(01/08) GAS Hour 3 - Update On Fires In LA

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.

They have a special fire coverage, of course, covering the fires that continue to burn in these very very windy conditions throughout La County. We have three, although they keep saying they want to shoehorn a fourth in there and there's no need. Three big fires. The Palisades Fire burning out Malibu between Malibu and Santa Monica through Pacific Palisades, well over five thousand acres is an under estimate as

Biden was just a Cedar Sinai where Hunter's wife, the one he married in twenty nineteen after just six days of knowing her, is giving birth to their second child. It was a planned c section there. He was in town to do the two monuments right over in the Inland Empire, and then they decided he would not be doing that because of the fire. So he was hunkered down somewhere overnight in La went to Cedars this morning, and it's going to the fire station now. But that's

That is just where you're.

Finding home after home after home just gone. And again the fire crew saying we are spread too thin. And when you think about the distances between the fires as well, it's great, great distances between the Palisades and Eaton Canyon area as well.

And I think it is telling that a lot of times with.

These fires, you'll hear the firefighters say, you know, just get out, just get out of your neighborhoods, you know, to leave the hoses there so that we can use them if we need to. You're not hearing that because they don't have enough crews to respond to every single

Well.

Obviously, people's eyeballs are important when we see the beginnings of these things. And the very first indication that we had of this fire yesterday in Palisades was listener Felix, who called and left us a talk back.

Oh, Garre at Salamonica. I'm facing north of Gloriafield Exit. It's a giant fire. I don't know if we just want to talk about that. It's yeah, these ways going to be killed.

Take care.

Yeah, And that basically started what began twenty four hours of wall to wall coverage up to this point. At this point, Felix actually is joining us live now on the phone to talk more. Felix, hey man, thanks for having great eyeballs yesterday. Good when you saw this yesterday, you have any expectation that it was going to get this bad?

I kind of did. Just the wind were so bad and the flames were just so so strong already, even if it's just on top of the ridge, you were able to tell that it wasn't going to be an easy battley to pay.

Yeah, you could kind of hear it in your voice. You're like, these winds are not good. This is not going to be a good situation. You know, we kind of had the same feeling yesterday when we were talking about it, talking to Henry to Carlo, and you know, you hear all this hyperbole about you know, Arctic blasts and atmospheric river and polar vortegs and Arctic outbreak and it's just like this hysteria. But when we are about this wind event, with these crazy ass mountain wave winds.

You just kind of knew it was gonna, you know, hit us very different.

Yeah, the winzard are consistent, they're being they may not be extremely strong, but they're they're there. I'm working, I work on doors, so I'm just constantly feeling the wind.

Oh man, what do you do?

I delivered for the brown trunk.

The brown trucks got it. I know. I like those guys. Felix, again, thanks for thanks for calling us when you saw that yesterday.

It's it's important we get that information quickly, and you were the first.

Thanks you, and thanks for continuing to work through all this mess.

Thank you. I appreciate your all.

You know, as they say, brown never stops.

No, it doesn't like that. No, it's a brown storm. Oh wait, that's the cruise.

Thanks Felix, We appreciate it you too.

We are in Santa Monica, the City of l a fire chief is giving President Sandalus an update looking at a map and aerial map of the Palisades fire warning.

Around ten thirty. We did pre deploy a number of resources. We knew this was there was a potential for a significant threat to our constituents due to the weather event high high, high winds. I've never seen the winds in my twenty five year career, so we leaned forward as much as possible and pre deployed with that. We had a significant amount of fire that occurred. We had an aggressive fire attack. The fire has grown from originally ten acres to ten thousand, eight hundred and two acres as

Interesting enough, because.

Of the winds and the low humidity, we had a second fire also break out, and that was the Hurst Fire, which is just north.

Of that area.

Again, this was close to eleven one thousand acres. This is close to five hundred acres. That also broke out. The information that I want to share with you is also the significance of multiple fires in the area within the city but also the county.

That's the second.

Fire that actually came out and we're actively engaged in that firefight. The third fire then broke out this morning at four o'clock in the morning, in which we have an active firefight there as well. We're working with our local jurisdictions, our state, regional, as well as federal, so we're doing everything we can to protect life first and property next. We'll go ahead and then pass this off to Police Chief McDonald.

Thank you, Thank you, Chief, Miss President.

It's an honor to be able to be here and be part of this and represent the men and women of LAPD and policing to support our partners in the fire service. What we saw here in the last twenty four hours is unprecedented. I've never seen anything like this. Fire is driven by the type of winds that we

So thank you for this opportunity circuit.

Oh sorry, let me introduce my partner from the county Fire Department, Chief Tony Maloney.

Yeah, so thank you. I'm going to be giving you an update on our Eaton fire, which is east of cornst The county starts all the way up in Lancaster and goes all the way down to the Long Beach border. We go from the county line in Fadura all the way out to Pomona four three hundred acres, so we have a fire east of the Palisades Fire that began last night. It's called the Eton Fire. It's currently ten thousand, six hundred acres zero percent containment. We have over seven

You get him a microphone? Why are people not good at their jobs?

Ken?

We are listening to President Biden speaks well from a mile away.

Apparently driving me.

Because he's talked to the Department of Defense about this. California National Guard, California National Guard. Good lord, why can't they get the president a microphone? For the love for more SOT? Okay, you know what, that's not gonna go any better. He's not on Mike. He's not on Mike. I've got an update here. We'll monitor this. I'm not gonna listen to bad audio. We've got an update from the watch Duty app. By the way, the watch Duty

It is true. It is a great app.

It's nonprofit, and it's fantastic in terms of the updates. It's a free app again watch Duty. It reports that the Palisades fire now that radio traffic indicates the fire is advancing up the canyon and will reach Old Topanga in about an hour.

Reversing direction there uh not.

They did see some of that kind of fire behavior yesterday, but it was not well reported. They did, you know, instances of it, but it wasn't. I mean, the benefit that we have today, obviously is daylight. For one thing, lower wind speeds and wind gusts, So we do have aircraft in the air so they can see that sort of behavior and give us a heads up. The other thing that the fire chief did mention was that Palisades

But by the time we're done with this, it's going to be in the tens of thousands, if not, you know, six figures.

You mentioned this earlier. The acreage isn't what is most important here. Most important here is a that we had no fatalities. We did have a high number of significant injuries, but that we've seen one thousand structures destroyed. That was the That was the number that was given by the county fire chief early this morning. A thousand structures destroyed. And that's just the Palisades fire. That doesn't count the Eaten fire over an Altadena in Pasadena.

This is continued. Nobody has a microphone.

Nobody has a microphone in that in that fire station, and there's a dozen cameras they're watching that.

Let's it's not a time, it's not about the what day is it is? Wednesday eleven, nineteen and forty nine seconds?

There is a microphone on a boom that's about sixty feet away from the guy's face.

I understand that. I understand that we're going to get through this together.

I doubt it.

We're taking your calls one eight hundred five.

Now they're offering everybody out, Ladies and gentlemen, out of the room, no questions.

You're yelling one eight hundred and five to zero, one KFI. This is a horrific morning, a lot of shock. A lot of people who didn't even know that they were going to have to evacuate, got out in the nick of time, and then went back this morning and there's nothing left. I mean, just a freaking whiplash morning for a lot of people. Eaton Canyon Pacific Palisades a mess. So if you've had an experience overnight a lot of us have, let us know. We'll talk about it together.

You were under an actual mandatory evacuation order. I was ready for one. I kept getting the alerts, but they were apparently sending them to the wrong zone. But I was ready to go. Dear, what was going on with you? I know you were in an area that was going to be you were nervous. I have a sense that you are a bit nervous.

Well, I'm in Woodland Hills and I'm up in the hills, and you know, Shannon's been mentioning ninety eight mile per hour winds and she's not kidding.

It was terrifying.

I literally, and I'm not exaggerating, did not get a minute of sleep last night. My bags and my husband's bag, dog stuff were all packed to go. In fact, I was going to bring the dogs into work this morning. But fortunately my daughter was able to come over for a little bit so I can come to work.

But terrifying. And we're very close to the Panga Canyon, so.

There are areas and it's very confusing with the different zones, but there are areas into Panga Canyon that have mandatory evacuation orders. Were also very close to Calabasa. It's the same. So I am just ready to get out.

Me.

Let me say, I was confused last night when my first when my first alarm went off at about twelve fifteen this morning and it said that I was in an evacuation zone. I didn't think I was, but I went on to their there's a couple different.

I mean, watching all in evacuation zones. It's just whether your zone has been alerted to it's turned off exactly.

Yeah.

So Watch Duty is that app that you mentioned a few minutes ago. That was great in terms of being able to very clearly see which zone you might be in or which zones are evacuation orders or warnings. The other one is Genesis Protect, which is ge Na Genesis Protect very similar in terms of the ability to zoom in, find your location where you are, and then compare that to which zones are under evacuation orders or warnings.

And those two do work in conjunction at times as well. Yeah.

My experience was my power was shut off just randomly at six pm. I didn't know if it was be peremptory preemptively shut off because I'm in a fire area. I'm right up against the foothills in the two ten quarridor where they were worried about, or if it was a power line down or whatever. And it was a pot a popcorn machine in my backyard for lack of a better term. Tables and chairs and plants just being

Of the house.

Like we heard Aaron said her dining room windows got blown out by the winds.

That seemed like a very real possibility.

Oh yeah, my power was shut off at seven.

And also I heard you talking earlier how you weren't able to listen to the station A same. I need to get a transistor radio as well, because I had my cell phone was everybody kept texting me to say if I was okay, which was very sweet, but I kept saying, don't text me anymore, and I don't want to answer it because I was trying to save the power.

Yeah, I mean I had a battery ready to go for my phone, so I was able to have a full phone battery. But it didn't matter because because I couldn't get anything, I couldn't get online. I couldn't get to Twitter, I couldn't get online, I coudn't get any news source.

I had nothing.

And that's a terrible feeling, especially how connected we are now.

It's not like it's nineteen eighty five.

But in nineteen eighty five, we all had transistor radios at the home. We all had radios, so it wasn't a problem. Now we're so connected with these phones. When they stopped working, we're screwed. It's a bad place to be. Like I said, I couldn't wait to get into the car so I had access to an actual radio. Anyway, we will stay on top of this. Let us know your experience. One eight hundred and five to zero one kfive eight hundred five two oh one five three four

Special coverage of these fires burning throughout southern California one thing to keep in mind. Former mayoral candidate Rick Ruiz was going to be on with John coming up right about one o'clock. Made some headlines yesterday when he went on Channel eleven and suggested that one of the reasons why we were seeing such damage inflicted on Pacific Palisades was crews were hooking up the fire hydrants and not getting any water pressure.

So we'll we'll hear.

From him again see if he can give flesh out some of the details about that.

The bottom line right now is we've got more than one thousand homes gone devastated. We've got two people who have died in Alta Dina. We don't know the specifics of that. We know that people had a hard time escaping in both Alta Dina and in the Palisades because the flames were moving so quickly, so ferociously, covering two to three football fields in one minute.

At times.

We heard that Dukes was kind of a mass casualty situation, with burned people coming down from the hills seeking refuge there.

These fires are out of control at the moment.

The good news, if any, is that the winds were the most dangerous last night between ten PM and five am least definitely for that two to ten area there in Altadina, where the evacuations are vast.

The fear was that when the sun came up, the winds would pick up. They have not, thankfully, and it appears that the peaks that we saw between say, ten o'clock last night and five o'clock this morning are gone for good. We will not see those wind gusts repeated. But that doesn't mean that it's that we're out of the danger yet. The other thing is that when we saw the sun come up, we knew where we were going to see some pretty devastating pictures and those have

Andrew Sorry.

Andrew Friedman is a senior climate reporter for Axios. He specializes in extreme weather climate science.

Andrew, thanks for joining.

Us, Thanks for having me.

So this is, as we've.

Said, been covering fires for decades, unprecedented to everyone who's lived in southern California for a very long time.

Does nothing ever like this when it comes to this wind event.

Yeah, this is the worst wind event in the Los Angeles County region since twenty eleven. What you haven't had before, however, is a wind event that is this powerful coinciding with this level of dryness. So usually when you have this wind event later in the season, so in November through January, that's not only your wet season, you expect it to be raining in southern California. However, that has not happened. The raining season has just extended the dry season right now.

I think this is a lee that is definitely a lesson that people are going to learn from this in terms of in terms of preparation.

And this is ironic.

I mean, I'm assuming you're you're calling us from the from the east coast where it's you know, twenty five degrees below what it would normally be this time of year.

Yeah, we we've got into the tavama on the ground here in d C. So you know, I wish I could carry some of that over there and help you out. But I think that what people need to realize is, you know, when people talk about extreme weather and climate change and California fires, I think there's been a tendency to think about northern California and to think about, you know, the massive forest fires that we've seen in recent years.

Andrew, thank you so much, appreciate it.

Thank you, good luck and everybody out of here.

Speaking, Thank you Andrew Friedman. When we come back, more of your calls. What's going on where you are? What was your night?

Like?

One eight hundred and five to zero one five three four.

Kings game against the Flames at Crypto tonight has been postponed because of the fires. We don't have a new date as well. The Palisades fire has expanded, as you were mentioning, as you were predicting, to more eight hundred.

Acres according to cal Fire at this point.

You know, this is one of those suggestions from a talkback here. I'll play for you in a second.

We don't spend a whole lot of time on I mean, this is an immediate threat still to the areas around Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Santa Monica and of course Altadena, Pasadena and then Silmar. But this is a you know, you can have twelve million people and the Greater Southern fifteen million people in the greater Southern California area and this affects a few hundred thousand. Most of us are going to see some of the smoke or have an idea of what's going on, or maybe we know somebody who's

Hey, Gary and Shannon, my heart goes out to all those people affected by the fires in California. I don't think we think about how much commerce is being effected. But our freight here in Tucson was about two hours late, and I don't think we'll be sending much out going that way. So with probably something unrelated, we're having wins here at least twenty two miles an hour, and that's run and steady, and our air quality and parts of the city are considered to be highly unhealthy.

Yeah.

One of the big things that we noticed yesterday, that I heard Conway mention quite a bit, was the amount of dust, the amount of particulate that was in the air, not smoke, but just stuff that was brought in as the winds came across the desert and up and over the hills.

You know, we've covered fires for twenty plus years living in California as reporters and working in news. And you know, I even right now, I'm under a mandatory evacuation order started last night, remains in place, and you know, it's wonderful to hear from family and friends texting and calling wondering how you're doing. And I say the refrain, and I you're so even though you're covering fires, you're still

Yeah, you know, it's just stuff. It's just stuff.

Like, as long as people are safe in my neighborhood and everything, it's it's just stuff. But then I get pictures from friends and Altadena, one picture in particular from a friend in Altadena whose house has been reduced to ashes, and suddenly that whole it's just stuff line kind of sounds so trite.

Yeah, it's so vapid.

Gigi Grossiette with Fox eleven has been in Pacific Palisades and has been stationed out in front of what used to be a mobile home park and it is. There is not a structure standing in that entire area, and that's that level of devastation. It adds a different feel to it. I mean, obviously, if it's your even if it was just your home, one home that was burned and it was your home, that's obviously devastating to you and your family.

But the idea then that you.

Are have that same I mean that there are that many families that are all feeling that same impact at the same time. It is it's almost overwhelming to think about the idea that I mean, Pacific Palisades is not going to look the same when this smoke clears, when this fire is tamped down, when they are able to get in there and get a true look at the be the station the same, because you almost can't, you

Now where the dust is settled in some place this is in the devastation has become clearer. It has not settled in many areas. We're looking at live shots right now from the Eton fire there Pasadena, Altadena area, and there are businesses on fire, homes on fire. You have yet to get your hands around any sort of understanding around the level of devastation there. Again, this is far from over. These two fires remain out of control, The Palisades Fire making its way as we speak to Old Tapanga.

Difficult to battle with.

If you are a firefighter, and you got to believe these guys gals are tired. They have all hands on deck, they called in all off duty firefighters.

They still don't have enough people.

There are crews coming down from Oregon, in Washington, northern California.

Still maybe not enough people.

Like we've said, you take the two biggest fires here and they rival when you talk about destruction and loss and just the ferocity of these things, they rival the worst wildfires in La County history.

This is also I mentioned this very early this morning. It's reminiscent to me of the at least the Palisades fire by itself was reminiscent of the Oakland Hills fire from back in nineteen ninety one. In that there were it wasn't huge acreage, but the houses were so close together. I think that was about sixteen hundred acres in that Oakland Hills fire. They called it the Tunnel fire near the Caldecott Tunnel. Fifteen sixteen hundred acres burned, but almost three thousand single family homes.

It reminds me of the Cedar fire more recently in two thousand and three in San Diego. I remember covering that from Sacramento and just how quickly that thing moved, and that was driven by those Santa Ana fires moving at you know, thirty six hundred acres an hour or something crazy like that. It was just it moved too fast to contain, I mean, let alone contain, and move too fast to get away from it.

And we're seeing that in both these places.

One of the resources not just for people who are affected by the fires directly, but others who want to help out was mentioned by Lindsay Horvath from La County's third Supervisor, District Emergency dot La County dot gov. It's emergency information specifically about evacuation maps areas large animals, small animal evacuation centers, evacuation for human centers, but also places that if you have resources and you can volunteer, you

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