January 7, 2026 • 37 mins
Michael Monks previews a special KFI Fire Coverage: One Year Later, as the Lachman Fire is formally acknowledged alongside the Palisades disaster. L.A. Fire Chief Jaime Moore joins with an overview of the changes and improvements made over the past year, while also addressing the ongoing budget pressures facing both LAFD and LAPD — including the growing financial toll of lawsuits on city resources.
The conversation shifts to the human cost of these fires, with a sobering look at the lives lost, neighborhoods erased, and the difficult path forward for impacted communities.
Conway opens the phone lines to hear directly from residents still dealing with the fallout. Calls focus on insurance struggles, rebuilding challenges, and confusion surrounding the California FAIR Plan — the state’s insurer of last resort for homeowners who can’t find coverage in the traditional market.
More listeners weigh in with questions, concerns, and firsthand stories that underline how far there still is to go in recovery, even one year later.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's KMF.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am sixty and you're listening to The Conway Show
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
It is The Conway Show.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
At seven o'clock tonight, Michael Monks is hosting a special
a year after the fires, and he joins his monks,
how are you.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I'm well, it's been quite a day here as we
remember what happened a year ago today watching folks share
their feelings of sadness.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Of remorse, of anger. Yeah, a lot of anger. It's
a lot of different emotions that people are feeling.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
You know, I've heard this from Heather Brooker and I've
heard it from three or four other people that the
vibe in Altadena and the eaton fire area is we're
gonna wear a community. We're gonna get back together. We're
gonna build, We're gonna help each other. We'll get there.
It might take some time, but we're all part of
the same oneness. We flow in and out of everything together.
(00:55):
The attitude in the Palisades is they want to kill
somebody over this.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I think you're dealing with a couple of different governmental responses,
and you're also dealing with the different communities. One Altadena
is governed by LA County. It's an unincorporated community. It's
not the City of Altadena. It's unincorporated. It like a
little trustees organization or something that helps manage that.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
And one of the most beautiful parts of LA It's
a Ballet County.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Really really beautiful and such an unfortunate loss. As for
the Palisades, that's the city of Los Angeles. And I
brought in a SoundBite that I use in the special tonight.
I bring it for you because I think it relates
to the Palisades situation. There's another fire that we really
didn't talk enough about at that time last year, and
(01:42):
maybe not even right now, even though it's played a
significant role in the Palisades fire. Some have suggested that
it led to the Palisades fire, and that is the
Lackman fire, right, And that was the fire that was
allegedly deliberately set by this guy was driving an uber
and for some reason decided to go up the hill
on New Year's Eve set this fire that was first
(02:03):
reported just after midnight on New Year's Day. The LA
Fire Department responded to that fire, and what we have
learned is that through reporting by the La Times, there
are text messages out there from LA firefighters saying I
don't think we should be leaving this scene yet because
this thing is not completely out, but they left anyway now.
(02:29):
When LA Fire Chief Jim Moore went before the City
Council to be confirmed in this new role, he said,
this media reporting is important. We are going to evaluate everything.
Days after that, he went to the Fire Commission and
spoke a little bit differently, criticizing the media, suggesting the
media was attacking LA firefighters and their performance during the wildfires,
(02:51):
which really wasn't an accurate characterization of the reporting. Just yesterday,
day before the anniversary, Chief More is back before were
that Fire Commission again for the regular meeting, and this
is what he says.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
At the time fire companies were directed to pick up hoose,
the department genuinely believed the fire was fully extinguished. That
was based on the information, conditions and procedures in place
at that moment.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
That belief got excuse me.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
That belief guided the operational decision making that was made. However,
the outcome has made it incredibly clear that our mop
up and verification process needed.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
To be stronger. We have to own that, and I do.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
As a result, we've already changed our mop up procedures
and we formally incorporated the use of drone technology to
enhance post suppression verification, situational awareness, and detection of residual heat.
These changes are now in place to help ensure that
this will never happen again.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
So think about that. If you live in the Palisades, tim.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
You've already got a litany of failures that you've criticized
the city for.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Where was the mayor, why weren't.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
There enough fire trucks pre deployed, where was the water
in the reservoir? Then you learn there was this earlier
fire that was apparently not fully put out, and all
they had to do is put that fire out. We
can't say for sure. These are just suggestions by federal
prosecutors and other investigators. It seemed to be the case,
(04:30):
and it was suspected even before these allegations came out
that there was an earlier fire that may have been smoldering.
If you knew that the fire department did not fully
put out a fire that was pulled out of the
ground by those Santa Ana wins and became the Palisades.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Fire, that may be the worst part of all of.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
This right, But I will say, and again I'm not
a fire expert, never tried to pretend to be one.
For that fire to burn underground for six and a
half days unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I've never heard of that before.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
And I think we all learned that this is something
that happens, it can happen, and we learned about it
because of the arrest. So we get word that morning
of the arrest that was announced a couple of months
ago by the US Attorney's office that the Uber driver
had been taken into custody. So the first thing that
we're told is that they're they're announcing something related to
(05:22):
the Palisades fire, and so like, who is getting indicted,
who's being brought in. But what ended up being the
most interesting part of it not just that they got
somebody in custody. It's this connection between that earlier fire,
Not that somebody went and dropped a match on January seventh,
when all these red flag warnings are going on. It
was that somebody did it on New Year's Eve, that
this fire was attended to and then left.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Burning when Mayor Baths was running and when she was
just a congress person and she was going to and
she decided to run for mayor. One of the things
that she told I think she told Alex Michaelson on
the issue is on Fox she said, if I become mayor,
I never leave town. I will never leave the country.
I'll never leave the state, you know, because that was
(06:05):
an issue with her. She traveled a lot and was
you know, prone to you know, getting on these junkets
and going overseas or going back to Washington, you know,
going to the Olympics to you know, to present the
flag and bring the Olympic flag home to Los Angeles.
And so when she's got when she's caught red handed
in another country while this is going on, and then
(06:26):
on top of that, erased all of her texts where
and there I don't I don't understand first of all,
how that happens. Now, that's allowed to be having, But
where's the anger over that? There's plenty of anger over
over the mayor. She was certainly the target of a
lot of ire. She turned that ire towards the fire
chief at the time, Kristen Crowley, saying that this was
(06:48):
a failure of la f D leadership and that is
why the fire chief had to be fired. But you
you've covered city Hall better than any other reporter in
LA and very nice, and I think that's true.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I don't hear any other station or any other reporter
covering LA and City Council sitting through the boring meetings
and sitting through the very hostile crowd that they have
to deal with every day. And you know that they
try to take money out of the fire department, out
of the police department on a regular basis. Well, it's
it's often hard to fully understand what that means. And
(07:21):
I don't want to let lecture our audience because I
know people are angry. People are angry. And one of
the first characterizations of the fire department during that time
was that Maribaths cut its budget, and that was not
necessarily true. It did not exactly work that way because
there are different budgets within budgets within budgets. So if
that is the conclusion you felt like you wanted to
(07:43):
reach and project, there's data to support that absolutely one percent.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
But they've been doing it way before her.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
You know, every time the budget comes up for LAPD
and LA Fire Department, they try to take money from them.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
And they take money from every department because they have
no money. No, it's it's critical related to fire department
and police department because you think safety, public safety is
the most important. Well, those two departments are still the
most expensive departments in the city. But you're also not
getting funding to fill your potholes. They haven't paid a
single inch of street in the City of Los Angeles
(08:18):
and snow. Fiscal year started on July one an inch.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
But where is the money? I know, look, they have none.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
They're paying it out in lawsuits, some that are related
to some of these public agencies.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Then how do other cities do it?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Because you know that the most expensive real estate probably
in the country is in La City. La City has
you know, has millions of homes worth millions of dollars,
and everyone's paying property taxes and yet that money is
either mismanaged or there's not enough of it.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
I ditorialized a bit with Gary and Shannon, and Bellio
asked me which word I used, And the word that
I used was this government, This city government is unserious.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, it's just unseerious to watch.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
And I talked to Billy all in the alls, like
you know, I live in LA and I drive here
to Burbank, and when you drive in LA you just
shake your head. And then you cross into Glendale and
you cross and you're like, this is California. This is
the California that somebody from not here thinks about.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
You get into the cities like Glendale and Burbank, which
you're on the way between LA and then this studio,
and you think those are nice little houses. There are
palm trees in the front. People are walking their dogs,
kids are shooting basketball. I could eat off of this road,
that's right. And then on the way home, I will
cross once they get out of Griffith Park. I'm back
(09:40):
in Los Angeles. I'm the same way and it changes instantly,
and it is a it's priorities. Yeah, can you stay
with us? We talk about the special exet I have
stuck here till ten o'clock tonight. Man, Oh okay, all right,
Monks is with us?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
The special starts exactly at seven pm, one hour and
forty five minutes from now.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
It is.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
We'll come back and talk about it. Right for this
commercial break.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand from KFI
AM six.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Forty Michael Monks joins us.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
He's been working the last couple of weeks, a couple
of months on this special that airs tonight seven o'clock.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
What are we going to hear tonight? You'll hear a recap,
of course, of what happened that day. You'll learn about
what has happened since and what hasn't happened since, and
we'll talk a bit about what's going on next. We recap,
obviously the events of one year ago today and the
immediate days afterwards.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
But a lot has happened, and a lot of homes
were not lost on January seventh, but on eighth, ninth,
and tenth.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
And you're going to find a piece of this that
our Brigidia Dagasino did on the challenges that people are
facing whose homes did not burn down in these burnt areas,
a very very unique angle to all of this, because
if you lived in Alta Diner, if you lived in
Palisades or Malibu or pass It in these places that
were hit really hard by the fires, and frankly, if
(11:04):
you drove through those neighborhoods and the immediate aftermath, you
would think, why is that house still there?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
And the two on either side of it are gone.
It was just very strange the way that fortune or
whatever selected wish homes were gone. So you would think
that house looks just the same as it did yesterday.
They're lucky. Yeah, Apparently they are not lucky because it
is more challenging for those folks to deal with the
insurance because there's smoke damage. I mean, they did not
(11:31):
go unscathed.
Speaker 6 (11:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
They referred to them as burners exactly. They are having
a heck of a time getting to get back into
their homes because of the insurance parameters. They're like, it
would be You will hear from one guy who says
we would be better off if our house had burned down.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
No way, is that right?
Speaker 7 (11:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Wow, So that's part of it.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
We have an interview our Jason Campedonia talks with a
US Senator Rick Scott from Florida Republican who's been out
here once to hold a hearing into the Palisades and
he joins us for this special as well. We'll talk
a bit about some of the trauma and the psychological
damage that this has done. This isn't just one family
(12:10):
who's fire burned down, which is tragic enough, you know,
with somebody loses. These are communities, oh yeah, that have
been lost, and not just those communities. I talked a
bit about this with Gary and Shannon earlier today. This
was different, really than any other wildfire experience we have.
We know wildfires in southern California, we know that they
can be devastating and deadly, but we've never had a
(12:33):
situation where two massive wildfires are burning at the same
time in densely populated areas, taking homes and lives, especially
in communities that everybody knows, right and so people, whether
you lived in the Palisades or altered or not, you
had some connection to those communities and your experiences there.
So your loss is obviously not as direct or as
(12:55):
personal or as terrible as some of your house burning down,
but you feel a loss as well, Oh absolutely.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I mean these are our you know, family members and
friends and relatives who have gone through this and there,
and most of them are doing it very silently, you know,
they're they're they're not, you know, crying for help all
the time. They're sort of internalizing all this and doing
what they can. And I hear very few people, the
(13:22):
people I know who've lost their homes in that area,
including we just talked to the sales manager here, David Howard.
You never hear them complain. They're working silently to try
to get their lives back together.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I talked to David Howard for last year special that
we did in a few weeks after everything started to
settle down, at least the initial impact of the fires.
And you know, he is. He's been great to talk
to because he's very well informed. Sure, but he's very together.
I know, it's surprising he was together then, yes, And
(13:58):
that's impressive, you know, just the way that you can
deal with something as traumatic as watching not just your
house but your entire neighborhood go up in flames and
manage to galvanize other folks to stay focused on getting
results and getting your lives back right.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
And I don't know which comes first. You know, that
kind of ability to you know, to put your life
back together. Is that something you had going in or
is that something you were forced into doing because of
the circumstances. You know, there's like, for instance, if my
community burned down, a house burned down, I would not
(14:35):
do well.
Speaker 8 (14:36):
Well.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
That's because you would probably be a suspect. That's probably
you would be lawyering up. I would be at.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Marongo pulling slot machines, trying to pay for everything that's right.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
I think some things that come out of tragedies like
this is a leader's rise. I think your people that
never thought of themselves as community organizers or community leaders
before start to think themselves as such.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
You saw Spencer Pratt did today.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
I mean, this is a guy who was a reality
TV star in the two thousands, mostly forgotten, but lived
in the Palisades and lost his home. Is really angry
about the state and the local response. He's built this
social media following, especially through national right wing figures platforming
him and elevating him. He announced that he's running for mayor.
And I don't know that in any other scenario we
(15:24):
would hear Spencer Pratt declare for mayor of Los Angeles.
But he did so today at a rally that had
about a thousand people at it. People who are really angry.
This rally was called they let us Burn. This was
not a candlelight visual to remember things. This was people
who are angry. But a couple of things with the Palisades.
One is that the people who run Los Angeles, the studios,
(15:47):
the big business people, A lot of them live there.
And so you know, that's where your boss lives in
Pacific Palisades. Every time I go to Pacific Palisades, the
guy who owns the house is doing much better than
I am. You know, that's where the money is, That's
where the bosses are. That's where the people who have
made who have kept their nose clean and have made
(16:08):
a ton of money, that's where they live. And those
people have been distracted by this fire for the last year,
and so a lot of other businesses have been suffering,
not their fault, but because their time is you know,
is called.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
For other places.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
You talked to Heather Brooker before the top of the hour,
and she did a piece for this special that's coming
up to night at seven on the effects the fires
have had on the Hollywood industry, which was already reeling
from COVID and the double strikes, the actors and the
writers strikes, and then all of a sudden, this fires.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
What does it matter to Hollywood? Just like what you
just said, I mean, so many people.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Who have influential roles in Hollywood live in the policies,
but also Alta dina that is a community for families,
and Hollywood is more than studio bosses and big time actors.
There are people who write scripts, who make music, who
run cameras, who do that sort of thing, and they
make a living and they live in communities like Altadena.
(17:02):
And so we talked to some of the folks who
were affected that way as well. What I will say
about Altadena was it looked like a storybook community that
if you were casting a town to be the small
town star of a television series, that's what you want.
As for the Palisades, anytime you ask somebody outside of
(17:24):
California to picture California, that's what you're picturing. Yeah, you're
exactly right, sprawling estates on a cliff overlooking the beach, right,
and all of that vanished.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
And they're rightfully so really pissed off. And Heather Brooker
played a piece of a guy who lives out in
the Palisades and emotionally a wreck he said he had
hit him and his family have paid six hundred thousand
dollars over the last ten or twenty years in property tax.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
That's what irritates the hell out of him. It's yeah,
where's the money going.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
What has it been used for? That kind of money
of property tax? And there's no water to put your
house out.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
The worst thing is if you live in the city
of Los Angeles, as people in the Palis Saints do,
you were told by the mayor that she was going
to remove the permit fees, which are expensive. It's not
like you're farnelling a forty five dollars money aware and
getting your permit. That's not how it works. So that's
hundreds of millions of dollars and it's tens of thousands
for some residents to rebuild to get this permit approved. Well,
(18:22):
it hasn't happened because it hasn't been approved by the
city council. The mayor does not have executive authority to
make this ah and the city council hasn't approved it
yet to their fiscal credit. Frankly, because the mayor thought
it would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty four
million dollars. Yeah, and it's over two fifty over to
fifty ye, I mean, apparently that's disputed, but that range
(18:43):
is significant. It's not just a gift. There is a
cost to the rest of the city's general fund. Right
is all ready a wreck.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
As we've talked about many times, and we'll talk many
times again. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
All Right, Michael Monks Tonight at seven pm, you're gonna
be hosting this thing.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
One year later.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
It'll run from seven to nine. I'm going to come
on live from nine to ten. We'll talk a little
bit more about today's fire stuff, but we'll also do
some general news talk as well for that last hour,
so feel free to join us for that.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Excellent all right, speaking of talking about this fire, if
you obviously there are people listening right now who've been
wildly affected by these fires. If you want to call
us up, tell us how it's going, Maybe you want
to complain, Maybe you have a piece of information that
we've not covered here on KFI. We are going to
open up the phones and you can call with whatever
(19:33):
you have. Maybe you know somebody who's in the fire,
Maybe you lost somebody, maybe a pet, maybe a loved one,
whatever it is, we are here for you.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
We are an hour and twenty three minutes away from
the special tonight at seven o'clock. You're going to want
to hear that, especially if you were listening to KFI
during the fires. You'll hear a lot of the same
audio that you heard last year. And it's going to
be a great special seven to nine pm tonight on KFI.
(20:15):
Whatever you got to do, maybe eating dinner, got to
get back in the car at seven o'clock and that'll
air right after the top break at seven o'clock. All right,
you have had some experience with the fire, Maybe you
have an opinion of what's going on. Maybe we haven't
covered something here. Maybe you're angry, maybe you're sad. But
(20:36):
these fires that rage through southern California a year ago
is still having an emotional effect on a lot of people,
even people who weren't involved in the fire at all.
It is affecting millions of people here in southern California,
especially people have had their homes damaged, or lost a
(20:58):
loved one, or lost a pet. And if you want
to jump on the air, you can call us at
one eight hundred five two oh one five three four
one eight hundred five to two oh one five three four.
Let's talk to Jenna here in Pacific Palisades.
Speaker 6 (21:17):
Jenny you there, Yes, I am How are you good?
Speaker 1 (21:21):
How are you?
Speaker 9 (21:23):
I'm good?
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Your home was saved in the Palisades.
Speaker 10 (21:28):
It was okay, that's good. By a miracle. It's everything
around us burned. Oh wow, but our house was saved.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Were you able to move back in?
Speaker 6 (21:38):
And yes, okay.
Speaker 10 (21:41):
We were out for about seven months and uh, you know,
a lot of remediation.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
Happened and a lot of things had to be replaced.
But we are back in.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
And and was it was the bill for that? I'm
sure it was significant. Was did the insurance company help
you out?
Speaker 10 (21:57):
They were actually pretty good with us.
Speaker 6 (21:59):
We didn't have a whole lot of complaints.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Who was your company?
Speaker 6 (22:02):
A little bumpy farmers?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Okay, yeah, I'm writing down all the good ones that
I hear about travelers and farmers.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
Yeah, they were, they were, they were good.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah did they did they respond immediately?
Speaker 6 (22:17):
There was not.
Speaker 10 (22:19):
Pretty I mean it was hard because in the beginning,
nobody could even get in sure, you know, not the homeowner.
You know, it was weeks before people could even get in.
So it was a little while before the adjusters were
able to come out and take a look.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
But but yeah, they came.
Speaker 10 (22:37):
And the first adjuster we had was not good.
Speaker 6 (22:41):
But once we got after that, we got a good
one and it was it went more smoothly.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Oh good, okay. And and how long you've been living
in that house?
Speaker 10 (22:52):
Well, what's funny or not funny is that we lived
in Malibu and we lost our house in Wolsey fire,
Oh my god, and rebuilt it, sold it, never moved
in and moved to the Palisades because you know, Palisades
is safe, right, sure, you know, but we it didn't
(23:13):
happen a second time, thank god.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
My husband and my son and some amazing.
Speaker 10 (23:18):
People stayed and for three days and fought the fire
on the street and said, you know, our house and
probably about ten others on the block.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Do you know if your home that was burned down
by the Woolsey fire survived the fire last year?
Speaker 6 (23:34):
Oh? Yeah, it wasn't.
Speaker 10 (23:35):
It wasn't anywhere near the fire was we were in
western Malibu.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
And what about your neighbors? Have any of them moved back?
Speaker 10 (23:43):
A few, a few, not not a ton of them,
but probably about oh, I don't know, four or five
of them have moved back.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
So what a year it's been for you.
Speaker 10 (23:54):
It's it's been a year. It has been a year,
but we you know, we count our blessings. We feel
very lucky that we are able to move home and
then we you know, we're still here.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, I'm glad that you are back in your home,
and I hope your neighbors join you shortly.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I appreciate you phoning.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
You may want to keep this SAW station on your
radio until at seven o'clock.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Is me a terrific special seven to nine tonight.
Speaker 6 (24:18):
I will thank you, Thank you, Jennen.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
All right, take care.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Let's talk to a ray in Running Springs. You're on
kfived Ray.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
How are you.
Speaker 7 (24:31):
Alive? And well?
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Thank you excellent? Whate are you calling.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
From Running Springs in the San Bernadino Mountains.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Okay, you've had a pretty tough year.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
You've had not only fires, but my radical mud slides
and a lot of water too.
Speaker 7 (24:53):
Tons of water. Yes, but in seven I have lost
my home to the slide fire and at that time
I had only had my homeowners insurance with all State
for about less than a year.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Oh wow.
Speaker 7 (25:07):
And I had asked them if they were going to
cancel me, and they were like, no, we want you
to live a long, healthy life in order to get
as much money back from me as possible. However, about
three years ago roughly we were canceled and everyone up
in the mountains is being canceled at all the companies
due to the location, right, and we're all forced to
(25:29):
go to the California Fair Plan, which is the last resort.
And my insurance has gone up from about eight hundred
dollars a year to like forty eight hundred dollars a year. Wow,
And it's extreme. And I'm just curious as far as
the people and the palisades have they experienced this? Are
they getting dropped? Are they going to be dropped? Well,
(25:50):
if they didn't thought about this going forward, Yeah, a lot.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Of them were dropped before the fire.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
A lot of them were dropped, you know, in October
November of twenty twenty four, before the fire even.
Speaker 7 (26:01):
Happened, perfect timing.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
It is horrible, it.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Really is, and you know it's it's it's horrible that
we all pay our premiums for ten, fifteen, twenty thirty
forty years, never ever using our insurance, and then when
you go to use it the very first time, they
make it as difficult as possible.
Speaker 7 (26:24):
Absolutely, and then when it's dropped with this California Fair Plan,
it's just absurdly extensive.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
And what does the fair plan cover?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Will that cover you if you lose your home or
is it just a portion of it?
Speaker 7 (26:37):
It's just a fire insurance and you also have a
have to have a wrap around policy to cover the
rest of abnormal Oh my god, home insurance policy. So
I have two policies like everyone else has done, the
California Fair Plan and it's just absolutely.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Wait, so your fair plan costs you forty eight hundred
dollars a year? Does that not include your secondary plan?
Speaker 7 (27:00):
So that is what the secondary plan it's but overall
from eight hundred dollars to forty eight hundred dollars, it's
it's more than my Estro account. It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah, well my principle, but.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
It's not you know, but it's not just homeowners insurance.
My my daughter's insurance. She's twenty years old and she's
on a policy that we pay for and it was
twenty four hundred dollars a year, and then she got
into a small accident and now it's eighty five hundred
dollars a year.
Speaker 7 (27:34):
Okay, but she had an accident. This was all of
a sudden they decided to stop writing for everybody in
I get that area.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
I know it is unbelievably expensive. Right, we appreciate you phoning.
We're gonna take another couple of phone calls one eight
hundred five to oh one five three four, and then
you got to get back here at seven o'clock for
the special.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Whatever you got to do, now, go do it.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
But you got to listen to that live. It is
going to be two hours of must listen to radio
and you're going to want to hear every moment of that.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
So what have you got to do? Go do it?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Come back at seven o'clock, seven to nine pm with
Michael Monks.
Speaker 5 (28:10):
You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand from KFI
AM six forty is.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
The Conway Show.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
We're taking calls from people who have experienced the fire,
and I'm trying to figure out how how you are
one year later? It was one year ago today that
the big fires started, the Eating Fire, the Palisades Malibu fire,
And let's talk to Tracy in act in. Tracy, you're
on KFI.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
How are you.
Speaker 9 (28:41):
Fie great?
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, you're on kfive.
Speaker 9 (28:45):
Hey, Tim, we're a longtime followers, our whole family at God,
it's great. I we love you guys. We love the
racetrack too beautiful. I just want to say, I know
we might. We were just working over by Santa Anita
the other day. That brought back so many memories.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Let me tell you.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Let me tell you a quick story about the racetrack.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
I bought a pick five ticket last I think it
was last Friday, and I got the first four races right,
and I had nine of the eleven horses in the
last race, and if the seven or eleven one, I lost.
But if any other horse won, I would have won
twenty six thousand dollars. And the eleven horse won by
(29:32):
about an inch and a half and I lost.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
So I told my friend.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
I told my friend Todd Shrub that story, and he said,
for another thirteen dollars, you could have had those other
two horses. And I said, I had to borrow the
fifty cents to get that ticket, as it was.
Speaker 9 (29:51):
Oh my gosh, another lose your story to tell, your.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Story to tell all right, So you've been living in
Malibu since nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 7 (30:01):
No, so our.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
Family from Malibu, My dad was the sheriff in Malibu
in the late fifties and early sixties. So my parents
rented a home off the Bob Hope estate because they
owned that home hill and they have the Malibu fires
and their house burned, so they rebuilt and or the
(30:27):
state rebuilt, and it burned again the next year. So
my parents packed it up and had had enough, you know,
they didn't want to deal with it. My dad got
transferred to the Antelote Valley. My mom always hated them
for that because she said, your father moved me to
this God's first taken place.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
It is quite a shock to move from Malibu to
Antelope Valley.
Speaker 9 (30:52):
Aloe Valley, and that was when there was nothing there
in nineteen sixty two. So the thing is is that
my son own restoration companies and so they're fire chasers,
so they're out of all these fires.
Speaker 6 (31:07):
You know.
Speaker 9 (31:08):
And my son had called me about five years ago
when they had fires and said, you know what, Mom,
the house would have burned again.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Oh my god. And I don't know how you deal
with it, you know.
Speaker 9 (31:19):
I don't know how they do. But we are stores.
We have two stores up in oak Onne, California. Maybe Kaipa, right,
and we've had three fires there and because of the fires,
we've had mudslides.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Oh my god.
Speaker 9 (31:33):
And I feel so bad for the people dealing with
their insurance from last year's fires.
Speaker 6 (31:39):
It's the Palisades.
Speaker 9 (31:41):
Because because of the mudslide, we lost twenty seven houses
up on our mountain and or the community did right,
and they weren't going to cover the twenty seven houses,
but because it was related to the fire the year before,
(32:02):
they did cover.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Oh that's great, that's a great story.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I'm glad they we got a positive story out of this.
All right, Craig and Pacific Palisades, you're on, Kofi.
Speaker 8 (32:13):
Yes, I just wanted to thank you so much for
keeping the Palisades as well as Alta Dina on your
program every day. It's great.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
At least we could do so I wanted so I lost.
Speaker 8 (32:26):
My house in the Palisades. It's been a very difficult year,
but also trying to move forward. But one of the
things that's bothering me, and I just heard on your
show as well, is the fees to rebuild. These these
rebuild fees and they can cost I don't know, thirty
sixty thousand dollars, and you guys alluded to this just earlier,
(32:48):
but you guys termed them as a cost, and the
city is saying it's a cost. There's no cost because
they never got this money in the first place. This
money i've been rolling in. Uh, it's never rolled in.
It's only going to roll in because through their negligence,
(33:09):
they burned down six thousand houses and now it's going
to roll in.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I'm with you one hundred percent not a cost.
Speaker 8 (33:14):
So it's not a cost. So I don't think we
should term it as a cost when we're talking about it,
because all they did was they're hemorrhaging money in the city.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Well, it's not us that referred to them as a cost.
It's the city council and the supervisors that use that term.
Speaker 8 (33:34):
Okay, But then when you guys report it, I'm not
attacking you by.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Any no, no, no, I'm with you. That is found money.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
That money would not have been there unless they were
negligent and allowing all these homes to burn to the ground.
Speaker 8 (33:46):
You're right, right, right, And so when we talk about
you know, when we're referring to the city council calling
it a cost, and I think the next thing out
of people's mouths should be it's not a cost, that's right,
it's and that's what I think is missing a little bit.
It's kind of like, oh, there were hurricane winds on
the day of January seventh, and there wasn't. I had
(34:08):
a weather station, you know, probably half a mile away
from the fire. I can tell you exactly what the
winds were every two seconds. But if no one believes
me that it wasn't hurricane force winds, then why were
they flying air assets over that fire all day long?
(34:28):
And I have video of it as a four fifteen PM.
They probably flew air assets above the fire even after that.
So again, when somebody comes out and says, oh, it
was hurricane force winds or whatever, they say, well, then
why were they flying the airplanes? They can't fly in
hurricane force winds.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
That I'm with you one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And we should and we should have also had helicopters,
you know, giving us video and giving the firefighters video
of what's going on, But we didn't because as Joe
Biden was in town and the Secret Service wasn't letting
anybody fly, right.
Speaker 8 (35:05):
And then how about Newsom's motor cake going through sunset,
which delayed people evacuating out of Palisades Highlands. That that's
a beautiful aspect of it too.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
It's incredible.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
But you know what, I'm glad you actually mentioned that
because I have a couple of friends who live up
in the Highlands area, and that's where you know, in
Pacific Palisades they refer to themselves as the poor people
in the Palisades up on the Highlands. But I was
always afraid of being up there because there is one
way in and one way out. If there was ever
(35:39):
an earthquake or a fire like this, people are going
to die over that.
Speaker 8 (35:44):
Right, there's no question. And this goes toward all of
the increased housing that everybody is scared of. You know,
it's all well and good, fifteen minute cities, increased housing.
You know, let's put four houses on law that had
won all that stuff. But in the end, the city
is going to have to tell us if no one
(36:06):
can evacuate ever, and they didn't they couldn't, how are
they going to evacuate with more density? They've already stated
into Panga Canyon. Hey, you guys are screwed. Just huddle
in place, because you can't evacuate through to Panga Canyon,
And they just come out and said that. So I
think this whole increased density in lots of problems. The
(36:29):
inveluce should be off the table because of that very reason.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Craig, I appreciate the call. You're exactly right.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
If people had trouble fleeing that fire a year ago,
how are they going to act when there are three
times more people because the ADUs and the and putting
four units on one lot. He's got a great, great
point one hour away from the special seven o'clock tonight
right here on KFI AM six forty Conway Show, on
(36:57):
demand on the iHeartRadio app. You can always hear us
live on KFI AM six forty four to seven pm
Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
It's KMF.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am sixty and you're listening to The Conway Show
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
It is The Conway Show.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
At seven o'clock tonight, Michael Monks is hosting a special
a year after the fires, and he joins his monks,
how are you.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I'm well, it's been quite a day here as we
remember what happened a year ago today watching folks share
their feelings of sadness.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Of remorse, of anger. Yeah, a lot of anger. It's
a lot of different emotions that people are feeling.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
You know, I've heard this from Heather Brooker and I've
heard it from three or four other people that the
vibe in Altadena and the eaton fire area is we're
gonna wear a community. We're gonna get back together. We're
gonna build, We're gonna help each other. We'll get there.
It might take some time, but we're all part of
the same oneness. We flow in and out of everything together.
(00:55):
The attitude in the Palisades is they want to kill
somebody over this.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I think you're dealing with a couple of different governmental responses,
and you're also dealing with the different communities. One Altadena
is governed by LA County. It's an unincorporated community. It's
not the City of Altadena. It's unincorporated. It like a
little trustees organization or something that helps manage that.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
And one of the most beautiful parts of LA It's
a Ballet County.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Really really beautiful and such an unfortunate loss. As for
the Palisades, that's the city of Los Angeles. And I
brought in a SoundBite that I use in the special tonight.
I bring it for you because I think it relates
to the Palisades situation. There's another fire that we really
didn't talk enough about at that time last year, and
(01:42):
maybe not even right now, even though it's played a
significant role in the Palisades fire. Some have suggested that
it led to the Palisades fire, and that is the
Lackman fire, right, And that was the fire that was
allegedly deliberately set by this guy was driving an uber
and for some reason decided to go up the hill
on New Year's Eve set this fire that was first
(02:03):
reported just after midnight on New Year's Day. The LA
Fire Department responded to that fire, and what we have
learned is that through reporting by the La Times, there
are text messages out there from LA firefighters saying I
don't think we should be leaving this scene yet because
this thing is not completely out, but they left anyway now.
(02:29):
When LA Fire Chief Jim Moore went before the City
Council to be confirmed in this new role, he said,
this media reporting is important. We are going to evaluate everything.
Days after that, he went to the Fire Commission and
spoke a little bit differently, criticizing the media, suggesting the
media was attacking LA firefighters and their performance during the wildfires,
(02:51):
which really wasn't an accurate characterization of the reporting. Just yesterday,
day before the anniversary, Chief More is back before were
that Fire Commission again for the regular meeting, and this
is what he says.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
At the time fire companies were directed to pick up hoose,
the department genuinely believed the fire was fully extinguished. That
was based on the information, conditions and procedures in place
at that moment.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
That belief got excuse me.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
That belief guided the operational decision making that was made. However,
the outcome has made it incredibly clear that our mop
up and verification process needed.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
To be stronger. We have to own that, and I do.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
As a result, we've already changed our mop up procedures
and we formally incorporated the use of drone technology to
enhance post suppression verification, situational awareness, and detection of residual heat.
These changes are now in place to help ensure that
this will never happen again.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
So think about that. If you live in the Palisades, tim.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
You've already got a litany of failures that you've criticized
the city for.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Where was the mayor, why weren't.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
There enough fire trucks pre deployed, where was the water
in the reservoir? Then you learn there was this earlier
fire that was apparently not fully put out, and all
they had to do is put that fire out. We
can't say for sure. These are just suggestions by federal
prosecutors and other investigators. It seemed to be the case,
(04:30):
and it was suspected even before these allegations came out
that there was an earlier fire that may have been smoldering.
If you knew that the fire department did not fully
put out a fire that was pulled out of the
ground by those Santa Ana wins and became the Palisades.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Fire, that may be the worst part of all of.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
This right, But I will say, and again I'm not
a fire expert, never tried to pretend to be one.
For that fire to burn underground for six and a
half days unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I've never heard of that before.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
And I think we all learned that this is something
that happens, it can happen, and we learned about it
because of the arrest. So we get word that morning
of the arrest that was announced a couple of months
ago by the US Attorney's office that the Uber driver
had been taken into custody. So the first thing that
we're told is that they're they're announcing something related to
(05:22):
the Palisades fire, and so like, who is getting indicted,
who's being brought in. But what ended up being the
most interesting part of it not just that they got
somebody in custody. It's this connection between that earlier fire,
Not that somebody went and dropped a match on January seventh,
when all these red flag warnings are going on. It
was that somebody did it on New Year's Eve, that
this fire was attended to and then left.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Burning when Mayor Baths was running and when she was
just a congress person and she was going to and
she decided to run for mayor. One of the things
that she told I think she told Alex Michaelson on
the issue is on Fox she said, if I become mayor,
I never leave town. I will never leave the country.
I'll never leave the state, you know, because that was
(06:05):
an issue with her. She traveled a lot and was
you know, prone to you know, getting on these junkets
and going overseas or going back to Washington, you know,
going to the Olympics to you know, to present the
flag and bring the Olympic flag home to Los Angeles.
And so when she's got when she's caught red handed
in another country while this is going on, and then
(06:26):
on top of that, erased all of her texts where
and there I don't I don't understand first of all,
how that happens. Now, that's allowed to be having, But
where's the anger over that? There's plenty of anger over
over the mayor. She was certainly the target of a
lot of ire. She turned that ire towards the fire
chief at the time, Kristen Crowley, saying that this was
(06:48):
a failure of la f D leadership and that is
why the fire chief had to be fired. But you
you've covered city Hall better than any other reporter in
LA and very nice, and I think that's true.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I don't hear any other station or any other reporter
covering LA and City Council sitting through the boring meetings
and sitting through the very hostile crowd that they have
to deal with every day. And you know that they
try to take money out of the fire department, out
of the police department on a regular basis. Well, it's
it's often hard to fully understand what that means. And
(07:21):
I don't want to let lecture our audience because I
know people are angry. People are angry. And one of
the first characterizations of the fire department during that time
was that Maribaths cut its budget, and that was not
necessarily true. It did not exactly work that way because
there are different budgets within budgets within budgets. So if
that is the conclusion you felt like you wanted to
(07:43):
reach and project, there's data to support that absolutely one percent.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
But they've been doing it way before her.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
You know, every time the budget comes up for LAPD
and LA Fire Department, they try to take money from them.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
And they take money from every department because they have
no money. No, it's it's critical related to fire department
and police department because you think safety, public safety is
the most important. Well, those two departments are still the
most expensive departments in the city. But you're also not
getting funding to fill your potholes. They haven't paid a
single inch of street in the City of Los Angeles
(08:18):
and snow. Fiscal year started on July one an inch.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
But where is the money? I know, look, they have none.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
They're paying it out in lawsuits, some that are related
to some of these public agencies.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Then how do other cities do it?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Because you know that the most expensive real estate probably
in the country is in La City. La City has
you know, has millions of homes worth millions of dollars,
and everyone's paying property taxes and yet that money is
either mismanaged or there's not enough of it.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
I ditorialized a bit with Gary and Shannon, and Bellio
asked me which word I used, And the word that
I used was this government, This city government is unserious.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, it's just unseerious to watch.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
And I talked to Billy all in the alls, like
you know, I live in LA and I drive here
to Burbank, and when you drive in LA you just
shake your head. And then you cross into Glendale and
you cross and you're like, this is California. This is
the California that somebody from not here thinks about.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
You get into the cities like Glendale and Burbank, which
you're on the way between LA and then this studio,
and you think those are nice little houses. There are
palm trees in the front. People are walking their dogs,
kids are shooting basketball. I could eat off of this road,
that's right. And then on the way home, I will
cross once they get out of Griffith Park. I'm back
(09:40):
in Los Angeles. I'm the same way and it changes instantly,
and it is a it's priorities. Yeah, can you stay
with us? We talk about the special exet I have
stuck here till ten o'clock tonight. Man, Oh okay, all right,
Monks is with us?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
The special starts exactly at seven pm, one hour and
forty five minutes from now.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
It is.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
We'll come back and talk about it. Right for this
commercial break.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand from KFI
AM six.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Forty Michael Monks joins us.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
He's been working the last couple of weeks, a couple
of months on this special that airs tonight seven o'clock.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
What are we going to hear tonight? You'll hear a recap,
of course, of what happened that day. You'll learn about
what has happened since and what hasn't happened since, and
we'll talk a bit about what's going on next. We recap,
obviously the events of one year ago today and the
immediate days afterwards.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
But a lot has happened, and a lot of homes
were not lost on January seventh, but on eighth, ninth,
and tenth.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
And you're going to find a piece of this that
our Brigidia Dagasino did on the challenges that people are
facing whose homes did not burn down in these burnt areas,
a very very unique angle to all of this, because
if you lived in Alta Diner, if you lived in
Palisades or Malibu or pass It in these places that
were hit really hard by the fires, and frankly, if
(11:04):
you drove through those neighborhoods and the immediate aftermath, you
would think, why is that house still there?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
And the two on either side of it are gone.
It was just very strange the way that fortune or
whatever selected wish homes were gone. So you would think
that house looks just the same as it did yesterday.
They're lucky. Yeah, Apparently they are not lucky because it
is more challenging for those folks to deal with the
insurance because there's smoke damage. I mean, they did not
(11:31):
go unscathed.
Speaker 6 (11:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
They referred to them as burners exactly. They are having
a heck of a time getting to get back into
their homes because of the insurance parameters. They're like, it
would be You will hear from one guy who says
we would be better off if our house had burned down.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
No way, is that right?
Speaker 7 (11:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Wow, So that's part of it.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
We have an interview our Jason Campedonia talks with a
US Senator Rick Scott from Florida Republican who's been out
here once to hold a hearing into the Palisades and
he joins us for this special as well. We'll talk
a bit about some of the trauma and the psychological
damage that this has done. This isn't just one family
(12:10):
who's fire burned down, which is tragic enough, you know,
with somebody loses. These are communities, oh yeah, that have
been lost, and not just those communities. I talked a
bit about this with Gary and Shannon earlier today. This
was different, really than any other wildfire experience we have.
We know wildfires in southern California, we know that they
can be devastating and deadly, but we've never had a
(12:33):
situation where two massive wildfires are burning at the same
time in densely populated areas, taking homes and lives, especially
in communities that everybody knows, right and so people, whether
you lived in the Palisades or altered or not, you
had some connection to those communities and your experiences there.
So your loss is obviously not as direct or as
(12:55):
personal or as terrible as some of your house burning down,
but you feel a loss as well, Oh absolutely.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I mean these are our you know, family members and
friends and relatives who have gone through this and there,
and most of them are doing it very silently, you know,
they're they're they're not, you know, crying for help all
the time. They're sort of internalizing all this and doing
what they can. And I hear very few people, the
(13:22):
people I know who've lost their homes in that area,
including we just talked to the sales manager here, David Howard.
You never hear them complain. They're working silently to try
to get their lives back together.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I talked to David Howard for last year special that
we did in a few weeks after everything started to
settle down, at least the initial impact of the fires.
And you know, he is. He's been great to talk
to because he's very well informed. Sure, but he's very together.
I know, it's surprising he was together then, yes, And
(13:58):
that's impressive, you know, just the way that you can
deal with something as traumatic as watching not just your
house but your entire neighborhood go up in flames and
manage to galvanize other folks to stay focused on getting
results and getting your lives back right.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
And I don't know which comes first. You know, that
kind of ability to you know, to put your life
back together. Is that something you had going in or
is that something you were forced into doing because of
the circumstances. You know, there's like, for instance, if my
community burned down, a house burned down, I would not
(14:35):
do well.
Speaker 8 (14:36):
Well.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
That's because you would probably be a suspect. That's probably
you would be lawyering up. I would be at.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Marongo pulling slot machines, trying to pay for everything that's right.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
I think some things that come out of tragedies like
this is a leader's rise. I think your people that
never thought of themselves as community organizers or community leaders
before start to think themselves as such.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
You saw Spencer Pratt did today.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
I mean, this is a guy who was a reality
TV star in the two thousands, mostly forgotten, but lived
in the Palisades and lost his home. Is really angry
about the state and the local response. He's built this
social media following, especially through national right wing figures platforming
him and elevating him. He announced that he's running for mayor.
And I don't know that in any other scenario we
(15:24):
would hear Spencer Pratt declare for mayor of Los Angeles.
But he did so today at a rally that had
about a thousand people at it. People who are really angry.
This rally was called they let us Burn. This was
not a candlelight visual to remember things. This was people
who are angry. But a couple of things with the Palisades.
One is that the people who run Los Angeles, the studios,
(15:47):
the big business people, A lot of them live there.
And so you know, that's where your boss lives in
Pacific Palisades. Every time I go to Pacific Palisades, the
guy who owns the house is doing much better than
I am. You know, that's where the money is, That's
where the bosses are. That's where the people who have
made who have kept their nose clean and have made
(16:08):
a ton of money, that's where they live. And those
people have been distracted by this fire for the last year,
and so a lot of other businesses have been suffering,
not their fault, but because their time is you know,
is called.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
For other places.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
You talked to Heather Brooker before the top of the hour,
and she did a piece for this special that's coming
up to night at seven on the effects the fires
have had on the Hollywood industry, which was already reeling
from COVID and the double strikes, the actors and the
writers strikes, and then all of a sudden, this fires.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
What does it matter to Hollywood? Just like what you
just said, I mean, so many people.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Who have influential roles in Hollywood live in the policies,
but also Alta dina that is a community for families,
and Hollywood is more than studio bosses and big time actors.
There are people who write scripts, who make music, who
run cameras, who do that sort of thing, and they
make a living and they live in communities like Altadena.
(17:02):
And so we talked to some of the folks who
were affected that way as well. What I will say
about Altadena was it looked like a storybook community that
if you were casting a town to be the small
town star of a television series, that's what you want.
As for the Palisades, anytime you ask somebody outside of
(17:24):
California to picture California, that's what you're picturing. Yeah, you're
exactly right, sprawling estates on a cliff overlooking the beach, right,
and all of that vanished.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
And they're rightfully so really pissed off. And Heather Brooker
played a piece of a guy who lives out in
the Palisades and emotionally a wreck he said he had
hit him and his family have paid six hundred thousand
dollars over the last ten or twenty years in property tax.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
That's what irritates the hell out of him. It's yeah,
where's the money going.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
What has it been used for? That kind of money
of property tax? And there's no water to put your
house out.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
The worst thing is if you live in the city
of Los Angeles, as people in the Palis Saints do,
you were told by the mayor that she was going
to remove the permit fees, which are expensive. It's not
like you're farnelling a forty five dollars money aware and
getting your permit. That's not how it works. So that's
hundreds of millions of dollars and it's tens of thousands
for some residents to rebuild to get this permit approved. Well,
(18:22):
it hasn't happened because it hasn't been approved by the
city council. The mayor does not have executive authority to
make this ah and the city council hasn't approved it
yet to their fiscal credit. Frankly, because the mayor thought
it would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty four
million dollars. Yeah, and it's over two fifty over to
fifty ye, I mean, apparently that's disputed, but that range
(18:43):
is significant. It's not just a gift. There is a
cost to the rest of the city's general fund. Right
is all ready a wreck.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
As we've talked about many times, and we'll talk many
times again. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
All Right, Michael Monks Tonight at seven pm, you're gonna
be hosting this thing.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
One year later.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
It'll run from seven to nine. I'm going to come
on live from nine to ten. We'll talk a little
bit more about today's fire stuff, but we'll also do
some general news talk as well for that last hour,
so feel free to join us for that.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Excellent all right, speaking of talking about this fire, if
you obviously there are people listening right now who've been
wildly affected by these fires. If you want to call
us up, tell us how it's going, Maybe you want
to complain, Maybe you have a piece of information that
we've not covered here on KFI. We are going to
open up the phones and you can call with whatever
(19:33):
you have. Maybe you know somebody who's in the fire,
Maybe you lost somebody, maybe a pet, maybe a loved one,
whatever it is, we are here for you.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
We are an hour and twenty three minutes away from
the special tonight at seven o'clock. You're going to want
to hear that, especially if you were listening to KFI
during the fires. You'll hear a lot of the same
audio that you heard last year. And it's going to
be a great special seven to nine pm tonight on KFI.
(20:15):
Whatever you got to do, maybe eating dinner, got to
get back in the car at seven o'clock and that'll
air right after the top break at seven o'clock. All right,
you have had some experience with the fire, Maybe you
have an opinion of what's going on. Maybe we haven't
covered something here. Maybe you're angry, maybe you're sad. But
(20:36):
these fires that rage through southern California a year ago
is still having an emotional effect on a lot of people,
even people who weren't involved in the fire at all.
It is affecting millions of people here in southern California,
especially people have had their homes damaged, or lost a
(20:58):
loved one, or lost a pet. And if you want
to jump on the air, you can call us at
one eight hundred five two oh one five three four
one eight hundred five to two oh one five three four.
Let's talk to Jenna here in Pacific Palisades.
Speaker 6 (21:17):
Jenny you there, Yes, I am How are you good?
Speaker 1 (21:21):
How are you?
Speaker 9 (21:23):
I'm good?
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Your home was saved in the Palisades.
Speaker 10 (21:28):
It was okay, that's good. By a miracle. It's everything
around us burned. Oh wow, but our house was saved.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Were you able to move back in?
Speaker 6 (21:38):
And yes, okay.
Speaker 10 (21:41):
We were out for about seven months and uh, you know,
a lot of remediation.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
Happened and a lot of things had to be replaced.
But we are back in.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
And and was it was the bill for that? I'm
sure it was significant. Was did the insurance company help
you out?
Speaker 10 (21:57):
They were actually pretty good with us.
Speaker 6 (21:59):
We didn't have a whole lot of complaints.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Who was your company?
Speaker 6 (22:02):
A little bumpy farmers?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Okay, yeah, I'm writing down all the good ones that
I hear about travelers and farmers.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
Yeah, they were, they were, they were good.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah did they did they respond immediately?
Speaker 6 (22:17):
There was not.
Speaker 10 (22:19):
Pretty I mean it was hard because in the beginning,
nobody could even get in sure, you know, not the homeowner.
You know, it was weeks before people could even get in.
So it was a little while before the adjusters were
able to come out and take a look.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
But but yeah, they came.
Speaker 10 (22:37):
And the first adjuster we had was not good.
Speaker 6 (22:41):
But once we got after that, we got a good
one and it was it went more smoothly.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Oh good, okay. And and how long you've been living
in that house?
Speaker 10 (22:52):
Well, what's funny or not funny is that we lived
in Malibu and we lost our house in Wolsey fire,
Oh my god, and rebuilt it, sold it, never moved
in and moved to the Palisades because you know, Palisades
is safe, right, sure, you know, but we it didn't
(23:13):
happen a second time, thank god.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
My husband and my son and some amazing.
Speaker 10 (23:18):
People stayed and for three days and fought the fire
on the street and said, you know, our house and
probably about ten others on the block.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Do you know if your home that was burned down
by the Woolsey fire survived the fire last year?
Speaker 6 (23:34):
Oh? Yeah, it wasn't.
Speaker 10 (23:35):
It wasn't anywhere near the fire was we were in
western Malibu.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
And what about your neighbors? Have any of them moved back?
Speaker 10 (23:43):
A few, a few, not not a ton of them,
but probably about oh, I don't know, four or five
of them have moved back.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
So what a year it's been for you.
Speaker 10 (23:54):
It's it's been a year. It has been a year,
but we you know, we count our blessings. We feel
very lucky that we are able to move home and
then we you know, we're still here.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, I'm glad that you are back in your home,
and I hope your neighbors join you shortly.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I appreciate you phoning.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
You may want to keep this SAW station on your
radio until at seven o'clock.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Is me a terrific special seven to nine tonight.
Speaker 6 (24:18):
I will thank you, Thank you, Jennen.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
All right, take care.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Let's talk to a ray in Running Springs. You're on
kfived Ray.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
How are you.
Speaker 7 (24:31):
Alive? And well?
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Thank you excellent? Whate are you calling.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
From Running Springs in the San Bernadino Mountains.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Okay, you've had a pretty tough year.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
You've had not only fires, but my radical mud slides
and a lot of water too.
Speaker 7 (24:53):
Tons of water. Yes, but in seven I have lost
my home to the slide fire and at that time
I had only had my homeowners insurance with all State
for about less than a year.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Oh wow.
Speaker 7 (25:07):
And I had asked them if they were going to
cancel me, and they were like, no, we want you
to live a long, healthy life in order to get
as much money back from me as possible. However, about
three years ago roughly we were canceled and everyone up
in the mountains is being canceled at all the companies
due to the location, right, and we're all forced to
(25:29):
go to the California Fair Plan, which is the last resort.
And my insurance has gone up from about eight hundred
dollars a year to like forty eight hundred dollars a year. Wow,
And it's extreme. And I'm just curious as far as
the people and the palisades have they experienced this? Are
they getting dropped? Are they going to be dropped? Well,
(25:50):
if they didn't thought about this going forward, Yeah, a lot.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Of them were dropped before the fire.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
A lot of them were dropped, you know, in October
November of twenty twenty four, before the fire even.
Speaker 7 (26:01):
Happened, perfect timing.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
It is horrible, it.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Really is, and you know it's it's it's horrible that
we all pay our premiums for ten, fifteen, twenty thirty
forty years, never ever using our insurance, and then when
you go to use it the very first time, they
make it as difficult as possible.
Speaker 7 (26:24):
Absolutely, and then when it's dropped with this California Fair Plan,
it's just absurdly extensive.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
And what does the fair plan cover?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Will that cover you if you lose your home or
is it just a portion of it?
Speaker 7 (26:37):
It's just a fire insurance and you also have a
have to have a wrap around policy to cover the
rest of abnormal Oh my god, home insurance policy. So
I have two policies like everyone else has done, the
California Fair Plan and it's just absolutely.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Wait, so your fair plan costs you forty eight hundred
dollars a year? Does that not include your secondary plan?
Speaker 7 (27:00):
So that is what the secondary plan it's but overall
from eight hundred dollars to forty eight hundred dollars, it's
it's more than my Estro account. It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah, well my principle, but.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
It's not you know, but it's not just homeowners insurance.
My my daughter's insurance. She's twenty years old and she's
on a policy that we pay for and it was
twenty four hundred dollars a year, and then she got
into a small accident and now it's eighty five hundred
dollars a year.
Speaker 7 (27:34):
Okay, but she had an accident. This was all of
a sudden they decided to stop writing for everybody in
I get that area.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
I know it is unbelievably expensive. Right, we appreciate you phoning.
We're gonna take another couple of phone calls one eight
hundred five to oh one five three four, and then
you got to get back here at seven o'clock for
the special.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Whatever you got to do, now, go do it.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
But you got to listen to that live. It is
going to be two hours of must listen to radio
and you're going to want to hear every moment of that.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
So what have you got to do? Go do it?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Come back at seven o'clock, seven to nine pm with
Michael Monks.
Speaker 5 (28:10):
You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand from KFI
AM six forty is.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
The Conway Show.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
We're taking calls from people who have experienced the fire,
and I'm trying to figure out how how you are
one year later? It was one year ago today that
the big fires started, the Eating Fire, the Palisades Malibu fire,
And let's talk to Tracy in act in. Tracy, you're
on KFI.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
How are you.
Speaker 9 (28:41):
Fie great?
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, you're on kfive.
Speaker 9 (28:45):
Hey, Tim, we're a longtime followers, our whole family at God,
it's great. I we love you guys. We love the
racetrack too beautiful. I just want to say, I know
we might. We were just working over by Santa Anita
the other day. That brought back so many memories.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Let me tell you.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Let me tell you a quick story about the racetrack.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
I bought a pick five ticket last I think it
was last Friday, and I got the first four races right,
and I had nine of the eleven horses in the
last race, and if the seven or eleven one, I lost.
But if any other horse won, I would have won
twenty six thousand dollars. And the eleven horse won by
(29:32):
about an inch and a half and I lost.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
So I told my friend.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
I told my friend Todd Shrub that story, and he said,
for another thirteen dollars, you could have had those other
two horses. And I said, I had to borrow the
fifty cents to get that ticket, as it was.
Speaker 9 (29:51):
Oh my gosh, another lose your story to tell, your.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Story to tell all right, So you've been living in
Malibu since nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 7 (30:01):
No, so our.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
Family from Malibu, My dad was the sheriff in Malibu
in the late fifties and early sixties. So my parents
rented a home off the Bob Hope estate because they
owned that home hill and they have the Malibu fires
and their house burned, so they rebuilt and or the
(30:27):
state rebuilt, and it burned again the next year. So
my parents packed it up and had had enough, you know,
they didn't want to deal with it. My dad got
transferred to the Antelote Valley. My mom always hated them
for that because she said, your father moved me to
this God's first taken place.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
It is quite a shock to move from Malibu to
Antelope Valley.
Speaker 9 (30:52):
Aloe Valley, and that was when there was nothing there
in nineteen sixty two. So the thing is is that
my son own restoration companies and so they're fire chasers,
so they're out of all these fires.
Speaker 6 (31:07):
You know.
Speaker 9 (31:08):
And my son had called me about five years ago
when they had fires and said, you know what, Mom,
the house would have burned again.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Oh my god. And I don't know how you deal
with it, you know.
Speaker 9 (31:19):
I don't know how they do. But we are stores.
We have two stores up in oak Onne, California. Maybe Kaipa, right,
and we've had three fires there and because of the fires,
we've had mudslides.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Oh my god.
Speaker 9 (31:33):
And I feel so bad for the people dealing with
their insurance from last year's fires.
Speaker 6 (31:39):
It's the Palisades.
Speaker 9 (31:41):
Because because of the mudslide, we lost twenty seven houses
up on our mountain and or the community did right,
and they weren't going to cover the twenty seven houses,
but because it was related to the fire the year before,
(32:02):
they did cover.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Oh that's great, that's a great story.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I'm glad they we got a positive story out of this.
All right, Craig and Pacific Palisades, you're on, Kofi.
Speaker 8 (32:13):
Yes, I just wanted to thank you so much for
keeping the Palisades as well as Alta Dina on your
program every day. It's great.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
At least we could do so I wanted so I lost.
Speaker 8 (32:26):
My house in the Palisades. It's been a very difficult year,
but also trying to move forward. But one of the
things that's bothering me, and I just heard on your
show as well, is the fees to rebuild. These these
rebuild fees and they can cost I don't know, thirty
sixty thousand dollars, and you guys alluded to this just earlier,
(32:48):
but you guys termed them as a cost, and the
city is saying it's a cost. There's no cost because
they never got this money in the first place. This
money i've been rolling in. Uh, it's never rolled in.
It's only going to roll in because through their negligence,
(33:09):
they burned down six thousand houses and now it's going
to roll in.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I'm with you one hundred percent not a cost.
Speaker 8 (33:14):
So it's not a cost. So I don't think we
should term it as a cost when we're talking about it,
because all they did was they're hemorrhaging money in the city.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Well, it's not us that referred to them as a cost.
It's the city council and the supervisors that use that term.
Speaker 8 (33:34):
Okay, But then when you guys report it, I'm not
attacking you by.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Any no, no, no, I'm with you. That is found money.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
That money would not have been there unless they were
negligent and allowing all these homes to burn to the ground.
Speaker 8 (33:46):
You're right, right, right, And so when we talk about
you know, when we're referring to the city council calling
it a cost, and I think the next thing out
of people's mouths should be it's not a cost, that's right,
it's and that's what I think is missing a little bit.
It's kind of like, oh, there were hurricane winds on
the day of January seventh, and there wasn't. I had
(34:08):
a weather station, you know, probably half a mile away
from the fire. I can tell you exactly what the
winds were every two seconds. But if no one believes
me that it wasn't hurricane force winds, then why were
they flying air assets over that fire all day long?
(34:28):
And I have video of it as a four fifteen PM.
They probably flew air assets above the fire even after that.
So again, when somebody comes out and says, oh, it
was hurricane force winds or whatever, they say, well, then
why were they flying the airplanes? They can't fly in
hurricane force winds.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
That I'm with you one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And we should and we should have also had helicopters,
you know, giving us video and giving the firefighters video
of what's going on, But we didn't because as Joe
Biden was in town and the Secret Service wasn't letting
anybody fly, right.
Speaker 8 (35:05):
And then how about Newsom's motor cake going through sunset,
which delayed people evacuating out of Palisades Highlands. That that's
a beautiful aspect of it too.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
It's incredible.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
But you know what, I'm glad you actually mentioned that
because I have a couple of friends who live up
in the Highlands area, and that's where you know, in
Pacific Palisades they refer to themselves as the poor people
in the Palisades up on the Highlands. But I was
always afraid of being up there because there is one
way in and one way out. If there was ever
(35:39):
an earthquake or a fire like this, people are going
to die over that.
Speaker 8 (35:44):
Right, there's no question. And this goes toward all of
the increased housing that everybody is scared of. You know,
it's all well and good, fifteen minute cities, increased housing.
You know, let's put four houses on law that had
won all that stuff. But in the end, the city
is going to have to tell us if no one
(36:06):
can evacuate ever, and they didn't they couldn't, how are
they going to evacuate with more density? They've already stated
into Panga Canyon. Hey, you guys are screwed. Just huddle
in place, because you can't evacuate through to Panga Canyon,
And they just come out and said that. So I
think this whole increased density in lots of problems. The
(36:29):
inveluce should be off the table because of that very reason.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Craig, I appreciate the call. You're exactly right.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
If people had trouble fleeing that fire a year ago,
how are they going to act when there are three
times more people because the ADUs and the and putting
four units on one lot. He's got a great, great
point one hour away from the special seven o'clock tonight
right here on KFI AM six forty Conway Show, on
(36:57):
demand on the iHeartRadio app. You can always hear us
live on KFI AM six forty four to seven pm
Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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