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Forty KFI AM six forty Bill handle Here. It is a Tuesday morning, January fourteenth, and the weather is well, the winds are whipping up, and everybody is waiting for the news as to whether or not there'll be another fire starting. And boy, I hope not. They were as well prepared as we can be. And I'm talking about law enforcement, fire fighting, all of it. I want to share a story with you because already we're looking at people to blame. There's no way that this happened without
someone to blame. Was it Mayor Karen Vass who was in Ghana? Had she been here, I guess it would have been better because of her vast firefighting experience and her decades of running fire departments. I mean, what would she have done. I would guess is she would just say hey to the fire departments and the officials, Hey, you guys, take care of this, right. I don't know anything about it. Nope, had she been here, it would have been better. Okay, how about the budget cuts to
the LA Fire Department. Yeah, she cut seventeen million dollars And is that what really caused the problem. What had him? What would we have been much better off had we had extra fire people or more airplanes, more helicopters in the sky. Well, according to fire officials, no. First of all, when the winds are zipping along at fifty at one hundred and seventy one hundred miles an hour, there are no airplanes or helicopters in the sky. They don't exist
for two reasons. First of all, it's way too dangerous for pilots. Second of all, whatever they drop, the winds are so intense that all of the fire retarnment of the water goes away. It never it can't hit the area that it's supposed to. Okay, so that's seventeen million dollars would have done it?
Right?
Then, there weren't enough people on the ground. We should have had thousands of more firefighters on the ground anticipating what was going to happen. Okay, well, right now we have firefighters from Canada, from Mexico, from Arizona, from Washington, by the thousands. We should have had them already in place because we should have known that these fires were going to be this dangerous and this enormous. Okay, that would be a good thing to have.
Right.
Well, the point is one of the reasons that people are not talking about is that home insurance isn't expensive enough. Wait a minute, how does that make sense. Well, home insurance, it's a trillion dollar industry, is built to identify risks. It's that simple. Here is the risk we are taking, and we are sharing that risk among our homeowners. And if we don't charge enough money, guess what, we can't cover it. And so what happens, Well, you have companies
like State Farms and we're out of that. We're done. We're out of California. Can't afford to be here. California is really interesting. In nineteen eighty eight, that was Prop One oh three reducing home insurance rates by twenty percent. That's per law, and future rates increases have to have public oversight. Read the Insurance commissioner. Insurance companies can't raise rates without an insurance The Insurance commission Commissioner saying, Okay,
he's elected. He runs for office, so believe me, it's a lot more important for him to get re elected than it is to protect homes. At least I think so. So low premiums encourage more Californians to live in the most dangerous areas. And it's just the way we build. We are built more homes against more areas that are fire prone. Read all those hills where the fire came down and destroyed thousands of homes. If rates were higher, people would think twice about building. I mean they are
artificially low. You know when they're artificially low. When insurance companies say they can't do business in California anymore and they bail out, well no, you should stay here. Well, you can't force us to stay here. Now, you can force us not to charge additional money for our policies,
but you can't force us to stay here. And so you have the insurance commissioner scrambling to get the three major insurance companies that bailed, and you're going to see the insurance commissioner didn't bitch at all about the fact that my insurance which lapsed last November, no November before last, when it lapsed and the insurance company doubled my policy literally one hundred percent more, I didn't see the insurance commissioner saying no, why because I got one company that
was willing to ensure my home wasn't the same company because guess what, I had a state foreign policy and they weren't doing business in California anymore. So, just the way we build, just the way we ensure. And here's the bottom line. If the insurance companies don't charge enough, Now, let me tell you. I'm not sitting and saying insurance people should charge more money. Actually I am if you think about it, I like the idea of insurance, and
insurance companies have to make money. I mean they have to make money. And you can argue that they're making exorbitant money. You can argue they're charging too much, and I come back at you and say that why did three companies leave California, the three major companies because they were making too much money? Is that why? So the way we deal with home insurance as well as the other problem is not only are we up against hillsides and we're building there, but our houses are wood stickhouses.
You go back eat back East, it's all brick and masonry. Here it's all wood. And we don't do a very good job of fire proofing our house or fire resisting our house. I did a story yet yesterday about private firefighters that people could actually buy insurance and buy private firefighters, and there was a huge controversy about that, and I
defended it well. One of the things that people pay for in private firefighting is fire proofing their homes, making it as fire resistant as possible, and that takes money. That takes real and the insurance companies should say, if you do a B and C, we're going to give you a break. They do that with auto insurance. If you're a good student, if you're a good driver, you get a break.
All right.
This Santa Anna win event, we were told, is life threatening and that happened two days I remember two days before the fires actually broke out. And we've had Santa Anna wins before. So why were we a unprepared for this or maybe there was no preparation possible?
Hm.
Brian Lewis, who is a meteorologist with the National Weather Services joining us. Thanks Brian for hanging with us for a few minutes. Explain what's the difference the difference between this Santa Ana event and previous ones.
Yes, good morning, Thanks for having me. There was a little bit of a difference in terms of direction of the Santa Ana win event. They had more of a northerly component as opposed to our traditional more north east splash east wind components. So that's why it was able to kind of have this direction down into La. In addition to that these strong winds, we also had very strong winds a loft which created a mountain wave effect.
And essentially the wind goes over the mountains and then creates a wave like pattern where it dips down and goes back up, which enhances the flow at the surface too. So those are the biggest differences compared to our normal sant Ana wind events.
Yeah. One of the things I was listening to and watching an interview with a gentleman who lost his house, and he said he'd never seen anything like this. You normally see a fire moving up the mountain side up to the ridge. He said, this was the exact opposite. The fire was moving down the hill at this extraordinary speed and that I've never heard of before. Why would that be happening when it normally wouldn't happen during a Santa Ana event.
Absolutely, the mountain waves are the biggest part of it. We did see wind guts upwards of one hundred miles per hour in some of these areas. With so, with winds that strong, it essentially creates enough force to move the fire the opposite way that we're used to, so downhill and down the mountain.
And so and how often does this happen? Because I'd heard it is so rare, But in the last five years it's happened more times than it has in one hundred years. Is that true?
I'm not sure about that. I know we were kind of comparing it to an event in twenty eleven that had some similar characteristics, not the same, but similar in terms of that, but in terms of this particularly dangerous situation that we were calling it. It has happened. We've used that verbiage four times since November and before that. The last time we used it was twenty twenty.
I don't remember winds at one hundred miles an hour. I mean that's hurricane strength, that's a hurricane two level. And I've been here my whole life. How often does that actually happen?
Quite rare?
Again, comparing it to that twenty eleven event is kind of what we were looking at. I haven't seen it since I've been here. Significant winds they usually will see some areas at really high mountain elevations, maybe at mountain peaks, but it's extremely rare.
And we expecting more of these in the near future. I mean, has climate change affected this to the point where it's going to be normal to have one hundred mile an hour winds occasionally?
Yeah, I'm not sure about that, but we are, you know, expecting, you know, tonight into tomorrow morning, some pretty significant winds. The good news is it's more of a traditional Santa Ana direction, so it shouldn't impact the Palaced fire burn area too much. However, we are still expecting some extreme winds with really dry humidities and dry fuel moistures to impact Ventura County and western La County.
All right, so when you I can see it coming down the mountains as the winds come. But how can it sustain itself at one hundred mile an hour winds across entire communities I'm talking about miles and miles like the Palace sads.
Yeah. Absolutely, it's that upper level wind support that just keeps it going and it's just stayed in place for days there, which contributed to that sustained extreme wind extreme winds.
All right, thank you very much for helping explain that. Jeene meteorologist Brian Lewis, Thank you much, Okay. I mean the bottom line is, as I understand it is, and this is where Neil and I got into it this morning, is this wind was so powerful that and of course Brian Lewis couldn't make that judgment that there was no way to really defend it. There's just no way to. If a fire starts, it's on its way and who's ever in its way just has to get the hell
out of the way. That's it. You can't be anywhere near a fire like this, which is why you had all the specific alsays disappeared. Basically, the entire community is gone it. You know, they describe it as a war zone, and I described it as soon as I saw those photos that came out a day after the fire. When you aircraft could go up and actually take photos or video of what the community look like, it looked like Hiroshima.
If you've ever seen a picture a photo of Hiroshima or Hiroshima after the momb was dropped, that's what it looks like. Everything flattened or parts of neighborhoods in Gaza where there's nothing left standing at all, and all you saw was foundation. And then when you go into other communities, for example, Altadena, which is a community it's not particularly wealthy.
Pacific palis as it was all tons of money, but Altadena, the homes are older and the chimneys are the old fashioned chimneys, when chimneys were actually made out of brick all the way up and all you saw was just street after street, block after block of just standing chimney's. Yesterday, I heard a reporter describe it as just they look like tombstones that we're standing in a cemetery that was full of debris. I mean it was, and is that bad?
So at this point, well, Amy, let me ask you real quickly, because you're paying attention this more than I am, because I'm doing the show and you're doing the news. Are we looking at anything happening with the winds that are increasing? Anything being reported?
The winds haven't picked up too as strong as we're expecting them. We're expecting those fifty five to seventy miles per hour gust in the eastern Ventura County and western La County, but those have not materialized yet. There's some winds blowing, but they're not blowing super strong as we're expecting later today.
Okay, so it starts what about noon, mid afternoon.
Well, the highest are expected from now until noon tomorrow, so we've got you know, six hours.
Yeah, lovely, just what we need. All right, Back we go to what's going on in light of the fires. A couple of stories that are opposite each other. One is the story of the gouging that's going on and the bad actors. And on the other side is the humanity of what's happening. People that are donating time and money. And if you look at sant Anita, the racetrack and the parking lot, it is so full of clothes and food and water is extraordinary. One of the good guy
stories is an organization called Wings of Rescue. Jeane Gable, who's part of Wings of Rescue, is with us and Gene people don't know enough about your story, but it's one of the really good stories coming out of the f So explain to us what it's about and what you do.
Well. Thanks Bill, We're really pleased to be on your show. Thank you very much, and thank you for highlighting the work we do Wings to rescue flies at risk pets. Sometimes that's from just overcrowded shelters that don't have room for them anymore, or they're high killed shelters. And often it is from disaster zones. We've fallen to hurricane zones. We've flown to earthquakes, we flew to a volcano eruption in Dominica. Wherever it's needed to move large numbers of pets,
that's what we do. We charter large planes or we have a couple of planes we work with pilots on and we fill them up and we take pets that are already up for adoption. Have to be very clear about that. We get a lot of people saying, well, what happens if somebody wants to find their pet. We
don't take lost pets. The whole point of this is that the shelters, like Pasadena Shelter has taken in over six hundred animals in the last two or three days, they have to have a place to put those and care for them while they wait for the owners to
come and retrieve them. So we take existing pets that are already up for adoption and we bring them to shelters that have extra kennel space so that everybody wins and we never take pets to a shelter where there's any chance that they're going to be euthanized or till we don't work for shelters to do that.
How far do you fly these pets?
In this case, we took pets On Saturday. We took a load of pets to Utah to a big sanctuary there that Best Friends, which is a wonderful rescue group as and then on Sunday we took them to Seattle and Oregon on the Pacific Northwest has a gracious appetite for adopting pets, which is terrific, and they don't have enough local pets to meet that need, so they often
have open kennel space. On this Saturday, we're taking two flights to Texas, and a lot of people are concerned because Texas does have some places and zones where there are too many pets. But we are only working with shelters that have open channel space and it's kind of a trioge situation. The rescue community is very willing to step up and take a couple of pets here and there if they can to help out. So that's what we do.
And a couple of questions, I mean, extraordinary what you do. First of all, how do you excuse me, how do you figure out who gets business class and who gets coach when you fly these cats?
Well, the people that load our planes are true and our CEO Crowdy, who is the guy who does a lot of that. He's very good. And there are there is a hierarchy, believe it or not. It has to do with weight in the airplane. So some pets get up front.
I'm assuming that these planes are configured as cargo planes and you've got the crates that are loaded onto the planes. Do I have that right?
Yes? They and they are cogo planes. So that also though all of our planes we fly are pressurized and temperature controlled, and the pets always fly in the main cabin with the pilot.
Yeah, I would think so, otherwise they tend to explode when it's not pressurized. But the cost, I mean the cost of flying these pets. I mean this is not putting them on a truck. I mean that's a lot of money. It costs to fly pets around the country.
It is expensive and unfortunately, in the last year or two it's gotten more expensive to the cost of fuel and the cost of everything has gone up. But one of the reasons that I think we can be successful is that we fly very large planes, relatively large planes for pet transport. So it's not unusual for us to fly one hundred hundred and fifty dogs and cats on a single flight. And when you amortize the cost over that many pets, it's not that bad.
I'm assuming you're a nonprofit and you ask for people to help you. Is that correct.
We are a nonprofit and people can go to wings or rest backslash donate or any place on our website. They'll find the button to donate, and we appreciate every dollar we get.
Okay, let me get that again. It's Wings of Rescue dot com, slash dot org. Okay, wingso Rescue dot org and we'll put that on our website also with a link to it. Jane, you do great work and people don't really know enough about that. I mean, you think about this. You're flying pets all over the country to basically well keep them alive. It's a good thing.
Jane. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate your exposure today.
Sure kind of a need organization that really is chartering a plane? Yeah, that is not cheap. Stuff all right. Now, one of the big stories that were one of the stories that are coming out of the fire yesterday there was a report and this is true. We're starting to talk about the fact that prisoners are are on the fire line LA County prisoners and Chuck Lovers, who is my go to fire guy who is a friend of mine and has been for many years, actually ran those
prison gangs for LA County. So Chuck, first of all, thanks for being here and explain how that works. And you know, I've got all kinds of questions like how do these prisoners even fight fires with those ball and chains, you know, dragging them along? How does this program work?
Well, that's a large question. The first off, they come from the state, their state villains. We contract with the state for their use, and part of the contract is when we're not using them on emergencies, we actually are tasked with teaching them a skill so they have some
kind of skill set when they parle. And that's where I came in because my background is architecture and I can build pretty much anything, and so, and you build a rapport with them when you're working on work projects, building every taining wall or repairing cement outside in front of a fire station. I used to teach them the math of the project, whatever it entailed. We start every project with the map, how we're going to do this,
how do we figure out how much material? And from there we teach them how to fight fires.
Also, yeah, that's the question.
To be safe out there, right, they need training to be safe.
All right, So let's talk about the training because you're actually, well, how much training does it actually take to put someone on the fire line, Because when we see a lot of people up there, these rows of firefighters, they're basically just digging and establishing fire breaks. There's more to it than that.
Correct.
Long before they get to us, we have a camp. The state has a camp called Sierra. It's up near Sacramento, and that's their fire training camp. And so they go through fire training and they learn how to deploy the fire shelters and the reasons behind them. They learn how to use the tools of the trade, and then they come to us and then we reinforce all of that.
I'm responsible for all their individual training. So we learn how to you know, what signs to look for if we get into a bad situation where we might have to move out of the area. They all have to look up, they all have to make eye contact with me, and then we'll move out of an area. If a fire is going to to overtake us, and it's never happened with me, then we will stop. We will get rid of our tools and our packs, and we will deploy and put our fire shoulders on. All right.
So, in terms of the prisoners, I gotta have a couple of questions. Is this something prisoners want to do? I know, the pay is extraordinary. It goes from normally eighty cents a day when you work, so like two dollars and eighty cents a day, which, of course you know they don't get paid or get paid very little. Number One is the benefit of doing this as a prisoner in the big picture when someone is released and are there more volunteers than people than you can use?
Generally speaking, there's more volunteers than we could use. Correct, It is totally voluntary. It's hard work. But the venues. You know, part of the contract with the state is we have to then provide a facility to house them. And what we use in La County is a lot of the old Nike sites, the military Nike sites that ring in the hills above Los Angeles, and they're tailor made for what we need because they already have guard
towers and concert in or wire. All that stuff is there, and we end dormitories, so the dormitories are generally better. A lot of times ton dormitories, we give them a higher calorie count because of the kind of work they're doing, so they get better food and they actually it out and they go out in the public, they see people. They're not just behind the prison walls anymore. So it's so good for them and if they're inclined, they can actually learn something.
So there. I mean, do you have people you have prisoners that are out there out there in the public. Is there any fear of them taking a hike? Has it ever happened to you?
It never happened to me. It's not that it doesn't happen, but it never happened to me. I just had a good rapport with my guys, and they for them, they wouldn't want to disrespect me.
Wow. Yeah, I know you've We've talked spent so many hours doing this. The people that you select, is there any criteria that you use as to I'll take this guy and not that guy.
Well, first off, we don't select. Everything's got to be racially balanced. And they you know, every Wednesday, a new bus would come in and you know, the guys that kind of got in trouble get rolled up or parole and we got new bodies. You know, we had we had four crews in camp, uh and so, and each
crew has a total of fourteen men on it. And then we have in camp people that do the logistics, the you know the uh uh make sure the clean that toilets are clean and stuff like that because we're out working doing other projects.
Uh and.
So.
Anyway, I don't pick they come and work.
I do.
I do suggest my crew leader go interview because they know the way I work, and we're gonna work. And everybody has to pull their own weight. And if you get a slacker that doesn't work, well.
Uh chuck. As far as the quality of the firefighting ability to these prisoners, is it up to par as to the regular firefighters that you.
Use, Well, when I was out there, I was type one. I could go anywhere. I didn't need supervision, So yes, uh you know. As far as as far as the the ICs system, is concerned. I could do anything that any of the other crews could do.
Understood, But again, I'm just going to ask you, and maybe in misunderstood the quality of the firefighting teams that are prisoner teams versus the ones that are not. Are they up to standard or are they better? Are they worse?
Well, every crew fluctuates up and down as personnel come and go. Okay, and and of course the other foreman has a lot to do with how a crew reacts. But I could put my crew up against any crew and hold arl right.
You know, it's a great idea, and it takes people to know what the hell they're doing. Chuck, as always, thanks for taking the time, so appreciated anytime.
Bill, and I appreciate talking about this subject that you know, they don't get enough recognition.
Yeah, and they don't. All right, Chuck, thank you. And by the way, Chuck and I do spend I can't tell you how many hours we spent. The guy knows well, he was thirty years of the fire department. And you know, it's anything you have to know or anything I ever have a question about. He's right there, all right. This is KFI AM six forty Live right here on KFI Am six forty you've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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