LA is Burning: What Happened? The Devastating Impact of Climate Change & Could It Be Avoided?

Jonathan Vigliotti is an Emmy-winning CBS news correspondent based in Los Angeles and previously served as a foreign correspondent for CBS’s London Bureau. He’s reported on sight for Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash, the Syrian civil war and recently authored the book, “Before It’s Gone: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change in Small Town America.” Jonathan Vigliotti discusses What REALLY went wrong during the LA wildfires. From residents ignoring warnings to Mayor Karen Bass being out of the country, Jonathan helps break down how LA’s leadership failed when it mattered most. He shares first responders' panic-filled experiences on the frontlines of the Pacific Palisades fire, the shocking impact of budget cuts to firefighters, and how false evacuation alerts left residents in chaos. Mayim and Jonathan tackle why LA’s emergency response fell apart, how environmental policies might be making things worse, and the critical changes needed to prevent future disasters. WATCH NOW to uncover the devastating reality and what must change to protect LA’s future. Please consider supporting any of the below fundraising organizations: - California Community Foundation: https://www.calfund.org/funds/wildfire-recovery-fund/ - United Way of Greater Los Angeles: https://unitedwayla.org/wildfire-response-resources/ - Pasadena Animal Shelter: https://give.pasadenahumane.org/give/654134/#!/donation/checkout Jonathan Vigliotti's Book, BEFORE IT'S GONE: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change in Small Town America: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Before-Its-Gone/Jonathan-Vigliotti/9781668008171 BialikBreakdown.com https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/ YouTube.com/mayimbialik https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTOocPnDh2YQZZwh86K2OxA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mayim Bialik?

  It is spreading through the whole city because possibly someone fucked up the money.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  This kind of weather event, the Grand National Weather Service, happens once every three to five years on average. We've had this happen now three times in less than three months. It makes us realize how fragile we really are.

• 0:24Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Iain Bialik.

• 0:26Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm Jonathan Cohen. We're in a unusual setup, sharing a microphone today because we are in the midst of the LA fires and the tragedy that's happening here.

• 0:40Mayim Bialik?

  I literally just packed up my house and came to be with Jonathan, so we're in a kind of a different setup. We're very excited to be joined today by someone who has literally been reporting on the fires since they began. In many cases, he was there when there were no firefighters even yet on the scene. He describes literally what it was like to be a frontline reporter. Jonathan Vigliotti is a CBS News correspondent. He's based here in Los Angeles. He's a very impressive reporter. He's won Emmys. He was actually the first national correspondent to report from the scene of the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant. Extensive coverage of the COVID outbreak, the Boston bombing, Hurricane Sandy, among many others. But he also specializes in stories across

• 1:24Mayim Bialik?

  this country and across the world relating to the environment. His new book, Before It's Gone, is all about the climate crisis and how it impacts small towns. But he is going to come and talk to us about how he has seen the impacts, not just of climate change, but the impacts in a shift in accountability, infrastructure, water supply, and the ability of a city to manage the fires that we are literally in the middle of experiencing. By the time you see this episode or listen to this episode, the fires will be in a totally different place. And we hope that by then, by the time this airs, things will have calmed down. But we are still in the middle of a new warning of intense winds. So we get to

• 2:07Mayim Bialik?

  speak to Jonathan right in the middle of, I mean, he literally is reporting day to day. And he's got some unbelievable stories and some unbelievable support for how to understand what went wrong, what we can do better, and how we can start to rebuild. Jonathan Vigliotti, welcome to our breakdown.

• 2:26Mayim Bialik?

  There's a level of devastation that we are experiencing here in Los Angeles, and people are still actively in danger. It's, this is a difficult conversation to have because we're in the middle still of a crisis. And yet, you have been at the forefront of, you know, speaking up. It's been a hallmark of your career to focus on all things climate. There's a lot of rumors now, you know, kind of circulating in social media, sort of, you know, those ignite on social media. But conversations in particular about the Palisades fire, the pumps running out of water. You, as I said, went viral for taking Karen Bass to task with, first of all, being, choosing to be out of the country, knowing that this was going on and coming back,

• 3:10Mayim Bialik?

  and a real lack of leadership. The LA Times just published an article, you know, defending all good things. Like, no one could have had enough water to battle this fire. There is no way, and I see you rolling your eyes, and I'm rolling my eyes as well. So I wonder if, if you want to give us a little bit of a lay of the land here, you know, I'm interested in kind of four things. Budget cuts, I'm interested in water supply issues. You know, 10 years ago, I think it was Prop 1, we voted for more water. There's some endangered freaking fish. And I am a super environmentalist, and I'm a person who loves fish. There's a fish that seems to have been in the way of water supply, lack of controlled burns, and a general lack of leadership.

• 3:54Mayim Bialik?

  So I wonder if you can sort of give us a little bit of a lay of the land. You've, you've obviously been out there on the front lines, both politically and also practically. So tell us a little bit about what's going on.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Where to begin? Well, when you first reached out, I said yes because I thought it would be healthy to unload a little bit. It's, it's been a lot to process. I know for you and for everybody that lives here in LA, you know, to give you a lay of the land, I think what's happened here, in this case, is a lack of imagination. To imagine the worst case scenario and I, and I don't say that to be critical. I, I understand it. I wrote a book about this, as you mentioned. The title is literally before it's gone. It, it focuses primarily on small town America because I always thought based on all of the reporting that I've done, the wildfires and other disasters I've been to. Primarily you have these small towns that are being out top flying.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Because you don't have the infrastructure, the engineering, the budgets to support this kind of response. And so those small towns really get hard hit. And in my sense here, as I'm trying to process everything, I, I guess I always thought Los Angeles was immune, immortal, would, would never fall victim to something like this. I mean, we are in the capital of wildfire country. I mean, I can't think of a better place to be well-prepared for wildfire weather. And yet, when the alerts first came down, the warnings from the National Weather Service, I think it was back on Friday. Uh, I didn't get a clear sense of just how dangerous the conditions would be.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Part of that was me a little bit asleep at the wheel, exhausted from covering a number of wildfires over the past few months. But that also was a result of not really getting the message loud and clear from the city, from the mayor. There were no press conferences, nobody really sounding the alarm in, in just how critical this warning was. We're talking about, if we were to think of this like a hurricane, this was the equivalent of a category four hurricane barreling down in Los Angeles. Now, if a category four hurricane was barreling down, and I know this from experience, you would expect the governor, the mayor, wherever this category four hurricane would be impacting, go on the air, day in and day out, leading up to the impact of this storm,

• 6:15Speaker 01

  warning people to take measures to be safe. At no point did any public official have a press conference saying such things.

• 6:24Mayim Bialik?

  So we get warnings for Santa Ana's all the time. I was born in San Diego, raised in Los Angeles. And Santa Ana winds would be like, oh, everybody's allergies and you know, things like that. So we've heard warnings, like the Santa Ana winds are coming. But I have to say, as a citizen, This warning had such incredibly harsh, severe language.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Life threatening.

• 6:45Mayim Bialik?

  Life threatening. And we kind of, I'm going to be honest, we laughed it off. We were like, what is this life threatening Santa Anna wind? What? Like, we laughed it off and I feel horrible. Like, am I just living in La La Land? And that's what people think of us is we don't take things seriously? I didn't get it.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Me neither. And, and I, and I feel terrible to say that, given my background and, and I should be able to recognize this, right? I mean, truth be told, I was supposed to be in Hawaii this week, covering a different story than my producer and I. The same producer I worked covering this story had focused the past six months setting up. And when the warnings came down, I was told to be on standby. This is back on Friday. And I went to my bureau chief and said, can't somebody else sit and watch and see if anything happens? Why am I going to sit around for a just in case? And she said, no, you really want to be here. This is severe. This is life threatening. I'll give you perspective. So this kind of weather event, according to National Weather Service, happens once every three to five years on average.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  We've had this happen now three times in less than three months. Camarillo in Ventura County, where I was there, hundreds of homes destroyed. Malibu, just last month, same exact thing happened. And then, of course, this month. And I kind of blew off those life threatening alerts because I didn't see the city sounding the alarm. And so I sat back. And I should be, I should be more alert to these things, right? Like, I should be very sensitive to this stuff. If, if I'm not picking up on it, are other people here in LA picking up on it? The millions of other people, nobody that I talked to was afraid of it. I think we all had confidence that the city had preparations in place, knew what they were doing.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  We have incredible infrastructure. We have an incredible police force, firefighting force. And yet, at the end of the day, they were all overpowered by Mother Nature. And I got a call from my bureau chief, the one that told me to be on standby, saying you have to come in. It's looking bad. And so I went into the Bureau of Studio City and sure enough, 10:30, Watchduty, that amazing app, I can't talk about it enough. I've been talking about it on social media throughout this crisis. The first alert went out on that app and we were launched to the Pacific Palisades. And so we drove there, we got there at,

• 9:09Speaker 01

  it's so the, the alert came out at 10:30. That's when the first smoke was seen. We got there around 11:15. And as we were entering town, there was this gridlock. We all are familiar with the images now. People were panicked in that gridlock. This was before the flames really even started to emerge in downtown, but because of that panic, people got out of their cars and started to flee. We were about, I would say a quarter mile away from that location where those cars were abandoned. And I could see the panic in people's faces and I immediately started to recognize the signs from previous disasters like Lahaina. People being backed up in traffic, not knowing what to do, the confusion, the same that happened in Paradise, California.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  And what I also noticed was no police officers, nobody in the streets, nobody guiding traffic. I didn't see a single firefighter. And we made our way up to one of the windy roads where everybody was trying to evacuate out. So we were able to gain access eventually. As good Samaritans were getting out of their cars to guide traffic and sure enough, we were on, um, Medio Drive. I believe that's the name. They made our way up and in short order, we saw the flames. They were on the crest of the mountain there.

• 10:25Jonathan Cohen?

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• 10:28Mayim Bialik?

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• 11:27Mayim Bialik?

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• 11:39Jonathan Cohen?

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• 11:43Mayim Bialik?

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• 13:11Mayim Bialik?

  Starting my day with this easy, health-focused task reminds me to continue to make healthy choices the rest of the day. For a limited time, visit drinkag1.com/breakdown and get a free immune support bundle, including omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 with your first subscription of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/breakdown. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that MyobioX Breakdown sent you. Before you get into a little bit more of the details of what you saw, now, to me, like, I've seen a lot of movies where bad shit happens. You're describing to me what I kind of expect in the movie version of this, which is just like chaos, like, nobody knows what to do and there's no grownups around, right?

• 13:56Mayim Bialik?

  But from your knowledge and your living so many of these scenarios, what should we have seen at this time with the progress of this fire, based on the warning and the progression of the flames and smoke? What should we have seen?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  We should have seen fire crews prepositioned.

• 14:16Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  We should have seen police officers prepositioned. We should have seen those incredible forces who are incredible at identifying locations that are ground zero for these kinds of fires in place. I mean, we all know the locations around Los Angeles County that are vulnerable. The Palisades, one of them. A lot of the dry brush up there on the mountainsides hasn't burned in years. The same is true for Altadena and a lot of the places where we're seeing all these fires pop up, even Sunset, the Sunset Fire, Canyon. That hasn't had a wildfire. I've lived here six years, I can't recall one ever. If I were to do things, and I am by no means an expert on this, I am-

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Not a leader of anybody, except my husband sometimes. If I were in charge, I would have prepositioned all of the teams and utilities that I had available to myself in those places in preparation for such an event. It was just a month ago that the fire struck Malibu. I would have put teams there, ready to dispatch. I don't know if they were there. My understanding is, and this is from speaking with firefighters and police officers, they were not there. And it certainly aligns with what we were seeing because if we can make it from Studio City to the Palisades faster than Cruz, because we did not see Cruz.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  It begs the question, where were they? That's what I was hoping to see. That's what I was expecting to see. And what I got instead was immediate panic. This was hours before the flames really started to engulf, and it's sad to even think about, engulf those neighborhoods. Hours before. This is before the wind reached a hundred miles per hour. This is when I was safe enough to gain access to these neighborhoods where I saw the flames coming down from the mountainside where they initially sparked. As they then made their way from that wildland area into the urban interface, those neighborhoods. This is where, you know, I was watching from the mountaintop as these flames were coming down.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  And then, one at a time, from roof to roof, embers were igniting homes. And where they're covering this, filming it, all around me, there were people, homeowners, with garden hoses. They were using garden hoses to try to get water on the rooftops of these homes. You know, their efforts, while heroic on their own, they all had to retreat. But while we were there for about an hour, I didn't see a single fire crew. And this is not a knock on firefighters. They are incredible. But from the firefighters I've since spoken to after that first day on Tuesday, they all said the same thing. They were stretched too thin.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  And what was very clear, there were so many homes, we now know, going up in flames. There simply weren't enough men and women to get to them. So. I saw the movie version play out. If this was a well-prepped plan being enforced and executed, I would have expected to see fire crews there and police officers. Every other scene that I have covered, that has been the case. In this case, they were absent.

• 17:31Jonathan Cohen?

  This leads us to infrastructure. Now, the devil's advocates may say, there's no way to possibly know all the different locations. You know, you stated, well, we could have known these are some places that haven't gone up in a while. But if we just take the devil's advocate, they may say, there's just too many locations in Los Angeles. It's too hard to preempt. But let's talk about the infrastructure because the two main questions are budget cuts. Now, the 17 million that was cut from the Los Angeles Fire Department budget, maybe that's a drop in the bucket and wouldn't have provided the person power required to have enough resources to address all of these. So let's try and start to cut through some of the noise. There's the person power and then there's the water itself.

• 18:13Jonathan Cohen?

  Can you talk about some of the changes that have led up to us being really understaffed and underpowered when looking at to fight some of these fires?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Well, I will speak to you through the words of the fire chief Crowley, who has been, as you know, very outspoken in the past few days. And I've watched those press conferences and the very early on press conferences where I was questioning the mayor. I could see her in the background. It was, she wasn't on board. The mayor saying, we come together as one voice, but I could tell that there was dissent. And eventually, when I later spoke to her off camera, she acknowledged that that cut of 17 and a half million dollars, something that she wrote a letter about specifically addressing. She said that that would impact preparations for fires. Preparations include, I see your face and it's.

• 19:07Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, people are dying. People are losing everything. Like it's, it is spreading through the whole city because possibly someone fucked up the money. Like I can't even.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  I I know and and you know that money is important. It's used for a number of different things, staffing certainly, but also fuel reduction. Fuel reduction, meaning getting rid of all of that dry vegetation. And that is something that we need to be focusing more on, investing more of our taxpayer dollars on, going into these areas where you have dry brush, growing and yellowing in the drought. It like tinder just waiting to catch. That's where that money really takes a hard hit in terms of preparing for something like this. Staffing, of course, the same. And we talked about logistics, right? And and John, you you bring up a good point. We're gonna play devil's advocate. But how can you be in every place all at once?

• 20:01Speaker 01

  You can't. But again, I bring up this point that I was in Studio City. Studio City. Uh, for those that don't understand the logistics, it's typically a forty, forty-five minute drive. I was able to get there as somebody that was not monitoring radio traffic. I was able to get there in forty-five minutes, and yet there weren't crews. So even if those crews were stationed elsewhere, the question still remains, how could a news crew without access to water and a fire hose get there before they did? And while we were driving there, and this is the other thing that also was mind boggling. I spoke to, I called my bureau chief and I said, can you please have our photographer as he's making his way over? Because at the time I was, I had urgency,

• 20:45Speaker 01

  but I was just like, who knows how big this thing is gonna grow? It was ten acres when I was deployed. In twenty minutes, it grew to two hundred acres. And and we didn't even have a full sense of that when we were driving. And and part of it was because as I was looking off on the on the side of the street, I think it was the four oh five, I saw road crews with chainsaws cutting down tree limbs that were over very close to power lines. Obviously, their concern was the wind breaking those tree limbs, the power lines coming down and sparking new fires. Why was that happening on the day of this projected one hundred mile per hour winds? Why were crews putting their lives in harm's way in hurricane force winds? Category two hurricane force winds. Winds with chainsaws and tree limbs over power lines.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  That's something that should have happened last week. When the National Weather Service first came out with these alerts. So there's the devil advocate side, but there's also the common sense side. And a lot of the things I saw did not add up and speak to a city that should have been better prepared. And that's why when I asked those questions to the mayor, I expected

• 21:54Speaker 01

  more frankness, maybe more humility, but instead it was very deflective language. And, and we went back yesterday and pressed harder and we still got kind of that same one voice message. We will look into this and assess down the road. But unfortunately, that still lacks sight and lacks imagination, especially as we are still in the middle of this disaster. The wind has come down today as we're talking on Saturday, it picks up again tomorrow. Like, we don't have time, I think, to assess, investigate the response. That could take months. In my experience, it takes months. It comes out, you know, when, when nobody is even thinking about this thing.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, we have alarms going off nonstop, evacuation warnings, like what you're experiencing, evacuation orders. And now false alarms that have been going off. So, yeah, I mean.

• 22:47Mayim Bialik?

  I got, I got, I got that freaking false alarm. And look, I also, I don't want to be that person who's like, this has to be a perfect system. And like, I'm, you know, complaining because like the, the milk was not, you know, warm enough in my cafe au la. But what happened was in the middle of hysteria and chaos. Like the entire county was told to evacuate. I mean, it was madness and they corrected it within, I don't know, 10 minutes. But the, the notion that we have a system and the explanation was it was a computer glitch. Like, why?

• 23:20Speaker 01

  And then, and this is so interesting because you said they corrected in 10 minutes. And maybe what you mean is you realized pretty quickly it was a false alarm.

• 23:28Mayim Bialik?

  Yes.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  And the reason I say that is important because the next day, and this is now Friday, we, we went to this press conference where I, I was addressing the mayor and as I'm asking her about these false alarms. The alarms are going off and this is in downtown LA. No fire in sight of downtown LA and those alarms were still going off. I think, to be frank, a lot of people, and this is, I live, I live in this community. So I know it well. LA is my home. It's been my home for six years. I love it deeply. And I have incredible friends here and, and friends of friends. And, and so I hear the stories. And what I can say unequivocally is people no longer trust those alerts.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  A lot of people have deactivated them on their phones. A lot of people are receiving them and ignoring them altogether. But the reality is, and, and we all know this, I'm looking out my window, like you can see smoke. Like the threat still very much exists, but when you're the boy that cries wolf and that alert system going off nonstop, nonstop, I, I understand ignoring. It's, it's like when your alarm goes off too many times and you press snooze, like I think people are pressing snooze. And this is not the time to press snooze.

• 24:38Jonathan Cohen?

  Obviously, there's the active threat right now. Could not be more important to trust and have systems in place that are going to protect people, shuttle them where they need to be, get them away from harm's way. I think a lot of people also, what this is bringing up for them is, do I trust Los Angeles as a safe place to live?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 25:00Jonathan Cohen?

  Is it being run in a competent way? And it's not only Los Angeles. We're, we're looking at a world that is being shaped by different climate response. And so let's get back into the infrastructure because there's the question that, again, the devil's advocate will say,

• 25:18Jonathan Cohen?

  uh, the system's in place, fire hydrants in place, they could never, they could never address forest fires, right? They are designed to put out fires in single homes or a couple of homes and there's no way. But the reality is, is that as we build and expand, we're living at the edges. Town is, a city is not the same way it was in downtown. It's not the same concrete.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Well.

• 25:40Jonathan Cohen?

  And so how do we reconcile the fact that there should be systems in place to keep people safe in a city that you're paying an enormous amount of tax in? And are those systems faulty? And if they are, is it from a design standpoint or a management standpoint or both?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  I think both, and let's talk about the fire hydrants. And there's still a lot of uncertainty about what exactly unfolded. We have pressed on those questions, and I think that is something that is going to take some time. I think what the clear message has been from officials and from firefighters that I have spoken with was that the water system was tapped by too many fire crews.

• 26:17Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, can you hold on? I need you to, I need you to explain this a little bit to me because I'm just a layperson. I don't think about this stuff a lot. So when you tell me that there's like a fire department and then the truck comes, like I've taken tours with my kids. There's like an amount of water that they have and they hook it up to the hydrant. I don't freaking know where that hydrant is connected. And I'm literally like pull it from the ocean like I don't know. So what are we talking about when we talk about like that they run out of water? Where is it supposed to, is it a lake? Like what, where's the water?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  It's a reservoir system. It is then piped into our homes. It's piped into those fire hydrants. And a lot of it is based and works on water pressure and having water available. In this case, I think what we're hearing from officials is that it was a water pressure issue. So when a fire truck pulls up to a scene, you know, those fire hydrants that you get tickets and towed away from if you're part of the prep. They then plug into those fire hydrants and that is their water source. And they can work off of it for as long as they need to. What we have been told as the official guidance on what went wrong was too many fire engines across the town of Palisades were plugging in.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  And the water pressure as a result was so low that they couldn't get enough water. It's like a dripping garden hose that just.

• 27:39Mayim Bialik?

  No, I get it.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Water. But when we were there, we were there every single day. We only took naps, I mean, I think for two hours. So we were there around the clock. We were at one home that was on fire. There was a fire hydrant right next to it. It had red tape on it. And this is a different issue from the water pressure. We went and spoke to the firefighter because they weren't tapping into it. And we asked what's going on with this? Is it because of? Water pressure and he said, no, water pressure is an issue, but this fire hydrant isn't working. The infrastructure, John, to your point, was outdated and had not been updated. They hadn't fixed it. And so you have this fire hydrant next door to a $5 million home now up in flames.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  You have this fire truck pulling water from a tank, from reserves on its actual engine. And that's not a limitless supply. They then, when they run out after about five to 10 minutes of fighting, have to then drive five, in this case, in this specific scene that I was at, they told me this, have to drive five to 10 minutes in one direction to a location where there is backup water, fill up their truck, which takes about a minute or two, and then drive back. So you're talking about a time gap of about 15 minutes, and that's at the bare minimum, when those flames are still now growing.

• 28:58Mayim Bialik?

  No, that's how long it, that's how long it takes for every picture, every piece of clothing, everything sacred to you to go up in flames. That's exactly how long it takes.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  And you know, the reality is, and if you talk to firefighters, this isn't my opinion, this comes from those that we have spoken with. There weren't enough firefighters there in town, so I find it hard to believe that it was just a water pressure issue. It wasn't like you had a thousand fire engines tapping in to every single hydrant that was in the city. Day two, like 48 hours later, I was on the street as there were two homes on one side of it up in flames, a home on the other side up in flames, a condo roof up in flames, no fire engine in sight. And it was that day, later on in that day, that officials here in LA, I think it was the mayor,

• 29:50Speaker 01

  said, the good news is, we have a thousand firefighters coming to us from Northern California. But that was 48 hours too late. They only had about 130 crews, I believe, pre-positioned in the city when they had access to a thousand additional crews. I don't know what the conversation was, if there was one beforehand, but Northern California right now is not vulnerable to wildfire weather. And it only takes a day to travel from there to here, they could have made their way back if the forecast called for it. If I were to do things, if I was in control, and again, I'm not in control of anything. I would have thought, given how severe and life-threatening the warnings were,

• 30:33Speaker 01

  tap into that infrastructure, that mobile infrastructure up in Northern California, have them come down.

• 30:40Mayim Bialik?

  Sure.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  You know, it only takes one engine to get to a scene fast enough to be able to really attempt to hold those flames back before backup gets there and really helps assist. But you had a fire that sparked an incredibly dry fuel, bone dry, that hadn't burned in many years, and it just went up. I mean, 20 minutes to 200 acres, that's all it took, and that was enough for this monster to then make its way out of this very, you know, mountainous, remote area into homes. And unlike forest fires where trees fuel those fires, and I've seen them where the balls of flames coming over 100-foot top trees. This was very different. The homes became those trees. The homes became the fuel.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  And so we were watching, you know, this is dry lumber. It's dry as paper, and it just, every home was catching fire within a matter of minutes. And it was this domino effect. We had to retreat. We went down. This was the first day Tuesday again, and we, for the evening news, we set up our live shot where we thought was a safe enough location. And behind us was suddenly this big black curtain of smoke. And we saw a fireball just come through it. And what we didn't know that at that point was this was a neighborhood of hundreds of homes that had been destroyed in a matter of just a few hours. We were by, I think it was the Presbyterian church, and I haven't, I haven't really spoken

• 32:06Speaker 01

  about any of this to anybody, because I'm still processing it. But the church got fire. So the church was in front of our live shot, the place that we thought was safe, and the roof went on fire. And I'm like, oh my God, there's this church on fire. What do we do? What do we do? And so we went and looked for a garden hose. There was nothing available. We then found one, actually, on the other side. And one of my, our audio technician, Carlos Essencio, was focusing this garden hose, it was so pathetic, right on the top of this roof. And it was like, it was, there was nothing we could do. And so I went and I took a rock.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  And forgive me, God, and I broke the window so that we could pull the fire alarm. So hoping that maybe a sprinkler system would go off. I called 911. 911 said they had nobody in the area that could respond. They were stretched too thin. And again, I heard so many fire alarms going up. I didn't hear sirens. So I, and that was downtown Pacific Palisades. We were just a few blocks away from the mall, from the main shopping district. And when you go and look around, as we have been doing now for several days,

• 33:26Speaker 01

  it's like, where were people? Where were fire crews? Because absolutely nothing survived.

• 33:31Mayim Bialik?

  So this is all, this is all speaking to, you know, a lack of leadership, lack of infrastructure. The, the issue with water supply, that's helpful to have sort of a framework. I wonder if you can talk though about for a decade, like the, the voters of, of California have been waiting for a release of more water is the way that, again, my layperson's understanding is, what is this fish? Everybody's talking about this fish. President-elect Trump is talking about the fish, that there's a conservation issue with a fish that prevented. Is this a thing?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  This fish is getting a bad rap. And if I'm being honest with you, I don't know enough about this fish, but I know a lot about other fish and water preservation efforts. In Northern California, there is a big effort to conserve water for salmon. Listen, one living thing helps every other living thing. So I am all for fish and, and, and saving them. But what is happening, that fish is symbolic of a greater issue. And we talk about climate change, you know, gas and emissions, CO2, warming our planet. We all know what we need to do. We need to cut back CO2 emissions immediately. But even if we do, it takes the entire world to do so. And just like a headache, reducing our planet's fever, that's going to take decades, not 30 minutes when you pop an Advil. Habitat change builds resilience.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Much faster, we can reverse the impacts. That fish represents, just like the drought that we have here, the lack of water habitat change. And I support the efforts to protect the fish because in protecting the fish, we are protecting our habitats. We're restoring our wetlands. We are building up water supply. There is a measure, it's called, I believe, Measure C, and I think I should be right on this. I wrote about it in my book. And Measure C, we pay a lot of money every year. I think it's half a billion dollars a year. And it's supposed to set aside land. So to take back these concrete jungles so that we have permeable soil. So when it rains a lot, like it should be raining right now, this is the wet season, this is not typical wildfire season.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  So when it rains a lot, like the atmospheric river that we got last year, which dumped trillions of gallons of water. Most of it went down the slide of concrete streets out into the Pacific Ocean. The LA Times did an investigation where they found in the first two or three years of this measure where if I'm doing the numbers right here, I think it's like 1.5 billion dollars was like in the bank to be used, and that's taxpayer dollars. So looking at that math, you would think there'd be a lot of land that would have been bought by Measure C and restored back to a more natural, natural permeable, almost like sponge-like atmosphere so that whenever it rains, it holds. Only 30 acres had been bought back.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  And so 30 acres, and we're talking about a fire that so far, as we're talking right now, more than 20,000 acres have been destroyed. 30 acres had been restored to the kind of land that can retain water.

• 36:28Mayim Bialik?

  How does that happen? How, I mean, how does that failure occur?

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Bureaucratic red tape, bureaucratic red tape, lawyers trying to figure out what land to get. Finding that land and then finding out that whoever owns it is resistant, perhaps. I, I don't know the full trail. But what I do know, based on that reporting and, and based on what really feels like an unsuccessful effort. It hasn't worked. We don't have water readily available to us. In many ways, we have outgrown our sandbox. I mean, there's, our population is growing. Water is very priceless these days. If we are going to thrive and grow as a city, and if we are going to feel protected in living here,

• 37:16Speaker 01

  we need to find a better way to manage water. And that management begins with the sky. I mean, the, the best thing, we, we get free water all the time, but if we're not working on ways like Measure C, taking back land, removing the concrete, letting, letting nature do its thing, then we're only screwing ourselves over in the future. And the future is actually right now. I mean, what we're talking about is a direct impact of a lack of not just planning, because I think Measure C shows that there's planning, but it's executing that.

• 37:50Mayim Bialik?

  Implementation.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  So it's, it's great to have the plan, but if you're not implementing it, and I'm sure LA County has an emergency response plan for wildfires, of course they do, but if you're not implementing it, then what good is that plan? So I saw, the New York Times had an article about, you know, about are we losing our power and our ability to like hold back fire? I think yes, we are, but I also think we're falling asleep at the wheel. I, I, I think if we took more action, if we listened to the science, and our leaders listen to the science, I'm not saying that they don't, but if we actually listen to it, believe it, and, and, and really take it in, and imagine the worst case scenario, you know, we have the opportunity with the tools that we have

• 38:36Speaker 01

  to protect and save lives. And instead, we're, we're sitting here right now, you've got this unique disaster unfolding, the, the worst in LA County history, I'm sure it's going to grow to the worst in state history, not the deadliest, I hope, I hope the, that's all does not rise. But certainly just in terms of the economic toll here, what, what is it? A hundred fifty billion dollars? I think I saw it so far. And what makes this so unique though, this isn't just, you know, paradise. And you know, paradise is so tragic. You have this fast moving storm. It came through, it left, and then there was what was left in a matter of a day or two. The same with Lahaina, came through, left in the matter of a day or two. We're on day five or six.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  So, speaking from the perspective of a television journalist, we wake up in the morning to go and find a live shot to really hit home to viewers what's going on. And so you want flames behind you. And it's, it's not to be showy, at least I, I'm truly not trying to be showy, but I know it attracts eyes. Cause I know what attracts my eyes as viewer. So you really want to hit this home. It's really hard to find flames in normal wildfires. Every single time we went to search for a wildfire, it was, it was like right in our backyard. There, there was a, every house was on fire. Every single house. I've never, I've never seen anything like it and, and I hope I never see anything like it again. And unfortunately I say that knowing that tomorrow brings more wind.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  And these fires are far from over. I don't even know what the latest containment numbers are, but those containment percentages don't always matter. Especially with something like the Palisades fire, which is growing. It's, uh, right now I think UCLA is on guard to evacuate. You have that warning, Brentwood is threatened. It's like, what's next? And the, the wind, and when it picks up, the wind is so critical because it blows these embers up to a mile away. So as I was covering the, the Palisades fire and my husband was calling me, telling me about these flames that he was seeing in Runyon Canyon. I'm about a half a mile away from Runyon Canyon in the hills.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  I knew that it took just a little bit of wind and one of those embers, which burned a structure to hit my roof. And then our neighborhood goes up in flames. So it's great to have a plan, but if you're not executing it, you see the results. And I, and I, I think that there was a lack of execution. And that's my thought, but it's also the thought of firefighters that I've spoken with and police officers. I, I had a police officer come up to me right before my live shot yesterday for the evening news. And I I was like his therapist in that moment. You're like my therapist right now because this is like free therapy talking about this. And he was so fuming, so upset about the lack of response.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  He could not believe he was the only one in the streets trying to help create order and help people guide out to safety. He was the only person. He was furious and he said every single officer he spoke with had the same sentiment. So there is a lot of frustration. It's why you're starting to see this house of cards at City Hall crumble. Because I I I think there was probably a lot of back and forth with what to do, what not to do. And ultimately, what was done is not what I think the experts in the room wanted, based on people I've spoken to.

• 42:07Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm gonna ask two very difficult questions and it is looking forward and we're not out of the we're not out of the grips of this tragedy yet or the danger yet. But before we let you go, when you have competent people who want to do good, being mismanaged. And it seems there's been a more than a decade of mismanagement, not allowing these propositions or and these initiatives to move forward. The continued cuts, the lack of preparation. What needs to change in order to actually make anything happen? Because the notion that, you know, government is ineffective is being on display in full force in in some of these ways.

• 42:50Jonathan Cohen?

  The fact that we can't imagine the worst possible scenario and yet it comes, you know, it's not like total mystery that that that something like this was bound to happen. You see the clips of podcasters and other experts saying, look, at some point, this is going to get out of control without a lot more resources, a lot more infrastructure. So that's part one. I'm going to pause there. And then there is a second question about the future of L A. But first, what needs to change in order to actually make the people in charge of these budgets able to action? And use the tools and engineering expertise that are possible in an effective way?

• 43:26Speaker 01

  What has to change is we need to listen to the voices in the room that speak from experience. And we need to support them at all costs. We live in a place that is getting drier. It is clearly unsustainable. Wildfire is one of the biggest threats, as we clearly now know. To our lives here. And unfortunately, what it's going to take for something like that to change, to finally listen to these people and to fund the heroes is a disaster like this. I like, I, when I talk about how

• 44:00Speaker 01

  how terrible it was, like, uh, I got a, I got a message on my Instagram from a colleague of mine uh, whose friend had gone to work and could not get back inside for his three dogs. And asked if I could go to their house to rescue these dogs. And this is not a story of heroism or selflessness. It's actually the most selfish story because I, I didn't want to go. I was so tired. It had been so long. I, part, part of myself was thinking like, this isn't going to, this is, I'm not believing what I'm seeing. It's not going to be so bad. Uh, the real heroes are going to get here and they're going to save this. They're, they're going to stop this, these flames from getting to these homes. There's no way.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  And then I was like, oh, like, we gotta go back. Like, I can't, I can't like live knowing that we didn't try. I can't do that thing where I tell somebody like, oh, we tried, but there was like roadblocks, like, can't. So we go back and it was like, break into the window, get these three dogs that were inside and like scared out of their minds, like would not, like, did not want us around. The houses across the street were on fire, smoke everywhere. And we go in and there's a dog underneath the bed that doesn't want to be caught, like, just like hiding from us. We had moved the bed to get the dog. There was, um, sorry, there was another dog that like had shit all over the place and like piss, piss.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  And we one by one get this dog and there's this other dog that was just growling. And I'm thinking to myself, oh, like that fire is really fucking close. Like, there's nobody here. Like, if we get caught, what are we going to do? And so I was like, okay, get a, get a blanket, get something. I threw a blanket over this dog and like brought it in the car. And again, I, I did this because it was like, The only good thing I could do like during this recording, because everything else that we showed is like the worst. It's like, everybody is depressed. I'm very depressed. Like, it's so sad. And I did that purely for this like, like this selflessness of like, having joy. Like, knowing like, I did one good thing. We never reported that. Like, I've never talked about

• 46:14Speaker 01

  that, like, talked about it all. They posted this on Instagram. So I like, now I feel like, at least it's out there. It's not like, I would never share the story if it wasn't out there. But it's like, I don't know. You see, you see these things. You have faith in the system. You have faith in your local leaders. And I'm realizing it was blind faith. And it's, and it's our jobs as constituents, not just to go and vote and then like, wait four years. It's our jobs to also keep pressing them to take action. And this isn't just about Mayor Bass. You know, we will learn more about what happened, what went wrong, what didn't go wrong in the

• 46:51Speaker 01

  future. But this was such a reminder. Like, we can't ever just think that we're safe. We can't. And that's the sad thing. I think this is a reminder. I think that's the look that I see on everyone's face. This new world that we live in, where nothing is guaranteed.

• 47:12Mayim Bialik?

  I know, Jonathan, you had another question that you wanted to ask Jonathan. But I want to, first of all, thank you for, for sharing this and for sharing such a human moment. You know, this is your, I don't know how you do your frickin' job. Like, this is your job to go in and show, you know, the heroism on, on display all over the world. But like, those three dogs, like, that's, that's an unbelievable story. But

• 47:37Speaker 01

  I was like, thinking of my dog as I was there. It's like, awful.

• 47:40Mayim Bialik?

  Of course, of course. Well, and I think that's sort of my question. I've been noticing, and you know, the, this podcast focuses on mental wellness and, you know, learning what it feels like in your body, to feel different things. And I was thinking, you know, there's so much similar that I'm feeling, like COVID.

• 47:58Mayim Bialik?

  And then October 7th, and then this. And it's like, I was talking with my, my 16 year old. And he's like, it's not the same. And it's not. And I said, no, no, no, it's not the same. Like, the fierceness of Mother Nature is unlike terrorism. However, our human experience of grief, of loss, of a sense of powerlessness and helplessness, like, those are these overarching emotions that we have to deal, like, it's kind of like you're being given the opportunity to deal with them in every possible situation. What if people fly planes into buildings, right? What if Mother Nature does this? What if the infrastructure of a city freaking falls asleep at the wheel because they're so excited about, I don't know, the Oscars, that they forget to burn acres and acres?

• 48:43Mayim Bialik?

  You know, like, whatever it is, we are left with this human experience of like, how do I metabolize this? And I'm curious for you as a reporter, how do you metabolize that?

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Well, I think, you know, first, all of those, all of those tragedies that you bring up, they all share, I think, a common theme, which is it, it wakes us up to the world we've taken for granted. It makes us realize how fragile we really are, how sometimes in autopilot we can be. You know, I, I will never take for granted, again, especially having lived through the things that I've seen, and I am lucky, I have a home to come to, home to, I have my loved ones that are okay. There are so many people that are really, I feel for them. They have nothing to go home to. If we say it's just stuff, but that stuff defines us, they are landmarks of our lives.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  That's why when we see the photos of police officers and firefighters going in and recovering photo albums, that's not stupid stuff. They're recovering that because that defines who we are. In terms of expressing emotion and being healthy and mentally healthy while doing this, I think talking it out, like, you know, I knew this was gonna be a little messy. I knew I wasn't gonna, you know, I didn't, I'm not, I'm sorry, no offense. I have not thought about any of this. And I am using you. I'm totally exploiting you. This is, this is just for my own benefit, for, for, for free therapy. I should probably get a, a nice therapist that doesn't charge too much. I think talking this stuff through. Is incredibly helpful.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  I hate going up to people, victims of anything, and asking them to talk to me. What we call in the news world an MOS. I'll get an MOS. I hate doing that. But I have learned to embrace it as long as it's done with respect because it helps me. I'm talking through this stuff that I'm trying to process. But more importantly, and those that I speak with, it helps them more. These people who are experiencing the worst moments of their lives, people that are emerging from the ashes of these fires, and the memories are never going to forget. It helps them not to hold on to it, but to let it go. And so I think for me, I'm learning that too.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  I'm learning that letting it go, talking it through, remembering it, not trying to forget it, not trying to bury it, not going back into autopilot mode, not taking for granted. The dinner I finally had last night with my husband, just sitting next to him, like trying not to look at my phone. Like, those are the ways forward. So for people who have lost everything, I think it's about reconnecting with your community. Not the physical aspect of it, because that does not exist sadly. But existing with your neighbors. One of my, I won't share too much of the story, but one of my colleagues is one of four families, four homes that survived on this street. Ninety percent of the neighborhood gone.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  I am no therapist, don't take what I say as anything to do. But I said to him, you need to do something to rebuild that community. Obviously rebuild physically, but before that happens, it's gonna take years. It's gonna take years. You gotta remove everything first, and you gotta go through the whole permit process. It's years. And if paradise is any indication, it's gonna take around 10 years. You need to, in the meantime, pull the loved ones that you have, your friends, your family, everyone, strangers that now you share this common connection with. You need to gather and you need to start creating new memories for those that still have homes, who we call the lucky ones, but they're not lucky either. Start rebuilding and start reconnecting and reconnecting in a new shared experience. I think that's certainly what I'm trying to do.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  And for anybody that's been impacted, whatever feels right for you, I would, I would try to do that.

• 52:40Mayim Bialik?

  Jonathan, we really appreciate you talking to us and you know, there's still a long way to go. So, um, thank you for really in the middle. Like, I literally just went room to room in my house and had those moments with my home. So, like, we're also in the middle of everything, but we really appreciate you taking this time and, um, you know, thank you for how vocal you've been about climate change, about all of the things that are impacting not just this country, but our world. Um, and I'm very, very, we're just, we're so grateful that you were able to share this time with us. So, thank you.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  No, and thank you for your interest in climate change and telling this story. I appreciate it, really.

• 53:19Jonathan Cohen?

  My question is really about, like, the future. You know, my son said to me, my 16-year-old said, "Where do all the people who have been evacuated and displaced go?" You know, there isn't enough housing for people in LA without the fires. Now you remove all of these houses, like, what happens? Where do people go to school? Do they, they have their jobs? What happens in the interim? Rebuilding is a very, very long process.

• 53:47Mayim Bialik?

  I think one of the things that people have been talking about, and you do see this kind of, um, discussion, we saw it after 9/11, uh, we, we saw it, um, during COVID. Uh, we did, we saw it after October 7th. Like, we're seeing it now, these conversations about, you're finding out what really matters. What do you do when there is this kind of crisis? And, uh, for my, for example, my friend whose house burned to the ground, um, he and his three kids and his husband are staying with friends, you know, an hour away in our part of the city and in the valley, um,

• 54:26Mayim Bialik?

  including their pets. You know, he sent me a picture of his dog and his cat in someone's bathroom. They rescued four tortoises of theirs. Like, just, people are doing whatever they can. And what does it look like if instead of your 2,400-square-foot house, you're living in someone's bedroom, you know? And I have friends who are cooking meals that they are distributing to people who are evacuated, like, all hands-on. On deck, people are collecting clothing like this is what it looks like for our humanity to be leveled. Right. And it's so interesting because a lot of these homes in the Palisades are multi multi million dollar homes and like homes that many of us can't even imagine living in with pools and jacuzzis and you know they're they're mansions. They're mansions on the ocean, but when it comes down to it, we are all humans.

• 55:11Mayim Bialik?

  We are all humans who need a place to sleep. We need food to eat. It's it's a real kind of like rocking of of what does it mean for us to be equal as human beings right now? People are staying wherever they can. A lot of people are driving south. A lot of people are driving north. I know people who have been able to have flown away and are just like stepping out of it. I think for those of us with kids who are in school, it's even harder because you have to anchor your kids to what their life experience is still going to be.

• 55:42Jonathan Cohen?

  In the Palisades, it's people often with resources, they have options, they can either have a second home or they may have other means by which they can put themselves up or maybe they're not. They don't need to go to a nine to five job necessarily. They may be able to work remotely or have other opportunity. But there are many other communities in Los Angeles who have been affected. Altadena is often people who maybe moved out there. I mean, I had a lot of friends who went to Altadena and left Eagle Rock when Eagle Rock got too expensive or Pasadena got too expensive. The Pasadena fire is a lot of people who you think are like, well, how are they going to go to work the next day? And you know, there's a tremendous amount of we're both concerned for people's safety in the moment, but also

• 56:26Jonathan Cohen?

  how do these people continue their lives in this city?

• 56:30Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, the notion that this is a fire affecting only wealthy people is not true. The Eaton fire has impacted Pasadena and Altadena. Those are very diverse communities. They're very interesting. Communities with incredible history in Los Angeles. So this really is, it's affecting. It's affecting everyone, obviously in different ways. And as you said, people have different resources. But but I think this is, you know, as Jonathan indicated, this is one of those moments where like, what does a community look like? What does it mean to cook for each other? What does it mean that you don't have clothes anymore? Let me help you with some. You know, just as a little interesting personal note, I had the time to be able to say, what do I take? For many people, they had to leave in an emergency panicked situation.

• 57:13Mayim Bialik?

  It really, it is, I mean heartbreaking is not even, I can't even describe the context that we now have for what has happened here. That while our firefighters are doing their best and they are the bravest to run towards a fire, to defend people that you do not know, it is the bravest. However, if they do not have the support, if they do not have the infrastructure in order to get them where they need to go with the supplies that they need, they're doing the job with one hand tied behind their back and hundreds of thousands of people are affected. It's a devastating, devastating moment for the bureaucracy of this state.

• 57:54Mayim Bialik?

  And our hope is that we will see a lessening of the winds and an ability for us to start rebuilding this city and, you know, building what we can with what is left over. So, thank you so much. And Jonathan, thank you for talking about this and for encouraging us to get Jonathan Bigliotti to come and speak with us. We will list some resources below if you need to know, if you'd like to know where you can donate, if you live somewhere and you are impacted because you've heard about what's going on, there are ways that you can help and we do need your help and our firefighters need your help. So, thank you. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.