January 14, 2025 ā¢ 21 mins
Los Angeles, CA | Los Angeles is burning, and the impact is personal.Ā We delve into the current status of the devastating fires, discuss the factors that made them so catastrophic, and explore what they mean for the city's future.
Linked Resources/How to Help:
California Wildfires: Palisades and Eaton Fires (AP)
L.A. Wildfires: Help and Resources List (KCRW)
Mental Health Support for Fire Victims (LAist)
How to Help L.A. Fire Victims (LAist)
Wildfire Awareness Post on Instagram (PBS SoCal)
Linked Sources Referenced:
Palisades Fire Wednesday Live Updates (KTLA)
Wildfire Destroys Historic Home, Structures at Southern California State Parks (KTLA)
Southern California Wildfire History (LAist)
California Fires: Possible Causes (AP)
California Fires: Victims and Aftermath (NYT)
Weather Factors in L.A.ās Fires (LA Times)
Santa Ana Winds and Wildfires (NPR)
Federal Aid Amid Fires (LA Times)
Maps and Visuals of L.A. Wildfires (CNN)
Why L.A. Struggled With Modern Fires (NPR)
History of Wildfires in Los Angeles (Wildfire LA)
Fire Spike in L.A. (NBC Los Angeles)
Bunny Museum Rebuild After Fire (LA Times)
Power Lines and Fire Causes (LA Times)
The title of this episode is inspired by a post from Blair Imani Ali, auth
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi everyone.
This is Leah.
I'm going to be going solo forthis episode, if you're just
joining us.
Normally co-host April would bejoining, but this is going to
be an exception to our normallyscheduled programming.
Now, normally this show isabout the dark history of major
(00:22):
cities.
Our current season is on LosAngeles, but in light of the
dark history currently unfoldingright now, we felt like this
was not the right time to talkabout all of the dark things in
Los Angeles' past, especiallywhen we're going through a very
dark moment right now, and thatis, of course, the fires that
(00:46):
have been ripping through theregions.
So if you've even remotely beenpaying attention to the news I
know many of you areinternational we are going
through one of if it doesn'tturn out to be, the worst
natural disaster in this region,possibly the US disaster in
(01:09):
this region, possibly the US.
Since Tuesday, january 7th,multiple fires have broken out
in LA.
They've varied in terms ofseverity and scale and the
devastation is just awful.
If you've seen the images, youknow thousands of homes have
been destroyed.
Businesses, schools,neighborhoods are just entirely
erased.
Some of the aerial footage thatI've seen.
It's almost like if you were tojust kind of squint or not
(01:33):
really be paying attention.
It kind of looks like a barrenwinter landscape that just had
snow.
But that's not snow.
Those are ashes from all of thethings that have burned in the
wake of this fire.
Here's how I'm going to run theepisode, because I feel like
it's very important for us totalk about it and acknowledge it
(01:55):
and explain what's happening,especially as someone on the
ground.
So here's what I'll do.
I'm going to give you a quickrecap of what's happened so far.
Why did this happen, how did itget so bad and what does it all
mean for the region?
But first I'm going to juststart off on a few personal
notes.
I know many of you who arelistening are local, which means
(02:16):
you could have been directlyimpacted by this fire.
You certainly know somebody whohas, and to those people, I am
just so sorry.
I don't think there are anywords that could be said, and
even if there were the rightwords, I don't think I could
find them.
It is just so devastating and Iam just so sorry.
(02:37):
To the first responders on theground, I think safe to say we
all appreciate them, but, boy,you don't know how much you
appreciate them until somethinglike this happens even if you
already did the firefighters,the police, the emergency
technicians, among so manyothers who are literally out
there risking their lives, evenif you are living in I don't
(03:01):
know Germany and I know some ofyou are Go treat your local fire
station to lunch or hug yourlocal firefighter.
I mean, they are out theredoing double, triple time.
And then also to the media.
So we're normally a historyshow.
We are not journalists.
We have so much appreciationand praise for journalists and
(03:23):
historians and what we do is wetake all the great work that
they do and package it intostories that you can listen to
while commuting or doing yourchores.
And I think times like thisalso highlights how important
the local media is.
If it weren't for them andtheir coverage, we wouldn't
really understand the extent ofthe damage and also inspire the
(03:44):
sort of help and support we needfrom all corners of society to
get past where we are today.
For myself, I live in the LAarea, so if you listen regularly
, you know that April is inPhoenix.
I live just a few miles southof one of the two biggest fires,
(04:05):
the Eaton Fire.
So first question is are youokay?
Yes, we're fine, my family'sfine, everyone's fine outside of
being shell-shocked.
There certainly could be aworse scenario here.
But one story I wanted to justrelate, being so close, on top
of all the personal tragediesand stories I've heard so far.
(04:27):
So the fire started on Tuesdaynight and on Wednesday morning
when I looked outside, the lightis really, really weird because
of all of the smoke and haze,really weird because of all of
(04:50):
the smoke and haze.
And then when I looked a littlebit closer I saw it looks like
it could be snow flurriesfloating around, but those
aren't snow flurries, those areashes, ashes of people's houses,
their schools, their kids' toys, and it's just really I can't
really describe it.
I've never seen or experiencedanything like it.
(05:16):
It kind of reminds me of tolighten this up for a second,
because this is a heavy episode.
Then again it's Dark City, soeverything's heavy.
But it reminds me of StrangerThings when they're in the
upside down.
You know how it's like, gotthat eerie light and there's all
that white stuff floatingaround in the air which is
actually alien spores, in caseyou're curious.
But yeah, it was kind of likethat.
(05:38):
It felt like I was in theupside down, my normal world
just turned upside down.
Now let me talk about thedevastation so far.
I saw a post on social mediathat said everyone in LA knows
someone who lost everything Imean, if not everyone, just
(06:00):
about everyone or you're theperson who lost something.
This is just massive in termsof scale.
So I'm going to start byzooming out and give you a
summary of the destruction,again as we know it so far as of
Monday, january 13th, keepingin mind this is an evolving
story and the numbers I'm goingto share below what they
actually are.
(06:21):
According to the New York Times,as of Sunday evening, the
combined area burned by the pastweek's fire is about 40,000
acres.
Now, to put this another way,because most of us don't think
in terms of where the fires haveare raging, it would be 62.5
(06:51):
square miles.
So, just if you have a sense,in any direction, what's eight
miles away?
That's just one side of thesquare.
The total area is larger thanthe city limits of major US
cities, including San Francisco,pittsburgh and Boston.
The last count, I saw 12,000structures destroyed across
these fires.
Those structures include houses, businesses, schools, cars,
(07:17):
outhouses.
According to NPR, as of Sunday,at least 153,000 people had
been forced to evacuate andprobably will not be able to
return until later this week dueto continued fire risk.
Another 166,000 people, Ibelieve, are still under
evacuation warning.
To fight the fire the region haspulled in from not just the
(07:41):
bench of firefighters here inCalifornia but other US states.
It's an international effort.
At this point we havefirefighters coming in from
Mexico and Canada, firefightersfrom a private firefighting
force, even firefighting airtankers being used, though
unfortunately those had to staygrounded when the winds were so
(08:02):
bad at the beginning of lastweek.
But they're out there andthey're in full force now.
I'm going to break down themultiple fires and give you a
sense of where they are,especially for most of you that
don't actually live in LosAngeles County.
The largest by far is thePalisades Fire.
This one has consumed 24,000acres it's about 17% contained
(08:28):
as of this recording and it's avery, very small fire.
This fire is taking place in aneighborhood that is located on
the coast.
It's between Santa Monica andMalibu those are two cities that
you might be familiar with andit's in the Santa Monica
Mountains.
So I think there's a lot ofluxury homes with ocean views,
(08:49):
winding canyon roads.
Because of that geography, ithas been a nightmare to evacuate
.
I was listening to the New YorkTimes, the Daily, and they
reported that there were pointswhen the traffic on these narrow
roads getting out were sobacked up.
People were told just get outof your vehicles and run if you
want to live.
(09:10):
There's this one story, theactor, steve Guttenberg, who
lives in the area.
He was running around andshouting to people.
Steve Guttenberg, who lives inthe area.
He was running around andshouting to people exiting their
vehicles leave your keys in thecar, because firefighters, if
they have to come and move itand they probably will at some
point it makes it easy for themto get in there.
The picture of that is justinsane.
(09:30):
Now, the Eaton Fire this is theone that is burning north of
where I live.
This one's roughly 14,000 acresit's about 35% contained.
So geographically this area isnorth of Pasadena.
The place that's being hard hitis out to Dana and it's
devastating how it is erasingthis community.
(09:52):
Also, to give you a sense ofwhere it is geographically, if
you're familiar with the RoseBowl, it's north of that and it
goes into the Angeles Forest.
There's beautiful hiking trailsup there that I'm sure no
longer exist.
I have memories in both thePalisades and in Eaton Canyon,
of places that just don't existanymore.
(10:14):
There are several smaller firesaround LA County, including the
Kenneth Fire that burned about1,000 acres.
That one's contained.
There's the Hearst Fire thatwas about 800 acres, it's just
about contained.
And then the Sunset Fire inHollywood Hills, and that one is
contained and I believe it'sextinguished as well.
Now, this is crazy because theday after the fires broke out I
(10:38):
was texting with a friend ofmine who was out of town about
how terrible it was, and she andI were texting just as this one
was breaking out andfortunately thank God, this is a
pretty heavily populated area.
No homes were destroyed.
They were able to get it intounder control pretty quickly,
(10:59):
but it was a very tense moment.
She sent me a video of a friendwho was literally taking video
of it from a distance in heroffice building.
You could see the fire in thehorizon.
A note on containment and whatexactly it means.
Containment refers topercentage of control lines that
(11:20):
have been established around afire's perimeter to stop its
spread.
So those barriers could benatural, like rivers or lakes,
or man-made, like dugout.
Fire breaks cleared zones, butwhen they say a fire is 100%
contained, that doesn't mean thefire is extinguished so like.
With the heightened wind riskwe still have through Wednesday.
(11:42):
It means you could have asituation where the embers could
cross those lines or justcontinue to wreak even more
havoc within those lines.
So it's good when the numbersgo up, but it by far and away
does not mean that it's over.
(12:03):
Now there are countless storiesof tragedy that are emerging.
I can't possibly recount all ofthem, but I'm going to share
just one in particular that Ifound so tragic as I was reading
about those that have losttheir lives in this fire.
There's a man named AnthonyMitchell.
(12:24):
He lived in Altadena.
This is where the Eaton Fire is.
He lived in a house that hasbeen in his family for a few
generations, with two sons bothin their thirties.
One of his sons, justin, hadcerebral palsy, and so he can't
get out of bed on his own.
Anthony himself, I believe, isalso disabled.
They had another son whonormally lives with them and
(12:48):
cares for both of them.
He was actually hospitalizedhimself with an illness this
week.
So Anthony was in touch withtwo of his other children
telling them you know, we'refine, even though his son,
jordan, wasn't there to helpthem evacuate.
He said we're going to getevacuated, but then they were
(13:10):
later found dead.
No one ever came to get them.
I don't know what the backstoryis.
Of course, the family isdevastated and they feel like
they have been failed by thesystem, and I understand that.
Outside of all of theseindividual stories of tragedy,
we're losing historical andculturally significant sites.
(13:31):
One of these, just to lightenthis up for a minute, there's
this museum in Altadena calledthe Bunny Museum.
That's called the HoppiestPlace on Earth.
Now this museum was started bya husband and wife, steve
Lubansky and Candace Frazee.
(13:51):
They each called each otherBunny and obviously loved Bunny
so much.
They started a museum that had46,000 rabbit related items.
This was everything from likestuffed animals and porcelain
figures to movie posters,costumes.
So that has burned down, thoughthey are committed to
(14:13):
rebuilding it and I hope thatthey do.
I remember seeing that andthinking that was the most
random, awesome thing and makinga note to visit it.
The Palisades Fire.
So on the other side of LA, onthe coast, the Will Rogers State
Park has burned down.
That park you might be familiarwith, you might recognize the
name Will Rogers.
He was a Hollywood actor.
(14:34):
In the 20s he developed theland into a ranch and put in
golf courses and riding trails,and it was donated by his widow
in 1944 to become a historicstate park that has been
decimated.
Now let's talk about why thefires were so bad.
I'm going to go over why.
We had the conditions for thequote unquote perfect storm.
(14:57):
And you're probably thinking,okay, that's all great, but you
have to have a spark to start afire.
And what was that?
I'll get into that Now.
Typically, los Angeles is reallydry, with minimal rainfall in
the months between June andSeptember, but usually there is
follow-up rain after this fireseason in the late fall to
winter, but that wasn't the casethis year.
(15:19):
To give you a sense of howsevere the dryness was in the
last three months of 2024,typically we would get around
3.5 inches of rain.
However, we only got about 0.03inches of rain, according to
what was recorded at LAX duringthose months.
Because of this, you have allof this vegetation that normally
(15:39):
would have been hydrated bymidwinter rains now turned into
this vast supply ofeasy-to-ignite fuel.
There was a lot of driedvegetation too, because the last
two rainy seasons in 2023 and2024 were unseasonably wet.
According to CNN, a weatherstation near the Palisades fire
(16:00):
recorded 19.3 inches of rain inFebruary of last year.
That's compared to the usual4.7 inches.
All that rain encouragedexplosive plant growth and I
remember thinking at that timeI'm so grateful for the rain we
certainly need the water butalso being terrified at all of
(16:25):
those beautiful flowers, becauseI knew when we would go through
these periods of no rain.
It would just be fuel for thefire.
Then add in the Santa Ana winds.
These are hot, dry winds thatoriginate in the winter months
in the Great Basin north of theSierra Nevada mountains.
They form when cold air fromhigh-pressure systems circulate
clockwise, forcing dense airdownslope towards Southern
California.
(16:46):
As this air descends throughthe many mountain passes and
canyons, it compresses, heats up, dries out and picks up speed,
and can reach up to 110 milesper hour.
This week we experienced windsas strong as 100 miles per hour.
That is equivalent of aCategory 2 hurricane.
And these winds, they don'tjust blow, they create chaos.
(17:08):
When fires do break out, theycan carry embers miles ahead of
the fire, allowing it to hopover fire breaks like freeways
and roads, with embers ignitingnew fires far from the point of
origin.
Fire behavior becomesincredibly hard to predict or
control.
At one point we were seeing theequivalent of three football
(17:29):
fields burning every minute.
So now on to the big question sowhat sparked the fires?
According to the National FireProtection Association, the
leading cause of wildfires islightning, which obviously did
not apply here.
The next most common causes arehuman-related intentionally set
fires or those sparked byutility lines.
(17:50):
In the case of the fires thatbroke out here, we don't have
definitive answers yet.
Investigators are still piecingthings together.
According to LAist, somereports suggest that the
Palisades fire could be arekindling of an earlier blaze
caused by fireworks on NewYear's Eve, which is a week
earlier.
Meanwhile, the LA Times reportsthat investigators are
(18:14):
examining the transmission linein Eaton Canyon as a potential
source of the Eaton fire.
Southern California Edison hasdenied responsibility for the
fire and says it hasn't beenofficially accused, but they're
still facing lawsuits.
Determining the exact cause ofa wildfire is notoriously
difficult.
As Michael Wara, director ofthe Climate and Energy Policy
(18:38):
Program at Stanford, put it,you're basically throwing a
crime scene in an oven.
So it might be some time beforewe can say anything with
certainty as to what the causeswere.
To quantify the cost of thefires.
Accuweather's preliminaryestimates place the damage and
economic losses between $135billion and $150 billion.
(19:02):
This, of course, does notreflect the countless personal
stories of loss and tragedy.
To put the numbers inperspective, hurricane Katrina's
impact was about $200 billion.
These fires represent a turningpoint for the region.
Entire communities are going toneed to be rebuilt.
The loss of cultural landmarkserases pieces of LA's unique
(19:26):
character.
With climate changeintensifying both wet and dry
seasons for the foreseeablefuture, and as evidenced by last
year's record February rainsfollowed by extreme drought, los
Angeles faces difficultdecisions about its future.
How we rebuild, where we allowdevelopment and how we
strengthen our emergencyresponse systems will shape the
(19:48):
region for generations to come.
The fires of January 2025 willlikely be remembered not just
for their unprecedenteddestruction, but as the moment
that forced Los Angeles tofundamentally rethink its
relationship and designedenvironment with wildfire risk.
So for all of you out there,there's no shortage of ways to
(20:11):
help.
If you want to help, donationsto established and trustworthy
nonprofits are always welcome.
You can donate clothes, books,toys All of those things are
needed.
And if you live here, like me,and want to help with cleanup
once it's safe, there's going tobe a number of efforts that
will be organized.
I know personally I'm going tohelp with rebuilding trails,
(20:33):
among other things.
We'll put links on how you canhelp in our show notes to
reference.
Until next time, stay safe andwe'll see you soon.
Thank you.
Hi everyone.
This is Leah.
I'm going to be going solo forthis episode, if you're just
joining us.
Normally co-host April would bejoining, but this is going to
be an exception to our normallyscheduled programming.
Now, normally this show isabout the dark history of major
(00:22):
cities.
Our current season is on LosAngeles, but in light of the
dark history currently unfoldingright now, we felt like this
was not the right time to talkabout all of the dark things in
Los Angeles' past, especiallywhen we're going through a very
dark moment right now, and thatis, of course, the fires that
(00:46):
have been ripping through theregions.
So if you've even remotely beenpaying attention to the news I
know many of you areinternational we are going
through one of if it doesn'tturn out to be, the worst
natural disaster in this region,possibly the US disaster in
(01:09):
this region, possibly the US.
Since Tuesday, january 7th,multiple fires have broken out
in LA.
They've varied in terms ofseverity and scale and the
devastation is just awful.
If you've seen the images, youknow thousands of homes have
been destroyed.
Businesses, schools,neighborhoods are just entirely
erased.
Some of the aerial footage thatI've seen.
It's almost like if you were tojust kind of squint or not
(01:33):
really be paying attention.
It kind of looks like a barrenwinter landscape that just had
snow.
But that's not snow.
Those are ashes from all of thethings that have burned in the
wake of this fire.
Here's how I'm going to run theepisode, because I feel like
it's very important for us totalk about it and acknowledge it
(01:55):
and explain what's happening,especially as someone on the
ground.
So here's what I'll do.
I'm going to give you a quickrecap of what's happened so far.
Why did this happen, how did itget so bad and what does it all
mean for the region?
But first I'm going to juststart off on a few personal
notes.
I know many of you who arelistening are local, which means
(02:16):
you could have been directlyimpacted by this fire.
You certainly know somebody whohas, and to those people, I am
just so sorry.
I don't think there are anywords that could be said, and
even if there were the rightwords, I don't think I could
find them.
It is just so devastating and Iam just so sorry.
(02:37):
To the first responders on theground, I think safe to say we
all appreciate them, but, boy,you don't know how much you
appreciate them until somethinglike this happens even if you
already did the firefighters,the police, the emergency
technicians, among so manyothers who are literally out
there risking their lives, evenif you are living in I don't
(03:01):
know Germany and I know some ofyou are Go treat your local fire
station to lunch or hug yourlocal firefighter.
I mean, they are out theredoing double, triple time.
And then also to the media.
So we're normally a historyshow.
We are not journalists.
We have so much appreciationand praise for journalists and
(03:23):
historians and what we do is wetake all the great work that
they do and package it intostories that you can listen to
while commuting or doing yourchores.
And I think times like thisalso highlights how important
the local media is.
If it weren't for them andtheir coverage, we wouldn't
really understand the extent ofthe damage and also inspire the
(03:44):
sort of help and support we needfrom all corners of society to
get past where we are today.
For myself, I live in the LAarea, so if you listen regularly
, you know that April is inPhoenix.
I live just a few miles southof one of the two biggest fires,
(04:05):
the Eaton Fire.
So first question is are youokay?
Yes, we're fine, my family'sfine, everyone's fine outside of
being shell-shocked.
There certainly could be aworse scenario here.
But one story I wanted to justrelate, being so close, on top
of all the personal tragediesand stories I've heard so far.
(04:27):
So the fire started on Tuesdaynight and on Wednesday morning
when I looked outside, the lightis really, really weird because
of all of the smoke and haze,really weird because of all of
(04:50):
the smoke and haze.
And then when I looked a littlebit closer I saw it looks like
it could be snow flurriesfloating around, but those
aren't snow flurries, those areashes, ashes of people's houses,
their schools, their kids' toys, and it's just really I can't
really describe it.
I've never seen or experiencedanything like it.
(05:16):
It kind of reminds me of tolighten this up for a second,
because this is a heavy episode.
Then again it's Dark City, soeverything's heavy.
But it reminds me of StrangerThings when they're in the
upside down.
You know how it's like, gotthat eerie light and there's all
that white stuff floatingaround in the air which is
actually alien spores, in caseyou're curious.
But yeah, it was kind of likethat.
(05:38):
It felt like I was in theupside down, my normal world
just turned upside down.
Now let me talk about thedevastation so far.
I saw a post on social mediathat said everyone in LA knows
someone who lost everything Imean, if not everyone, just
(06:00):
about everyone or you're theperson who lost something.
This is just massive in termsof scale.
So I'm going to start byzooming out and give you a
summary of the destruction,again as we know it so far as of
Monday, january 13th, keepingin mind this is an evolving
story and the numbers I'm goingto share below what they
actually are.
(06:21):
According to the New York Times,as of Sunday evening, the
combined area burned by the pastweek's fire is about 40,000
acres.
Now, to put this another way,because most of us don't think
in terms of where the fires haveare raging, it would be 62.5
(06:51):
square miles.
So, just if you have a sense,in any direction, what's eight
miles away?
That's just one side of thesquare.
The total area is larger thanthe city limits of major US
cities, including San Francisco,pittsburgh and Boston.
The last count, I saw 12,000structures destroyed across
these fires.
Those structures include houses, businesses, schools, cars,
(07:17):
outhouses.
According to NPR, as of Sunday,at least 153,000 people had
been forced to evacuate andprobably will not be able to
return until later this week dueto continued fire risk.
Another 166,000 people, Ibelieve, are still under
evacuation warning.
To fight the fire the region haspulled in from not just the
(07:41):
bench of firefighters here inCalifornia but other US states.
It's an international effort.
At this point we havefirefighters coming in from
Mexico and Canada, firefightersfrom a private firefighting
force, even firefighting airtankers being used, though
unfortunately those had to staygrounded when the winds were so
(08:02):
bad at the beginning of lastweek.
But they're out there andthey're in full force now.
I'm going to break down themultiple fires and give you a
sense of where they are,especially for most of you that
don't actually live in LosAngeles County.
The largest by far is thePalisades Fire.
This one has consumed 24,000acres it's about 17% contained
(08:28):
as of this recording and it's avery, very small fire.
This fire is taking place in aneighborhood that is located on
the coast.
It's between Santa Monica andMalibu those are two cities that
you might be familiar with andit's in the Santa Monica
Mountains.
So I think there's a lot ofluxury homes with ocean views,
(08:49):
winding canyon roads.
Because of that geography, ithas been a nightmare to evacuate
.
I was listening to the New YorkTimes, the Daily, and they
reported that there were pointswhen the traffic on these narrow
roads getting out were sobacked up.
People were told just get outof your vehicles and run if you
want to live.
(09:10):
There's this one story, theactor, steve Guttenberg, who
lives in the area.
He was running around andshouting to people.
Steve Guttenberg, who lives inthe area.
He was running around andshouting to people exiting their
vehicles leave your keys in thecar, because firefighters, if
they have to come and move itand they probably will at some
point it makes it easy for themto get in there.
The picture of that is justinsane.
(09:30):
Now, the Eaton Fire this is theone that is burning north of
where I live.
This one's roughly 14,000 acresit's about 35% contained.
So geographically this area isnorth of Pasadena.
The place that's being hard hitis out to Dana and it's
devastating how it is erasingthis community.
(09:52):
Also, to give you a sense ofwhere it is geographically, if
you're familiar with the RoseBowl, it's north of that and it
goes into the Angeles Forest.
There's beautiful hiking trailsup there that I'm sure no
longer exist.
I have memories in both thePalisades and in Eaton Canyon,
of places that just don't existanymore.
(10:14):
There are several smaller firesaround LA County, including the
Kenneth Fire that burned about1,000 acres.
That one's contained.
There's the Hearst Fire thatwas about 800 acres, it's just
about contained.
And then the Sunset Fire inHollywood Hills, and that one is
contained and I believe it'sextinguished as well.
Now, this is crazy because theday after the fires broke out I
(10:38):
was texting with a friend ofmine who was out of town about
how terrible it was, and she andI were texting just as this one
was breaking out andfortunately thank God, this is a
pretty heavily populated area.
No homes were destroyed.
They were able to get it intounder control pretty quickly,
(10:59):
but it was a very tense moment.
She sent me a video of a friendwho was literally taking video
of it from a distance in heroffice building.
You could see the fire in thehorizon.
A note on containment and whatexactly it means.
Containment refers topercentage of control lines that
(11:20):
have been established around afire's perimeter to stop its
spread.
So those barriers could benatural, like rivers or lakes,
or man-made, like dugout.
Fire breaks cleared zones, butwhen they say a fire is 100%
contained, that doesn't mean thefire is extinguished so like.
With the heightened wind riskwe still have through Wednesday.
(11:42):
It means you could have asituation where the embers could
cross those lines or justcontinue to wreak even more
havoc within those lines.
So it's good when the numbersgo up, but it by far and away
does not mean that it's over.
(12:03):
Now there are countless storiesof tragedy that are emerging.
I can't possibly recount all ofthem, but I'm going to share
just one in particular that Ifound so tragic as I was reading
about those that have losttheir lives in this fire.
There's a man named AnthonyMitchell.
(12:24):
He lived in Altadena.
This is where the Eaton Fire is.
He lived in a house that hasbeen in his family for a few
generations, with two sons bothin their thirties.
One of his sons, justin, hadcerebral palsy, and so he can't
get out of bed on his own.
Anthony himself, I believe, isalso disabled.
They had another son whonormally lives with them and
(12:48):
cares for both of them.
He was actually hospitalizedhimself with an illness this
week.
So Anthony was in touch withtwo of his other children
telling them you know, we'refine, even though his son,
jordan, wasn't there to helpthem evacuate.
He said we're going to getevacuated, but then they were
(13:10):
later found dead.
No one ever came to get them.
I don't know what the backstoryis.
Of course, the family isdevastated and they feel like
they have been failed by thesystem, and I understand that.
Outside of all of theseindividual stories of tragedy,
we're losing historical andculturally significant sites.
(13:31):
One of these, just to lightenthis up for a minute, there's
this museum in Altadena calledthe Bunny Museum.
That's called the HoppiestPlace on Earth.
Now this museum was started bya husband and wife, steve
Lubansky and Candace Frazee.
(13:51):
They each called each otherBunny and obviously loved Bunny
so much.
They started a museum that had46,000 rabbit related items.
This was everything from likestuffed animals and porcelain
figures to movie posters,costumes.
So that has burned down, thoughthey are committed to
(14:13):
rebuilding it and I hope thatthey do.
I remember seeing that andthinking that was the most
random, awesome thing and makinga note to visit it.
The Palisades Fire.
So on the other side of LA, onthe coast, the Will Rogers State
Park has burned down.
That park you might be familiarwith, you might recognize the
name Will Rogers.
He was a Hollywood actor.
(14:34):
In the 20s he developed theland into a ranch and put in
golf courses and riding trails,and it was donated by his widow
in 1944 to become a historicstate park that has been
decimated.
Now let's talk about why thefires were so bad.
I'm going to go over why.
We had the conditions for thequote unquote perfect storm.
(14:57):
And you're probably thinking,okay, that's all great, but you
have to have a spark to start afire.
And what was that?
I'll get into that Now.
Typically, los Angeles is reallydry, with minimal rainfall in
the months between June andSeptember, but usually there is
follow-up rain after this fireseason in the late fall to
winter, but that wasn't the casethis year.
(15:19):
To give you a sense of howsevere the dryness was in the
last three months of 2024,typically we would get around
3.5 inches of rain.
However, we only got about 0.03inches of rain, according to
what was recorded at LAX duringthose months.
Because of this, you have allof this vegetation that normally
(15:39):
would have been hydrated bymidwinter rains now turned into
this vast supply ofeasy-to-ignite fuel.
There was a lot of driedvegetation too, because the last
two rainy seasons in 2023 and2024 were unseasonably wet.
According to CNN, a weatherstation near the Palisades fire
(16:00):
recorded 19.3 inches of rain inFebruary of last year.
That's compared to the usual4.7 inches.
All that rain encouragedexplosive plant growth and I
remember thinking at that timeI'm so grateful for the rain we
certainly need the water butalso being terrified at all of
(16:25):
those beautiful flowers, becauseI knew when we would go through
these periods of no rain.
It would just be fuel for thefire.
Then add in the Santa Ana winds.
These are hot, dry winds thatoriginate in the winter months
in the Great Basin north of theSierra Nevada mountains.
They form when cold air fromhigh-pressure systems circulate
clockwise, forcing dense airdownslope towards Southern
California.
(16:46):
As this air descends throughthe many mountain passes and
canyons, it compresses, heats up, dries out and picks up speed,
and can reach up to 110 milesper hour.
This week we experienced windsas strong as 100 miles per hour.
That is equivalent of aCategory 2 hurricane.
And these winds, they don'tjust blow, they create chaos.
(17:08):
When fires do break out, theycan carry embers miles ahead of
the fire, allowing it to hopover fire breaks like freeways
and roads, with embers ignitingnew fires far from the point of
origin.
Fire behavior becomesincredibly hard to predict or
control.
At one point we were seeing theequivalent of three football
(17:29):
fields burning every minute.
So now on to the big question sowhat sparked the fires?
According to the National FireProtection Association, the
leading cause of wildfires islightning, which obviously did
not apply here.
The next most common causes arehuman-related intentionally set
fires or those sparked byutility lines.
(17:50):
In the case of the fires thatbroke out here, we don't have
definitive answers yet.
Investigators are still piecingthings together.
According to LAist, somereports suggest that the
Palisades fire could be arekindling of an earlier blaze
caused by fireworks on NewYear's Eve, which is a week
earlier.
Meanwhile, the LA Times reportsthat investigators are
(18:14):
examining the transmission linein Eaton Canyon as a potential
source of the Eaton fire.
Southern California Edison hasdenied responsibility for the
fire and says it hasn't beenofficially accused, but they're
still facing lawsuits.
Determining the exact cause ofa wildfire is notoriously
difficult.
As Michael Wara, director ofthe Climate and Energy Policy
(18:38):
Program at Stanford, put it,you're basically throwing a
crime scene in an oven.
So it might be some time beforewe can say anything with
certainty as to what the causeswere.
To quantify the cost of thefires.
Accuweather's preliminaryestimates place the damage and
economic losses between $135billion and $150 billion.
(19:02):
This, of course, does notreflect the countless personal
stories of loss and tragedy.
To put the numbers inperspective, hurricane Katrina's
impact was about $200 billion.
These fires represent a turningpoint for the region.
Entire communities are going toneed to be rebuilt.
The loss of cultural landmarkserases pieces of LA's unique
(19:26):
character.
With climate changeintensifying both wet and dry
seasons for the foreseeablefuture, and as evidenced by last
year's record February rainsfollowed by extreme drought, los
Angeles faces difficultdecisions about its future.
How we rebuild, where we allowdevelopment and how we
strengthen our emergencyresponse systems will shape the
(19:48):
region for generations to come.
The fires of January 2025 willlikely be remembered not just
for their unprecedenteddestruction, but as the moment
that forced Los Angeles tofundamentally rethink its
relationship and designedenvironment with wildfire risk.
So for all of you out there,there's no shortage of ways to
(20:11):
help.
If you want to help, donationsto established and trustworthy
nonprofits are always welcome.
You can donate clothes, books,toys All of those things are
needed.
And if you live here, like me,and want to help with cleanup
once it's safe, there's going tobe a number of efforts that
will be organized.
I know personally I'm going tohelp with rebuilding trails,
(20:33):
among other things.
We'll put links on how you canhelp in our show notes to
reference.
Until next time, stay safe andwe'll see you soon.
Thank you.
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