This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI A M six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Marla and Neil are here with you. Marla, tay Is, Neil Savedra.
Good to be back. Nice to have you, Nice to see you.
I wish it was under different circumstances in that I wish that we had a whole lot of better news to report, although we did get some good news nuggets out of the press that we just listened to.
Slowly, things are getting better, of course, even today. Schools were opening. My son's been out for the past week, and I'm sure many others have. This is great news. The campuses are reopening, those located in severely impacted areas or not so. Canyon Charter Elementary School, Kenter Canyon Charter Elementary School, Palisades Charter, Marquez Charter to Panga Charter, Lenai Road Elementary School, and Paul Revere Middle School still closed.
But the greater part of LAUSD, which they announced yesterday that is back open today on this Monday.
So they were closed Thursday Friday.
They waited throughout the weekend, of course, to make a decision, So most of those schools are back in play today, which is great news. And then what's really pretty remarkable is sad news. Of course, out of the Palisades fires, at the Palisades Charter Elementary that was completely destroyed, well,
they found a second site to put those kids. So now those kids who lost their school, they are back in the classroom today in Brentwood at a magnet school there, so that school is now serving as essentially two schools. But to think about the fact that the logistics involved of having to get all that done in just a matter of days to move an entire school to another school campus, don't no.
I'd go to Brentwood.
Yeah, well it's like, yeah, okay, you make a good point.
But for right now in LA to find a place where you're going, okay, this is safe.
Right.
But the news that we just got out is most of the evacuations, the evacuation orders and.
Warnings that were in place for Santa.
Monica of course Brentwood adjacent, those have been downgraded, so there are no more evacuation orders.
That is great news.
And then in Brentwood, most of those have been downgraded as well, So things are looking so much better than.
They were Friday.
Saturday was precarious all over again, but then they really did stop the forward progress as those flames made their way into Brentwood and Meneville Canyon.
I'm glad to hear these things that we see the changes day to day, sometimes hour to hour on the lifting of these evacuations. I don't want to see anybody hurt, and I don't want anybody into the stress of having to evacuate. Save for one situation, nothing funnier than seeing John Cobalt leave his house with a bearded dragon in tow.
Two of them.
Yeah, that's now, that's a personal joy. But I'm glad everybody's say so far.
Well.
So, I was working at Fox eleven on Saturday providing the coverage and John came on the show.
Yeah. I pushed it out as well, you did, Yeah, thank you, thank you.
Yes.
But one of the first things if you didn't hear it, it's on social of course, you can find it there. But for the folks who didn't get to hear it, one of the first things that he said was, you know, here I am going, You're essentially in an evacuation zone right now.
What is that like? And he says, well, I had to get my two lizards out.
Yeah, he said, they're now safe, so that was sort of top priority for him.
They weren't even his originally there were his sons that they left them when they went off to.
Call with get that backstory.
But he's safe and his wife Deborah, which is great.
Yeah, and this continues to shift all over the place.
You know, even hearing the DA today come on and say listen, people are evacuating and then he paused and he's like.
I'm one of them.
You know, it's like, yeah, this is one of those things that takes me back. And as a journalist, you know this that oftentimes reporting on the news and the things at hand that are going on to other people. COVID and this are the two big situations where you're living and experiencing at the same time you're reporting on.
It, Amen, and it's impacting everybody right in that. You know, our coverage on Fox eleven obviously same right here at KFI is people need the information right now. So typically you know, we we provide local news twenty four seven, three sixty five, right, but that's just you know, pocket news here and there that doesn't really affect me. This is impacting everybody. And of course if you're thinking, well, I'm in Orange County and I'm you know, it doesn't matter because people want to help too.
Right, Buyers won't dare to go to Orange Country.
Well, and that's the other thing, and I'll get a risk. I'm gonna get serious again because tomorrow is what we're worried about. So while we're able to report this relief and this reprieve right now, tomorrow, the National Weather Service is issuing another what they call a PDS.
But this is you know, all the initials in the world, sure, politicians and professionals, but.
This is big time.
This is a serious, serious warning and one of the most more serious ones we've gotten during all of this.
Yes, and this is the highest it goes.
So PDS stands for a particularly dangerous situation. And they issued this last Tuesday when the fire broke out, and so we know what happened then. So another one is coming tomorrow. And they've only issued this two times prior in our area and Neil. Those two times were for the Mountain fire Inventory County where hundreds of structures were lost. That was in November, and then again for the Malibu fire, the frame than fire, structures lost there, and now here
we go again. So this will be the I'm losing track third or fourth time, but they've all proven to be very detrimental.
So we got to get through Tomorrow through Wednesday.
Gus could range from forty five miles per hour to a whopping seventy miles per hour. Air is going to be very dry. This combination is that awe inspiring spectacle that we saw Tuesday night Wednesday. Wednesday was so insane. You know, you had trees at thirty degree angles in the wind or more.
Those that didn't get ripped out from the roots.
You know.
This is something interesting too, is that my wife and I have a place in a Big Bear and we went up there recently during the New Year to see what the fire damage was from the gosh, I don't even remember remember the name of the fire now, but it came back on the back side of the hill towards Running Spring. It's bizarre to see that trees still
stand when burned. Oh yeah, often so. It's and I know there's a lot of talk about that because people are going, well, all these houses burned, but trees around them maybe didn't. It's a bizarre thing to see trees that are burned just still.
Standing the skeleton, if you will, of the charge.
You think they just turned to ash. And it's not the same way as a home back. This no longer living wood that just turns to ash instantaneously. But it was really bizarre to see hills spotted with trees still standing but completely torched.
Well, I saw that up in the Bay Area.
The other deadly fire, of course, one of the most deadly in California history was the Tubs fire up in Santa Rosa. And this personal for me because some of our friends lost their homes.
This is where I'm from. My mom lives there.
But still now they're still building a lot of those areas are still rebuilding.
But I've seen you know exactly what you're and I'm.
Sure a lot of our listeners have as well, just those charred remains of the trees that are still standing.
One quick note about the PDS. It does start tomorrow.
The particularly dangerous situation the winds, as Neil pointed out, forty five to seventy miles per hour, but last week they exceeded eighty miles per hour, so it's not going to be as bad, but I mean, don't get me wrong, fifty mile per hour winds dangerous.
Yeah, and they moved that fire along handily.
Oh god, which is what we were seeing experiencing.
All right.
If you were joining the Bill Handle show, you know that just wrapped was a presser. Each day there's been a presser with all of the local dignitaries to update us on the horrific fires that overcome our area.
And I just want to point out a couple of the good.
News nuggets because I think that's important because we've been inundated with such bad news what we learned. There has been some more containment overnight, you know, bit by bit it's getting contained. So the I'll start with the Eating fire. I haven't talked about that one, of course, that's the second largest one that's burning in Altadena Pasadena. That one is just over fourteen thousand acres and thirty three percent contained, so that earlier it was I believe in the seventeen
percent area. So they have grown.
It's a nice jump.
It is a good jump. Palisades not as big of a jump. It was eleven percent contained. Now that's fourteen percent contained. Almost twenty four thousand acres burned there good news the super Scoopy, I dare you leave that? I'll leave that to you. It was hit by a drone. I believe it was last Thursday, and that Superscooper has been grounded. Ever since, it's been fixed and today the La County Fire chief said it will be up in the air again tomorrow.
So these we only have two of them.
They carry more than fifteen hundred gallons of water where they can just go and they can go into the Pacific, for instance, and.
Load up and then you know, blast the water.
It's amazing. Have you watched them, Yes, in the ocean, it's awesome. You know, we.
Kind of lease them from Quebec. You know what their names are. It's very great marketing.
I should know. I don't know Quebec one in Quebec two. It's like, okay, well I guess that makes it.
Well that's my favorite.
Is the VLAT.
Do you know?
No?
So the v LAT those were out and about flying, thank goodness on Saturday, huge huge aircraft and they're known as a VLAT stands for a very large air tanker.
Oh wow, legitimately, I mean that's legit.
See I like that better than like vortex this and all these you know.
Right, fancy, it's like just be literal.
And they are very large air tanker.
So so as if tomorrow we'll have both super Scoopers back in the air, which is key because again the winds are expected to really pick up tomorrow. So that is great news as it relates to help, and so many of you need help and asking about Hey, I've been you know, living at a hotel for the last week. Am I going to get reimbursed for this? What about my food? You know, all of the expenses that come
with losing your home, being evacuated, et cetera. That was asked of the officials yesterday and it was basically, well, for reimbursement, you're going to have to.
Go through FEMA. They'll help you in that.
Well, there will be two Catherine Barger Elle County Board Chair of Supervisors. She announced today there are two FEMA Disaster Resources centers will open tomorrow locally, ones at UCLA and one is at the Pasadena Community College. So at least those resources are there now. And this is all you know, if this is all too much to take in, there is a website, and that website is Recovery dot La County dot gov for all of this information.
That's the same website that has that housing map correct where you can look and.
See if your home has been.
Have you gone through that? I has it is?
I know we are using these words over and over because there aren't any other words.
I'm proud of, no heartbreaking. Just have to look.
Imagine going through a map to see whether your house is standing or not.
Well.
The chief address that today too, because obviously people have gone on there to see and some of their addresses haven't are there, not there? And he said, if your address isn't there, we haven't been able to get to your homework.
Verify it one way there right.
I mean the task of doing so, because again, if you've been out there to Palisades, Alta Dina and you just see it, does you've heard this a lot.
It does look like a war zone.
I will tell you something.
Mentioning Supervisor Catherine Barger, she comforts me, I think the part of a politician or a face of a city of any kind is to put you at peace, to make me feel like somebody's doing something.
And God, I like her in this situation.
I know it's a crap situation for anybody to be in, but she strikes me, and I know bass is taking it on the chin in every direction. But the man she strikes me is more in charge of more mayoral than our own mayor.
Because she talks to you like a person. Yeah, and she doesn't make excuses.
No, And it doesn't seem like she's worried about herself.
Well, no, she's not.
She admits when there's an error she had and she says, look, I know that is terrible. We messed up. We don't know the answer. The even admitting we don't know is comforting. It's comforting because, okay, because you know, when her mouth is open, she's telling you the stuff she does know, right. I mean that she was out front on the La County false alerts that were going out, absolutely and most everyone was you know, it's you know, kind of danced
around it. And she said, this is terrible. We don't know what's going on, you know. And then and she said I have to learn why this is happening. And you know, she came back and then said, we are working on it.
This is unacceptable.
You know.
She calls a Spade of Spade.
There's something about that that that does comfort me. So when she speaks. You were kind enough to help us out get her on Saturday with me when I was doing coverage, and.
I just like her and I trust her, and I'm like, thank God.
Well, that's one of the things that officials are dealing with right now is distrust.
Yeah, and she's not tap dancing, right, and that's all I need.
Yeah, Just I don't be a straight shooter.
No one has all the answers be a straight shooter.
Yeah, so I don't expect you to have all the answers. But you know, it's been very comforting. So my hat's off to supervisor Catherine Barker, who to me, has been, unfortunately in an ugly situation, a rising star of strength.
Yeah, I mean for us here in Los Angeles.
Her district is the fifth district, which is alsadin O Pasadena. So she's been out front there, you know, trying to get answers for her constituents, and she means business.
She strikes me as someone that would be bothered if somebody wanted a photo op, like like, don't I'm doing something. I'm working that So you know, God bless her and the work she's doing because she has been a point person to me that makes me feel secure when she tells when she says something, it's not trying to steal this spotlish, but she's trying to get in front of that mic and out of that mic.
In the second she's done talking. I'm glad.
I'm glad you got her on on Saturday.
She was very kind to take the time. We have a large audience and for her to take the time to make sure that they're hearing strength coming out of counting offices and the like is important. So what's your schedule today?
Well, if we are not in continuous coverage five to seven and ten to eleven thirty tonight, but all of last week, since the fire broke out almost a week ago Tuesday ten thirty am, we've been basically commercial free around the clock.
It's a different animal.
I don't which people which part that when you're doing that kind of coverage and there's commercial and it's commercial free, it changes everything.
Well, it's a whole lot of teamwork involved, right because you are tied to the desk in a good way in that you are providing valuable information and hopefully life saving information to everybody. But yes, you don't people ask, you know, how do you go to the bathroom?
What do you eat?
Because Elex and I were there from ten to twelve hours straight.
And so you Elex is eight feet tall. He could literally be in the bathroom and on the.
Air at the same time. Yeah, yeah, just turn the mic off. Yeah, you just got to switch out. You know, I'm going to go right now. You handle it. Again, This is not for sympathy. This is no zero what we're dealing with, zero what most people are dealing with out there. So but yeah, it's a it's just a great privilege though that we are able to do this and honor in that this is such vital information for people at such a crisis time.
Yeah, but I I feel the same way, yes, And.
The time goes by so quickly because what when we're in it for you and seeing it happened live, you know, this is all it's so fluid, and it's so many unknowns, so much devastation, and our viewers are reaching out to us with great information. We're trying to, you know, put it all together. It's just it's an amazing thing that happens and.
The questions and everything else.
And one of the ones that I've been seeing quite a bit that's come over and over is about the safety of water. So you have two different water entities dealing with the fire areas. So you have Pasadena Water and Power in the Altadena Pasadena area and then you have LADWP there in the Pacific Palisades area. So if you are in these zip codes, the zip codes that they are giving currently with LADWP are any of the zip codes in the nine zero two seven to two
community and adjacent communities. Keeping in mind, you know, you need to look into this and find out if you're in these areas because they keep changing and it's interesting how they're building these maps. But what we can tell you that if you are in these areas, you're in the surrounding areas, you know you are wrestling with the same air conditioning, air quality, and all of these things as well. They don't want you drinking the tap water.
Find out in your local area. DWP established two bottled water distribution locations, Westwood Recreation Recreation Center on Supulvita Boulevard and then adjacent to the Brentwood Country Club there on Gretna Green way is where you can go for bottled water service. There's also because of the chemicals and the like that gets into the water that hot showers, long
hot showers, even using you know, hot tub. Don't know why you'd necessarily be doing that or polls can be problematic and the hot of the water the worst it can be for you. And so they don't want you to take long showers things like that. They don't want you to try and purify the water yourself by boiling it.
This is beyond that.
And if you're in those areas, take heed because you're talking about water that's been poisoned essentially.
I mean, they literally say, don't take a hot bath, do not do it.
No cooking, even you know, with cooking, I know a lot of people think, well, once you heat things up, it's getting rid of stuff, and that is true with bacteria, but other chemicals and the like sometimes can become like I said, more problematic when they are hot. And this means ice and stuff too, because your ice on your refrigerator and freezer is coming either you are manually putting it into the ice trays or it's coming through a water line to the back of your refrigerator to make
ice inside. Both are problems.
You mentioned the two bottled water distribution location set up by LADWP again the Westwood Rec Center, which by the way, is also an evacuation center.
That's where a lot of people have gone.
And then the right next to the Brentwood Country Club on Gretna Greenway, the City of Pasadena opened a bottled water distribution center Saturday. That one is on Lake Avenue and that one's open from eight to five as well. And then you think about LADWP and all of the power outages that they've been dealing with, thousands of people without power. That was one of the interesting things when
I was on the air live on Saturday. First of all, it was such a sight to see site for sore eyes if you will, to see that just darkness because when pardon me, when Skyfox, our helicopter was over the Palisades Fire at one point before we see off at eleven thirty that night, it was pitch black down below, and that was wonderful because there's no flames, yeah, you know,
Oh my goodness. And then on the other side of the coin is a lot of these areas were blacked out where there weren't flames because there's no power, and so LADWP has been doing what they can to restore power and to do it as quickly as possible.
Today, we're letting you know that most schools in the la USD are back in service opened to teach the children. We talked a little bit about the safety of water, and the big story is that another red flag fire weather warning came from the National Weather Service swaths of areas in Los Angeles finter counties before the dawn tomorrow, and the concerns of forty five mile per hour to seventy mile per hour wind gusts in very dry areas will cause another concern as we go into this.
Week, another dangerous situation coming our way. Unfortunately. Well, if you've been watching our coverage on Fox eleven, then you are very, very familiar with him.
His name is Matthew Seedorf.
He's one of our outstanding reporters in the field, and he has been all over the Palisades fire and the Eaten fire. So I've asked him to join us so that he can talk about his experience.
Matthew Seedorf, welcome.
Good morning. Yeah, thank you guys for having me.
I know we actually gave you a day off, so I appreciate you jumping on the air with us here at KFI. Matthew, what has it been like to be out there, because you've literally fought tried to help people save their own homes yourself, because at one point there was no firefighters around last week when the Palisades fire broke out.
Talk to us about your experience.
Yeah, it's unbelievable, and it's training and just what you're talking about. I mean, we understand everyone loves their firefighters, right, And we were out there and going to the scene when we first originally saw the smoke in the Palisades, and it was so gridlocked, traffic was so bad, and we saw emergency vehicles driving on the wrong side of the road to get up there. And we finally got up there and we saw homes burning. But I mean, we were up there for an hour and a half
before we saw a firefighter. So while we were working with Fox eleven trying to do live shots and battling the cell reception we called in the nine one one couldn't get through. So my photojournal is Sam Dubin and I were driving around looking for garden hoses outside homes where we saw fires up in trees very close to homes or even on homes and just turning on those hoses and trying to put out the flames because we
could we could sense the urgency. We knew it was getting bad, the winds were picking up, but again, we didn't see any firefighters in sight. We saw We did speak with one resident who was evacuating and he was like, where's the help, where are the firefighters, And we're just like, well, we don't know. And like I said, we understand that they were extremely overwhelmed, but this is pretty early on in the fire and they were probably trying to take
out you know, where this started. But that's what residents were feeling at the time, and we were trying our best to help, but it was just it was probably too little, too late.
Honestly, you're hearing the voice of Mats Matt a seed Draft from Fox eleven reporter there, Matt, it's one thing to be overtaxed with firefighters. We get that they're pulled in two directions and you know how what it's like to even get five miles in la across town. But did you see any traffic control any La PD or the like out there helping guide people at all through stop lights that maybe weren't working or any of that.
No, absolutely not, and this is pretty early on. It was absolutely chaos. Around around noon or so on Tuesday, while people were evacuating, you could sense that people were getting frustrated. There was people honking, and the police and emergency vehicles that we did see a lot of them were driving on the wrong side of the road. But then also people evacuating or trying to get to their homes to evacuate, were also driving on the wrong side
of the road. So it was complete gridlock. I mean, if there's six lanes, including the opposite end of travel, five and a half of those lanes were being used by people trying to get out. So it was a really bad situation because you have half a lane, so to speak, to try to get up to the fire like we were able to do, but you can imagine what a fire truck might have been going through to try to get up there right well.
And that's when we saw those pictures too, of all of those abandoned vehicles, which we learned we heard from people we had them on our air who they were trying to evacuate in the gridlock, and then the flames
were coming again. Folks, if you're just joining us, you are listening to Matthew Sedorf, one of our reporters at Fox eleven, and we're hearkening back to really day one of the Palisades Fire, when all of those vehicles were abandoned because the flames were getting too close and they literally had to get out of their car and run for their lives. Matthew, Tomorrow, we're in a red flag warning right now, but tomorrow.
It's expected to be even worse.
The National Weather Service issuing what they call a PDS stands for particularly dangerous situation. This is the highest warning that they have. That means that the winds are expected to pick up like they did last week, not as strong. Nonetheless, I'm bringing this up because you literally, in the height of the Palisades Fire, you were standing within wind gus
of fifty miles per hour embers everywhere. Talk to us about how that feels, because a lot of times I think people will say, oh, you know, it's strong winds, but you know, you know what it feels like.
To be in that.
Yeah, I mean it's just hot ash and coal embers flying in the air, and I mean essentially, you're standing in what would be a tropical storm or a hurricane and you have instead of rain, you have hot embers flying at you, and it stings like you're getting stung or bit by something. Every time you get hit and there's dust flying in the air, it gets in your eyes, even with goggles on, ors getting in our eyes. It's
not a fun situation to be in. It's definitely dangerous, and you know, we try to do it as safely as possible. But I mean, you just got to think about all the firefighters and first responders that are driving to that too to try to help, and how dangerous it is for everyone. But yeah, it is. It doesn't feel good and the only thing I can compare it to is a hurricane, but instead of rains, it's embers and it hurts.
That, of course, is Matt Seedorf with fire even thanks so much out there reporting and you're doing a great thing. It's so important for us to be able to get this information, and we appreciate you taking the time to come on and give that first person perspective.
Thank you so much, Thank you so much.
Thinking about the community and the first responders and firefighters still out there doing their thing. Appreciate it.
Amen.
Neil Sevadra with Marlataeaz today filling in for Gary and Shannon. We'll be back with more and of course we're taking it to one o'clock where we'll hand it over to John Cobalt. So go know where this is KFI heard everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. 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.