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.
Welcome back, Christina Pascucci and for Shannon today.
Thank you you decided to come back. Let me in the building.
Agad Well, I kind of had to joyce, but you brought your blanket and your slippers again, which is important.
I'm professional up top and comfortable in bottom.
Let's say that.
Well, thanks for coming back. We're going to get to a lot of stuff today.
More details about that mine rescue that took place in Colorado, More problems at CBS.
There's a boil order for Long Beach Water.
There was an awful road rage incident last night that shut down I five through Boil Heights. You actually have some information to shed when it comes to the plane crash out on Catalina that killed five people. Talk about that and if you have, have you seen the video of the guy punching out a bunch of Palestinian a holes. That's not what makes them may holes, it's that they're bugging people. That's what he punched out. One of those guys.
We'll actually be talking to him a little bit later in the show.
It's going to be his first interview he's done, so we're really looking forward to hear what he has to say. And it's interesting because he told us how he's an Albanian Muslim and he stands up for or against anti Semitism, and that's what he was doing in that case when this heckler threw the first punch at him and he had to defend himself, he says.
So the video is pretty crazy.
Yeah, I shared it on my Instagram if anyone wants to see what we're talking about.
On Christina Pascucci.
A lot going on in the campaign as well.
Former President Trump scheduled a campaign in Aurora, Colorado today. This is one of the places that he says has been overrun by a Venezuelan gang, although the Republican mayor of Aurora says that's not entirely true. But there, I mean, for hours, there have been people lined up to get into his rally today. They're in Aurora. Of it's not
former she's the current Vice President Harris. She's campaigning in Arizona today and then she's also going to be joining President Biden for an update virtually at least for an update on the responses to hurricanes the.
Leen and Milton. And that's where we'll start today.
So the storm left that or bands of the storm left the state yesterday afternoon, and yet you already have one point six million accounts have been restored in the state of Florida. Two point four million as of nine am are outstanding.
I wanted to play a couple of soundbites really quickly.
This one from a woman who said the hurricanes, She's been through hurricanes before, That wasn't it. That wasn't the rain, the wind, or anything. It was the tornadoes that got her.
Never have I experienced damage or the amount of tornadoes that came to this area. Yeah, and it was the most frightening thing I've ever looked through.
This guy was flooded out of his house and he's describing it to a report or what he's kind of saw, what he's dealing with, et cetera. And you can hear him at the end start to get emotional.
Anywhere from hip to chest deep the time we got.
Done, you can't stay here, No, no, no, no.
And is it my generator's underwater? We have a septic system. It's underwater.
It won't it won't work for months.
It's saturated, so and we'll get water in here. Everything is just gonna buckle.
How are you doing right now?
I'm okay, surely, but not.
He did eventually break down and start crying in front of in front of quarters time. So this is and here's the issue that I think a lot of people in uh western North Carolina are worried about. Now, Milton's getting all the attention. I mean, granted, it just happened. We're talking about, you know, less than forty eight hours after this thing made landfall. But Milton's getting all the attention. What's happened to everybody that was hit by Hurricane Helene?
Because they're still dealing a lot of them still dealing with power outages, no clean water, like this guy. I mean, their septic systems are gone at least they will be for months.
They're desperate for help, so hopefully the attention doesn't go off of them. But I mean, to the point of Milton, at least sixteen people are dead now that death tool has risen. One of those killed was a man who stepped on a down power line. So that gives you a sense of the danger that remains after a storm hits.
Governor Desanta says a thousand people have been rescued. That includes a fourteen year old boy who is found on a floating fence gasping for air and a Florida fishermen who I think we'll talk about at some point through the show where we can talk about it now, but he was found clinging to an ice cooler in the middle of the Gulf after his boat capsized in twenty five foot waves.
We'll talk about.
That, we'll talk about why it's going to take so long to get gasoline back into those areas that were hit by Milton as well.
Okay, yeah, shut it up for a night, and then we'll hear from Captain Eric Scott LAFD on the scene in Florida responding doing incredible work. So Captain Eric Scott will come and speak to us about twenty minutes.
Don't forget today's Friday. So we're going to do what you learned this week on the Gary and Shannon Show. You can always leave us a talkback message and let us know what you learned while you were listening this week. When you're listening on the app, just hit that little microphone button and that leaves us a message that we can hear. We'll get to that late in the show as well. You mentioned this just before the break. A boat captain was able to ride out Hurricane Milton overnight
in the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard was able to spot this guy thirty miles offshore, clinging to a cooler from his boat.
So many questions.
Lieutenant Commander Dana Grady, the Sector Saint Petersburg Commander Center chief, said, to understand the severity of the hurricane conditions, we estimate he experienced seventy five to ninety mile an hour winds, twenty to twenty five foot seas for an extended period of time overnight, and he survived because of a life jacket and the emergency positioned indicating locator bacon and a cooler that he had with him.
He should be the real, Lieutenant Dan.
Yeah, this is the guy I mean, granted, he probably shouldn't have been out there. He was the captain of this fishing vessel that broke down on Monday.
The boat was left at sea. They're going to try to figure out what to do with it.
They're probably I would imagine just scuttle that thing and let it go to the bottom. But the owner reported to the coastguard at about noon Wednesday that the captain went back out to the boat before dawn to make repairs on it and hadn't been heard from since.
Conditions deteriorated quickly. That gives you a sense of how fast things can change.
Yeah, he was last heard from about six forty five Wednesday night, and then landfall. I mean he would have been right in the middle of this thing. Landfall would have been about an hour and fifteen hour and thirty later. And then he was rescued at one thirty yesterday afternoon, about thirty miles off of Longboat Key in Florida.
That is remarkable he survived.
It's unbelievable. Why didn't you go out? Why did you go back out in the storm?
Leave it to Florida All this story's always coming out of A.
Quarter of the almost eight thousand gas stations in the state of Florida have run dry, according to gasbuddy dot com oil price information service. Another company, the Tracks Oil, found as much as half of the state's gas stations don't have enough gasoline. An expert said that this could persist for a long time. Which it's not just people getting around. Businesses need them homes and businesses need gasoline
for some of them to run generators, et cetera. The Port Tampa Bay handles about forty three percent of Florida's gasoline in and they're talking about power outages that are also going to impede gas service. Obviously, gas stations depend on the electricity to pump the fuel from their storage tanks and deliver it into the vehicles, and that's not something that you're going to solve overnight. We did hear from Ron DeSantis about the power being you know, turned
back on for many many customers right away. That is a great credit to the leaders in Florida who knew to pre position all of those assets, and some of them were already I mean, some of them were already working or continuously working since Hurricane Helene shift them downstate just a little bit to pick up the job after Milton rolls through.
Right And you know, we heard from people who are on the ground there yesterday who said they were so impressed by the amount of information and preparation on behalf of the government. And that's not something you hear often, so they are used to hurricanes there.
They know the drill.
It seems like the governor handled it very well, and they had officials on standby, thousands and thousands of people ready to go, not only people who are on the rescue effort, but utility companies and the like and Port Tampa Bay. I mean this when you think about if the storm had changed its path just by a few miles, Port Tampa Bay, where a lot of that gasoline comes from, as you mentioned, is avoided major damage.
Yeah, we're hearing.
Their docks themselves don't appear to be damaged. I mean, there's some flooding on the roads getting into and out of the port, which are going to cause problems, but the port itself.
Is in pretty good condition, so that's good news.
We're live everywhere on iHeartRadio app. I'm Christina Pascucci and filling in for Shannon. Today forty nine ers were playing you Know Where She Was? But she'll be back Monday.
Depending on I haven't checked the.
Intake records at King County Jail in Seattle, so I'm not sure.
So depending what we find there, we have so much coming up, we have a lot to talk about I feel almost like energized this morning because there's so much happening. We have great interviews for you. We're going to talk about all your top news. The boil water noted it's been lifted for Long Beach. Also the Catalina plane crash that happened earlier this week. Sadly, because I'm a licensed pilot, I actually I know some of the people in that community who knew the people who died. Well, I'm getting
some insight into what happened. We'll also talk about the airport conditions there. Just coming up later in the show, Captain Eric Scott with the LAFD is going to call in any second and talk about the cruise absent on the ground to Hurricane Milton and Helene before that, what they're doing, what that rescue operation is like. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, Saga CBS continues.
I'm pretty amazed at what's going on. We talked before a couple of things about what's going on at CBS News.
One of them was the criticism from above.
Okay, so Captain Scott's on the line, so we'll come back to the CBS thing.
But all right, all right, so.
Captain Eric Scott from the LA Fire Department talking about what is it a couple dozen of a dozen dozen firefighters from different agencies.
Captain Scott, what's going on?
Hey, Gary and Christine, our pleasure to be on this morning. So yeah, we definitely are headed out that way and assisting them. We landed on Monday evening, so we sent forty three members to assist with the Hurricane Milton response in the southeast. So this is just part of what we call a nationwide neutral aid, essentially neighbors helping neighbors. So we have a group of firefighters from FEMA California Task Force One that's our members from the La City
Fire Department. They're really specializing in urban search and rescue and swift water specialists to give some technical assistance to the recovery efforts, but not just Milton.
I'm my understanding is also there's some people that are headed up farther north to help with the recovery efforts after Helene.
Yeah, you're spot on. We this follows a separate eighteen member las A team that left Friday, that would be last Friday, to respond to Hurricane Helen, and so they're assisting with search efforts in North Carolina, and this most recent team that we had, they basically arrived Monday night. You have to meet up with a convoy. There's other rescuers and teams up there. So they did that in Orlando, Florida, and then they make their way up to a camp
in Blanding kind of northeast Florida. And it's a staging center, so as you can imagine, it's like an army base. You have a lot of resources. You have different government entities, National Guard, FEMA, task forces, et cetera. And everything is very organized that we do. So the whole state is broken into several branches and then our LAFD members they're working in what we call Branch three that's in the
northeast area. So they have to tie in with local resources kind of liaison and surveying determine what the needs are and that's what they've been doing.
Matain Scott, it's so good to talk to you and have you on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time. So I know you have a million things going on today. Can you talk about the specialized teams within the LAFD.
I know you reference the swift Water rescue.
I mean, you guys are training year round for this, and we have a year round fire season here in California, so you have a.
Lot going on.
You're right, Christina, and our pleasure speaking with you again too. It's been a while, very highly trained team. We couldn't be prouder of the Los Angeles City Fire Department members. They truly pride themselves on striving to be the best of the best. So we do have a full swift water component like you mentioned. That means they're bringing inflatable
rescue boats that are trailered up there. So part of a team has to go on ground with semi trucks you know, vans for transportation, four wheel drive vehicles, a ground based convoy to make their way up, including canine searches. We have multiple dogs with us. We have hazardous materials specialists, confined space specialists if there was, you know, any rubble to get through, so they're truly prepared to do anything
can to assist those in need. I'll be honest, long story short, I just got off the phone with our team prior to calling you or receiving your call, and fortunately things are going pretty well. The whole team is in good spirits. They're leaving this morning. They're headed to Tampa at the State Fairgrounds and what we call Branch four. So that's actually the area that's most impacted by the storm,
where most of the searches took place. So now they're going to go there and make connections and assist those folks.
Can you talk Captain Scott about the after action once the once your teams come back, what kind of what kind of briefing do you guys go through to figure out how can we do it better? What happened, you know, what needs to happen the next time around.
That's a good question because we do that every time, from every small little fire of our fifteen hundred emergency incidents every day in Los Angeles, we do after action reports, and of course one large scale, significant deployments, we do that even more so there'll be a full team debrief. We also want to make sure they're mental and medically
taken care of. Did they get sick. We'll do a full medical evaluation on those members to assist so and then you kind of get them a little bit of rest and you go back into constant state of readiness to be pre deployed because as you know, wildfires are going all over. We are all hazard, meaning we go to any sort of hazard from wildfire, earthquake, tornado, or hurricane, you name it. I'm on personally on a federal incident management team and it's been I think I think that
team alone has had five deployments already this year. And so as soon as you're done with the two week deployment, you get hopefully seven days of rest and you kind of have to be right back up into a area of readiness. But that's what we signed up for and our members are proud to do it.
I have a logistics type question, Captain Scott. So you know you guys are the ones who run toward the fire, of course, so in terms of a hurricane, when you've been deployed to help you and the impacted areas and you know it's headed luckily didn't hit straight on like we thought that, say, you know exactly where.
It's going, do you.
Stand by you right outside of that area and then go in the second it's over or how do you do that to make sure your crews stay safe.
That's a good question too. Everything is based upon situational awareness to make the appropriate risk analysis profile to ensure that everybody goes home. So we're not going to directly put ourselves into the eye of the storm and wipe out our team, especially if it's just homes and there's not a life to save, so life above property. Again,
this is very organized. There's multiple THEMA deployed teams, and we have base camps in safe areas completely grid out the impact areas and branches and divisions lay out our maps get assigned certain areas, and because of the unique incident Command system, which is known nationally, that's why you got people here on the West coast, you can go
clear over to the East coast plug and play. Because when we use certain vernacular and tactics and strategies, we all kind of practice the same sheet of music, so to speak. So our members are now today going into the area that was a little more impacted. That's in what we call branch for where most of those searches take place. And again we need to tie in with
the local resources. And I've also heard they've had a little bit of downtime when you first get there and you're building your base camp and they're immediately training, so they're training for really wide area searches right now.
Do you teach them to speak with an accent at all in the South or.
Is it only on the weekends?
Okay, great Captain Eric Scott, LA Fire Department, thanks for your time today.
Keep us updated, yes or our pleasure, both of you.
Take care.
I say thank you.
That's a I love to see that happen in moments of natural disasters like that, when people come from around the country to help out or internationally even that's I think that.
It is a display the best of humanity, which we need right now.
A couple of people died a few dozen injured when a chemical leaked at a Houston area industrial plant. Hydrogen sulfide leak was reported last night at a Pemex facility in the suburb of Deer Park. Sheriff said that workers were working on a flange when there was a leak of this hydrogen sulfide. Two people confirmed dead. Thirty five employees either transported or triage there at the scene because of the injuries.
It's a very real issue with refineries.
Well, and we have a bunch of refineries here.
Yeah.
Actually, not too long ago, the Chevron refinery in Alsigundo had a little hydrogen sulfide leak when they had an emergency situation there.
It didn't even make the nase a little leak. Yeah, I know.
Well it actually you know, made some people sick surrounding the area.
So we talked to earlier about the CBS problems that are going on, not just the chastising of anchor Tony D. Koppel for his interview with Tanayashi Coats close. I'm going to leave it at that because I've said it seven different ways. One of them's got to be close. I know what you're talking about. But also this editing that went on with the sixty minutes interview that Bill Whitaker did with Vice President Harris, and it's not CBS has not denied any of it. They completely edited the interview.
They copped to that, but they're not saying why they did it. Were they asked to do it, Was it somebody's decision to do it?
And if it was someone's decision, what was.
The reasoning behind editing the answer to in the interview.
Well, look, I feel sick over this.
Because to me, as journalism is in a rapid decline, CBS to me, was the gold standard. I used to dream of working there and working for sixty minutes because they hold themselves to a higher standard, you think. And so when you see this story, my question is sometimes, you know, as a journalist myself, I've done thousands of stories, and when someone gives a long answer, sometimes you'll take the first half of the answer, or you'll take the second half of the answer.
And so did they do that?
Did they take you know, the first half for the part that aired Sunday and then the second half or a smaller portion of the part that aired Monday, or did they take parts different parts of her answer and edit them together to make her sound good and those that's.
A big difference.
That is a big difference.
We talked about it on Tuesday after the interview because.
We have experienced doing the same thing.
But most of the interviews that you would that I would feel comfortable trimming down are things like if I'm going to interview, as an example, Captain Eric Scott with the LA Fire Department, and he's going to go into detail about the house fire and how they broke in and how they were able to rescue people, you don't need to hear the whole story and sometimes it's too long for what the time is allotted for the information
that's there. So if editing for time is one thing, but they the difference between what they showed on Sunday and what they aired on Monday night were completely different and painted her in a completely different light, so that the motivation behind that has to be explained. CBS has to come forward and say something, and they haven't yet.
Yeah, and I think just to clear the air and to make it absolutely clear where they stand, the obvious thing to do would be to release a full transcript so that people have a very clear view of how was edited and you know, some explanation from CBS around why.
And by the way, the technology allows for that to be done almost instantaneously. Yeah, to go through to digitally have your computer come up with a transcript for what was said, It takes seconds.
I can imagine done you.
I can imagine they're in full panic mode right now. But it is more important than ever to be clear, trusted, credible, to uphold your integrity. And if they failed in this case, which it looks like they could have, because the Lord only knows what's happening with the other stuff. With that interview, you mentioned in How Far South That's Gone. They should just own up to their mistake and do better and move on.
Hopefully 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