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. What a week we have had in Los Angeles. And next week, as we mentioned, another wind event will be happening on Monday. Looks like we've got three separate wind events and so we'll get a forecast on those from the National Weather Service coming up next.
So keep it right here.
We have been keeping our eyes on what we know now as the Archer Fire. This is burning up in the Granada Hills area. So if you're headed up I five, for example, and you're going to go towards the Santa Clarita Valley, this is just before you get to the New Hall Pass and it's kind of off to your left there. There's not any homes immediately in the area where it is burning, but there's also nothing to slow it down. It's just a bunch of dry grass and
a little bit of brush up in that area. So the winds are pretty light in that area, but the smoke is coming through the north end of the San Fernando Valley and it is going to be pretty visible for a lot of places. There are at least a couple of helicopters that are already there. We've seen some fire crews driving up into that neighborhood, so they're making quick work of this, they hope. But it has expanded so it's well above the two or three acres that
we saw before. Again, this is a fire burning in the Granada Hills area up in the north end of the San Fernando Valley.
I don't think if I don't know if you have noticed it, but I feel like I have on social media Twitter, for example, more so this fire than in fires past. And we've kind of seen this when it comes to true crime stories that are just developing, where you see all these amateur sleuths doing all their own research online right into the various players of different news stories that are going on, and digging into people's backgrounds.
I felt like I saw more footage from people who are not reporters in fire zones, just trying to get maybe the hits or the exposure or what have you, and they look like they're not in the best areas. From what I remember being a reporter out there and being told where to stay away from, what to look forward to know which areas to stay away from when covering a fire.
It just seems like, and again it might be a story for next week.
If the authorities have encountered more people that have no business being out there when the flames are eating up these homes.
They absolutely have just if I am to trust some of the TV reporters, especially in I would say like Wednesday night, after most of the flames had burned through the Palisades, for example, some of those reporters were standing in that parking lot at will Rogers State Beach because it was I mean, it was an open place for them to stand, but that they were referring to, you know, and they're all alone. They're not standing with the fire
department or anything like that. They're all there by themselves. And they do have the ability. Members of the media do have the ability to go into across fire lines or police lines in these cases, to get into those areas, taking their lives into their own hands and with knowledge. And the fire department would usually say to you, hey,
don't go in that area, like you're saying. But the TV reporters were saying that sometimes they were getting the pushback from either CHP or Sheriff's Department whoever might be running security on the line because they don't have a way to verify that your media credential is a real
media credential. And there's so many people out there who, like you said, are these new I don't want to say generation, a new type of journalist, perhaps that they're trying to take advantage of this situation to get those clicks for themselves, to get that notoriety, and they are not following the same kinds of rules even they're not following the same kind of common sense other reporters would.
It used to be you had to have a CHP issued press badge or an LA County Sheriff's Department press badge, usually both of those, at least when I start, you had to have both of those to be able to gain access to specific areas. And now it seems like that line is blurred on what kind of credential will get you where, And unfortunately, I think it's putting people in harm's way more often than not, especially when you look at events like this.
Yeah, and it's I don't think I mean, we're seeing a good example of this now, but the nature of fire, especially fires like this wind driven wild land fires or wind driven fires that go in these neighborhoods. It's hard to underestimate. I'm sorry, Yeah, it's hard to am I saying that right, It's hard to underestimate the power and
the behavior of these things. You and I both covered fires, and I know that I have had some pretty close calls in areas that I thought were going to be safe, and wind picks up, shifts directions, something else catches fire. It takes one little thing. You've got fire on both sides of the road that you thought was a an escape route and it's not. And that just comes from kind of the experience of being in there and doing those fire kind of stories. Some of these people don't
have that experience. I'm not saying I'm experted at it at all. I'm saying that when I've done it, it's scared the living tar out of me.
All right, Well, we've.
Got a handful of other stories that are going on that we have kind of put on pause the last couple of days.
So what else is going on that's next hour? Oh?
I'm sorry, Oh you're fine.
You're in a different time zone.
I am in a different time zone.
I just got a text from Kana saying that we're going to do what's happening, and that means next hour, that doesn't mean right now.
No, it's fine.
I was feeling bad because I went on and on during during what we were.
Supposed to do with this.
I did want to spend a couple of minutes talking about the idiot with the drone, the drone that glided with the Super Scooper over the Palisades fire. I'm actually prize this didn't happen sooner, not with a Super Scooper that was kind of like the big splash right that it was one of our biggest air craft that we've got, and one of the first ones and only ones that was able to take to this fire with those wins.
But I'm surprised that we haven't.
Heard of other drone interference, maybe not collisions, but so far with this fire.
But still, nonetheless, it's very.
Depressing and annoying that a drone collided with a Super Scooper and made that aircraft have to land.
This was Chief Moroni, County Fire Chief Maroni this morning explaining what happened.
We did have a drone incursion yesterday at the Palisades fire. Unknown exactly what time this small drone hit the wing of our COL four fifteen Super Scooper aircraft that we currently have on contract from the Province of Quebec. The pilots were unaware that they hit the drone. It wasn't until they landed at Vanui's airport that they the maintenance staff noticed that there was a fist sized hole in the leading edge of the round inboard of the landing light.
Yeah, I saw it last night. I mean, I would describe it much larger than a fist. It looks like about the size of a couple of baseball gloves or something. But the chief did say it can be repaired, they believe, and that they do expect to have the availability of that one back in the year by Monday.
It is a federal crime.
You could get a year in prison to interfere with firefighting. There's a civil penalty of up to seventy five grand against any drone pilot who interferes.
And I say, you.
Throw the book at whoever this is. Well, do you know who agrees with you is Nathan Hawkman. He was also at that news conference.
If you're thinking that it's fine, to send a drone up in the area for your own amusement, or you want to get information that nobody else can get, and you do it in one of these areas that for which drones are not permitted.
I'll repeat one more time.
You will be as you will be prosecuted, and you will be punished to the full extent of the law.
There's time I'm kind of annoyed. Not annoyed, that's not the right turn.
I you're surprised.
I know I have heard that you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
So many times that it's so watered down.
I would love somebody to get up there and just be like, we are going to ruin your life if you try to take down our firefighting aircraft, or you get even close to it, or you just are a dumb ass, we are going to ruin your life.
That's what I want to hear.
Did you see the imprint of the drone on the Super Scooper By the way, it's like one of the It's like one of those cartoons where the cartoon runs through the wall and it's like.
The the exact outline.
The exact outline.
It's the exact outline on the Super Scooper. It's like there's the hole and then there's the two little wings that kind of shoot out that have dented the sides of the hole that it made.
I didn't see that.
The one active place that we're looking at right now is a new fire that has popped up in the Granada Hills area. For the most part, it looks like this is not going to get too out of hand. There are I've counted three helicopters, several ground crews, hand crews that are out there in the area right above Sesnon Boulevard if you know where Balboa goes under the freeware over the freeway sorry on I five as you
just head up towards the New Hall Pass. They have issued a couple of evacuation places areas with the following boundaries, the east boundary of Balboa and I five, the west boundary of Tampa, the south Sesnon and the North Sunshine Canyon Road right there next to the landfill. Those areas are to be are that area, I should say is to be evacuated. There is some structured defense going on that I said that they do have several units, several fire units in the neighborhoods.
They're protecting homes.
The fire itself has been burning to the north, so away from the neighborhoods, but the smoke it looks like, is blowing sort of to the south and to the southwest.
So they are doing what they can.
A bunch of bulldozers out there as well, trying to cut some fire. They said it is. It's still only maybe an acre or two. It looked much larger than that earlier. So and a couple of helicopters, like I said, doing fire drops on this water drops on this fire again towards Granada Hills. If you're headed north in the San Fernando Valley on I five, it's just off to the west of the freeway.
There.
Following a story of a brand new fire, this one is burning up on the Granada Hills area known as the Archer Fire, and it's burning just off of Sesnon into the into the hills up there. A lot of the Mike Antonovitch open Space is up there. You've got old Melviny Park that's nearby. The fire itself is only a couple of acres, but there is an evacuation order that has been posted. So if you're in this area in Granada Hills, the east border is going to be
where Balboa meets I five. The west border is Tampa, the south border Cessnon and then the north border is Sunshine Canyon Road. If you're up in any of those areas there, they're asking you to get out right now.
They say the fires pushing hard towards the Tuscan Drive area, that structures are threatened there, so they've called an additional resources for structure protection.
Just moments ago.
This, by the way, this is a reaction. Is that the right word.
The quick reaction of dozens of fire crews onto this thing shows just how aggressively they are fighting every single one of these new spot fires that has come up. I mean, we obviously have the two big fires that we've been paying attention to, the Palisades Fire on Palisades and then the Eton fire and the Altadena area, but any one of these little ones that has continued to pop up, they get on immediately.
Well.
Also, it's helpful in that regard that the Hurst fire is right next door, you know, as opposed to the distance between the Palisades and Alta Dina, you kind of saw the same thing with the Hollywood Hills fire, and then when that house went up in Studio.
City, they were able to get there quick because they were right there.
So we'll keep an eye on that.
We want to talk about what's going on weather wise, because it seems like the last couple of days it has gradually been improving in terms of the conditions. But we're not necessarily going to end this thing yet because the red flag warning is expected to expire tonight, but that doesn't mean it's the last time we see a red flag warning.
Mike Wafford is with the National Weather Service, joins US now to get a look at next week and these Santa Ana events that are on our doorstep. Mike, thanks for your time today. Absolutely So what are we looking at coming on Monday?
Yeah, well, you're absolutely right. We are ending some red plag warnings this afternoon and evening, but we are expecting another event to come back at us Saturday night into Sunday, so we're going to be doing some additional red flag warnings, particularly for the mountain areas. And we've got another event, another high wind event expected perhaps even stronger as we get into Monday and especially Tuesday, so we're definitely not out of the woods yet.
We haven't.
Is the expectation that's going to be anywhere close to as aggressive as the winds were earlier this week.
No, it really is not. But you know, we're still looking at winds in the forty to sixty mile per hour range, which is very significant and especially with these existing fires, that could really exacerbate things.
So when we're talking about sustained winds and gus, do we have any idea yet or we're just too far out?
Yeah, well, you know, we're thinking somewhere around the forty mile prior range. We could see some locally stronger guests in our typical really high wind areas up there in the mountains. So you know, that's our initial guests at this point, but we'll see as we get a little closer.
You know.
One of the weird things about this event, I guess you want to call it early this week was that there was some rain and snow up in the mountains that was sort of on the front end of all of this. Any expectation that we see some precipitation in the next week.
Well not with this particular event. There are a few signals that we're seeing as we get into later next week Thursday, Friday. Potentially a little upper low that's kind of hanging around that could move into the area and drop a little bitter rain. I don't know that it would be enough to really have that much of a significance, but we'll keep an eye on that and see how it develops as we get closer.
Has that been a conversation amongst y'all who watched this, the fact that we haven't had rain in eight months? Or is that just kind of usually we get a little October, November, December and just just nothing this time around.
Absolutely, we were talking about this long before that, actually, and you know, we were putting information out that you know, this has been the start that one of the driest winters ever, at least the start that we have on records. So yeah, and that's obviously playing a big role because everything's so dry and just really crisp and ready to go.
Mike Wafford, National Weather Service, Thanks for your time today.
Oh yeah, very welcome.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's gonna be a I'm hoping that fire crews get enough of a break over the course of this weekend that they're ready for whatever's coming. I don't know if you follow Mike Row, Dirty jobs guy, Mike Row, he ran into a crew. He's been stationed at a hotel basically down on the West Side because he's been out of his house, and he ran into a fire crew that came down from Mount Shasta last night.
Wow.
And they're all the way down from Shasta and they were they were getting basically a good night's sleep before they were going doing their rotation to go through and relieve some of the local fire crews that have been going i mean pretty much non stop since Tuesday night to get them in there. And there's just I mean,
there's it's a it's an incredible system. We've talked before about that mutual aid system and the partnerships between not just the local agencies, but statewide and and interstate relationships between these fire agencies that they can step in and take over because listen, a hillside's a hillside, whether it's when it's burning, so they can do what they can to protect homes and businesses and people's lives there. There
is a new evacuation warning that has been issued. This is for the Archer fire up in the Granada Hills area north San Fernando Valley. If you are in that area, I mean, if you if you know that is above Sesnon Boulevards or Omelvenny Park, that's where the fire is. And if you can smell the smoke and see the flames in everything, they're expecting you to get out of there or be ready to go. They do have some boundaries that they have listed for the absolute evacuation order,
which is balbo At I five on the east. On the west side Tampa Avenue. South border is Cesnon and then the north border is Sunshine Canyon Road. There's not a lot of homes that are affected by the actual evacuation order, but the others just below Cesnon should be paying attention because they are in an evacuation warning area as of right now.
So just to keep an eye on that.
If you've never heard Chris Rock do his bit on insurance, you've got to hear it. I mean, it's probably twenty plus years old, but it's a great bit. I mean he nails it, you know, talking about how it shouldn't be called insurance, it should be called in case S.
In case S happens.
The experts now looking at what's going on in the pure scope of the devastation and the number of insurance payouts that are going to have to materialize, they say, it's incredibly difficult to gauge a timeline of when the victims will receive those payouts. They say, anywhere from a few weeks to several years.
Yeah, this is not a process.
Listen, in the best circumstances where you were, say, the only person who lost a home in your neighborhood and you want to rebuild, that process alone takes months and years because if you think of the bureaucratic morass that you have to go through to pull permits, to get plans approved, to make change or I mean, all of
these things take a lot of time. And now the system to do that is going to be overwhelmed by four or five thousand other homeowners who want to do this same thing that you want to do.
Brian Brasswell, as a senior vice president at an independent insurance broker it's called the Daniel and Henry Company, says the timing depends on the insurance company, the coverage in place, and the policy terms as well as volume. He says companies are inundated with claims. Imagine you have something like one hundred claims a month, all of a sudden you have one million.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's unbelievable. The price tag, and I don't want to diminish the emotional impact of what this is, but the price tag itself, they're talking about as high as one hundred and fifty billion dollars, which would put it on par with some of the worst disasters that we've seen in this country.
Now.
The Insurance Commission, Ricardo Laura did come out today. He was part of that news conference that took place in downtown LA to talk about things that he says he's going to be able to do to help people recover from all of this. He has moratory empowers. He says he's going to prevent insurance co companies from canceling or non renewing policies in these wildfire impacted areas so that people don't have to worry about the added stress of
trying to find new insurance on all of this. He also said that he's going to issue a notice calling on insurance companies to stop any of the pending non renewals or cancelations for any properties that are located near the wildfires, if they're not already protected by the mandatory moratorium. He also is demanding that these insurance companies come to him with an emergency plan. How are you going to
serve the people that are your customers. I've heard of a couple of insurance companies that have already purchased office space in la I mean more local to the fire scenes themselves, whether it's Pasadena or somewhere in Santa Monica, for example, to be close to the Palisades, so that they have offices and actual footprints where people can come and begin this process or continue this process of figuring out their claims, what's going to be covered, what's not
going to be covered, and what the next steps are going to be.
I mean, listen to this, they say.
In some cases, these companies may just flat out deny the claim, hoping nothing will ever come of it. They deny the claim knowing they'll end up getting sued, but at least the denial and waiting for the lawsuit to get filed will buy them more time. Because insurance companies are constantly analyzing their data, computing how much money they need to have in reserves at a given time for paying claims, so they only have X amount of dollars.
So somebody with the same amount of damage as you might get paid first, just because the numbers are crunching for them when they call or they get the paperwork across the desk that it works. But by the time you do, suddenly they're going to say, no, we got to just deny that and just punt it down the road.
I mean, how frustrating is that.
Well, and it's one of those things that when you have insurance on your house, the expectation probably is that you you never want to use it. Obviously you never want to have to use it, but that if you did, it would be something like the oven was left on, or it's an individual thing where it's just your house. And now, like you said, you've got thousands and thousands of people filing claims all at the same time.
It's just gonna be a nightmare.
The Commissioner again, the insurance Commissioner, Ricardo Laura, says that there's gonna be an insurance support workshop coming up next weekend eighteenth and nineteenth to help people figure out their insurance policies and this claims process, also providing information about available resources for rebuilding and recovery.
And I have a question.
I don't know if I have an answer.
You know, how people that have money can just like pay their way out of things that are annoying?
Sure is there?
Oh my computer just shut off. That's unfortunate.
You didn't plug it in.
I didn't bring the battery. You know, I didn't bring the charger. I never bring the charger.
You don't know how things work.
I'm consistent, I'm consistent. Appreciate that, consistently irresponsible when it comes to chargers. But I'm wondering if there's some sort of like it's kind of like, I have a friend who works in concierge medicine, where if you're a rich person, you hire her. She hooks you up with a concierge doctor and handles all the paperwork, all the appointments, scheduling, all of the if you need transportation, things like that.
She kind of just takes control of your life in that regard and gets in and does all that, makes all the calls, fills out all the paper work, does all the scheduling. All of that is there that can you pay your way out of? If you're like one of the people that has tons of money of dealing with insurance companies, like in terms of like you can call somebody and just be like, hey, my house burned down. Can you handle the disaster that is the insurance industry.
I'm sure there is. I'm sure.
I'm sure that people, especially not to overgeneralize, but especially some of those customers in the palisades, are going to have people to do that for them.
Right, I'm assuming they do.
That's just like one of those things the other half or the other one percent lives where you're just like, I'm sure they have.
People for that.
They don't have to wait on the phone to get an agent. Right Yeah.
It's always the richest people that have the least inconvenience, right Yeah, I mean I get it makes sense.
But well, listen, one of the things that frustrates people in situations like this is for those of us who have not been directly impacted by these fires, a sense of helplessness. To a lot of people, a sense of maybe not being able to do anything to help out. But you can. In fact, iHeartMedia LA and the Dream Center LA are stepping up. We are going to try to do what we can in to provide some hope
and some relief and some resources to the community. Whether you need support, maybe this is this is hitting a little too close to home, or you have lost your home and you need some help, or you're looking for a way to get off your button do something about it. The Dream Center and iHeartMedia are standing with La County.
We're navigating this time. You can go to Dreamcenter dot org slash donate because that's where you can give financial donations, the monetary contributions, but also the huge list of things that they need, nonperishable food items, baby supplies, first aid, kits, pet food stuff like that where you can donate that. You can also go to KFI AM six forty dot com. It's right there on the front page. Just click on your way through and get some more information or text
the word relief to three three one zero zero. Text the word relief to three three one zero zero to help us out. Along with the Dream Center LA and iHeartMedia, LA mentioned the fire that is burning up with the Granada Hills area. For the most part, looks like forward progress on that fire has slowed or completely stopped, so that's good. That was the Archer fire it's at about thirty one thirty two acres something like that. So the crews, I mean, this swift action that they took once that
thing popped up was pretty amazing. So that thing is out for the most part. Hand crews are down there and they are up there, I should say, and are mopping it up. It has again they have said that the forward progress stopped at thirty one and a half acres. The evacuation order that was in that area has been
simply downgraded to a warning. But again, if you know where that is, up the north end of the San Fernando Valley, right where I five goes starts to go up over the New Hall Pass is where that fire was.
We will absolutely stay on top of all the developments as they come up here when it comes to the fires, covering the fires, where we're at with containment, any new fires and things like that. It's something It hit me when we were talking to Michael Monks and he was talking about peeing into a Stanley cup and it made me laugh so hard and I thought.
Gosh, it feels good to laugh.
So we will be bringing you what you learned this week on Gary and Shannon as well as the nine nuggets you need to know. Because yes, we can stay informed, we also need to have a little bit of comic relief.
I do believe a.
Little bit of levity.
Yeah.
So, if there's something that you learned this week on The Gary and Shannon Show, you can leave us a message on the talkback feature. If you're listening to us on the iHeart app, all you have to do is hit that little white microphone button and it will record a message that goes straight into us and we'll be able to listen to it with you. Just tell us what it is that you learned this week while you're listening to the Gary and Shannon Show.
Didn't want to play for you a couple of quick talkbacks.
Gary and Shannon, longtime listener, California born and raised, living here in shah Halis, Washington. Now pass seventy five hundred and our local fire department here in town is sending a truck down with fire people on it. And I think the state of Washington I saw in the news last night, is sending five trucks, but even our little town of seventy five hundred people is sending a truck down to health there.
We got a message also from somebody yesterday who lives in northern Oregon, and they said that they're sending a bunch of trucks down.
I love Shahlis, I love Centralia, I love them all, Love them all.
Hi Gearing, Shannon. Hey, I work with rock stars, and believe me, any rock stars or celebrities up there that have any kind of success, they're not making any of those calls. They've already got assistance that handle groceries and stuff like that, so something like this, absolutely they're not going to be handling it themselves, which it's part of being rich. I guess, yes, yeah, that's a good point.
Wow.
Hey, if something happens with my stuff, do you think you seem like you could handle this kind.
Of stuff, handle insurance stuff.
I'll pay you in compliments.
No, And I won't sing for as long as you don't want me to sing for No, I won't come to work for as long as you don't want me to even.
With a good insurance company.
And I have a good insurance company, And I guess my definition of what is a good insurance company is any time I've had to deal with them, they've been incredibly appeasing.
They're easy, easy to work with. That's nice, it's really great.
It's USAA, and I don't they are not paying me to say that or anything. Although listen, if they're listening, they have been fantastic for me, for my family, and it's been great. That makes I still that makes no difference because I still do not want to have to deal with usually because it's a problem, right. I mean, when you have to call an insurance company, it's usually because something has gone wrong. You don't call them to
celebrate unless you're adding somebody. You know, you're adding a new kid to the policy or something like that.
Yeah, And it's one thing.
I mean, they've been great for you when you've needed them for whatever. But now, I mean, how many insurance companies are going to be great for everybody when there's this kind of volume.
Yeah, that I mean can't be well.
And that's that's I think the Insurance Commission was trying to address that today when he was saying this is going to be an all hands on deck, not just for the for his agency, but he's trying to impart that upon the the insurance companies. We're going to need you to do your absolute best for as many people as you possibly can. We are getting we've got it. Just a report a short time ago. Law enforcement has been requested to go to Topanga Canyon Road area to
help get people out of there. Some people are impeding firefighting operations.
Oh boy, I hope these aren't the hippie hiker people.
Well, there are areas that up there, there's some structures that are immediately threatened by this increased fire activity on that edge of the Palisades fire, along with the super Scooper that's been in the air. They just showed a short time ago one of the big, huge tankers that had come through and dropped a huge line of fozchek on one of the ridge lines there to try to protect some of the infrastructure up there. But law enforcement has been requested up there to residents that may have
stayed behind. And you know that if the firefighters have to rescue you, that means they can't do the thing that they are actually named for, which is fight the fire.
So you're in the way if you didn't already get out, all right.
Have you heard about that Delta flight at Atlanta this morning? No, we'll talk about it.
They had to go down the slides we'll talk about what's happening when we come back to Gary.
I am shamp.
You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app