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 with all the coverage of this fire that has exploded this morning in the Pacific Palisades, quickly taking off down the hills there as it makes its way, particularly on the west side of Timescal Canyon there,
into the neighborhoods we mentioned most recently. Because the winds are coming down the mountain from the north and from over the east, it pushed this thing to the west into the borderline of the Summit area, which backs up right there to Palisades Drive, which has said to be overrun all four lanes with cars trying to get down as fire crews try to get up.
Getting word that some people are starting to walk out because of the evacuation problems that they're having with people cars that are jamming the roads getting out of it. A couple people that we have heard from have said as much, and we're hearing radio traffic as well that even dispatchers realize that there are problems getting people out of the areas that need to be gotten out of.
I don't know what you do at that point.
Yeah, this is some more bad news for you.
Reports now that the fire has spotted across Palisades Drive and is on both sides of the road, which puts it if you're looking at a map here on.
The Getty Villa side right of Palisades Drive.
Now that is this in terms of the sheer number of homes. That's probably the smaller pocket right right there before it goes before you hit Topanga and then it kind of gets wild landy before you make.
Your way over towards Big Rock and in the Malibu area.
But this does not mean that it's less dangerous, because that just means it's spreading as it reaches out into
the into the flatlands there. We have been following all of the coverage of it as well, and I mean you could see there's there's a picture right there from Channel five of the traffic as it exists there people getting out of pch and then fire trucks that are stuck in that same traffic, and of course that dark cloud of smoke that comes over them brings with it sort of that I'm sure probably fear inducing panic.
So here's where we're at.
It quickly went from ten acres and just balloon to two hundred like that. They knew it would because of the twenty to six excuse me, forty to sixty mile per hour winds gus even more as we can imagine and predict with fires like this wind driven down the mountains with those mountain wave winds behind it, Several spot fires have erupted in multiple neighborhoods. This was an area
where strike crews were deployed. This was considered to be one of the high intensity when it came to high fire risk areas that they knew that anything that exploded in this area would take off. Unfortunately, they just didn't know when. And the speed of this thing means that people didn't have time to preemptively leave if they were going to anyway, which is why you're seeing the gridlock everywhere there.
But anyway, they have.
Got at least four or had had four firefighting aircraft in the sky, including those two Super Scoopers. Now, the Super Scoopers are unique and that they can fly in winds of forty five miles per hour per hour. They can scoop up water in headwinds of forty five miles per hour, which is one of the reasons why they are so key. The pilots which are also on loan, the equipment crews who know how to take care of these babies, they can approach. They can approach their approach,
I should say, based on different wind speeds. They have different protocols for different wind speeds on how to approach the water pickups as well as the water drops. They are very skilled at that when it comes to the technicality of that kind of maneuver. So they are able to reach these fire locations quickly, repeatedly drop water on flames in wind. So lucky that we have those. I can't believe they were still on lease in January. Usually
fire season is over. They say it's year round, but rarely do we have these things explode in January.
We are watching, like you said, a handful of air traffic, a bunch of different spotter planes that have now come in and are circling around this thing. The last number that we had was two hundred plus acres. It is going to be whatever the number is next is going to be much much larger than that, based on the speed with which this thing has been able to expand there has been video that we've.
Also seen of homes that are on fire. So this is.
A situation now that is getting I mean exponentially more dangerous, not just for the people who are trying to get out, but for the fire crews. A couple of different TV stations have reporters up in those neighborhoods and they are watching law enforcement and firefighters going into homes, ushering people out door to door, literally yelling for people to get out of the neighborhood.
LA Fire Department, LA County Fire Department, the finest departments you will find when it comes to firefighting in this country, possibly the world. They are very good at this, and they're describing this situation as dire. They're saying that this is the ferocity of a blowtorch. Again, a dire situation. They said this morning it was going to be life threatening. They said it was going to be destructive when it came to this wind event, and they were not kidding.
There are homes that are on fire.
The entire Pacific Palisades area has been ordered evacuated, and that means that everybody is trying to get out of there at the same time.
Yeah, Palisades Drive is gridlocked. They're using all four lanes told to are not told to to get the hell down while fire crews are trying to use that only and only.
Major artery to get up.
Right now, radio traffic indicates that the traffic there on Palisades Drive is gridlocked. Cars are being abandoned by people, which is making things harder for fire engines as you can imagine, to get up that road. So firefighters right now are requesting that people at the top of Palisades Drive shelter in place at this time, don't try to come down.
Well, I mean, the one thing they would have is that the fire doesn't appear to be moving that direction. I mean it has jumped over as you get farther south, farther closer to the water, I should say, and it is on the side of Palisades Drive that would be the Getty Villa area, and as you make your way over towards Topega Canyon Boulevard or Topenga Canyon Highway twenty seven there. But that's not a that doesn't make anybody
feel calm. I wouldn't expect two hundred plus acres was the last time we saw a number associated with this, But we know it's going to be bigger than that once they get in more information. There's a couple pictures of all of the different agencies that have reacted to this. I've seen LA County and LA City firefighting aircraft that are in the air. They've got a couple of different tankers with their lead spotter planes that are coming through,
just doing their circles all around. So you could imagine it is a very busy time in those skies above this fire trying to do what they can. That's at least four helicopters that I see now, and then a couple of other tankers that continued to circle through.
Again. The winds are volatile, so there are a number of aircraft that will not fare well in situations like this.
At this point, there is going to be.
A lull, we're told by meteorologists in the afternoon, at some point where maybe you can get on top of this thing from the sky a little bit more. Take advantage of that break, because the strong winds and the strong wind gusts will make a return this evening. Now, if you're on PCH hoping to get by this thing before it hits PCH, you're so well traffic on PCH toward the Palisades is a mess. You're not going anywhere, so your plans need to be aborted.
At this point. I'm looking at live pictures and there's just no.
Way that you're going to get in that direction. I don't know if these are people trying to get to their homes to get things out, or people trying to get through this area on pch because it is shut down as well.
It's a Pega Canyon southbound.
Yeah to Panga A. Mulholland is where pH is close.
We talked with Quentin Fleming from the Pacific Palisades Community Council a little bit earlier and we discussed that one way in, one way out, especially if you're up at the top of the hill there in the Palisades, that that Palisades Drive was really the only access to get
in and out of that place. Like you said, that's one of the reasons they have suggested it if you are up at the top of that hill, that you shelter in place, because they need to get the fire equipment in there to help fight that fire.
Much farther, I.
Shouldn't say much, but a couple of miles to the west of that is where we saw that fire last month that burned up towards Malibu, down towards Malibu, I should say, and it is echoing a lot of what we saw then today, but today's exploded in size. We were on edge in that Malibu fire. We were waiting for it to grow and grow exponentially, but it did not.
This one is.
This one is taking advantage of the incredible wind speeds that we saw, like you said, up to sixty mile an hour gusts, if not more than that, specifically in this area and again the entire area of Pacific Palisades. They want you out of there so that they can go in and fight this fire and try to protect your homes.
Unfortunately, pictures of homes on fire. As you mentioned, We also talked about how the President's trip to the Inland Empire to declare some national monuments has been canceled. One of the reasons is that it would have created problems in airspace. Him coming on Air Force one to the Inland Empire would definitely shut down and some airspace over much needed airspace, as you can imagine around southern California with this beast that is just eating up the Palisades.
Now, one of the things that we mentioned this morning when we were talking about what was going to happen for the rest of the day and for the next couple of days. As a matter of fact, because of the red flag fire danger, CalFire did deploy a few dozen fire engines and six hand crews from northern California to come down here to Southern California, La Orange, Riverside,
San Bernardino, San Diego, Samuis Obispo, and Ventura County. So the local units were going to be We're staffing extra engines, extra hand crews, bulldozers, water tenders were all ready at the ready. But this is not This is beyond what we have seen in terms of fire behavior in many instances before. So that's one of the reasons why we've seen such an incredible response. And then there's one of the images that we see so many times in southern California where the palm tree is catching on fire.
And those palm trees, once they get to the fronds, those things take off and they travel. I mean, you don't need that palm tree to spread this thing in terms of spotfires because of the wind, it'll carry those those flames alone. But it doesn't make matters any better. And look at that. Look at that live area of just gridlock. I mean it's like trying to get out of a stadium after a concert or a sports event. You're not moving because there are just so many people
and nowhere to go. And you wonder if they've got the traffic lights configured correctly, you know, or people are even paying attention to traffic lights at this point to get out of there. But look at the chaos and people just to well just be kind of one another. You've got civilians out there directing traffic at this point.
It looks like that guy's car is stalled, and that's probably what's causing the problem right now.
No, I mean that's moving.
Yeah. No, these are people that have gotten out of their cars to try and get people to go different directions or to actually just plate traffic monitor there to try and get these cars through. Oh, that guy's car is stalled. Yeah wow, look at that. Look at this, This guy's car is stalled. What of time to have your car stall?
Right?
Four people get out of their cars to push them down. That's nice to see, yeah, and hopefully free up at least some of the problems.
So again it looks like traffic is gridlocked in different areas trying to get out of Pacific Palisades.
And it looks like just like every other fire where there's no visibility, it's just all gray, just like it looks like.
A war zone. It is like a bunch of bombs have dropped.
And again there are homes that have burned. We haven't seen what sort of plans LA City Fire or County Fire, whoever's going to take the charge of the lead on this would be giving updates on any of it.
So we'll keep an eye on that.
But that just goes to show you how feverish this is, how hot it got, how quickly, how wide spread it is. There's just no time to give an update. I don't want them to waste time giving us an update, you know.
Well, yeah, I mean that that along with the lack of specific evacuation orders early on everybody and now it's just everybody in the Palisades leave.
Every one in the Palisades area.
Leave is the evacuation order they're not just getting they're not getting granular about which neighborhoods.
There's no time to get granular.
I mean, just miles of smoke that have now been blown out across the ocean and everywhere along the west side. You can see images of this fire. You can see it from the valley over the hills.
There is just it is. It is big again.
There is supposed to be a lull in the winds coming up this afternoon before they pick up again tonight. But the red flag warning is in effect for this area until Thursday at six pm. Still got a lot of hours to go with this wind event.
All right, we'll continue to keep an eye on this again. Two hundred plus acre fire in a Pacific Palace Sades, very dangerous situation.
All of the Palisades has been evacuated. We are seeing some they're trying to now they're trying to at excellent point. We've got eyes on Palisades Drive. All four lanes, two in, two out, all four now have been devoted to outs as according to the people who are trying to get out. Unfortunately, there are fire engines trying to get in, making matters much worse. You pointed out a palm tree that was on fire.
Yeah, right in the median there. It's too like you said, two lanes up and two lanes down. On Palisades Drive and in the media and through much of it there are palm trees. It's California, and some of the palm trees have started to catch fire from the earlier spot fires that we saw the embers that were blowing in.
There was also a car that it was actually.
A van, headed down Palisades Drive away from the fire on the wrong side of the road that had caught fire. But that thing burned for a good ten or fifteen minutes before a fire truck came and they were able to put it out just a couple of minutes ago.
But this is it's a situation.
I don't think anybody, well clearly nobody expected like this, especially with people trying to get out of that hillcrest area the top of the Palisades area, the summit, because the only way to get out of there is through Palisades Drive.
You can't go back the other way. You can't go back up over the hill.
You have to come down Palisades Drive. And even with two lanes up two lanes down, pretty sizable, I guess access lanes on the side of that, it's just a mess.
So you can see cars that are just abandoned on Palisades Drive. Cars that were driving down the wrong side of the road to get out, desperate to get out. People have just been taking off running. Now mentioned that the fire did jump Pacific Palisades Drive, so it's on both sides, on the Temescul side and it's on the side of the Getty Villa.
Well.
Now listening to radio traffic that indicates the fire is currently impacting the Getty Villa area, will be impacting Coastline Drive area shortly, which is as you know, if you know the area right in.
The thick of residential communities.
As well, a couple of notes to pass on the command center that you're going to see a lot of don't go there. But if you are coming out of Palisades, the area to the south is jammed. The area headed towards Topega and then into Malibu, you're also going to see a lot of traffic, but it's apparently not as bad going that direction.
Also, the evacuation center.
One evacuation center that's been set up has been set up at the Westwood Recreation Center, which again you're going to have to go through all of that traffic to get out of the Palisades. To get into that area. In terms of the wind that we saw drive this thing for the last couple of hours and just grow it exponentially, very quickly. Is expected to peak later tonight.
That's not the good news. I mean, we've seen sustained winds in thirty forty mile an hour, but we expect winds to peak somewhere around ten o'clock tonight in the Palisades area, peaking it around forty five miles per hour sustained, which would put the gusts well up over sixty seventy miles an hour possible.
Actor James Woods has posted some very graphic footage from his driveway as he's preparing to get out.
You better hurry the hell up and get out. Several homes around there on fire.
And again it doesn't make it any worse any better, but these are as you can imagine multimillion dollar homes up in flames. Again, a lot of the conversation, and it's too soon to have it, will center around the fact that Palisades Drive is the main and only.
Artery out of the affected area.
The images down Palisades Drive with these cars listen, it's still, hey, it's daylight. That's a good thing. The smoke isn't that thick that they can't see ahead of them, but you.
Can't see daylight when you're down there in it. It's just all gray and all smoke. And imagine the air quality as well. But it's eerily reminiscent of the Skyway. Yeah, when everybody was leaving that fire, Paradise up in northern Califoria. Skyway is basically Palisades Drive.
It was the one way out of Paradise, and there were so many people that got caught and were afraid for their lives while they were trying to get out of there.
And I wonder what the conversation has been. And I don't know why we haven't heard more about it, And maybe it's just because these fires have become more explosive in recent years, But it seems like a conversation that we would have been abreast of in the news business if this was a major conversation topic and the Pacific Palisades.
Maybe it was locally, like we were talking to one of the community council members about the fact of well, worst case scenario, were screwed with this one major artery in and out. And I think a lot of people don't like to think about the worst screwed possibility, and today we're screwed, which is why you see people just making a run for it, you know, miles away from from Sunset Boulevard there, if you're coming down from Palisades, just taking off and walking or running down down the road.
Yeah, And I think everybody, we all know some people who who are in the Palisades. They don't have to be celebrities, but just neighbors or friends or friends of neighbors or whatever that do live in the Palisades. And as far as we know, most everybody's getting out quickly
and getting out safely. But they've had to abandon cars, like we've been saying, they've abandoned them, whether it's on Palisades Drive or other places on pH As they get out of there, it is as life threatening as they expected. I mean, this is this is kind of the worst case scenario that they were saying, or the very bad case scenario that was possible.
And it's coming to fruition.
And it's one of those situations where it's not that people were dilly dallying.
You know.
So often when we cover these fires, there are people that are interviewed to say, ma'am, I'm just gonna wait it out. I'm just gonna see what goes on. This was one of those fires there are. I'm pretty sure eighty five to ninety percent of the people in the area said oh, hell no, and just got the hell out of there. The thing was moving so quickly, though, that as soon as they had that thought and started
getting in the car, everyone else had that thought. It wasn't that people were just waiting and seeing how this thing was going to play out.
They wanted to get out of there, and they did.
It's just that there's so few space on those roads to make your way down the hill.
Again, the immediate threat to life. The evacuation order is very general in terms of its location, but evacuation orders are in effect, and they have listed the zones. It's all of the palisades. It's the entire from the summit all the way to down out of the water. They want you out of there.
And from the summit there, right to the east of that neighborhood is where this thing erupted. And it is just a steady stream, a massive thick stream of white and black smoke, and that black smoke of course, means most likely homes burning, and then the fingers, the fingers that exist down towards near Santa Monica.
Of just the spot fires that are.
Crawling down the terrain there are also just terrifying to see because again those embers doesn't take much to get them flying and sparking new fires.
All right, so this is going to be an all day and probably well into the evening kind of a story because as we mentioned, the wind gusts are expected to peek later tonight and the red flag warnings for this fire danger will continue through the next couple of days. It could be until Friday that the red flag war are up in those areas. If you are making your way out of Palisades, out of Pacific Palisades, there is
movement in traffic. Yes, it looks pretty grim in terms of getting out of there, and we know plenty of people have abandoned their cars and are trying to walk out, but there is some movement. They finally have it looks like a handle on some of the traffic control to try to get people out of there as quickly as possible.
Palisades on fire right now pretty much worst case scenario in terms of this wind event and how quickly it hit this area, no time to respond, no time to get out, which is why you've got people abandoning their cars on the only major artery in and out of the Palisades. There are four lanes, two lanes in each direction, but everyone decided to make all four lanes one direction out.
Problem is fire engines are trying to get in.
Yeah, this was We talked with Quentin Fleming from the Community Council, the Pacific Palisades Community Council, and that question came up. Is this something that's been talked about. I mean, there are hundreds of homes higher up in the hill and only one good way in and out, and it's not like fire is new in this area. So the
entire area has been placed under evacuation order. There are I mean just scores and scores of images on social media from really far away where people can see the smoke cloud from this well down the coast, well down the west side into the beach communities down there. The traffic in and out of the Palisades, I shouldn't say in the traffic out of the Palisades is very, very thick. There is an evacuation center that been set up at the Westwood Recreation Center, but it's going to take some
patients among other things to get there. We do know that there have been homes that at least have been damaged. We don't know of any that are complete losses as of this point, but it just seems the way that this thing was behaving early on, it's almost an inevitablity that we're going to lose some homes in this area and it is going to get worse potentially before it gets better, if no other reason. Then the winds are not expected to die. The winds have not peaked yet.
It will be several hours before they peak. In fact, the expectation is that it's sometime between eight and midnight tonight when they will peak in that area.
Thank god, we still have those super Scoopers on loan from Quebec. They are able to fly in the winds. They are making crucial air drops. They're able to pick up water in headwinds of forty five miles per hour. So those things were activated right quick and have been attacking this thing now for a couple hours.
The spot fires were.
A concern that came true very quickly as well. So you can see just fingers of active flames working down the hills. Here, the fire did jump Palisades Drive from the Tamescul side over to the Getty Villa side. In fact, they do say that the fire is impacting the Gelly Villa area, will be impacting the Coastline Drive area. Shortly pch non negotiable trying to make your way to the Palisades. There's just no way to get in. If you're trying
to get into your home or what have you. There's it's just not tenable at this situation, at this time.
A couple of quick notes just about we've done this for a long time and not had an experience where there's so much that is happening at the beginning of an event like this that they don't they being fire authorities, don't give out information. They were slow in putting out specifics about the evacuation parameters because they were just saying, if you're in that area, you need to get out. It doesn't matter what zone you need to get out of the Palisades. The other thing is our last number
is at two hundred acres. It's well over two hundred acres, and you can tell that especially with these other spot fires that have come up. But their priority is not coming up with a number of how many acres. Their priority is absolutely protecting people's lives and then protecting properties and getting people in and out of their safely.
It's telling that they don't have acreage. It's telling that we are hours away from any sort of containment number. All of this is telling that this is their number
one priority is getting people out, structure protection. I'm trying to create a ring around something that is moving like this and this quickly and this erratically is near and possible, So hopefully they will get some work done from the air on this thing before they are able to get in there and do the painstaking work that will be wildline containment line for this thing.
Wildfire containment line for a lot of that.
That's just literal boots on the ground hand crews that are going in some of those areas. There are a couple of dozen, it looks like, just based on flight radar, twenty four aircraft in the area, which in and of its self brings a whole series of potential problems. You've got to be able to coordinate all of these different firefighting aircraft you've got for the tankers. They are usually following a spotterer plane or a lead plane that will go through and indicate where it is that they need
to have water or retardant dropped down. On top of that, you've got all of the helicopters that are in the air. Throw into all of that. Like we were saying earlier, this mess of traffic getting out of Palisades. The last time, about fifteen twenty minutes ago we started seeing some of the traffic really starting to move, but that was the first time we had seen it in probably an hour
or so. It looks a lot like as you head up the hill up Palisades Drive, you go past a little shopping center that's got an Italian place, a little restaurant in there, a sushi place, and a Starbucks. That hillside just above that, as you head up towards the summit, there is on fire and there are crews that are trying to get some sort of water on that. But you could see it right above, right on that hill behind that little shopping center, there's all kinds of open flame.
Hey takeaway from here is if you live in a wild fire risk area and you know when you do just note that with this wind event we've got, with these mountain wave winds coming down, if you're in the San Gabriel's, the valleys, wherever you are there, because the winds in this event are coming from the north, are
coming from the east. These things are moving ferociously, So you're not going to have time to pack up the car the way you normally would have when you are given the evacuation order, because likely you're going to have to evacuate before you get that order. So takeaway from this is just be ready to go on a wind event like this. I mean, if it means pack in a bag, put it in the car now, why not?
Why not operate out of an abundance of caution. Again, the evacuation area is basically all of the palisades from Topanga Canyon to the to the west, all the way down to pch and all the way over towards towards Brentwood.
I mean, it's just all of the palisades.
We haven't seen much yet of any sort of update where we're going to get a news conference out of fire authorities and they can give us more information and print some specifics probably about the people who might still be up in that area. What you can do to protect yourself, But we will keep an eye on this and we'll bring it to you, of course, live when
it happens, whether it's our show. John's coming on in just a few minutes, and of course Deva and the rest of the team, you're going to have everything throughout the course of the day.
We will see him minat Manada Manada? What's manada? Is that a thing?
It's a tomorrow's soup. It is tomorrow's menuda.
All right, we'll see youm mignona. Okay, stay drive everybody, blessings.
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