February 22, 2025 • 31 mins
This special looks at the devastating effects of the wildfires through the voices of people who lost their homes, the people who covered it, and the ones taking charge in the aftermath. We takes listeners from the first flash of flames spotted in the Palisades and Altadena, to now, as LA starts to pick up the pieces. Survivors who fled as the fires claimed their homes, journalists who told the stories as they unfolded, and government officials looking for a path forward join KFI News's Michael Monks for two hours of reflection and examination. This conversation includes a look at the legendary historic properties lost, the still evolving and far-reaching economic impact, and the spirit of LA rising to the occasion to help our neighbors in this unprecedented time of need.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is La Fires,
A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
what happens next. ELI Mayor Karen Bass is said to
expect a thorough review of the preparedness and the response.
She's faced considerable criticism for being halfway across the world
(00:32):
in Ghana as the fires broke out, despite days of
weather forecasting suggesting something disastrous could happen. In her second
live news conference after returning, she discounted questions about people
calling for her resignation and.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Let me just say because I answered some questions like
that in the morning, and let me just state now,
number one, these fires are burning now. Our job is
to make sure that people stay alive, that we save lives,
that we save homes, that we save property. And I
also said that when the fires are out, we will
(01:08):
do a deep dive. We will look at what worked,
we will look at what didn't work, and we will
let you know. Until then, my focus is on the
TV screens behind you that are showing devastation that has continued.
Thank you answered it in the morning, answered it now,
won't answer it again.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
A week and a half later, Mayor Bass appointed the
city's recoveries are Steve Silberoff. He's got a long history
with civic, business and philanthropic groups, including the Dodgers and
the city's Police Commission.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
And what we need is and what I hope people
will start with is today is hope there is an
A to Z for each one of us, and a
is today, and we're going to get there step by step,
and the city is going to help to the extent
(01:59):
that can, and we will have to outsource to the
extent it can't. That there's going to be a bus
to yes, and if people want to get on the
bus with us, get on them. If they want to
spend their time throwing embers right now next Tuesday when
it's windy, by spending their time on that kind of stuff,
(02:20):
just don't get on our bus.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
But that ended up causing more political fallout for the
mayor because Soberoff's bus was set to lead to half
a million dollars for him for three months of work.
The outcry was strong and swift, and now he's working
for free, the preparedness, the response, and now the aftermath
will continue to raise questions and stakes for local government.
(02:43):
LA County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath represents Pacific Palisades a supervisor. Obviously,
this has just been a terrible disaster that LA County
has experienced in multiple spots. At the same time, I'm
curious as a government official, what have you learned about
local government specifically in LA County as we've dealt with this.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
I think LA County has a commitment to emergency preparedness
and investing in keeping people safe, and they're given the
climate hazards and risks that we face in our region.
My district, the third District of Los Angeles County, is
the most disaster prone district of any county, of any
(03:25):
district in any county in the entire country. So not
only is it something that we must continue to invest in,
it must be a way of life for all of us.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
The supervisor, I'll note whether it's reopening pch or getting
people back to their properties, just to inspect or how
the repermitting process is going to go. It seems like
there are different speeds that people want, regardless of which
side they're on. Maybe they're a politician, elected official, maybe
they're a resident. This is too fast, this is too slow.
(03:55):
What has it been like trying to find that perfect
goldilocks temperature? As we the rebuilding phase.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
Well, I think there's no question we want to move
with a sense of urgency because, especially in this debris
removal phase, the household hazardous materials in an uncontrolled environment
are just not safe for anyone. So we absolutely want
to move quicker. And I'm glad to see that so
many teams have been deployed by the us EPA on
(04:22):
the ground to move Phase one faster than was originally predicted.
We're doing so because of all the teams that have
been deployed. We're doing so without cutting corners, which is
incredibly important because we don't just want to move quickly,
we want to move safely, and so we're doing both
at a pace that's never been seen before. And it's
because of the number of teams that are on the ground.
(04:43):
It's because of the kind of expertise that's on the ground.
We have folks who were involved in some of the
fires in Northern California and now we and some of
the disasters that we've seen throughout the country. So we
are bringing the best thinking to this effort, which allows
us to do both. We can move quickly but also
do so safely, and by working with people who are
(05:04):
informed and who have experience on the ground, we're able
to help people have certainty around what these milestones are.
And I know, when the world is swirling around you
and things feel uncertain, the thing that you're really holding
onto is information that's verified, that's trusted, and that allows
you to start putting together what looks like and you
(05:25):
know what the journey is going to look like for
you to get back home. And that's really what we're
trying to do.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
This is really going to put local government to the
test in a lot of ways, and already has in fact.
But I'm wondering, big picture, what do you see going
forward being the relationship between local government and the people
of your district the Palisades specifically based on the experience
they had here, whether it was related to the amount
(05:53):
of time they had to get out, the response to
the fires, and here in the aftermath as we move
towards rebuilding, do you see any loss of trust or
any opportunities to build trust or rebuild any loss trust.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
You always think that this, uh, this experience teaches people
what they can count on us for how we will
work together in that rebuilding process.
Speaker 6 (06:18):
UH.
Speaker 5 (06:19):
They're watching to see if we clearly answer their questions,
which is why I'm committed to an after action process
that helps us learn from this experience not only as
a practice of good government, but because people want answers.
They deserve answers, and that is how you continue to
build trust. I think you know, the work that we
(06:39):
have to do is among government agencies and making sure
that you know, in a time of crisis, we know
how to you know, check logos at the door and
really just get to work and assigning tasks and making
sure that we are all focused on that that shared
vision of serving our constituents to the best of our ability.
(07:01):
And I know that on the county side, we have
experienced doing that among our departments from the many crises
we've faced, and that is the experience we've we've brought
to the fires that we're now recovering from, and we
will continue to use that expertise to inform how we
serve our constituents going forward.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
The cost of the wildfires has been staggering. Property losses
alone have been estimated at more than one hundred and
fifty billion dollars, but the cost doesn't stop there and
may hit all of us in different ways. That's next
when LA Fires A Path Forward continues after this report
from the KFI twenty four hour News Rum.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Demand AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is LA Fires
A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
what happens now. The losses in Altadena and Pacific Palisades
(08:15):
are staggering. More than sixteen thousand structures burned to ash,
including homes, churches, schools, libraries, as strong Santa Ana winds
fueled fires across nearly forty thousand acres in just those
two parts of LA County. The property and capital losses
alone have been estimated to be between ninety five and
(08:36):
one hundred and sixty four billion dollars, with insured losses
estimated at seventy five billion dollars. That's according to the
latest research by the UCLA Anderson School of Management. The
losses are crippling here, but they're so big they would
completely wipe out smaller cities.
Speaker 7 (08:53):
I feel compared you to with other cities, so you
will look at older Colorado is a small city that
is for a pole, six buildings like annual GDP for
that small city, so it's almost a destroyed, like reduced
the gb GDP of that small city.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Julian Lee is an economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast.
Her research, along with william U, suggests the wildfires have
cost La County nearly half a percent of its gross
domestic product. It's not just private or public buildings that
were lost. Roads, bridges, utilities were also erased by the flames.
Those repairs and replacements will come in a significant cost.
(09:36):
On top of that, there are environmental concerns the labor market.
The UCLA study shows there were about one thousand businesses
in three zip codes burned by the Palisades and Eaten fires,
with a total of between five thousand and eighty five
hundred employees with total wages over a billion dollars. The
loss of productive income over a year is estimated at
(09:57):
twenty five, fifty and seventy two percent in those three areas.
Speaker 7 (10:01):
For example, during the wildfires, there may be some evacuation,
so our employees cannot work at the effective areas. Then
they influence the labor productivity. And also it also has
some impacts of example, government expenditure and their revenue because
(10:22):
of that. So yeah, so that could be that the
GDP number, the half percent reduction in GDP can incorporate
those kinds of things during the economic production process like
labor productivity, capital productivity, and something like that.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
The home insurance market is also expected to take a
hit along with your wallets. The state has already struggled
with keeping insurers in the marketplace at affordable rates. That's
because the threat of fires or other natural disasters has
been deemed too much for some companies to bear. Thousands
of policies have been canceled and others have been refused
to be issued. And the fires broke out in Alta,
(11:03):
Dina and the Palisades just days after the state announced
its sustainable insurance strategy, which could cost everyone with the policy.
Speaker 7 (11:11):
This is because in the beginning of this year, in
twenty twenty five, the California Department of Insurance implement a
new regulation. So because of this new regulation, first, it
allows insurers to they can transfer the risk of those
(11:33):
natural disasters to local residents. So this is the first
time they are allowed to do this, so they can
file application for increasing their premium premium rates. So because
of the welfare's insurers are going to file applications for
increasing their insurance rates more than before. So California, local
(11:56):
California residents, I mean all the California evidence homeowners are
going to face increasing insurance rate.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
The regulation allows insurers to take a look at forward
looking probabilistic models to set their premiums, including reinsurance costs
in their rates, and they can also seek approval to
assess all policyholders in the state if claims exceed the
program's capacity. The state has required insurers to increase their
number of policies by five percent each year until eighty
(12:26):
five percent of the state in wildfire areas is covered.
UCLA predicts that all homeowner insurance policies are likely to
see a rise in price, but the study also says
the state plan is supposed to introduce more insurers in
the market, which could eventually lead to more competitive policies,
but the cost of housing itself in an already expensive
(12:47):
county could also go up.
Speaker 7 (12:49):
The loss of properties reduces the housing supply, which could
also boost the demand, particularly for rental units in the regions.
On years the affector the rages, so it predicts that
the housing offer the housing market that if housing prices
will still increased in the long term. Of Based on
(13:13):
our study for the historical wildfires over.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
The past ten years, there have been permits issued in
La County for around twenty to twenty five thousand new
housing units each year, but the fires took out between
two thirds and three quarters of the yearly housing supply.
The study suggests price hikes in the housing market could
be expected in the long term, especially if more building
doesn't take place quickly. The UCLA researchers say California's most
(13:39):
pressing issue should be to invest in wildfire mitigation strategies,
noting that newer buildings had a better survival rate. Newer
regulations like using artificial intelligence and drones to detect and
put out wildfires could be helpful, they say, along with
managing forests and brush upgrading utilities and controlling homeless camps,
(14:00):
strengthening building codes, and subsidizing what they call home hardening.
Speaker 7 (14:04):
There are studies showing that the buildings that are built
after two thousand and eight are less likely to be
destroyed in a websare. That is because California implement regulation
in two thousand and eight requiring new buildings to adopt
mitigation strategies. However, most of the majority of the housing
(14:28):
stock in California are older buildings. They were built before
two thousand and eight, so a government might need to
expand their grant for repro food in those old homes.
In effect, I mean in high risk areas, so that
may be active. There's a need for more investment in that.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Even as La County's emergency alert text messages went awry
during the fire, sending evacuation scared to everyone, one piece
of technology was a must have during the disaster. We
talk with the man behind the Watch Duty app when
La Fires. A Path Forward continues next after this update
from the KFI twenty four hour newsroom.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is La Fires
A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
what happens now. As the flames blew closer to homes
and Pacific Palisades and Altadena, more and more people found
themselves turning not to government alerts but to their phones
(15:48):
and the watch Duty app. It was a lifeline for many,
especially as the La County alert system suffered mistake sending
alerts to everyone in the county even if they weren't
affected the big fires in January. We're not the first
time people counted on this app. John Mills is the
founder and CEO of Watch Duty. John, this app has
not just been popular, it's been a lifeline for a
(16:11):
lot of people. And you wrote an editorial for the
La Times that said, it really shouldn't be that it's
sort of a failure of government.
Speaker 8 (16:19):
Tell us what you mean, Yeah, that was I started
this out of frustration that this is not how the
world works. I would have assumed that, you know, the
same folks who build roads and schools and infrastructure were
going to be building alerting systems to keep us informed.
And although they exist, they're not really properly used. They
(16:41):
leave a lot to the imagination, as you probably saw
on the Palisades fire specifically, and also the delays in
the Eden, fire alerts went out to the wrong areas
at the wrong times with some of the wrong information,
and it ends up causing even more panic.
Speaker 9 (16:55):
And I feel like.
Speaker 8 (16:58):
Until you go through the situation, you don't really quite
understand it.
Speaker 9 (17:01):
But like the user experience of disaster is something we
really think about.
Speaker 8 (17:06):
And so what I can tell you from going through
it and being around people is cognitive ability goes down
when you're panicked, and then when you get lackluster information
that leads you to ask more questions.
Speaker 9 (17:19):
You don't know what to do, and it makes the
situation worse.
Speaker 8 (17:23):
And so after living through that several times and realizing
that no one was going to fix it in any
reasonable timeframe, I decided to do something about it.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
You saw a popularity spike for this app Watch Duty
last fall when we had some wildfires in southern California,
so you knew well at advance of what happened in
the Palisades, what happened in Altadena, that the government was
not living up to its potential, let's say, in the
way that it notifies people about these looming disasters, especially
(17:53):
as the unfold. I want to know when those alerts
went out from the government from La County to every
body in the county, no matter where you live, that
the time to evacuate was now, and that was obviously
a mistake of failure. What were your thoughts in that moment.
Speaker 9 (18:09):
Well, it's a great question. I mean, I mean a
couple of things.
Speaker 8 (18:13):
I mean, first of all, we've been around for three years,
a little over three years, and so this is not
the first time we've seen these types of problems. It's
not just specific to any any government per se. So
I'd rather spread the blame on us as taxpayers and
voters as well as them, as we all need to
get better.
Speaker 9 (18:31):
It just we saw something.
Speaker 8 (18:33):
Really bad in LA which obviously we saw the Franklin
and the mountain fire before that, which I think is
what you're referring to.
Speaker 9 (18:39):
And then actually before that was the line, the bridge
and the airport fire.
Speaker 8 (18:43):
I'm surprised I can remember all these off the top
of my head, but it's kind of how we live
there are back to your question there. Right now, we
only have one or two reporters who are living in
LA so they got the alerts and then we have
ways to scrape in mind that day, but what we
saw first was actually an incredible spike in traffic. We
(19:04):
started receiving about one hundred thousand requests a second, about
three million or so a minute, and our service began melting. Luckily,
we were able to keep everything online. But that's how
I knew something really bad. It happened, and then we
quickly realized, oh my goodness. They send out a WILLA,
a wireless burdency alert which goes to all the active
(19:26):
cell phone towers in the area and the neighboring area
as well, because cell towers reach over borders, and so
you know, something like twelve million people got an errant
emergency alert, and so we knew because again our servers
were just going haywire.
Speaker 9 (19:43):
And luckily we didn't have any outages, but it was
harrowing for the whole team.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
You mentioned reporters there, John, How does the watch Duty
app work?
Speaker 8 (19:53):
Yeah, so, Watch Duty, simply put, is really a service,
not an app. So people interact with an app, but
behind the scene there are dozens and dozens of active
and retired first responders, radio operators, dispatchers, reporters, and people
who have experienced listening to wildland fire on the emergency
radios meaning we hear them talk to each other on
(20:15):
the fire ground. And so those folks we call them reporters,
have really been reporting on this activity for years.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
Right when we found them all they.
Speaker 8 (20:25):
Had their own Facebook and Twitter pages and different regions
like you know, like Cole Yukon in Lake County and
Maureene up in Reading.
Speaker 9 (20:34):
They had the voice of their community.
Speaker 8 (20:36):
Already, and they were doing this job well before Frankly
I moved into Sonoma County.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
But once I.
Speaker 8 (20:41):
Moved here and I realized what these people were doing,
I thought to myself, Man, if we could ban them
all together, imagine how powerful they would all be. And
so that's how Watch Study was born, and that's how
it operates.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
We've heard from La County officials that they planned to
investigate what went wrong with their own emergency alert notification system.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
They reached out to you at all.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Have you been approached by this government or really any
government on how to improve their own efficiencies?
Speaker 8 (21:07):
Absolutely, I mean we work with so many including La
County Emergency Operations Center.
Speaker 9 (21:11):
You know, they're really trying.
Speaker 8 (21:12):
Everyone's trying to do better and we want to be
of service, and so we do work with many governments
and many governments give us information in real time because
they know that we have more users than anybody else.
Users are residents, right, and so they they're starting to
embrace it and ask us for help, and we are
here to serve them.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
We think about apps, we think about Silicon Valley, we
think about how rich people can get even if an
app is a flash in the pan and very short lived.
That's not the case with this one. This was started
as a volunteer funded nonprofit. Is that Is that still
the case even after all this popularity.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
Yeah, I don't see. If it ain't broke, don't fix it,
you know. But I mean back to the point earlier.
It is like, you know, I want better for my community.
I want better roads, better schools, better infrastructure like this
is this is a public benefit, right, this is a
life and death It's kind of hard to imagine profiteering
off of something that's so viscerally important and frankly extremely dangerous.
Speaker 9 (22:11):
So we have no plans of changing anything soon.
Speaker 8 (22:14):
And luckily we've had many donors come to our rescue.
Google dot org is one of our largest donors, and
many people paying twenty five dollars for the extra services
in the app makes a huge difference. Right, This all
this money, even though it's a small amount compared to
how many users we have, helps to keep our free
service free. Like it's like remind people, you know, we've
(22:34):
been doing this for a long time. Right, it just
becomes more and more valuable. There's really not I don't say,
not much to learn. I'm just so used to the devastation.
This one happened to be incredibly deadly and a lot
of structures were lost, But we see the loss of
our habitats, our forests, our communities, and so you know,
(22:54):
it's just the mission gets stronger.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Right.
Speaker 8 (22:56):
We didn't all of a sudden like flip the table,
raise a bunch of money, go to get some private
equity capital and start running a different business. You know,
our roadmap is the same, our hiring strategy is the same.
Exactly what we thought was gonna happen is happening, and
so for us, it's just if business as usual. Unfortunately
I wish it wasn't a business, but I guess it is.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
The wildfires have been destructive, they've been tragic, but they've
also given LA the opportunity to show its softer side,
helping neighbors in need.
Speaker 6 (23:29):
It's unbelievable. It's almost like a big old city has
become a small town.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
That's next when La Fires. A Path Forward continues after
this report from the KFI twenty four hour newsroom.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is La Fires
A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
what happens now. The tragic loss of Pacific Palisades and
Alta Dina to wildfires has led to an outpouring of sympathy,
offers to help, and cash lots of money. La is
(24:17):
a city of very rich and very poor. It's home
to some of the world's most recognizable celebrities, and Hollywood
has shown up here in the early days of the recovery.
Fundraising efforts at the Grammys and a special star studded
fire aid concert brought in one hundred twenty five million dollars,
But regular La folks are also stepping up, showering their
neighbors with love, support and money. They're also volunteering. A
(24:41):
lot parts of La are notoriously disconnected, maybe by culture,
maybe by traffic, but the wildfires have brought southern California
together in an unprecedented way. I spoke with Pastor Matthew
Barnett of the Dream Center to talk about it. He
says his organization has helped people through serious difficulties in
recas and years, especially COVID.
Speaker 6 (25:01):
Then we get to twenty twenty five and I was
just kind of giving a little prayer and I said, God,
can twenty twenty five just be the year of peace?
And then Wow, I mean, we're faced with this just
unbelievable thing that's happened. I never dreamed that, you know,
we would just once again make ourselves available at the
Dream Center and you know, put our food trucks out
there in the parking lot and say if anybody wants
(25:25):
to come by and get take care of your need
and feed you and help you. And I didn't realize
that that thirty days would literally change our life, as
you know, thousands of cars would come through and get
food and resource and drop off supplies and things that
would really become the foundation of all that we're doing
with the fires here in now Sadena and all that
(25:46):
work that's going on, and the daily distributions and our
lives have changed forever.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
What are you seeing from the families who come down
and need these days?
Speaker 6 (25:55):
You know, when we when we started the food line,
it was interesting because we were seventeen minutes or so
away from Altadena in downtown area, and I thought, well,
I don't know if really people will come here. But
once we set up that ground floor, that staging ground
for what was going on, people were showing up. And
sometimes they were showing up and they were just they
were just getting out of their car in line and
(26:17):
they would go up to people and hug them and
they would just cry and they would mourn. It was
just really like a staging ground of generosity and kindness
but also incredible grief, and you know, it was a
place for people on his shoulder to cry on. And
so when all this started to happen, you know, the
needs started to kind of determine what the what the
call was for the day, and we began to realize
(26:40):
people were looking through you know, bins define things and
specific things, and we took all those donated clothes and
turn them into a like a store for people to
come in and get specialty items and and all that,
and so you know when you were walking. We're working
with seven hundred and eighty families right now to try
to help them unbelievable. And the thing that we're dealing
(27:03):
with the most is people just really want them to
walk them help them through life, you know, whether it
be some finances that we've been able to give to
help people in this bridge period between now and you know,
trying to rebuild their lives. They're all faced with unbelievable
rent hikes, or face with housing issues and expiring vouchers
and and so a lot of people have gone through
(27:25):
unbelievable grief and trauma and now a lot of tears
have wiped away, and now they're just finding a lot
of closed doors in front of them that we're just
trying to help them navigate.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I imagine that a lot of people who are in need
of charity are often living on the edge, as it is,
living in housing and security, food and security, money and security.
But for a lot of the folks, maybe all of
the folks who've been displaced by these fires, this was
so sudden. What can you tell us about those differences
and experiences?
Speaker 6 (27:55):
You know, you know, we do ash outs every day,
you know, we help people find their possessions. I think
we one of the first ones actually in outfit of
doing that. And you get a chance to talk to
a lot of people, you know, you're standing on their
lot and they're watching you go through their valuables and
and things like that, and you realize really quickly that
people are they don't have as much money sitting around
(28:16):
as most people are saying, even with secure homes, I mean,
everything has gone into you know, the mortgage. They live
in a very expensive city where it's very hard to
survive and it's very hard to just do anything, and
the cost of living. And so I was really really
surprised to find out, you know, because I've worked with
people in downtown in La most of my life, and
you know, people that aren't paycheck to paycheck their moment
(28:37):
by moment. But I realized so many of these people,
just their whole heart and soul went into that one
you know, generational investment to give down to their kids,
to their house. That they were really si wife, like
you said, with unbelievable level of surprise and just the
inability to really have a lot lying around to bridge
(28:58):
that gap of how having a house to nothing and
then going all the way back the into rebuilding. And
so that's what we're finding is that there's just a
lot of people that if they had a little bit
of resource in their hand, I believe they can really
build back again. There's some great coaching and help and
people on side of them. But I was just surprised
to find the level of how difficult it is to
(29:20):
survive in a city of Los Angeles. And just to
make it, I think more people are living paycheck to
paycheck than anyone could ever possibly imagine. That's why I've
discovered through all this, this.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Is a city of immense poverty and immense wealth living
side by side each other. It's also a city that
may be disconnected from one another depending on which side
of town you live in. What do you see from
your perspective in all of the years you've worked in
charitable giving about LA right now, has the city risen
(29:51):
to the occasion?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (29:53):
That's the wild thing. You know, when we just we
just said everyone come to service on the food line,
you know, COVID was hard because there's people had you know,
barriers and things that you know that were there. But
this thing has just been unbelievable. I mean, we had
at one time we had twelve hundred volunteers in one
day on our campus. We found a way to mobilize
all of them, which is incredible. And there's people crossing
(30:15):
freeways to say, I've never been in this area of
LA before. How far do you live? Five miles? You know,
It's it's unbelievable. It's it's almost like a big old
city has become a small town. You know, people come
to this city, you know, they're dreamers, they have a
lot of ideas about what life can be. And then
if you just open up a door and let them
(30:35):
come and serve, you'll find they're just like anybody else.
They have a tremendous heart of generosity and they want
to give. And I was just laughing at just the
unbelievable cross section of people that were there serving, you know,
through the tragedy of all this, and it really is
mostly tragedy, but there is a silver lining through this.
It's that LA has been really mobilized to where we've
(30:57):
seen the best of our city and that's rally together
and it's kind of beyond I've been here for thirty years,
and this is beyond my comprehension anything I thought was
ever possible to see this many people cross the three
Ways and go to other neighborhoods, and then people would
get so excited about serving they would just show up
(31:18):
and they would next day we would have to direct them.
They would just go right to their post, and they
just continue to do it for a week upon week,
and so it's really exciting to see.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
And as the recovery continues, as the reviews and investigations unfold,
KFI News will be there to tell you about it.
This has been la fires a path forward. If you
miss any part of it or want to hear it
again or share it, find it at KFIAM six forty
dot com or on the iHeartRadio app. For producer Matthew Soffler,
I'm Michael Monks.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
KFI AM six forty on demand
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is La Fires,
A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
what happens next. ELI Mayor Karen Bass is said to
expect a thorough review of the preparedness and the response.
She's faced considerable criticism for being halfway across the world
(00:32):
in Ghana as the fires broke out, despite days of
weather forecasting suggesting something disastrous could happen. In her second
live news conference after returning, she discounted questions about people
calling for her resignation and.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Let me just say because I answered some questions like
that in the morning, and let me just state now,
number one, these fires are burning now. Our job is
to make sure that people stay alive, that we save lives,
that we save homes, that we save property. And I
also said that when the fires are out, we will
(01:08):
do a deep dive. We will look at what worked,
we will look at what didn't work, and we will
let you know. Until then, my focus is on the
TV screens behind you that are showing devastation that has continued.
Thank you answered it in the morning, answered it now,
won't answer it again.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
A week and a half later, Mayor Bass appointed the
city's recoveries are Steve Silberoff. He's got a long history
with civic, business and philanthropic groups, including the Dodgers and
the city's Police Commission.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
And what we need is and what I hope people
will start with is today is hope there is an
A to Z for each one of us, and a
is today, and we're going to get there step by step,
and the city is going to help to the extent
(01:59):
that can, and we will have to outsource to the
extent it can't. That there's going to be a bus
to yes, and if people want to get on the
bus with us, get on them. If they want to
spend their time throwing embers right now next Tuesday when
it's windy, by spending their time on that kind of stuff,
(02:20):
just don't get on our bus.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
But that ended up causing more political fallout for the
mayor because Soberoff's bus was set to lead to half
a million dollars for him for three months of work.
The outcry was strong and swift, and now he's working
for free, the preparedness, the response, and now the aftermath
will continue to raise questions and stakes for local government.
(02:43):
LA County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath represents Pacific Palisades a supervisor. Obviously,
this has just been a terrible disaster that LA County
has experienced in multiple spots. At the same time, I'm
curious as a government official, what have you learned about
local government specifically in LA County as we've dealt with this.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
I think LA County has a commitment to emergency preparedness
and investing in keeping people safe, and they're given the
climate hazards and risks that we face in our region.
My district, the third District of Los Angeles County, is
the most disaster prone district of any county, of any
(03:25):
district in any county in the entire country. So not
only is it something that we must continue to invest in,
it must be a way of life for all of us.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
The supervisor, I'll note whether it's reopening pch or getting
people back to their properties, just to inspect or how
the repermitting process is going to go. It seems like
there are different speeds that people want, regardless of which
side they're on. Maybe they're a politician, elected official, maybe
they're a resident. This is too fast, this is too slow.
(03:55):
What has it been like trying to find that perfect
goldilocks temperature? As we the rebuilding phase.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
Well, I think there's no question we want to move
with a sense of urgency because, especially in this debris
removal phase, the household hazardous materials in an uncontrolled environment
are just not safe for anyone. So we absolutely want
to move quicker. And I'm glad to see that so
many teams have been deployed by the us EPA on
(04:22):
the ground to move Phase one faster than was originally predicted.
We're doing so because of all the teams that have
been deployed. We're doing so without cutting corners, which is
incredibly important because we don't just want to move quickly,
we want to move safely, and so we're doing both
at a pace that's never been seen before. And it's
because of the number of teams that are on the ground.
(04:43):
It's because of the kind of expertise that's on the ground.
We have folks who were involved in some of the
fires in Northern California and now we and some of
the disasters that we've seen throughout the country. So we
are bringing the best thinking to this effort, which allows
us to do both. We can move quickly but also
do so safely, and by working with people who are
(05:04):
informed and who have experience on the ground, we're able
to help people have certainty around what these milestones are.
And I know, when the world is swirling around you
and things feel uncertain, the thing that you're really holding
onto is information that's verified, that's trusted, and that allows
you to start putting together what looks like and you
(05:25):
know what the journey is going to look like for
you to get back home. And that's really what we're
trying to do.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
This is really going to put local government to the
test in a lot of ways, and already has in fact.
But I'm wondering, big picture, what do you see going
forward being the relationship between local government and the people
of your district the Palisades specifically based on the experience
they had here, whether it was related to the amount
(05:53):
of time they had to get out, the response to
the fires, and here in the aftermath as we move
towards rebuilding, do you see any loss of trust or
any opportunities to build trust or rebuild any loss trust.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
You always think that this, uh, this experience teaches people
what they can count on us for how we will
work together in that rebuilding process.
Speaker 6 (06:18):
UH.
Speaker 5 (06:19):
They're watching to see if we clearly answer their questions,
which is why I'm committed to an after action process
that helps us learn from this experience not only as
a practice of good government, but because people want answers.
They deserve answers, and that is how you continue to
build trust. I think you know, the work that we
(06:39):
have to do is among government agencies and making sure
that you know, in a time of crisis, we know
how to you know, check logos at the door and
really just get to work and assigning tasks and making
sure that we are all focused on that that shared
vision of serving our constituents to the best of our ability.
(07:01):
And I know that on the county side, we have
experienced doing that among our departments from the many crises
we've faced, and that is the experience we've we've brought
to the fires that we're now recovering from, and we
will continue to use that expertise to inform how we
serve our constituents going forward.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
The cost of the wildfires has been staggering. Property losses
alone have been estimated at more than one hundred and
fifty billion dollars, but the cost doesn't stop there and
may hit all of us in different ways. That's next
when LA Fires A Path Forward continues after this report
from the KFI twenty four hour News Rum.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Demand AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is LA Fires
A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
what happens now. The losses in Altadena and Pacific Palisades
(08:15):
are staggering. More than sixteen thousand structures burned to ash,
including homes, churches, schools, libraries, as strong Santa Ana winds
fueled fires across nearly forty thousand acres in just those
two parts of LA County. The property and capital losses
alone have been estimated to be between ninety five and
(08:36):
one hundred and sixty four billion dollars, with insured losses
estimated at seventy five billion dollars. That's according to the
latest research by the UCLA Anderson School of Management. The
losses are crippling here, but they're so big they would
completely wipe out smaller cities.
Speaker 7 (08:53):
I feel compared you to with other cities, so you
will look at older Colorado is a small city that
is for a pole, six buildings like annual GDP for
that small city, so it's almost a destroyed, like reduced
the gb GDP of that small city.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Julian Lee is an economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast.
Her research, along with william U, suggests the wildfires have
cost La County nearly half a percent of its gross
domestic product. It's not just private or public buildings that
were lost. Roads, bridges, utilities were also erased by the flames.
Those repairs and replacements will come in a significant cost.
(09:36):
On top of that, there are environmental concerns the labor market.
The UCLA study shows there were about one thousand businesses
in three zip codes burned by the Palisades and Eaten fires,
with a total of between five thousand and eighty five
hundred employees with total wages over a billion dollars. The
loss of productive income over a year is estimated at
(09:57):
twenty five, fifty and seventy two percent in those three areas.
Speaker 7 (10:01):
For example, during the wildfires, there may be some evacuation,
so our employees cannot work at the effective areas. Then
they influence the labor productivity. And also it also has
some impacts of example, government expenditure and their revenue because
(10:22):
of that. So yeah, so that could be that the
GDP number, the half percent reduction in GDP can incorporate
those kinds of things during the economic production process like
labor productivity, capital productivity, and something like that.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
The home insurance market is also expected to take a
hit along with your wallets. The state has already struggled
with keeping insurers in the marketplace at affordable rates. That's
because the threat of fires or other natural disasters has
been deemed too much for some companies to bear. Thousands
of policies have been canceled and others have been refused
to be issued. And the fires broke out in Alta,
(11:03):
Dina and the Palisades just days after the state announced
its sustainable insurance strategy, which could cost everyone with the policy.
Speaker 7 (11:11):
This is because in the beginning of this year, in
twenty twenty five, the California Department of Insurance implement a
new regulation. So because of this new regulation, first, it
allows insurers to they can transfer the risk of those
(11:33):
natural disasters to local residents. So this is the first
time they are allowed to do this, so they can
file application for increasing their premium premium rates. So because
of the welfare's insurers are going to file applications for
increasing their insurance rates more than before. So California, local
(11:56):
California residents, I mean all the California evidence homeowners are
going to face increasing insurance rate.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
The regulation allows insurers to take a look at forward
looking probabilistic models to set their premiums, including reinsurance costs
in their rates, and they can also seek approval to
assess all policyholders in the state if claims exceed the
program's capacity. The state has required insurers to increase their
number of policies by five percent each year until eighty
(12:26):
five percent of the state in wildfire areas is covered.
UCLA predicts that all homeowner insurance policies are likely to
see a rise in price, but the study also says
the state plan is supposed to introduce more insurers in
the market, which could eventually lead to more competitive policies,
but the cost of housing itself in an already expensive
(12:47):
county could also go up.
Speaker 7 (12:49):
The loss of properties reduces the housing supply, which could
also boost the demand, particularly for rental units in the regions.
On years the affector the rages, so it predicts that
the housing offer the housing market that if housing prices
will still increased in the long term. Of Based on
(13:13):
our study for the historical wildfires over.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
The past ten years, there have been permits issued in
La County for around twenty to twenty five thousand new
housing units each year, but the fires took out between
two thirds and three quarters of the yearly housing supply.
The study suggests price hikes in the housing market could
be expected in the long term, especially if more building
doesn't take place quickly. The UCLA researchers say California's most
(13:39):
pressing issue should be to invest in wildfire mitigation strategies,
noting that newer buildings had a better survival rate. Newer
regulations like using artificial intelligence and drones to detect and
put out wildfires could be helpful, they say, along with
managing forests and brush upgrading utilities and controlling homeless camps,
(14:00):
strengthening building codes, and subsidizing what they call home hardening.
Speaker 7 (14:04):
There are studies showing that the buildings that are built
after two thousand and eight are less likely to be
destroyed in a websare. That is because California implement regulation
in two thousand and eight requiring new buildings to adopt
mitigation strategies. However, most of the majority of the housing
(14:28):
stock in California are older buildings. They were built before
two thousand and eight, so a government might need to
expand their grant for repro food in those old homes.
In effect, I mean in high risk areas, so that
may be active. There's a need for more investment in that.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Even as La County's emergency alert text messages went awry
during the fire, sending evacuation scared to everyone, one piece
of technology was a must have during the disaster. We
talk with the man behind the Watch Duty app when
La Fires. A Path Forward continues next after this update
from the KFI twenty four hour newsroom.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is La Fires
A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
what happens now. As the flames blew closer to homes
and Pacific Palisades and Altadena, more and more people found
themselves turning not to government alerts but to their phones
(15:48):
and the watch Duty app. It was a lifeline for many,
especially as the La County alert system suffered mistake sending
alerts to everyone in the county even if they weren't
affected the big fires in January. We're not the first
time people counted on this app. John Mills is the
founder and CEO of Watch Duty. John, this app has
not just been popular, it's been a lifeline for a
(16:11):
lot of people. And you wrote an editorial for the
La Times that said, it really shouldn't be that it's
sort of a failure of government.
Speaker 8 (16:19):
Tell us what you mean, Yeah, that was I started
this out of frustration that this is not how the
world works. I would have assumed that, you know, the
same folks who build roads and schools and infrastructure were
going to be building alerting systems to keep us informed.
And although they exist, they're not really properly used. They
(16:41):
leave a lot to the imagination, as you probably saw
on the Palisades fire specifically, and also the delays in
the Eden, fire alerts went out to the wrong areas
at the wrong times with some of the wrong information,
and it ends up causing even more panic.
Speaker 9 (16:55):
And I feel like.
Speaker 8 (16:58):
Until you go through the situation, you don't really quite
understand it.
Speaker 9 (17:01):
But like the user experience of disaster is something we
really think about.
Speaker 8 (17:06):
And so what I can tell you from going through
it and being around people is cognitive ability goes down
when you're panicked, and then when you get lackluster information
that leads you to ask more questions.
Speaker 9 (17:19):
You don't know what to do, and it makes the
situation worse.
Speaker 8 (17:23):
And so after living through that several times and realizing
that no one was going to fix it in any
reasonable timeframe, I decided to do something about it.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
You saw a popularity spike for this app Watch Duty
last fall when we had some wildfires in southern California,
so you knew well at advance of what happened in
the Palisades, what happened in Altadena, that the government was
not living up to its potential, let's say, in the
way that it notifies people about these looming disasters, especially
(17:53):
as the unfold. I want to know when those alerts
went out from the government from La County to every
body in the county, no matter where you live, that
the time to evacuate was now, and that was obviously
a mistake of failure. What were your thoughts in that moment.
Speaker 9 (18:09):
Well, it's a great question. I mean, I mean a
couple of things.
Speaker 8 (18:13):
I mean, first of all, we've been around for three years,
a little over three years, and so this is not
the first time we've seen these types of problems. It's
not just specific to any any government per se. So
I'd rather spread the blame on us as taxpayers and
voters as well as them, as we all need to
get better.
Speaker 9 (18:31):
It just we saw something.
Speaker 8 (18:33):
Really bad in LA which obviously we saw the Franklin
and the mountain fire before that, which I think is
what you're referring to.
Speaker 9 (18:39):
And then actually before that was the line, the bridge
and the airport fire.
Speaker 8 (18:43):
I'm surprised I can remember all these off the top
of my head, but it's kind of how we live
there are back to your question there. Right now, we
only have one or two reporters who are living in
LA so they got the alerts and then we have
ways to scrape in mind that day, but what we
saw first was actually an incredible spike in traffic. We
(19:04):
started receiving about one hundred thousand requests a second, about
three million or so a minute, and our service began melting. Luckily,
we were able to keep everything online. But that's how
I knew something really bad. It happened, and then we
quickly realized, oh my goodness. They send out a WILLA,
a wireless burdency alert which goes to all the active
(19:26):
cell phone towers in the area and the neighboring area
as well, because cell towers reach over borders, and so
you know, something like twelve million people got an errant
emergency alert, and so we knew because again our servers
were just going haywire.
Speaker 9 (19:43):
And luckily we didn't have any outages, but it was
harrowing for the whole team.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
You mentioned reporters there, John, How does the watch Duty
app work?
Speaker 8 (19:53):
Yeah, so, Watch Duty, simply put, is really a service,
not an app. So people interact with an app, but
behind the scene there are dozens and dozens of active
and retired first responders, radio operators, dispatchers, reporters, and people
who have experienced listening to wildland fire on the emergency
radios meaning we hear them talk to each other on
(20:15):
the fire ground. And so those folks we call them reporters,
have really been reporting on this activity for years.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
Right when we found them all they.
Speaker 8 (20:25):
Had their own Facebook and Twitter pages and different regions
like you know, like Cole Yukon in Lake County and
Maureene up in Reading.
Speaker 9 (20:34):
They had the voice of their community.
Speaker 8 (20:36):
Already, and they were doing this job well before Frankly
I moved into Sonoma County.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
But once I.
Speaker 8 (20:41):
Moved here and I realized what these people were doing,
I thought to myself, Man, if we could ban them
all together, imagine how powerful they would all be. And
so that's how Watch Study was born, and that's how
it operates.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
We've heard from La County officials that they planned to
investigate what went wrong with their own emergency alert notification system.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
They reached out to you at all.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Have you been approached by this government or really any
government on how to improve their own efficiencies?
Speaker 8 (21:07):
Absolutely, I mean we work with so many including La
County Emergency Operations Center.
Speaker 9 (21:11):
You know, they're really trying.
Speaker 8 (21:12):
Everyone's trying to do better and we want to be
of service, and so we do work with many governments
and many governments give us information in real time because
they know that we have more users than anybody else.
Users are residents, right, and so they they're starting to
embrace it and ask us for help, and we are
here to serve them.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
We think about apps, we think about Silicon Valley, we
think about how rich people can get even if an
app is a flash in the pan and very short lived.
That's not the case with this one. This was started
as a volunteer funded nonprofit. Is that Is that still
the case even after all this popularity.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
Yeah, I don't see. If it ain't broke, don't fix it,
you know. But I mean back to the point earlier.
It is like, you know, I want better for my community.
I want better roads, better schools, better infrastructure like this
is this is a public benefit, right, this is a
life and death It's kind of hard to imagine profiteering
off of something that's so viscerally important and frankly extremely dangerous.
Speaker 9 (22:11):
So we have no plans of changing anything soon.
Speaker 8 (22:14):
And luckily we've had many donors come to our rescue.
Google dot org is one of our largest donors, and
many people paying twenty five dollars for the extra services
in the app makes a huge difference. Right, This all
this money, even though it's a small amount compared to
how many users we have, helps to keep our free
service free. Like it's like remind people, you know, we've
(22:34):
been doing this for a long time. Right, it just
becomes more and more valuable. There's really not I don't say,
not much to learn. I'm just so used to the devastation.
This one happened to be incredibly deadly and a lot
of structures were lost, But we see the loss of
our habitats, our forests, our communities, and so you know,
(22:54):
it's just the mission gets stronger.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Right.
Speaker 8 (22:56):
We didn't all of a sudden like flip the table,
raise a bunch of money, go to get some private
equity capital and start running a different business. You know,
our roadmap is the same, our hiring strategy is the same.
Exactly what we thought was gonna happen is happening, and
so for us, it's just if business as usual. Unfortunately
I wish it wasn't a business, but I guess it is.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
The wildfires have been destructive, they've been tragic, but they've
also given LA the opportunity to show its softer side,
helping neighbors in need.
Speaker 6 (23:29):
It's unbelievable. It's almost like a big old city has
become a small town.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
That's next when La Fires. A Path Forward continues after
this report from the KFI twenty four hour newsroom.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
I'm Michael Monks from KFI News. This is La Fires
A Path Forward, our special look at what happened and
what happens now. The tragic loss of Pacific Palisades and
Alta Dina to wildfires has led to an outpouring of sympathy,
offers to help, and cash lots of money. La is
(24:17):
a city of very rich and very poor. It's home
to some of the world's most recognizable celebrities, and Hollywood
has shown up here in the early days of the recovery.
Fundraising efforts at the Grammys and a special star studded
fire aid concert brought in one hundred twenty five million dollars,
But regular La folks are also stepping up, showering their
neighbors with love, support and money. They're also volunteering. A
(24:41):
lot parts of La are notoriously disconnected, maybe by culture,
maybe by traffic, but the wildfires have brought southern California
together in an unprecedented way. I spoke with Pastor Matthew
Barnett of the Dream Center to talk about it. He
says his organization has helped people through serious difficulties in
recas and years, especially COVID.
Speaker 6 (25:01):
Then we get to twenty twenty five and I was
just kind of giving a little prayer and I said, God,
can twenty twenty five just be the year of peace?
And then Wow, I mean, we're faced with this just
unbelievable thing that's happened. I never dreamed that, you know,
we would just once again make ourselves available at the
Dream Center and you know, put our food trucks out
there in the parking lot and say if anybody wants
(25:25):
to come by and get take care of your need
and feed you and help you. And I didn't realize
that that thirty days would literally change our life, as
you know, thousands of cars would come through and get
food and resource and drop off supplies and things that
would really become the foundation of all that we're doing
with the fires here in now Sadena and all that
(25:46):
work that's going on, and the daily distributions and our
lives have changed forever.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
What are you seeing from the families who come down
and need these days?
Speaker 6 (25:55):
You know, when we when we started the food line,
it was interesting because we were seventeen minutes or so
away from Altadena in downtown area, and I thought, well,
I don't know if really people will come here. But
once we set up that ground floor, that staging ground
for what was going on, people were showing up. And
sometimes they were showing up and they were just they
were just getting out of their car in line and
(26:17):
they would go up to people and hug them and
they would just cry and they would mourn. It was
just really like a staging ground of generosity and kindness
but also incredible grief, and you know, it was a
place for people on his shoulder to cry on. And
so when all this started to happen, you know, the
needs started to kind of determine what the what the
call was for the day, and we began to realize
(26:40):
people were looking through you know, bins define things and
specific things, and we took all those donated clothes and
turn them into a like a store for people to
come in and get specialty items and and all that,
and so you know when you were walking. We're working
with seven hundred and eighty families right now to try
to help them unbelievable. And the thing that we're dealing
(27:03):
with the most is people just really want them to
walk them help them through life, you know, whether it
be some finances that we've been able to give to
help people in this bridge period between now and you know,
trying to rebuild their lives. They're all faced with unbelievable
rent hikes, or face with housing issues and expiring vouchers
and and so a lot of people have gone through
(27:25):
unbelievable grief and trauma and now a lot of tears
have wiped away, and now they're just finding a lot
of closed doors in front of them that we're just
trying to help them navigate.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I imagine that a lot of people who are in need
of charity are often living on the edge, as it is,
living in housing and security, food and security, money and security.
But for a lot of the folks, maybe all of
the folks who've been displaced by these fires, this was
so sudden. What can you tell us about those differences
and experiences?
Speaker 6 (27:55):
You know, you know, we do ash outs every day,
you know, we help people find their possessions. I think
we one of the first ones actually in outfit of
doing that. And you get a chance to talk to
a lot of people, you know, you're standing on their
lot and they're watching you go through their valuables and
and things like that, and you realize really quickly that
people are they don't have as much money sitting around
(28:16):
as most people are saying, even with secure homes, I mean,
everything has gone into you know, the mortgage. They live
in a very expensive city where it's very hard to
survive and it's very hard to just do anything, and
the cost of living. And so I was really really
surprised to find out, you know, because I've worked with
people in downtown in La most of my life, and
you know, people that aren't paycheck to paycheck their moment
(28:37):
by moment. But I realized so many of these people,
just their whole heart and soul went into that one
you know, generational investment to give down to their kids,
to their house. That they were really si wife, like
you said, with unbelievable level of surprise and just the
inability to really have a lot lying around to bridge
(28:58):
that gap of how having a house to nothing and
then going all the way back the into rebuilding. And
so that's what we're finding is that there's just a
lot of people that if they had a little bit
of resource in their hand, I believe they can really
build back again. There's some great coaching and help and
people on side of them. But I was just surprised
to find the level of how difficult it is to
(29:20):
survive in a city of Los Angeles. And just to
make it, I think more people are living paycheck to
paycheck than anyone could ever possibly imagine. That's why I've
discovered through all this, this.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Is a city of immense poverty and immense wealth living
side by side each other. It's also a city that
may be disconnected from one another depending on which side
of town you live in. What do you see from
your perspective in all of the years you've worked in
charitable giving about LA right now, has the city risen
(29:51):
to the occasion?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (29:53):
That's the wild thing. You know, when we just we
just said everyone come to service on the food line,
you know, COVID was hard because there's people had you know,
barriers and things that you know that were there. But
this thing has just been unbelievable. I mean, we had
at one time we had twelve hundred volunteers in one
day on our campus. We found a way to mobilize
all of them, which is incredible. And there's people crossing
(30:15):
freeways to say, I've never been in this area of
LA before. How far do you live? Five miles? You know,
It's it's unbelievable. It's it's almost like a big old
city has become a small town. You know, people come
to this city, you know, they're dreamers, they have a
lot of ideas about what life can be. And then
if you just open up a door and let them
(30:35):
come and serve, you'll find they're just like anybody else.
They have a tremendous heart of generosity and they want
to give. And I was just laughing at just the
unbelievable cross section of people that were there serving, you know,
through the tragedy of all this, and it really is
mostly tragedy, but there is a silver lining through this.
It's that LA has been really mobilized to where we've
(30:57):
seen the best of our city and that's rally together
and it's kind of beyond I've been here for thirty years,
and this is beyond my comprehension anything I thought was
ever possible to see this many people cross the three
Ways and go to other neighborhoods, and then people would
get so excited about serving they would just show up
(31:18):
and they would next day we would have to direct them.
They would just go right to their post, and they
just continue to do it for a week upon week,
and so it's really exciting to see.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
And as the recovery continues, as the reviews and investigations unfold,
KFI News will be there to tell you about it.
This has been la fires a path forward. If you
miss any part of it or want to hear it
again or share it, find it at KFIAM six forty
dot com or on the iHeartRadio app. For producer Matthew Soffler,
I'm Michael Monks.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
KFI AM six forty on demand
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