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.
We want to jump right into this. We are in the midst of the recovery phase after our twin fire disasters from January seventh, the Eating fires in Palisades, the Eating fire, I should say in Altadena and then the
Palisades Fire over in Pacific Palisades. And last week we went through a few recent fires that have happened, devastating fires and talked about the recovery and the rebuild process and the lessons that we have learned from places like Maui or up in Paradise, or even the Tubs fire that devastated the Santa Rosa area as well as Lake
County and Napa County. And we wanted to talk with Jennifer Gray Thompson, who was the CEO of After the Fire, which helps people recover, get back on their feet, of find a positive future in what was a devastating situation for everybody. And Jennifer joins us now and I want to appreciate Jennifer, thanks for taking time for us today.
Thank you for having me I'm born.
And raised Petaluma, so a lot of the stories about the Tubs fire hit home. We all knew people who were involved with it, who lost homes in the Tubs fire, and then obviously to see it here in the Palisades and over in Alzadena, more stories, similar stories of people just losing everything so quickly. Where did what's your experience with the Tubs fire? And where did after the fire come from?
Well?
After the fire was actually born at the same time as the Tubs Fire, but as another organization called Rebuild North Day Foundation, we thought we were going to be the one big disaster, like how could this ever happen again? Across four counties. We actually lost eighty nine hundred structures in several fires, all in the same night that started. So I live in Tsinama Valley. I love that you're a pedolumble. That's wonderful. So it was such such a
devastating experience. And I worked for the County of Sonoma at the time, and so when this organization was started, they needed somebody who had like high social capital and understood government to sort of take the lead and figure out how are we going to get our you know how are we going to make it through this incredibly daunting process where you know, if you saw it, it felt like the apocalypse had had come upon us and we're
going to live in an ash tray forever. We just didn't know, and I had nobody to call that first year as we were all learning our way through this. It's you know, rebuild and you know, recovery from disasters and absolute group projects. So my job is really like the group project coordinator. What happened then is we did a lot of good work in the first year, we learned, we made a lot of mistakes, and then in the thirteen months later the campfire and the Losey fire happened.
So just out of a sense of human decency, we started helping them saying, hey, we don't know a lot,
but we get we're thirteen months ahead. Maybe you can avoid our mistakes and maybe we can hand you some adaptable systems, and also a community that's sort of been walking through this since then in twenty twenty, we've just continue to pay it forward to every mag Fire community that has ever been affected, except for the Thomas fire, because that came right after us, and we have found that we were able to build this massive community of survivors and subject matter expertise who show up, and we
designed the delegation so that we can actually serve the community in front of us. We're very respectful of that. And then our real job is to really support the local leadership, so it's all locally designed and led.
We've seen since these fires a huge number of groups, organizations, foundations crop up in order to help. I mean, we had the fire aid concerts that raised one hundred million dollars. You had Rick Caruso and his group of private companies come together in order to help rebuild. Then obviously you've
got all of the government agencies that are involved. How do you make sure that all of those good meaning people are going the right direction and that there's no conflict between what they between the private and the public partnerships there.
Well, the's first thing you do is you have to organize the community. And that means so these fires we call them sisters, not twins. They affect very different communities, but what each of them has in common is a deep commitment to the people there, the place and to rebuilding. We find that the more community organizing you have, the more likely you are to come back in a way that's very much survivor informed and the way that the
community wants it to go. The community can drive this process, but that also requires a relationship between the fire survivors, the funders, and the public sector. Organizing the community into a system we call block captains or zone captains, which is really like a representative way to do it is really the number one way that you can sort of drive the process. It certainly has worked here and in Paradise.
In the case of I'm not really sure what the groups are doing, but I can tell you that we are working with Department of Angels, the organization stood up by Evan Spiegel of Snapchat and the California Community Foundation.
They had a lot of conversations with many people, including us, and from that they have designed a community organizing an an organization that will help the community not only organize, but support them for the long term for all of the resources that they will need to maintain that cohesion. We really like it. We haven't seen it before and so supported, so we are working with them. The biggest thing is just to ask. It's okay to ask questions, but people need to also give, you know, give it
a minute. One of the things I'm seeing in LA that I'm a little concerned about is there seems to be like a why are we already done, especially from some of the media, And I'm saying, like this just happened, Like you guys are doing a good job. You know, it is moving the way it needs to. It's going to be very imperfect. These people have never done this before, and our job is to connect them with people who have done it so that they can have all of
the best information possible. But like Colonel Swinson has done this, he just did this on Maui. For all of the debris removal, they are ahead of schedule. I think there's a lot of intentionality, but they're you know, there have been missteps, so I'm not coding over that, but that has to be somewhat expected. But really empowering the community
is a number one way through. I can also tell you that the big funders have reached out to us a lot, and they have been incredibly intentional about really wanting to hear from the community. So I feel very positive. If you look at the list yesterday released by fire Aid, they they are supporting a variety of organizations that runs deep into both of these communities. We are one of those.
Let me ask you.
You mentioned that you have experience in at least county level government. I'm curious, do you have the ability or do you have the ears of the politicians the bureaucrats who would need to get rid of some of the red tape in order to rebuild.
Can you help advise them on how to do that?
Well, you know, they're getting lots of advice from other county leads to people have really good experience in Sinoma County and Butte County and the County of Maui. We actually just brought the managing director from the County of Maui, Josiah Nishida, to La a couple of weeks ago. We're definitely in conversation with the supervisors, and I know that the Blue Ribbon Committee that Supervisor Horvos put together actually
has really talented people on it. So I am offering advice for sure, and we are here for them, but I'm also giving them just a moment because I'm watching what they're doing and I know that have good advisors, So I do have that experience. What we what we expect absolutely is for all of these jurisdictions to hire a third party contractor that will expedite all the permitting. Are firms out there that are extremely experienced. There's often
a misunderstanding when stuff gets delayed. When it gets delayed, there are a number of reasons. Sometimes it is the you know, it is the jurisdiction, and sometimes it is the homeowner who wants to rebuild back in a way that requires extra permitting, adding a pool, doubling the size of their home. All of these things are fine. They have the right to do that, but it does trigger a longer process. So it's very complicated. There are many many steps to it, and it can be it can
feel at very opaque at times. That's one of the reasons why we exist, so that we can sort of break that down with them as they go. Let communities know what's around the corner. We expect you to be cleaned up in under a year completely, it might even be eight to ten months. We do not expect a two year process. And we know that they are standing at those contractors and engaging with them now.
It is a little bit weird that you have to have a group like after the fire, dealing with wildfires across the western United States. But I'm glad it's there. Jennifer, thanks for your time today, appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
You bet, Jennifer grey Thompson there again, Founder and chief executive officer After the Fire USA. In fact, that's their website. Go to AFTERTHFIREUSA dot org and find out information about all the programs that they have coming up.
Next hour.
By the way, right at ten thirty, LAPD chief Jim McDonald is going to join us. So the plan is that we're going to have these regular chats with the chief of the LAPD. Big fan of Jim McDonald, but we're going to ask him about some of the stuff that's going on, some of the headlines, including the whole LAPD stance when it comes to the potential for federal immigration rates here in LA That comes up at ten thirty.
So President Trump has suggested that Ukraine was in fact responsible for the invasion by Russia, which makes very little sense.
Here was what he was talking about yesterday.
Well, we have Marshal Law, essentially Marshal Law in Ukraine. Where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at four percent approval rating.
He's not down at four percent. I don't even know where they're I don't know where he got that number from. There are polls in Ukraine that show him close to fifty percent.
That's not great.
In fact, it's right about what President Trump is right now, but not four percent.
But today I heard, oh, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given him almost all of the land everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished, and not one dome would have been knocked down.
This was President's Lenski.
No tot nozai.
President Trump.
Okay, well he's speaking Ukrainian, I will translate. He says.
Unfortunately, President Trump, who we spread, who we respect a lot as a leader of the nation that we really respect, the American nation, who supported us all the time. Unfortunately Trump lives in this disinformation space. ABC's Patrick Reval is in Key.
The comments from President Trump have really sparked outrage and fury here in Ukraine. This claimed that it was Ukraine and not Russia that began this war, and that Ukraine was to blame for this unprovoked invasion that has caused so much enormous destruction and suffering. Here we also heard President Trump seeming to attack the legitimacy of the Ukrainian president Volodimia Zelenski, saying that he only has four percent
approval rating. Now, in reality, most respective polls in this country show that he has more like fifty percent approval.
All right, So they go back and forth and then Trump takes to truth social and just blasts Zelensky.
This was his post earlier this morning. Think of it.
A modestly successful comedian. Vladimir Zelensky talked to the United States of America and to spending three hundred and fifty billion dollars to go into a war that couldn't be one that never had to start, but a war that he without the US and Trump will never be able to settle. The United States has spent two hundred billion dollars more than Europe, and Europe's money is guaranteed, while
the United States will get nothing back. Why didn't Sleepy Joe Biden demand equalization and that this war is far more important to Europe than it is to us. We have a big, beautiful ocean as separation. He goes on to say he refused. He Zelenski refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle, a dictator without elections. Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a country. It is being
received well well in the Kremlin. Moscow's foreign policy administrators have said the first and so far apparently the only Western leader who was publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the brazen path of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO. Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister in Russia, said, this is already a signal that he understands our position.
This does not look good at all. The idea that you would.
Blame Ukraine for a Russian invasion is ludicrous, It's absolutely crazy. Is it still part of the negotiation process where he's trying to sidle up to Vladimir Putin so that he can grant some more concessions to Ukraine. I don't get it at this point. It's one thing to suggest that you've got an a team of public officials in Marco Rubio and Mike Walls and Stephen Witkoff in Saudi Arabia new negotiate with Russia, and then to just absolutely take
a steaming turd on Zelensky and Ukraine. Doesn't that part of it doesn't make sense to me at all. We are in the midst now the recovery phase of our fire disasters. From January seventh, we talked with Jennifer Gray, the CEO of After the Fire USA, about how recovery begins and about how these different organizations come together, and you could check out again more information about After the Fire After THEFIREUSA dot org. The Trump administration is canceled
all government news subscriptions deemed non mission critical. This is a memo that came out was posted in the Washington Post. A total of six news organizations were singled out. The Economist, The New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg News, the AP, and Reuters.
All subscriptions end. The mandate is a global one.
It's given one hundreds of US embassies and consulates overseas. This also makes no since a new poll conducted by Emerson College College commissioned by KTLA found that those people in California. Of those surveyed, fifty four percent said the high speed rail project is a good use of state funds fifty four percent. If you are one of those people who believes that the high speed rail is a good use of state money, I would love to hear
your justification for that. I would love to know why people believe that that is still a good idea going forward. You can always leave us a talk back, You can send an email, whatever it is. April twentieth. April twentieth, nineteen ninety nine.
The reaction of so many people today was oh no, not again. Another high school, Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado, this time on the edge of Denver.
It has been a horror.
The gunman fell, those students who rushed the school and open fire for reasons we do not know yet, for reasons we may never know.
I mean, it was just April of this year that they held a twenty fifth anniversary commemoration of the shooting itself for all the survivors and family members there in Littleton, Colorado.
Brings back the trauma. It's heartbreaking to see this happen again and again and again and sort of having you know, frankly, I have very little hope that things will change.
That was one of the survivors who was actually injured in the shooting. Back in nineteen ninety nine, I mentioned this. I was a reporter in Seattle at the time, and while this was going on, I mean, while there were still shots being fired, our news director up in Seattle had booked me a ticket to fly to Denver and I was going to cover the story. And this is before we knew anything about the extent of the devastation
inside that high school. I got to Little in Colorado about two in the morning or three in the morning and set up with all of the other media members in Clement Park, which is just I think it's sort of in the same large block area of the high school itself, but it's a good quarter mile away from the fence line of the school. But I set up in that parking lot basically spent three days there and got all of the news as.
Everybody else did. That there were.
Twelve students who were killed, There was one teacher who was killed, a couple dozen people injured, and it was by far the most difficult story that I'd ever covered. I was that not only was sort of the media staging area, it became an area for that was basically as close as you could get to the school. So that meant that friends and family members would show up at all hours a day and night to just get
as close as they possibly could. And it was also sort of a secondary parking lot for the kids who didn't want to pay for the permits to the school, whatever it were forty buy or whatever it was, they would park at this sort of auxiliary public park parking lot. And when you get twenty four hours after the shooting, forty eight hours after the shooting, you realized that some
of those cars in that parking lot hadn't moved. And when we got there on the third day, the third morning, some of them had been taped off with yellow tape because they belonged to some of the kids who were killed in the school. One of those who was injured was Anne Marie hack Alter. She was paralyzed in the shooting and she was eating lunch with friends when the two shooters came in to Columbine. She was seventeen She was shot twice, once in the chest, once in the back,
paralyzed from the waist down. Her brother, Nathan was a freshman at Columbine at the time. He was actually trapped in the school until the SWAT team came and got him out. Six months after the shooting, her mom, Anne Marie's mom, walked into a pond shop, asked to see a gun, loaded it, and shot herself there. She'd been struggling with depression mental issues even before the shooting, and obviously this was a massive impact on her and her family.
Now Anne Marie dealt with the loss of her mother, talked about rebuilding her life emotionally, physically, said she became fiercely independent. She learned to maneuver in a wheelchair, to drive, and live by herself. The Townshend family, the family of Lauren Townsend, who was killed in the shooting, became really great friends with Anne Marie hawk.
Calter and.
Helped her steer through this life of rebuilding. After the Columbine shooting, and when Sue Kleebold, the mother of one of the shooters, released a memoir, it was Anne Marie hawk Calter wrote a note addressed to Sue Kleebold on Facebook, saying she felt no ill will. She said, it's been a rough road for me, but bitterness is like swallowing a poison pill and expecting the other person to die. It only harms yourself. I have forgiven you and only
wish you the best well. Amrie Hawk Calter dealt with chronic pain, the lingering effects of the shooting, pressure sores from being in a wheelchair for as long as she had. She was found dead just Sunday at her home in Westminster, Colorado, and she died at the age of forty three. Police said that they were called to check on her after
they asked somebody was asked for a welfare check. The Adams County Coroner said it was transferred to the Jefferson County Corner given that her death was likely related to complications of paraplegia associated with the Columbine shooting. In The Jefferson County Corner's office has not completed its autopsy report, but twenty five years after the Columbine shooting, they're saying that this forty three year old woman apparently died from
complications from the injuries that she suffered that day. You can always leave us a talk back message when you're listening on the app. Just hit that little microphone button, send us a message.
Hey, Gary and Shannon Frank the process over here. I just wondered if you'd give my daughter a shout out to Melissa Navarro if you get out in South Dakota. Just gave birth to my first my first granddaughter. Yes, yes, Camilla Maurice Sofigo. He wanted a congratulator and wanted to see if you can send her a shout out and congratulator.
Thank you, guys, you just did. We don't need to you did all the work. Good job, Grandpa.
I didn't hear Trump blame Ukraine. I heard him saying that it could have been avoided had they had discussions prior to the war breaking out, and then he could have helped with that.
And you know, I know you're not going.
To put this on the air, but to be honest with you, everything he said is pretty much true, with the exception of the four percent approval rating. So len's he's a con man, just saying have.
A good day.
All right, let's go through some of this. Only because I don't have a lot of time.
Well, we have Marshall law, essentially Marshall law in Ukraine where the leader in Ukraine. I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at four percent approval rating.
I mean they have canceled or pull sponed elections because you know war, So I guess you could say it's technically martial law.
But today I heard, oh, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it.
You should have never started it. You should have never started it.
Ended it three years. You should have never started it.
That's his words. Listen Tomorrow night.
The Four Nations face off includes another Team USA VERSUS Canada game.
Now.
In the first nine seconds of the Team USA Canada game on Saturday night in Montreal, there were there was fighting.
There was not just one fight. There were not just two fights.
There were three separate fights between US and Canada players, Fists flying between the United States dates in Canada. In this Four Nations face off, social media absolutely fell apart. And you don't even have to be a hockey fan to enjoy what's happening. These hockey stars dropping gloves, slugging it out. The Four Nations face off is sort of an all star innovation from the NHL four national teams of top players that represent Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the
United States. We don't do the Fabulous Five or the Five Nations because Russia is not included in all of this because of the International Ice Hockey Foundation. The round robin tournament concludes tomorrow night in Boston with yet another USA Canada match. It's usually, I mean, this is usually the epitome of the best of professional hockey as well, best on best. Canada is playing the part of the metal hoarding Goliath, as one writer puts it, in the US,
the prideful contender that is tired of disrespect. All of this comes up as well at a time when Canadians have been booing the American national anthem up there. This is one of those sports where they play both national anthems because of the teams that are in both countries. Team Canada's captain Sidney Crosby doesn't sound thrilled about this discussion. He says, we respect the anthems, being the players. I'll leave it at tad, but it's incredible. This is absolute madness.
The games have featured the sort of aggression and the hits that you usually don't get until NHL playoffs. These are well paid men. These men are the greatest at what they do. You have Team USA stars who play for Canadian NHL teams, and then Canadian players who play for American teams, and in some cases you literally have NHL teammates on opposite sides in this four Nations showoff, show off, showdown, face off, whatever turn you want to use,
it will be incredible. Because if you think that the Canadians booed the American national anthem, wait till the Americans here?
Oh God, not a name, cruel, Hey.
Frist blood, everybody knows the words, right, we come back? Ooh, you thought Canada USA was bad? You thought Blake Lively Justin Baldoni was bad? What about mayor Karen Bass versus supervisor Lindsey Horvath? Mean, girls, I know what side I'm picking. You miss any part of the show, go back and listen to the podcast. Go to KFIAM six forty dot com, slash Gary and Shannon or anywhere you find your podcast. Just type in the words Gary and Shannon. Back right after this.
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