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All right, Bill Handle here and the morning crew. As we've been listening to the press conference.
Really good stuff.
We've heard from the police, We've heard from La County, the county officials, the fire officials, all of it.
Now we're into.
The political end of it, the elected officials thanking everybody, and we're all together and we love each other, and there's a lot of that, and I think there's a lot more to talk about. When the question and answer period starts. We are going to cut to the question and answer period because we're going to get some really good information and hopefully we'll have a chance scheduled as Captain Sheila Kelleher and that's thea Fire Department public information
officer who I have a few questions. One of the things that was mentioned is while this is going on and all assets that are available are being thrown on this, fire police, especially fire departments from county and city and other adjacent areas from Oregon, Washington, Nevada. They're being brought in. They are sending fire personnel to fight these fires that are growing like crazy, nine to one one services. What if your house is on fire and it's another area your standard fire department call.
What are they doing?
Is it a skeleton crew that has left? How about the paramedics? Is everybody at the fire? So the planning that has to go on is just extraordinary and it leaves a lot of questions wide open.
So it eight fifty.
I think we're scheduled with the Public Information officer for LA Fire Department. Now a recap if you've just tuned in, we have fires that are out of control. I don't think we have containment of any fires. Zero containment, and it is it's scary stuff.
Aircraft are not up in the air.
And we talked to Chuck Lovers, who is a friend of mine who worked with a county fire department for thirty years, and he was giving us the inside story and I asked aircraft, how how much are they relied on? And he said extraordinarily certainly. When I started, it was different. Now it's critical to fighting fires. We don't have assets in the air. The wind is too strong. Amy let's do a quick recap of the fires, the evacuations, what's going on, the size of the fires, where they are.
Okay, So starting with the Palisades fire, which was the first one that started, hearing from La County Fire Chief Anthony Maroney that as many as a thousand structures have been destroyed. After that, La City Fire Chief Christian Crowley came on and said, we're going to verify the assessment on that, so we're going to double check those numbers. Not sure if he misspoke, also saying that we have
confirmed three thousand acres. Chief Maroney said five thousand acres, and on all of our sources they're still saying three thousands, So we're double checking all of those numbers. A high number of significant injuries to residents who did not evacuate it. According to La County Fire Chief Morony, the cause of the fire still unknown. They have a thousand firefighters on
the Palisades fire. More than one hundred structures that's buildings, businesses, homes, churches, as we know, have been destroyed in the Eton fire burning in Altadna, it's actually burning in the Angelus National Forest in Altadena and in parts of Pasadena, that's at twenty two hundred twenty seven acres, about five hundred firefighters on the lines, and we're hearing that there are two fatalities we do not know the cause of them yet,
and then also a number of significant injuries. There's then the Silmar fire. LA City Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said that that fire is actually burning within the footprint of the Saddle Ridge fire. It is five hundred acres. That's the latest large one to start. It started last night about ten thirty and that is burning north of the two ten freeway. There are evacuations in place. The top priority,
according to fire officials is saving lives. And I think one of the most incredible things that was said today by La County Fire Chief Anthony Maroney is at all residents of La County, all residents of La County are in danger as these fires continue to burn out of control. As we mentioned, there's no containment and fire danger is still really really high. Red flag warnings are in effect until tomorrow night at six.
Is none of it is particularly good news in this fire, and we've heard from the authorities at that they have at least the ones that we're speaking have not seen anything like this. Ever, Now keep in mind the actual acreage that's involved is actually small. It's relatively small. We're talking maybe six thousand acres. And if it were up in the hills, if it was an area where you hear, we can't get to it. The fire crews are not able to get into those areas because it's too rugged.
It wouldn't be much of a story. It would be a blip.
The problem, of course, with this fire, it's in congested areas, it's in residential areas, and you have houses that are burning, and we don't know how many houses and businesses have been destroyed. From the news, the news on television, what we're seeing is, for example, on Sunset Boulevard there was a piece of it where businesses and houses on both sides of the streets were burning. And on ridges where there are homes, which by the way, are multimillion dollar homes.
Specific Palace Age is a very high end area there. We saw homes that have been burnt we don't know how deep.
And there's housing all through that.
How we don't know how many homes have been destroyed. The way we find out is the aircraft goes up. The planes go up. The helicopters go up, and not only are they used for throwing water dumping water on the fires, they're also used for mapping, determining where the fire is going, where the fire is hottest. I mean, that's all done by aircraft, and they look and they do surveys of how.
Many homes have been destroyed.
We find that out, and as Chuck Lovers have explained, that's why it's so critical to have aircraft in the air. But as Amy is reporting, and I believe that there are no aircraft in the air.
Do I have that right? Amy?
You have that correct. They've been grounded since last night. I believe about five point thirty. The wind conditions were too strong even for the helicopters to get up. And officials are saying this morning that as soon as the weather conditions allow for it, we will get the helicopters and hopefully the planes up in the air again.
Yeah, and even if they do get up in the air. This morning, we talked to Alex Stone who's ABC News correspondent, and he was at the Altadena fire and he had mentioned there are certain helicopters. Chuck had told us there the I think Seahawk or Blackhawk helicopters that you see. Those are the ones that you see going in on rescue missions in the movies on TV when the army goes in and they repel down a big, big ones,
those which are own and operated by certain agencies. Those can go into areas where there's a lot of wind where other aircraft cannot. Helicopters, for the most part can't. You've got the fixed wing, they can't. And he said, and he explained. The other problem that we are having, or the fire department authorities are having, is even when they were dumping water over a fire, the water dissipated immediately. It basically became water vapor.
It was done.
There was no water there that would go on the fire. He actually described one helicopter, one of the big ones, dumping water over a fire and literally the water went sideways, made a hard left turn. So there's a huge disadvantage going on. And we are into a mess. And I am hearing I'm getting texts from family that lives all over the country. Was supposed to come in this weekend and visit, and we're supposed to go to lunch on Sunday, and she was going to buy, so I was pretty excited about that.
She canceled. She said, no, not at all. We're not coming.
We're not coming, And she texted me, it's terrifying. The last time I remember it being this crazy. She now lives in the New York area. The last time I remember it being this crazy was two thousand and three maybe, And we heard from one of the fire chiefs say he has never seen it this bad in terms of the wind and Amy, let me go back to you.
Let's talk about the weather forecast, what we are looking for in the next few days, both humidity wise, which has a great deal to do with how this fire is moving, and the winds, which is virtually everything all the news of this fire.
Right so, we still have read flag warnings in place. Red flag warnings are for high fire danger when the winds are blowing very strong and the humidity levels are very low, which is the condition that we have now in southern California. The red flag warnings are expected to
continue until at least tomorrow night. At six o'clock of the National Weather Service is saying the wind gusts not quite as strong as they have been for the last overnight, when we were hitting up to one hundred miles an hour, eighty miles an hour. Seeing that, they're saying that it's still going to be blowing thirty forty miles per hour, and of course higher gusts are possible, so the winds are still going to be blowing very hard in certain areas.
And again that humidity level is low. The ground is very dry. We haven't had a lot of rain, so we are ripe for fires, ripe for fires.
There's so many questions, and I'll be asking that of Captain Sheila Kelleher, who is I believe still scheduled and still scheduled to join us in just a few minut She is running. She runs LA Fire Department, which has I believe helicopters, which has aircraft.
And she'll answer that question.
La County, I believe, has most of the assets. And this morning with Chuck Lovers, he explained Chuck Lovers, being a friend of mine, having been in La County La County Fire for over thirty years, explained what happens right there on the fire line, and frankly, it's.
The fires like this you just get out of the way.
You know.
It hit me Bill as we're watching and listening to the press conference when the first responders are saying, listen, we're nowhere, nears out of the way of harm and all of Los Angeles. Things can shift at any time. You're talking about embers being able to travel miles, and that can so it's not even oh, the fires close to me, or it's not close to me, It could be close to you in a heartbeat with these winds.
Yeah, and with the embers.
And this is Dean Sharp who talks about this regularly on his show. One of the most dangerous things about fires like this because embers can blow miles. So here you are looking at a fire that's five miles away or four miles away, and you basically get a view of a disaster. It's nowhere near you. You feel bad about any structures, any homes that are going down, but you know it's over there.
It's four miles away.
And Dean explains, you don't understand that those embers, and especially when you're talking about winds of this speed, can travel and they go into the vents. That is the danger. The embers hitting the stucco on your house is no big deal. The embers hitting the roof of your house is no big deal because all of us have asphalt or concrete shingles.
We don't have wood shingles anymore in our house.
But going through the vents up in the attic, that's just open space between those flaps of the vents, and the embers get in there, and there there's lots of wood. There's lots of just lots of kindling, if you will.
It's a real danger.
And that is, as Dean explained, a real problem where so many homes are lost simply for lack of a proper vent that he explains the kind of venting you need and how they have him out there.
And I just did that.
As you know, I bought a house that didn't have proper venting and one of the first calls I made was to the roofing peoples.
Yes, go ahead, Amy Bill.
I want to dip back into the news conference. We've got a representative from DWP talking about reports that there was water pressure decrease and how they're trying.
To get Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Okay, So here's got to talk about.
Eight thirty pm and the third tank about three am this morning. Those tanks help with the pressure on the fire hydrants and the heels of palisades. And because we were pushing so much water in our trunk line and so much water was being used before it can't get to the tanks. We were not able to fill the tent fast enough. So the consumption of water was faster
than we can provide water in our trunk line. So I want to make sure that you understand there's water on the trunk line, it just cannot get off the hill because we cannot fill the tanks fast enough, and we cannot lower the amount of water that we provide to a fire department in order to supply the tanks, because we're balancing firefighting with water, so we have we have our operations people on the water side at the command post with the fire department helping them with tactics
to an sure that we can provide as much water as we can find to our first responders. What are we doing now. We're sending about twenty water tanks for our construction crews full of water to support the fire department. We identify other areas in our system where our tanks our tankers can refill. It takes about thirty minutes to refil about four thousandallons of water and we're constantly moving that water to the fire department to get them as
much water as we can. I would also ask for the people on stip cut nine zero two seven to two, because we're pushing the water system so hard, our water quality is decreasing. So we're going to be issuing a boil water notice this morning and I will extend for about forty eight hours. The water quality is low. We have a lot of ash and system and so please if you're going to be drinking water, you need to boil the water. Those boil waters will continue to increase
us the system starts restoring. We're also managing a power outer restoration. Our water emergency has been the number one primary issue, but the power issues are continue to increase. The winds picked up at around eleven PM last night and that's when we saw the majority of our outages coming in. As of seven am today, we have one hundred and thirty five thousand customers out of power. We have restored about seventy eight thousand customers since the start
of the outage. Thirty two customers have been out of power for more than ten hours, and seven for over eighteen hours. If you are out of power, I urge you to call us, call nine on one, let us know so that we can get to you as fast as safely as possible. We are on a severe emergency activation at the EOC for both water and power. It's taking us twenty four to forty eight hours to get to all of the outers. That's why we're going to start increasing our mutual eight requests to get more crews
on here to reduce that restoration time. But we cannot do that until it's safe for our crew. And I'm happy to report we have high no safety incidents for either the water or the power cruise, which we need all the crews safely operating in our system. Forty percent of our otages were due to us having to energize the circuits for public safety, and we cannot energize them until it's safe to do so, and we have put
eyes on our system. Twenty percent is because of wire downs, and six point five percent because our system has protected itself from further outages, and so we have to patrol every line before we come back online. With that, I just want to thank everybody and.
Love I'm sure, thank you so much we want to transition. We're five minutes over. We do want to give a few a little bit of time for a question answer with the press. I'm going to call on you. Please identify yourself, your name, and which media outlet you're with. I see a hand up here, We'll go with you first.
Because this press conference called One Voice, is bringing together some of our city leaders, are town any leaders here together for this incredible tragedy, this crisis that we're experiencing right now, and a lot of our viewers are asking how can other Angelinos help? Because people want to volunteer, people want to help. What's the best way that other folks out there that want to help? What can they do?
Well, first of all, thank you for that question, because I think this does speak volumes to the fact that it's not just at the local level, it's at the state and the federal level as well, and it is one voice. We're seeing these fires taking place county wide, which is stretching our resources.
But to the public.
I mentioned All Saints in Pasadena that's opened up it's church to people that are evacuating, people that are not only part of their parish, but also people that are seeking refugee. I would encourage and we will work with our office Emergency Management to put together a list of what you can do to help. I know at Pasting a convention center they're looking for resources, food and blankets. Red Cross is putting that together, but we can always use more.
So this is the time for us all to come together.
I mean we're trying to wrap our heads around just getting this fire under control, but make no mistake, we will put something together so that people can offer their support. You are seeing the goodness and I know suho As or Horrorbac mentioned it. With all these horrific stories you hear, you also hear stories of people that are doing amazing things to help their neighbors in their community.
Thank you for that and go ahead in the green shirt.
Yeah. The DDBP was talking about the problems with the water supply and I was wondering if either the DDBP or the Fire department has any kind of numbers to talk about, what is the number of hydrants that could not get water because of these pressure issues. What percentage of the system in Pacific Palisades wasn't getting serviced at that point? And given the type of things you're describing
this morning. Do you think there needs to be an overhaul of the system given these increasing number of urban fires, and also when does the mayor.
Return and name and media outlet needs.
David's on iiser with the Los Angeles Times.
So chief please correct me if I'm wrong. But we were trying to keep water at all altitudes on the Palisades, and I think about three in the morning dusk when the hydrants went dry above the Brainwood area. We are able to push water on that on that trunk line on the east side of that, and we have some water on higher elevations sixteen to eighteen thousand, but at three thousand, all of the at three am, all of
the fire hydrants went dry and the Palisades. To your question of climate resiliency and how do we need to update the system, I would say that that is true. We were talking with the county supervisor and Mark on how are we going to change the way we operate our water systems for events like this. This is an unprecedented event. I think the twenty eleven winds was significant from a power our perspective, but the fires have really increased the response complexity of this. We had crews trying
to mitigate this and we had to evacuate. We worked with fire department to try to get back in and try to fill the tanks. Again it wasn't safe to do. So you're managing the fires, you're managing the power outage, and you're managing the water needs because there was an urban wildfire firefighting. So yes, we have to look at our system from a climate resiliency as a region, and it's going to be more than just the WP. It's all the water agencies here, including the county.
Thank you over here in the Burgundy with a mask name and media outlet please.
Real quick, I can speak on the operational side of the hydrants. We don't have a specific number to the hydrants. We do know that it came in phases. Now, our firefighters always have a primary plan, a backup plan, contingency and emergency plan. So oftentimes just so that the public is aware, in large brush fires, water supplies are normally limited. So with that our apparatus do have that ability to draft water if we need to out of pools, ponds,
any type of water resource. We also utilize the water tenders in which we spoke about.
We're going to continue with the press conference, obviously, and so I'm out of here. Gary and Shannon now starred and they're taking over for me. I'll catch you tomorrow. You've been listening to The Bill Handle Show Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.