January 8, 2025 • 33 mins
Gary and Shannon have the latest on the Palisades Fire, the Eaton Fire, the Hurst Fire and Woodley Fire.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
They have a special fire coverage, of course, covering the
fires that continue to burn in these very very windy
conditions throughout La County. We have three, although they keep
saying they want to shoehorn a fourth in there and
there's no need. Three big fires. The Palisades Fire burning
out Malibu between Malibu and Santa Monica through Pacific Palisades,
(00:29):
well over five thousand acres is an under estimate as
to how much ground has burned up. The county fire
chief did say that about a thousand structures were destroyed.
That number could also be low. A high number of
significant injuries that again the Palisades Fire. The Eton Fire
(00:50):
in the Altadina Pasadena area has now burned more than
ten thousand acres according to the Angelus National Forest. We
do know there were two fatalities in that fire, but
at this point point unknown cause of the fatalities, also
a number of significant significant injuries and well over one
hundred structures destroyed there. The third one, burning in the
(01:11):
northernmost area of the San Fernando Valley. The Hurst Fire
up near Silmar is over five hundred acres burning in
an old burn scar from the old Saddle Ridge Fire
and has caused been cause for several evacuations as well.
We're keeping an eye on a fire station out of
Santa Monica where we expect to have President Biden and
(01:33):
Governor Newsom take part in a news conference in a
short time.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Biden was just a Cedar Sinai where Hunter's wife, the
one he married in twenty nineteen after just six days
of knowing her, is giving birth to their second child.
It was a planned c section there. He was in
town to do the two monuments right over in the
Inland Empire, and then they decided he would not be
doing that because of the fire. So he was hunkered
(01:56):
down somewhere overnight in La went to Cedars this morning,
and it's going to the fire station now. But that's
neither here nor They're not important. No politics is important
right now. It was devastation and eating canyon overnight where
that brush fire that started last night round six six
thirty something like that. It exploded overnight because the winds
(02:19):
were so insane. We mentioned that ninety nine mile per
hour wind in Altadena clocked at about nine thirty last night.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
That is just where you're.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Finding home after home after home just gone. And again
the fire crew saying we are spread too thin. And
when you think about the distances between the fires as well,
it's great, great distances between the Palisades and Eaton Canyon
area as well.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
And I think it is telling that a lot of
times with.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
These fires, you'll hear the firefighters say, you know, just
get out, just get out of your neighborhoods, you know,
to leave the hoses there so that we can use
them if we need to. You're not hearing that because
they don't have enough crews to respond to every single
residential fire that's sprouting up. So you've got people manning
the hoses trying to water down the bushes and the
(03:14):
trees and the fences and everything around the homes because
of what you saw also in past in the Pacific
Palisades yesterday where the fire crews couldn't get to the
top of Palisades Drive because of all the traffic moving
down all four lanes from the mountain, and then saying
that if you're at the top, shelter in place, don't leave.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Well.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Obviously, people's eyeballs are important when we see the beginnings
of these things. And the very first indication that we
had of this fire yesterday in Palisades was listener Felix,
who called and left us a talk back.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Oh, Garre at Salamonica. I'm facing north of Gloriafield Exit.
It's a giant fire. I don't know if we just
want to talk about that. It's yeah, these ways going
to be killed.
Speaker 6 (04:01):
Take care.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, And that basically started what began twenty four hours
of wall to wall coverage up to this point. At
this point, Felix actually is joining us live now on
the phone to talk more. Felix, hey man, thanks for
having great eyeballs yesterday. Good when you saw this yesterday,
you have any expectation that it was going to get
this bad?
Speaker 6 (04:24):
I kind of did. Just the wind were so bad
and the flames were just so so strong already, even
if it's just on top of the ridge, you were
able to tell that it wasn't going to be an
easy battley to pay.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, you could kind of hear it in your voice.
You're like, these winds are not good. This is not
going to be a good situation. You know, we kind
of had the same feeling yesterday when we were talking
about it, talking to Henry to Carlo, and you know,
you hear all this hyperbole about you know, Arctic blasts
and atmospheric river and polar vortegs and Arctic outbreak and
(04:57):
it's just like this hysteria. But when we are about
this wind event, with these crazy ass mountain wave winds.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
You just kind of knew it was gonna, you know,
hit us very different.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Yeah, the winzard are consistent, they're being they may not
be extremely strong, but they're they're there. I'm working, I
work on doors, so I'm just constantly feeling the wind.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Oh man, what do you do?
Speaker 6 (05:23):
I delivered for the brown trunk.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
The brown trucks got it. I know. I like those guys. Felix, again,
thanks for thanks for calling us when you saw that yesterday.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
It's it's important we get that information quickly, and you
were the first.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Thanks you, and thanks for continuing to work through all
this mess.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
Thank you. I appreciate your all.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
You know, as they say, brown never stops.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
No, it doesn't like that. No, it's a brown storm.
Oh wait, that's the cruise.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Thanks Felix, We appreciate it you too.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
We are in Santa Monica, the City of l a
fire chief is giving President Sandalus an update looking at
a map and aerial map of the Palisades fire warning.
Speaker 7 (06:06):
Around ten thirty. We did pre deploy a number of resources.
We knew this was there was a potential for a
significant threat to our constituents due to the weather event
high high, high winds. I've never seen the winds in
my twenty five year career, so we leaned forward as
much as possible and pre deployed with that. We had
(06:27):
a significant amount of fire that occurred. We had an
aggressive fire attack. The fire has grown from originally ten
acres to ten thousand, eight hundred and two acres as
we speak. It's an active, active firefight with our firefighters
and they're doing their very best to protect our people
within this area.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Interesting enough, because.
Speaker 7 (06:49):
Of the winds and the low humidity, we had a
second fire also break out, and that was the Hurst Fire,
which is just north.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Of that area.
Speaker 7 (06:58):
Again, this was close to eleven one thousand acres. This
is close to five hundred acres. That also broke out.
The information that I want to share with you is
also the significance of multiple fires in the area within
the city but also the county.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
That's the second.
Speaker 7 (07:14):
Fire that actually came out and we're actively engaged in
that firefight. The third fire then broke out this morning
at four o'clock in the morning, in which we have
an active firefight there as well. We're working with our
local jurisdictions, our state, regional, as well as federal, so
we're doing everything we can to protect life first and
(07:36):
property next. We'll go ahead and then pass this off
to Police Chief McDonald.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Thank you, Thank you, Chief, Miss President.
Speaker 8 (07:44):
It's an honor to be able to be here and
be part of this and represent the men and women
of LAPD and policing to support our partners in the
fire service. What we saw here in the last twenty
four hours is unprecedented. I've never seen anything like this.
Fire is driven by the type of winds that we
saw up to one hundred miles an hour. Our role
out there is strictly support to be there for evacuations,
(08:06):
to get people out of the affected area, to be
able to provide for traffic control and then crime suppression
as the fire is fought and some may come in
and try and take the opportunity to go into these
homes and steal from them. So we're going to be
on top of that. I just want to say the
relationship we enjoy here in my case under the leadership
of Mayor Bass, but all of our elected officials, is
(08:28):
unlike I think anywhere else in the country. We are
blessed to have the relationship between police and fire that
we do here. Unfortunately we do this kind of thing frequently,
never to this level, but I can't say enough about
how important that is. And as we go into the
next five years with the Super Bowl and the World
Cup and the Olympics coming up, it's critical that we
maintain those partnerships.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
So thank you for this opportunity circuit.
Speaker 8 (08:51):
Oh sorry, let me introduce my partner from the county
Fire Department, Chief Tony Maloney.
Speaker 9 (08:58):
Yeah, so thank you. I'm going to be giving you
an update on our Eaton fire, which is east of
cornst The county starts all the way up in Lancaster
and goes all the way down to the Long Beach border.
We go from the county line in Fadura all the
way out to Pomona four three hundred acres, so we
(09:18):
have a fire east of the Palisades Fire that began
last night. It's called the Eton Fire. It's currently ten thousand,
six hundred acres zero percent containment. We have over seven
hundred and fifty firefighters on the line. Unfortunately, two people
have lost their lives. Residents have lost their lives at
(09:39):
the Eaton fire. It's impacting tens of thousands of homes,
not only in the city of Pasadena, but also the
county area of Altadena, and we're doing our very best.
We just had our out of state resources arrived from
Arizona at the Eaton fire to assist us. Last night,
(10:00):
as the Region one coordinator, I contacted the Governor's Office
of Emergency Services. We requested two hundred and fifty additional
engines into La County with one thousand personnel. We also
are using our inner our compacts with other states like Arizona, Nevada, Oregon,
(10:20):
and Washington. Firefighters from those regions are on their way
down to Los Angeles County right now to assist us.
So thank you for your interest, thank you for your attention.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
You get him a microphone? Why are people not good
at their jobs?
Speaker 9 (10:46):
Ken?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
We are listening to President Biden speaks well from a
mile away.
Speaker 10 (10:51):
Apparently driving me.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Because he's talked to the Department of Defense about this.
California National Guard, California National Guard. Good lord, why can't
they get the president a microphone? For the love for
more SOT? Okay, you know what, that's not gonna go
(11:19):
any better. He's not on Mike. He's not on Mike.
I've got an update here. We'll monitor this. I'm not
gonna listen to bad audio. We've got an update from
the watch Duty app. By the way, the watch Duty
app has been key. There's been a lot to talk
about this on Twitter and elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
It is true. It is a great app.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
It's nonprofit, and it's fantastic in terms of the updates.
It's a free app again watch Duty. It reports that
the Palisades fire now that radio traffic indicates the fire
is advancing up the canyon and will reach Old Topanga
in about an hour.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Reversing direction there uh not.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
They did see some of that kind of fire behavior yesterday,
but it was not well reported. They did, you know,
instances of it, but it wasn't. I mean, the benefit
that we have today, obviously is daylight. For one thing,
lower wind speeds and wind gusts, So we do have
aircraft in the air so they can see that sort
of behavior and give us a heads up. The other
(12:19):
thing that the fire chief did mention was that Palisades
fires close to eleven thousand acres. Remember we were saying
earlier today that five thousand that he estimate that he
gave in the first news conference was very very low,
and as I was saying multiple times, it's going to
come out much higher than that, the ten thousand, eight
hundred and two acres of the Palisades fire.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
But by the time we're done with this, it's going
to be in the tens of thousands, if not, you know,
six figures.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
You mentioned this earlier. The acreage isn't what is most
important here. Most important here is a that we had
no fatalities. We did have a high number of significant injuries,
but that we've seen one thousand structures destroyed. That was
the That was the number that was given by the
county fire chief early this morning. A thousand structures destroyed.
(13:09):
And that's just the Palisades fire. That doesn't count the
Eaten fire over an Altadena in Pasadena.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
This is continued. Nobody has a microphone.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Nobody has a microphone in that in that fire station,
and there's a dozen cameras they're watching that.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Let's it's not a time, it's not about the what
day is it is? Wednesday eleven, nineteen and forty nine seconds?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
There is a microphone on a boom that's about sixty
feet away from the guy's face.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
I understand that. I understand that we're going to get
through this together.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
I doubt it.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
We're taking your calls one eight hundred five.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Now they're offering everybody out, Ladies and gentlemen, out of
the room, no questions.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
You're yelling one eight hundred and five to zero, one KFI.
This is a horrific morning, a lot of shock. A
lot of people who didn't even know that they were
going to have to evacuate, got out in the nick
of time, and then went back this morning and there's
nothing left. I mean, just a freaking whiplash morning for
a lot of people. Eaton Canyon Pacific Palisades a mess.
(14:16):
So if you've had an experience overnight a lot of
us have, let us know. We'll talk about it together.
One eight hundred and five to zero, one KFI. The
big three, of course, being of the Palisades, which we've
been monitoring for more than twenty four hours now, Altadino
which exploded overnight sheer devastation there as well, and Sillmar
(14:37):
being the site of the latest big one. There have
been other smaller ones popping up all over the place,
but these are the three big ones. The good news,
I guess, if there is any for people whose homes
still stand, is that the water dropping aircraft have resumed flight.
The winds have died down, which will make it all
(14:57):
not for not the way it was yesterday and you
saw whatever aircraft were able to survive the winds and
fly through the winds, they were kind of deemed irrelevant
because they would drop the water and the water would
just fly sideways. It wouldn't land because the winds were
so erratic. You saw the flames blowing sideways. I mean,
(15:19):
this was the angriest fire I've ever seen, and it
was no match, no matter We've talked to firefighters and
fire agencies, no matter how ready they were, how experienced
they are. We have the best firefighting agencies in the
world in La County, and I can't get over how
frustrating it might be to be put up against a
(15:39):
wind event that you just have no chance against.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
You were under an actual mandatory evacuation order. I was
ready for one. I kept getting the alerts, but they
were apparently sending them to the wrong zone. But I
was ready to go. Dear, what was going on with you?
I know you were in an area that was going
to be you were nervous. I have a sense that
you are a bit nervous.
Speaker 11 (16:02):
Well, I'm in Woodland Hills and I'm up in the hills,
and you know, Shannon's been mentioning ninety eight mile per
hour winds and she's not kidding.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
It was terrifying.
Speaker 11 (16:11):
I literally, and I'm not exaggerating, did not get a
minute of sleep last night. My bags and my husband's bag,
dog stuff were all packed to go. In fact, I
was going to bring the dogs into work this morning.
But fortunately my daughter was able to come over for
a little bit so I can come to work.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
But terrifying. And we're very close to the Panga Canyon, so.
Speaker 11 (16:32):
There are areas and it's very confusing with the different zones,
but there are areas into Panga Canyon that have mandatory
evacuation orders. Were also very close to Calabasa. It's the same.
So I am just ready to get out.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Me.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Let me say, I was confused last night when my
first when my first alarm went off at about twelve
fifteen this morning and it said that I was in
an evacuation zone. I didn't think I was, but I
went on to their there's a couple different.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
I mean, watching all in evacuation zones. It's just whether
your zone has been alerted to it's turned off exactly.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
So Watch Duty is that app that you mentioned a
few minutes ago. That was great in terms of being
able to very clearly see which zone you might be
in or which zones are evacuation orders or warnings. The
other one is Genesis Protect, which is ge Na Genesis
Protect very similar in terms of the ability to zoom in,
(17:29):
find your location where you are, and then compare that
to which zones are under evacuation orders or warnings.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
And those two do work in conjunction at times as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
My experience was my power was shut off just randomly
at six pm. I didn't know if it was be
peremptory preemptively shut off because I'm in a fire area.
I'm right up against the foothills in the two ten
quarridor where they were worried about, or if it was
a power line down or whatever. And it was a
pot a popcorn machine in my backyard for lack of
(18:02):
a better term. Tables and chairs and plants just being
thrown all over the place. And like Debra said, I
was not going to be able to sleep, There's no way,
Like you didn't get any sleep because your first alert,
Gary went off at twelve fifteen. I knew I would
not be able to sleep through that winds because I
was worried that the trees in the backyard were come
slight just come be thrown into the windows.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Of the house.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Like we heard Aaron said her dining room windows got
blown out by the winds.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
That seemed like a very real possibility.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Oh yeah, my power was shut off at seven.
Speaker 11 (18:34):
And also I heard you talking earlier how you weren't
able to listen to the station A same. I need
to get a transistor radio as well, because I had
my cell phone was everybody kept texting me to say
if I was okay, which was very sweet, but I
kept saying, don't text me anymore, and I don't want
to answer it because I was trying to save the power.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, I mean I had a battery ready to go
for my phone, so I was able to have a
full phone battery. But it didn't matter because because I
couldn't get anything, I couldn't get online. I couldn't get
to Twitter, I couldn't get online, I coudn't get any
news source.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I had nothing.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
And that's a terrible feeling, especially how connected we are now.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
It's not like it's nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
But in nineteen eighty five, we all had transistor radios
at the home. We all had radios, so it wasn't
a problem. Now we're so connected with these phones. When
they stopped working, we're screwed. It's a bad place to be.
Like I said, I couldn't wait to get into the
car so I had access to an actual radio. Anyway,
we will stay on top of this. Let us know
your experience. One eight hundred and five to zero one
(19:35):
kfive eight hundred five two oh one five three four
will take your calls. See what happened in your life.
Over the course of the last twenty four hours.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Special coverage of these fires burning throughout southern California one
thing to keep in mind. Former mayoral candidate Rick Ruiz
was going to be on with John coming up right
about one o'clock. Made some headlines yesterday when he went
on Channel eleven and suggested that one of the reasons
why we were seeing such damage inflicted on Pacific Palisades
was crews were hooking up the fire hydrants and not
(20:05):
getting any water pressure.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
So we'll we'll hear.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
From him again see if he can give flesh out
some of the details about that.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
The bottom line right now is we've got more than
one thousand homes gone devastated. We've got two people who
have died in Alta Dina. We don't know the specifics
of that. We know that people had a hard time
escaping in both Alta Dina and in the Palisades because
the flames were moving so quickly, so ferociously, covering two
(20:37):
to three football fields in one minute.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
At times.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
We heard that Dukes was kind of a mass casualty situation,
with burned people coming down from the hills seeking refuge there.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
These fires are out of control at the moment.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
The good news, if any, is that the winds were
the most dangerous last night between ten PM and five
am least definitely for that two to ten area there
in Altadina, where the evacuations are vast.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
The fear was that when the sun came up, the
winds would pick up. They have not, thankfully, and it
appears that the peaks that we saw between say, ten
o'clock last night and five o'clock this morning are gone
for good. We will not see those wind gusts repeated.
But that doesn't mean that it's that we're out of
the danger yet. The other thing is that when we
saw the sun come up, we knew where we were
(21:27):
going to see some pretty devastating pictures and those have
come to four. I mean the images that are coming
out of Pacific palisades, of entire sections of sunset gone.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Andrew Sorry.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Andrew Friedman is a senior climate reporter for Axios. He
specializes in extreme weather climate science.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Andrew, thanks for joining.
Speaker 10 (21:51):
Us, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
So this is, as we've.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Said, been covering fires for decades, unprecedented to everyone who's
lived in southern California for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Does nothing ever like this when it comes to this
wind event.
Speaker 10 (22:05):
Yeah, this is the worst wind event in the Los
Angeles County region since twenty eleven. What you haven't had before, however,
is a wind event that is this powerful coinciding with
this level of dryness. So usually when you have this
(22:28):
wind event later in the season, so in November through January,
that's not only your wet season, you expect it to
be raining in southern California. However, that has not happened.
The raining season has just extended the dry season right now.
So we had that extreme wind event coinciding with this
(22:52):
extreme dryness after a summer that was unusually hot. It's
just been this disastrous ingredients that we could see coming
that forecasters we're using very strong language from the National
Weather Service, from TV broadcasters, from radio broadcasters. Everybody's trying
(23:15):
to get the word out. But there's a limited amount
of number of things that you can do before these players,
you know, start in terms of preparing to evacuate, obviously,
but now this is just this is just really everybody's
fears come true.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I think this is a lee that is definitely a
lesson that people are going to learn from this in
terms of in terms of preparation.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
And this is ironic.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
I mean, I'm assuming you're you're calling us from the
from the east coast where it's you know, twenty five
degrees below what it would normally be this time of year.
Speaker 10 (23:51):
Yeah, we we've got into the tavama on the ground
here in d C. So you know, I wish I
could carry some of that over there and help you out.
But I think that what people need to realize is,
you know, when people talk about extreme weather and climate
change and California fires, I think there's been a tendency
(24:14):
to think about northern California and to think about, you know,
the massive forest fires that we've seen in recent years.
But these firestorms that can take place in the wildland
urban interface, where they start at the edges of these
forests in these hills and come roaring into populated communities
(24:40):
is also part of what we're seeing with climate change
in terms of making these events more likely, making hydro
climate extremes more frequent, more severe, and more likely, as
you see saw between two wet conditions too dry conditions.
(25:02):
But this wind event, truly, truly is has been horrific,
with winds upwards of one hundred miles an hour in
some locations, and that obviously affects the firefighting efforts. We had,
you had aircraft up last night, but they were grounded
(25:22):
for most of today because of because of the winds.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Andrew, thank you so much, appreciate it.
Speaker 10 (25:29):
Thank you, good luck and everybody out of here.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Speaking, Thank you Andrew Friedman. When we come back, more
of your calls. What's going on where you are? What
was your night?
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Like?
Speaker 4 (25:41):
One eight hundred and five to zero one five three four.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Kings game against the Flames at Crypto tonight has been
postponed because of the fires. We don't have a new
date as well. The Palisades fire has expanded, as you
were mentioning, as you were predicting, to more eight hundred.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Acres according to cal Fire at this point.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
You know, this is one of those suggestions from a
talkback here. I'll play for you in a second.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
We don't spend a whole lot of time on I mean,
this is an immediate threat still to the areas around
Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Santa Monica and of course Altadena, Pasadena
and then Silmar. But this is a you know, you
can have twelve million people and the Greater Southern fifteen
million people in the greater Southern California area and this
(26:29):
affects a few hundred thousand. Most of us are going
to see some of the smoke or have an idea
of what's going on, or maybe we know somebody who's
been affected by this. But this will have impacts nationwide,
and this is something that we don't think about all
the time.
Speaker 12 (26:43):
Hey, Gary and Shannon, my heart goes out to all
those people affected by the fires in California. I don't
think we think about how much commerce is being effected.
But our freight here in Tucson was about two hours late,
and I don't think we'll be sending much out going
that way. So with probably something unrelated, we're having wins
(27:04):
here at least twenty two miles an hour, and that's
run and steady, and our air quality and parts of
the city are considered to be highly unhealthy.
Speaker 5 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
One of the big things that we noticed yesterday, that
I heard Conway mention quite a bit, was the amount
of dust, the amount of particulate that was in the air,
not smoke, but just stuff that was brought in as
the winds came across the desert and up and over
the hills.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
You know, we've covered fires for twenty plus years living
in California as reporters and working in news. And you know,
I even right now, I'm under a mandatory evacuation order
started last night, remains in place, and you know, it's
wonderful to hear from family and friends texting and calling
(27:49):
wondering how you're doing. And I say the refrain, and
I you're so even though you're covering fires, you're still
distance from them. Even if you're out there on the
front lines with the command post or whatever, you're still distanced.
You're still telling someone else's story. And even under a
mandatory evacuation order, and I'm telling people checking up on me,
I'm like.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah, you know, it's just stuff. It's just stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Like, as long as people are safe in my neighborhood
and everything, it's it's just stuff. But then I get
pictures from friends and Altadena, one picture in particular from
a friend in Altadena whose house has been reduced to ashes,
and suddenly that whole it's just stuff line kind of
sounds so trite.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah, it's so vapid.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Gigi Grossiette with Fox eleven has been in Pacific Palisades
and has been stationed out in front of what used
to be a mobile home park and it is. There
is not a structure standing in that entire area, and
that's that level of devastation. It adds a different feel
(28:53):
to it. I mean, obviously, if it's your even if
it was just your home, one home that was burned
and it was your home, that's obviously devastating to you
and your family.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
But the idea then that you.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Are have that same I mean that there are that
many families that are all feeling that same impact at
the same time. It is it's almost overwhelming to think
about the idea that I mean, Pacific Palisades is not
going to look the same when this smoke clears, when
this fire is tamped down, when they are able to
get in there and get a true look at the
(29:28):
be the station the same, because you almost can't, you
cannot have that same, I mean the same vibe. I
think that we talked about that with with Sue Cole,
the Pacific Palisades Community Council President, about what that place
means to those people who live and have lived in
Palisades for you know, in some cases decades, and the
(29:51):
she described it as kind of a Midwest feel despite
the fact that you're on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Now where the dust is settled in some place this
is in the devastation has become clearer. It has not
settled in many areas. We're looking at live shots right
now from the Eton fire there Pasadena, Altadena area, and
there are businesses on fire, homes on fire. You have
yet to get your hands around any sort of understanding
(30:21):
around the level of devastation there. Again, this is far
from over. These two fires remain out of control, The
Palisades Fire making its way as we speak to Old Tapanga.
The winds remain a factor today, although not as devastating
as we saw overnight, remain extremely.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Difficult to battle with.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
If you are a firefighter, and you got to believe
these guys gals are tired. They have all hands on deck,
they called in all off duty firefighters.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
They still don't have enough people.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
There are crews coming down from Oregon, in Washington, northern California.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Still maybe not enough people.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Like we've said, you take the two biggest fires here
and they rival when you talk about destruction and loss
and just the ferocity of these things, they rival the
worst wildfires in La County history.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
This is also I mentioned this very early this morning.
It's reminiscent to me of the at least the Palisades
fire by itself was reminiscent of the Oakland Hills fire
from back in nineteen ninety one. In that there were
it wasn't huge acreage, but the houses were so close together.
I think that was about sixteen hundred acres in that
(31:29):
Oakland Hills fire. They called it the Tunnel fire near
the Caldecott Tunnel. Fifteen sixteen hundred acres burned, but almost
three thousand single family homes.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
It reminds me of the Cedar fire more recently in
two thousand and three in San Diego. I remember covering
that from Sacramento and just how quickly that thing moved,
and that was driven by those Santa Ana fires moving
at you know, thirty six hundred acres an hour or
something crazy like that. It was just it moved too
fast to contain, I mean, let alone contain, and move
(32:01):
too fast to get away from it.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
And we're seeing that in both these places.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
One of the resources not just for people who are
affected by the fires directly, but others who want to
help out was mentioned by Lindsay Horvath from La County's
third Supervisor, District Emergency dot La County dot gov. It's
emergency information specifically about evacuation maps areas large animals, small
(32:25):
animal evacuation centers, evacuation for human centers, but also places
that if you have resources and you can volunteer, you
have the time. This is going to take months, if
not a couple of years, to get anything close to
a semblance of normalcy. Emergency dot La County dot gov.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
and any time on demand on the iheartradiol
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
They have a special fire coverage, of course, covering the
fires that continue to burn in these very very windy
conditions throughout La County. We have three, although they keep
saying they want to shoehorn a fourth in there and
there's no need. Three big fires. The Palisades Fire burning
out Malibu between Malibu and Santa Monica through Pacific Palisades,
(00:29):
well over five thousand acres is an under estimate as
to how much ground has burned up. The county fire
chief did say that about a thousand structures were destroyed.
That number could also be low. A high number of
significant injuries that again the Palisades Fire. The Eton Fire
(00:50):
in the Altadina Pasadena area has now burned more than
ten thousand acres according to the Angelus National Forest. We
do know there were two fatalities in that fire, but
at this point point unknown cause of the fatalities, also
a number of significant significant injuries and well over one
hundred structures destroyed there. The third one, burning in the
(01:11):
northernmost area of the San Fernando Valley. The Hurst Fire
up near Silmar is over five hundred acres burning in
an old burn scar from the old Saddle Ridge Fire
and has caused been cause for several evacuations as well.
We're keeping an eye on a fire station out of
Santa Monica where we expect to have President Biden and
(01:33):
Governor Newsom take part in a news conference in a
short time.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Biden was just a Cedar Sinai where Hunter's wife, the
one he married in twenty nineteen after just six days
of knowing her, is giving birth to their second child.
It was a planned c section there. He was in
town to do the two monuments right over in the
Inland Empire, and then they decided he would not be
doing that because of the fire. So he was hunkered
(01:56):
down somewhere overnight in La went to Cedars this morning,
and it's going to the fire station now. But that's
neither here nor They're not important. No politics is important
right now. It was devastation and eating canyon overnight where
that brush fire that started last night round six six
thirty something like that. It exploded overnight because the winds
(02:19):
were so insane. We mentioned that ninety nine mile per
hour wind in Altadena clocked at about nine thirty last night.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
That is just where you're.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Finding home after home after home just gone. And again
the fire crew saying we are spread too thin. And
when you think about the distances between the fires as well,
it's great, great distances between the Palisades and Eaton Canyon
area as well.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
And I think it is telling that a lot of
times with.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
These fires, you'll hear the firefighters say, you know, just
get out, just get out of your neighborhoods, you know,
to leave the hoses there so that we can use
them if we need to. You're not hearing that because
they don't have enough crews to respond to every single
residential fire that's sprouting up. So you've got people manning
the hoses trying to water down the bushes and the
(03:14):
trees and the fences and everything around the homes because
of what you saw also in past in the Pacific
Palisades yesterday where the fire crews couldn't get to the
top of Palisades Drive because of all the traffic moving
down all four lanes from the mountain, and then saying
that if you're at the top, shelter in place, don't leave.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Well.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Obviously, people's eyeballs are important when we see the beginnings
of these things. And the very first indication that we
had of this fire yesterday in Palisades was listener Felix,
who called and left us a talk back.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Oh, Garre at Salamonica. I'm facing north of Gloriafield Exit.
It's a giant fire. I don't know if we just
want to talk about that. It's yeah, these ways going
to be killed.
Speaker 6 (04:01):
Take care.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, And that basically started what began twenty four hours
of wall to wall coverage up to this point. At
this point, Felix actually is joining us live now on
the phone to talk more. Felix, hey man, thanks for
having great eyeballs yesterday. Good when you saw this yesterday,
you have any expectation that it was going to get
this bad?
Speaker 6 (04:24):
I kind of did. Just the wind were so bad
and the flames were just so so strong already, even
if it's just on top of the ridge, you were
able to tell that it wasn't going to be an
easy battley to pay.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, you could kind of hear it in your voice.
You're like, these winds are not good. This is not
going to be a good situation. You know, we kind
of had the same feeling yesterday when we were talking
about it, talking to Henry to Carlo, and you know,
you hear all this hyperbole about you know, Arctic blasts
and atmospheric river and polar vortegs and Arctic outbreak and
(04:57):
it's just like this hysteria. But when we are about
this wind event, with these crazy ass mountain wave winds.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
You just kind of knew it was gonna, you know,
hit us very different.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Yeah, the winzard are consistent, they're being they may not
be extremely strong, but they're they're there. I'm working, I
work on doors, so I'm just constantly feeling the wind.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Oh man, what do you do?
Speaker 6 (05:23):
I delivered for the brown trunk.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
The brown trucks got it. I know. I like those guys. Felix, again,
thanks for thanks for calling us when you saw that yesterday.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
It's it's important we get that information quickly, and you
were the first.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Thanks you, and thanks for continuing to work through all
this mess.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
Thank you. I appreciate your all.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
You know, as they say, brown never stops.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
No, it doesn't like that. No, it's a brown storm.
Oh wait, that's the cruise.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
Thanks Felix, We appreciate it you too.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
We are in Santa Monica, the City of l a
fire chief is giving President Sandalus an update looking at
a map and aerial map of the Palisades fire warning.
Speaker 7 (06:06):
Around ten thirty. We did pre deploy a number of resources.
We knew this was there was a potential for a
significant threat to our constituents due to the weather event
high high, high winds. I've never seen the winds in
my twenty five year career, so we leaned forward as
much as possible and pre deployed with that. We had
(06:27):
a significant amount of fire that occurred. We had an
aggressive fire attack. The fire has grown from originally ten
acres to ten thousand, eight hundred and two acres as
we speak. It's an active, active firefight with our firefighters
and they're doing their very best to protect our people
within this area.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Interesting enough, because.
Speaker 7 (06:49):
Of the winds and the low humidity, we had a
second fire also break out, and that was the Hurst Fire,
which is just north.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Of that area.
Speaker 7 (06:58):
Again, this was close to eleven one thousand acres. This
is close to five hundred acres. That also broke out.
The information that I want to share with you is
also the significance of multiple fires in the area within
the city but also the county.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
That's the second.
Speaker 7 (07:14):
Fire that actually came out and we're actively engaged in
that firefight. The third fire then broke out this morning
at four o'clock in the morning, in which we have
an active firefight there as well. We're working with our
local jurisdictions, our state, regional, as well as federal, so
we're doing everything we can to protect life first and
(07:36):
property next. We'll go ahead and then pass this off
to Police Chief McDonald.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Thank you, Thank you, Chief, Miss President.
Speaker 8 (07:44):
It's an honor to be able to be here and
be part of this and represent the men and women
of LAPD and policing to support our partners in the
fire service. What we saw here in the last twenty
four hours is unprecedented. I've never seen anything like this.
Fire is driven by the type of winds that we
saw up to one hundred miles an hour. Our role
out there is strictly support to be there for evacuations,
(08:06):
to get people out of the affected area, to be
able to provide for traffic control and then crime suppression
as the fire is fought and some may come in
and try and take the opportunity to go into these
homes and steal from them. So we're going to be
on top of that. I just want to say the
relationship we enjoy here in my case under the leadership
of Mayor Bass, but all of our elected officials, is
(08:28):
unlike I think anywhere else in the country. We are
blessed to have the relationship between police and fire that
we do here. Unfortunately we do this kind of thing frequently,
never to this level, but I can't say enough about
how important that is. And as we go into the
next five years with the Super Bowl and the World
Cup and the Olympics coming up, it's critical that we
maintain those partnerships.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
So thank you for this opportunity circuit.
Speaker 8 (08:51):
Oh sorry, let me introduce my partner from the county
Fire Department, Chief Tony Maloney.
Speaker 9 (08:58):
Yeah, so thank you. I'm going to be giving you
an update on our Eaton fire, which is east of
cornst The county starts all the way up in Lancaster
and goes all the way down to the Long Beach border.
We go from the county line in Fadura all the
way out to Pomona four three hundred acres, so we
(09:18):
have a fire east of the Palisades Fire that began
last night. It's called the Eton Fire. It's currently ten thousand,
six hundred acres zero percent containment. We have over seven
hundred and fifty firefighters on the line. Unfortunately, two people
have lost their lives. Residents have lost their lives at
(09:39):
the Eaton fire. It's impacting tens of thousands of homes,
not only in the city of Pasadena, but also the
county area of Altadena, and we're doing our very best.
We just had our out of state resources arrived from
Arizona at the Eaton fire to assist us. Last night,
(10:00):
as the Region one coordinator, I contacted the Governor's Office
of Emergency Services. We requested two hundred and fifty additional
engines into La County with one thousand personnel. We also
are using our inner our compacts with other states like Arizona, Nevada, Oregon,
(10:20):
and Washington. Firefighters from those regions are on their way
down to Los Angeles County right now to assist us.
So thank you for your interest, thank you for your attention.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
You get him a microphone? Why are people not good
at their jobs?
Speaker 9 (10:46):
Ken?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
We are listening to President Biden speaks well from a
mile away.
Speaker 10 (10:51):
Apparently driving me.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Because he's talked to the Department of Defense about this.
California National Guard, California National Guard. Good lord, why can't
they get the president a microphone? For the love for
more SOT? Okay, you know what, that's not gonna go
(11:19):
any better. He's not on Mike. He's not on Mike.
I've got an update here. We'll monitor this. I'm not
gonna listen to bad audio. We've got an update from
the watch Duty app. By the way, the watch Duty
app has been key. There's been a lot to talk
about this on Twitter and elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
It is true. It is a great app.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
It's nonprofit, and it's fantastic in terms of the updates.
It's a free app again watch Duty. It reports that
the Palisades fire now that radio traffic indicates the fire
is advancing up the canyon and will reach Old Topanga
in about an hour.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Reversing direction there uh not.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
They did see some of that kind of fire behavior yesterday,
but it was not well reported. They did, you know,
instances of it, but it wasn't. I mean, the benefit
that we have today, obviously is daylight. For one thing,
lower wind speeds and wind gusts, So we do have
aircraft in the air so they can see that sort
of behavior and give us a heads up. The other
(12:19):
thing that the fire chief did mention was that Palisades
fires close to eleven thousand acres. Remember we were saying
earlier today that five thousand that he estimate that he
gave in the first news conference was very very low,
and as I was saying multiple times, it's going to
come out much higher than that, the ten thousand, eight
hundred and two acres of the Palisades fire.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
But by the time we're done with this, it's going
to be in the tens of thousands, if not, you know,
six figures.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
You mentioned this earlier. The acreage isn't what is most
important here. Most important here is a that we had
no fatalities. We did have a high number of significant injuries,
but that we've seen one thousand structures destroyed. That was
the That was the number that was given by the
county fire chief early this morning. A thousand structures destroyed.
(13:09):
And that's just the Palisades fire. That doesn't count the
Eaten fire over an Altadena in Pasadena.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
This is continued. Nobody has a microphone.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Nobody has a microphone in that in that fire station,
and there's a dozen cameras they're watching that.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Let's it's not a time, it's not about the what
day is it is? Wednesday eleven, nineteen and forty nine seconds?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
There is a microphone on a boom that's about sixty
feet away from the guy's face.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
I understand that. I understand that we're going to get
through this together.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
I doubt it.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
We're taking your calls one eight hundred five.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Now they're offering everybody out, Ladies and gentlemen, out of
the room, no questions.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
You're yelling one eight hundred and five to zero, one KFI.
This is a horrific morning, a lot of shock. A
lot of people who didn't even know that they were
going to have to evacuate, got out in the nick
of time, and then went back this morning and there's
nothing left. I mean, just a freaking whiplash morning for
a lot of people. Eaton Canyon Pacific Palisades a mess.
(14:16):
So if you've had an experience overnight a lot of
us have, let us know. We'll talk about it together.
One eight hundred and five to zero, one KFI. The
big three, of course, being of the Palisades, which we've
been monitoring for more than twenty four hours now, Altadino
which exploded overnight sheer devastation there as well, and Sillmar
(14:37):
being the site of the latest big one. There have
been other smaller ones popping up all over the place,
but these are the three big ones. The good news,
I guess, if there is any for people whose homes
still stand, is that the water dropping aircraft have resumed flight.
The winds have died down, which will make it all
(14:57):
not for not the way it was yesterday and you
saw whatever aircraft were able to survive the winds and
fly through the winds, they were kind of deemed irrelevant
because they would drop the water and the water would
just fly sideways. It wouldn't land because the winds were
so erratic. You saw the flames blowing sideways. I mean,
(15:19):
this was the angriest fire I've ever seen, and it
was no match, no matter We've talked to firefighters and
fire agencies, no matter how ready they were, how experienced
they are. We have the best firefighting agencies in the
world in La County, and I can't get over how
frustrating it might be to be put up against a
(15:39):
wind event that you just have no chance against.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
You were under an actual mandatory evacuation order. I was
ready for one. I kept getting the alerts, but they
were apparently sending them to the wrong zone. But I
was ready to go. Dear, what was going on with you?
I know you were in an area that was going
to be you were nervous. I have a sense that
you are a bit nervous.
Speaker 11 (16:02):
Well, I'm in Woodland Hills and I'm up in the hills,
and you know, Shannon's been mentioning ninety eight mile per
hour winds and she's not kidding.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
It was terrifying.
Speaker 11 (16:11):
I literally, and I'm not exaggerating, did not get a
minute of sleep last night. My bags and my husband's bag,
dog stuff were all packed to go. In fact, I
was going to bring the dogs into work this morning.
But fortunately my daughter was able to come over for
a little bit so I can come to work.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
But terrifying. And we're very close to the Panga Canyon, so.
Speaker 11 (16:32):
There are areas and it's very confusing with the different zones,
but there are areas into Panga Canyon that have mandatory
evacuation orders. Were also very close to Calabasa. It's the same.
So I am just ready to get out.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Me.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Let me say, I was confused last night when my
first when my first alarm went off at about twelve
fifteen this morning and it said that I was in
an evacuation zone. I didn't think I was, but I
went on to their there's a couple different.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
I mean, watching all in evacuation zones. It's just whether
your zone has been alerted to it's turned off exactly.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
So Watch Duty is that app that you mentioned a
few minutes ago. That was great in terms of being
able to very clearly see which zone you might be
in or which zones are evacuation orders or warnings. The
other one is Genesis Protect, which is ge Na Genesis
Protect very similar in terms of the ability to zoom in,
(17:29):
find your location where you are, and then compare that
to which zones are under evacuation orders or warnings.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
And those two do work in conjunction at times as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
My experience was my power was shut off just randomly
at six pm. I didn't know if it was be
peremptory preemptively shut off because I'm in a fire area.
I'm right up against the foothills in the two ten
quarridor where they were worried about, or if it was
a power line down or whatever. And it was a
pot a popcorn machine in my backyard for lack of
(18:02):
a better term. Tables and chairs and plants just being
thrown all over the place. And like Debra said, I
was not going to be able to sleep, There's no way,
Like you didn't get any sleep because your first alert,
Gary went off at twelve fifteen. I knew I would
not be able to sleep through that winds because I
was worried that the trees in the backyard were come
slight just come be thrown into the windows.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Of the house.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Like we heard Aaron said her dining room windows got
blown out by the winds.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
That seemed like a very real possibility.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Oh yeah, my power was shut off at seven.
Speaker 11 (18:34):
And also I heard you talking earlier how you weren't
able to listen to the station A same. I need
to get a transistor radio as well, because I had
my cell phone was everybody kept texting me to say
if I was okay, which was very sweet, but I
kept saying, don't text me anymore, and I don't want
to answer it because I was trying to save the power.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, I mean I had a battery ready to go
for my phone, so I was able to have a
full phone battery. But it didn't matter because because I
couldn't get anything, I couldn't get online. I couldn't get
to Twitter, I couldn't get online, I coudn't get any
news source.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I had nothing.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
And that's a terrible feeling, especially how connected we are now.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
It's not like it's nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
But in nineteen eighty five, we all had transistor radios
at the home. We all had radios, so it wasn't
a problem. Now we're so connected with these phones. When
they stopped working, we're screwed. It's a bad place to be.
Like I said, I couldn't wait to get into the
car so I had access to an actual radio. Anyway,
we will stay on top of this. Let us know
your experience. One eight hundred and five to zero one
(19:35):
kfive eight hundred five two oh one five three four
will take your calls. See what happened in your life.
Over the course of the last twenty four hours.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Special coverage of these fires burning throughout southern California one
thing to keep in mind. Former mayoral candidate Rick Ruiz
was going to be on with John coming up right
about one o'clock. Made some headlines yesterday when he went
on Channel eleven and suggested that one of the reasons
why we were seeing such damage inflicted on Pacific Palisades
was crews were hooking up the fire hydrants and not
(20:05):
getting any water pressure.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
So we'll we'll hear.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
From him again see if he can give flesh out
some of the details about that.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
The bottom line right now is we've got more than
one thousand homes gone devastated. We've got two people who
have died in Alta Dina. We don't know the specifics
of that. We know that people had a hard time
escaping in both Alta Dina and in the Palisades because
the flames were moving so quickly, so ferociously, covering two
(20:37):
to three football fields in one minute.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
At times.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
We heard that Dukes was kind of a mass casualty situation,
with burned people coming down from the hills seeking refuge there.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
These fires are out of control at the moment.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
The good news, if any, is that the winds were
the most dangerous last night between ten PM and five
am least definitely for that two to ten area there
in Altadina, where the evacuations are vast.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
The fear was that when the sun came up, the
winds would pick up. They have not, thankfully, and it
appears that the peaks that we saw between say, ten
o'clock last night and five o'clock this morning are gone
for good. We will not see those wind gusts repeated.
But that doesn't mean that it's that we're out of
the danger yet. The other thing is that when we
saw the sun come up, we knew where we were
(21:27):
going to see some pretty devastating pictures and those have
come to four. I mean the images that are coming
out of Pacific palisades, of entire sections of sunset gone.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Andrew Sorry.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Andrew Friedman is a senior climate reporter for Axios. He
specializes in extreme weather climate science.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Andrew, thanks for joining.
Speaker 10 (21:51):
Us, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
So this is, as we've.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Said, been covering fires for decades, unprecedented to everyone who's
lived in southern California for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Does nothing ever like this when it comes to this
wind event.
Speaker 10 (22:05):
Yeah, this is the worst wind event in the Los
Angeles County region since twenty eleven. What you haven't had before, however,
is a wind event that is this powerful coinciding with
this level of dryness. So usually when you have this
(22:28):
wind event later in the season, so in November through January,
that's not only your wet season, you expect it to
be raining in southern California. However, that has not happened.
The raining season has just extended the dry season right now.
So we had that extreme wind event coinciding with this
(22:52):
extreme dryness after a summer that was unusually hot. It's
just been this disastrous ingredients that we could see coming
that forecasters we're using very strong language from the National
Weather Service, from TV broadcasters, from radio broadcasters. Everybody's trying
(23:15):
to get the word out. But there's a limited amount
of number of things that you can do before these players,
you know, start in terms of preparing to evacuate, obviously,
but now this is just this is just really everybody's
fears come true.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I think this is a lee that is definitely a
lesson that people are going to learn from this in
terms of in terms of preparation.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
And this is ironic.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
I mean, I'm assuming you're you're calling us from the
from the east coast where it's you know, twenty five
degrees below what it would normally be this time of year.
Speaker 10 (23:51):
Yeah, we we've got into the tavama on the ground
here in d C. So you know, I wish I
could carry some of that over there and help you out.
But I think that what people need to realize is,
you know, when people talk about extreme weather and climate
change and California fires, I think there's been a tendency
(24:14):
to think about northern California and to think about, you know,
the massive forest fires that we've seen in recent years.
But these firestorms that can take place in the wildland
urban interface, where they start at the edges of these
forests in these hills and come roaring into populated communities
(24:40):
is also part of what we're seeing with climate change
in terms of making these events more likely, making hydro
climate extremes more frequent, more severe, and more likely, as
you see saw between two wet conditions too dry conditions.
(25:02):
But this wind event, truly, truly is has been horrific,
with winds upwards of one hundred miles an hour in
some locations, and that obviously affects the firefighting efforts. We had,
you had aircraft up last night, but they were grounded
(25:22):
for most of today because of because of the winds.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Andrew, thank you so much, appreciate it.
Speaker 10 (25:29):
Thank you, good luck and everybody out of here.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Speaking, Thank you Andrew Friedman. When we come back, more
of your calls. What's going on where you are? What
was your night?
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Like?
Speaker 4 (25:41):
One eight hundred and five to zero one five three four.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Kings game against the Flames at Crypto tonight has been
postponed because of the fires. We don't have a new
date as well. The Palisades fire has expanded, as you
were mentioning, as you were predicting, to more eight hundred.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Acres according to cal Fire at this point.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
You know, this is one of those suggestions from a
talkback here. I'll play for you in a second.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
We don't spend a whole lot of time on I mean,
this is an immediate threat still to the areas around
Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Santa Monica and of course Altadena, Pasadena
and then Silmar. But this is a you know, you
can have twelve million people and the Greater Southern fifteen
million people in the greater Southern California area and this
(26:29):
affects a few hundred thousand. Most of us are going
to see some of the smoke or have an idea
of what's going on, or maybe we know somebody who's
been affected by this. But this will have impacts nationwide,
and this is something that we don't think about all
the time.
Speaker 12 (26:43):
Hey, Gary and Shannon, my heart goes out to all
those people affected by the fires in California. I don't
think we think about how much commerce is being effected.
But our freight here in Tucson was about two hours late,
and I don't think we'll be sending much out going
that way. So with probably something unrelated, we're having wins
(27:04):
here at least twenty two miles an hour, and that's
run and steady, and our air quality and parts of
the city are considered to be highly unhealthy.
Speaker 5 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
One of the big things that we noticed yesterday, that
I heard Conway mention quite a bit, was the amount
of dust, the amount of particulate that was in the air,
not smoke, but just stuff that was brought in as
the winds came across the desert and up and over
the hills.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
You know, we've covered fires for twenty plus years living
in California as reporters and working in news. And you know,
I even right now, I'm under a mandatory evacuation order
started last night, remains in place, and you know, it's
wonderful to hear from family and friends texting and calling
(27:49):
wondering how you're doing. And I say the refrain, and
I you're so even though you're covering fires, you're still
distance from them. Even if you're out there on the
front lines with the command post or whatever, you're still distanced.
You're still telling someone else's story. And even under a
mandatory evacuation order, and I'm telling people checking up on me,
I'm like.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah, you know, it's just stuff. It's just stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Like, as long as people are safe in my neighborhood
and everything, it's it's just stuff. But then I get
pictures from friends and Altadena, one picture in particular from
a friend in Altadena whose house has been reduced to ashes,
and suddenly that whole it's just stuff line kind of
sounds so trite.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah, it's so vapid.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Gigi Grossiette with Fox eleven has been in Pacific Palisades
and has been stationed out in front of what used
to be a mobile home park and it is. There
is not a structure standing in that entire area, and
that's that level of devastation. It adds a different feel
(28:53):
to it. I mean, obviously, if it's your even if
it was just your home, one home that was burned
and it was your home, that's obviously devastating to you
and your family.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
But the idea then that you.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Are have that same I mean that there are that
many families that are all feeling that same impact at
the same time. It is it's almost overwhelming to think
about the idea that I mean, Pacific Palisades is not
going to look the same when this smoke clears, when
this fire is tamped down, when they are able to
get in there and get a true look at the
(29:28):
be the station the same, because you almost can't, you
cannot have that same, I mean the same vibe. I
think that we talked about that with with Sue Cole,
the Pacific Palisades Community Council President, about what that place
means to those people who live and have lived in
Palisades for you know, in some cases decades, and the
(29:51):
she described it as kind of a Midwest feel despite
the fact that you're on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Now where the dust is settled in some place this
is in the devastation has become clearer. It has not
settled in many areas. We're looking at live shots right
now from the Eton fire there Pasadena, Altadena area, and
there are businesses on fire, homes on fire. You have
yet to get your hands around any sort of understanding
(30:21):
around the level of devastation there. Again, this is far
from over. These two fires remain out of control, The
Palisades Fire making its way as we speak to Old Tapanga.
The winds remain a factor today, although not as devastating
as we saw overnight, remain extremely.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Difficult to battle with.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
If you are a firefighter, and you got to believe
these guys gals are tired. They have all hands on deck,
they called in all off duty firefighters.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
They still don't have enough people.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
There are crews coming down from Oregon, in Washington, northern California.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Still maybe not enough people.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Like we've said, you take the two biggest fires here
and they rival when you talk about destruction and loss
and just the ferocity of these things, they rival the
worst wildfires in La County history.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
This is also I mentioned this very early this morning.
It's reminiscent to me of the at least the Palisades
fire by itself was reminiscent of the Oakland Hills fire
from back in nineteen ninety one. In that there were
it wasn't huge acreage, but the houses were so close together.
I think that was about sixteen hundred acres in that
(31:29):
Oakland Hills fire. They called it the Tunnel fire near
the Caldecott Tunnel. Fifteen sixteen hundred acres burned, but almost
three thousand single family homes.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
It reminds me of the Cedar fire more recently in
two thousand and three in San Diego. I remember covering
that from Sacramento and just how quickly that thing moved,
and that was driven by those Santa Ana fires moving
at you know, thirty six hundred acres an hour or
something crazy like that. It was just it moved too
fast to contain, I mean, let alone contain, and move
(32:01):
too fast to get away from it.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
And we're seeing that in both these places.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
One of the resources not just for people who are
affected by the fires directly, but others who want to
help out was mentioned by Lindsay Horvath from La County's
third Supervisor, District Emergency dot La County dot gov. It's
emergency information specifically about evacuation maps areas large animals, small
(32:25):
animal evacuation centers, evacuation for human centers, but also places
that if you have resources and you can volunteer, you
have the time. This is going to take months, if
not a couple of years, to get anything close to
a semblance of normalcy. Emergency dot La County dot gov.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
and any time on demand on the iheartradiol
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