Altadena Warnings

Bureau of Fiscal Service. That's the program that handles about ninety percent of federal payments trillions of dollars. But this order comes after the Justice Department yesterday had agreed in a proposed court order to make sure that they limit access to the sensitive records to only two DOGE employees special government employees within DOGE, and those two would only have read only permission. This was approved today in a

brief order that came out from the judge. The share by the way of Republicans who say they want Elon Musk to have significant influence and the Trump administration has fallen precipitously. In a poll that was taken just a few days after the election, forty seven percent of Republicans surveyed said they wanted Musk to have a lot of influence in the Trump administration. Twenty nine percent said a little. Today, the share of Republicans is way down. It went from

forty seven to twenty six percent. Meanwhile, they want Elon must to have a little influence ballooned. It's up to forty three percent, and now seventeen percent say they don't want him to have any influence at all.

this is going to work all right. Locally, the Eaton fire over now to Dina burn more than fourteen thousand acres, and the county sent out evacuation alerts to some areas that were too late, and they did not use all of the public warning channels at its disposal, and we've seen that those lapses have had disastrous and in some cases deadly results. Half of the La County Fire Department

waterdowsing helicopters were out of service. Apparently that equipment issue like that means that firefighters didn't have all the tools at their disposal. Despite the fact that we knew that a massive wind storm was coming in and had been warned about for several days. Wall Street Journal came out with a report that said this is a sort of a cascading event, a cascading series of problems that may have led to the deaths of many many people on

that west side of Altadena. For example, Juan and Lori Corral lived west of Lake Avenue. They've been there for about nineteen years. They raised their teenage kids there, and about dinner time they know the fire started six thirty ish. They had lost power. About forty minutes later, he goes outside and he actually takes a video of the fire approaching and said that they were listening for an evacuation alert on the radio, specifically to the east of Lake Avenue.

All those alerts started to come in, but none of them went to the Corrals on the west side of Lake Avenue, and one reassured his wife, don't worry, they'll give us notice when it's time to leave. Their actual warning came from neighbors, not from any official source, and they left their house at about nine to twenty three. They did take some things, but not enough. They had no idea when they would have been able to return.

In an emergency alert system that can broadcast an evacuation alert and warnings to lowal radio and TV, stations was never activated by the county for the fire. They were relying on the push notifications that went out via your cell phone and the emergency alert system that they've got. That's not the one that we do, you know, the ones that we play, But they were using their own systems.

The La County Coordinated Joint Information Center set in a statement it couldn't immediately comment on all of this.

through their emergency notification system. According to calls that were obtained by the Wall Street Journal, firefighters were made aware of at least ten houses on the west side of Lake Avenue that were on fire before an alert was actually sent, and it wasn't until three twenty five in the morning, at least nine hours after the fire started, before an evacuation alert was sent to the west side

of Lake Avenue. A little bit more on this and another story that you've heard Amy mention all morning, Edison is now taking at least some potential responsibility for one of the fires. A bunch of stories that we are following. The EPA is going to establish a household hazardous waste staging site will Rogers State Beach.

He said Palestinians would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities after the United States is handed Gaza by Israel at the conclusion of fighting, So whenever that would be, and he said, the US, working with the great development teams from all over the world, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of

its kind on Earth. A new strain of H five N one bird flu has spread to six dairy herds in Nevada. The Department of Agriculture there says this new strain called D one DOT one has been connected to serious infections in humans, but it is different than the B three one three. It was detected in other dairy herds throughout the country. This newer strain was first detected in birds, and people came in contact with some infected birds. We'll talk more about political stuff when we get into

swamp Watch. At the top of the hour, we were talking about the Wall Street Journal's breakdown about what happened in the hours leading up to and during the Eaten fire over in Altadena, when emergency evacuation alerts for those people on the west side of Lake Avenue came way too late, many many hours after that fire had started, and even after some of the homes on the west

side of Lake Avenue were in fact on fire. One of the other issues pointed out by the Wall Street Journal is some of the La County firefighting equipment was on the sidelines that we did. We the county did pre position some of their assets fifteen engines, a bunch of water carrying trucks, some firefighting equipment that were put in different areas where the expectation was that a fire could start. There were some crucial firefighting equipment pieces that

were still awaiting maintenance. About twenty eight percent of the La County Fire Department's frontline large pumper engines were out of surface as a service, most of those with mechanical issues. The specialized rigs could carry five hundred galls loans of water plus hoses, and in some cases the county did tap some reserve equipment to fully equip their stations, but that reduced the number of backup trucks that would otherwise

have been available now. According to the County Fire Department, Heidi Oliva, a spokesperson, said the agency didn't have equipment issues that affected its response and they planned to review every aspect of preparation. She said they were unable to complete an aircraft replacement plan that was recommended in twenty nineteen because in part of the pandemic and some aircraft

production limitations. Half of the ten helicopters owned by La County Fire were out of service on the morning of January seventh, and again most of those were mechanical issues.

the Eton fire started in the hills above Altadena. A couple weeks ago we told you about how there is surveillance video that appears to show the beginning of the fire white flashes kind of off in the distance, and a few minutes later the telltale orange and yellow flames

that existed below the power lines in those hills above Altadena. Well, on January nineteenth, a couple weeks ago, technicians for so Cal Edison started testing the electrical equipment near the origin of that fire, and according to Pedro Pizzaro, President, chief executive of Edison International, they engineers noticed some small white flashes that were appearing on the high voltage transmission lines

when the power was being restored. That is a telltale sign that the system was functioning abnormally.

The lawyers for the Department of Justice vowed to notify every federal employee who is subject to the buyout, more than two million federal employees. We're facing a deadline tonight midnight Eastern time to accept the administration's offer for a buyout. There you'd get basically eight months of pay and benefits.

A federal judge in Massachusetts is going to consider the eleventh hour request to block the buyout from moving forward, so he set a hearing today to consider a request by three federal unions to issue a temporary restraining order that would suspend the debt line. The unions that represent a combined about eight hundred thousand federal civil servants have argued that the deferred resignation offer is unlawful, it's arbitrary, and would result in a dangerous one to two punch

to the federal government. So at least forty thousand federal workers have already accepted these deferred resignation offers to leave the federal government.

But the CEO and Chief execu sorry, CEO and president of Edison International, the parent company Socalaedison, has said that's not enough. This is an ongoing investigation. This isn't conclusive evidence that they started the fire. That being said, they are a little closer to accepting responsibility for the Hughes fire. That's the Hurst fire. I apologize the Hurst fire that started in the Silmar area and contained about eight days later.

That one really didn't damage much of anything. This was out in the hills, thankfully, and never really got into the neighborhoods there in Silmar. But this update from so Cal Edison was part of the information that was submitted to California Public Utilities Commission. The utility is required to provide regular updates to the Commission, and what they said in their statement today is SCE believes its equipment may

be associated with the ignition of the Hearst fire. Cause of the fire still under investigation, and that SEE continues to cooperate with authorities. The La City Fire Department is

also investigating. They reported that the fire started north of Saddle Ridge Road, and yes, there are transmission towers in that area, so they may be closer to accepting responsibility for starting that Hearst fire in Silmar, but they got a ways to go before they accept responsibility for the eat and fire, the deadly and incredibly destructive eat and fire. After all of this, and in the wake of the destruction and the damage and the death from these fires,

there will be rebuilding. There will be to use the corny term or reburnt of these neighborhoods, these communities.

You heard lausd talking about making the schools that they'll rebuild more disaster proof. Maya Bratkas, for example, was watching this fire back on January seventh, and on her family's TV, she saw the synagogue in Pasadena where she went to Hebrew school where she celebrated her about Mitzvah at thirteen, and the thing was on fire and she didn't know what's going to happen up in the hills what she referred to as the natural splendor of Eaton Canyon. But

she was terrified for her family. They live around Altadena and Sierra Madre. They weren't sure if they were okay. She'd been struggling to make sense of all of this and said, for her family, we didn't lose our homes, so I'm not going through that grief. I know that so many people did, but she said she felt herself kind of fallen into a pretty dark place and she

wanted to be able to contribute. And the way she did that was she created drawings for her friends about what their homes used to look like, the homes that they had lost. She is an actor, self taught artist. She tufts rugs and crafts jewelry. She said she'd never trod. She never trod. She never tried drawing houses before this, but in her work at cal Arts up in the Santa Clarita area, she probably had to take some kind of art class.

going to do it free of charge. And if you wanted drawings of homes that hadn't been affected by fire, you could do it. You could buy them from her, and she would donate anything she had made from that to help her friends in Altaden. And she's been making the drawings digitally, she's printing them soon she's going to

distribute them to people. And her website for the project is now linked to a list of go Fundmese pages for people who are affected by the fire, and said donations to her project will go toward all of the project's costs, including the possibility of putting together a book

on all of this. This is one example of the things that people will find a way to help that rebirth, rebuilding that exists, and more power to people like Maya who will be doing this when it comes to the fires, By the way, there will be incredible amounts of government money that goes into the rebuilding. And one of the things that happened yesterday is Gavin Newsom had to meet with President Trump in DC. Gaven Newsom spent some time with Donald Trump today in what is referred to as

a weird relationship. And he'll explain that he was on CNN last night for an interview he kind of described

what his relationship is with with President Trump. There is Steve Lopez and The Times actually has a column today about trees and as a result of the fires that we have seen, if there are questions that need to be asked about what kind of trees exist in LA in California in general when it comes to wildfires, Gaven Newsom is already ordering the state to speed up some of the rule making when it comes to wildfire safety

around homes in fire prone areas. And those rules would actually ban most plants and combustible materials like mulch and wood fencing that are close to your home. They would require you to clear an area within five feet of your home of five feet of your walls. That they call it zone zero. An ember resistant zone. There could be no flammable materials the exception of some mature trees, and it would apply in those areas where the risk

of fire is rated as very high. You can find the state's fire risk designations in different maps in different places to see where you would be. The concept was developed by researchers who found that homes are vulnerable to flying embers that land close to the structure. They then ignite the vegetation or wood mulch, or the fencing or

some other materials there. And the state legislature has mandated the creation of these requirements, these zone zero requirements, which were supposed to go into effect a couple of years ago, the Border Forestry Protection has delayed. A spokesperson says wildfires here at La means that the board is still in the pre rule making phase of development for zone zero, but at least one draft of it had the zone zero requirements applying to new homes first and then later

to existing homes. It's not clear if they're still going to do that, so we know that that's going on the state level. Steve Lopez's column in the La Times talks about the potential for getting rid of trees. Nobody wants to get rid of trees in general, but there are some trees that do better than others when it

comes to wildfires. As an example, those native grasses and bushes that grow the California chaparral the coastal sage scrub tend to be less flammable than non native grasses, according to a research scientist at the Conservation Biology Institute also happens to be a fire ecology expert and basically explains that when you clear the native stuff out and then let non native grasses and trees and bushes grow, those

non native plants tend to be more fire prone. If you have a healthy, well watered live oak tree California live oak tree on your property, or a sycamore tree on your property, those can actually protect your home in instances like fires. They contain a lot of moisture, They can be more fire resistant than the house itself. They can actually intercept flying before they get into the building.

A lot of the homes that we saw destroyed in both the Palisades and the Eaten fires were destroyed because of the embers that we saw specifically blowing from palm trees. Steve actually points out in his column, you know, getting rid of a palm tree in LA would be like getting rid of the Dodgers or surfing or food trucks.

But maybe based on the tiki torch like images that we saw of these palm trees and they're burning fronds, throwing embers into the air in ways that we had never seen before, despite all the wildfires that we've seen in this area, is this now a time to get rid of some of those palm trees, because, by the way, you go to Costa Rica and you see similar palm trees, I mean, the same kind of palm tree, but it's

in a much more humid, moist environment. Those trees would not act the same as the dried out remnants of palm trees that we have here in southern California. Swamp watch when we come back. Tech Talk also next hour and are you okay with previews of commercials? This is one of these trends that has popped up around Super Bowl in the last couple of years where we know there's going to be a commercial about Dunkin Donuts with Ben Affleck.