This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to kf I AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. You know, I'm in Houston here for the wild Card game Chargers Texans, and I was walking around, you know how we don't have anybody that works in La Yes.
It's a ghost studios, not just because of fires, not just because of COVID.
It's just been a ghost town here, right.
It's like this huge building with like six people in it anyway, So like when we walk around there, it's not a problem for me to have my tourettes. I was walking around in the hallways here and it's an iHeart studio, so it kind of looks like home, but it's not, you know, with the iHeart insignia, same kind of glass doors, red red walls.
Things like that.
Yeah, And I was walking in the bathroom and I was like, las us Center and then I was like, uh oh, and I kind of looked at her.
I told you the other day, I said, listen, we need to cut down this singing just a bit, keep you to one song.
And I tried, I really should be let out of our little cage there I tried.
The National Guard is in town, they are in place. They are going to help enforce a curfew that was announced just last night went into place all of the Palisades and eaten fire areas and all areas that are under evacuation orders. There is a curfew in place between six pm and six am. Sheriff Luna at the news conference this morning said, you are subject to arrest if you are in those areas at that time, even if
you live there. He said, it's not to try to punish people, it's try to protect the properties that exist, and the easiest way to do that is with a pretty blanket curfew from six pm to six am again in those areas of the Palisades and eaten Fires, and any other areas where there is an evacuation order in place.
Side not the red flag warnings are expected to expire at about six o'clock tonight, but the National Weather Services the gusty winds out of the North could come back Sunday and the early part of next week.
I just got an alert from the Watch Duty app, which has been incredible throughout these all of these incidents and a bunch of evacuation orders and warnings have been lifted for Glendale, which is great as well. Every time we get an alert that something's been lifted, it's been nice. Michael Monks has been spending some time in the Pacific Palisades, joins us now with the latest of what he has been able to take in from the scene there.
Good morning, Gary, Good morning Shannon.
Yes it is.
You know, you see the images from ten thousand feet and it's shocking to come up close to it. It's something that won't leave your mind maybe ever, it's just so disturbing to see one of the most aspirational places of LA basically wiped off the map. I'll let you know. If my connection is bad, go ahead and dump me. I'll try to call in on the phone. It's been really difficult to get proper coverage out here, so I've
been moving around a lot. I'm at will Rogers State Beach right now, and you know, it's one of those California days. On one side, when you look out, you have the water and the sun shining a little bit, but the haze has blocked much of the horizon and then Pacific Coast Highway, no civilian traffic really at all. It's all emergency vehicles and not just our own. I've seen fire trucks from San Francisco. I've seen fire trucks from Clark County, Nevada, Las Vegas, so this is quite
a scene. I haven't seen the National Guard yet, but as you noted just now, Gary, they are apparently on their way to the various areas hit and that's only going to add to the surreality of what we're experiencing in these places, because it does look like a war zone, and a fresh one. The way the smoke is still kind of coming off of the ground and some of these burned out places. Oh, I spoke too soon. The National Guard has literally just rolled in past this beach.
They are going past me right now. I'm seeing the big humbis the camouflage. Here they come. So the National Guard has arrived in Pacific Palisades right this moment.
Hey tell us about these hikers that you were able to talk to, all right, you know, I mentioned I was looking for some service and I've had to move around a lot, and I found myself next to some portolettes on.
The on Pacific Coast Highway and was able to get a signal there, so I set up shop.
I know, in case I had to pee too.
It's like, all right, I got a signal and a toilet.
Hey, when you're a re border, you know the free bathroom.
Good point.
Oh absolutely not, no question, because this Stanley cup was about to be filled.
So we all got luck.
Anyway, these two guys, these two guys were walking and you know, I'm from downtown La, so I'm a little shady when you know folks are approaching me that I don't know, because you gotta stay alert. And they did look a little dirty and weird, but they approached and they were asking if I had any water, and I did, thankfully. I hadn't dumped out the cup to pee in it, so I had the water still in there, and so I let them drink it. And I asked them, you know,
where did you guys come from? And they were hiking, and so originally I thought, oh my god, what a story to think that you went up into the trails before all hell broke loose and you're just now getting out. No, sixteen hours ago is when they decided it was a great idea to go hiking near the Palisades.
And it didn't go well for them. As you can't imagine. They're alive.
They weren't harmed, but they had no supplies left, they were sweaty, they were tired.
They went.
I went in a little piece of the interview.
Oh, and then all of a sudden.
If you want to hear, it's.
Crazy, and we're like oh, and we were like, okay, well fine, we would turn back around, and we'd love to. We saw a whole bunch of orange and we're like, maybe just keep going the same direction, kind of think we kind of already made the dumb mistake and just keep going. And then yeah, we got by like this rock corner and we were like, do we keep going or not? And we said, screw it, let's just like
stay here for like ten minutes. And that ten minutes became like three four hours, and we literally had like like hell fire waves going over us. But we're in rock and I've traveled quite a bit, so I was kind of aware that, like, as long as you're not somewhere super combustible, all you have to worry about is asphyxiation suffocation.
So it gets just get low.
God, the evolution of Michael Monks should not be overlooked this week from going to the evacuation center and not wanting to disturb people who were evacuated being sensitive to that, to nearly peeing in his cup and talking to hobos on drugs coming out of the hiking trails and the flames. It has been an evolution and I'm here for it.
It's a growing experience.
And I'll also let you know that I relate to your turettes because I mean, I'm sitting here in this war zone waiting for this life hit to come up. But I'm like, I feel incredible. You know, you hear these things enough and you start to lose your mind.
I know, I know, I hear you, and I do love I do love that.
One of the hikers said, I've traveled quite a bit, and then that somehow translates into him becoming a fire behavior expert.
Well, he seemed a little silly, but he's from up in Bear Springs Valley, he says, and that seems like a pretty nice place. So, I mean, they weren't completely crazy, but they did something crazy, and you could tell that they regretted. In fact, I asked them that, and he says that he probably shouldn't have. I asked you know,
they couldn't use their phones either. There's no service up here, so they could not get a hold of anybody to even tell them that they were stupid and went into these trails, which is probably a good thing, he says, because if they had to be airlifted, he would have owed about fifty five thousand dollars to the state of California. But when he finally met the first responders of the police outside the trails, they got a scolding and directed
on their way. No, he was like, I was sad they didn't give us a ride, Like, oh, there's some things going on here.
I mean, talk about a bill that would never be So take a hike, you know what. It feels really good to laugh. Thank you, Michael.
It's always my pleasure. Michael Monk's out there in Pacific Palisades. Okay, So.
Keana producer Keana just got about ten fifteen minutes ago, got another alert that she needed to evacuate.
Is she anywhere near a fire zone?
No, right, she's in the other room.
I know that, But I mean is her residence?
No?
Do they go based off of where your phone is or where you live?
Well?
Mine, the way I have it set up is it goes through location services. So this morning, when I drove through what was an evacuation warning area, it gave me an alert that says you're entering an evacuation warning area. That was for about four minutes on the freeway, and then I got here again. This is after I was woken up by the false alert alert at four am, and then the other one from night before four pm.
The explanation for this is completely unnecessary. What is necessary is the county explaining how they're going to prevent it from happening again and how they're going to restore trust in this app that they are using to try to get information out.
We'll talk about it when we come.
This is why I don't have any of those alerts set up by way.
I know.
Well, we're continuing to talk about the fires. Of course, we will talk a little bit later into more detail about the iHeartMedia Los Angeles teaming up with the Dream Center LA committed to providing immediate support and resources to anybody in need during these incredible fire siege that we
have seen. You can donate at the Dreamcenter dot org slash donate actively collecting and distributing a bunch of disaster relief supplies for communities, and we need things like bottled water, sports drinks, non perishable food items, hygiene products obviously, clothing and blankets, flash lights, batteries, portable phone chargers for power outages that people are still dealing with, pets, food and supplies.
We'll talk more about it as we get through the as we get through the day today, but dreamcenter dot org slash donate is one way you can do that. You mentioned Shannon's in Houston today for tomorrow's wild Card game between the Chargers and the text and.
So I have time for a brief story. Of course, Okay, here's a brief story. May not be that brief. I'm a little long winded.
So yesterday, thank you off Yesterday. I have a clock. Yesterday.
We get to the facility and everyone's wearing LA Fire Department hats, La County Fire Department hats. The whole team, the whole staff, we're all wearing them, right, We wear them on the plane. We get to Houston, where it's wonder raining and cold and you could breathe and it was incredible. And we get to the hotel and it's a it's an older Marriott and we get We get there and it's always a crush to the elevators, right, so it's a large influx of people to be getting upstairs at one time.
But anyway, I.
Get upstairs and we get got it about nine thirty. I hadn't really eaten anything, and so I ordered a pizza. Listen, I'm rationalizing the pizza. I ordered a pizza. I wanted pizza, Okay, I wanted right. So I go downstairs to get my pizza to pick it up from the Uber Eats. It's about ten o'clock and at ten o'clock local time, and the elevator is taking forever.
I'm on the tenth floor. It's taking forever and ever and ever, Like, what the hell's going on? Whatever?
So I get downstairs or I'm all my way down and offensive coordinator comes into the elevators like, can you believe that the elevators are stuck again?
I said what?
Because it when we were in Dallas, there was a group of guys that got stuck in an elevator, justin Herbert included Dan Felt's wife was in there for two and a half hours, okay.
And so it was a big story.
Jim Harbaugh came out, was like, I wish I was stuck in that elevator.
I want to be in the war.
You know.
It was like this great team building moment. You know, one of the things that Justin he doesn't often post to social media, but every time he has, he hashtags no elevators. The team even had hats made with a picture of an elevator and a red ex going through it. It's been a huge deal for the fan base. Everyone's kind of bonded together over no elevators this season.
So I get.
Downstairs and I see and Greg Grolman's like look, and I look at the elevator and it's clearly stuck in between the floors. And so there were some coaches on it, a couple players. I think John Spanos was on there
as well. So I get downstairs finally to the lobby and the police the fire department's there and he Waston Fire Department, and then they're coming in with all their equipment, and here's a contention of us in the lobby all wearing La Fire Department hats as the Houston Fire Department's coming in.
So it was very funny. They were able to make quick work out of it.
I think they were only stuck in there for about twenty minutes, but it was just and then I saw the GM this morning.
I go, maybe this is a good sign.
He's like absolutely, He's like, we won that game, so.
Here we go.
He's about the state of Texas and the elevator and the elevators all right. Well, listen, a lot of people are being having their heads put on a stake because of what's been going on in terms of fire response and fire preparedness. I think this guy might be the first guy to lose his job.
I can't express enough how sorry I am for this experience.
This is the guy in charge of La County's Office of Emergency Management, the agency that's responsible for now at least two false alerts that went out on everybody list.
These two missus.
Patricia says she got three false alerts. She said, the first two she loaded the car. The second or the third alert, she made a cup of tea.
Yeah, and that's the problem. There had been some announcement. I didn't know where it come came from. I didn't hear it, but somebody said the Chargers game was postpone removed.
Yeah, Amy's okay, Well, I got a couple texts from people that it may have been in one of Amy's newscasts.
Oh well that wasn't, because I'll hear it. No, no, no, no. The Rams game that's scheduled for Monday night has been moved out of so far to what is it state Arizona.
To Glendale, Arizona.
Yeah, so the game will take place, and in fact, tickets are on sale for season ticket holders for the Rams right now. If you're here and you want to make plans and go to the game Monday in Arizona. For the first two hours of ticket sales, it's only open to Ram season ticket holders, and then at noon, I guess the NFL opens it up to everybody else.
God bless her Art's trying to pack that with Rams fans when you know that the Vikings fans travel with a hunger, with a drive, with the give me the Lombardi Trophy spirits.
They give me the trophy spirit.
Yes, they are hungry that fan base. I love the Vikings fan base, by the way. They are good people. We wish I could say the same for the Rams.
I can't.
Wow. Oh you're gonna make friends.
I don't care.
That's that's something about you that's awful.
They're awful fans. They use those noise makers there. It's so far the Rams fans do, which because they.
Know the World Cup soccer ones, the Vuzelas or whatever they are.
Now they're like they're they're smaller, and it's like it's like it's an admonition, like they know that there's not enough of them, so they have to amplify the sound of each person.
Wow, it's true, sad.
La County is in the hot seat, and I mean that both ways. La County itself has been sending out false alert for people to evacuate, or at least telling them that they are in evacuation warning zones. I got one yesterday afternoon. I got one this morning at four am. Keana got one about nine to forty five. And we're not the only ones, hey.
Garan Chan, I love the show. I also got those false notifications. I'm down in Orange County. My wife got one this morning. And I actually lived in Honolulu when we got the false notification about the nuclear warhead that was going to come and decimate the island a handful.
Of years ago.
What they found there, and I'm sure what they'll find here is it's the human element sitting behind the computer pushing the buttons that causes the false notifications. Just my thought. Take care.
Yeah.
So Kevin McGowan is the director of the Office of Emergency Management and his explanation of what's going wrong.
Is so stupid, It is so.
Idiotic that it almost defies credulity to even play it.
First of all, I want to clear this is not human driven. There is no one sitting at a desk right now initiating emergency alerts. I want to restate that right now, as these alerts are being issued, they are not being activated or initiated by a person.
Okay, does that make you feel better that it's not a human being who is sending out false alerts a little bit?
Why?
Because humans are more likely to error than machines are. If they're machines that are calibrated correctly to know exactly which areas are affected, which I believe would involve a human at some stage.
Well, okay, that's that's the key. It should involve a human at some stage if there's if there's an alert that's going to go out to the entire county, why isn't there somebody in that chain of command that can click a yes or a no button. Yes this needs to go out to the entire county, or no, we need to rethink this before we send the alert.
The thing I don't like about it is the complete lack of accountability.
Say we screwed up.
There's so few times when people will have the balls to get up and be.
Like, I screwed up. We screwed up. This is screwed up, you know what I mean.
It's just like this, like you said, obfuscating all the time from all of these people. I did a deep dive on this kid, Kevin McGowan, wanting to know what his deal.
Is lot tea dot com? Is that where he looked?
No, Actually, he's a veteran. He was in the army for eight years. He went to Harvard, he did some time with FEMA, Naval postgraduate school, went to got his bachelor's poll PSI from North Carolina, went to Pepperdine for his masters. So there's a little low tea mixed in there with FEMA and well some other things. But I mean, he is a veteran. He's only been on the job since twenty nineteen, so it's kind of been like a
dead zone. I guess you could say after COVID and all of that, but but you got to have accountability when you're the director of emergency services and those things go wrong. I mean, it's right there in the title, right. This is when people need somebody the most. It's an emergency. And if you're the head of the department that's going to be decimating the information, disseminating the information, then you
need to be accountable. You need to make sure all the t's are crossing, the eyes are dotted, the buck stops with you, and if you're not willing to get up there and say that, then that's a problem.
Yeah.
I mean he was asked that in an interview very early this morning that I heard. Kevin McGowan was asked where does the buck stop? Who is responsible for this? And he refused to say who it was. I mean, I mean it's him. He's the director of the Office of Emergency Management. This is his buck to stop, and
I'm glad he's got his best people on it. He talks about the state level, the femal level, they're all trying to help out figure out what's the ghost in the shell here, what's the bug in the system that's causing these things to go out? But in the meantime, listen, it's an inconvenience for someone like me. I haven't had to evacuate. My house is still standing. I haven't lost
anybody to these fires. But imagine if you're one of the tens of thousands of people who has had to evacuate or has lost their home or property or car or their loved ones to this fire, and you keep getting these false alerts.
I think the bigger detriment is what happens when you get one of these alerts and it's real.
And you make you make a cup of tea instead of getting your stuff in the car and getting.
Out of there.
Well, you make an educated guess best based on the fact that you got three alerts in air the last time.
This time, you know it should be talked about too.
And we're kind of out of time here, but I do want to get into the forecast for next week because it's not great.
But you set out.
These boy that cry wolf of alerts and they just get watered down the next time they're absolutely real. And also think about people who have pets, you know, multiple dogs or cats or what have you. And every time they're loading up the car and the crates and the food and the pets and the whole bit. And then they drive down the block and they realize, oh, wait, there's nothing on fire here. Wait was that an error? And then and then you don't know where to go to find out what is What I.
Will say this, Kevin McGowan did give information to do just that.
I ask everyone that gets an alert to verify if they are in an evacuation warning or order to go to alert, La dot org, La County dot gov, slash emergency or dial to one one for assistance.
Now those three areas should have.
The other one is the Watch Duty app and that Genesis Protect app that have very updated information, which is where I went this morning to figure out that.
It was a FALSEIL arm.
But that's just me.
We got word of another fire. This one is up in the north San Fernando Valley, again near where the Hearst fire was in Silmar, but this one is on the west side of I five. It's sort of in the Granada Hills area, just as I five goes up and over the New Hall Pass.
It would be off to the west side.
It's only about an acre or two, but it is in an area that is burning. It's burning uphill. There's very light flashy fuels in that area. Again, that's in the north San Fernando Valley in.
Then is this the one called the Archer Fire?
That is the Archer Fire? Okay?
Yeah, they say light flashy fuels, winds at about five to ten miles per hour.
Isn't that nice to hear? No homes threatened there?
Well, we have teamed up with Dream Center Allay to try to bring some amount of relief essential disaster relief supplies to some of the communities that communities that have been impacted by these fires. Joining us to talk more about this whole pro Clint Carlton, Director of Disaster Relief for Dream Center, La Clint, thanks for thanks for picking up this mantle with us and trying to get things done.
How's it going, Hey.
Thank you guys, Gary and Shannon. We appreciate what you guys are doing over there with iHeart and and KFI. We we couldn't do it without people like you getting the word out about what the Dream Center is doing. The thing is is right now, I stand in the middle parking lot. There's over four hundred volunteers. There's a line. We have a line set up here at the Dream Center. If you don't know about the Dream Center, we were at one on one in Alvarado. We're the Old Queen
of Angels Hospital. So we have a giant parking lot stand in the middle of parking lot right now, and we have a drop off location where people can drop
off items to help people. And then we have a pickup location where people that have been affected by the fires, the very fires, I mean, we're adding another one on as you just said, where people can pick up items in Necessity's water, they can pick up palace for the family, baby supplies, diapers because a lot of these families they just ran out of their house with nothing, just to clothes on our back. Our founder and CEO, Matthew Barnet,
he literally left his house. He had just his clothes on his back, and so we're having to float him as he's out serving people as well. Today.
Pretty much every disaster, not just in Los Angeles but around the country, the Dream Center has been a haven for people in terms of throwing open your doors. I think a lot of people in various different disasters at least since I've been in La past twenty five years or so, that where people have even relocated to La from other parts of the country after spending some time at the Dream Center and getting on their feet.
Yeah. Yeah, we during if you've noticed, during Katrina, that was one of the first big ones that I started working on. I'm the director of disaster relief for the Dream Center, and during Katrina, we took in people that were their homes were demolished during the hurricane, and we they were able. We had a chef, I remember, a chef, Eddie Murphy, actually got him a job at his restaurant.
And so that's the thing about the Dream Centered day is there's a lot of these shelters that are temporary shelters, but some of these people have lost their homes and that are staying here and they're scared and they don't know there's so much uncertainty going on right now with insurance, and so we want to give them time to rebuild their life, and so we tell them where they come in, there's no deadline for you to leave right now. If your family needs to stay here for six months, nine
months a year to get yourself back on track. That's what you're gonna do. But that's what we do with everyone's life. When we deal with the homeless families, when we're dealing with the veterans, we say we give them the luxury of time. And I think that's what the Dream Center's doing today.
What are the easiest ways for people to give?
Easiest ways to give, I would say text relief to three three one zero zero. Text relief to three three one zero zero. Or you can go to kf I am sixty dot com backslash donate if you want to get finance, so you can go on and check that. If you want to volunteer, you can come down here and volunteer. But also if you want to drop off items, howels, sheet, bedsheets, just your basic necessities. We need those right now. Cases of water, so they can come down bring it down
to the Dream Center. We're going to be here till late in the night receiving donations, so drop off your donation anytime you want. We're going to be here.
That is awesome.
Clint, again, thank you for what it is that you guys are doing there at the Dream Center. We're very happy to be able to partner with you and try to make a difference over the next couple of days and weeks.
Hey, garyan Chin and we appreciate you guys, and thanks for getting the word out and we're honored to partner with KFI on this again.
What they need nonperishable food items, bottled water, hygiene products, clothing, blankets, baby supplies, air purifiers, things like flashlights, batteries, first aid kits, pet food and supplies, cleaning supplies. Again, you can drop off the essential items there at the Dream Center, but also monetary donations dreamcenter dot org slash donate. You can go to KFIAM six forty dot com slash donate or text the word relief to three three one zero zero.
All right, coming up next.
La County Fire officials say that our area is in a much better posture than we were earlier this week thankfully. Today, however, CRUs are bracing for another red flag warning expected to begin on Monday. We'll get details coming up in the next hour right here on Gary and Shannon.
You've been listening to the Garyandshannon Show. You can always hear us live on KFIAM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday. Through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio AB