Mike Baker
Appearances
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
Yeah, we're hearing from firefighters that they felt they did everything they could with the resources they had.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
That cuts to her budget made last year definitely had some negative impacts for her crews.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
I mean, and this is something she had been talking about for months, even before the fires. Crowley had felt that her department did not have enough resources. She said cuts that were made last year to overtime created unprecedented operational challenges for the department. And, you know, has sort of repeated that now in the aftermath of the fire.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
You know, I think if you... The mayor is saying that those budget cuts didn't have an impact on the response to this event.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
I think from talking to people throughout Los Angeles this past week, there's a general sense that, of course, more resources would have been helpful. People would have been grateful for it. It probably could have saved homes. Maybe it could have even saved lives.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
But it also seems likely that given the scale of this disaster, a few million more dollars, some more firefighters, you know, it maybe only could have helped around the margins. It seems these fires were bound to overwhelm a system that wasn't designed to handle them.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
Yeah, so the day before the fire, we're starting to see forecasts from the National Weather Service of a particularly dangerous scenario, how the winds would be gusting up to potentially 100 miles an hour, where any spark could spread into a catastrophic fire. But it's also the sort of like classic fire danger scenario for Los Angeles. I mean, that... The city knows the situation.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
They know how to prepare for that kind of circumstance. And so they did. I mean, they started to refill water tanks all over the city, the sort of water tanks that are a supply for higher elevation neighborhoods. They start refilling pre-positioning trucks in vulnerable areas. They've got firefighters deploying. They've got extra engines coming in. They're calling up people who are off-duty.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
You know, the Forest Service is getting involved, and there's trucks and bulldozers and helicopters and airplanes all getting sort of ready in case something happens.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
Yeah, you know, the fire department's looking at past wind events, where fires, you know, normally take place, and they're looking at the forecast for the day and sort of making their own educated guess about where the best spot will be for them to place their assets. But of note, none of the extra trucks went to Pacific Palisades.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
We don't. We've been spending some time the last few days up there examining satellite images, collecting images and videos from neighbors who saw the start. We have a pretty good idea exactly where it began, but even being up there, there's a lot of clues on the ground that could suggest a few different things that could have taken place.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
In that exact area, there was a fire about a week prior, started on New Year's Day, that had been put out. But there's lingering questions of whether maybe embers deep in the ground had sort of sustained and survived from that fire and then reemerged when the winds kicked up. There's remnants of power line materials up there that...
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
don't seem to be connected to any active power lines, but were there on the ground near the origin of the fire. And then it's along a trail that's a popular one for people to come climb and hike and be around. And there were people up there that day, that morning. And something they had done, purposefully or not, could have contributed to the fire starting.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
So it's around 10.30 a.m. that the first report of fire comes in, and it's in the Palisades. Residents start seeing, you know, flames emerging out in the dry brushland, and it immediately starts racing down the hillside toward the ocean. I mean, it's moving fast right from the beginning.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
We've listened to the dispatch audio from firefighters who are rushing to the scene that they can see that it's moving quickly and headed right toward the Palisades. You can hear one of them warning that, you know, it could be getting towards Holmes within minutes. And that it looks like it's going to have a good run ahead of it. And you can tell immediately this is a pretty dire situation.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
And at the same time, the conditions are getting worse. The wind is picking up. Smoke is choking the air. The fire is moving quickly. There's frantic evacuations that are blocking one road as the road gets clogged up. One fire captain says he can't see more than 10 feet in front of his own rig.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
And as these winds keep getting worse as the day progresses, the firefighters start losing one of their key tools. They're no longer able to use those aerial assets, the helicopters and the planes that pick up water and drop it on the fire and also spread fire retardant to prevent the fire from spreading further. Music And then we get the word that things are even worse.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
There's another fire 25 miles away threatening a different part of the Los Angeles area.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
Yeah. So the Eden Fire begins in the hills around the Altadena area, and immediately it's starting to threaten neighborhoods nearby. Firefighters are once again scrambling, trying to get assets there. One fire chief talks about driving there actually from the Palisades. He plugs it into his GPS. He's stuck in this bumper-to-bumper traffic.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
He watches as this new fire he's trying to get to starts filling the sky. That fire chief, he eventually calls the California Office of Emergency Services and says... Essentially, we are out of resources and need more help. He asked for 50 strike teams, a total of 250 more fire engines, and 1,000 more firefighters. And even as he's putting in this request, there's really more trouble brewing.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
Soon we get word that there's a third fire up in the San Fernando Valley. They're really beyond their max capacity and it keeps getting worse. The fire in the Palisades is spreading ever further. More homes are going up into flames. And then late into the night, you know, this one fire captain talks about how, you know, their fire hoses start sputtering and then go dry.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
And they try a new hydrant. Still dry. Try another hydrant. Still no water. There's no water left for them to keep fighting the fire. We've been really spending a lot of time trying to understand exactly What went wrong here?
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
We talked a little earlier about the city had filled a bunch of storage tanks all around neighborhoods that are high up in these hillsides, and that included the Palisades, where there are three million gallon storage tanks designed to fill the system with water designed to support not only homes and their water lines, but also the fire hydrants below.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
And what we've learned is that the city could not fill them up to keep pace with how much water was being used.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
What the city has basically said, there's so much water being funneled out of this system. You have residents that are sort of spraying their own properties, trying to stop any embers from taking hold. You have the mega rich who are contracting their own private firefighters to protect their own properties. At the same time, you have all these firefighters tapping numerous hydrants all at once.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
Frankly, this is not what the system is designed to handle. Municipal water systems like this are really designed for small fires, handling blazes that might consume a few homes, not one that is consuming a few hundred all at once.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
Yeah, it turns out one of the reservoirs, the one actually located in the Palisades, was down for maintenance. No water available at that point to feed the system and to also help push water up into the storage tanks that turned out to be depleted sort of within hours after the fire began.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
Certainly to the firefighters that were there watching their hoses go dry, there was a lot of frustration, a feeling of desperation, a feeling of helplessness that they couldn't really do the work that they're in position to do. Certainly having those resources could have at least helped to some degree, but I think there's a lingering question about whether it could have
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
turned the tide of a fire that had already grown so large.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
Yeah, that's definitely one of the questions I've been asking. In some ways, it's offline for maintenance in the winter, and these things need repairs, and winter is normally a good time to make that happen. But I keep wondering, was there an opportunity here to bring it back online, especially when the weather forecast was predicting a scenario that could turn disastrous.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2197 - Mike Baker
Hey, Joe, it's the replacer. Yeah. No, you. Hey, I'm going to take it from here so you can enjoy some Call of Duty Black Ops 6. Great. Now, listen up, folks. Life can be chaotic, but you shouldn't have to miss out on the latest Call of Duty just because you've got, I don't know, responsibilities. That's where I come in. I will handle the boring stuff like work, chores, even podcast ads.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2197 - Mike Baker
Well, I think it's important that we all participate. It's a free market. I gotta go. I gotta go.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2197 - Mike Baker
So you can dive right into the fight. Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is out October 25th. So dive in because I've got your back. Remember, I replace you, Blade. It's that simple.