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Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Monday, the thirteenth of October. I'm Lucy Passel, I'm Billy fit Simon's The California fires earlier this year burned thousands of acres of land, destroyed homes and businesses, saw more than one hundred thousand people flee for shelter, and directly killed thirty one people. Now, US authorities alleged one man was responsible.
In today's episode, we'll explain what we know about the man accused of starting the La fires and the alleged involvement of chat GBT.
Lucy. This story of the LA fires, I feel like it was the first big news story of twenty twenty five.
Yeah.
It happened early in January, and it's easy to forget, I guess because we are on the other side of the world, just how big this was, how catastrophic it was. It was just it was massive news. Yeah, for anyone who perhaps says forgotten some of the details. Do you want to just refresh our minds?
Yeah? Absolutely. It was our first week back of full time work here at the daily os kind of the second week of January. There were two major fires that developed around the same time, and two smaller fires, but the two main fires were the Palisades Fire and the Eton Fire. They were named after the areas that they burned, and as anyone who was on Australia's East coast during the pre Covid Black Summer would know, when you have a fire that big, even if it's just in one
part of a city, it affects a huge area. So smoke was really blowing everywhere. A lot of it was blowing out to the ocean, but it sort of felt like something that was affecting in my memory, the whole US West coast, and by the eighth of January local time, the neighborhoods of Alta Dina and the Pacific Palisades had effectively been wiped out by fire, like thousands of homes and businesses destroyed.
And I remember a big conversation at the time was what caused this? Because what was confusing was that it was winter there. What did we know at the time about.
What had caused it. Yeah, I think we think of fires as being exclusively a summer thing, particularly here in Australia. What was interesting for me to learn at the time was La Mayor Karen Bass said the fires had been stoked by winds that are normal for that time of year. She said it came from a combination of quote hurricane force winds and extremely dry drought conditions. So there's a
phenomenon in LA's cooler month. It's called the Santa Ana winds, and they blow in to La from the desert in the east of the city out towards the ocean, increasing the risk of fires because it dries out vegetation. Sort of the same logic as what causes fire here, which is if you have a lot of very dry vegetation, that increases fire risk. It's just that that tends to happen in Australia more in summer, particularly if it's an
El Nino summer, if things are very dry. So on top of these kind of seasonal winter winds, they also had extreme drought in particularly in central and southern California, which is where Los Angeles is, Okay.
So we know that there were extremely dry conditions and that there were also these dangerous winds that exacerbated the possibility of a fire, and that eventuated in these extremely catastrophic fires. But why we're talking about it today is because we have learned or there is an allegation that there was someone who potentially actually started the fires.
Yeah. So last week we got a press release from the US Department of Justice aka the DOJ saying authorities had arrested a man in the state of Florida, quote alleging he malicious started what became the Palisades fire.
Wow, And so what do we know about him?
We know that the accused is a twenty nine year old man. His name is Jonathan Rindanek. He was in California at the time. He's since been staying with family
in Florida on the other side of the country. In December twenty twenty four and January twenty twenty five, he was in California working as an uber driver, And the DOJ's press release actually told us that authorities interviewed him for the first time at the end of January twenty twenty five, so only a couple of weeks after those fires, which tells us they've been working on this for a while. And I keep saying authorities because we're not specifically talking
about police. So we've got the DOJ, which represents the people of the US in federal cases. Like you might hear a case called the people versus Xyzed, so that's criminal cases. Yeah, so that's the same way that in Australia, because our head of state is King Charles, we would say the Crown versus Xyz. It would be represented as are if you've ever seen it illegal listing, I'm digressing.
We've got the DOJ, and we also have the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives aka ATF involved in this case. And the main source that I'm using here is an APHA davit filed by ATF Special Agent William Shriye who's based in la and his affidavit says his responsibility includes identifying the origins and causes of fires.
So you've got this kind of federal bureau, you've got this guy within it who's filed this affidavit of evidence that authorities say suggests rindern Neck was responsible.
And what kind of evidence do they have?
So shri laid out a lot of evidence. It's argued the Palisades fires specifically was a quote holdover from a fire that Rinderneck allegedly intentionally started on New Year's Eve. It's alleged he dropped off some Uber passengers just before midnight and then drove up to the Pacific Palisades area, went up to the beginning of a walking trail, and lit a fire. A nearby resident actually spotted the blaze
and called emergency services. It's also alleged that rinder Neck was trying to call emergency services as he walked back to his car, but couldn't get through.
To inform them.
Yes, It's alleged he fled the scene in his car, but then drove back and watched firefighters fighted and recorded video on his phone. Although firefighters thought they had contained the fire, it's been suggested that it actually continued to burn underground through route networks before resurfacing and spreading due
to heavy winds a few days later. Prosecutors say Rindnik lied to authorities about his location in a police interview, claiming that he was at the bottom of a hiking trail when he saw the fire and tried to call nine one one. But they say they have geolocation data from his phone that they say puts him nine meters from the fire when he first attempted to call emergency services. So this is all evidence that hasn't yet been tested in court.
It's just allegations.
It's just allegations and shries Affi. David also includes a detail that allegedly Rindanak had a chat GPT generated image of a city on fire in his phone.
I have seen this around, so he asked chat gpt to create an image of la on fire.
Yes, with he kind of described it as one side should have people burning and one side should be behind a wall that shows people laughing at the people burning, right, Yes, And it's also alleged that in the early hours of January first, twenty twenty five, so after it's alleged he lit this fire. He allegedly Sorry, so many allegedlies. We just have to be careful. He entered a prompt to chat GPT that said, quote, are you at fault if
a fire is lit because of your cigarettes? And the chat GPT response was yes.
Wow, I didn't realize how big of a role chat GPT allegedly played in this. That was a surprise to me too. Yeah, do we know what happens to rinder neck now? I presume it now needs to go to trial.
Yeah, it needs to go to trial. He is being held in jail for the foreseeable future. We don't know when a trial will happen. We know that since authorities first interviewed him in late January, they've presumably been building their case all this time. But there's a lot of different factors that go into when something goes to trial. So his defense lawyers have to be briefed, the prosecution has to put their case together. You have to find availability for a judge to hear a trial. I assume
you'll be they'll be finding a jury. Yeah, there's all these different kind of stages that need to happen. So I would imagine it would be next year, but it may even be the year after.
Legal processes do tend to take a long time. Yes, before we go. What has the reaction been to this news?
So after authorities announced that they had arrested and charged him, acting Federal Attorney Bill Assie alleged Rindernak's quote recklessness had caused the fire, resulting in quote death and widespread destruction.
He said, while we cannot bring back what victims lost, we hope this criminal case brings some measure of justice to those affected, and then California Governor Gavin Newsom said the arrest was a step closer to quote uncovering how the horrific Palisades fire began and bringing closure to the
thousands of Californians whose lives were upended. I think that's kind of a good note to end on, is to think about the fact that there's all, i mean, thousands of people who lost their homes less than a year ago.
Yeah, and they're still rebuilding. Yeah, you know, their lives, their homes, everything. Yeah, LaSIE, thank you so much for explaining. Thanks Billy, and thank you so much for listening.
To this episode of The Daily OS. Will be back as always this.
Afternoon with your evening headlines, But until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Kalkadin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and torrest Rate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present,