Ep. 289: Los Angeles Wildfires

[00:00:06] If you're a California conservative, a libertarian, a moderate Democrat, believe in common sense, or just the sane person, this is the political podcast for you. It's the California Underground Podcast.

[00:00:27] What's going on, everybody? Thanks for tuning into another episode of the California Underground Podcast. I am your host, Phil, and we have an absolutely jam packed show tonight. We got a lot of stuff to talk about. I know we always say we have a jam packed show, but tonight we like legitimately have a really jam packed show. We are talking all about what's going on up in Los Angeles with the fires, which start with the Palisades fire, how it's been spreading, what we know, policy failures, all of that stuff. We're going to try and cover as much as possible tonight.

[00:00:56] So if it's a little longer than our normal episode, I mean, you're getting more content. That's good. If you're a fan of the show, then you're getting a longer podcast tonight. But for people who are usually used to like maybe an hour, this probably will be a little bit over, but there's just so much to get to and talk to. But before we get started, as always with me is my trusty co-host, the best, the fastest researcher in the West, Camille. How are you doing tonight, Camille?

[00:01:20] I'm good. I've been in Urge County, so I'm not in a fire zone. We've had red flag warnings all week, but I know we have so much to say. We've been like really down the rabbit hole of this fire thing since basically since it started. So it's just it's crazy. It's been a week. It's literally this fire has been going for a week next week when we're here. And this isn't the point of the show, but like next week we're here, we're literally going to have a new president.

[00:01:50] And so that's kind of crazy. But I just really, really want to emphasize I tend to be I blunt. I like facts. I just kind of like spit out information and I don't want that because it does come across as me being insensitive or lacking compassion. And I like I sincerely care about this fire. It's and I think I even overly care because it doesn't personally affect me.

[00:02:15] And, you know, I've been like texting you and like one of our group texts are like, I don't even know why I'm so like worked up over this fire. I'm so bothered by it. I'm not even not even near it. And I was like angry and emotional and all the things. And I mean, of course, we're always sad for people to lose things. But I just don't want our podcast to come out tonight as like insensitive or lacking compassion, especially because of the way that I do tend to speak. And so I just wanted to make that really clear. Anyway, how are you?

[00:02:44] Yeah, I mean, I'm good farther south than you are. So farther away from the fires. But, you know, still Southern California, still dealing with the Santa Ana winds. We have our own worries down here in San Diego. There was actually a fire at Miramar yesterday, but they jumped on that right away. I think the military who are at that base jumped on it right away.

[00:03:07] Yeah, just to echo what you're saying, the point of tonight's episode is we are going to talk about sort of like what we know, the facts we know. We're obviously going to talk about like some of the policy failures that have probably led to this. Like, did we see this coming? Was there stuff that politicians could have done better?

[00:03:26] We're not going to go down any sort of rabbit holes of any wild claims because the point of our show has always been to put the facts out there and be, you know, as truthful and honest with you, whether it cuts against your narrative or supports your narrative. But, you know, our hearts obviously go out to the people.

[00:03:47] I tweeted last week or X or whatever they call it about how many conservative influencers were jumping on the bandwagon to kind of like dump on California. And I think that set me off because it's not the time or the place within 24 hours of people dumping on California and saying stuff like, oh, you know, this is what you get. You deserve this. What you voted for and stuff like that.

[00:04:17] Like, this is like a human element. Like, just this is not like I don't think anybody goes to the ballot box and thinks I'm going to vote for utter calamity. Like, I don't think people voted for the most catastrophic wildfire to come to Los Angeles when they went to the ballot box. These things happen. Yeah. And the people they elected were not prepared.

[00:04:42] In my humble opinion, I don't think I mean, this just goes to my theory that most politicians are not prepared to handle big situations like this. I think they think it's all going to be like ribbon cutting and signing budgets. So that's a whole different issue on itself. So tonight we're really going to go over a lot of like what has been happening, the policy failures. Was there stuff we could have done? So there's a lot to cover tonight.

[00:05:10] And we're going to keep it as factual as possible so that people can, you know, take in those facts and come to those conclusions that they want to. So without further ado, we do have a pseudo cringe moment of the night, which I'm going to pull up right now. It's not really a cringe moment. Yeah. Because when I was going through the notes, I think yesterday my Internet was cutting out because the winds very high winds here. And I clicked on it and it wouldn't play.

[00:05:39] So I was just like, I'll just let it be a surprise. Well, I'm sure you've seen it before. I think a lot of people have seen it before. So quick 30 second clip. What is the situation with water? Obviously, in the Palisades ran out last night in the hydrants. I was trying to fire fire on this block. They left because there was no water in the hydrant here. Local folks are trying to figure that out.

[00:06:02] I mean, just when you have a system that's not dissimilar to what we've seen in other extraordinarily large scale fires, whether it be pipe electricity, whether it just be the complete overwhelm of the system. I mean, those hydrants are typical for two or three fires, maybe one fire. You have something at this scale. It's not really cringe, but it does sort of go into the theme of tonight's episode, which is and we'll get into that. That'll be our first segment on all of this is the finger pointing.

[00:06:31] There is a lot of finger pointing going. It took all of 48 hours. I feel like it took maybe three days for people to start pointing the finger at each other before we actually hop. Yeah, they turned on each other really quickly. And it's only gotten a lot worse since then. So this is what we know thus far. This is the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. So this is what we know. This is being updated in real time.

[00:07:01] 20,967 total emergency responses, 124 wildfires, 40,000 acres burned, 23 fatalities, 12,000 structures. So this is talking about Palisades, 23,000 acres. For Palisades alone, the Eaton Fire is 14,000. The Hearst Fire was 700. So and the Palisades Fire right now is only 17% contained. The Eaton Fire is 35% contained.

[00:07:33] Obviously, the Palisades, I think, is the most distressing because they just don't have it contained as much as they should be. Eaton Fire is not as much either. And there is one more day before we hopped on. I was watching Fox News LA, which is Los Angeles, is local Fox affiliate to see if there's like any last minute stuff before we hopped on tonight.

[00:07:56] And I know that the high winds were supposed to be today or going into tomorrow, but they've now been pushed to Thursday. So they're still expecting these red flag warnings to come down in the next 48 hours. Now, any of this can push back all of the progress they've made. It could prevent them from containing this even more. It could start new wildfires.

[00:08:25] It could start, you know, it could start more sites of wildfires. We know that there's been reported cases of arson that people are starting to now set fires in Los Angeles, which is absolutely horrible that people are really starting to start fires. People are being arrested for it. It's it's absolute like mayhem right now. And suffice it to say, I just feel like they don't have a lot of this under control.

[00:08:52] Like it's been a week and it feels like they they have some under control. But I feel like the Palisades fire is like just one strong wind away from really just getting out of control. What are your thoughts?

[00:09:09] Right. Which, yes, that's how any little thing which I know we're going to get into more of this, but like the the outdated unmaintained power lines, any of that, you know, a little spark, some wind, a cigarette. Spark, car fire. And with these continued dry conditions, any little thing can just pick this up and, you know, make it worse on your by fire.

[00:09:38] I was texting you about a fire that hit Orange County. In 2008, where I live when I had to be evacuated. And I'm not trying to, like, say my experiences like that, but there were actually multiple fires that then met up and became one massive fire. And I I sincerely hope that doesn't happen. But I keep like feeling like it's going to. And I'm like watching for that to just like like these fires flare up and then just me.

[00:10:03] And then all of a sudden we just have this out of control, just absolute chaos because that can happen. And I've seen that happen. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of my concerns about like the Palisades fire right now is it's not contained and it's creeping up towards containment. But it feels like after a week and they're only 17 percent contained and it's 23,000 acres of land has been burned up.

[00:10:33] One one false, you know, one strong wind or something can happen. And this is going to get out of control all over again. And that's my concern. The Paradise fire in 2018, I think they called it the campfire. And there was like multiple fires. Do you recall how long that one went on? I didn't even look that up. I don't remember. If somebody in the chat knows how long the Palisades or the Paradise fire went on for.

[00:11:02] So if anyone knows, can just say in the chat. Producers, producers, are you out there? Producers, are you out there? Any producers out there? So, yeah, I don't really know. But this is a clip from Pod Save America. Newsom went on Pod Save America. And this is from Fox Business on Instagram. This is the only place I could find like a short clip of this.

[00:11:25] Everything else is the entire podcast, which I don't want to watch the entire podcast of Gavin Newsom on Pod Save America. So let's see if I can get this synced up. Forgive me for doing it this way, but this might be the only way we can actually do this. Answers. So I'm the governor of California. I want to know the answer. I've got that question. I can't tell you about how many people. What happened? My own team saying what happened. And I want to get the answers. I wasn't getting, I'll be candid with you, I wasn't getting straight answers.

[00:11:54] I watched the press conference. I met with some of those leaders. We had my team start talking to local leaders saying what's going on. And you weren't getting straight answers from local leaders. I was getting different answers. And so for me, that's not a story. When you start getting different answers, then I'm not getting the actual story. And they're assessing it. And I get that as well. You have a little bit of grace back to the point. We're in this emergency environment and everything else. So I just want to determine the facts. But no one has any patience anymore. In this weaponized, back to the grievance of Trump, everyone else. There's immediacy.

[00:12:24] And lies travel the proverbial world. And it's hard to get the facts out there unless you have the backing of those facts. And you can communicate them soberly. And so that's what we're trying to achieve. So that was him on Pod Save America already kind of pointing the finger at local leaders, people on his team. Let's take a minute to talk about Newsom's response to this. I mean, there's definitely going to be, we're going to show videos of other things and other people on the local level.

[00:12:54] But let's talk about Newsom for a minute. And his response to all of this. Would you say this was, dare I say, presidential of him, the way he responded to this crisis? Or would you say this crisis was bigger than he could manage? I actually don't think his response has been presidential. From that little clip right there that we just watched, I agree.

[00:13:24] Let's get the facts. Like, facts are important. And it's part of what we're doing tonight. But he is the governor, as he reminded us in that video. And the whole have a little patience, like you don't tell that to someone who just lost their home, or they might lose their home right now, and they've just lost somebody they know, likely they lost pets, they lost their livelihood, they lost their business. You don't say have a little patience. Patience.

[00:13:52] Like, that was such an a-hole little clip right there. Like, it was just, how about I'm the governor, and this has gotten out of control. Like, a little humility, a little bit, a little bit of, like, owning it. You know? Like, no, he didn't start the fire. I don't think that Newsom started the fire. I'm not saying that at all, or that any elected official deliberately started this fire.

[00:14:22] But, like, I'm the governor of the state. You know, this is on me, and I'm going to work with the elected officials to get the answers, and I am going to help going forward. Like, I'm here for you guys, and not, no one's patient. That's what I got from that. So. Yeah. It seems like, instead of saying, instead of, like,

[00:14:50] the whole buck stops here kind of mentality, like, you're the governor of the state. You could have came in and said, okay, this whole thing is a mess. Not pointing fingers, but saying, like, look, we're doing the best with what we have. Like, just be a leader in this time. Right. And it seems like, instead, now he's kind of, like, backpedaling, and he's trying to say, like, oh, well, it's the local leaders didn't really know what's going on, and we're getting straight in, and we're not getting the right answers, and it's really their fault,

[00:15:19] and kind of taking and shifting the blame and the accountability off of him, and saying, I'm just, you know, I don't really know what's going on, so I can't help. And to me, that's just kind of a lackadaisical answer, especially if you're that, you know, four years away from what we all most likely expect, you're going to run for president. You just don't give off that vibe of, like, I'm going to step in here as a leader and take control of this situation.

[00:15:49] Right. And that's what I think is, that's what I think is really kind of non-presidential about him at all, is he's, it's only, it's been less than a week, or about a week, since this all started, and he's already kind of backpedaling and backing off all this going, trying to shift blame to other people. And a leader doesn't do that. A leader doesn't shift blame when all of this happens. Now, there could be a time for accountability

[00:16:18] after all this, and quite literally after the fires die down and they take care of it. But right now, it just doesn't seem like this is the best time for him to be pointing the finger at other people. So I don't think it's as presidential. You know, this will haunt him come 2028. And I think this is, just add this on the pile of other things that he has managed or controlled.

[00:16:48] And it's going to be running campaign ads about how he handled the fires, what kind of leader he was. And it's just going to go on the big pile of stuff that they're going to use against him in 2028. What are your thoughts? Well, yeah, I mean, that's, I kind of shared my thoughts. So then I feel like we pretty much aligned with them and you reiterated what I said, but yeah, it was just, he's, he's basically like, you know, wait, obviously we have our president and our vice president, but as far as California is concerned, he's, he's at the top.

[00:17:18] He's the branch manager, the boss, if you will. And I understand that California is absolutely huge. And the boss cannot be involved in every little thing that happens, although this is a little thing, but when, when a big thing happens, the boss does need to come in and, you know, and be a leader, figure things out, get some answers. And I, and I get that these answers are not going to come overnight. We're still working through all that. Lots. I mean, this,

[00:17:46] this could take a year before we have answers or legit answers and all that. I understand that. But like I said, just that video was just, it just came across as very cruel, insensitive. And maybe that's like what I said at the top of the podcast. Like maybe, maybe he just speaks like I do, you know, but I'm not an elected official, nor do I have plans to ever be one. So because, because of that reason, no, that's not the only reason, but I would literally, people would be like, wow,

[00:18:15] she's a jerk. Like that's how I would come across. So. Well, yeah, comparing that video, and the first video we showed, it keeps, both of them have the same pattern as he's kind of thrown up his hands in both of them. Yes. You know, when Anderson Cooper asked him in front of a burning house, like what's going on here? He kind of looks around, shrugs, oh, well, local officials are going to find out. That's, that's a local thing. They'll figure it out. Like, you don't know you, you're here. Like,

[00:18:45] you're obviously invested in being here. And then there's another clip where he takes time to go to pod, save America and do a podcast. And now he set up this whole website, which, you know, get the wildfire facts. Yeah. it seems like he is so concerned about like how he's viewed during this, that he had to go out of his way to set up a website to be like, these are the facts. And now like,

[00:19:14] these are the actual facts, my facts for my office. And it's like, okay, well, we know your facts are slanted to make you look better. Doesn't mean what people are debating or bringing up in terms of policy failures are not true. So I haven't, I've only briefly looked at that site and I haven't looked at it today. Cause he's like updating it quite often. Do you know, is he only defending himself on that site or is he defending like Karen Bass,

[00:19:44] LA mayor, Karen Bass? I actually haven't looked. What's the website? There's something on there. I might even have an open. I have so many tabs open, you know, he went after assembly member of Bill Asaley. They had a little back and forth on Twitter and then he added screenshots to, to the fact website. And that's, that's just another thing is that in the midst of this literal disaster of fire, like this is a nightmare. He's like, hold my beer.

[00:20:13] I need to go ahead and make a fact checking website that defends myself real quick. So I found Gavin Newsom.com, California fire facts, and it's just all about him. Um, is that the same thing as the website that he has? Yes. His alleged like fact, whatever defaults to his website. Or as a part of his website. It's, it's all about him. It's like, okay,

[00:20:39] the budget for managing the forest is now 10 times larger than it was when Governor Newsom took office. Okay. Uh, but it is all about protecting his legacy. It, cause it's on his site directly. Um, talking about what he's not even trying to come in to defend other elected officials. It doesn't look like, no, it's, it's all about like what he's done. Oh, there's one here thing. And Governor Newsom, Mayor Bass, and others deliberately set these fires. Oh, well,

[00:21:08] that's just one of those crazy theories. Yeah. We know what they do. Governor Newsom, Mayor Bass, and others deliberately set these fires to hide secret pedophile tunnels. Yeah, that's, we're not on that train. We're not, I'm not even on the blue roof chain. Uh, I, sorry. I'm just not that level of conspiracy. But again, this is like what the level of like lies that he is debunking are, are like one lie.

[00:21:36] The outbreak of one fire stemmed from a satanic ritual linked to a creepy red roof mansion. That is straight out of a horror movie. Okay. So 99.99% of people are going to be like crazy and ignore that comment. But Newsom's like, I need to debunk this. This is what's really important right now. Um, that original tweet was from Matt Wallace, who, if you follow him on X tweets out a lot of crazy stuff. Um, I don't. Yeah.

[00:22:05] So some like you get to the bottom of this and it's like a lot of it. It's just like, he's replying to some like absolutely insane stuff. Um, but anyway, again, it's, it's him defending his own legacy. This is what he's concerned about. It's, it's all, and this is not shocking for someone like Gavin Newsom, who we know sets himself up in a way where he always is,

[00:22:33] is reaching for that next brass ring and position himself and getting footage. And like, he's always on the move to the next wrong. And in this case, the next wrong is the presidency. So all of this is people are critiquing him and bringing this stuff out. And he's trying to protect his legacy and, and fact check people. Um, and he's pushing a lot of the blame and accountability back onto the local people, which I,

[00:23:03] we were talking about this a couple hours ago. There is a new recall of Gavin Newsom that has been started. I don't know how I feel about a recall. I mean, unless you like really, unless you really organize really quickly and get like, what is it? 1.3 million signatures really quickly, which you might be able to do to get 1.3, you know, people who are really angry about Los Angeles. Yes. Our collecting petition signatures in the fire zones.

[00:23:33] Um, I don't know. I mean, I guess you could recall them and get them out. And then I would tarnish him for the presidency, but he's out in two years anyway. It's like, you'd get like what? Six months. It'd be like what happened with the last recall where they passed the recall and then they had the recall election. And then he went and won both elections. So it just, I don't know. I think even if,

[00:24:01] even if the majority of California is fed up with him right now, like even if the super majority is fed up with him right now, we have just been through the 2021 recall, the 2022 election. And now the 2024 election people are exhausted of elections. I don't think. And then we, of course coming up, we're going to have the 2026 elections. Like, yes, that's in two years,

[00:24:30] but two years is going to come fast. Like people are absolutely exhausted of elections right now. I think in California. Oh yeah. So I just, I could see, I could see a recall of Karen Bass. I think that is a real possibility of like, I think there's a real possibility that a recall gets started. Maybe it goes to an actual official recall. We see what happens.

[00:25:01] She might end up falling on her sword. All of this. I feel like she's been very quiet through a lot of this. And a lot of people are pointing the finger at her. So I could see a real recall of her. Make, I would say if I had to pick which recall would have more steam behind it, Karen Bass over Gavin Newsom, I think makes more sense. I agree. You're going to get more people pissed off at Karen Bass. I mean,

[00:25:30] the whole fact that she was in Ghana for, you know, a diplomatic mission while this was all happening. And she was advised that like, there's going to be a lot of Santa Ana wins at this time. Doesn't, doesn't bode well for Karen Bass. Um, and speaking of someone who called out Karen Bass in the city, uh, LA fire department chief, Kristen Crowley. Is that her name? Kristen Crowley. She is the chief of the fire department and she came out the other day and she called out,

[00:25:59] she was calling out everybody. Like, I think she got tired of being blamed for everything. Maybe she got tired of being called like the DE hire. So, um, this was just a clip of her calling out a bunch of people. Period. Did the city of Los Angeles fail you and your department and our city? It's my job to stand up as a chief and exactly say justifiably what the fire department needs to operate to meet the demands of the community. Did they fail you? That is our job.

[00:26:29] And I tell you that I'm here. So let's get us what we need. So our firefighters can do their jobs. Did they fail you? Yes. Pretty, pretty damning. Um, she did go on to say when you're a firefighter, you expect to go up to fire hydrants and you expect there to be water there. And in this case, there weren't water. There was a lot of water going on up in Palisades. So, um, that's another one pointing fingers.

[00:26:59] So let's talk about, uh, is there anybody else we missed blaming pointing fingers? They've been pointing a lot of fingers at, uh, DWP, which we'll get to in a little bit about what is going on over there. Okay. can we go, are we going to talk about the fire hydrants for a moment? We can talk about the fire hydrants. Um, I think, you know, I don't know if you saw on my notes, like I was kind of going into that and there, there are various reasons.

[00:27:27] Obviously an empty reservoir is not going to provide water to a fire hydrant, but, um, I think everyone understands water pressure. I hope they do. You know, I know that I have an older home, but if I go out back and turn on my hose to water my plants, then I, if I come into shower, not only am I going to have like really low water pressure, I'm going to have really hot water. I'm going to have to go turn off my house. If everyone's doing laundry and running dishes and like, you know,

[00:27:56] water pressure is going to drop. Um, obviously if now these fires are out of control and several fire hydrants need to be in operation at one time, water pressure is going to drop. Water is not necessarily going to come out of them. And definitely an empty reservoir is not going to provide, any, uh, water. And then fires can damage fire hydrants. A damaged fire hydrant is going to possibly have leaks and also then have low water pressure. The water,

[00:28:25] the reservoir was empty. We know that I heard, and I don't know if this is factual. I heard it was emptied in February of 2024. So nearly a year ago. Um, the reason that it's empty is because in 2011 to 2012, they built this. It's my only word for it's a cover. It's not like an enclosed cover. It's an expandable so that with lower water levels and higher water levels, it can, so it's basically a very high tech tarp is how I would describe it. So it's,

[00:28:55] it's, you know, it's better than a tarp, but that's just picture this, you know, massive reservoir with this massive tarp covering it. So that was a $23 million project that was approved in 2009. They started it in 2011, completed it in 2012, and they estimated that the lifespan of this tarp would be 20 years. 2012 to 2024 is 12 years. It had a massive rip in it, and they had to empty the reservoir to fix it. I have no idea if they started fixing it.

[00:29:24] I don't know when or how they were alerted to this tear and, um, how long before they emptied it after finding this out. And if there's been any work done on it, but that is the reason that I have from my research, that that is why the reservoir was empty. Yeah. It, it's been almost a year. And in that video with the fire chief, they asked her point blank, did you know that this reservoir was emptied? And she goes,

[00:29:52] I wasn't aware that it was empty and no one told me, which that's a criticism of like, it's been empty for a year. How did that? Yeah, that's really important info. If you're a firefighter and you need access to a lot of water and you have no idea, one of your biggest reservoirs is completely bone dry. Like that's a big deal to not know that. So that's a failure right there. And how are,

[00:30:19] how are these departments communicating and letting each other know what they need to know? Um, so that the, the, the fire hydrant thing, is, and you're, you're right. These are things that like this, this does happen because of the pressure, because of the use that were not used to do this. Um, there wasn't enough water. Um, they were not made to fight huge fires,

[00:30:48] which begs the question of like, okay, so maybe we should look into building fire hydrants that can fight huge wildfires. Like maybe we don't rely on, you know, normal residential fire hydrants. Like maybe we have different fire hydrants that are reserved just for wildfires. Like, why are we not thinking that far ahead in advance of if something like this happens and we need a ton of water to fight this,

[00:31:16] where are we getting a ton of water from? and the coast is how far? Well, that, that one I heard you can't use seawater. Well, right. But wasn't there a plant that they were trying to build and that was shot down? Are we getting to that? Am I jumping ahead? Yes. We're going to get to that. So this is, um, that's one of the articles we're going to go over. Uh, this kind of leads us as a good segue into like mismanagement of the forest themselves,

[00:31:46] because you and I have been finding articles. I made sure like when I'm highlighting these, that I'm highlighting the dates, because I think it's important. The point of tonight's episode is to look back on as much as people like Gavin Newsom are trying to be revisionist history and say like, no, no, no, we've been, you know, this is, we've all been on top of this. Like we've been spending money and investing money, but there's articles going back years to show like, this has been a problem and we should be all worried about it.

[00:32:15] So this article is from October 18th, 2020. It's from NBC news. It's titled decades of mismanagement led to choke forests. Now it's time to clear them out. Fire experts say. Now this was five years ago or four, like, you know, four or five years ago. For decades, federal state and local agencies have prioritized fire suppression over prevention, pouring billions of dollars into hiring and training firefighters, buying and maintaining firefighting equipment and educating the public on

[00:32:44] firefighting in California. Forest management also falls under the purview of the state's department of forestry and fire protection known as Cal fire. Since 2011, Cal fire spent more than 600 million on fire prevention efforts and removed or felled nearly 2 million dead trees. In 2018, California set the goal of treating, which can include slashing, burning and sawing or thinning trees, 500,000 acres of wild land per year. Yet Cal fire remains far from meeting that target.

[00:33:14] It's an ongoing process. And Cal fire spokeswoman, Christine McMorrow, there's always going to be more work. I thought I highlighted more of this. Oh, here we go. Long before the country's founding Spanish explorers documented wild land fires in California in 1542, conquistador Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed along the coast and noticed smoke billowing up from what is now known as the Los Angeles basins.

[00:33:44] He called it La Valla de los Fumos or the Bay of Smoke. Studies by archaeologists and historians support a theory that Cabrillo might have been witnessing an early form of land management, including the burning of shrubs in chaparral to clear dry brush and promote better conditions for hunting big game. Prescribed and controlled burns were integral to the American landscape for generations. In 1910,

[00:34:09] focus started to shift away from forest management and steer toward for fire suppression. After the big burn ravaged 3 million acres across Washington, Idaho, and Montana. The state's policy to stop fires as soon as they ignite results in a backlog of trees and forests now choked with brush and other dry fuels. So it goes on to say, anyway,

[00:34:33] so basically the article goes on to say that over time they have gotten away from this. And even though this has been going on since, you know, since the Spanish conquistadors came over, they, we have moved away from this in, in favor of environmental conservation and protectionism, which is something Trump has been calling out Newsom for with the whole Delta smelt,

[00:35:02] which I didn't know that a Delta smelt is like they can't swim. It's hard for me to fathom that a fish that can't swim is something that we're that concerned about. I mean, I feel like for all these people who don't, who believe in evolution and all that, wouldn't a fish that can't swim, wouldn't that be part of evolution or Darwinism? Call me crazy, but I don't think if you're a fish that can't swim, then you have bigger problems. If you're an environmentalist,

[00:35:33] governor, would you be using a water bottle in that podcast interview? That we, the second one we showed, cause that's stood out to me right away. It's like, that's not very environmentalist. You'd be using a nice, uh, reusable water bottle. If he was in LA, they are, they are saying don't drink the water, but there's, you know, you can boil the water and drink it out of a glass. There's options.

[00:36:03] So it's the next article. Continuing with that vein of, um, God, unlike you right now, I have so many tabs open. Uh, you're the leader of this. So like I get to have my chaos and nobody sees it. That's the problem. I try and even like put them in order of like, but sometimes that doesn't even work. Okay. So going along with environmentalism over fire prevention, this was,

[00:36:31] this is a recent article, how California eco bureaucrats halted a Pacific Palisades fire safety project to save an endangered shrub. And this was from the New York post. In 2019, the LA department of water and power began replacing nearly a hundred year old power line poles cutting through Topanga state park. When the project was halted within days by conservation.

[00:36:54] Conservationists outrage that federally endangered Broughton's milk vetch plants have been trampled during the process. The goal of the project was to improve fire safety for the Pacific Palisades area by replacing the wooden poles with steel, widening fire access lanes in the area and installing wind and fire resistant power lines. All after the area was identified as having an elevated fire risk, according to LA times quote,

[00:37:24] this project will help ensure power reliability and safety while helping reduce wildfire threats. The LA W D W P said at the time, these wooden poles were installed between 1933 and 1955 and are now past their useful service life. But after an amateur botanist hiking through the park during the work, saw the harm to some of the parks, Broughton's milk vetch,

[00:37:50] a flowering shrub with only a few thousand specimens remaining in the wild and complained. The project was completely halted. Instead of fire hardening the park, the city, which the state said had undertaken the work without proper permitting, ended up paying $2 million in fines. It was ordered by the California coastal commission to reverse the whole project and replant the rare herb. That work saved by two, that work saved about 200 Broughton's milk vetch plants,

[00:38:18] almost all of which have now likely been torched in the wildfires that consumed Topanga Canyon along with 24,000 acres. Yeah. So all that work, uh, to save the plant and might've been engulfed in flames. The good news for the milk vetch, however, is that they usually need wildfire to sprout, meaning dormant seeds that now have a massive new habitat for a new crop of the rare shrub, which means there'll be more of them.

[00:38:44] So you can't go back and fire proof that area because conservationists will worry more about the milk vetch than the homes that are up in the Palisades. So that's, uh, you know, this is when environmentalism and conservation goes from, you know, we want to take care of the environment and protect it to you're not living in reality.

[00:39:12] Like something has to give, and I want the environment to be protected. I want our natural beauty here in California to be protected and preserved. I also don't want thousands of people to lose their home because of a milk vetch, whatever that is. Well, I don't want anyone to lose their home because of any plant. Excuse me. Like I'm not going to look at somebody and be like, this is a lovely home you have here that were, that you've designed to build. But unfortunately this,

[00:39:42] this little plant here is dormant right now, but I want to save this plant. Yeah. And it was funny. There's an amateur botanist who ran off to the California coastal commission and made a complaint about it. Like that's a busy body environmentalist. Yeah. That's, um, you see that person. I hope that that person kind of looks like it goes, whoops. Um, but you know,

[00:40:07] I actually don't think he does because I think a lot of these environmentalists who are this obsessed with these things, they, they don't see that. They see it as like, well, we're not supposed to be here. This isn't our habitat and stuff like that. They would rather see homes burned down and all of this and protect the plant or a fish or something like that than, than human lives. And this becomes a question of, again,

[00:40:31] putting it back on like these local officials who subscribe to these policies and subscribe to these, these ideals. you're going to have to pick a lane now. Like, are you going to pick, we have to govern responsibly and in reality, or are we going to continue to kowtow to environmentalists? Like, the environmental thing probably sounded good in their mind 20,

[00:41:00] 30 years ago when they started, but it's gotten to be such a, it's, it's like a Frankenstein monster they've created and they don't know what to do with it. Now. It's kind of like the whole thing with affordable housing. Can we build housing? But no, every time you try and build something, sequel gets involved and then seek was a mess and it won't let you build. So like, or like Gavin Newsom saying, we're going to be cutting red tape and, and, and bureaucratic red tape. So people can rebuild their homes faster. Okay.

[00:41:28] So you're admitting there is bureaucratic red tape and there's too much of it for people to build housing in California. Maybe that's an issue that like, we should all be kind of concerned about that. There is so much red tape. Why do we need it? If you can cut it to rebuild housing faster. Um, and that's, that's kind of the road that like California Democrats are gonna have to figure out going forward. And maybe California Republicans can kind of capitalize on is like, Hey,

[00:41:58] we're not going to put all of your homes at risk for a milk vetch. We're going to be responsible and like, make sure we fireproof your County. Um, I mean, it's crazy that they were trying to protect homes and fireproof them. And they were like, no, no, no, you, you trampled on these milk vetch. You can't put these things in. It's like, that's an insane policy to me. So what do you think? Well,

[00:42:26] even regarding building housing in this, this, uh, Palisades fire, we saw that there was a lot of, they were trying to leave and they had to just abandon their cars because it was like, you know, they were literally getting out of their cars and running down the streets, down the freeways, running away from the fire because so much traffic. Um, so is the whole Yimby thing even safe? I mean,

[00:42:54] we're building so much housing and then people can't get away when there is a fire. Right. Yimby being the yes in my backyard, uh, building. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're all for building up and building more high density housing, but yeah, cities like LA aren't, I mean, a lot of cities to be honest are not really built. I mean,

[00:43:20] they've been built for a long time ago and they were not built for thousands of people to try and exit all at once. Right. Especially LA. If you've ever driven through that part of LA, like sunset Boulevard or anything like that, these are not built to already traffic. There's already traffic on a normal day. And now you tell everyone they have to evacuate Santa Monica. It's, it's going to be stopped at traffic trying to get out of the city, which puts a lot of people in harm's way. Um,

[00:43:50] all right. So I did want to talk really quickly about these, uh, you know, we were talking about who's in charge, pointing the finger, blame game, all of that. Um, people I think should know how much these politicians who are in charge of the responses are getting paid, um, for doing their job. And maybe people might look at how much they're getting paid and say, I don't think they,

[00:44:19] they are worth that much money or they're not doing their job well enough to warrant that much money. Uh, open the books, uh, put out an article or a blog post and it went over some of the pay. Uh, so Karen Bass makes $300,000 a year. She made that in 2023 plus benefits, making her the second highest paid mayor in the country, just after, uh, her San Francisco counterpart, the San Francisco mayor,

[00:44:49] just for reference, London breed last year made 383,000, which is, that seems like so much to money to me to be making for being the mayor of a city. Well, it's like a servant position. Kristen Crowley, the LA fire department chief, her pay was $439,772.

[00:45:16] That's $412,000 in base pay and $27,000 in other pay. So she makes more than the president as a fire chief for Los Angeles. Um, there are some other top highest paid employees in the city of Los Angeles. Let me ask, do you know a guy named Mark chambers? Does he ring a bell? I don't, I don't know. No, it's not a trick question because I know. I just, I don't think so,

[00:45:45] but you might start describing. I'll be like, Oh yeah, that guy. Uh, no, it's, it's not a trick question because I looked at this list and I have no idea who he is either. Mark chambers is the lead or load dispatcher for the department of water and power. His base salary is 293,000. He made $334,000 in overtime pay bringing his total to $857,000 a year.

[00:46:12] Did he stand there and watch the reservoir get emptied the entire time? And that was, I think he watched the entire load of that reservoir get emptied. Uh, John get Kies. He is a fire captain in Los Angeles. His total pay was $801,000 last year. Uh, his base pay is 176, but he made $600,000 in overtime. So over a half a million dollars in overtime. Okay.

[00:46:42] I think that's too much. I think it's fair that somebody who is putting their life on the line is maybe paid a little bit more. Most of us don't really want to do that. We're certainly not trying to do that, but that amount is, is pretty ridiculous. So I don't, I guess the department of water and power is a very lucrative position to get because after John get Kies, you have one, two, three, four, five,

[00:47:11] six people. Who will work for the department of water and power, and they all make over $700,000. I know where I'm looking for my next truck. I mean, I can, I can stand and watch a reservoir get emptied. I'm cool with that. I mean, go work for the department of water and power. Cause that seems to be a pretty, pretty sweet gig and not to be outdone. The CEO, Jenny's Quinones.

[00:47:41] She is the head of the department of water and power in LA. Her annual salary is 750,000. So that's just her base salary, $750,000 a year. A lot of these other people, they're getting like overtime and stuff like that to bring it up to 700, but her base salary is $750,000 a year annually. And her predecessor, Martin Adams made 435, which we discussed and we were kind of, looking at this,

[00:48:11] like a little quizzical, like why all of a sudden did it almost skyrocket to double just for this one lady? Right. She used to be a senior vice president of PG and E, you know, the one that got sued for, I was just going to say, are they bankrupt? Are they bankrupt? Are they getting bailed out? I was going to say, cause we didn't now we kind of, yeah, we went back and forth with her a little bit and we didn't read too much. We had some ideas. They didn't really pan out. We were like, okay,

[00:48:41] this is just confusing. But now I'm speculating again. Cause she left PG and E. And. And now I'm wondering, and I am, this is just me throwing this out there off the cuff right now. Like I'm not making an accusation, but they're like supposedly bankrupt. And then they were found responsible for their equipment for fires, paradise fire. Right. Yes. Not what we said. Right.

[00:49:07] So maybe she knows something that she was basically like, I'm going to keep quiet. Here's, here's my, my salary demand. Something stinks to high heaven with her. Why she came over from PG and E. A. Public utility that just got sued into oblivion for wildfires. Then gets put in as the CEO of the LA department of water power at almost

[00:49:36] double the salary of her predecessor, which is an enormous spike. Like, and then she oversees. She's the CEO with the biggest wild. And it's probably coincidence. I'm not saying that this was all, it just happened that she was also at the helm when the biggest wildfire in LA happened. Right. I'm not blaming her for the fire whatsoever, but it is weird. It is very weird. We tried to look up like,

[00:50:03] did Karen Bass get a lot of donations from PG and E, which I don't know. There were some, not, not much. It wasn't enough to warrant giving her that cushy job, but I still think something's out there. I feel like there's a story there as to like, why is she getting paid so much out of the blue? All right. So speaking of water and department of water and power, everyone's been asking,

[00:50:31] why don't we have more water? If y'all remember prop one, which was a proposition that we passed over 10 years ago, 2014 was to address this specific question. This is from the LA times, January 19, 2023 asking about, well, why are we not building reservoirs as fast as possible? The article goes on the state.

[00:50:57] California voters approved a Ballyhooed $7.5 billion bond issue. Eight plus years ago, thinking the state would build dams and other vital water facilities, but it hasn't built zilch. True or false? No dams have been built. That's true. But one will be in two will be expanded and hundreds of other small projects have been completed. So they are making progress on these reservoirs,

[00:51:24] but not as fast as you would think over 10 years. Cites project director, Jerry Brown, now no relation to the former governor who lives nearby and his family's ancestral ranch seems satisfied with the project's progress. We're rolling along. He told me by the end of 2024, we should be all squared away and able to initiate construction in 2025. That will take six or seven years, which is insane to me that we passed this in 2014.

[00:51:54] It took 10 years for us finally to be squared away to start construction in right now in 2025. And this is going to take six or seven years. I don't think the California voters signed up for a 17 year process for this. No. And that, especially after our record rainfall last year and the year before, I mean, we were like on here being like, it's still raining. Do we live in Seattle?

[00:52:23] Like I love the rain and I was like, okay, son, so please. But it's, and it's, I've lived in California my whole life. And I remember like my earliest memory of like massive rain. I was seven years old and I, I swear there's a VHS tape of it somewhere because my mom did pull out the video camera and I'm like, we were all playing in the rain, my sisters and I, and my mom's explaining to us like in California, this is how it works. There's usually a five to seven year drought. And then we get a few seasons of rain.

[00:52:54] And I just could never understand why we didn't have enough water storage to store it for. And we don't even need to like, sure. There's probably a level of treatment that needs to happen because we don't want some massive water storage, just like breeding mosquitoes like crazy, but it doesn't even need to have to be treated for us to drink from. Like, it just needs to be available water that we can use for fires. And I know there's more to it.

[00:53:20] Like we talk about if only the reservoir was available and a massive plane has to come and collect the water. And I get, you can't just snap your fingers and the plane is there. Like there's, you know, I do understand all that, but still the water was right nearby or should have been right nearby, but it was empty. And if we had more of that and it's like, here's, you know, this reservoir, this neighborhood, like fires are never going to be a non-issue,

[00:53:49] but preventing them and proper treatment could go a long way. If you think about that article we just read from the New York post, it's not surprising. It took 10 years for them to get squared away just to begin construction. When, if you step on the wrong weed, the California coastal commission is going to come in and like, tell you to stop and do everything. Like they have to do a whole report and they have to do everything. So it's not surprising. It's taking this long.

[00:54:18] You brought up a point that has been in debate this past week regarding Congress saying that they want to put conditions. on any federal aid. And I know that's become a political football that people are punting back and forth. I kind of don't think it's a bad idea. And here's my rationale for why they,

[00:54:43] they try to compare this to stuff like what happened with the hurricane in North Carolina and what happens in Florida or what happened in Texas with the freak snow storms that never happened or the ice storms that never happened. When a hurricane comes to Florida, there's nothing Florida can do to stop or mitigate the hurricane from coming. Like basically you're just, you're on alert, you get out, you board up your house.

[00:55:13] Like hopefully the houses are built strong enough to withstand hurricanes. That's sort of it. Like your infrastructure is built for the fact that you're going to get hurricanes every year. And you know that, but there's nothing you can do to stop a hurricane. Right. And to your point, which is wildfires are going to be a part of California for eternity, unless all of a sudden some ice age happens or something. It's going to be here with us as long as we're around,

[00:55:41] but you can take proactive steps to mitigate wildfires. And I think that's what Republicans in Congress are saying is we're not just going to write you a blank check and give you all this money. Like you have to start investing in more water storage. You have to deforestation. You have to do controlled burns. Like you have to do all these things. So this next time something happens,

[00:56:08] it doesn't burn 30,000 acres of Los Angeles County. Like that's what I, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to say like, okay, California, like it's time to get serious about wildfire prevention. You can't just let this happen and then go to the federal government and be like, okay, bail us out, please. That's my thought. Like you can, you can mitigate wildfires more than you can mitigate a hurricane,

[00:56:37] which you can't really mitigate a hurricane. It comes. And if it's super powerful, that's all you can do is just kind of hope for the best. Um, I don't think it's reasonable. What do you think? I've got to get to your point in just a second. Cause I wanted to go back to what we're talking about with the infrastructure and the taking time to build, because we also have earthquakes. We can't, we can't prevent earthquakes. And so I do understand that like, there's a whole lot of engineering that goes into the design and planning and building of these water structures.

[00:57:07] Um, so I understand that that takes a few years, but yes, 17 years. No. Okay. Back to the Congress. And then of course, right now, a lot of people are saying, well, Trump said, you know, X, Y, and Z. And, and I told you, I like, I sent you the article and I was like, I think that, you know, it was back in, I believe September of 2024 before he was reelected. Trump was telling Gavin Newsom, if you can't get things under control, then if you have fires, we're not going to send you aid.

[00:57:34] And of course now people are using that content as if somehow Trump causes fire. And like, now he's about to be president and whatever. And yes. Now that goes back to the whole sensitivity thing and everything like, yeah. Like it just, it comes out sounding like, okay, Trump just stopped talking. But then Gavin Newsom goes on the defense of that back to Gavin. Um, if we had proper infrastructure and planning,

[00:58:04] plans and management in place, Newsom wouldn't have to be so defensive, you know? Right. Like he, he would, could have, would have said, Hey Trump, like, why don't you come out to California and I'll give you a tour of everything we've got going on and what we're doing to prevent all that. Like, I want to reassure California we're on top of this, but instead this is being used as like a Trump and Elon Musk because Elon

[00:58:32] Musk owns us X and is allowed to say what he wants to say on his platform. Like now they're responsible for this fire. And it's like, it's like the left is like trying to, you know, be like, let's focus on Trump and Elon instead of the problems that actually are happening here. And who's in leadership here. I think the whole blaming it on Trump is falling flat. And I agree with you. I think the fact that he's so defensive,

[00:59:02] it's like that, that old Shakespearean quote, the lady doth protest too much. He thinks or something like that. Like he does, he wouldn't have to be so defensive and come up with this whole website and be like, Oh, look at all the great things that I've done. Um, but I think the Trump thing falls flat because he's not president yet. Like this happened while you were governor and Biden was the president.

[00:59:28] And like you were bragging years ago that now with a cooperative administration, wildfire prevention would be bolstered even more. Like it'd be strengthened so much because now you have a friend in the white house. Like there was all a press conference about it, you know, years ago when Biden got elected and you know, yes, it's days away. We are days away from Trump being inaugurated. He's still not the president. Like it's not,

[00:59:57] he hasn't been president for four years. Biden has, and you've supposedly been working with Biden to strengthen the country or strengthen these wildfire prevention tactics. And clearly you haven't. So trying to now all of a sudden turn around and be like, nah, well it's, you know, Trump is spreading all this misinformation about all this stuff. People are kind of looking at you going like, really dude? Like Trump, like you're going to blame Trump for wildfires. Like, like he's not even president yet.

[01:00:26] And like, what does he have to do with any of this? Like Trump caused the wildfires. And for you to, did, did Trump cause Karen Bass to go to Ghana and be like away from the city when this all happened? Like did Trump order that reservoir to be emptied in 2024? Like Trump didn't have anything to do with this. So I think it's, yeah, go ahead. In 2018, when Trump was the president, Congress passed,

[01:00:56] I should, I should have it up. I don't think I have this one open on a tab. They passed something that was like, you know, multi millions of dollars for specific things like this. And a lot of it was going to California for water infrastructure and like fire prevention. That was under Trump. And I, I highly doubt it got built here, but yeah. At a certain point, it's almost like for a lack of a better term,

[01:01:23] your Trump derangement syndrome is now costing people their livelihoods. Like it's, it's kind of like your devotion to the church of climate change and environmentalism and your crippling addiction to Trump derangement syndrome has now cost thousands of people, their homes, their, you know, homes they've, they've worked hard for that. They say for that they have held in the family that they were planning on

[01:01:52] passing down to their children. They're all gone. And because it's your, you did stuff to thumb your nose at Trump. And I think that that is going to start resonating with people as this continues to, as this continues to go on. I think people are going to realize you did all this because you hate Trump. Like really? Like you, you didn't want to work with Trump to bring more water down from Canada and, and use the federal government to help.

[01:02:22] Like what's going on here? Like you did all this just because you hate Trump. Um, like my family home is gone because you hate Trump. That's what it all comes down to sadly. And that's why, you know, politicians for someone like Gavin Newsom to say now is not the time for politics is, is so laughable because with him, everything is politics. Well, it's not on our notes. I don't think,

[01:02:50] but the special session that he was trying to call, about Trump proofing California in the midst and like the middle of these fires. And he's trying to call this special session about what is it? He wants to put like 50 million into Trump proofing California. And I guess, be ready for lawsuits against Trump. Yeah. And then of course, everyone's pressuring him to like, Hey, maybe the priority should be how to fix this fire situation.

[01:03:16] So now they're saying they're adding the fire protection or whatever they're doing, adding it onto this Trump proofing thing. And it's probably kind of a way to be like Republicans voted against this. They don't care about your fire protection stuff, but they're tacking it onto the Trump proofing thing. And the Republicans are not going to vote for Trump proofing. Right. So now they can turn. Yeah.

[01:03:45] And I did see Newsom wants to separate the wildfire. This just came out like a couple hours ago. He wants to separate the wildfire special session out from the Trump proofing. Oh, but he should definitely update his website to call Scott Weiner for being the one to say that, because that's where I read that. Oh, okay. So this was, this was real. Like I saw this a couple hours ago before I left work that he wants it to be separate from the Trump proofing thing. But yeah, it's, I mean, this is typical politics.

[01:04:14] Like we were discussing this back and forth between like Bill Saley, who called out Newsom for everything for cutting funding. And then he calls and then Newsom claps back at Bill Saley and says like, no, you know, you voted against all this stuff and you didn't want to give them all this money. And Bill Saley had to be like, no, because you're, it was all part of your budget that I wasn't going to pass. Like this,

[01:04:39] your fire thing was part of hundreds of different budget items that you wanted to pass. I wasn't going to pass that budget. Your Democrats did, but like, it's one of those things that didn't help Californians. It was for illegal immigrants, migrants. Right. So they always bury this stuff like in these bills. And then if you vote against it, it's like, Oh, you didn't vote for, for increasing fire spending. It's like, well,

[01:05:06] it was increasing fire spending and a hundred or 200 or 500 or a thousand different things that were not good for Californians. So it's the age old tactic of like, you know, if we don't do this, it'll hurt first responders. It's always the first responders and the kids and the schools and teachers and stuff like that. That's who they always trot out first. And now there's tens of thousands of students out of school in LA right now. I mean, maybe they found something for them,

[01:05:36] but their schools have burned down. So. Yeah. Okay. Finishing up this article. And then I do want to touch upon because a lot of people would have been complaining about what's going on with the insurance companies. And I saw this actually, I had posted this, the news store. I had posted the video from this reporter a couple of weeks back. But I want to finish this article real quick. The LA times article finishes quote, it's slow going.

[01:06:06] A lot of permitting. Lisa lean major. And it's still talking about prop one and why we haven't built more reservoir. It's not like the state just writes a check. The rest of proposition. One money is for a myriad of projects such as wastewater management, stormwater capture, recycling, and groundwater cleanup of the total bond money. 6.4 billion has been committed to projects and more than 2 billion has been spent. Says Nancy,

[01:06:35] Nancy Vogel, the national natural resources agency's deputy secretary for water in all 1,838 projects have been funded and 760 are completed. Under proposition one, $2.7 billion is earmarked for storage above and below ground. But, and this is why I always vote. No, whenever I see a bond, because it's never ever exactly what you think it's going to be for. There's always fine print.

[01:07:05] This is why cardinal rule for me, always vote no on a bond, but the state money can be used only for public benefits, such as salmon protection, recreation and flood control. Water users, farmers, homeowners, businesses will pay the rest with higher monthly bills. So a lot of it also goes to conservation. Who knew you thought you were building water reservoirs. Instead, there's saving fish. Always. It's always, it's always deep, deep,

[01:07:34] deep in the bill that they always tuck in a little bit of money just for themselves to do what they want. So that's why I never vote. Whenever there's a proposition that, that issues a bond, I'm always like, nope, because I know what you guys do with it. All right. Last thing. So this is a video. This came out from ABC Bay area, ABC seven. Stephanie Sierra was the reporter. Uh, she was calling out Ricardo Lara,

[01:08:03] who is the insurance commissioner, basically on the fact that there is a problem with insurance in California. And he has not been really for a lack of better term, taking ownership of what is going on. So, um, I reposted this on mine. So thank you, Stephanie, for doing a good job and calling him out. I'm waiting for this ad to pass before I bring up the video into it. Credit karma app.

[01:08:33] They're not a sponsor of the show. So, so, although it's not bad to check your karma. Uh, okay. We're not going to watch the whole thing. It's seven minutes long, but I do want to at least watch some of it to give you an idea of like, this was weeks ago. Actually, this was months ago at this point, November 7th. Yeah, we're coming up on like two months ago. This is when this happened, when this story came out. So for all those saying that the insurance crisis and the insurance companies are, you know,

[01:09:03] they're bailing out on everybody. Well, this has been bubbling up for a while. So here we go. Insurance crisis is in chaos. Now spring calls for the insurance commissioner to step down over a lack of transparency. I'm very disappointed in, uh, the insurance commissioner Ricardo Lars lack of being able to be transparent. He said, you know, you're on your own. Basically. They just weren't really helpful. And he's not doing his job and he should leave.

[01:09:30] The state's plan to expand coverage in fire prone areas is supposed to be implemented in less than two months. And as seven on your side, Stephanie Sierra will show you here tonight. Tracking down the man in charge is no easy task. Yes. It's been a long time coming. The state's insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara has the most authority to address this crisis, but his latest plan came with criticism. It's filled with loopholes, alleged misrepresentations of his promises. So for months now,

[01:09:59] we've tried to talk with him, but his office has repeatedly ignored our requests, refusing to answer basic questions. Now tonight that changed. I mean, the guy's got the title of insurance commissioner. You know, isn't he supposed to be doing something about insurance? Meet Valerie Baldwin. Like millions of Californians, she was dropped by AAA, her insurer of 40 years, then forced to another provider that spiked her premiums. 50% more. Same story with her neighbor,

[01:10:29] Bob. 60% higher. And her neighbor, Janet. They canceled me. Meanwhile, the broker put me into the California fare plan. Do I have to come up with the money to pay off my mortgage? You know, what will I do? Despite the fact her garden is well-groomed, and her Portola Valley property is directly adjacent to a fire station, the 86-year-old's premiums still went up nearly 50%. Absolutely frightening. And I was just numb with fear.

[01:10:56] Fear turned to frustration as both of them tried to get answers from the man elected and granted the legal authority to respond to these situations. California's insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lada and his staff. He said, you know, you're on your own. Basically, it was all on me to do it. I think that they would try to give us some help or nothing. There's been nothing. Our goal is to help consumers like Valerie, Janet and Bob. It's why we're called seven on your side.

[01:11:22] The irony here is the commissioner has the same message telling consumers he's on your side, along with promises of transparency. Hi, this is Michael Saller at the California department of insurance. I've called repeatedly. We really want to hear his side. We don't often show you the behind the scenes reporting process, but the lack of communication with California's insurance commissioner and his office, unfortunately became the story here. That's not acceptable.

[01:11:50] To be fully transparent for more than two months now, seven on your side investigates has made more than a dozen attempts via phone or email to speak to the commissioner about some of the concerns raised about his insurance reform plan. This affects all of us, but his staff has yet to give us a straight answer and oftentimes don't even respond. It wasn't until the six email attempt over the course of eight weeks when we indicated we were doing a story on the matter that we got a response. And his office told us with some advanced planning,

[01:12:20] we can look at his availability through the end of the year. So we responded. We are happy to plan ahead asking repeatedly for his availability. No response. I reached out the next day, the day after that again and again, five more emails asking the same question. Still nothing. So, uh, let's see if I can skip ahead a little bit. It's gonna be hard to do. Let's see. Um, obviously a guy who's all about transparency and accountability, uh,

[01:12:51] not easy to get ahold of. And, I don't know if you noticed in that one clip, he had a little plasterboard that said wildfire, the domino effect. So, um, obviously he's going to be dealing with that issue now. More than two months later. Why did it take so long to get ahold of you? Oh, I have no idea. I have no idea. This was the case. We've been, you know, busy traveling the state. So I apologize for that. I wasn't aware. This is the first time it's been brought to your attention. Yeah.

[01:13:20] I have been very concerned about the way in which the current commissioner has conducted himself in this office. Congressman John Garamendi was California's first elected insurance commissioner who served for eight years. He sent a letter to Commissioner Lada last year, signed by dozens of California lawmakers, including nine from the Bay Area, all calling on Lada to hold insurers accountable by using his authority granted by Proposition 103.

[01:13:48] That's the state law that protects consumers from unfair insurance practices and rate hikes. Over the last three years, I have observed that this commissioner is not willing to take the hard task and the necessary task to stand up to the insurance industry. Now, if the commissioner is not willing to do that, and there's plenty of signs that he is not, then he's not doing his job and he should leave. Do you have a response to that? I do not.

[01:14:16] When Lada was running for reelection in 2022, he had this to say about insurers raising rates. I'm very kind of sketch about giving them any authority to just haphazardly raise rates without getting anything for the consumer. Since then, the state's top insurers have raised homeowner rates by at least 30 percent or more. You have the option to file legal action against these insurers. Will you do that?

[01:14:43] I would file legal action against an insurer that's breaking the law and that is breaking the current regulations that we are, that abide by Prop 103. The rates that you've been seeing reflect the risk of where we're living. We've had unprecedented fires since 2020, since 2017. Let's go back to 2017. When we asked years ago for him to be engaged and he just kept pushing it off.

[01:15:09] State Senator Brian Daly says he reached out to him years ago for help after the 2017 Tubbs fire and the 2018 Campfire, the state's deadliest wildfire. And he didn't respond. He wouldn't even respond to the calls I was receiving in my office of people who couldn't get insured. What do you have to say about that? Wow, that's interesting because we've had several town halls in the senator's district. So that's a surprise for us. I would make sure I connect with Senator, who's a good friend.

[01:15:39] This was a direct request to you from his office, not pertaining to a town hall. I mean, we get requests all the time. So I don't know who they're filtered through, but I will make sure to contact the senator myself. Not only his colleagues in the state legislature, but local city governments like Pasadena are calling on the governor to step in due to Lada's lack of action. There's been no transparency. The companies are not being held accountable. Which brings us back to why this all matters.

[01:16:08] Consumers like Valerie and Janet. It protects policyholders. I don't think that's true. Who couldn't get answers from the state and ended up signing with an insurer they didn't trust. This was a fly-by-night organization. And if we, you know, we live here in the WUI. And if the place is all burned down, they'd hightail it out of town. Now, Congressman Garamendi raised. All right. So, actually, we did end up watching most of it anyway.

[01:16:33] But I thought it was just really interesting that this is the guy who's in charge of— Should I call former Senator Brian Dolly right now and see how good a friend's up? Yeah. Can we call up Brian Dolly? He's a good friend of the show and be like, hey, you know, the insurance commissioner said he's a good friend of you. That guy, just his whole interview comes off as shady and just not responsible at all because he— I go, oh, I don't know. There was a launch back in that video.

[01:17:02] And I won't for time's sake. Yeah. So, there's been a lot going on with the insurance companies. We could probably do a whole episode just on what's going on with the insurance. Just for another fun story, maybe we'll get to another time, is that the chair of the insurance committee in the state senate is under federal investigation for receiving bribes. So, that's fun.

[01:17:30] So, the whole insurance industry here in California, I know a lot of people, the people who hate capitalism and big corporations are going to blame insurance companies. But, you know, California has created this risk and this mess of you can't raise rates. And when you can't raise rates as a business and you're an insurance company and you go, well, we can't raise rates to compensate for the high risk of insuring your house.

[01:17:58] What do you think those insurance companies are going to do? They're probably going to go, okay, well, it doesn't make sense to do business here in California anymore, so we're going to leave. It's one of those things where they meddled a little bit too much to try and stop them from raising rates. And the free market just went, okay, well, if we can't make money and we can't raise rates, see you later, we're out of here.

[01:18:20] So, now you have all these poor homeowners and, you know, I fear to think how many homeowners right now in Los Angeles had to deal with a lot of these fly-by-night, untrustworthy insurance companies just to get some sort of insurance on their house or fire insurance. And how many are even going to be able to make claims on their house?

[01:18:42] So, in terms of the insurance companies leaving California and fleeing California, in my mind, it's California did this itself. It created the policy that has now ruined the insurance industry. Of course. And then, yeah, we seem to have someone in position who doesn't actually care. He's probably got a great salary doing nothing. And then, and we had a chance to get somebody new in.

[01:19:11] I'm not saying that he was so inspiring, but 2022, we did have a chance. Didn't you get to interview him? And I don't remember his name, but I'm sure you interviewed him in October of 2022 at Freedom Revival. Yes. Like somebody's running for the insurance commissioner position. And I, yeah, I said, I forget his name. And that's, people don't really even know about that office.

[01:19:38] It's a statewide office that will be on her ballot again in 2026. But I think, like, we should be calling for his resignation or possibly recall. But nobody really even knows that position. Yeah. It's just, it's not a sexy one. I mean, apparently he's been touring the state doing whatever. I don't know. According to him.

[01:20:03] But clearly not answering his emails, which it seems to be hard to get a hold of him. Yes. So thanks to ABC7 for that video. And it's, again, it's, I think the kind of sum up our episode tonight. And like we said, this was going to be a jam-packed episode tonight. We're already at hour 20. The point of tonight's episode was to kind of say, like, this didn't happen in a vacuum.

[01:20:31] And there is a lot that is going to be unpacked. There's a lot of stuff that, like, we read articles from four years ago. We've read stuff from longer back, like before that. And it shows that, like, these policies eventually have all culminated into this big mess that we're seeing right now.

[01:20:55] And a lot of these policies were passed with the hope that this Black Swan event would never happen. And unfortunately, the Black Swan event did happen. Now, for those of you who don't know what a Black Swan event is, it's like, it's a rare event that nobody ever sees coming. Um, and no one ever plans for it. And this is exactly a Black Swan event where they thought, oh, well, if we put pressure on the insurance companies and they leave, it's not a big deal.

[01:21:22] Like, we'll figure it out and we'll come up with our state plan. Well, now the state has to figure out how are they going to pay out all these people because they threw all these people on the state plan. And now they have thousands of people with their homes burned down. Now they've got to pay them out. Um, you know, the environmental policies, all this stuff was kind of enacted hoping that something like this would never happen. And now it has happened.

[01:21:47] And I think it's going to be a long time that people have to kind of look through this and we'll do our best to kind of keep feeding information and giving you guys this information that this didn't happen in a vacuum. This has been the culmination of decades of policy decisions here in California that unfortunately have culminated in this, this horrible tragedy up in Los Angeles. So I hope that our episode did a little bit of that.

[01:22:16] I hope people started to say, wait a second, how long have we been not managing our forests? And why did we not fireproof Palisades because of some weed? I don't know. Any final thoughts before we hop off tonight? Cause we're already almost at an hour and a half, which is might be a record for one of our longest episodes, but this is sort of a big event that we want to talk about. I'll try to be quick.

[01:22:38] Something we didn't discuss too, is that there's been multiple reports of homeless people starting fires and, you know, that's a whole other, another issue within California that has not been handled at all or handled well. And that has gone, you know, $24 billion are unaccounted for that we've spent on homelessness over the last few years. So there's another thing that possibly has added to this.

[01:23:03] And then, um, we should have said at the beginning, thank you so much to our first responders. Um, if you are, you're probably not watching this, if you're a first responder, because you're busy literally fighting fires, but like, and our first responders, uh, spouses as well, who support them. Um, you guys are obviously the heroes who are risking your lives to save other people's homes and livelihood. And, um, you know, I know you guys are working overtime and just, so thank you for doing what you do.

[01:23:32] It's a dangerous job. I know I couldn't do it. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you to everyone out there. Um, also thank you to the people stepping up and helping, uh, you know, it's, it's great to see. In times of tragedy, when how communities can rally together and help, like there's communities who are feeding people, they're giving them clothes. They're, um, just being a friendly ear.

[01:24:00] Uh, you know, there's humane societies who are stepping in to help pets. It's, it's a whole thing. So it's great to see all the people who are out there helping and being there on the ground. So, um, it's going to take a while to come back. So, um, thank you to everyone who's, who's, who's out there doing the hard work. Um, so obviously what we're saying is, you know, all the people who are the first responders who are out there doing their job and helping these policies are not a critique of you.

[01:24:30] They're the people, they might be critiqued to the people who are running all this stuff. They are not a critique of the people who are out actually out there fighting the fires, protecting Los Angeles and all that stuff. So, um, all right. Well, with that, as more of this unfolds, obviously we will continue to let you know and continue to discuss it. But that was our episode on what's going on with the Los Angeles fires. There was obviously so much more we could have gotten to. This could have been like a three hour episode.

[01:24:58] Honestly, like we, we reviewed so much and sent so many articles back and forth. It was like, this could be a three hour episode. Um, but we want to focus on the high point. So, uh, with that said, thanks everyone for tuning in. Make sure you subscribe, like, share, review, all of that stuff. It helps with the algorithm. And the one way that you can help this show that is 100% free and support this show is share it with a friend.

[01:25:25] So with that, we will see you on the next one. Have a good night, everyone. Later. Thank you for listening to another episode of California Underground. If you like what you heard, remember to subscribe, like, and review it. And follow California Underground on social media for updates as to when new episodes are available.