Fire Hardening Follow up: Fact & Fiction Part 1 | Hour 1

It is a hard pill to swallow. That the best of southern California has to start moving on and continuing with our lives getting back to normal as it were, or the new normal for a while. But we are not going to ignore the fact that there is still fresh devastation out there and a lot of confusion. So here's the thing. Today. On the show I Know last weekend, I spent both shows talking about evacuations, fire hardening, what to think what to expect in regards to the future

for those victims. How do we rebuild? How do you rebuild when an entire neighborhood is destroyed? This weekend, as a result of a lot of questions coming into me this week a lot, and as a result of me doing a lot of perusing and on various forms from social media to major media outlets, and seeing so much misinformation about what to do next for fire hardening your home. I'm so concerned about this that I want to take

this weekend and I want to take calls. I want to clear up confusion, I want to answer questions, and I'll tell you what. I've got one goal this weekend, one goal, and that is to number one, help you understand how a fire interacts with your home. And you would think, yeah, I know, dand burns it.

How should we get our home ready? If you're not thinking about it, then that, in one degree or another, is a result of some of the confusion and the misunderstanding of what the threat level is. We don't want another one of these events. I know I'm not going to be able to stop it from devastating another neighborhood the next time it happens, but I can stop it from devastating your home if you're willing to hang with me and listen through. And that's what we're going to

do right now. What's fast approaching is not a fire but the fire hardening frenzy, and we need to separate fact from fiction as we go. Sound good, all right? Let me introduce you to our crack team. Sam Is on the board. Good morning's dad, Good morning, dear. How are you doing today? I'm well, I am well, I'm well. My friend. I heard you on with Matt Money and Monks earlier this week pre five o'clock as you guys continued, and I gotta say you sounded really good, bro, really good.

You know, it's a little teen game, and the trash talking gets a little heavy, and you know she's not mad at me or any No, it's not because of that, No, it's just you know, losing is exhausting.

the house whisper. Hey, whether you live in a condo or cottage or castle for that matter, it doesn't matter. I'm here to help you take your home to the next level. And guess who joined me just now, just now, welcome home. Well, hello sunshine, good morning to you.

Now that we're turning a corner. Everybody's talking fire hardening, fire hardening. Yeah. I just took a quick glance on social media this week at various people saying, oh, check out this, and they've got some gizmo contraptions set up to put sprinklers on the top of their roof or out here or you know what. I'm saying, this kind

of stuff. You're starting to see it everywhere now. Actually, companies are springing up saying hire us and we will come out and do this amazing thing, so your house will never bring I just want you to take a beat and listen to me this weekend, because there's so much money, so much money that can be wasted, so much time, and at the same time for a very little effect.

I know we're getting our arms around the fires fantastic, but we are not gotten our arms around the ignorance that abounds throughout the region in terms of who needs to fire hard in their home and how to do it. And we're going to address both of those. So you stick with me now this morning. I want to answer as many calls as possible, but we're going to start out with giving you a quick fire status update here. This is what I understand the latest that has crossed

my desk. Here, the Palisades fire still just under twenty four thousand acres, coming in at twenty three thy seven hundred and thirteen, a big jump from yesterday. Yesterday's reporting now at forty three percent containment. It's not over, but I tell you what, that is really really good news in terms of getting control of this fire fire. Five thousand structures damaged or destroyed, the Eaten Fire fourteen thousand, one hundred and seventeen acres now seventy three percent containment.

Great news there, and unfortunately even more seven thousand structures damaged or destroyed. By the way, gives you a perspective if you're not familiar with the area. The Palisades Fire at twenty four roughly twenty four thousand acres burnt, five thousand structures. The Eaten Fire at only fourteen thousand acres only, But you understand what I'm saying, just a little over half of the Palisades Fire seven thousand structures, So about thirty percent more structures burnt in the Eaten Fire at

half of the acreage than the Palisades firre. And that's simply because the Palisades is a is a larger the lots are larger, the space is more open, the houses are larger, fewer houses per acre there. The Eton fire in Altadena is a very dense area with much smaller homes, and so seven thousand homes lost in Eton, five thousand in Palisates. Twelve thousand homes or structures, primarily residences lost in these two fires. The death toll currently stands at

twenty seven. It is still expected to grow, Ela County reports The Ela County Sheriff reports that there are currently thirty one missing person reports between both fires that are still being followed up on and investigated. Let's hope that all of those do not turn into additions to the death toll. Evacuation orders, according to Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Moroni, it will be at least another week before some people can begin heading back to their homes

in the evacuated fire zones. Now, to be clear, what that means is those are evacuation zones that were not devastated by the fire. Okay, these are homes still standing

in the evacuation zone, but outside the devastation zone. Getting back into the devastation zone, that's a completely different animal, and it's going to take quite a while, quite a while as we discussed on our previous two shows last week, check those out if you want to understand how an entire region rebuilds when an entire region has been devastated. The damage cost estimate currently both fires now rank among the ten most destructive in California history and the most

costly in US history. Now estimates are starting to vary wildly. But I'll tell you what those initial estimates that you heard, this is going to be a fifty billion dollar fire incident. No, no, it's no, it's not. Many financial experts say the combined costs, and that is firefighting cost, insurance claims, cleanup, infrastructure repair, ongoing disruption of business losses will likely be somewhere over two hundred billion dollars when it's all said and done.

The cleanup very quickly. The Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA, working with the Governor's Office of Emergency Services that's called OEES. They have mission tasked the US Environmental Protection Agency the EPA to safely remove and dispose of hazardous waste from homes and structures impacted by the LA fires as soon as it is safe to enter the affected areas. It is the OEES and the EPA, who are going to be doing the initial cleanup on all these fires because

of the toxicity of the waste. Phase one clearing, securing damage infrastructure, fallen power lines, broken gas and water lines, damaged roads, all the things that make an initially dangerous to approach the area. Phase two will be debris removal, cleaning up household hazardous waste, paint, ammunition, pesticides, propane tanks, car batteries, all of that kind of stuff. And then finally remaining structural debris, clearing trees and testing the soil

for contamination. There is no current time estimate for when residents will be allowed to return to their properties. Even undamaged homes in the devastation zone will not have full service utilities for the foreseeable future. All right, there you go, your quick estimate. When we come back, let's go to the phones, going to answer some questions, whether they are geared towards the fire or not. Take as many calls as I can this morning. You're Home with Dean Sharp the house whisper.

your home? I want to talk to Steve. Hey, Steve, welcome home.

not leaking. Uh, so I would you know, it's it's yeah, it's hard to argue with the fact that, hey, my roof doesn't leak. Uh, and so but I do have a little bit of ponding, so I would say, probably get a roofer up there. And uh and who is good at what they do? I mean really good at what they do in terms of flat roof and uh you know, let them kind of free float uh some silicone into the areas that are dipped low so that you don't get the ponding effect. And uh, you know,

bide your time for for when it goes. But I tell you what, when the leak does start to happen, just know you're gonna have to pull the whole thing off the next Yeah.

That doesn't count as putting up another roof layer. So if you've got a flat roof with some ponding, if you're not going to recoat the entire roof, okay, that's a whole other layer, and that's not what I'm suggesting. But you could definitely do some work to That's why I said, a roofer who knows what they're doing with skill in this area, you can definitely do some work to basically kind of self level and fill in the ponding areas so that you get adequate drainage everywhere. That

is not a new roof. That is augmentations to your existing layers. And since you didn't lay the other layers down, you're well within your rights to do that.

at the moment. That's great, uh, this and very very cool weather at the moment. This allows our fire teams to get an even bigger handle on the Eton and the Palisades fire, which without another major surprising wind event. And yes, yes, the weather outlook for next week looks like we've got some more of our classic Santa Anna is coming, so putting that aside, as long as they don't stir up more trouble, then it looks like we're getting the better of these two fires at this moment.

Of course, after they have definitely gotten the best of us, so there's at least some light on the horizon in terms of both of these fires. I spent all last weekend talking about all aspects of these fires, and you're going to start seeing coverage change and life sort of try to return to normal for most of southern California in terms of what's being discussed in the media. But here is my concern. My concern is that there is now now kind of a fire hardening frenzy and a

lot of misinformation going around out there. So I want to take a little bit of time today also answer calls, like I said, and a lot of time tomorrow over these two shows to address and separate for you the fact from the fiction when it comes to what it takes to fire harden your home. Just a lot of ignorance.

I actually was. I was so impressed with it, was so impressed upon me just in the first couple of days of this week that I also spent some time asking some people just sort of you know, man on the street kind of stuff, just asking friends, family, and some coworkers. I'm like, OK, explain to me what you think the threat of fire is to your home and how you're going to deal with it or how you would deal with it. And I got to tell you, almost everybody got it wrong. And this is a concern.

Plus I've had so many questions in about it that it's a concern, So I want you to hang with us. I'm not addressing a ton of it this morning, most of it on the Big Show tomorrow, but hang with me owhen Yes, by the way, just a quick announcement. You heard Andrew say earlier that tomorrow across the state, Governor Gavin Newsom has a town hall scheduled that we here, of course, are going to air on KFI. That's going to happen at nine o'clock, when we normally start the show.

The town hall, though, is scheduled, anticipated to our coverage of it, to last about a half an hour or so. So currently the plan is that we'll be starting the Big Show tomorrow at nine thirty instead of nine. It's not that Dean is not on the air tomorrow, it's just that we're making some room to cover this town hall and then we will get started. So if you tune in and you find yourself in the middle of the town hall, don't be dismiss because we will be

doing the show tomorrow. Just a little bit clipped on the front end. Okay, all right, let's get back to the phones. How about talking to Peter. Hey Peter, welcome home.

How do you know how much you're taxing these outlets and what can you do about it?

moving through. Now, the voltage of our electricity here in the US is one hundred and twenty okay, and so basically, hang on just a second here, basically one hundred and twenty volts fifteen amps, And the question is how can we determine the wattage? Now, the wattage is what is used, the amount of energy, that's the quantity used. Okay, so if we ask the question how to determine, you guys can look this up here. I want to see. I want to see how easy this is to find for everybody,

how to determine wattage on a fifteen amp circuit. I just want to I'm curious. I'm curious how clear this information is for the average person online. Of course, my computer just froze up, so it's not clear at all, is it, Tina. Come on now, come on, now, come on, give me this, give this to me. Hang on, hang on, my friend. We're going to find out for you here. I just want to find I'm curious. Sometimes. Somebody asked me this week, of some of the questions that you get,

how much of it is easily accessible? And I said, well, sometimes it's not as accessible as you might think. Oh my gosh, really, and here I want to do this demonstration, and my computer froze up on me. All right, fine, fine, fine, all right, my friend. So here's what it comes down to. Number one, you usually don't have to worry about it in terms of what you've got going on, because you've essentially got electronics hooked up to it. Electronics are very

low wattage equipment, okay, especially things that use transformers. That's just an indication that there isn't a huge power draway. Secondly, if you are pulling more energy through a circuit, like a fifteen AM circuit, than that circuit wants to handle, that's when the fifteen am breaker at the panel pops okay and goes off. So the breaker is designed to protect the wire, the conductor, the size of the wire conductor, which in the case of a fifteen amp circuit is

a fourteen gauge wire. Now I'm just spewing out numbers and people are like, I have no idea what you're talking about. It's essentially this. It's a smaller gauge wire. It's protected by a appropriately sized breaker, and if that wire begins to heat up because there's too much electrical draw through it, the breaker goes off, right, And then you find yourself you're like, oh, I'm pulling too much

energy through this circuit. I need to disperse it. And that's the easiest way to figure out whether or not you're using too much energy or putting too much of a burden on one outlet. Now here is the more important subject. Okay, the more important subject is that if

you plug in these tiny, little thin extension cords. Okay, now it sounds like you you're actually using an actual you know, multiplug adapter, right, yes, Okay, when people plug into an outlet a tiny little extension cord, a really thin one that those little five dollars extent cords that you get at the and then and they have multiple outlets on them, and then plug a bunch of stuff into those. It's not the circuit that you're overloading, it's

the extension cord that you're overloading. And sometimes that will literally melt down and cause a fire. Not good. But if you're using a heavy gauge power strip coming out of that outlet and then dispersing the power from the power strip, the power strip itself also has a little breaker device on it. So the point is, I wouldn't worry about it. I wouldn't worry about it unless you

see the thing dropping constantly or not. And I'm gonna tell you the result of the search and whether it's user friendly as soon as my computer comes back online. But Peter, that's the answer. You have got breakers tech those circuits, and you're not going to open to it.