What Impact Are the LA Wildfires Having on You?
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Nina Kim. Coming up on Forum, how have the Los Angeles wildfires affected you, either directly or from afar? Last week's firestorm that hit the Pacific Palisades, as well as north of Pasadena and the San Fernando Valley, upended many lives. More than 150,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, with 24 lives lost so far and more than 12,000 structures destroyed.

Now, another wind event expected tonight along the L.A. Ventura County line could threaten the progress fire crews have made. We'll hear what life is like in the region and talk with climate scientist Daniel Swain about the fire risk ahead. Join us. Welcome to Forum. It's good to be back with you. I'm Mina Kim.

The Los Angeles area is on edge as strong Santa Ana winds, which spread devastating wildfire throughout the region last week, are expected to pick up again tonight. The death toll has climbed to 24, with officials warning the number will likely rise. 16 of those deaths have been from the Eaton Fire, which ravaged Altadena and burned more than 14,000 acres, its 33 percent contained.

Five people have died in the Palisades fire, and for more on that fire and how crews are preparing for this next wind event, we're joined by Chris Harvey, Public Information Officer with CAL FIRE Incident Management Team 2. Chris, thanks so much for being with us. Good morning. I understand it's the Palisades fire among the two largest fires that these winds could affect most. Where does containment stand? How much progress have fire crews been able to make?

So the Palisades fire stands this morning at 14% containment and 23,000 acres. And I'm sorry to say, just a quick update to your earlier statement, that we now have eight confirmed fatalities. That's as of 9.53 this morning on this fire.

We do have over 5,000 personnel assigned to this fire and unfortunately still over 10,000, I'm sorry, 100,000 evacuated from the Palisades fire. I'm so sorry to hear that. And, you know, these gusty winds, what effect could they have on the Palisades fire and how are crews preparing?

So, yes, as you stated, you know, the next 48 hours are going to be very critical. We are in a red flag event. We continue to have low relative humidity and high winds over the next 48 hours, and in that

rugged steep terrain there's some difficult access in there you know there's a lot of places where wheeled vehicles cannot get to and so it's incumbent upon hand crews as well as a fixed wing and helicopter aircraft to get in there and try and get all these hot spots and embers put out before the winds pick up and can spread those embers elsewhere so how are firefighters holding up chris

Well, I wouldn't even single out the firefighters at this point. I would say everybody involved in this incident obviously is very tired. You know, utility crews, law enforcement, firefighters, everybody that's involved in trying to mitigate this disaster has been running on very little sleep for the last five days. And then, of course, we can't we can't.

forget to just acknowledge how difficult it is for all of the residents and everyone who's even adjacent to this. You know, people who live in the in the valley north of here obviously been watching the northward spread of the fire with great trepidation. Yeah. And has the evacuation zone, the orders for people to be able to leave in light of this wind incident coming in, has that grown? Has that zone increased?

The evacuation zones have been a little bit flexible the last couple days. They expanded to the northward towards the 101 freeway and then to the eastward toward the 405 corridor. And then on the southeast edge of the fire, there has been some areas that were in mandatory warnings that were then reduced to a mandatory.

to a warning, sorry, mandatory evacuation that was reduced to a warning. And so some folks were allowed to get back into that area. But I'd say generally speaking, overall, over the whole incident, you're going to see these orders stay in place at least until, you know, Wednesday night into Thursday. Once just strong wind event has passed, then I feel like officials are going to feel a little bit more at ease about letting residents back into these neighborhoods.

Yeah, I was wondering when they would be able to get in on a larger scale to see their homes. Chris, are we zeroing in on a cause for the Palisades fire? Where are investigators focusing their attention?

Yeah, so the investigation process has been, I will say robust would be a good word. There are a number of different agencies that are involved. They are working very diligently. Again, that process can sometimes be hampered by the fact that they are still very cautious about the conditions could possibly change. And so, you know, the sorts of...

maybe like a camp in that area where they can really set up and really set up their equipment and really be kind of there to stay for a long time. We're just not at the point where that's possible. So I feel like the investigation is definitely ongoing, but we don't have a cause at this point. And Chris, is there a message that CAL FIRE would especially like to get out to people, to listeners right now? Well,

I will pick one. There are so many different public safety messages that can try and be got out in an incident like this. But I want to just talk for a moment about drones. I know it's been in the news a lot. I have been on a number of large incidents in California over the last 10 years. And I will say without a doubt, this is the worst incident that I've been on in terms of drone incursions we've had.

At least 48, I don't even actually know the number this morning. It's probably over 50. And these are incidents where private drones are being flown by citizens that cause firefighting aircraft to either divert or to be grounded. And you can, you know, I don't even need to state

the importance and the danger of what this can cause if firefighting operations are suspended and the fire is allowed to grow larger because our crews can't fly because of drone incursions. So we're always trying to get the message out. If you fly, we can't. And unfortunately, there still seems to be some people that think they can fly their drones over the fire. So I just can't overemphasize enough the danger to this. And I really want

listeners and the public to understand how important that it is for them to not fly drones over these incidents. Chris Harvey, Public Information Officer with CAL FIRE Incident Management Team 2, focusing on the Palisades fire. Thanks so much for being with us, Chris, and giving us your time. Really appreciate it. Thank you. With us now is Saul Gonzalez, co-host of KQED's The California Report. Saul, really glad to have you on too.

Oh, thanks for having me. You've been all over the place, all to all the fire damaged zones. Tell me where you are right now. Well, at this very moment, I'm in the Eaton Fire Zone. Excuse me. Excuse the sound as...

excuse two sounds, there's work crews arriving here, which is a good thing, right? You want these people in these communities doing assessments and making them safer. And then the wind that you might hear hitting the mic, which is of all importance because right now it's very light and we don't want it to increase. But I am on Maiden Lane in the Eaton Fire area. This is a block, I'll just give you a local geography. It's

a couple blocks east of Lake which is the main commercial strip here and I'm just surrounded by home after home after home that has been just charred to a heap

and there is just very little here. A couple of homes are still standing. They're incredibly fortunate, but most of the homes on this street, like so many streets around me, are just simply obliterated. They're gone. Yeah. You know, tell me what the mood has been like in the region over these days of fire in Altadena and the other places that you visited.

near the Palisades fire in Malibu as well. And then now we have these winds picking up. I'm just really wondering how people are feeling, coping,

Well, I got to say, I wasn't there. I'm not that old, but it is a little bit like London during the Blitz, I think. It's just a feeling of unity and people wanting to help and people wanting to do something. So you will be on streets, sometimes very hip and happening streets where you, you know, stores have been turned into shops.

places where people can go with clothing and food. Driving up here, I passed a parking lot just outside the evacuation zone checkpoint, and they were collecting clothing, food, canned items for people. So there is a lot of people who want to show their better side, their better angels, and are doing whatever possible to help people. Excuse me, there goes a fire truck.

driving by urban search and rescue fire truck. And but then you also have, you know, then this will probably only swell in the coming days, you have frustration with the with the response, you have risk frustration with some of the actions and the words or lack of words from the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass. So you're you hear that as well about people, you know, who are going to have a lot of questions, they have a lot of questions now. And those questions will continue in the near future.

You spoke with a Palisades resident who told you their name was Ariel, who felt that this was a preventable disaster. Let's hear that clip. It's a totally preventable disaster. This neighborhood is gone. There is nothing here. My elementary school burned down. The library burned down. The entire village burned down. There is nothing here. I cannot imagine putting down roots here again. This is the only place I've ever called home.

And Saul, you've also been with people who have managed to get back in to see their homes in some of these areas. Tell us about that. Yeah, but that is a very rare occurrence. Ariel was one of them. She somehow, she has chutzpah. She somehow got in to the Palisades. I was driving around and, you know, usually you're in these neighborhoods and there's nobody around except the work crews. And I go, well, who are those people going through the wreckage?

It was Ariel and her family. They had gotten in some way, and they were just trying to see what they could salvage. Basically, bits of metal. They had found some spoons of historic importance to the family. They were trying to get out a couple of safes, and that's what they were doing when they came across Ariel.

Yeah. And then you also spoke with Marina Aguilar, and her comment to you was particularly sad in terms of what it was like to see her burned home. Marina was wearing a mask, so her voice is a little muffled as well. But let's listen. It's like a viewing of a body, you know? It's like...

Until you see it and you're with it, it's almost inconceivable. It's inconceivable when you're here, but there's a closure somehow to what that life was. So what kind of practical assistance are people getting? What are you seeing along those lines? Yeah, sure. Well, I've seen a little bit of it. I was at a FEMA center that had opened. I believe seven of them have opened in local libraries to offer initial assistance to

And small groups of people were starting to arrive when I was there. That'll transition to sort of larger operations tomorrow. There's going to be one in this fire zone out in where I am out toward the Eaton Fire area. And then I think at a UCLA facility, FEMA will be opening up shop.

at a UCLA office off campus. And I'm sure there'll be a lot of people at each of those places. And also just earlier this morning, I was driving to come here and I passed a kind of a state farm encampment, you know, and the insurance company had set up shop here and they had said it, you know, you often see these after natural catastrophes and they set it up so people can start processing their claims and bring their, the material they need to start that process going.

Well, I understand you also visited the Rose Bowl, which is the command and logistics headquarters for firefighters. What was that like? And has that inspired confidence in terms of trying to address what sounds like it's going to be a prolonged wind event, maybe not as extreme as the wind event last week, but a prolonged one that could further inflame these fires?

Two words about the Rose Bowl: incredibly impressive. I mean, the Rose Bowl parking lot, if some of the listeners know it, it is expansive and it seemed like every square inch of it was filled with emergency vehicles and fire trucks and just people from all over the state, all over the west that had come here to help us out. And that made the heart swell. That was a really great sight.

Listeners, what impact have the Los Angeles wildfires had on you if you live there or have ties to the region as so many of us do? What questions do you have about the fire itself and what lies ahead for the L.A. region? Email forum at kqed.org. Call us at 866-733-6786. Post at KQED Forum. Stay with us.

We could all use a little help navigating the news these days. The Consider This podcast wants to give you a hand. Six days a week, we'll help you make sense of the day's biggest news story and what it means for you in less than 15 minutes. Listen now to the Consider This podcast from NPR. Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Displaced Los Angeles area residents are mourning their lost pets, homes, in some cases entire communities, businesses and restaurants, arts institutions, hiking trails,

We're getting the latest and hearing from you about the impact the wildfires are having on you, either directly or as someone with ties to the region. Susan writes, being in Northern California, I am so grateful for Facebook and Instagram. I'm able to share posts about needs and donation links for free housing and meals, and I can give thanks for the remarkable work of animal rescue and care.

Listeners, what impact have the fires had on you? What are they bringing up for you? If you live there, how have you been directly affected or what ties do you have in the region and what concerns do you have? What questions do you have about the fire itself and what lies ahead for LA and the LA area this week?

You can call 866-733-6786. You can post on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, ThreadsX. We're at KQED Forum. You can email forum at kqed.org. I want to bring into the conversation now Jake Viator, a recording engineer who lost his home in the Eaton Fire in Altadena. Jake, thanks so much for being with us, and I'm so sorry to hear about your home.

Thanks for having me, Mina. It means a lot. I understand, Jake, that you were in the middle of renovations, actually. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. I had just started renovating my house about a month ago. And yeah, I was right in the middle of it. I was kind of camping out in the house while we replaced drywall, installed new cabinets and all that. And yeah,

Yeah, I was about as in the middle of it as you could be. Yeah, creating your dream haven. I understand before you had to leave it, you tried to get the word out. What did you do?

Yeah. So I feel like I kind of got the jump on the evacuation. Um, you know, we, we do a lot of hiking. We have a lot of friends who are, you know, into outdoor activities and, uh, they're all very kind of tuned into the news of the Canyon and, um, got a very early on text that was, that actually came through my wife. My wife was out of town because we were renovating and a friend texted her saying, did you hear, is there a fire in the Canyon? And

My wife texted me, and when I walked to the top of my driveway just to kind of see, I saw just an absolutely huge plume of smoke over the mountain. And had a bag packed already. We've evacuated several times when I was living in a different part of Los Angeles. And yeah, grabbed my go bag and started leaving the neighborhood. And when I kind of turned the corner on my street, I was just...

amazed by the wall of orange that I saw that seemed to just explode so quickly and uh yeah spiraling kind of flames and it just looked like a literal fire hurricane coming toward us so um

realizing the immediate threat, I started kind of honking my horn and yelling fire out the window. Um, I just didn't know what to do. There was no one on the street. There was seemingly no one leaving or that knew that this was happening. So, um, I went and knocked on a friend's door, tried to get him to leave, which he did right away. And, uh,

Yeah, circled the block a few times until I started seeing headlights coming on and people kind of starting to come out and at least look to see what was going on. But there are a lot of, you know, elderly people in my neighborhood. It's a neighborhood of long, long, long time residents. And I just knew that without, you know, much warning, you know, it could really spell absolute devastation for people.

for the human toll, which I'm very surprised to hear has gone up from Chris's report earlier.

Yeah. And of course, the Eaton Fire disproportionately having more of the death toll there. Where are you now, if you don't mind my asking, or are you safe? Sure, I'm safe. I immediately drove to the Scottsdale area where my wife and daughter were already living because of the renovations we were doing. So

I'm safe. I'm out of the smoke. I'm out of the kind of toxic zone of our house now. And, yeah, just kind of waiting to hear back when we can go and sift through the ashes and try to find, you know, anything meaningful from our home. Tell us about Altadena, the community there. It's just...

It's really like the most beautiful part of Los Angeles to me, physically and just community-wise. We've hopped all over LA for the past decade plus looking to try to coincide our professional lives and our personal lives. And obviously, Los Angeles is a very difficult place to pay the rent. So,

yeah, we've hopped around a lot. And then, um, a friend who had a home, um, in Altadena had his tenants leave during the pandemic and asked us if we wanted to move in. And we absolutely jumped to the chance, such a beautiful, small, but beautiful mid-century home that, um, yeah, was, was very much the case in our neighborhood. There are a lot of, uh, test case homes and, um, mid-century, you know, beautiful small family homes. And, um,

Yeah, we really felt at home there. I knew people who had businesses in the area, which is very rare in Los Angeles to know the business owners in a certain part of town. And it was a place where there were a lot of artists. I mean, so many of my friends were starting to move to Altadena. It was sort of like the last affordable place where you could have

piece of yard or, you know, a park nearby. And of course, like it's proximity to the mountains is just, you know, constantly inspirational. I mean, you wake up in the morning and you catch the most beautiful sunrises, the most beautiful view of the mountains. In the winter, sometimes snow accumulates on our mountains and, you

It's just more than anything, my home, my possessions, we are absolutely mourning the devastation of our beautiful community. Are you able to think about what's next, whether you want to rebuild there again, things like that?

Yeah, I mean, there's so many questions about it. You know, the insurance question, will we be able to reinsure our home? The question of who will build there, who will be...

the properties that undoubtedly these, you know, elderly and middle-aged neighbors will be probably selling to, you know? So there's a lot of questions, but I mean, we are so motivated right now to rebuild and to rebuild right. You know, Altadena had so many beautiful older homes, just like an absolute like beautiful

beautiful architectural place that represented so many different periods of architecture.

And to see that just wiped off the map within a few hours has been, yeah, just so shocking. And trying to figure out, you know, what Altadena might look like in a few months or in a few years is concerning. But there is a very big movement right now. A lot of group texts, a lot of Facebook groups, a lot of late night phone calls with other parents and artists who...

who feel like there is no other place in LA to be. Um, we've all set up shops so hard in Altadena that it's hard to imagine being anywhere else. So I think we're, you know, we're definitely going to give it a shot. And, um, you know, as long as we can make it work on a, on a financial level and, uh, uh, you know, a legal level, we're, we're down to do it. We're down to, you know,

make that stand and put in the effort and try to rebuild Altadena to, you know, the Altadena that it used to be. Before I let you go, Jake, how are you holding up? Like, what have you found helpful personally? Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm sure it sounds cliche, but I'm just so happy to have my family, you know, my daughter and my wife are just

Absolutely everything to me. And I'm feeling oddly very blessed. The outpouring of support from my neighbors has just been incredible. The outpour of support from old friends and old colleagues. And it's just been really beautiful and inspiring. And to have my

my daughter and my wife not have to, not have had to experience the kind of traumatic evacuation. I'm just, I feel very thankful that they didn't have to go through that. You know, we're still trying to

There's so many questions figuring out the aid and the insurance and all that, but overall feeling very blessed to be healthy and to have each other and to have a beautiful community that I can reach out to and cry with and laugh with and try to pick up the pieces with. Well, we feel really fortunate to have you on with us today, Jake. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Jake Viator, mastering recording engineer who lost his home in Altadena in the Eaton Fire. Hope you'll stay in touch with us, Jake. We also have with us Saul Gonzalez, co-host of the California Report for KQED, who is in Altadena as well. And we have you, our listeners. Let me go next to Angela in Hayward. Hi, Angela. You're on.

Hello. Yes, my name is Angela Andrews, and I'm calling from Hayward. I am a city council member, but I was born in Los Angeles, raised in Los Angeles, in Carson, and this fire has impacted me personally, emotionally, and I have a lot of friends who have been evacuated, who have lost homes, and I did go to USC and UCLA, so it's been kind of

traumatic to see these areas where I frequent, where I went to school, where I had my formidable years be impacted in this way. And being in those homes where they're no longer there, it's just, it's been surreal. So one of the things that I'm doing with a group of businesses in Hayward, we are starting our toiletry drive starting tomorrow through January 25th.

And you can drop off toiletries. We're not asking for clothes, only toiletries. We have seen the images and LA has been inundated with clothes from what I hear. But we also will have opportunities to give financially as well. But it will be at a list of locations. We're still organizing a drive, but it will be at Brick by Brick Toys off of Hesperian and Winton.

We also will be having a drop-off at SAC Records in downtown Hayward. And then also the Labor Hall, LIUNA, will be collecting items off of industrial emissions. So those are the three locations. And it's going to start tomorrow, January 14th, all the way through January 25th.

Please check their websites for office hours or give them a call so you'll know what time to drop off. Well, Councilwoman Andrews. Yeah, thank you so much for telling us how people in the Bay Area can help and about all your connections to the area. Really appreciate you calling in. Thank you.

We also have with us climate scientist Daniel Swain at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources and UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. Daniel, really glad to have you on as well. I know how busy everybody is, so really appreciate you. Yes, thanks for having me. Sorry it so often occurs under such dire circumstances.

But we so appreciate your analysis of these dire circumstances. Like, for example, can you just remind us of the conditions that made these fires so fast and destructive and talk about the relative danger of this week? Well, we really last week had a confluence of pretty extraordinary events. And now we're

heading tonight into tomorrow, in fact, have somewhat similar conditions redeveloping once again. So this is the cause for concern for the next 48 hours is that we'll be seeing conditions that are not quite as bad as we had when the Palisades and Eden fires did most of their damage, but nearly getting back to that point again tonight into tomorrow. So there is great concern about what might still be to come.

Even though the activity on both of those fires right now at least is greatly decreased from what it was last week, it has the potential to flare back up tonight into tomorrow or of course there could be new fires as the very strong winds and very low humidity will affect a slightly different region than it did last week. But going back to what transpired when these really dual wildfire events

disasters unfolded last week, as I mentioned, was really a confluence of meteorological and climatological events. The proximal one, the one that was probably the most obvious to everybody who experienced it, in fact, it was almost impossible to ignore. If you've ever been in one of these windstorms, you know how impossible they are to sleep through or to go about your normal daily business, was these very strong winds, a little bit different from

from a more typical Santa Ana wind event in that the winds were both stronger they were from in some cases due northerly from the north rather than being more from the east which is more typical of Santa Ana winds but the most important difference was that these winds occurred not only in the regions that are typically favored to experience those strong gusty conditions in the autumn and early winter in this part of the world but also extended all the way

to the lower elevations, the San Fernando Valley floor, the Pacific Coast Highway, right around sea level,

where a lot more people live than up in the more remote reaches of the San Gabriel Mountains, for example. So this windstorm was unusual, something that we might only expect to see every five or ten years or so in the region. So it was notable, certainly not unprecedented, but the winds were particularly extreme and they reached the valley areas because of what's known as a mountain wave effect.

But the other condition, the other precondition that was arguably even more anomalous and really set the stage for what has transpired and what could continue to unfold in the coming days because there's really no break, there's no rain on the forecast, is that we've now seen what my colleagues and I have termed a hydroclimate whiplash event in California. So especially in the southern part of the state,

Two consecutive winters, if you recall, were very wet in Southern California, including the winter and spring of 2024. But then some parts of the interior of California, including mountain and desert regions in Southern California, saw their hottest summer on record this year. Again, this is the third or fourth time that's happened in the last six or seven years.

And now we're experiencing the record driest start to the current rainy season observed since at least the 1850s. So essentially, for as long as we've been keeping precipitation records in California, we've never seen a drier start to the rainy season in Southern California than we're seeing right now. Again, that following two of the wettest seasons on record. So there's your wet to dry whiplash that we were talking about. But the reason why that particular sequence happened

that particular order, temporally speaking, matters, is that the fires that are burning in coastal Southern California, they're not forest fires. They're primarily fires burning in scrubland and grassland. And these are ecosystem types where the vegetation responds differently

pretty robustly to seasonal precipitation to the extent that there's essentially a lot of additional what are known as herbaceous fuels. So essentially the biomass of grass and the lighter, more responsive brush was as much as double the usual amount in some of these places in Southern California as a result of the wet conditions the past couple of years.

But then we had this hot summer and now this record dry start to the season that has dried that out to record levels. And all of that is arguably much more anomalous than the winds themselves, which were extreme, but far from unprecedented. But this lead up to the situation with the antecedent record breaking dryness and wet to dry flip is by many metrics, something we just haven't seen before to this degree.

And this is caused by climate change primarily. And we're coming up on a break. So sorry to give you a big question with 30 seconds. It is a big question and perhaps we can return to it after, but there is a climate change link. We just published a paper ironically and somewhat eerily this week, uh, suggesting that global hydro climate whiplash, exactly what I've been talking about is increasing in a warming climate, but we already know that in California, uh,

the increased thirstiness of the atmosphere in summer and autumn has already increased the vegetation dryness preconditions conducive to severe fires. But there are some nuance there that would be great to talk about after the break. Yeah. Casey on Discord writes, I lived in the west side of LA for six years. I have several friends in Santa Monica and a few in the Altadena area too. The places burning in the Palisades and down to the Malibu beachfront were my favorite places to bike.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking this hour about the devastating firestorm in the Los Angeles area, the wind event that is picking up this evening. We're talking all about it with Saul Gonzalez, co-host of the California Report at KQED, and Daniel Swain, a

climate scientist at UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the UC Agricultural and Natural Resources. We're also talking about it with you, our listeners, 866-733-6786, the number, the email address, forum at kqed.org. Find us on our social channels at KQED Forum. Denise in Sacramento is with us. Hi, Denise, you're on.

Hi, I'll make mine quick. I just wanted to say for those people that are not sure how it's going to affect, there's a lot of actors up here in Sacramento and in San Francisco, and we're already hearing about productions being pushed back and work being canceled altogether. I also on hold just got a text from two people telling me that they want to know what the rent's going for up here because they're

They're gouging down there in L.A. They're raising the rent really high, and a lot of people are homeless. They also mentioned even if we consider coming down for any work, it's like inhaling 400 cigarettes. The air quality alone is enough to not go down there. And Topanga Canyon reminded me a lot of Berkeley, and Altadena was a historical black community, and it's really sad what's happened.

That's all I wanted to say. Denise, another listener wrote in as well. African Americans were historically prohibited from buying or renting in the LA area, except in Altadena. Now a historic black community that grew out of the civil rights movement is among the communities wiped away.

by the devastating wildfires. And Saul, hearing Denise talk about the situation, you know, for actors and so on, can you just talk about the long-term impacts from this that LA, the LA region is facing, some already beginning to show themselves? Yeah, Lord, where do you begin? Because the economic ramifications are immense. It's

The rebuilding part, the cleaning out process alone, then you rebuild and that could be years in the making. The person who just called in, for instance, just one part of our industry to talk about Hollywood, right? Talking about actors getting jobs. This is the film and TV industry is still trying to bounce back from the strikes and from the pandemic. And there was this saying in Hollywood, you know, survive till 25. Basically, things will improve in 2025. Well, what happens in 2025?

We get these fires and it's going to have an enormous effect on people who work in this industry. A lot of them have lost their homes at all level from, you know, movie moguls and top actors to people, you know, who are manning cameras and sound equipment and all the rest. And there's a fears that...

we were already concerned about keeping production here in Southern California and Los Angeles. Will this encourage people to flee even more so to New Mexico, Georgia, New York state and all of that. So it is just, and then housing, I mean, I'll be very brief, but you know, struggling with, with our, our, our usual housing crisis, uh,

Well, we now have tens of thousands of people who are now part of the homeless or at least the unhoused. What happens to them? Do they stay? Do they go like what happened with Hurricane Katrina, as you might remember in that disaster? A lot of people in South Louisiana and New Orleans made their way to Texas, Utah, California. Do we see something like that happen where a lot of people just say goodbye to this region for good and try to find greener pastures and safer pastures someplace else?

Yeah, listener TJ on Discord shares your concerns and questions about housing. TJ writes, my concern is about housing over the next few years between the 2028 Olympics and the existing housing shortage. Where will people live while rebuilding? What's going to happen to rental rates? Will this drive people into San Bernardino County? And then Saul, you also shared a clip with us last

of Reef Anawalt, whose family owns a chain of lumber and supply stores around L.A., talking about his Malibu location. Let's hear a little bit of that. I think for the next two to three years, you're going to see the Palisades economy is done. There is nothing left. I don't know when they'll even allow businesses to reopen there. And from Malibu, I think we're going to see

Rougher roads ahead than better roads. And that's because we don't know when PCH will open. Restaurants will struggle. They already struggle in Malibu. And to be honest, with closures like this, I would see a lot of restaurants and brick and mortar stores closing for good in the city of Malibu. And to be honest, I think we'll see loss of jobs and more devastation from this fire.

Daniel Swain, you were talking about just how incredibly intense these fires were driven by hydroclimate activity.

whiplash, I think, essentially, as you were describing it, and then just the structural loss we've seen and we're hearing people describe and be concerned about. Could you talk about the structural loss, but also just the extent of the infrastructure as well, and what you see with regard to our ability to come back from this degree of structural loss?

Yeah, I mean, the scope of what we're seeing really is, even for those of us who are sort of enmeshed in the science and the practice of dealing with climate extremes and weather extremes and wildfire extremes, is...

is pretty shocking. Some of the aerial footage literally took my breath away when I saw the first clear images of the scope of the devastation yesterday. Southern California in particular is no stranger to wildfire historically. It's not like this is the first major fire to destroy a lot of structures in Southern California, but it is the first wildfire event

to destroy a five-figure number of structures in Southern California. We just haven't seen that before. There have been a couple such events in the past decade in Northern California, because think about the Camp Fire or the Tubbs Fire, for example. But the scope of the losses, cumulatively, in L.A. County in the past week are staggering, and that will have...

for everything moving forward. I mean, it really is going to be a challenge, as we've seen in previous wildfire disasters in California and elsewhere, to rebuild even some of the basic infrastructure from the ground up. Water systems, for example, are compromised to the point of probably needing to be completely rebuilt

replaced in the fire zones and nobody's going to be able to live there really even if their home survived until those systems are back in place which could take months to years.

So, you know, there are even more people who may have functionally lost the use of their homes than is indicated by the actual number of structures that burned to the ground. There's also smoke and water damage. And then, of course, there's the collateral damage in the surrounding areas, which is often also higher than is recognized. There's toxic ash blowing around. There's going to be area use restrictions for a very long time. And then we may also have to contend with, as much as I hate to say it,

It is still winter and it's been record dry and to be clear, there's no indication of rain on the horizon, although it would be helpful to a certain extent if there were right now. But because it is winter, even if there's just one heavy rain event this winter later on, there could be very serious flash floods, mudslides and debris flows in places that were not directly affected by the fire but are adjacent to it in these highly populated urban areas. So

I know it's one thing at a time, but we may even have to be thinking about the secondary disaster risk in the weeks to come as well in a lot of these areas. So you're saying even if your home or business or structure survived, it may not be habitable. Yes. And I recall speaking to a number of survivors from other wildfire disasters who have experienced this

personally where their home was not among those that burned down on their street, for example. In a couple of the cases, theirs was the only fire resilient house in the neighborhood.

And initially that seemed like really good news, but then the reality kind of sunk in as you realize that there's no water, there's no gas, there's no electricity, and some of these things may not be usable for a long time. Your house, while still standing, may have been filled with smoke, and you need to do heavy-duty, expensive remediation. And also, because your house didn't burn down,

you may not get a meaningful insurance payout because your house is still standing. And yet, you know, you may have functionally lost use of your home for an extended period of time. And that in some ways, I've actually had one person who at one point explained to me that they very much would have rather had their house burned to the ground than have it left as the only one standing in the neighborhood because it sort of was a

worst of both worlds situation for them. So that won't be true universally, of course. There will be cases that are not as grim as that. But that is the kind of reality, you know, that I think a lot of people are going to face, even if their house did not, in fact, burn in the event, but was in the disaster zone or immediately adjacent to it. So are you hearing that dawning on people in the area? Yeah.

I think it is just starting to. I mean, people have been dealing with immediate issues. Where do I live? Where do I go to shop? Whose couch can I crash on for the night? I think those, it's going to be kind of a collective psychological challenge is people coming to grips with what was just said, where whether your house is gone or whether it's survived, but it's the only one on its street.

are going to have to come to grips with those challenges. And can I just say one thing very quickly? I mean, we've also, these communities have lost the things that make them communities, supermarkets and stores and restaurants and services and schools. And all of that is either gone or has been affected. And that's, it makes it that much harder to come back, right? So I think, again, this is something that's going to dawn a lot of people. It's probably just starting to, and it will continue to in

the rest of this year and beyond that. Let me go to caller Tammy in Berkeley. Hi, Tammy, you're on. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I can personally attest to people I know who I'm from Pacific Palisades. I grew up there. My family still lives there. My mother, my stepfather, my little brother, everything is gone. And I know people who personally whose family members, their house is the one house standing and it's exactly

as the speaker is saying, that it's worse. Their house is uninhabitable. It's going to be, you know, how do you go back to that? And then also the survivor's guilt of it. Our house was on a street that was in flames as the water ran out at midnight on Tuesday. We knew of several houses on our street, and we all learned about the houses burning down because of video footage of people trying to escape. And we could point out, wait, that's our house, that's our chimney, that's the only thing left. Yeah.

And one of the things I want to talk about is that in the Palisades specifically, I feel like there's some little bit of just negative talk about the fact that it was an area that had a really high median income and the cost of housing. But I just want to be clear about

there were real people living there of all types. And, you know, we moved there in the 80s. My mom was a graduate student. She put herself through school. She became a local psychologist. She worked in the town for 35 years. Her office burned down. We walked to our local schools. They're all burned to the ground now. And all of the people we grew up with, their families, they may have had wealth, but it was in their houses. And those houses are gone.

And none of those 70- and 80-year-olds are going to be able to afford anything in L.A. anymore, and they just lost their future. There were many renters in the Palisades. There were many people from all kinds of places. And it wasn't just the houses. As people can see, the town is gone. It's decimated. And the houses in the hills actually did better than the ones in the residential areas.

Oh, Tammy, I'm so sorry how much you've been affected by this as well. And so appreciate you sharing that with us. And let me remind listeners, you are listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Let me go next to Johnny, who's calling from Malibu. Hi, Johnny, you're on. Hi.

Yeah, we defended the top of Chacoa, and it was terrible, man. My father, ironically, worked for Bechtel, and they designed the aqueduct system by Edmund G. Brown, which was a gravity flow system. And that gravity flow system, they left the San Ynez Reservoir empty. The system was a Roman system, okay? What people don't understand is, don't blame Democrats or Republicans.

Somebody's got to be responsible because the water system was designed never to run out. If you understand what I'm saying, all the way from Shasta, running the California Aqueduct, all the way into L.A. is a system based on water pressure. And no hydrant should have gone dry. We were left on the top of Chautauqua with no water. I saw it. I won't name the celebrities. Get on TMZ. We can't. We're not going to show what we did. Our crew entirely lost stock. We couldn't defend anything. We couldn't do anything.

Johnny, you said you were at the top of Chautauqua. So are you a firefighter or a volunteer firefighter? Yes, volunteer firefighter. We were wildland guys. So we're used to no water. I've been on the CGU complex fire in Santa Cruz. I've been on some of the biggest fires. I've never seen anything like this. And it was so sad because...

All the firefighters, I want to say God bless everyone, all the guys that were there, all the women that were there defending everything. But I don't want to get mad at Democrats or Republicans. I want somebody to be held responsible for – we have to stop –

Because we're going to face an earthquake. It's not just this. It's not your other callers, your guest that was there. He would agree with me. A lot of times it's man-made stupidity. We've designed great systems, but the reservoir was empty because of ripping a tarp. You can't make this up. Well, Johnny, I'm just...

Yeah, I'm really glad you're bringing up those issues because there have been so many questions, Daniel, about why fire hydrants ran dry. I know Governor Newsom has ordered an independent investigation into the reported loss of water pressure in L.A. fire hydrants and so on. There are also these accusations of L.A. running out of water and so on. Can you just help us understand what may have happened here? Sure.

Yeah, I think it's a good opportunity to clarify a couple things. And I think what has been lost in the conversation about water or lack of water or hydrants running dry or quote, LA running out of water, which really has been a headline actually in certain major media outlets, a lot of this just isn't true. It's just factually inaccurate. So for example,

What has transpired in the L.A. basin this week has nothing to do with California water overall or the California aqueduct or even L.A. County in any way having a shortage of water. In fact, reservoirs in L.A. County, most of them are well above average storage levels currently, and they remain so even after the firefight in the urban areas largely wrapped up. I think what

I think what we're hearing is that in the enormity of the disaster, there really is a mismatch of scale between people's expectations surrounding that when there's a fire, the fire department can come plug a hose into a hydrant and immediately get a good flow of water. I think what isn't recognized in this is that that is true and did occur before.

in the early moments of the fire, but as the fire worsened and as more and more fire crews essentially plugged their hose lines into the hydrants, going from not just dozens of engines and dozens of hydrants, but then hundreds of hydrants, hundreds of engines, literally,

There is only so much water that can flow through that system at a time. And the system simply, we don't have double, triple redundant systems with separate water lines for firefighting. It all has to run through the same water lines. There is only so much water that can collectively flow through the system at a time. And we reach that limit. Now, in addition to that, the fire itself, once it was burning for a couple of hours, and this is true for both the Eaton and the Palisades fire, it

As we know now, individually, they each destroyed at least 5,000 to 7,000 structures, each of those structures as water pipes to kitchens and bathrooms.

and laundry rooms. And so when those buildings were destroyed, those water pipes were often melted or destroyed as well. They're exposed to the open air and leaking a ton of additional water. So not only do you have hundreds of firefighters and fire vehicles tied into this water system, but you now also are losing a ton of water from the system due to leaks caused by the enormity of the fire itself.

And so that's not to say I don't know exactly the details of what happened to that very small reservoir above Palisades. I know there will be investigations, but I think what

is not often acknowledged is that the disaster is not the scale that it is because of lack of water. In fact, had there been a functionally infinite amount of firefighting water, it's genuinely not clear that that would have made a material difference to the thousands. Individual structures, perhaps the outcome could have been different, but the scale of the loss is given the extremity of the wind event and the extremity of the vegetation dryness

and just the vast amount of urban firefighting that was occurring

I think that's the challenge here. I really encourage people to go to Daniel Swain's live streams and to his report in Nature and also to KQED for information on how to help as you are asking many questions about that. You have been listening to Forum. Thank you all. I'm Nina Kim. Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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