was nobody.
Speaker 8 (29:22):
You think when there's a major disaster, there's gonna be
people to support you, especially when you have that much time,
and they didn't.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Do their jobs. Nobody did their jobs that day.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
What did you lose? Did you lose your whole house.
Speaker 8 (29:33):
Or I lost my life? My house is partially there.
I'm the only one on my block. I'm the only
one on my street, not just my block. I don't
want to say exactly where my house is, but I
stayed that day.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
I prepared my house for the fire.
Speaker 8 (29:46):
I prepared a few other houses for the fire on
Timescal and those were the only houses on Timescal.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
Out of about one hundred houses, we kept.
Speaker 8 (29:52):
About five of them and about three of the ones
we were working on.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
What did you do?
Speaker 8 (29:56):
We turned off the gas. We threw things in pools
that could have burned. We watered down the areas the
fire was coming from, any areas we thought could burn.
We took away vegetation or chairs that were close to
the house.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
I mean we too.
Speaker 8 (30:11):
We prevented the fires for several houses that day that
should have happened throughout the neighbor.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
So you watered down these properties that it helped prevent
them from being burned. And then we hear from the
government that having a one hundred and seventeen million gallon
reservoir empty, the reservoir would have had no effect.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
On fighting the fire had it been full. What do
you say to that?
Speaker 8 (30:31):
Okay, so there are two reservoirs that were empty, right,
there was two reservoirs, And yeah, that's another part of
the incompetence. Here is the biggest part of the fire.
I was watching the fire that day from ten thirty on.
I had a very good few of the fire. We
had two planes trying to fight the fire that had
to travel very long distance to do their water drops.
If we had five planes that were able to go
to the reservoirs and pick up water, that would have
(30:52):
been able to extinguish the fire or at least stop
eighty percent of the fire. The big issue is when
the fire doubled back across the Mescal Canyon took out
the entire city. That happened at about three PM, within
the span of ten minutes when the wind changed.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
They had four hours to fight the fire and to
get it out with air drops before the wind got
too bad, and.
Speaker 8 (31:11):
The city didn't do it. The city wasn't prepared and
they didn't get They didn't protect us.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Talk about what your life's been like for the last year.
You have a family, You've moved a lot. Go through
those details.
Speaker 8 (31:24):
I'm forty three. Last year was by far the most
difficult year of my life. We moved five times, we
evacuated from four different houses.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Dealing with our insurance company.
Speaker 8 (31:33):
He won't give us any information dealing with banks that
slow down the process. It's just a I have three
jobs now, trying to deal with my insurance comp company
and then fix my house while I'm trying to support
my family that just went through this disaster.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
It's everything just keeps piling up.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I mean, that's got to be so draining physically and emotionally.
I mean, as it if you felt like you're near
a breakdown at times.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
All the time.
Speaker 8 (31:58):
I've had forty three I've never seen therapists before this year.
I would love to send the city my therapy bill.
We all need a lot of support here. It's been
very difficult for us.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
What's the thing that infuriates you most? All levels of
government failed us. You know, we found out recently that
the state Parks Reps kicked out the LA Fire Department
so they couldn't tamp down the lock Right fire exactly.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
Yeah, they could have put out the fire.
Speaker 8 (32:23):
They were there two days after there were videos it
was still smoldering. I Mean, what bothers me is the
people now saying they did a good job and that
things are going well and they're helping.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
Us, and they're not. Nobody helped us.
Speaker 8 (32:34):
They screwed everything up and now they're acting like they're
doing a great job. They're not Mayor Pass, Governor Knewsom.
They're doing a terrible job. There's no help for us.
There was no help for us that day, and there's
been no help for us since then. They said they're
going to help wave fees, they're gonna help rebuild. I
mean you can see around here. About two months ago
it was one in twenty houses. Now it's about three
or four and twenty houses that are being rebuilt.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
We're nowhere near we should be. And it's the fault
of the city.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
What do you want done? Do you want fast? Do
some new? Some's going to be out in a year.
What are you looking for in government? To people? New
people are going to be.
Speaker 8 (33:10):
Elected, Accountability, people who can do their jobs, not people
who are here to give us lip service and say
they're going to do a great job. There's two kinds
of people. There are people who do and there are
people that talk. We got a lot of talkers right now.
We got we need people who do, people who put
the right people in place to be prepared for disasters.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
We're not prepared.
Speaker 8 (33:26):
What's gonna happen when we've an earthquake. What's gonna happen
when we've another disaster. We're not prepared and we need
people who are prepared, people who are have been trained
to protect us from disasters.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
All right, your name again, Josh Letterer, Josh Leederer, Josh,
thanks very much.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Are when we come back, we're gonna have Royal Oaks
on to talk about, Uh, take a break from the
fire for just a moment, because Robin Michelle Reiner's son
and killer Nick Reiner, was in court today and the
big story is his lawyer, quit Alan jack and Jackson
(34:03):
is a big name attorney who's defended celebrities like Harvey
Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, and he got out and he
won't explain why, says he's not allowed to explain why.
So we're going to have Royal Oaks on see what
he can figure out. And then we've got more interviews
to play for you from our attendance in the Palisades today.
(34:23):
They let us burn rally, including the former La County
Sheriff Alexi Viennaweva, who'll set some light on the Alta
Dina fiasco because that was another big botch up by
government in Altadena and.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
We're also going to talk to.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
A woman who went through the lengthy list of fallops
and she was aware of all of it as it
was happening. That's next. 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 and on the iHeartRadio app.
The John Kobylt Show News
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John Kobylt
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