You're listenings KFI AM six forty the Bill Handle show on demand on the iHeartRadio f KFI.
It is handled here in the morning crew. It is Tuesday, February eleventh.
As we continue on with the program, now a little bit about the fires, and we talk about the history of these fires. Do you know that fires in southern California go back, I don't know, thousands of years. How is that possible. It really started with a conquistadoris and I'll tell you about that in a moment, but let's talk. Let's go back to nineteen sixty one. I'm gonna give
you a little history of fires in southern California. So nineteen sixty one, you had a trash pile up in the Mulholland Drive area and a fire broke out, picked up by the Santa Ana Wins and then went as the canyons and.
It was apocalyptic.
And what made that one pretty interesting is how many celebrities lived in that area. And this is why I caught the world Tension actor Kim Novak. And by the way, these names may not be very important or you don't know them, but this in nineteen sixty one, these were a List actors, actor Kim Novak, her home was destroyed.
Well, she was actually took a hose out to home to save it.
A guy by the name of Richard Nixon who had lost the presidential as you know, in nineteen sixty and then ran for governor and was killed by Pat Brown, the governor, the father of Jerry Brown.
So he went to practice law in California.
Well, his home that was about to go, and there he is with a garden hose trying to soak the wooden roof shingles.
Fred McMurray who starred.
In My Three Sons at the time and big television series in the sixties or early sixties, he had to evacuate his family and he took worker studio workers from the set to help evacuate his family.
So the fire reaches bell Air.
The mansions of bell Air where a lot of very high end people live. Thermal heat which we've seen before with the embers that just happened, lifted the wood shingles. They were all of wood at that time, high end of the air. Fifty mile an hour winds hurled them
more than a mile over Brentwood by nightfall. The bell Air fire destroyed four hundred and eighty four homes, including homes of Burt Lancaster, huge actor, comedian Joey Brown, which I'm sure you've never heard of, but massive star Nobel Laureate who Willard Libby, which is a fairly big news.
So firefighters extinguished the flames. And there was Jajah Gabor dressed up in well in Jaja Gaborland and she is with a shovel going through the lumber of her or the rubble of her home, looking for a safe that was there with her jewels in it.
And she had a zillion dollars.
Worth of jewels. That's that's who she was. So the bell airfire became known as the big one. Back then, four hundred and eighty four homes, that was the big one. It forced everyone in La to reckon with the dangers of fire.
They really dealt with it now.
They realize that people in La realized, okay, fires in the canyons are no small deal. So l officials in response put in a bunch of new fire safety measures, more firefighting helicopters, new fire stations, a new reservoir, and no more.
Untreated wood shingles.
They had to be treated later on, it was no more wood shingles of any kind. And you will see today you will not see wood shingles on a house. A roof lasts about thirty years, and we're already about fifty years into an ordinance of no more wood shingles. So now we have concrete and tile and that's fire proof, actually not only just fire resistant, so also in high risk fire areas, a brush clearance program. And so this
is what they're doing now. But I'll tell you what they didn't do is they didn't stop building in the canyons.
That they didn't do.
So there was no measure push to radically rethink of building. It just disappeared new housing tracks all over the place. And then larger and more deadly fires swept through the region. And all the fire the safety improvements improvements prompted by the bel Air fire, well they were there, but they couldn't outpace the new development and climate change.
It's that simple.
So now we have the Eton and the Palasages fire, probably the big one, sixteen thousand structures, twenty nine people dead, and once again new reckoning. How many LA homes came to be built on land that is so vulnerable to fire, and the question.
Is should they even be rebuilt? And at this point we're grappling with that.
Stephen Pine, it was a fire historian Professor Meredith Arizona State University studies this.
He said, straight out. California is built to burn straight out.
So the way the topography is the way the climate works in California, it is built. So what happened and this really got crazy more than a century ago.
So what happened one hundred years ago?
Well, the building on hillsides really started with a venge vengeance. So Los Angeles begins to overtake San Francisco as the most populated city on the West coast, and real estate developers begin their eye begin to look up to the foothills of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains. There's a nineteen twenty three ad that showed renderings of the Spanish Revival houses that we have in southern California, and
there they were over steep hillsides, over bluffs. The ad read, the future of Los Angeles is in the hills right there billboards. Matter of fact, that's when Hollywood Land, the Hollywood Sign was first built, and it was Hollywood Land and it was advertising a tract, a real estate track in the hills. And then the land part dropped out, And of course now we have the world famous Hollywood sign that was nineteen twenty three. You know what the lots cost in those days two thousand bucks. You know
what that is today, thirty six thousand dollars. Now can you imagine a lot for thirty six thousand dollars in the hills. So in the twenties, now it was boom time for La the whole country. It started to go crazy before that the nineteen thirteen construction of the La Aqueduct. This is William Mulholland who engineered that Mullholland Drive at the top of the hill, and that paved the way for one hundred thousand people to move into the city each year because there wasn't.
Water before that.
And when that aqueduct came down the mountain, all of a sudden, the San Fernando Valley became a fertile landscape.
For growing particularly oranges. Before that it was desert.
And as a matter of fact, if you go up to the north valley right off Fornaldi, you can see where the aqueduct spills into the area that fills up the San Fernando Valley and the reservoirs. Bell Air marketed itself as the exclusive residential park.
Of the West.
There were lavish real estate ads, sales brochures, and bell Air was so exclusive. Not only did the area, the owner of the bel Air Tract and others not sell to blacks or Hispanics, not that they had money anyway, because we're talking in the twenties, but also no Jews.
Of course that's a given.
Nobody in the motion picture industry was allowed to buy because that was considered less.
Than today bell Air. Well, you tell me, huh.
The bell Air count Country Club started because of the discrimination.
Okay, So here we go.
Californians are drawn to the woodlands, the base of the mountains. They didn't want to live down in the canyons. They wanted views. So there they are at the top of the mount on all these hillsides. Perfect place for a fire, absolutely perfect.
This all started.
When the Spanish colonizer that can kiss the daughters came in the fifteen hundreds. The natives, the Indians as they were known the Native Americans, would use burn. They did controlled burns. That's been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years. So the Spanish go kiss, the daughters come.
By, and they stop it cold. That continues.
On eighteen fifty, legislators passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. No intentional burning anymore. So the move to suppress fire, that's what that was about. Magnified the risk of fire, the destructive fires. And in nineteen twenty three, the Fire Chief one an ordnance prohibiting wood shingles.
It went down that far, that early. But what happened.
Wood shingles weren't made illegal until the nineteen seventies. Well, the lumber industry, how powerful do you think the lumber industry was shut that down. We're not going to lose manufacturing wood shingles, especially with a growing population like that. How about that lobbyists changing a law. Well, you had a whole bunch more fires, and then the population exploded.
After World War Two, you had all of these young men move into Los Angeles, which was a staging ground for the Pacific Fight, and they realized, wow, look at this land, Look at these places.
It's cheap, it's a great place to live.
I remember my parents' home that they bought in the mid fifties twenty six thousand dollars. Today that would be I don't know, two fifty three hundred thousand dollars North Hollywood, beautiful three bedroom, two bath house, gorgeous, decent sized lot. So this went on and on with half a dozen fires. Now maybe they're getting serious about retrofitting your home.
I don't know. We'll see, we'll see.
I think people are looking pretty serious now about it. And the easy stuff is easy, putting in those vents that stopped from embers from coming in, pulling back brush fire resistant, fire resistant trees. At the Persian Palace, I had big palm trees right next to the house. Those ignite which is very which are very easy to ignite and burn, would burn down the house. And the fire was very close. And people were saying, but weren't you worried about the fires? I go, no, I've already sold
the house, so I don't care. Okay, here's the big story. And Elon Musk.
Is he crazy? Who the hell knows?
So open Ai Elon Musk is trying to buy now.
He started open Ai.
It's obviously an artificial intelligence company with Sam Altman, and he is out of it, but he's filed a lawsuit against the company and Altman. And here's why, because Altman misrepresented open Ai. And here's the fascinating part of it. Altman and the other co founders were so frightened of what AI could do that they established the company as a non profit and gave its code out. It was
open source code. You can do people can do whatever we want you want with it, which is basically the company becomes worthless at that point, and there were investors that were allowed into the company. How it got started. You know what investors want. They do not want a nonprofit. They want a for profit. You don't pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a company and say, okay, it's worthless. That it's not making any money because it is a nonprofit. So they had to switch at least a part of
it to a for profit. Musk is suing saying, you lied, you lied, You said that it was a nonprofit. Now you have most of it as a profit, and now it's valued at one hundred billion dollars.
That's how big a deal AI is. And so what's going on with this is Musk wants to buy it.
He has his own company, x XAI and artificial intelligence intelligence company. Major companies are investing billions and billions of dollars into AI. So he says, I'll buy it for one hundred billion dollars the for profit part because.
Now we've got some money.
Allman posts on x no, thank you, but we'll buy Twitter for nine point seven four.
Billion dollars ten billion dollars. Musk bought Twitter for forty four billion dollars.
It was worth twenty five billion dollars at the time. Think you overpaid, and now it's valued at about ten billion dollars. Now that's not to say Musk is the richest man in the world, the richest person in the world. So between SpaceX and Tenes and a few other things, he has Tesla batteries and a bunch of other companies, he's doing just fine. But the Twitter issue is it's more of a yuts is what it is from Altman.
Altman and Musk are now enemies, I mean real enemies, and they're suing each other, going going crazy.
And so here is the issue. A company with big.
Backers like Microsoft when it started venture capital, well, it has an obligation to grow its business and to make money, and investors from Silicon Valley want a turnover very quickly. They are not patient about their return. They come in by a company, want to grow it, and out they go. So the first time must sues open AIS in June of twenty twenty four. The emails show Musk acknowledge the need for the company to make large sums of money.
He originally invested in it, he is now out of it.
He wants to buy it, and he's filing a lawsuit because they.
Breach their charter that it's going to be a nonprofit.
So let me get this right, all right, part of is a nonprofit, Musk issuing it has to stay a nonprofit, but he's willing to buy it for one hundred billion dollars because it's worth so much money and makes money, or at least it's about to make money. And so which one do you want?
No money?
Because that's what it's worth zero if it stays a nonprofit. My guess is if he were to keep it a nonprofit and pay off all the investors that they're insane wins on this their profit.
You know what, he can have a nonprofit and make no money on it. Okay, is he going to do that? No? So what does open ai do well?
It accuses Musk of being jealous that he was no longer involved in the startup.
It's that simple, and it has become a personal fight.
So now AI companies are well, can you imagine what altman is worth?
He started?
There was a first company started actually chat GPT open Ai think is the company.
Is that owns it.
And the only downside about AI now because it AI takes massive amounts of energy, takes very high end, very expensive chips, and the Chinese have been able to do it. A couple of guys have been able to do it with cheap with chips that barely power your refrigerator or you're old, Atari far far cheaper, quicker, better.
We'll see what happens. That's up in the air.
How unusual the Chinese producing products at a much much lower cost but at the same time having the tech.
Great story I want to share with you. The owner of Sony, right after World War two, had started manufacturing tape recorder super scope and he had just started was and he met with an American CEO of a company that was looking at distribution, and he said maybe this even before Sony started it was just a startup, and the Americans sitting down with him this is in Japan, said the only thing Japanese business can do is make those little paper umbrellas that you put in drinks like
my ties. Well, the Japanese so certainly showed him, didn't they. And the same thing as happening with China, where they are ahead of the game. They're able to produce great ev cars at about the third of the cost that.
We pay for him here.
It's fascinating stuff, the way life is going. There is a story about the Altadena fire in which a one hundred year old woman was left in a senior home. Now, if there's a fire anywhere near where I am and I'm one hundred years old, to be rescued, you would have to pull me out of the ground, which is the case.
With most of us. She was alive, still is.
Alive, and she wasn't rescued until two firefighters went in and we're looking for people, and they found her down the hall and they were able to rescue her. And therein lies a big issue because her son said, if it wasn't just a question of luck, she wouldn't be around,
and so he has called for total reform. I think the reform is pretty easy, and it has to do with that the authorities have every senior home, they have it on record, and as soon as anything near a fire burns out and that's the risk, they go in and clean the place out, making sure that everybody who needs to get out gets out.
So that is fairly easy.
But I think this goes beyond that and talking about how elderly people, how important elderly people are in.
Our lives, not much. Do you know?
There are countries that the senior homes don't exist because the.
Culture is old people live at home.
Most homes in those countries are multi generational. You've got the kids leaving with their living with their parents, living with their parents parents, and they can even go beyond that. And if you go to Japan, you go to certain places in Europe, one hundred year old great grandmother.
Yess, her great great grandmother would be at home.
She'd be wrinkled and old and barely able to function. This woman walked down the hall, she walked out a walker.
The other day, I was in a restaurant with a woman who yeah, it was what restaurant was that, I don't remember, but she was.
I was sitting down and her family with a walker. It was awaiting. We were waiting. Her family with a walker comes by, she's with a walker, and says, do you mind if she sits down?
I go, yeah, I mind. You know, I'm sitting here.
And literally they said she's one hundred years old, and she knew she was one hundred years old. So she looked down at me and said, I'm one hundred years old, not in therefore I should sit down. And she was just very proud of it and said I'm one hundred years old. And I said, I don't care how old you are, you're not taking this seat. Now, that part is not really the way it happened, but I'm one hundred years.
Old and moving with a walker.
Everybody who heard that went over there and congratulated her and said that is a wonderful thing. A centenarian who is coming into a restaurant to eat with her family. Did you I thought that was Did you see the video of the one hundred year old woman that they that they found.
Yeah I did. I just like, she's like, don't lose me.
Yeah, she's perfectly lucid. She goes, I'm here, don't lose me. Don't lose me.
By the way, the joking, the joking I did.
About telling that one hundred year old woman that you couldn't sit in my seat, and that's really not much of a joke.
You guys have a lot to talk about the day he's the buggy whip. No, not a lot, did you guys?
Although they called you know what they did, They called her first before me, even though I was there first, And I'm screaming at the hostess, yelling, hey, I was here first. It's like when my kids were born. There
was a DJ from and this is absolutely true. There was a DJ from some minor rock station and his wife was pregnant and she was delivering as Marjorie was delivering, and we were waiting for an o R. It was pretty crowded, we were waiting for the R to be cleaned, and she went in first, and I'm screaming, has anybody looked at the ratings? What is she doing first? That actually happened, By the way.
Oh, do you hear any of us giving pushback? No? Oh, I can't believe it. That didn't happen. All right, 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