Devastation in Los Angeles - Part 2

It's nice time with Dan Ray. I'm telling you easy Boston Radio.

Just looking at pictures of Los Angeles, pictures of people standing by what was their homes. Again, anyone who loses a home to a fire is tragic, but we're talking about thousands of people who have nowhere to go and have nothing left except for the clothes on their back. It's an incredible story. We'll keep rolling here six one seven two six seven. I was gonna change at ten o'clock and talk about Donald Trump's day in Zoom Court. We can say that till next week, but let's let's

How you doing again, Nice to talk to you again. I talk with you, sir, you know, to take a few things. It was just it's funny they just talked about it on the news just now about a reservoir that was taken off line. Was close to two million gallons of water. Yeah, and I think that had a lot to do with why some of the hydrants ran dried then and they didn't have enough water to fight the fires.

Why did they take it? Why did they take that reservoir offline? Did they explain that?

Yeah, yeah, I heard of it even on Fox News. They were for repair is it something for some reason like that, for repairs or they were repairing something.

But well, they must have let me just add this, they must have known that the Santa Anti winds. I mean that that is what they get this time of year out there. It's like we get cold weather in January, they get the Santa Ana winds. Why would they take it right line at this time?

I know? No, mean that you're talking about hundred hurricane force winds in one hundred miles an hour. Yeah, I stayed pictures of hillsides and that were glowing in Orange. They were so much on fire. I couldn't even believe what I was watching. They were glowing at Orange, the hillsides right.

And all of the contributing factors. I know that people are going to say, well, it's the lack of rain, Okay, that's fair, gonna say climate change, that's fair. But in winds, that's fair. But how can you allow your city to be exposed? You take a reservoir with two million or whatever the number of gallons of water.

You take one one point seven million gallons.

Take it offline. Was that whoever made that decision? I mean, that's just Look, I'm sure that it wasn't uh, you know, something that was done intentionally and saying, oh, yeah, we're gonna have a fire next week. No, it was just abject stupidity. Competence.

Yeah, yeah, a lot of incompetence. I understand. The fire chief cut so many, so many, so much money from the fire budget, a lot of a lot of bats.

Who whoa, whoa, whoa waste that? Hold on, let me defend the fire chief. It wasn't the fire chief. It was the mayor of Los Angeles.

The man, the mayor, I'm sorry, yeah, the man, the.

Mayor who used to be a member of Congress, and and she was away. They knew that they had some problems, some weather problems, and she went off to some sort of celebration in Ghana.

I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, what a ship of fools.

That city is. And that's the city that had had the prosecutor, George Gasbag gascon who who was defeated, thank god. And there's a new prosecutor out there who tonight, believe it or not, Thank God is threatening looters and and scammers. Listen to this sound by that I got. I played this last hour, but I think it's worth a second play. Wouldn't it be great to get a prosecuted like this a message in Boston? This has cut thirty seven. Play that one again, please Rob.

This is the La County Colisades at the sight of what used to be my sister's home.

She's lived here for a while, a long time with her family, and are now this this home, along with the homes in the street, in this neighborhood, are just gone.

I've been here for over sixty years.

I've not seen devastation like this in my lifetime. I mean, you have to harken back to the nineteen nineties when we're hit with the floods and the fires and the earthquakes and the riots to even get.

Close to this.

Now, I'm absolutely convinced that La is incredibly resilient and like it's done many many times before, Angelino's will come back and build this back better than ever. But for the people who are thinking, the criminals who are out there thinking about taking advantage of this situation through looting or through scams or over.

The Internet and praying on vulnerable victims. Let me make it quite clear what's going to happen. The DA's office working for with law enforcement is going to arrest you. They're going to prosecute you, and you will be punished to the full extent of the law.

That's a promise.

Now, that's a prosecutor. And hopefully if there's anybody out there who's scamming people, twenty years should would would be about right, I think for people who are scamming. I hope so, I hope so and I and I hope that we can we can find some prosecutors here in Massachusetts as well. We got a couple, you know, John Blodge it up in Essex County retired unfortunately, Uh, and we do have we do have a couple of prosecutors, but we need more. I mean, Gascon was the guy

Yeah, Jan can I just sad one more thing about let you go Nextcarlo. Sure, you know they're talking about rebuilding. I know it looks you see all this devastation, but you know what I think it's going to be rebuilt faster than you think. The bulldozers will come through there, will clear out the debris, and people are going to come in. New people with money are going to come in and buy the land and rebuild on there.

You must waste. You got people out there who are pretty wealthy to live in palace in the Pacific Palace, right they own the property. I mean, you know they're not gonna I don't know. Maybe some will sell, maybe some won't. How long do you think before it will take you're optimistic, how many years do you think before that that those fire ravaged communities will come back to where they were two weeks ago? How many years.

They said five to ten? I say five. Maybe it might even be within five. Because it happened, it can happen faster than you think.

Well, I hope, so, I hope, so, I hope the people.

Would have money. Then the people that have money will rebuild. I'm talking about the ones that are kind of financially in the middle and didn't have it and don't have insurance. In that case, somebody else will replace will coming by the land because they will go to rebuild all Steve.

I appreciate you call. Got to keep rolling, thank you very much.

All right, by bye bye, let me keep rolling here.

I got to get Ruth at Uxbridge. Ruth, I don't want you to have to wait any longer. I'll take you before. Go ahead, Ruth.

Thank you, thanks doing good to talk to you. And oh my heartaches for those people. Because I lived out there for a few years. I was born and raised

Yep.

I've never seen one, but and I don't know how they fill them, you know what I mean. But yeah, it's it's so different. It's almost like you've got to be out there to really understand and see what the terrain is like, and stuff like that.

And did you live in the city or did you live outside of the city.

No, we live We lived in both sides of the city, on the east side and on the west side, both sides during the time we were out there. But we'd take a lot of trips going up. We had a young we had a baby, and we'd take day trips up into the mountains and stuff like that, you know, and then come back, you know. So we saw what it was like out there, you know, very very different, very different. So I'll let us people talk.

Ruth, Thank you much. I appreciated interesting perspective. I'm glad you're back in Uxbridge, to be honest with you.

Yes, me too.

Yeah, it's devastating, devastating than it is.

Thank you. Happy new to you too.

Byebye.

We'll be back on night Side. We'll continue to call, will continue to talk about this. Six one, seven, two, five, four ten, thirty six one seven. We'll be right back after this quick break.

Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World, Nice Sight Studio. I'm WBZ News Radio.

Let's go next to Jerry and Michigan. Jerry, next to night Thanks for calling in. How are you sure?

Hi, Hi, Dan, I'm fine. I wanted to tell you how they load those planes up with water, I.

Believe, love you know, yeah, how did they do that? Thank you.

They've they've got a pan like a vent, a reverse vent on the belly, and what they do is they fly over the whatever it is, a lake or the ocean or whatever, and they scoop that water up into the plane as they fly over. And it takes I'm going to say a minute or so to do. It doesn't take very long. And that technology, Hold on, I got questions.

The person who sent me the material hasn't called in, so thank you. How low do they have to fly over the body of water to scoop the water up?

Well, they got to make contact with it, so it's almost like a seaplane. You've probably seen steam planes into You got to make contact with the water or you're not going to pick it up. And so they're flying probably one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty miles an hour, so I mean they're really they're really moving along and it doesn't take long depending on how big their scoop is. And they'll have that plane loader that I'm going to say, in less than a minute.

Okay, So now how long has this technology been available?

Is this that?

Believe it or not? That technology goes back to World War two because you know as well as I do, that we had steam locomotives back in that era that ran on water and coal and then they switched cold oil. Well, the steam locomotives, what they would do is they would flood between the tracks and instead of having that train stop at a at a one of those whistle stops where they brought the big pipe down from the water tower and filled the tender with water, they dropped a scoop.

Okay, so here's my question, Jerry. They someone said that they were able to put on like one point seven million gallons of water on the plane.

Well, probably a big seven. I don't know what planes they're using, they have have them out there.

They said seven. They were two seven to twenty sevens. The question is, if the plane is on the water scoops the water into the belly of the plane, how the hell can the plane get off? The ground. It has nothing to it has no runway to come down.

It's it's still flying. It's flying right over the water. It's it's flying just at the surface of the water, scoop in that water up. It's still in flight. It's not a question is it taking off or whatever. It's still And I'm.

Assuming that it would only be able to fly over a body of water where it had. When I say when I use the word runway, I'm using the word runway in sort of a metaphorical sense. It couldn't drop down just on a small lake. It would have to be able to come down. You just can't. You can't like dive bomb down. You got to have quite a distance to be able to run.

I assume it's gonna need probably two to three miles at least, because depending on the airplane and the wait. But it's it's probably going out over the ocean out there where you're at. But we have those planes around here. I'm in northern Lower Michigan, and we have a lot of wildfires out here. Just as soon as the snow melts, we have wildfires here that end up going across two and three counties. But that's that's the that's the way

I'm not sure that the plane that it took out a service was one of these seven thirty sevens, these seven No.

You're right, you're right, it wasn't. It was a red one, And I don't know. And they probably have those smaller planes so they can get into smaller lakes.

Absolutely. The seven thirty sevens are based at Colorado Springs, which is close to the Air Force Academy, and it said it was based at the Colorado Springs Airport. Why they haven't been They could fly, if they could do it, fly right over the Pacific Ocean and run run, you know.

And the other thing they have or they have helicopters. I don't know if those are out there or not, but they have like these elephant snouts or whatever you want to call it, or maybe six or eight inches or ten inches in diameter. They dropped down and they suck the water up. That takes a lot longer and they don't carry as much water, but they scooped that water out and like I say, they did that with trains back around World War two.

All right, Hey, Jerry, have you called my show before since your first time?

Yeah?

No, I called you had an airplane thing when the eight of system went down three or four years ago. I called you and told you talk to you about about that. I don't call you very often, but I've been listening to you for years.

Jerry. I appreciate it very much. What town are you in out there?

I'm in a very small town. It's I'm going to tell you. I'm around Grailing, which is about an hour and a half south of the bridge there between the up and Yeah, I got an idea.

I know. I know Michigan a little bit. Jerry. I appreciate you called very much. I really do.

I'm in a I'm out out in the middle of the out in the middle of nowhere.

Well, you know, when when you're on night side, you're you're in the middle of everywhere. Because you got a lot of people in a lot of parts of the country listening to you tonight. It was a very informative phone call. The fellaw who sent me the seven twenty seven pictures. I wish that he would be listening tonight. We get a lot of information people send to you, and then it's like, hey, I'm going to use it, but I'm gonna have some questions. You helped answer some

Well, for ten years, I got a pilot's license. I flew instruments for ten years, and my license is hanging on the wall. Now I got heard issues and I can't fly anymore. But I've got it all upstairs. Still I can still go and fly. I just take an instructor with me.

He sounds sharp as attack. Appreciate it. Appreciate Jerry, talk soon.

Thank you. I have a good evening.

Okay, bye.

All right, We're going to take very quick break here. The news is a little early. I don't want to short change anyone. Susan and Cambridge is next. I got Joe and Abril, and I got room for you. If you want to call six one, seven, two, five four to ten thirty or six one, seven nine three one ten thirty, I'll get you in before eleven. I promise at eleven we go to the twentieth hour, and tonight. What I want to do on the twentieth hour is give people an option sort of like kind of like

At Night's Side with Boston's News Radio.

All right, let's keep broller. You're going to go to Susan in Cambridge. Susan, I suspect you and I are looking at this very in a very similar fashion. How are you, Susan.

I'm good, I'm good. And I just got to say, Jerry and Michigan rocks really informative call. Yeah, yeah, I learned a lot. I just wanted to provide some context to something that the prior college, Steve had said about the you know, the reservoir being taken offline. And while you know that may have posted some issues, they didn't run out of water in like a traditional sense of

Well that might be interesting, but and it may have maybe absolutely accurate. I'm not an expert on it, but that's a little consolation to people who watch their houses bright. I mean, this has never happened on this magnitude. There have been fires in small towns. Remember there was a fire in a small California town four or five years ago that I mean it was literally a town that right woods, this is Los Angeles, this is suburban Los Angeles, I mean right.

Well, but that actually makes it harder to fight because you can't really do it's difficult to do controlled burns around fidential areas, and they're limited in their seasons. Like obviously you can't do a control burn in the dry season, right, so you have to do them, you know, in the wet season. But if the wet season isn't particularly wet or doesn't last as long, then you can't do it. And then if you're trying to do it in a residential area, it's really impossible because.

Many dangers or susan.

Yeah, absolutely, you wouldn't want to do a control burn in a residential area. You go in and you get that stuff out. Now, I'm not an expert in this, but if this has never happened before, and the people who are in charge, the mayor out there, I guess in December a month ago, cut the fire budget by seventeen million dollars.

Okay, I got to give contacts for that.

Oh, of course, because it's a democratic mayor. Go ahead.

Yeah, well let's just look, she inherited a budget shortfall. The fire department actually got like the lowest cut. It was two percent. The budget is over eight hundred and eighty. Is it million or billion?

It wouldn't be billion, it wouldn't be billion.

Okay, yeah, okay, million. So so it was a it was a two percent cut, it's and it was the least of like you know, all the departments basically, except I think for police.

Susan. Can I ask you a question, and this is an honest question, Okay, if this had been a Republican community, do you think you would have been reaching for as many excuses as you're reaching for right now. I mean this in a very gentle way. I'm not trying to be difficult.

This is well, if it was if it was a Republican would you be would you not be providing context? You always provide content. The boneheaded thing that Trump says, you know, you're always providing context, but you never you never know that for Kamala.

Harris, really well, oh, let me ask you when when Trump back in twenty and sixteen, and you've been listening a long time, made the comment the so called Billy Bush tape, you know, the one I'm talking about. We talked about grab right private parts. Do you know what my comment was? This was October twenty sixteen. I said, get off the ticket, resign from.

The ticket, right, Okay. But more recently you have provided context for things like like the things when he said, you know there's going to be blood you know, I don't know bloodshed or something like that, and you provided context for what he said.

I have what you're talking about there. Look, I am not a Trump person, as I think.

You know you're not.

You probably know that, Okay.

So I even don't provide context for Democrats.

I mean, we all have biases, Dan, But what I'm saying is you just had But Susan, this is a devastating lack of leadership, A devastating This is.

I can't think of anything that has hit me harder in terms. I looked at what happened in Hawaii and I was I felt concerned about that. But but it is now starting to percolate up that they were budget counts seventeen you know, billion dollars, not billion dollars, seventeen million dollars. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. And all I'm just saying is that you have you have, you have news him out there, the governor.

Okay, I would submit that anyone who's who's going to pass his loyalty test is probably not going to be particularly competent.

Well, that may be, And that's my comment. And if you if you consider that that I'm providing context to defending him, I think you're mistaken. Anyway, Good luck with Karen Bass. She decided to take a little trip as as the mayor of Los Angeles to a celebration of presidential inauguration in Ghana, and was she was out of town when Harold Washington was out of town on a blizzard in Chicago. Uh, that was not nearly as predictable as this. You knew the Santa Anna wins were coming.

Susan, Well, he was never my choice anyway. So well, but may have been some you know, some issues, but can we not overlook this. This is an unprecedented natural disaster. You know, I didn't see people in you know, western North Carolina, you know, well they were they were, I mean, people on the right were blaming you know, we're claiming that you know, the government was controlling the weather and creating oh wha, wha wha was waste.

There was a woman who worked for THEEMA who testified in front of car Ungress that she had been instructed not to provide assistance to people who had Trump signs of support on their homes.

People from Shima were being threatened by people with Trump signs. There were people I.

Can just imagine that. I can imagine that. Susan. Oh my god, Susan, I got a run. Thanks very much, this was not your greatest call. Okay, thank you much, appreciate it, all right, Oh God, Daryln Brunswick in New Brunswick, Daryl, welcome back.

How are you hey?

Dan? I was just calling in to Kauflman and Jerry reference the aircraft for water bombing. Yes, he did great and great and also Gaylord is a great area. They got a great place where you order anything and you get a pound of bacon every order.

All right, that's good.

Don't know what I'm talking about, but anyways, a serial two fifteen's they're actually made out of Canada. Canada there, and uh what they do is they have scoops on the very bottom. Like Jerry was saying, but they also have a relief mechanism so that way they don't overflow. So they don't because they have the boat for an end.

Right.

Yeah, again, I gotta be honest with you. I'm not an expert in this one, Darryl at all, and any uh any information. I thought Jerry explained it pretty well. I didn't realize that these planes literally, uh skim the surface of a body of water to ingest upwards of a million gallons of water onto the plane and they still can stay, they still can gain altitude after that. It's it's amazing. One of my listeners like.

The old what they're like, the old p B PB wise.

Oh, the pb wise. You're right, Darrel, I forgot about those. Yeah, they're similar to the r X fours too, by the way. And I think the x W threes I think they're in the same category, don't Darryl. Thanks thanks man, I gotta run talk soon. Thanks bye bye. Oh come on, folks, we had some good calls earlier. Let's finish up strong six one, seven, two. I don't need any excuses for Karen Bass and I don't need any excuses for Gavin Newsom. Okay, their political careers are at an end at this point

Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World night Side Studios on WBZ, the News Radio.

I wish you could have heard the conversation between Rob and me. Just then, Folks, when you call, try to stay on topic, Okay, just try to stay on topic. Okay, Daryl, if you're listening, I don't care that there's there's some place in Michigan you get a pound of bacon. I mean, we're talking about some serious stuff, Daryl. Let's get back to the call. It's gonna go to Dave in Bridgewater. Dave, welcome to Nightside. How are you?

Dan? Hey, Look at let's be real about this. A plane cannot lift a million gallons of water, all right, Yeah, there's no way eight pounds a gallon. There's no way a planet could lift that.

Yeah, no way, be real, right, Okay, let me tell you what someone sent me. A guy who occasionally communicates with me sent me pictures, and I'm going to find them here because I want you to understand I'm.

Not nice to say one the biggest plane in the world can carry a load of two hundred and forty ton Okay, that's the biggest plane in the world.

Okay, that's good to know.

Milliam a million gallons of water is it's it's not even feasible. You can't even what never couldn't even happen.

Yeah, okay, let me let me see if I can find these.

Let me see if these are This fire is, like you said, devastating, and they should have been prepared for this, they speak, there should be water lines coming from the ocean. Whatever they have to do.

Yeah. So the plane that was that that I received, and the fellow who sent the information to me is pretty sharp, dude. It's called the seven forty seven Supertanker. The seven forty seven to Supertanker is a retired aerial firefighting air tanker derived from various Boeing seven forty seven models. The aircraft's rated up to carry nineteen uh nineteen thousand US gallons.

Right thousand gallons. Yeah, that's not nearly a million.

Yeah, no, I understand that somebody mentioned that, and I should have caught it to be.

Water and a lot of weight.

Yeah yeah. And that's just trying to figure out.

That the spires burned so hot that the water hardly does anything. Really, it's you know, it's the winds are so fast and like, you know, you can't control the weather, but in the wind.

Well, I will, I just say this. The Santa Anna winds are very predictable. They happened every year in California. Now they may have happened with more intensity, but California should have been on the alert. Remember how we had some drought this summer. We had rained that August, and then we had nothing in September, October into November, and we had a whole bunch of brush fires around the state. Uh and and and then then we did get rain.

And that.

You have the mayor who flies off to a presidential inauguration in Ghana, Ghana. I mean, so you're former congresswoman Congress Mayor Bass, and you have the guy out there who's been running for President Governor Gavin Newsom, and they cut they cut the fire budget by seventeen million dollars.

I mean that that's such a bad move. I mean, well, where's all this money go to the people who are coming in from the border. Well, it doesn't go to the homeless people or anything like that. They waste money and it's terrible that they don't have fire control out their prevention and they just they spend money. Stupid.

They also appearently not clear out a lot of underbrush. And you know, people were talking about having controlled burns. I don't you kind of have a controlled burn neighborhood.

No, not like that, Not like that. They got to you know, you go in with the army, the core or whatever and clean it up, you know, to chip it up and you know, make make guidance out of it whatever. But you have to take care of it. You don't see that stuff happening out here. And there's a lot of debris in the woods too, a lot of trees down, A lot of fire could happen, but we don't. I mean, we had winds this week, but

We It's like, well, I think, well, I think that we geographically are protected in the sense that in New England we have of all the weather patterns around the country. We have blizzards, we have hurricanes. Yeah, we get that. Sometimes we get you know, big time marine storms.

We haven't had a while.

Well, we've had a lot of rain in the last month and a half. Believe me, we actually it turned out. I believe that in twenty in twenty twenty four, we actually had uh more inches of rain in the Boston area than on average.

After even with all, I heard on WPZ this morning that they just lifted the burning or the du roat. Yeah, in the west of Massachusetts today.

I get that. Yeah, And obviously the what I'm saying is at the end of the day here we we kind of dodged a bullet, is what I guess. But we're both agreeing upon. Hey, look, I appreciate you all day. Thank you so much. Appreciate Yeah. Absolutely, you'll go to Mike and MITHU and Mike you might wrap us up here. Go ahead, Mike, Hey, I'm doing just great. What's your take on all of this?

I agree?

Yeah, terrible. Look that it was, you know, a couple of years ago we saw pictures of this, so you know, it was a freak accident once, but it can't be a freak accident twice. Kind of fool me once. Shame on you and pull me.

There happened fires before you had the fire in Hawaii a couple of years ago, which again there was a weather situation out there and I guess they had some high winds and it got going and uh and they did have some fires previously in California. I know there was a small town that was devastated, but this is a big city.

Who did anything like this, No, And I just I pray for all the people out there, and I just I was at the doctor Goblin and I just saw that you know, they're setting up you know, donation mines and things like that. So that's one thing we can be hopeful for.

But I do.

Go ahead.

No, I'm just saying, you look at these people, and you know, when we have a fire back here and there's a family that loses everything, or for that matter, an apartment building. I was watching the news tonight there was an apartment building I think it was in Fall River. Fifteen people or have to find a new place to live, and they may have lost a lot of their worldly possessions. But fifteen people, they can go to Red Cross, they

Yeah, I agree, I don't know how you recover. I really don't. Because they're using seawater, which is salting earth. So you got one bad choice or another.

Yeah. They were saying that that even if they could have scooped seawater out, it could have had an adverse impact on some of the the planes end or helicopters. I I'm not a smart enough person kept from a chemical point of view, to understand. I do understand that that that seawater is corrosive, and anyone who lives near uh the Atlantic Ocean knows exactly what what what I'm talking about there, But boy, this is I just think there's such a lack of leadership. California has has has

I agree.

Just one thing for all the listeners, with.

Your listeners out there, yep, let's be prepared.

Let's let's make emergency catch for ourselves just in case.

Absolutely What do you what do you do if your house goes on fire? What do you grab? And you don't have a lot of time? You know, those people had a matter of minute or two to get out of their house.

I'm gonna think about that an idea.

All right, Mike, me too, Thanks, my friend, talk to you soon. All right, I think we've wrapped this. I think we have talked about this. We're gonna go to the eleven o'clock hour and we're gonna change it up just a little bit. It's the twentieth hour. I'll explain right after the eleven o'clock news