@MrMoKelly & ‘Weathered: Inside the LA Firestorm’ w/ Maiya May

You're listening to Later with Mo Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty with Kelly OKAM sixty.

This fire is Different.

I'm Weathered host Miami and we're on the ground talking to survivors, first responders, and experts. We're living through one of the worst fires in American history to see what happened and how the people of LA are fighting back and adapting to a hotter, drier, and more dangerous reality. Weather Inside the LA Firestorm.

KFI AM six forty, It's Later with Mo Kelly. We're live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app premiering tonight at ten pm on PBS. Weathered Inside the LA Firestorm examines the root cause of the LA wildfires and uncovers what communities

Was like many people, most people not in La, watching.

From Afar and being horrified at what I was seeing. But luckily, and a lot of people don't realize this, the director of our show, he is a fire expert, and this special wasn't like we didn't have our We don't do these types of specials normally, but PBS knew that we our whole our show is directed by this you know, amazing journalist who's done a lot of work on wildfires. He's created a fire feature film as well, and they trusted us to tell this story and he.

Led a lot of of what you know, we talk.

About in the show.

Obviously he's the director, but yeah, he led the charge here. But for me, just you know, as as the communicator and the messenger for this story, it was very interesting. There's a lot of mixed emotions. I learned a lot. The main thing being that these types of disasters don't have to happen, and and there are things, very small things, fairly inexpensive, things that we can do to harden our homes.

To see the film and get this very useful information.

Correct, but if I'm wrong, but they're probably two facets to this. Yes, there's things that we can do individually, as you mentioned, like to harden our homes. But we've also seen all sorts of extreme weather events in recent years. In fact, the Midwest and South are dealing with it right now. What are we seeing in a weather or climate since that we've not seen in previous decades before.

In terms of this story and this particular event weather event being the wildfires, is temperature and that plays.

A role in quite a few of the.

Crazy natural disasters that we've experienced in recent years.

In recent months and weeks.

I don't know about the line of storms that came through this weekend that always happens, you know, severe weather. There's a lot more research that needs to be done to kind of attribute rise in tornadoes, for example, to climate change.

But we know that.

Increased temperatures as it relates to the fire that happened.

In La play the role.

When you have a warmer atmosphere, it sucks.

More moisture out of the vegetation.

And California before twenty twenty four experienced two really wet years.

You had these really wet years.

You had all this vegetation that resulted from those wet years being dried out.

As we entered into.

The summer of twenty twenty four, I don't think you guys can't get any rain for eight months.

So on top of the there was no rain, you have.

Increased temperatures, and we know temperatures are increasing on average. That also contributed to the drying out of these fuels and.

That is what fed the fire.

And again once it once it reached urban communities, it was just it was like a runaway freight train.

There was really nothing that could have been done.

Lot of the weather aspect that played a role here, and that play continues to play a role on large scale.

Let's talk more about that, and let's talk about these La fires. Investigations are ongoing, and blame is going to be pars that. I'm not going to put that on your shoulder. But in your conversations in whethered inside the LA firestorm, what were some of your other observations, your analyzes, what if any other conclusions have you arrived at?

Yeah?

So, I mean everyone was talking about the lack of resources, right. There were a lot of people that were very angry, and that happens. I think that's human nature. After a prett ezy disaster like this, you know, people naturally are going to want to point the finger.

How what happened here?

Someone had to have dropped the ball.

And I made a point to ask every single fire official that I spoke to, every climate scientist, would there have been enough resources to stop this fire once.

It reached urban communities? And the answer is no.

There wouldn't have been enough firefighters, there wouldn't have been enough water, there wouldn't have been enough force management that could have helped once it reached that first home in those conditions, because our communities weren't building in a way to be resilient to these climate related disasters that we're seeing.

That's a question of infrastructure and planning, and maybe we would not have been able to change the end result. But is there a conversation to be had about what we could have done better or should have done better before it got to those urban communities, Because I think we all can agree once it got to the urban communities, it was all over at that point and nothing could

I don't.

I don't believe in this situation. I mean, like I said, the conditions were.

Just so so primed.

Imagine doing forest management for thousands and thousands and thousands of acres.

In this eight month period leading up to the disaster.

I know, I know, like I.

Know, you know, we want to point to, you know, some person, some human. Mother Nature is fierce, and we're seeing that. I think we're seeing just how relentless Mother nature is in the face of our changing climate. Like I said, there's just so much built up vegetation from those two years, those those extremely wet years, that that California experienced and then once we got to that drought, I mean there's just not much that could have been done once we had that red flag warning.

I mean people were predicting it. All you needed at that point.

Was was a arc and you know people, people knew this was going to happen.

So yes, yes, like we definitely need to be thinking about more resources in that sense. Yes, we need more firefighters, more water, you know, better better management of land in that sense.

But I think the biggest conversation that.

Needs to come out of the special is adaptation and how we are building and where we're where we're building. Mother Nature is going to mother nature either way. But how can we continue to build in a way that humanity can thrive on this planet?

I think that needs to be the conversation.

By later tonight, right after our show at ten pm on PBS, Weathered Inside the LA Firestorm, hosted by journalists, weather expert, storyteller, Science Communicator. You got a lot of titles, got a lot of titles, but you've earned them all Science Communicator.

We'll go with Science Communicator and that's that's going.

Thank you for coming on tonight.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

It's Later with mo Kelly caf I AM six forty Live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app.

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