KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The House Whisperer on demand on the iHeart radio app. You know, this very program is the House Whisperer podcast that you can listen to anytime, anywhere on demand. Hundreds of episodes I've got for you. We've been doing this now we are beginning our ninth season. Can you believe that hundreds of episodes, all searchable by topic it is or could
be maybe should be your home improvement reference library. And if you're thinking, hey, that's all great, but you know what we really need is Dean and Tina in our house to looking at our stuff telling us what to do, well, you can do that too. You can book an in home design consult with me and the tea who's sitting right across the table from me here. You just go
to house Whisperer dot design. Okay, we are having a very serious conversation about fire hardening your home, one that I want you to listen very carefully too, because it is sane and rational, and I want you to be able to discern and assess the needs of your home and not just go with kind of the fire hardening frenzy that's already begun on in standard media, traditional media, and especially on social media right now, and we are talking this is I'm going to move on from this.
But the first and foremost threat to homes in any kind of fire condition are the embers that are flying off the fire line the fire. Nowhere near your home, nowhere near your home, but embers that can fly up to two miles away and actually start structure fire. Now, how often did that happen?
Do you know?
I mean, come on, realistically, yeah, realistically, ninety percent of the homes that ignite in a wildfire event ignite because of embers not on the fire line, do you hear me? And that is why I have my very special guest on the line with me right now, Kelly Berkampas who is the vice president and co founder of brand Guard Vents, which is my number one recommendation for you for your
enber proof vents. Kelly, We're going to go one extra segment here because I still have a couple of questions for you.
Number one, I'm going to start off with this.
I want everybody to realize this, and Kelly is going to lead into our next quick conversation here.
Whether you know it or not. Most homeowners wouldn't know this. Why would you?
But the California Building Code is updated triannually every three years. Every three years we gather together all the things that are going to be the updates to the building code and then they are affected in those years. Twenty twenty five, this year that we are in right now is on
that three year cycle. That means that this year things are going into the California Building Code that will be applicable and effective as of January first, twoy twenty Okay, this is the year, and we already know, Kelly knows, I know, we already know that for all new construction and for major remodels all across the state of California, that fire resistant EMBER resistant venting is a from now
on in the history of California, a requirement. Just like in earthquakes, earthquake retrofitting, a requirement, ember resist in venting, now a building requirement in the building code. So, okay, Dean, that's fine. That applies to you, know, you know, people who are building new and who are doing a major remodel.
That's not me.
What does it have to do with me? Well, you've been listening to the news at all. You've been hearing the ongoing conversation that these very, very costly, the most costly fires in US history, are creating for insurance company and insurance coverage out Let me just say this. I don't want to get into the politics of it at all.
That's not what I do. But I will tell you this, if the California Insurance Commissioner pulls off the miracle of keeping or requiring insurers to offer fire insurance for California residents, if he successfully pulls that off, I guarantee you that one of the variables will simply be but you don't have to ensure a home that doesn't have a certain level of regulated fire hardening by code, and that will
include I guarantee you it will include amber proof vents. Kelly, what have you heard along those lines?
Yeahan, I mean that's correct, You're totally spot on about everything. And in fact, some insurance company is already actually mandate mber resistant. I mean we get calls from homeowners all the time. Over the past I mean some started doing it, you know, as much as ten years ago, but especially over the past year or two, we've seen an uptick for sure where insurance companies are mandating, as a condition of binding a policy or as a condition of renewal,
that you have to install ember resistant vents. I think it's what this fire has done is now it's probably going to make it more at a larger scale with more companies.
I think, yeah, wow, Okay, So Kelly, before I let you go as succinctly as you can so that we all understand it and remember it. All right, I'm convinced. Dean convinced me. Dean and Kelly, you've convinced me. We got to get mber proof fence from my house. How do I begin? What's the process? What happens?
What do I do?
Well? The process is extremely straightforward and easy. If you were a do it yourself for you know this is not rocket science. You can call us, go to our website. You can order the events. You can call us go to your go to our website. You can tell us what sizes you need, will ship you just events. If you don't mind getting on a roof, or you don't mind doing it yourself. However, if you need help with
the installation portion of it, give us a call. We have a whole network of professional installers throughout the state of California and even further east that we will then help you coordinate to send to your house. They'll come out, they'll take measurements, we'll get you a quote, and then you can have them installed. I mean, installation is like
I said, it's very easy, very non intrusive. It does not affect the home you're not going to you know, we're not going to be breaking up your stucco or cutting into the sidewalls or even cutting into your roof at all. So it's extremely easy and you just need to give us a call or go to our website and request an estimate, and we got you covered, whether you're a do it yourselfer or whether you need help with the installation through a contractor right on.
All right, Kelly, here's your big shot. Uh who uh? Where do people go to get a hold of you?
So you can go to our website, which is brand guard vents dot com. Brand guard vents dot com. You can also give us a call. We're there Monday through Friday, all day long. The phone number is nine four nine three zero five eight zero five nine.
All right, repeat it one more time for us real quick.
It's area code nine four nine three zero five eight, zero five nine, and we will pick up the phone and help you right away.
Fantastic, Kelly, I think thank you so much.
I promised our listeners that I would not only be explaining the vulnerability of their home and explaining the rat sane way to fire harden it, but also handing out resources and everybody who's listening to me Kelly at brand Guard Vents here in southern California, this is your number one house whisper recommended resource, so call them. Go to brand Guardvents dot com. Kelly, thank you so much for your time this morning, and good luck with everything that lies ahead.
Thank you, Dean, I really appreciate it.
All Right, y'all, we're going to move on to the next phase of fire hardening your home. We've talked about when the fire is near and the threat of embers. Now let's turn our attention towards when the flames are here, and what part or parts of your home do we really need to focus on and why we'll discuss all of that.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
I don't take our show very seriously, thank goodness, but I take you in your home very seriously, and today, because everybody is still in the place where you're thinking about the LA wildfires, I am taking yet another weekend to talk to you very honestly, very forthrightly about how to properly assess your home so you can figure out how to harden it. There's all sorts of stuff. Please don't lead out, lead with what you and I are
talking about right now. Don't lead out with stuff you're seeing randomly on social media or even in mainstream traditional media formats on TV. And so there's a certain amount of sensationalism that tends to win the day in those places, and with it comes lack of attention to what's actually actually on the ground happening. Okay, So I'm here to tell you that when it comes to assessing your home
for fireheartening, we're using a very very simple formula. Two phases when the fire is near, and then phase two when the flames are here. Okay, Now we've spent the first part of the show talking with my very special guest, Kelly Bercompas from Brand Guard Events, about when the fire is near and how that is statistically actually the greatest threat to your home because that's what ninety percent of homes actually ignite in a wildfire event. But but let's
not ignore the fact that flames reach homes. Okay, that's simply, you know, against all of our wishes. That's the truth. So now let's turn and spend a little time talking about when the fire is here. Now, what is the first thing that I want to explain to you. Let's
talk about Class A fire rating exterior surfaces. Okay, A Class A fire rated surface is anything that has been approved by the California Building Code cal Fire and the Uniform Building Code as a material and or a surface that can resist direct contact with heat and flame for an hour one hour burn through time. Okay, it is.
It is not.
It's not exactly the same as a one hour fire rating. And I'm not going to get into the differential details there, but just kind of go with that. Now you're like, well, great, that's the best. Yes, that's the best. Okay, so we're all toast. No, No, you're not, okay, And here's why. If you know how fires burn and how they move, especially how they move through neighborhoods, you know, a fire moves past your home or could move it theoretically past
your home relatively quickly. The idea of a flame just there burning for an hour on one location, on one bit of fuel, on one surface. There's a reason why Class A fire rating is in fact a Class A fire rating. It's because that is an unlikely event. So now the big question is this, how much of this Class A fire rating do you have on your home already? Okay, well, let me tell you. If you've got wood siding on your home, you do not have a Class A fire rated wall, okay, And I'm not going to tell you
to tear off your wood siding. I am going to tell you that we need to make that a Class A fire rated surface by using a Class A fire rated coating on top of that wood siding.
Okay.
There are paints out there that will take the undersides of decks, structures, decking material wood decking materials themselves, and wood sighting, all exterior kinds of woods and protect them with a Class A fire rated protection service. Now, it will require maintenance as the years roll on, but they are there and they actually work. If though you live in a typical southern California home and with a typical southern California stucco exterior and a typical southern California asphalt
composition roof. And I say typical because about eighty percent of the homes in Southern California fall into those categories. Then you are living in a structure that is covered in a class A fire rated surface. All right, one inch thick stucco is concrete on the outside of your wall. Can fire burn through it?
Yes?
Absolutely right. If you take a look at the power and the eaten fire destruction, you don't see stucco walls standing in place when everything else is gone. But does it burn through quickly?
No? No, it does not.
Will it withstand flame in a you know, in an ideal situation while the fuel that it's using on the ground is exhausted.
Yes? Likely?
Okay, So do I need you to go to heroic measures to wet the surface of your house when it's a stucco house painted in exterior weather proof paint, which by definition precludes the stucco getting soaked with moisture. It's not a really the most important thing for you to do.
Okay.
So the stucco is an adequate surface, fire hardened surface, you're roofing material. I know you've seen countless, countless video of roofs burning. Let me tell you how that happens. Roofs burn from the attic out, just like we were talking with Kelly Bercompass at Brand Guard Vents about. They burn most likely from the underside of those rafters up
through the roofing material, not usually the other way around. Okay, an asphalt composition roof, any asphalt composition roof that you have purchased or has been purchased and installed on your roof in the last thirty plus years, is a class A fire rated roof simply unless you bought it off the black market somewhere in Indonesia and smuggled it into the United States illegally.
I mean.
The fact of the matter is the manufacturers of these roofs are required to produce this roofing material in this way. If you've got a Spanish tile roof or a lightweight concrete roof, all the more so. Okay, you have a roof that is already ember protected in that sense and flame protected as reasonably as possible. All right, So think of the outside of your house, the envelope of your house. What's left if the walls are Class A. If the roof is Class A number one, we don't have to
go to heroic measures to keep them all wet. Okay, number two, what's left? What's left is any exposed wood sticking out from the side of your house aka your roof eves, the underneath side of your roof eves. You look underneath your eaves, it's wood up there. Now, if you've got enclosed eves, meaning that the stucco runs up and closes over the then great, fantastic, Okay, But most people don't. Most people have exposed rafters. And I say rafters.
Those tails sticking out of your house, those are the rafters that are holding up your roof. They are a and when they ignite, they climb right into your attic space. So the roof eve area is a highly vulnerable area. It's vulnerable for embers to get up in there. That's why we're changing out the vents. But if the flame has arrived at your house, it's vulnerable because the flame is right down at the base of your wall, burning up heat, embers, sparks and flame. And guess what's right
directly above it the roof eve catching it all. Okay, this is how these areas catch on fire. So now the question is if that's a vulnerable area, then we should give that attention. We should give that attention before we spend money with limited funds, as we all have, on areas that are already Class A fire rated. I'm not saying if you've got an unlimited budget that you
shouldn't just coat your dip your whole house in fireproof substances. Great, But if you are like me and you have a limited budget, then we have to address the holes in the boat. Okay, not just it's thick in the hole, but we have to actually patch the holes in the boat if we don't want to sink.
That's what I'm talking about.
All right, you're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Dean Sharp the house whisper. That's me.
We're talking about fire hardening your home, sanely, affordably, rationally, fire hardening your home. For everyone who is listening to me, I don't care if you don't live right next to an open space, if you don't consider your home as a threat from wildfires. Here's the fact that we've already established earlier today, after these mega expensive wildfires. Insurance fire insurance for any home anywhere in the state of California, it's up for grabs right now. It really, truly is
a big question mark. I know a lot of people are saying a lot of things, but it is a thing. If by some miracle we push through and may the right to have fire coverage on your home, you can be guaranteed that those insurance companies are going to be requiring certain things be in place for a home to
get and receive fire insurance. So hardening and the steps that we're talking about today, not the heroic kind of crazy stuff that you see on DIY and social media right now, but the stuff we're talking about this is the stuff that will enable you to move down that pathway for the future. So we are at this place now where we're talking about when the fire is here, and I'm talking about plugging holes, Okay, metaphorically and literally, what we're about to talk about holes in the boat
as it were. In other words, your roof with Class A fire rated material on it is not a hole in your boat. Neither is the stucco on the outside of your house. But the roof eves the over lap the overhang of exposed wood. That's a hole. It can be treated, doesn't have to be all just cut off. It doesn't have to be covered in stucco. It can be treated with a fire resistant fireproof coatings like fireproof paints. Now, should I just paint the whole house, Dean, Well, you shouldn't,
certainly could. But the stuff that I'm recommending that you use that has again to use this word again into messin qualities to it, Okay, into messin properties. The stuff I recommend you're going to find it from reputable companies at about four hundred dollars for a five gallon jug. Yeah you heard me right. I didn't say forty. I said four hundred dollars. So here's the thing. Very few of us feel comfortable buying enough to cover our entire
home in that material. And what I'm pointing out to you today is the stucco is okay as it is, so is the roof, But the eve. I would encourage you to invest in enough of that material to treat your eve because it's the hole in the boat, okay, that will bring you at least up to snuff on that that class a fire resistance on the outside of the house. So don't think about the whole house. Think about the eves, think about those vulnerable wood overhangs, think
about your wood decks, and and so on. You get me, You feel me? All right, let's talk about the other holes. Doors and windows. Doors are not an issue if you have a legal house in southern California. Exterior doors, by definition, are class A fire rated exterior doors. Excuse me, Sliding glass doors are by definition class A fire rated doors. They have tempered glass in them, not just because they
were done that way for fire purposes. They have tempered glass in them a sliding glass door, or because the Building Code states universally across the planet that any glass that occurs in your house, glazed surfaces below eighteen inches off the floor are in the kick zone, right, I mean where your feet are running around smashing into things, and so that glass can't be standard annealed glass. It has to be tempered glass strong enough to withstand you
kicking it with your foot and it not shattering. So sliding glass doors not a problem. Standard exterior doors not a problem. The problem is windows. Windows are standard annealed glass unless otherwise specified. What do we want from our windows. Ideally, this is the most expensive way to go. But ideally we want fire rated windows. Now, what is a fire rated window. It's a big ugly thing. No, it's just your window with tempered glass in it as a part
to standard annealed glass. Tempered glass is I explained this last week. I'll do it really quick again. The problem is that when the heat of a flame from a fire gets on the outside of that window, it raises the temperature to an extreme several hundred degrees, if not over one thousand degrees, depending on the conditions on the inside your seventy degree house.
All right.
The temperature differential from the outside of that glass to the inside of that glass causes it to expand unevenly and it shatters. And when it shatters, it falls out of the window sash and leaves a hole. Now in your home, an open door, an open window literally for the flames to start intruding into the interior of the house. Okay, so the tempered glass. Tempered glass is manufactured at five
thousand degrees fahrenheit. All right, Tempered glass does not get about the heat of a wildfire brushing up against it because it was manufactured at almost three and a half times the temperature that that wildfire can produce. Therefore, fire
rated windows understood. Okay, Now, if you do not have in your budget to replace all the windows of your home or the side that faces the open, vulnerable space, you've heard me say, there are some coatings, tinting films, films like you know, tinting your windows on your car, window films by very reputable corporation like three M. Three M produces some fantastic fire rated window films. Now, let me be clear on this. The windows are going to shatter.
But the point is this, the film will not dissipate and fail you when the flame is licking up against it and the film, despite the fact that your standard window glass will shatter, the film holds the glass in place and therefore the opening does not open. Okay, that's the theory behind it. Is it ideal? No, the fire raided window is better by far. But again we've been talking about all sorts of levels of what you can do,
because I'd rather have you do something than nothing. Fire raided window film doesn't have to darken the house, doesn't have to tint the house or anything like that. It can just simply be there, like safety glass is on your car windshield. You know your car windshield. The safety glass, if you've ever seen one get smashed in, it doesn't shatter and just fall to bits all of a sudden,
It just kind of pushed in there. That's because there is a film in between two layers of glass on your car windshield that holds all the glass in place. That's what we're talking about you. For these window films, they can be applied by di wires and there are plenty of companies out there that will tint and work your windows for you. The point is there is some price point where you can invest in your home and increase its fire hardness. Okay, decking materials, I've already kind
of covered. That's where we're going with all these soap Let me well, okay, I'm going to back up one thing here. I don't want to jump over this. I've heard a lot of talk this week about people who are like, yeah, and what we've also decided to do is zero escape our landscape. In other words, we're just going to desertify our landscape like we did in the drought. I'm going to cut all my trees down, I'm going to just clear it all out because I don't want
anything fallen on my house. Well, that's a qualified no on my part. I'll tell you why. Number One, Clearly, I do not want palm trees, eucalyptus trees, and pine trees sitting right next to your house and hanging over your home because these trees, by definition, by the way, non native to this area. Most of those trees full
of resins, highly flammable trees. If you've ever seen a palm tree go up in a fire, it is nothing but an ember hydrant, Okay, just blowing embers everywhere in extreme So I don't want them right next to your house, and I don't want them hanging over your roof. But what about out on the perimeter of your property. So here's the problem that I've heard commented on by several
fire experts and fire officials. Number One, the more, and you've heard me talk about this on landscaping shows, the more we remove green coverage from our cities, the hotter our cities get, the drier they become, okay, and the more fire prone they become. The second thing, just in all practicality, is this clear out all the trees and shrubs from your property. And you know what you've just created.
You've created a bowling alley for fire. Just you might as well just invite everything in anything, because there's nothing to stop anything. So I'll ask you this, would you rather have your house being flooded with embers or a tree that's sixty seventy feet away from your house catching them as they come in, the fact of the matter
is that you don't. Now, we can argue about this all day long, but I'm just saying that there are just as many good arguments for keeping and I think more for keeping the trees around your home than eliminating them. So just don't automatically buy into that stuff. But if you've got trees, highly flammable trees hanging over your roofline where they could literally just fall upon your house and deliver all sorts of flammable materials on your house, then yeah,
let's get serious about that. Otherwise, don't just clear your yard out. Okay, we're only making the problem worse in the in the long run. Okay, when we return before some closing thoughts for you today, I'm going to run down a ten point checklist for a sane fire hardened home based on everything that we've talked about today. Now that you understand the essential structure of your home and how it reacts, I'm going to go down my list.
You're going to hear it all from me. We'll do that right after.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Tina wanted me to make you aware that I was on Fox eleven News earlier this week. The video of that is up on our social media right now. What is it on dabe, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok which has had a reprieve from the moment, so you can go check that out at Home with Dean on those and what else? Did you want to remind me of what else is going on up there?
Nothing? Something? Just that? Was it? Just that?
Catch this show again if they missed anything on.
The oh the podcast? Yeah, yeah again, if you've yeah, if you've forgotten any details or missed any details of what we've been talking about today. Of course, about an hour after we go off the air. Uh. This program in all of our episodes are translated into podcast form and live there in perpetuity wherever your favorite podcasts are found.
All right, let's finish up.
Uh. We have been talking about the sane rational ways of fire hardening your home, approaching it in ways that I that I want you to be encouraged you can actually do. Okay, So I told you at the end here I was going to leave you with a ten point checklist for a sane fire hardened home.
Is this a.
Guarantee that your home will not be damaged or destroyed in a fire?
No?
No reasonable honest person is with any kind of home building or firefighting experience, is going to tell you that. Zero zero people who are being honest with you are going to tell you that. But does this give you a fighting chance? Absolutely? No question. And as I've been saying throughout the program, are these measures your best bet of actually being able to obtain fire insurance from this point forward?
Absolutely? Yes.
So this is the doorway that you're going to need to walk through no matter where you are in southern California. If you want to ensure your house against fire, then these are the things that you should seriously consider. So here the ten point checklist for a sane fire hardened home. Number one ember resistant vents. What is your resource for this?
I want you to go to brand guard Vents dot com brand br a n D brand Guard like Guard gu ar d Vents dot com brand guard vents dot com for an ember resistant event.
And I didn't.
I'm just gonna say real quickly, I didn't talk today about the OP. The other alternative, the far more expensive alternative to getting fire resistant events, and that is if you are doing a new construction build or a major remodel, then you need to have a conversation with your designer, your architect, or your builder about building the house with a ventless conditioned attic space where the attic is a
part of the conditioned air in the home. Why is that because in those conditions there are no events, zero events in the house, nothing, no open doorways leading into the attic space because technically it's part of the interior of the house. So that's another discussion. I actually did this as an episode last year. You can find in last year's episodes. The New Attic I believe is the name of that show. You should go and check it out. Number two Class A fire rated sighting. Sighting is a
technical term that I'm using uh in the code. Sighting means whatever is attached to the outside of your walls of your house. Stucco is technically sighting, citing what you think of as sighting as sighting siding siding the outside of your house. Class A fire rated materials or codings on top of vulnerable materials. Number three Class A fire rated roofing. That's a given. It's a given. Uh, make
sure your roof is in good shape. Make sure it doesn't need replacement, make sure there aren't holes, so on and so forth. Number four Class A fire rated doors. This is also a given if your house is built to code, because exterior doors have by code fall into those categories Class A. Number five Class A fire rated windows, which we just discussed, or Class A fire rated window films attached two standard windows and your resource for that, I'm just going to send you to three M dot com.
Go there first, find the film films, the finest films. Don't go for some off brand films claiming this or that. The three end films have been they've been ul tested and verified. Go there first, and then find installers who are capable of installing those films for you. Number six in two messent exterior codings for roof overhangs and eves and so on. Here is a source firefree dot Com fire free dot com for those code the best of those codings. Number seven Class A fire rated decking materials
or fire retardant deck codings. I talk all the time about fire resistant decking materials. Let's just talk about what you've got, uh and putting a coding on it. Find that at r d R Technologies dot Com. R d R Technologies dot Com Number eight fire retardant coding for ex exposed deck structures. Also RDR Technologies dot Com number nine Clear your defensible space, Get flammable things away from your home.
That's what that means, okay.
And number ten Interior sprinkler fire suppression systems by licensed Cowfire approved Fire Marshal approved contractors. Interior fire sprinklers. Okay, not the ones on the roof, not the claims of you know, the ones out in the yard. Interior fire sprinklers. They are code for all new construction and major remodels in California now and they can be retrofit into your
home at not an unbelievably high cost. Take a look at them, Get serious about them, because if fire does penetrate into the interior of your home, those interior fire sprinklers do an excellent job of suppressing if there's water in this if there's water in the system. Okay, that's the ten point checklist for a sane fire hardened home. I hope you can appreciate this approach.
Again.
Our approach is very simple, two phases. When the fire is near, what are we doing? That's ember resistance? And when the flames are here, what are we looking at. We're looking at Class A fire rated surfaces. The outside walls, the roof usually are handled. The eve overhangs those are vulnerable.
The windows, those are vulnerable. If you were to follow through and button up these ten points on this checklist, then you know what you would be, as fire hardened as any home could rationally be expected to be, and you've got a really good chance of doing well in the next fire event. Let me also say, very quickly, it was pointed out to me, I want to make a delineation about vegetation in your yard. Dead vegetation needs
to go, period. Okay, live vegetation, good, live and green, good, dead and dry gone.
Okay, all right.
I'm actually shocked that we made it through all of that and we've got just a couple of minutes left, and I'm going to get myself sort of set up here because we're going to make a little video of this as well, which I didn't do ahead of time on the break Tina to do this. So let me raise this up and turn on the thing, do the whole thing.
Here we go. I have sorry about that. I've got a closing thought for you today.
We like to make it available on social media after the fact, so takes me a half second to.
Get it set up here. So let me do it.
And are we going? I think we are. We're gonna give it our best shot.
All right. I ran a card. This is not me.
This is not my thing today. This is something that the team actually pointed out to me.
This morning.
Gosh, dang it, hang on, you know, it's fine. It's fine. It's live radio. It's what we do, okay. A beautiful Instagram post from former Disney imagineer Joe Rhad who last week this last week saw his old home burning. While watching it on the news, he wrote this, and I love this. He said, this was our first house from night a bit after starting at Disney Imagineering. That big window there is our bedroom and I was just writing about this house in an essay about the origins of
the Adventures Club at Walt Disney World. This is where it started in this house. The Quirky Immersive Theater Club is gone, of course, and now so is its birthplace. So what are we to do? Well, he writes, we don't just live at the tail end of history. We live within history. Right now people are looking back at all that has been lost a lot. But in the future people will look back at all that was done
in the aftermath of this disaster. This point in time will be subsumed in other points to come, just as creative work is subsumed into later newer works of art. San Francisco was destroyed in an earthquake, and yet San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Tokyo, Berlin, Mexico City, Chicago, Rome, Deli, all built back from the ashes of some other version of themselves that is gone.
Now.
Critics can say what they will about Los Angeles, but it is a creative city, dynamic, diverse, open minded, always changing. This is the city that invented the modern city and in everything from the Internet. Yes, at UCLA's Arpinnet to Barbie and hip hop, to electric guitars, to the modern film industry, to the Mars Rover and the Space shuttle.
This is a city full of people who move here from somewhere else so they can invent themselves, and they are not going to do nothing as time moves forward. As a creative person, one cannot help but think that everything is always raw material. Creation is intimately tied to the destruction of the status quo. Nothing has ever finished as long as there is imagination in the world, and what lies before us now is not nothing. It is the raw material for what the people of Los Angeles
are going to do next. No one should minimize the suffering that has been created. It is profound. Our children lost the entire world they grew up in. Dozens of friends lost everything. We all mourn for what we have lost, and we understand that it will never return in the form that it once had. But it is not the end. It is the middle. It is always the middle, and then it all burnt down. Is never the end of a story. It is typically the end of just act one.
And to that I say true, Joe, very very true, and thank you. And with that I'm going to send you forward into the middle of your story, the middle, and use it and get out there and get yourself busy, build yourself.
A beautiful life. We'll see you're right back here next week.
This has been Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. Tune into the live broadcast on KFI AM six forty every Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time, and every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.