Handel on the News

You're listenings KPI AM six forty, the Bill Handles Show on demand on the iHeartRadio f.

And now Handle on the news. Ladies and gentlemen, here's Bill Handle.

All right, it's a Wednesday, January eighth, and I would start good morning saying good morning not unfortunately anticipated and it came out exactly as we did anticipate and expect.

The wildfires and it is.

We're going to be covering out, of course, versually the entire show, and it's been going on all night. As a matter of fact, we did not go to syndicated programming George Norri. It was live through the entire evening with the KFI hosts and reporters. And so when we say a hello first everybody, Amy, I know you've been up for a while.

Good morning, good morning?

Yeah, all right, Neil, who has been here since? What you were on from three to five am?

Now here at thirty and did a three to five before wake up call?

Yeah, and I know what was on from seven to midnight?

Oh yeah, he had a long shift and then you had Conway come back midnight to three am.

He likes these overnight fire shifts.

Well because he's ups up anyway.

Yeah, yet it's not gone to bed, and I swear he lives so close that if he fell right here at the station, his head would hit his pillow on his bed.

Yeah.

So it's been a This is where I love KFI and I love what it does.

We're at our best and situations like this.

I got a call yesterday Chris Berry, who is our now management, came into manage for a while and interrupted watching Wicked, which I got very upset. I actually paid thirty dollars to buy Wicked. Big, big, big mistake. So I'm watching it dozens of times to get my money's worth.

All right, We're going to have to hear about that at a later date when we're not talking about wildfires.

You don't really think so yeah, okay, Yeah.

Also, I you know, all of you folks have been up and working for a long time. And I was up all night because my little dogs, they have a bed in the bedroom and when there are people outside, the dogs mark because they're simply protective.

They're dogs.

They're dogs, and so you know, people walking outside, the barking happens. Well, the wind was howling and the furniture outdoor furniture was moving that. Every time the wind picked up and you could hear a branch. The dog starts barking because someone is outside, and.

I got I shut up, shut up, I want some sleep.

I had no idea you could do that much damage to a dog, a twelve pound dog, by throwing it against the wall.

Uh. It did work, though, that little dog shut up.

Finally it's limping, you know it's it's out there limping and won't be barking again at people. God, God help us if a burglar comes in, because that dog is never gonna bark anyone ever.

A more tiny little dogs balls or four times the size of yours. You're not throwing that dog, mister a tough guy.

Oh and I looked at that dog and I said, honey, honey, do you want to snack?

And let me tell you what a weird I don't even know if you know this story, Neil, Let me tell you what a weirdo. Lindsey is little Tommy, who of course had to be spade, had to be neutered because it's a male dog. She kept his balls in a jar, which is yours. No, well that's different, but we have his nuts in a jar on the shelf.

Those those are what I'm serious. By the way, I'm not making that up. It is different, Yes, she's different.

Who would have thought that a forty old marrying this wind bag over here is weird?

Not quite a little older than that? All right, Cono, that I say good morning to you, you do not? Okay? Good morning? Cono. Also drove in. Did you see the fire on your drive in?

I did see one fire, Okay, I want to say it's a simmer fire.

Right, we're going to talk about that. Gary Hoffman, I heard him this morning. Gary is and he came in very early, obviously, and at his driving from Santa Clarita. I want to talk to him at seven point thirty, and it's I have not seen any fires. First of all, I live in South Orange County, and so I'm in my home studio this morning because I wasn't going to deal with all that stuff. So on my ten foot commute from the bedroom to my studio, I did not see a fire. I don't have a fireplace on so

I did not, Okay, not at all. But I did notice when I walked out of my house this morning, you could smell the smoke in the air, which was which was a new thing.

Absolutely, Yeah, all I all I have is the winds were howling, and just I haven't even gone outside yet to see what.

A mess are they still blowing where you are?

Uh, let me look.

I don't think you need to look for the winds.

Is he licking his finger and putting it in the air.

That seems stupid because at my house there were no winds this morning. The winds were howling last night, but then this morning, dead calm in my neighborhood.

I can't see because it's dark. Yes, so we have yea the outdoor lighting. The winds are going, They're not howling, but it looks.

Like a wind. What I'm not trying to be mean?

Do you think that your star on the Walk of Fame and your Marconi was a like a dare? Like somebody in those departments thought it'd be funny to give you those things.

Okay, Woodleigh Fire.

This is a one Woodley Avenue south of Victory Boulevard, and this Pulvida base and seventy five acres another one just pop it up there.

So we're obviously going to be reporting on the fires. We've got Michael Monks out there on the fire scene. We're going to go to some national correspondence coming up at seven Alex Stone, ABC News correspondent who's on our show all the time. He's going to talk about what's going on, and he's in Altadena at the Altadena fire. This is being covered. If you watch national news, which I always do. You know, I'm sort of a news junkie, so I always watch ABC or CBS in addition to

It would be a brush fire.

The problem is, of course, it's in Pacific palisades.

Populated areas period, right, It's.

Yeah, or what used to be Pacific Palisades, and we've got Malibu. All of these these aren't in the hills way above where firefighters can't get through.

Firefighters can't get through now because.

The winds are blowing so strong, aircraft can't get up in the air.

I mean, it is a mess. It is a mess, and something that I have rarely heard.

I've been watching Channel five and Channel eleven as well as for hours, is the word heartbreaking in referring to the houses that have been destroyed and the families that have been affected. And reporters, usually try to be objective, are deeply moved about seeing going there's some one's home going, not.

Be it's you know, I was looking.

I was just went into the booth, was talking with kno and and we're looking up at the screens and you're looking at areas that, you know, there were sidewalks that people were probably walking their dogs on two days ago, and the houses on the corner. I mean, everything looks like a normal neighborhood, except it's completely engulfed.

Yeah, it's it's almost like it's almost like a movie set.

It's almost like they're filming.

It's almost like they're filming, filming. Gone with a wind with at land to burning.

All right, a back lot somewhere, Let's take a.

Break, we'll come back and then we're gonna go right into it, the latest, what's going on talking to people who are on the fire line. Uh, and give you somewhat of an idea that you're only going to hear here, You're only going to hear on KFI. You know. Sometimes I really enjoy doing stories that are breaking and we have to deal with them all morning.

Sure, it's a different Yeah, this is this is our wheelhouse.

You know, like nine to eleven, I think I broadcast for seven or eight hours straight.

It was, you know, this is what we do.

But unfortunately, always unfortunately, I mean god, that was the most unfortunate thing that happened to us in one hundred years.

But being this close and knowing people have been evacuated.

For example, we have friends in Malibu, Uh, and this will be their fourth.

Go round after having already rebuilt a.

House that went down, and if it goes down again, it will be their second rebuild. If they're even there, and if they even stay, because.

Would huh would you stay if it was your even if it.

Was and if it was a dream house, Yeah, and it is their dream house.

No, I wouldn't stay. I'd go, you know, what uh, this is somebody up there telling me. If I I don't know who it was would be up there would be telling me, Actually be the pyro Baniaca on the hill just above me would be saying this is not a very good place to live anyway.

So what we're going to do is we're going to report. I'm going to throw it to Amy.

Amy, if you can just give us the highlights the headlines of the Palisades Eton Hearst fire, and we also understand there's what fire is now breaking out all over southern California, small spotfires, which is one of the problems when you have eighty mile an hour winds and you have no idea where the next spot fire is going to erupt.

Well, the laziest one to erupt is in the Subpulvida Basin in the San Fernando Valley. It started just before six this morning and has burned at least seventy five acres. Officials say the fire is being pushed by the winds moving south and is threatening to jump Burbank Boulevard. There's no reports of any buildings threatened for that one at this time.

Now.

The one you mentioned first was Pacific Palisades. We've got thirty thousand people under evacuation orders. At last count or at last update, it had burned just about three thousand acres. We're expecting those numbers to change, possibly dramatically, when we get an update later this morning from fire officials in the Altadena area. That fire, we just got new numbers twenty two hundred and twenty seven acres and there are

Yeah, it's heartbreaking.

And one of the things that we are not reporting and no one is reporting, is how many homes were.

Destroyed or damage because we don't know.

There's no way to know, because the way is the only way to know is to send aircraft up and literally look down and just start counting the neighborhood, look at the looking at the neighborhoods that have been destroyed and go, Okay, there's a this street one, two, three, four, five, eight houses that's straight over there. Twelve houses no idea

Yeah, and you know what they look like now they're torched. Yeah, they're all torched. And you can't help but notice because the affluent nature of the neighborhood that the row of cars were not your average wasn't a bunch of Toyotas, is what I'm saying.

Not Honda's No.

Well, those houses and if they're not really mentioning it because it sounds a little bit, is the word obnoxious elitist? Pacific Palisades is a wealthy area. Those are multi million dollar homes. I mean, this is I'll tell you who's sweating bullets the insurance companies. You've got a couple of insurance executives looking at this and going ah, crap, oh.

Well, there's also there was also some pulling out or some changes with insurance companies a week or so ago that will be affecting these people, and rate change in all kinds of things we haven't even heard the beginning.

Oh no, it's crazy. That will go on.

And then there are some homes along the coast in Malibu that have gone up, and those try to get anything along a coast for under twelve million dollars.

I mean this financially, the hit is going to be enormous.

And it doesn't mean that people who have a lot of money are more important or have greater value than everybody else. Well actually they do, but we normally don't talk about that. The point is that you've got this devastation. The financial hit is enormous, which I think what this is going to do is amplify the issue of you can't get fire insurance. You know, we have three insurance companies bail out of California. A lot of people are not insured. They're bare because it's not a question of

No, but the hills. So what happens. What's that California insurance that you get.

Yeah, it's the Fair Plan, the Fair Plan with the insurance companies put into this fund, and you can buy into the Fair Plan if you can't get insurance anyplace else. The problem with the Fair Plan, well, if I mean it does help, it's only fire insurance. It's not liability, it's not comprehensive, it's not theft, nothing except for fire itself.

Pipe breaks.

You're done if your house floods out, and it costs a fortune. The rates are very expensive, and the limitation I think is around two point two to two point three million dollars I think is the most they'll pay out, which is a lot of money for most of us.

But is the house itself? Is the value based on its location? That sure?

No, we're talking about hard costs. Were just talking about hard costs.

Yeah, to build the house. That's what fire insurance is about, just rebuilding. That's it, okay, But I want to go into a deeper conversation as to what is happening. As I said, and as we all know, this has become an international story beyond just a national story, and so we're going to get a couple of different views of it. Alex Stone, who's an ABC News correspondent, is going to give you what he's reporting nationally, what that take is,

He'll be reporting. And then we have a.

Couple of press conferences. What I think there's a press conference at eight o'clock, yes, the fire officials, which of course will be covering, and then at a thirty assuming the press conference doesn't go on forever, Jim Keeney is going to be with us, and obviously we're going to talk about the effects of smoke inhalation, what it's about, long term, short term, medium term of fire injuries, burn injuries, which we now know there are several and they're probably

And you said yes, What exactly were you doing and what was in it?

And how close were you actually bailing out getting out of dodge.

Well, I figured, if we're gonna sit there and get these notices, I might as well be prepared in case, just in case. You never know, these embers fly far, and you know, we were in an evacuation potential area. So I mean, we just put like photo albums, birth certificates, passports, just those types of things in our car and.

Just we're already in a car and then yeah, we're ready to My car is loaded right now. Actually, okay, ready to jump in the car.

I was talking to Pamela, my daughter Pamela, who is in with Woodland Hills area, and she was very close into a couple of voluntary evacuation orders and she was the light was flickering on and off, and she would say, there's no power in the house.

Dad. She was on a cell phone. Obviously there's no power in the house.

And then all of a sudden three minutes later or two minutes later, Ah, the.

Powers back on.

Go.

Yeah.

Those Department Water and Water and Power people are very good about repairing.

It takes them two minutes. Yeah, flickering all night, Yeah, those are trained squirrels.

You know that the DWP has that repairs that stuff very quickly. Do we know, and let me go to Amy on this one, Amy, do we know how many voluntary blackouts? That is the power company blocking off electricity cutting, shutting it down for fear of the power lines igniting the structures or the brush around the structures.

We know that in southern California about three hundred thousand people are without power. We do not know which of those might have been precautionary shutoffs and which might have been as a direct result of fire activity.

Yeah, and that's fairly new southern California.

Edison did implement preventive power shutoffs, but as Amy said, they didn't say what areas or how many homes were affected.

Now, usually by this time we hear from the fire officials that the fire started under where they're investigating the origin of the fire, which means was at arson, Was it caused by somebody? Any information of that, because I've been waiting to hear whether that's even being looked at.

We do not have any kind of information on the sources of the fires.

I mean, think of this.

I mean, you've you've been covering fires for a whole lot of years. We don't know how many structures have burnt, no idea, how many homes, no idea how many people, for example, have ignored evacuation orders, although at this point I can't think of anybody in their right mind that would ignore an evacuation order. I mean, it happens all the time with hurricanes. Yeah, just let it, you know, come over me. I knew I was gonna I knew we were gonna be okay just before there literally swept away.

You know, there was one that we had all seen because somebody was shooting video from their own home on their phone. There was a couple of guys and I think a dog in Pacific Palisades and they have these beautiful, massive windows, and the fire was right outside. I mean it basically was anove. And I have not heard any updates about them, but they were unable to get out. From what I had seen, that would be one that I would be curious about, for sure.

There was.

I was watching one of the news outlets, and I don't know whether it was eleven or five or two, because I was going back and forth on all the channels, and one of the reporters was there in front of the camera. Behind you could see the smoke going sideways. The wind was blowing so hard, and.

One second she's there, the next second she's not. It's like in vaudeville they got.

The hook and yanked it and you flew off the stage.

Oh it was insane.

But there are seventy eighty mile Prier in Palisades.

Amy. I noticed you're not out there reporting in the middle of these howling winds.

It's my job to be here.

There you go.

We have Michael Monks out on the lines, you have Alex Stone out on the lines.

Yeah, we'll talk to them, and I want you to mention, you know, when I will start, I'll mention how comfortable you are when we start talking to them. We heard from the weather people that this high wind event is coming when you days in advance, and so there was plenty of warning, and you had Southern California fire departments La.

County, La City.

I think you had the various other adjacent fire departments all ready to go and stay each right.

Well, did that help? And I don't know the answer.

Later on, Chuck Lovers, who has been a friend of mine for twenty.

Five years and he was with La County Fire.

He if he had not retired, and he retired a few years ago, he would be on.

The fire line right now.

I would be having a reporter throw a microphone in his face and say, Chuck, what are you doing now?

What is happening?

And I have a couple of questions to ask Chuck that frankly, very few other people are getting because he could tell me inside, tell us inside baseball. And then I want to talk to Gary Gary Hoffman a little bit later on, because he described driving in and what he saw. He came from the north. He came from Santa Clarita into burbank Gary of the North, Gary of the North.

Gary. Yeah, and Amy, who lives you live east of here? Right?

Aby, I live south of here.

Okay, she lives. She lives south of here. And you're of the South, Amy of the South. Cono, you live just east of Denver, right, pretty much?

Yeah, pretty much?

Might have. He got quite a spectacle on his way in.

Yeah, So, ConA, what did you see coming in? And usually it takes you what forty five minutes to get in?

Yeah, closer to an hour with no traffic, with no traffic yeaheah. So I'm like lo Melinda out in the Inland Empire. So and I was corrected. I was saying the Silmar fire. But it's the Altadena fire that I was seeing off the one thirty four when the two ten turns into the one thirty four, and it basically just looked like armageddon.

Just those are the hills. Those are the hills.

If you're heading from the east to the right, the foothills sort of northeast of Pasadena and Altadena is up against those hills.

You can see that fire from here in the studio. If I turn around I look out the window, I can see it coming down, miserable.

Just the wind is still going now.

The worst of it, I understand, was done by around six am this morning, about an hour ago.

That's what the weather report said.

And then throughout the morning, Amy, I know you're following this much closer than we are because you're right on top of it, and you're in front of all the news computers.

And what are you asking about the winds?

I completely forgot we were asking about the winds. Yes, that's a joke, by the way, Neil, I knew.

Exactly what I was asking. Stop at that was a joke. By hear the moment joke, Amy, I was.

I was asking about the weather National Weather Service and the winds when they died or will die down, and what we're looking at.

They're not going to die down for a while. We did talk to Mike Woff with the National Weather Service this morning. The winds are still blowing. They're not blowing as strong as they were, but we still have red flag warnings in effect until at least tomorrow evening. We could see gus still up to seventy miles per hour one clocked. Neil mentioned this earlier. One clock didn't act in at one hundred and fifteen miles an hour.

Yeah, which is hurricane strength.

I mean it's four, but that's pretty Yeah, that's pretty insane.

And then Toto, wasn't he saying on your way in that you saw a truck or something top of Oh.

No, I saw it's like seven.

I think around seven that.

I counted big rigs that were over.

But the wind is I mean, you know it's a big deal, but I didn't really take it into perspective until I'm driving, you know, at eighty miles an hour and I'm seeing actual massive trees now down that I have to look out for.

Whether it's no like, was was your car buffeted at all by the winds coming in?

You're gonna have to explain what buffeted The winds affected the car?

Were one and you said you went sideways or you swerve because of the wind power.

Well at he was missing a door and there's no window, that's not your shield, and.

None of that is true.

But yes, it was affecting my car along with other people's cars and big rigs.

Like I'm not driving you.

Could understand because big rigs are basically a sail in the shape of a box, and the wind comes against those things, and that's a lot of wind.

It is ultimate gottam here. That's what's key, that's what's important. It's a multwagen.

Okay, Amy, you drove in for a bit. I want to ask you, did you would did the wind affect your drive?

Did you feel it?

It did? Yes, but it was once I made the made the turn onto the one thirty four and headed west and was hitting the valley.

Yeah, and then I and it comes to the point, and there's a point of this conversation somewhere, and that is if the winds are strong enough to move a car or to take a big rig off the road, can you imagine what it does to a fire? That is, all the fires consume oxygen, and the more oxygen they get, the hotter they burn.

Of course, there has to be fuel a lah brush.

Uh.

And but for saying that the winds are eighty miles per hour, which is a massive quote event wind event. Amy. If this was forty miles an hour, this would be big news, wouldn't it.

It could be if the conditions were ripe. What makes the wind conditions so devastating or potentially devastating here is because the humidity levels are very low and we haven't had much rain, so the ground is very dry and it's just ready to burn.

So, by the way, I just got up to look out the window. Here, go look at that, and it is insane. So that fire has now become this massive black cloud that's moving our way here in Burbank.

It's insane.

Before all you could see is the flames serpenting up the mountain, and now we have It's so it's hard to describe the difference between the sky I'm looking at now and then you peek around the corner in the studio here and that is I'm assuming that is the eating fire, the Altadena Pasadena fire. Now it's just massive, this cloud that is coming our way, and it is pitch black.

Yeah, and when it started, of course, it was a spot fire that started. And because of what we were talking about, the massive winds, the fuel, the brush that's available to it, that's a bone dry and also humidity. Aimy even been reporting on the humidity because that is ridiculously low, which of course adds quote fuel to the.

Fire absolutely, and the humidity levels are expected to stay low through at least tomorrow, which is why those red flag warnings for high fire danger will remain in effect. The winds are still going to be blowing, not quite as as strong as overnight. The humidity levels stay low. That keeps the fire danger really high, and new fires could crop up at any time. We've got the new

Okay, this is KFI A M six forty. 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