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.
A lot going on.
We're continuing to update that to Middle East Deal, which now looks as though it might be voted upon by the Israel kinesset. I guess tomorrow after a pause in things, but we'll talk about that.
We'll go back.
Around the Hecklers who went after Anthony Blincoln today.
Yeah, the state procressor.
How do you get into a state department briefing to you know, to heckle and usually that's only open to credentialed reporters.
It's a weird thing.
Yeah, that's the question I have.
But back to the fires and a compelling story.
Yeah, so you, thank goodness no new growth on the eating fire, but we know the damage that it has left behind. And we hear about, you know, this person lost a home, this person lost a home, and then we're hearing this family lost four homes, a son and kids, and so on and so forth. And that's one of these cases. With Steven Sippio, he's a live flong Altadena resident and his parents have been there for fifty three years. They lost their home and the home where Steven's kids
were living with their mother. They lost their home, and Stephen really was their hero in that he got everyone evacuated, so everyone lived to tell That's the most important piece to this. But such an emotional story. Stephen Sipio is on the line right now. Steven. Good to have you.
Hey, Marlin, thanks for having me.
I did my best to summarize your ordeal that transpired last week. Why don't you tell the people what you just went through?
Yeah, I mean, as you as you describe it, you did a great job. But it's like people tell me a little bit about grief and that it's going to come in waves, and I can't hear you describe that, you know what I mean without getting emotional, because that is exactly what happened. Yeah, so we're just, you know,
we're moving forward. I was fortunate enough to get my parents out and get my children and their mom out after there was a delay there till about two thirty in the morning when the smoke was completely covering the house, and then we rushed out, got them to safety, got to bed about four am. Woke up about seven. I couldn't sleep and then I just had to drive to Altadena. I drove up and I just saw Mayhem. Like I've showed you guys videos, It's just everything is on fire.
You can't see the sky, the smoke. It looks like midnight, but it's you know, nine o'clock in the morning. It's just it was just nothing. And you know.
I'm just the devastation. The devastation was complete and no.
And Mark, I want you to know this because I forgot to include this in his introduction as that Stephen is a filmmaker and so he documented everything with the evacuation and the aftermath. It's an incredible video.
Wow.
Wow, Well I've got a season with that, and when it's posted online and when you put it all together, I mean, obviously they are different priorities now, but I want to take you back to this because I don't know the story and I find it compelling.
So what was going on?
Take me into the moments when you first decided to evacuate. What will you talk about the smoke, et cetera. I'm curious about Yeah, go ahead.
I was. I was visiting my children at the mom's house in Alta, Dina on Raymond and Wapello and my son comes.
To me and said, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Guys comes to me.
He says, he says, Dad, the sky is red. And I'm like, yeah, right, and then so I go to the window and I'm like, oh, shoot, it is red. And then his mom is like, yeah, there's a fire. And then we've had fires in Altadena before, so she casually brushes it off. And then I do my part,
what what are in my instincts? And I drive up to the highest point in Altadena to see what I can see get to buy a park, Farnsworth Park where I trained my kids at on Lake Street, and I just see a bunch of sheriff officers and fire vehicles, but no fire engines. And then I talked to one of the sheriffs and he said, yeah, just you got to just try and get down the hill. This is
before it even came close to us. And then I went down and I went to tell my parents, and my dad was getting in bed, and ironically, when I was pulling up, his eighty five year old neighbor was, you know, making his way over to their house to tell them that they're going to evacuate because they're hearing it's pretty serious. So I said, I got this, mister hillstock, I go inside and get my parents up, get them together,
and get them down to Pasadena to a hotel. And then I rushed back up to tell the mother of my kids and that we need to leave. And then she doesn't want to, like she's not taking it that serious because we kind of had seen this before. And then so I kind of get a little agitated, and she just like was like, get out. So and when that's the drama within the drama.
Right, because a lot of people don't want to leave, She's not the only one. And you literally sat in your car and on guard in front of the house.
Yes, yeah, And I was on the opposite side of the street because that's how I could see the fire on the actual mountain. And then I just watched it like I went to sleep and and a car would go by and I would I would wake up and be like an hour later and fast forward to I watched the fire crawl across the hill until it was directly in front of us, and I have footage of
this and everything. And then after I saw the fire, the fire went away, and then the smoke stream had overtaken our street, so I couldn't see the fire, but I knew it was burning, and I just knew it was time. And they were coincidentally coming out the house when I was getting out of the car to like I was going to break that door down if I had to, and because I didn't know if they were
sleeping or whatever. And and then I got them down the hill, and then that's what I you know, you say around four in Yeah, yeah.
That's an extraordinary story. It really is.
I mean, the notion that you would park out front knowing that the threat was so imminent.
Yeah, wow, it was never I was there was never and I couldn't set an alarm for like when I wanted to wake up. It was just like, it was never a moment in my life that I was going to allow them to be there and me to be somewhere else. How old are your kids? I had My daughter's fourteen and my son is eight.
Wow.
And my son's school burned down. It was like a couple of blocks of North Alma out to his school burned down.
Where are the kids now? Where is everybody now?
So they're with their mom. We're going from Airbnb to Airbnb, which.
Is a reality for so many people.
You did have insurance, right, Stephen, Yes, yes, my parents had insurance and they're dealing with that whole situation. But it's kind of it's kind of weird, like when people ask me how can they and what go fund me? You know, it's kind of like three families. It's like, you know, my children and their mom. It's like me and my children, we both do for them equally, and then it's my parents.
Sure generation and that so much of that community is filled with this sort of story, I mean, with as you say, generational connections. Uh, Stephens, thank you God. I find it. It's such a compelling story. And it's not over. I mean, are you going to stay in Altadena? Do you think when you build back?
Yeah, there's no chance. I mean if you had a chance to, like, you know, be in this community and see these people and just know that how diverse it was and how calm. Like I've been I'm well traveled, so I've been like to the New York and I've been to the small towns in the South, and like I've seen it all. And I lived in Badnor's, Louisiana for two years and like I've come back home to Altadena, Like there's no felt so good, you know, no place.
Like home, No place like home.
Listen, I'm going to reach out to you separately because I want to get you on my show on YouTube and show some of your footage and hear more about your story. And I'll look forward to talking to you more and following your progress even in building back in Altadena.
Is that cool? Yeah?
Thank you guys so much for just signing a little light on our town.
Yeah.
Wow, Steven Sippio, thank you for joining us at KOFI. Wow, what day story. You know, these charities that are emerging associated with the fires and trying to support so many who are displaced.
There's so many charities, and there's a whole lot of scammers out there.
I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out, because today at the press conference, they had said that the Firefighter Relief Fund hadn't yet been set up, and.
They actually made this point yesterday they said, look, we're hearing from so many of you who want to donate to Ellie County Fire or even of course LAFD, all the agencies to help support our look firefighters and Maroney the chief of La County Fire said yesterday, we just haven't organized that yet, so we don't have a direct fund. So maybe you've given money, but it's not necessarily linked to us officially. He made the point today, but he did say that there's a little bit of progress in that.
Yesterday, the Los Angeles County Fire Department made good progress towards partnering with a reputable five OHO one C three that we'll be able to accept cash checks and electronic donations for the Los Angeles County Fire Department. I ask interested donors to be patient as we finalize our donation process, and I thank you for wanting to support our brave Los Angeles County Fire Department firefighters.
So keyword reputable.
Yeah, but they're are already a long list of charities, and I'm just does that mean that they are not reputable?
Right?
Not necessarily exactly, yes, So it's very hard to distinguish.
So you end up I think gravitating toward U. Two things.
I would say, One, charities that you know, I mean things that you have confidence on to say, salage and army argument across exactly. I mean Jimmy Kimmel, I think posted I want to say it was the it's the World Kitchen Charity essocially, Yeah, done so, so you know that that's you know, that's a solid charity. But beyond that, there are lists of their animal charities, and there are many other charities to support first responders and and and
their families. And you question, and I'm leaving out the myriad of go fund me offerings. I mean, there are stories after story after story of go fund me a posts that will tell you a tale and you'll just want to empty your pockets to try to help these people. And I don't know, I guess GoFundMe do they vet these stories or you can pretty much tell whatever story you want.
Yeah, I mean that's a great question. The vetting process at GoFundMe the other thing to think about. And Supervisor Barger was on this, you need to get a follow up on it. But when you make a GoFundMe donation,
it comes with a price. You have to pay a fee. Sure, So Supervisor Barger was trying to make a five hundred dollars donation to a friend impacted by the fires, and the fee for her five hundred dollars donation was ninety five dollars, and so she reached out to the head of gofund me to say, hey, can we waive these
fees for right now? Sure, I mean, there are thousands of go Fundme pages anyway, but now tack on the devastation that we're seeing here in southern California, and we shouldn't have to be paying all of these fees just trying to help somebody else.
Well, I understand that you've got to pay a fee to a platform. I mean I understand or that when I say you've got to, I mean that these platforms generally designate some part of your donation that goes to the fee of maintaining the platform. The platforms are valuable and it's helpful if you can support them, but as you say, sometimes the fees are just ridiculously high.
Yeah, astronomical. So in this case, she's not saying to waive the fees forever, but can we at least decrease them during this time of crisis.
And so all of this coexists with the opportunism that comes with these moments of crisis that happens in hurricanes, and it's happened now in these fires. So I'm really interested to see when these firefighter relief funds get powered up, and as you say, with a reputable organization, the La County Fire Chief is making that point and so we can actually support those men and women who we are.
So grateful to.
I do to talk about the super Scooper aircraft, you know, Marlo, we want to cover why we don't buy them, you know, we lease them on ninety days cycles, and we'll get into that next as we continue. It's interesting because as we fight these fires, and they have to be fought specifically from the air, the questions as to what kind of aircraft you get, whether you lease, whether you buy these become super relevant and we'll get into some of that next.
Yeah, we're also going to talk about the other sad element to all these fires, and that is missing pets. So many pets have gone missing because of the fires. But we have a great organization who's doing wonderful things to reunite pets and owners.
And now there's one number you can call a clearing house for those owners who are trying to find their pets or describe where the pet is lost. So all of that is still to come. We're just kind of we're fillers. Well, there's that because you're rap we're wrapping. There's no question that's true. We're just wrapping up a lot of fire stuff, loose ends on fire, and these
are loose ends that will continue. There are questions about First of all, there's stuff that's happening now which we continue to update, and I'll give you just one example of that. There are now centralized numbers for those who are missing animals and if you've found a stray animal. Now the city has a central number. This is La City. That number is two one three two seven zero eighty
one fifty five. Again two one three, two seven, zero eighty one fifty five, So that's a sort of centralized number. And there's also a number for Altadena for the eaten fire orphaned animals. Should you find one, should you be missing one six two six five, seven, seven thirty seven fifty two six two six. I have seven, seven, thirty seven fifty two. So those numbers, and we'll give them to you again before the end of the show.
But yeah, yeah, And in addition to that, coming up in the next hour, we have joining us somebody from a service called Love Lost. They've been around before the fires started This is a Petco organization. We're familiar with Petco, but they reunite pets, lost pets and owners and how they do it is really very cool. It's high tech and they've had seventy five thousand reunions already and they've already had several and that's in its history in four years,
but they've already had several. As it relates to the fire zone. So the executive director of that service will be joining us in the next hour.
So many emotional stories related to animals. When you see them reunited, it's like, oh, it's instant.
Choking, I know.
And then the little ones that have you know, suffered burns and they're.
There's some brutal, brutal realities that have followed everything.
Listen.
The question that is often asked is how come we don't have super scoopers?
Why do we lease them? Why don't we in California own them?
And the answers are interesting because superscoopers are obviously capable of picking up these immense quantities of water fifteen hundred gallons of water from large bodies of water like the ocean, and we're right alongside. And the minute they got involved in everything that we've been dealing with. It was something that changed the entire landscape immediately, but.
Not for long though, because they were seen in the first day of the firefight. We have two on loan from Canada, and then the winds were just too treacherous that they had to land. And then and they did go up again, one of them got shot by a drone or got hit struck by a drone and damaged the wing.
So but again, when they're up though, they are total game changer. It's just yeah, then they're grounded based on conditions generally, So what tends to happen in California is that we favor helicopter involvement. Helicopters are good for tactical stuff from what I understand. In other words, they can put out fires in very sort of pinpoint ways. Plus the buckets can pick up water from a lot of different places. They don't need to the scoopers need to
go over a larger body of water. They have to keep moving, if you will, you were describing this yesterday, I think it was yesterday, and the days run together. But the helicopters, their buckets can just even pick up water out of a pool, so they are able to quickly respond, but obviously don't drop as much water as you can get from a super school.
Yeah, and we can also access places that are harder to reach, more so than the Super Scooper. So that's why the California's State Fire Marshal says helicopters do just find for US plus and the feet they have for all of California. They have a diverse arsenal firefighting tools, including twenty three air tankers that do carry up to twelve hundred gallons of water mixed with fire retardant. So there are we do have tools in our tool box that do carry and even exceed the Super Scoopers sixteen
hundred gallons or fifteen hundred gallons. But still the question remains, why not just have our own? Why do we have to do this ninety day increment? And I was pretty struck to read that there are only one hundred and sixty Super Scoopers in the entire world.
Yeah, it's an extraordinary thing.
They're used in Europe and I think they're built in Canada, and their distribution to the world is such that it is sort of covering you wide areas of the world.
With a very small number of these.
Things, and there are there's been basically one model. They haven't really changed the model. It's worked, and so why try to fix what's not broken. And there's not a lot of alternatives to Super Scoopers, so much so that tech startups are trying to race right now to build bigger, more powerful fire fighting drones, but most are still under development. So the Super Scooper it is a premiere aircraft for these special missions, but it doesn't seem that the US
has any plans to buy their own. It's an interesting question given that we used to have wildfire season, and essentially it's wildfire season at least nine months out of the year here.
And by the way, the fires that we're playing out here in southern California and in California generally, it's being played out across the world.
Look at Australia, look at Europe.
I mean, these are fires that are burning hotter, longer, and over much bigger areas than ever before in modern history. So these Superscoopers are in demand. And as you say, tech startups are trying to build bigger and more powerful firefighting drones typically is what they're looking at.
But that will take take a very very long time.
So with all this demand around the world, again, California leases these in ninety day cycles and that's worked for us. We'll have to see moving forward whether we want to invest in the technologies associated with having super scoopers ready to go all the time. As you say, it's a year round thing, but as it sits now, it's more cost effective for California just to lease them.
I don't know the price tag though for the ninety days.
I don't see anything on the price tag, and in all of the different materials that I'm looking at, I don't see anything on but we're actually paying I mean, that's a knowable thing. But you know there's a lot made of the environmental side of this there, meaning you know, when you scoop up salt water and you have this high salinity water that's being dropped on vegetation, it can
damage the vegetation below. Much is made of that. I don't know if that really holds water, if you'll part of the expression, because I mean, if you look at hurricanes and you look at the East Coast, they can be inundated in any of these areas by floods. As a result of hurricanes, and yet vegetation grows back.
Sure, and I guess it's the lesser of two evils. Perhaps. We interviewed a global security expert for retired not former Marla, retired marine intelligence officer, who talked about that and talked about the fact that the salt water it erodes. So if it's not just on the land, if it's on your car and all of that, If on your home,
that can do damage as well. And the mixture that most of our aircraft use is a fire retardant mixed with water, and that is reportedly supposed to be environmentally friendly, and it allows the vegetation to grow back quicker than salt water, if you will. So you know, who knows.
I'm going to find out though during this break how much we pay in California for because I don't know why we don't have that information.
We have all this information about super scoopers.
But in any case, we're on a lease program every ninety days, and frankly, the super scoopers seem appropriately used and appropriate in number, you know, just to put a button on that question of the super scoopers.
How much they cost?
Yeah, So the information is a little tough to come by, so you can find quotes on it from twenty sixteen, and those quotes are around thirty five million. I saw thirty seven million for a super Scooper. But again that's in twenty sixteen, and you're paying again, these figures are now but almost a decade old. Five and a half million just for a handful of the autumn months to have them up. Five and a half million bucks.
And that's for the ninety day lease exactly.
And then the county also pays eleven hundred dollars an hour to operate them. Now, again, these figures are from twenty sixteen. I couldn't find anything more contemporary than that.
Well, you'd think that they have done the math that it's more cost effective to loan them for three months. Yeah, but again times change. And this is to your point, almost ten years ago. And now wildfire season, as it has been for a long time, is basically year round. So is it worth it for us to buy a forty million dollar aircraft to have at our disposal any time?
Yeah? And by the way, you need more than one, I mean.
Yeah, the all right eighty million.
Yeah exactly. So I mean, fortunately there's just nothing but money to spend. So yeah, plenty of money to go around. Updating the Israel Hamas ceasefire. There was a delayed cabinet vote on this ceasefire in Gaza. President or Prime Minister, I guess he is. Netan Yahoo in Israel was saying that Hamas has renegged on parts of the agreement. And so this is a very fragile agreement and it's really played out as such because now it looked to be
in doubt. I think they now agree they are going to vote on it tomorrow.
So it's been especially just pushed back a day exactly, and specifically Net and Yahoo was saying that Hamas was seeking to dictate which Palestinian prisoners should be released in exchange for Israeli hostages, and that was hit. That was Hamas reneging. According to a net Yahoo.
Apparently Hamas is sort of wanting their top dogs released, and net and Yahoo is saying, you don't get to dictate the terms of you know, who was released. On some level, that's a major reducto on what was going on. But that's the kind of thing that's informing the problem. So Anthony Blincoln was at a press conference during which he was heckled really by a couple of activists, and it sounded like this, Finally, I just wanted to shore this morning.
Get your hands off me, Get your hands off me, Get your hands off me, answer a damn question.
Yeah.
So obviously when he's saying get your hands off me, he had asked a question. He kept shouting it and it was being ignored.
Get your hands off me, Get your hands off me, Get your hands off me, answer.
A damn question. I look forward to answering questions.
And you know, not a real snipletar weapons everybody from the icy Jake. I was sitting here quietly, and now I'm being manhandled by two or three people. You're in pontificate about a free press. You pontificate about a free press. You're hurting me.
You're hurting me.
You are hurting me.
I've been asking questions after being total Please Matt Miller that he will not answer my questions.
That's how I ad please, sir, respectively, respect the process.
We'll have an opportunity to take questions in two minutes.
What's at the point of the Hey, the May thirty first statements have blocked the ICJ orders.
He blocked the ICJ orders. Please sir, respect the process.
Thank you, respect the process. Respective process.
Everybody, everybody from the from EMS internationals, from the ICY day saying that is well doing tenn aside an extermination and you're telling me to respect the process.
Criminal. Why aren't you with the hey?
Why aren't you with the hey?
Why aren't you with that?
So there is uh, you know, these questions that surround us, I think have to do with credential press. I would think a state department pressure has only credential press people.
But these people work credentials.
Right, yeah, and you know their identity.
We know Max Blumenthal who is one of them.
He's an activist and uh, the other is a Jordanian journalist. I believe Max is an American And.
And ultimately when you're hearing his voice get quieter and quieter as he's shouting, he's escorted out.
So yes, it's it would seem one of those situations where there was a briefing going on and he's shouting questions during the briefing, so you know, he's not waiting for the Q and A period, right.
And Blaken's saying, you can ask all the questions you want I don't know if he's necessarily saying that, but you can ask a question once I'm done briefing.
Yeah, exactly, now to be fair. And when I say to be fair, I mean just when you know, in the fullness of the whole thing.
Obviously, this is a viral moment. We just played it.
It's being carried by a lot of other news organizations probably, And so to the extent that activists like Max and others when I say Max, like I know him. I've never met him, Max Blumenthal, but the I just know who he is. But that these people could be successful in making their points. I mean in a way he was successful.
Right on dred percent. If it bleeds, it leads, right. So this is the moment in the blanken pressor and the briefing today that is now going to be the headline.
Yeah, at least one of them. Look, there's a lot involved in this agreement. It's not just releasing prisoner's prisoner exchange. There's a ceasefire involved, there is land involved.
It's a two phase agreement which could take.
Months exactly exactly, and so there are many opportunities during this entire process for things to fall apart. So this fragile agreement. It's huge that it's happened. But the idea somehow that you know, it's a lead pipe singe to continue. I think it is not necessarily the case.
But Blinkeln said, it's not exactly surprising that in a process and a negotiation that has been this challenging and this fraught, you may get a loose end or tying up that loose end as we speak, So he's referring to it as just that a loose end.
Yeah, I mean it may be a loose end, but there it's a pretty heavy duty loose end.
So but in other words, he's downplaying it.
Yeah, would do better, which is what a diplomat should do.
You know that you'd expect that from the Secretary of State. The net and yahoo government and cabinet does vote on the agreement, though, that perhaps is the thing to focus on.
That will happen tomorrow.
Let's say it's expected to happen tomorrow.
Yeah, that might be a more appropriate way to frame it.
The new pick for Trump's energy chief is talking about the wildfires. We'll get to that next also in the next hour. As we were saying, seventy five thousand reunion stories in the four years from this one organization that reunites animals and pets with their owners. It's extraordinary. And we get into the second Trump era coming up. It all begins the inauguration on Monday. All of that still
to come. Gary and Shannon Show, Mark and Marl is sitting in on KFI AM six forty live 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.