Why the LA Fires Happened & How to Stop Them: 5CAST with Andrew Callaghan (#3) feat. Danielle Venton

Summary

Podcast Summary: Why the LA Fires Happened & How to Stop Them
5CAST with Andrew Callaghan (#3) featuring Danielle Venton
Release Date: April 20, 2025

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Introduction: Unraveling the LA Wildfires
Timestamp: [00:00] - [03:00]

In this compelling episode of 5CAST, host Andrew Callaghan dives deep into the catastrophic wildfires that recently devastated Los Angeles, particularly focusing on the Eaton Fire that claimed 18 lives and destroyed over 9,000 structures in Altadena. Callaghan sets the stage by highlighting the widespread blame directed at various entities, including Governor Newsom, local fire departments, and even the transgender community. However, he emphasizes that the true causes are far more intricate and multifaceted.

Notable Quotes:

• Andrew Callaghan: "The true story is much more complicated and it's one that we aim to tell to the best of our ability." ([00:00])
• Steve Gutierrez: "The public needs to get on board when we start doing some prescribed fire burning." ([14:20])

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In the Field: Ride Along with Wildland Firefighter Steve Gutierrez
Timestamp: [09:03] - [18:52]

The episode transitions to its first-ever in-the-field segment, where listeners are taken on a ride-along with Steve Gutierrez, a union representative from the Wildland Firefighters Union. Gutierrez provides firsthand insights into the immediate aftermath of the Eaton Fire in the Angeles National Forest. He discusses the immense challenges faced by firefighters, including inadequate fuel management and the halting of prescribed burns by federal authorities just months before the disaster.

Key Discussions:

• Fuel Management Failures: Gutierrez explains the importance of maintaining brush and vegetation to prevent wildfire spread, emphasizing that "all this brush, all the trees... that is what we consider as fuel."
• Prescribed Burns Halted: He reveals that the U.S. Forest Service directed California employees to indefinitely stop controlled fires on October 24, 2024, severely limiting preventative measures.
• Firefighter Workforce Issues: With federal firefighters underpaid and overworked, many have left the force, leading to a reliance on incarcerated individuals who are paid significantly less and motivated by sentence reductions.

Notable Quotes:

• Steve Gutierrez: "The vegetation's at a critical state with fuel, moisture, and firefighter slang, fuel means flora." ([11:48])
• Andrew Callaghan: "Incarcerated firefighters get between five and ten dollars a day." ([18:07])

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Interview with Environmental Journalist Danielle Venton
Timestamp: [23:20] - [73:52]

The heart of the episode is an in-depth interview with Danielle Venton, an environmental journalist and advocate for prescribed burns. Venton, who has been vocal about the federal government's suspension of controlled burns, discusses the historical context of fire management in California and the detrimental policies that have led to the current wildfire crisis.

Main Topics Covered:

1. History of Prescribed Burns:

   • Venton traces the roots of prescribed burns to Native American practices, explaining how settlers misunderstood these methods, leading to decades of fire suppression that have exacerbated fuel build-up in forests.

2. Policy Failures:

   • Gutierrez and Venton critique the bureaucratic red tape that makes approving prescribed burns nearly impossible. They highlight specific legislative acts like CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) and NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) that add layers of approval, often delaying essential fire management practices.
   • Venton notes, "You have to go through a ton of red tape or green tape to do a prescribed fire," ([35:30]) underscoring the inefficiency of the current system.

3. Impact of Environmental Regulations:

   • The duo discusses how environmental protection groups, while well-intentioned, often hinder prescribed burns through lawsuits and stringent regulations designed to protect endangered species, inadvertently increasing wildfire risks.

4. Firefighter Workforce and DEI:

   • Steve Gutierrez addresses misconceptions linking Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives to wildfire management failures. He emphasizes the critical need for a diverse and adequately compensated firefighting workforce, stating, "DEI has nothing to do with that. Everybody has their own weight to pull."

5. Public Perception and Community Preparedness:

   • The conversation shifts to the importance of public support for prescribed burns and community readiness. Gutierrez advocates for home hardening measures and strategic fuel breaks to mitigate fire impacts, asserting, "Think about hardening your home. Think about defensible space."

6. Future Outlook and Policy Recommendations:

   • Venton and Gutierrez express cautious optimism that increased awareness and better policy frameworks can lead to more effective fire management. They call for policies that support prescribed burns, fair wages for firefighters, and community-based fire preparedness.

Notable Quotes:

• Danielle Venton: "We have to do things to be less antagonistic to fire. Like, it doesn't need to be a pitched battle where we're just... trying to live with it." ([32:42])
• Steve Gutierrez: "We just kind of choose the fires that we want." ([13:44])
• Andrew Callaghan: "Fire used to be human's best friend, right? And now it's our worst enemy." ([31:33])

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Conclusion: Charting a Path Forward
Timestamp: [73:02] - [73:52]

As the episode wraps up, Venton and Gutierrez emphasize the necessity of learning from the recent disasters to implement sustainable fire management practices. They advocate for a balanced approach that incorporates both preventative measures like prescribed burns and robust firefighting resources. Callaghan reinforces the episode's key takeaway: addressing bureaucratic inefficiencies and supporting firefighters are paramount to preventing future wildfires.

Final Thoughts:

• Steve Gutierrez: "I hope that we use this moment to think about how to better live with fires... That would be the best outcome." ([63:34])
• Danielle Venton: "I never gonna stop talking about fires." ([73:47])

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Key Takeaways:

• Prescribed Burns are Crucial: Effective fuel management through controlled burns can significantly reduce the severity of wildfires.
• Policy Overhaul Needed: Streamlining the approval process for prescribed burns and supporting fire management policies are essential.
• Support and Compensation for Firefighters: Fair wages and a stable workforce are critical to managing and preventing wildfires.
• Public Engagement: Community preparedness and acceptance of fire management practices play a vital role in mitigating wildfire impacts.
• Balanced Perspective: Understanding the complex interplay between environmental regulations, policy decisions, and firefighting resources is key to addressing the wildfire crisis in Los Angeles.

This episode of 5CAST offers a thorough examination of the factors contributing to the recent LA wildfires and provides actionable insights on preventing future disasters. Through expert interviews and firsthand accounts, Callaghan presents a nuanced narrative that challenges simplistic blame and advocates for informed, policy-driven solutions.

Transcript

[Andrew Callahan]

All right, guys, Sunday special number three. Today we're going to be talking about California, its horrifically poor management, what can be done to prevent the next wildfire, and the alleged swamp of eco bureaucrats in the government who've hijacked the permitting process for controlled fire burn. Critics claim these tree huggers have made it nearly impossible for the federal wildland firefighters to clear brush inflammable chaparral habitats like the Angeles National Forest, which is where the Eaton fire began several months ago. If you can remember, that fire was catastrophic, claiming 18 lives and destroying over 9,000 structures, mostly in the working class suburb of Altadena. It was a disaster that led to a lot of finger pointing, mainly at the city of La Cal, Fire Governor Newsom, and of course, the trans. But the true story is much more complicated and it's one that we aim to tell to the best of our ability. Today we're going to be premiering our first ever in the field segment where I'll take a ride along with a union chief from the wildland firefighters union, Mr. Steve Gutierrez. And then we're going to sit down in this studio with environmental journalist and prescribed burn advocate Danielle Venney, who was warning of an impending disaster far before January's wildfires. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Andrew Callahan and you're watching Five Cast, our.

[Danielle Venton]

Weekly broadcast here at Channel 5, the.

[Andrew Callahan]

Largest independent, crowdfunded newsroom on earth. You're currently watching our Sunday special, but we actually do this episode twice a week. And our Tuesday show is available exclusively on our Patreon, where we host a variety of uncensored and extended content. Membership is five bucks a month, which is annoying, but it's your subscriptions to keep us in business without having to sell out. So it's a very effective means of autonomy for us. Let's back up a bit for a quick refresh. The wildfires happened during the 2025 election cycle, so naturally the aftermath was politicized by both sides of the aisle. On the right, the conversation revolved around Jewish space lasers, DEI and the homeless population, which if you ask me, is a perfect storm.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Tell us about Jewish space. No, why don't you go talk about Jewish space lasers and really, why don't you? Off. How about that? Thank you very much.

[Andrew Callahan]

The homeless do often reference space lasers and are certainly a diverse bunch.

[Danielle Venton]

But that's not exactly why propagandists like.

[Andrew Callahan]

Megyn Kelly and Charlie Kirk were thinking.

[Danielle Venton]

When they ran their content bl.

[Andrew Callahan]

Their agenda is to smear blue states and cities. And because homelessness has been deeply criminalized through vagrancy laws in red states and counties, like in the case of the Grants Pass, Oregon ruling, which made it illegal to sleep in public even when there are no shelter beds available. There are many more homeless people living in woke cities like LA who generally don't take you to jail for being poor. Perhaps punching down on the homeless also provides some form of spiritual protection for blindly patriotic conservatives. After all, accepting homelessness as a byproduct of our society in terms of drug addiction, lack of economic opportunity, lackluster mental health treatment options, a broken Veterans Administration, and such a weak social safety net that we let our poor die in public in the streets of the wealthiest cities in the country would require coming to terms with the greed, cruelty and corruption that's run through the veins of this cursed land since the inception of the American experiment. It's much easier to blame the homeless and call them freeloading, lazy, ungrateful welfare dependents who ought to just fuck around and work harder, and to cast Democratic lawmakers as their enablers. Now moving to the post fire leftist narrative which seemed to suggest that these motherfucking celebrity colonizers shouldn't have built mansions on indigenous lands. Which reinforces the Nebraskan misconception that all of us in LA are living like Tai Lopez, despite the fact that Hollywood tech and comedy have left California for tax breaks and a lower cost of living. Rest assured, we're going to break down all of these narratives and misconceptions. But before we get into the meat and potatoes of the day, I'd like to present you all with some positive news as a reminder that shout out shit is mostly okay if you turn off that damn phone. Our first positive story of the day is coming out of the mighty Philadelphia zoo, where their 100-year-old critically endangered Galapagos tortoise, who arrived at the zoo in 1932, is pregnant. A rapid DNA test recently confirmed that the zookeeper is thankfully not the father. That means this week the first purebred Galapagos tortoise in 150 years will be born in West Philadelphia, thanks to the valiant efforts of the association of Zoos and Aquariums. The and apparently it's a boy, so cross your fingers. Let's just hope that things go well and he won't have to move across the country to live with his uncle in Bel Air. President of the Animal well Being and Conservation Corps, Rachel Metz is quoted as saying, these hatchlings not only protect the species from extinction, but serve as important ambassadors to inspire guests who Want to save wildlife and wild places, which frankly is inspiring news. The last time I was at the Philadelphia zoo I was 3 years old and petrified of the lions. But once these shelled bastards reach maturity, I'll be sure to stop by. And to all you zoo haters out there, I get it. But fragile and critically endangered species like the galapagos tortoise don't stand a chance in animal sanctuaries. And that's on Joe. Exotic free, bro, I think. All right, moving on to some more positive news in San Francisco. Justice has been served and no, I know what you're thinking. Jack the bipper has not been arrested, but MAGA influencer and right wing provocateur Richie Wynn, aka Richie415, a self proclaimed San Francis nationalist who I once interviewed back in the day for my piece San Francisco streets, has been arrested for pimping, pandering, child endangerment and is now being charged by the U. S. Attorney general's office for the production of child pornography and is facing a minimum of 15 years in federal prison. Here's a look back at Richie and I's conversation.

[Richie Nguyen]

My name is Richie Nguyen. Basically I'm kind of like a video vigilante, if you will. I'm kind of taking it into my own hands to film some of the things that I feel like are plaguing the city. Mainly the drug use. Hey bro, you know, people got kids and stuff like that. You out here drawing up heroin or fentanyl. You can't be doing that right here. Have a little fucking respect, man. For people that pay rent. I don't think the children should have to see it because it's grotesque. A lot of it is, you know, it's harsh to see. It is very gruesome. Some of these individuals are suffering from also mental illness and picking away at themselves. They are shooting drugs in their neck. They are screaming obscenities that can be triggering to somebody that is frail and is still developing. I gotta stop smoking that in front of the kids, man. You got the kids right here, man. What the you say, man? Arrest these individuals, take them into custody.

[Andrew Callahan]

While I believe the prison system to be generally a non rehabilitative institution and more of a criminal networking opportunity than a corrective experience. This truly feels like poetic justice. If you can recall, Richie spent his afternoons gallivanting around the tenderloin antagonizing and filming homeless drug addicted people, typically chastising them with statements like, yo, pull your pants up bro, you stink. Think don't you know there's Kids out here.

[Richie Nguyen]

What the are you doing out here pregnant? On dope on the streets, man. Get some help.

[Andrew Callahan]

Hey, you, you piece of.

[Richie Nguyen]

This situation is unacceptable. It's disgusting to me to see a woman poisoning her baby like this on the streets.

[Andrew Callahan]

A wise man once said that every accusation is a confession, which I'm not sure is true, but it sure is nice to see a bully who is converting public misery into capital through paid Fox News appearances, gaining clout by liaisoning YouTubers through the drug zones, face the music for his own bad choices. In other happy news, I am hoping to officially partner with an organization called the Perception Restoration foundation to help fund research to find a cure for hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, which is a lifelong condition that I've suffered from since I.

[Danielle Venton]

Was 14 years old.

[Andrew Callahan]

The condition generally constitutes visual snow and frequent psychedelic flashbacks, often accompanying a variety of anxiety disorders like depersonalization and derealization. I've thankfully been able to live a normal life despite being permafried. But still, very little is known about the brain condition from a scientific standpoint and I'd like to help change that. So stay tuned and I'll keep you posted. All right, we're about to get into the fiery meat and potatoes of this episode, but before we get into it, a word. Hey, what's up guys? Ah, shit. Hey man, thanks for that web link. It's really working.

[Danielle Venton]

I don't know if you guys missed.

[Andrew Callahan]

The memo, but we just dropped an entire feature film. That's right over Full blown movie at www.DearKellyFilm.com Dear Kelly Film.com it's an action packed movie that revolves around the life and times of Kelly Johnson, AKA Kelly J. Patriot.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Kobe Bryant was assassinated by the Quinns.

[Andrew Callahan]

Come here, Nazi. You're going to Guantanamo.

[Danielle Venton]

Oh my gosh, what did I do?

[Rachel Metz]

Am I getting canceled?

[Andrew Callahan]

The Democrats don't like you. They're going to cancel you. It documents his semi estranged family and their attempt to pull him out of the rabbit hole.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Are you selling baby parts?

[Rachel Metz]

Yes or no?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Don't tread on me.

[Danielle Venton]

Don't even think about it.

[Andrew Callahan]

I don't want to say too much, but it's a good movie. If you guys want to watch it.

[Danielle Venton]

It would mean a lot.

[Andrew Callahan]

Www.DearKellyFilm.com it's available for rent and buy. You can rent it for $5.55 or you can buy it for $15.55.

[Danielle Venton]

Www.DearKellyFilm.com www.DearKellyFilm.com WWW.Dear all right, let's get.

[Andrew Callahan]

Into our next segment, the first ever in the field correspondence of the Channel 5 cast, which is a ride along in the Angeles National Forest, which is near Mount Wilson, with wildland firefighter Union representative Steve Gutierrez, who much like Richard Nixon and Lefty Gunplay, is from the San Gabriel Valley. This footage, which I believe will set the stage well for the main interview of the segment today with journalist Danielle Venton, was gathered in the immediate aftermath of the Eaton fire as things began to calm down and the firefighters entered their cleanup stage.

[Danielle Venton]

Here's a look at that footage.

[Unknown]

Hi, I'm Steve Gutierrez. I'm a national business representative for National Federation of Federal Employees. I worked for the forest service for 15 years as a wildland firefighter. And we're going up here to Mount Wilson right now. There's a lot of resources there that are part of the fire. We're see if we go talk to some Fed resources. Okay? Mount Wilson's like a very historical and important piece of infrastructure to la. Millions of dollars are up here. I'm going to say at least a billion. Now, all the TV antennas, all the radios, every three letter agency has their radio tower up here.

[Andrew Callahan]

This looks like, you know, Watts, California on steroids. Giant towers controlling the flow of information. It's kind of cool to think that we're, you know, surrounded by an invisible.

[Danielle Venton]

Field of so many frequencies.

[Andrew Callahan]

So where I'm standing in these segments is exactly where, where the disastrous Eaton Fire began. Given that presumably most of you guys don't live in la, I'm going to get a little bit nerdy and topographical here. So the Angeles National Forest is a massive 700,000 acre expanse behind the skyline of downtown that separates the gorgeous Mojave Desert from the population dense LA Basin. The Santa Monica Mountains where the Palisades fire started is a smaller, less grandiose, but equally flammable forest west of town, which encompasses Topanga, the Palisades and Malibu. Now, while they're quite far from each other, what these forests have in common is that they're both maintained by federal firefighters who are employees of the National.

[Unknown]

Park Service, United States Forest Service. This is our jurisdiction here. Others will come up, of course, but this one, like we had several fire engines up here that were, you know, protecting during the initial firefight a couple.

[Andrew Callahan]

Days ago, if you can tell, there was a bit of tension in the air back when, when we filmed this, because it was their responsibility to extinguish both significant fires and they weren't able to.

[Unknown]

It started mid slope, like you know, above the city of Altadena. It's still under investigation. I'm sure the FBI is involved and all that.

[Andrew Callahan]

In the immediate aftermath of the destruction, the firefighters primarily blamed two factors. The first factor they blamed is fuel management. I think we can do better with fuel management.

[Rachel Metz]

The vegetation's at a critical state with.

[Andrew Callahan]

Fuel, moisture and firefighter slang, fuel means flora.

[Unknown]

All this stuff that you're looking at, all the brush, all of the trees, that is what we consider as fuel trees in general. Brush in general. That is fuel. The leaf litter that's on the ground there, that is fuel to add to the fire. So, like, this fuel needs to be removed, it needs to be mulched, it needs to be burned in some way, shape or form, and it's some type of controlled manner or turned into paper products or, you know, in this case, you could thin the forest. You can reduce the amount of trees that are around here so that they're not all competing for water, so that the canopy isn't touching each other, so the fire doesn't spread from tree to tree to tree.

[Andrew Callahan]

To clarify, what Steve is referring to is not what would be considered deforestation, like what's happening in the Amazon rainforest or Indonesia, where habitats are bulldozed altogether to make room for residential development, developments, and arable farmland.

[Unknown]

No, it would be considered like. Like timber harvesting. Yeah, but not like on a scale of, like, clear cut, where they just do massive blocks of clear cutting. Yeah, right. They have to go out there, pick one tree and pull that out.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

It's not. And here's the problem. It doesn't. It costs a lot of money. Yeah, it cost a lot of money.

[Andrew Callahan]

The often expensive but beneficial brush clearing procedure Steve is referring to is called prescribed burning or controlled fire. A practice that was once used to manage the dry, highly flammable forests of Southern California. First by Native American tribes.

[Unknown]

Yeah, Native Americans were some of the first to introduce fire into the landscape. They used it to herd buffalo, to herd and graze cattle. They've been doing it for thousands of years, and we've just eliminated that pretty much throughout the landscape. In other states, in rural states, it's.

[Andrew Callahan]

A little bit easier.

[Unknown]

They have more of a relationship with fire. You know, I know Florida specifically burns every year, and they have, like, prescribed burning programs. I know in the Southwest, they definitely live with fire. They have prescribed fire burning programs. California does, too.

[Andrew Callahan]

Or at least they did. After conducting seasonal prescribed burns for decades, the U.S. forest Service directed all of its California employees to indefinitely halt controlled fires. On October 24, 2024, just three and a half months before the massive wildfires took hold. The journalist who broke the story was Danielle Venton, who will break down exactly why the decision was made later in this video. However, with very little public transparency as to why the Forest Service made that call, an internal blame game ensued amongst firefighters, which you can see here. Steve seems to place blame on the voting public of the state, who he believes fundamentally misunderstand the practice.

[Unknown]

The public needs to get on board when we start doing some prescribed fire burning, do prescribe burning so that we have lower intensity fires. When a wildfire does happen, putting that.

[Rachel Metz]

Fire back into the ecosystem helps improve forest health and all, all of that.

[Unknown]

But the public isn't in support of it because they don't want their homes smelling like smoke, you know. So do you want your home smelling like smoke or do you want a home at all? Yeah, that's just what it is. Having it all nice and picturesque isn't always the best.

[Andrew Callahan]

Other firefighters blame environmental protection groups, groups who they claim have embedded themselves into local, state and federal governments to push their snowflake, anti burn, save the trees agenda at the expense of human life.

[Rachel Metz]

Mostly they don't understand the benefits of it. For the most part, they don't want to put fire back onto the landscapes. They feel that it cannot be controlled. Their big concerns are obviously air pollution, at least here in the LA Basin. And they put up a lot of roadblocks. There's a lot of endangered and threatened species that they want to protect. Animals, plant life. There's endangered plants.

[Andrew Callahan]

But for most federal firefighters, the controlled burn blame game takes a real backseat to the bigger issue at hand, the battle for a fair wage.

[Unknown]

Let's focus on the real issues.

[Rachel Metz]

The current pay for federal firefighters is $15 an hour starting.

[Unknown]

Yeah, they start off at $15 an hour.

[Rachel Metz]

It's very hard to retain highly qualified candidates when they can make more in and out flipping Cheeksburg workers. The legislative action that we're pushing for the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection act through Congress has to get passed and placed into law so these firefighters can be.

[Andrew Callahan]

Compensated appropriately in the absence of a wage change. Between 2021 and 2024, during which California became the most expensive state in the country, while sporting both the highest personal income tax and homelessness rate, Steve says that many of his co workers were forced to quit out of economic necessity.

[Unknown]

In this region, specifically California, 45% of the workforce has left here.

[Rachel Metz]

Locally, about 40% we've lost to other agencies and other jobs just because the low pay and the schedule is so rigorous that we have to work to get that to a number that survive. You got to work a thousand hours.

[Andrew Callahan]

Of overtime to survive, to afford to.

[Rachel Metz]

Afford to live in Southern California. So a thousand hours of overtime, and that's primarily from May to November. So you're working a year and a half of hours in six months.

[Andrew Callahan]

For most, voluntarily committing to that intensive a schedule for such little pay is out of the question, especially with the unique health and safety risks associated with the job.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I mean, it's presumed that, you know, wildland firefighters are going to get cancer. Smoke gets on our clothes, on our boots, on our pants, that all off gases into, into our bodies.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Extreme conditions faced by wildland urban interface firefighters are at a high risk of cancer.

[Unknown]

You're out there dealing with the elements, right? You're waking up in the middle of the night to respond to a call. You're working thousands of hours of overtime. This stuff may be natural, but it's still carcinogens, it's still carbon that's going into your lungs. You're not wearing a respirator, you're not wearing any type of mask or anything like that.

[Andrew Callahan]

It was for all of these reasons, from risk to pay to forest overgrowth, that the wildland firefighters found themselves ill equipped to handle the situation. As the fire spread beyond the forest and into the urban core, where Lafd, Cal Fire and many others found themselves equally overpowered by the catastrophic blaze. Scrambling for help and faced with a diminished workforce as a result of their own greed, the state and feds opted to use their prison population to fill these empty jobs, which was convenient as they were allowed to pay inmates even less.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Of the roughly 1,870 firefighters that are out there, 900 of them are incarcerated. That's almost half.

[Andrew Callahan]

Incarcerated firefighters get between five and ten dollars a day.

[Unknown]

I've worked with incarcerated firefighters. They're, they're tremendous workforce. They're great to work with. They're hard workers. They want to be there. They volunteer for that position. So every day that they work, they get two days off their sentence. That's, that's a huge incentive. You work 100 days, you just got 200 off. I do know that they get a certain low pay wage for per day.

[Andrew Callahan]

But do you know what it is?

[Unknown]

Honestly, it's a good avenue for them to gain some qualifications for a potential job lined up right afterward. Men and women do this. So for me, if I was incarcerated, I definitely would rather be out in the woods doing some work. Occupying my time than spending myself in a jail cell.

[Danielle Venton]

How'd you feel hearing people say that.

[Andrew Callahan]

DEI was to blame for the fires?

[Unknown]

It's pretty sad to hear that kind of stuff out of some media outlets. I don't agree with it at all. I came from a hotshot crew that had the like 50% made of women. They pull their weight. They do great job. That's BS DEI has nothing to do with that. Everybody has their own weight to pull. And this job isn't made for everybody. A home is a home no matter what. And a firefighter is a firefighter no matter what. Period. Man or woman, it doesn't matter.

[Andrew Callahan]

All right, that was our segment. Now we're going to get into the weeds with the first environmental journalist I've ever met in my life, Mrs. Danielle Venton, who covers wildfires, outer space and oceans. She's currently working for kqed, a public radio station based out of San Francisco. Before working in California, she wrote about computing and computer science in Geneva, Switzerland, but switched gears as wildfires began to ravage her home state, particularly after the campfire of 2017, where she was one of the first reporters on scene in the devastated locale of Paradise, California. Before getting into it, I just want to thank Danielle for showing up on such short notice. 24 hours prior, we got flaked on by a Wall Street Journal reporter named Jim Carlton, who discovered at the 11th hour that we were not in fact Channel 5 KTLA, but lowly mere Channel 5 with Andrew Callahan. But it fuck the Wall street journal. I prefer Ms. Benton work anyway. So I'm very glad she showed up to Occupy Wall Street.

[Danielle Venton]

Get it?

[Andrew Callahan]

Because it was supposed to be Wall Street Journal and she's occupying his his chair. Anyways, months before this year's catastrophic fires, Danielle was raising awareness and writing foreboding articles about the federal government's decision to halt prescribed burns. And after the fires brought national attention, her words bled into the greater conservative outrage machine, allowing many to point fingers at a progressive government of communist tree huggers who'd rather save salamanders than human lives. But as we'll the reality is much more complicated. But features nuggets of truth from both sides of the aisle. But before we get into it, a word from our sponsor. Here at the Channel 5 newsroom, we know more than most how unpredictable the world can be. On a day just like any other, you could be pulling into the office and boom, you're T boned by a Ford F150, your car's totaled, your Back's hurting and you're going to be late for work. While this might sound unrealistic, it actually isn't like at all. Two million people in the United States are injured every year. Year. Are you prepared for that possibility? Well, guess what? If you're injured in a car accident, your case could be worth millions. But most people never file a claim. And if they do, they're often low balled by insurance companies into thinking it's not worth their time. How could millions not be worth your time? It's ridiculous. Traditional injury law firms might bog you down with reams of paperwork, time consuming processes, never ending upcoming appointments and the cost of the company, all those things. But not Morgan and Morgan. Morgan and Morgan. Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury law firm with over a thousand attorneys operating in all 50 states, even Rhode Island. They're not one of these traditional law firms who might waste your time and money. They're a national facing brand with the promise of being for the people para la gente. Morgan and Morgan do not settle for low ball offers. They've achieved significant verdicts in the past couple of months for victims involved in life altering car crashes. Morgan and Morgan was able to secure one client $6.3 million despite the client's own insurance company arguing they deserved nothing. Despite prior medical issues and minimal vehicle damage, Morgan and Morgan was able to build a compelling case and reward what was rightly deserved. In Florida, they secured 12 million, which was 34 times the highest insurance offer. And in Philadelphia, they were able to even secure $26 million, 40 times the highest insurance offer. You might be thinking, I don't have the money to hire lawyers in a case. That might go on for a while, but that's the thing. Their fee is absolutely free. Unless you win. Fighting big insurance companies takes a big law firm. Which is why America's largest injury firm can take on companies of any size. It only takes a few minutes to see if you could have a case and it couldn't be easier to submit a claim if you ever seriously got injured. Your case could be worth millions. And you're only a few clicks away from your potentially life changing sum of money. It's so easy. You can start your claim right now with Morgan and [e-mail] Channel 5 found in the description or by scanning the QR code on this screen from your phone's camera. All right guys, thanks. In this interview, we're going to discuss why the burn program was halted. What other contributing factors led to the Catastrophe, and most importantly, how the people of Los Angeles can adequately prepare themselves for the next round. Without further ado, here's the interview.

[Danielle Venton]

Danielle, thank you so much for making the time. I really appreciate you coming down to our studio. I'm really excited to talk about all the things related to the prescribed burns and the LA wildfires.

[Steve Gutierrez]

I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Danielle Venton]

Of course. So there's been a lot of discourse surrounding California's decision to stop the prescribed burn program. And whenever there was a lot of discourse about that after the obviously wildfire disaster broke out, a lot of people pointed to an article that you wrote months before the big fires, kind of criticizing their decision to halt the program.

[Steve Gutierrez]

The article that you're referring to was about the federal government, the Forest Service, halting its prescribed burns. What was so interesting about that was that the feds were saying, no more prescribed burn burning until further notice. But everyone else, state agencies, local prescribed burn associations, tribes, were doing great burning at that time. It was a really good burn window in a lot of the state. So that was why some of my sources were critical of the federal government for halting that burning. So it wasn't like a California based thing. It was a federal government decision. That said the history of prescribed burning really has its roots in practices of Native people who for thousands and thousands of years cared for their land primarily through fire. They burned not necessarily to try to prevent bad fires, but to open up hunting ground to encourage acorn harvests to get the bugs out of an area. And they did do, and they did get fire protection along with that. When white settlers came to the Western U.S. they didn't understand that practice and thought it was dangerous and outlawed it and even threatened Native people with death if they were caught burning. In the early part of last century, the emphasis was on growing and on timber harvest. And people thought that by not having fire, you were protecting trees. The habit of intentionally setting good fire went by the wayside. Didn't take too many decades for a lot of scientists to realize that we do need good fire. There's no world where we don't have fire. We just kind of choose the fires that we want. There's been in the last couple decades this re blossoming of interest in good fire. There's areas of the states where it never stopped. The southeastern U.S. we were, you know, Florida, you know, all that southern belt, have had a robust good fire culture for many decades. But in California, we're really seeing a resurgence of it.

[Danielle Venton]

So when you talk about Colonization. Obviously the colonization of California took a couple different centuries. The first people to arrive were the Spanish who set up missions in Santa Barbara, San Jose, Santa Cruz and then obviously it became an American territory later in time. Were prescribed burns outlawed or punished by the colonial entities during that early period of colonization? Or did that come when westward expansion was in full spring?

[Steve Gutierrez]

It was more when miners and ranchers were moving in.

[Danielle Venton]

Got you. So it was during westward expansion when.

[Andrew Callahan]

You saw a lot of the industry.

[Danielle Venton]

Headed to the west coast to make money from logging and timber, which is why Portland's in Seattle became such major trade hubs. And so the idea was that if the Native Americans were to burn the forests to open up fertile ground for hunting, acorn harvest, et cetera, that would make it so there's less money to be made in terms of trees to cut down.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Hard thing to understand, right? Like there's not a good fire, you know, system in England or in Scotland because it's such a wet climate. But native people understood that to have the to take care of land in the Western U.S. you did need to set periodic fire. And early settlers who wrote accounts about visiting this area talk about how, you know, the forests were just these beautiful park like habitats where you could kind of walk through with your arms outstretched and not touch anything. And there was always a light haze in the sky from the burning that was happening. Those that park like habitat, you know, was because of intentional fire, because fire was allowed to pass through.

[Danielle Venton]

Were there huge wildfires back then before colonization?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I mean fires did happen from lightning strikes, but they weren't this kind of intense. What we are seeing now is very new where you have 100,000 acres burned at incredibly high intensity. 200 years ago, fires moved through more frequently, but they were less intense and they didn't kill as many big trees.

[Danielle Venton]

So long story short, in your perspective, what caused the LA wildfires?

[Steve Gutierrez]

A century plus of doing things in a fire antagonistic way. So the LA fires had several causes. One big one was the weather. You know, there were 90 mile an hour winds. It was the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane for fire. We also have communities that are not built with fire in mind. And then we are also seeing the fingerprint of climate change in those fires because it was the winter rains which should have come, didn't come. You know, there was like eight months without a drop of rain and the season before had been so wet. So there was all of this luscious growth and then it was super dry. And so there was all of this fuel to burn. So you just had factors stacking up that brought these horrible, horrible fires to the area.

[Danielle Venton]

And to clarify, the Southern California habitat is a bit different from other parts of the state because you have the desert that's over the valley and then the Northern California ecosystem is not what is considered chaparral. And what can you tell us about the difference between a typical California forest and the Southern California habitat?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah, so the dominant story of fire in most of California and most of the west is that there has not been enough fire. The frequency with which fire is moving through is taking longer than it would have 200 years ago before Western settlement. Southern California is a really different story where we're seeing too much fire in this area rather than not enough. And you mentioned chaparral. That's this beautiful biodiverse, scrubby habitat that is in this area that has plants like manzanita and sagebrush and chamise and that is not meant to burn as frequently as it has been burning. I was looking up some stats and the land above Malibu Canyon historically would have burned every like 30 to 100 years. And their fire, you know, that land is fire adapted to some extent. Fire could move through and then those plants could reestablish. Well, now fire is moving through these areas on the average about every eight years. And that's not enough time for that vegetation that's kind of supposed to be there to reestablish. And so what we're seeing is non native grasses that are really flammable moving in and it's just accelerating this pattern. Most of the state has a story of not enough fire, but this area of Southern California has too much fire.

[Danielle Venton]

Do you think that the absence of prescribed burns happening in federal forests around the LA area contributed to the disaster that took place?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I'm a big fan of prescribed fire. And there are, there are instances where the forests in and around Los Angeles had been treated with prescribed fire that helped save communities when there was a subsequent wildfire. I'm thinking of like Angelus Oaks. However, I do not blame the lack of prescribed fire on the devastation that we saw a couple months ago in la.

[Danielle Venton]

But you did call the situation a mega policy failure. So what are the main policies that you think caused the disaster?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah, I mean, the idea that mega fires are a policy failure has organized a lot of my reporting over the last few years. And that's because we did not used to have this problem with fire. It's the result of human choices, but that's choices over decades. Right. So it started with outlawing Cultural burning and continued with suppressing all fires. You know, the Forest Service used to have a policy that wanted all forest fires to be out by 10am the next day. You have to go through a ton of red tape or green tape to do a prescribed fire. That sells a lot of prescribed fires back. And then the way we build houses, you know, they're the most flammable thing in the landscape. In many cases, you can see an area where fires move through and the trees may still be green, but the house will be burned down. So we need policies to be pro fire rather than fighting fire. Sometimes I think about, fire used to be human's best friend, right? And now it's our worst enemy.

[Danielle Venton]

Now dog's our best friend.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Well, yeah, I do love dogs, but we can do things to be less antagonistic to fire. Like, it doesn't need to be a pitched battle where we're just, you know, like, there's an arms race. We can work with it.

[Andrew Callahan]

How?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Through a million different things. So you should just expect that fire is gonna show up and try to be ready for it. When it does, you can make sure that your house is resistant to embers. Up to 90% of homes that burn are not burning down from the advancing front of flames. They're burning down because embers are being catapulted by wind. And they find a way into an attic, say, and then burn it down. Well, you can prevent those embers from getting in by just putting, like a fine mesh over your attic vents. A lot of people have a wood fence that leads straight to the house. Well, if a fire is in the area that can act like a candle wick, you know, straight to the house. So there's a lot of things we can do with home hardening. There's a lot of things we can do with creating a strategic fuel break, which might not stop the fire, but would be a place where firefighters could have an access point and take a stand. I think we need to hugely ramp up our prescribed fire. We also eventually need to think about maybe managed fire, which I don't have. You. Are you familiar with that? So managed fire sometimes is called, like, let it burn, which is a term a lot of people hate, but it kind of gets at it.

[Danielle Venton]

Sounds very destructive.

[Steve Gutierrez]

It sounds super destructive and sounds really, you know, accident prone and uncontrolled. But prescribed fires are so hard to do that. When you look at the fire debt in California, like the fire that we need, it's going to be really hard to treat all those acres with prescribed fire. Ideally we would be treating about a million acres a year. 200 years ago, about 4 million acres a year burned in the state. So we can barely get to 100,000 with all of the agencies working together. Some people think that what we need to do is when a fire naturally breaks out and it's burning kind of in a medium style way, and it's not doing too much damage and it's kind of acting like a prescribed fire, that you just let it continue to burn until you find a place where you can put it out. That would be appropriate in like a very sparsely habit, you know, very sparsely populated area. Not in LA at all. But that's something that kind of. No one really wants to talk about managed fire because it just sounds so scary. But it might be one of the tools that would help us get to a more fire safe future.

[Danielle Venton]

One thing that you mentioned about the process of getting approval for prescribed burns, as you said, there's a lot of yellow tape and red tape that you have to navigate.

[Steve Gutierrez]

And green tape.

[Danielle Venton]

Yeah, and green tape. Can you kind of give us a magnifying glass into that bureaucracy?

[Andrew Callahan]

Like what are the bodies of approval? What does that process look like?

[Danielle Venton]

If I'm a firefighter and I want to get approval to do a prescribed burn in somewhere like the Angeles National.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Forest, I'm not a burn boss. I've never written a burn plan. But let's say you wanted to do. You were a burn boss and you wanted to do a prescribed fire.

[Danielle Venton]

Is this a real title?

[Steve Gutierrez]

It's the real title. Thank you. That's like the coolest job.

[Danielle Venton]

It's not like fire journalists slaying.

[Steve Gutierrez]

No, no, no. Like you are a burn boss. So you write a burn plan. And what's interesting is the reason it's called a prescribed fire is you write a prescription for the fire you want. The prescription might be, I want to kill all the trees that are, you know, one inch in diameter and smaller. That's how specific they get. Depending on what land you are, you have to get CEQA approval, which is California Environmental Quality act, or if it's on federal land, you need to get your NEPA approval. National Environmental Policy Act. You have to get, you know, like a billion people to sign off on it. You have to have like backup there in case the fire got out of control so that you could suppress it. And people are very hesitant to assign resources to a prescribed fire if they're worried a fire might break out some other place. That's why last fall the Forest Service halted all Prescribed burning because they thought that maybe their firefighters would be needed somewhere else. And I remember one of the prescribed burns that I was on in the Six Rivers National Forest, which is like along the Klamath River. It was this really neat guy and he was so happy to be burning. And I said, how long have you been planning this burn? And he said, like, seven years. I was like, that is just insane. And how are we ever going to treat all of this land with fire if it takes seven years to get a project done?

[Danielle Venton]

So there's an unbelievably annoying process of administrative bureaucracy that you have to go through to even get approval to be.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Able to do that on federal land. Yes. If you are a private landowner, you still have to get like a burn permit, but it's much easier. Yeah.

[Danielle Venton]

You can set your own house on fire. It's yours.

[Steve Gutierrez]

No, I don't think you can.

[Danielle Venton]

Why not? I mean, you bought it because I.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Think it would be causing too much of a hazard to your neighbor.

[Danielle Venton]

Oh, that's true. But if you lived out in the middle of nowhere and weren't trying to run an insurance scam, you'd be, you know, that'd be within your rights, right?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I assume so, yeah. Yeah.

[Danielle Venton]

So the prescribed burn process is kind of like the asylum application process.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Like, it's.

[Danielle Venton]

So it takes like seven, eight years.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah, it's pretty bad.

[Danielle Venton]

It's unbelievably mismanaged. You mentioned these specific boards, the Environmental Protection Board, you said.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Oh, no, different acts. So they're, they're, they're pieces of law that are, you know, trying to make sure that we don't repeat the environmental mistakes of the past?

[Danielle Venton]

Are there any sort of like extreme tree hugger types who are involved in this process who just think all fire is bad because they want to save every living animal?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Hmm. Well, I will tell you that everybody who I speak to regularly who is a trusted source think that like SIQUA and nepa, these acts and the process that you have to go through are flawed and could be helpfully tweaked. People fight over details. Right. There are, it seems to me, some green groups that just don't want kind of humans doing much of anything on the landscape. You know, don't light prescribed fires, don't cut down any trees in the name of fire safety. Some think that very intense fires are ecologically good. It's. I don't want to point fingers at people, you know, because I think a lot of environmental organizations are well intentioned, but there are some that just seem to be sort of lawsuit cannons and hold up a lot of work that would otherwise happen on federal land.

[Danielle Venton]

That's a big problem.

[Steve Gutierrez]

It is. However, it is not an overwhelming problem. And I think if you talk to people who care about prescribed fire, few of them would say that their biggest, the biggest hurdle in their way is environmental lawsuits because there is a process to move it through.

[Danielle Venton]

So after the fire broke out, there was obviously a huge amount of frustration aimed at eco bureaucrats. There was a New York Post article that was blaming an environmental protection group that's out of Topanga, who's dedicated to the preservation of an endangered shrub and vetoed a bunch of different prescribed fire burnings that the federal firefighters wanted to do in the Santa Monica mountains.

[Steve Gutierrez]

I don't think they vetoed it. I think they sued to stop it. Right.

[Danielle Venton]

And then, yeah, well, yeah, sorry I messed up the language, but they effectively stopped it from happening. And so there's a big perception that, you know, these people care more about an endangered shrub than the lives and homes of hundreds of thousands of people.

[Steve Gutierrez]

That's not a one to one, like, decision. Right. I think if you're, if you're talking about there was a plan to replace like old wood electrical infrastructure with steel ones, the fire in that area didn't start. It's not suspected to have started from, you know, wooden poles or like electrical lines. It seems like maybe a fire that had been started from New Year's Day fireworks or New Year's Eve fireworks, like flared up again. You know, that blame may be misplaced.

[Danielle Venton]

Do you think that it's part of a broader, you know, anti environmentalist pro drilling movement that's trying to trivialize the concerns of people who are concerned about climate change and just make it seem like they're all just these delusional lunatics who care more about the environment than human life?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I mean, I think these fires were kind of an unbelievable moment for people trying to score political points and, you know, just expressing kind of radical thoughts and everyone overnight becoming a fire safety expert and stuff that was never controversial before, becoming kind of controversial overnight. Stuff that I had written, I felt like it was misapplied because it fit in with people who wanted to score a point against whoever they didn't. Like the campfire that destroyed paradise in 2017. In 2017, you know, I hadn't really seen such a political lightning rod come from an instance of fires.

[Danielle Venton]

Well, you're in a unique position there where you create something that is somewhat critical of a progressive movement in a Certain capacity. And then there's a right wing canon event that creates a whole propaganda cycle for them. And all of a sudden elements of your research are being cherry picked to advance their narrative, and you've kind of fallen into the zeitgeist. What was the main piece of research that you feel like got hijacked by that crowd?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I am happy to criticize any fire agency, federal or state, no matter who is at the head of it, if they are, you know, kind of messing up on their duty to try to promote healthy forests and healthy ecosystems. And the piece that I did that, that at least echoed other people's criticisms of the Forest Service for kind of being so afraid to do prescribed fire and in their view, take, you know, refusing to take a leadership role in this, then got grasped onto and said, hey, look, it's, you know, it's these people's fault when that wasn't paying attention to, like, the context of which, you know, in which these fires broke out.

[Danielle Venton]

Yeah. I mean, the way they put it, it was kind of a hybrid theory. But what I gathered was they thought that the fire was started by homeless people on skid row who got butane lighters from harm reduction facilities. They start a trash fire, and then the DEI firefighters show up, just kind of throw their hands in the air. They're like, we don't know what to do. Let's tweet about this. And then it spreads. And then the space lasers make it even worse.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah.

[Danielle Venton]

And then I had. There was leftist discourse. That was something. I saw it on Twitter that was like, these celebrities should know better than building mansions on occupied Tongva land. And there was a weird notion that everyone living in LA was like this massive celebrity. And I'm over here in Altadena and I'm like, damn, you guys got it all wrong.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah. Do you live in Altadena?

[Danielle Venton]

No, I was just. They're covering the fires. Which kind of brings me to a different point that I had is one thing that Steve Gutierrez said, who's a wildland firefighter, is. He said that the public needs to get on board when we start doing some prescribed fire burnings.

[Andrew Callahan]

What role does the public.

[Danielle Venton]

Not the boards that do administrative approval, but what role does the public, the taxpaying, voting population, play in the approval of these fires?

[Steve Gutierrez]

The public is important because they kind of are surrounding the decisions that people make. You know, if people in power are making really unpopular decisions, sometimes they don't keep their job very long. And I would say 10 years ago or so, members of the Public were very afraid of prescribed fire. They thought that it would be, you know, maybe it would escape, and there have been escapes. So it's not like that never happens, or they don't want any smoke in the air. You know, they don't get to. They don't sign off on a burn plan. But what the public wants, you know, agencies do gather public input. So it makes a difference if people want prescribed fire or not. In. I was mentioning other areas of the nation where there's more prescribed fire. You know, it makes a difference if your neighbors want you to light the land on fire.

[Danielle Venton]

So public opinion is important, but there's no explicit vote where, like, the people of the Palisades got to decide yes or no to prescribe burns.

[Steve Gutierrez]

No, I don't think there's. There's not a vote, but they. But they can make it unpleasant for people who do want to do that fire. Yeah, you know, there's. They can levy lawsuits or. You know, what I would also say the public needs to get on board with is the idea of communities being ready for fire. And that is kind of a much more personal, maybe much more difficult thing, because getting communities ready for fire looks like getting rid of that tree that you love or taking out some shrubs that give you some extra privacy. And I think that's gonna be really hard for people. We're seeing California looking at a law that would require within five feet out from your house there can be nothing burnable. And scientists believe that that would go a huge way towards saving more houses. But I think emotionally, it's going to be really difficult for people. But if people bought into that idea of getting your house and your whole neighborhood ready for fire, we would see a lot less destruction.

[Danielle Venton]

That mean, like, no rocking chair, A.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Wooden rocking chair would be a risk.

[Danielle Venton]

That's not gonna. It's not gonna work for retirees.

[Steve Gutierrez]

We'll have to see.

[Danielle Venton]

They love them. I like them, too. I just don't have one.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah.

[Danielle Venton]

So speaking of the public, and we're not going to bash on the wealthy here, but there is the lore and mystique of being successful and rich in Los Angeles is buying a house in the hills. The hills are actually just the mountains, and the mountains are made of the most flammable fuel in the state. So do you think that there's any undoing this perception that wealth in Los Angeles connotates this sort of like, serene in the hills but near the city thing? Are we just going to have to eventually do away with that?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Oh, I don't know, is the, you know, can people live in the hills safely? Yeah. Is that the idea? I think there could be ways for people to live in the hills safely. When we talk about, like, does there need to be undoing of, you know, wealthy people's lifestyles? I don't know. I'm not real thrilled with the amount of, like, income inequity that we see. It's a different issue from fire, though.

[Danielle Venton]

Well, okay, so if you look at Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, other developing nations, hills are associated with poverty. You know, that's where they build slums, favelas, shanty towns. That's a place where it's harder to get to. It's obviously difficult for older people to come back and forth. So the cheapest part of any city outside of the U.S. mostly in Europe, is the hills. But because the U.S. has such wealth and equity, the hills have become more expensive because the rich want to be isolated from the poor, not have to witness the sort of frustration that comes with, you know, a Lamborghini next to a homeless encampment.

[Steve Gutierrez]

You know, I never thought about that before. My, my grandparents bought land in Nevado, which is like in northern Marin. And there was this like, new subdivision going in, and then there was this like little pimple of a hill, and it was the eyesore. You know, everyone wanted to live in the valley. This is like in the 50s, and they were going to just bulldoze it down. And my grandfather was like, well, I'll buy, I'll buy that. You know, and it turned out to be like a really desirable house in the neighborhood. But maybe, maybe that's part of, like a country's economic stages, where hills go from being. I never thought of that before.

[Danielle Venton]

Not only that, but also LA has done so much to destroy public transit and incentivize car ownership and freeways. The whole city is based upon the idea of total isolation of the poor and rich. You don't see those fault lines meet anywhere except for Larchmont and East Hollywood. But that's the only fault line I can think of where you have concentrated wealth on a direct flat plane next to people kind of living in the projects.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Well, that's one of the sad things about Altadena being so hard hit, from what I understand was that it was a place where you could have real working class families of all stripes mixing.

[Danielle Venton]

Definitely.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Good coffee.

[Danielle Venton]

It is good, right? We used to do Starbucks blend. This is gonna make the podcast. We used to have Starbucks blend and we switched over from P Place Roast to a Local. Not local, but some Hawaiian blend, I believe. So shout out to our office assistant Julia for holding it down. She lives in Lancaster so she doesn't have to worry about fires. Sorry, Julia. I just don't know why she lives there. It's crazy, you know, it's so far away. But yeah, you know, some people like the desert vibe.

[Steve Gutierrez]

You know, people seem split on the idea of whether there might be areas that are too dangerous to live to live in. Some people seem to think, yeah, there's just like, you know, shouldn't build in a floodplain. You shouldn't build in a fireshed where fire comes through every so often. And other people seem to think, well, you know, we can do so much to divert fire, you know, harden a home, that you should be able to live there. It's like, it's one of those things that there's not a lot of consensus on. There's so many things in the fire world that there's a huge amount of consensus on. And, like, are there areas that are too dangerous to live? Some people think so, yes. Some people think so, no. There's definitely areas of Sonoma county that I would not want to live in because they're on real steep hills, like dense vegetation.

[Danielle Venton]

You live there now?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I live in Sonoma county, but I don't live in a real fire prone area. Like, if my house burns, basically, the apocalypse has come.

[Danielle Venton]

What's the largest city in Sonoma County?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Santa Rosa.

[Danielle Venton]

Oh, Santa Rosa is there.

[Steve Gutierrez]

So we had, we've been hit by like the 20. The 2017 fires that like, took out Coffey Park. I mean, that was just, that was insane. But these are all, you know, all these really bad fires we're talking about are associated with super high winds, super dry weather, super, you know, super hot, super dry, super high winds, yeah. And you were talking about people being really interested in, like, exactly how the spark started. That's worth paying attention to. It's always worth investigating how your fire started. Do you have a guess for how many fires Cal Fire has responded to this year?

[Danielle Venton]

39.

[Steve Gutierrez]

610. Serious L for me, 610 wildfires just this year. Last year it was more than 8,000. So fires are starting all the fucking time. Right. And we only really care about the ones that, that take people's lives and burn down houses. I understand that, but what that tells me is that they're always gonna be starting. So it's much better to like, be ready for one to start and kind of be able to deal with that rather than Thinking that we can stop every ignition.

[Danielle Venton]

Right. So it's about preparing for fire. And then as you mentioned, the prescribed burn approval process is a bureaucratic nightmare, but it's not the sole driving cause of these recurring wildfires. Agreed, but it's not helpful.

[Steve Gutierrez]

No, it would be better for it to be easier to. You know, right now we treat prescribed fire as. It's like this optional extra thing that is not necessary. If you're a burn boss and your burn gets out of control, you're liable for that. You burn down my house, you owe me a new house.

[Danielle Venton]

You can't just quit and blame your company.

[Steve Gutierrez]

I mean, if you work for an agency like, you know, your agency will cover that liability. I think there's one burn boss in California. Last time I looked into this, there was, like, one burn boss in California who could get insurance, private insurance. So you're gonna be really cautious before you do that. Yeah, right. You're gonna make sure you have all your ducks in the row. If a wildfire starts, no one's liable, you know, unless you started it. You're not liable for that. If it burns down your house. If it burns down my house. Like, you know, I can't necessarily sue anyone because it was a wildfire, but.

[Danielle Venton]

I feel like every catastrophe, everyone becomes polarized to try to point singular blame at a cause. And as a journalist, your goal is to say multiple things can be true at one time. Here's the order of importance and magnitude. And so number one, you're saying is the winds. The Santa Ana wins. Number two, would you say climate change?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I don't know the percentages. I don't know if I can, like, confidently rank them. But for these fires, I would say winds. I would say a built environment. Climate change, and then, yeah, non white firefighters. Yeah. Dei. No, the funniest thing, DEI is not causing fires.

[Danielle Venton]

One thing that I thought was crazy is, like, when all the conservative reactionaries were doing the whole DEI thing, they were using the AI imagery of, like, these heroic white firefighters. And then all the AI imagery of the DEI firefighters were, like, literally 5 foot 7, like, racially ambiguous people with glasses and, like, no muscle definition. I was like, have you guys seen firefighters before?

[Andrew Callahan]

First of all, they're not all white.

[Danielle Venton]

But they're all pretty strong.

[Steve Gutierrez]

They are. And let's talk about DEI for a second. We are going to need so many more firefighters in the future and so many more people to do prescribed burns and create fire breaks and all that clearing. Right. And the pipeline is like, you know, some people Are worried that the pipeline is not necessarily there. There's this really neat program in Marin. It's a hotbed of liberalism and all that. But as a really, really neat fire chief who's created a program called Fire Forward that offers encouragement to women and to minority firefighters to bring them in, give them training, because you wouldn't. It's not necessarily easy to become a firefighter. Most firefighters have one in the family to help them figure out how to get in there. And they're trying to train the next generation of firefighters because it's a pretty good job. It's an established way into the middle class, so you could try to solve poverty while also making sure that you have firefighters in the future. The other thing that, like, I don't know if you. I did a piece about the Shaver Lake area fires, and it was. I was kind of interested in, like, the public is so amped up on the idea that firefighters are heroes and they risk. They risk their personal safety to protect others. That is heroic. But they are also professionals who should be respected and who should be paid well and who should not have to put themselves at undue risk to protect my house. And they're so valorized after a fire. But they're not necessarily appreciated when they're doing a. You know, when they're doing a defensible space inspection and give you like a. You know, like, you have to clear this stuff, and people are like, fuck you. So it's not really helpful, I think, for people to get wrapped up in this idea of, like, the heroism of firefighters. We could treat them better.

[Danielle Venton]

Yeah. I mean, I've been indoctrinated since a young person in the heroic narrative of firefighters, ranging from, you know, Clifford the Big Red Dog to this moment right now, where when I think firefighter, I picture a man jumping out of a helicopter into the gates of hell with a bunch of flame retardants strapped to his back.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Right. But if that was you, wouldn't you rather that forest be cared for? Well, and so that you didn't have to do that. You didn't have to put your life at risk? Like, I think we could treat our firefighters better.

[Danielle Venton]

How are we going to do that?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Well, we should pay them properly. We should take preventing fires as seriously as putting them out, and we should, you know, not expect that they risk their life to save our property.

[Danielle Venton]

Yeah, you mentioned something really important, which is the pay and the risk. So going back to the wildland, firefighters, who obviously work for the National Park Service, they drive green trucks, they're a little bit different, but they're oftentimes on the front lines when fires first start. So a lot of, especially in California, it's seen as their responsibility to stop the fire from advancing from the forest into the population centers. So for the past 10 years, they've been getting paid a non negotiable wage of $15 an hour, which is less than you make working as a manager at In N Out Burger. So they've lost 50% of their workforce since COVID because of the rising cost of living in California. A lot of them love the job and they want to help people and take care of the forest, but they can't afford to live in California under these circumstances while, while working as a firefighter and getting paid 15 bucks an hour. So they've lost so much of their workforce and they were campaigning for the past couple of years under the Biden administration. Pay us more. Now Trump's in office and he's threatening to cut the whole force as it's currently composed in half. So what is the path forward as far as getting firefighters a fair wage?

[Steve Gutierrez]

There was a firefighter fix program that was proposed, I think last year and it was like with the inflation reduction act, money got temporarily funded and then it was also funded in the continuing resolution. Congress knows that the problem and is trying, is trying to fix that. A lot of firefighters, firefighters are exempt from the buyouts and the layoffs so far. But a lot of the people who do research and the scientists that support them, like you need scientists to study an area before you light it on fire for a prescribed burn or before you create a fire break, those are the people getting laid off. And so it's going to be harder to do that advance work, which will mean even more focus on suppression, which is a, which is a negative cycle.

[Danielle Venton]

So what threat does the new Trump administration pose for the future of wildfires?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Right now it seems like there's a lot of short term thinking going on with how the Forest Service works and how wildlands are cared for. And a lot of the interest seems to be towards extracting resources, increasing logging and doing less of the advanced, you know, advanced prep work. We'll have to see how it shakes out. It feels like it changes by the hour.

[Danielle Venton]

So going back to your career, I mean, I think that your journey has been pretty interesting, going from covering computer related stuff to now becoming a fire journalist. What was that launch point for you?

[Steve Gutierrez]

It was partially because of where I lived, so I thought I was, when I grew up, I thought I'd become a scientist. And I don't really like doing science. I don't like gathering data, but I like talking about it and thinking about it. So was, you know, starting my career. Career as a science journalist. And then I live in Northern California. I'm, you know, for the Bay Area, I live quite far north, and so I was closest to the fires. So the radio station would send me first and then started seeing patterns, getting interested in how kind of all fires are the same, but every fire has something that's unique about it. And. And then I was off to the races, I guess. Feels like I have a lot of. Of job security with how bad fires are getting.

[Danielle Venton]

Yeah. That's how I feel with the country getting worse.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah. Well, I would love to be out of jail for that.

[Danielle Venton]

It's always sad as a journalist, you're like, man, things are really bad right now, man, I'm gonna have some good content to work with.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah. And you're like, oh, man, it's getting even worse.

[Danielle Venton]

What's the most destructive fire that you've personally witnessed in the field?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I went to paradise, you know, in the aftermath of that, and that was. Felt unthinkable at the time. I also drove through Altadena and Pacific Palisades after the fires, and I just couldn't believe it. I mean, it was. You know, normally you see a couple hundred fire engines and stuff, but, you know, driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, I mean, there was just thousands of trucks from every part of the. Every.

[Danielle Venton]

When I spoke to people that were. That had their homes burned down, obviously when someone's in that tense moment, they're not necessarily speaking in a way that they would otherwise speak.

[Andrew Callahan]

But a lot of people were upset.

[Danielle Venton]

That there wasn't any firefighters on scene. Was there a firefighter shortage at that time?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Firefighting resources got overwhelmed. But when we see these big mega fires that turn into urban conflagrations, where the fuel is actually houses, not the forest. Right. Or the chaparral. The fuel is the houses. You cannot pay for enough firefighters in the world. And even if you had, even if everybody was a firefighter, some of these fires don't respond to firefighting. The water evaporates before it can get to the flames. You can't fly planes because the winds are so intense. You know what firefighters are doing, they can't engage directly with the fire. So, of course it's upsetting when you want to see a fire engine outside your house and you don't. But it is also true that, you know, we cannot get Enough resources to cover everything at once. And we have this mutual aid system. You know, there was, there was a lot of people who float into the area. Most people don't think it's, we can one more hand crew our way out of this problem. It's like actually attacking the root cause of these mega fires.

[Danielle Venton]

Are you optimistic about the future?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Oh, I don't know. I would like to be. There is a better world out there that we could move towards where we have a better relationship with fire. A lot of people are interested in it. Ten years ago when I started doing this, people didn't really want to hear about fires outside of the fire season. The fact that we're having this conversation now gives me some hope that people will think and learn more about fires and start trying to think about how to live with them and not just, you know, rely on firefighters to bail us out when the flames are coming towards us.

[Danielle Venton]

Maybe this disaster was God's way of keeping the question alive.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Maybe it's good to use disasters to kind of reevaluate how we're doing things.

[Danielle Venton]

I mean, that's kind of the jump off point for every big conversation. Is something bad happening?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Absolutely, yeah. The Titanic ushered in new shipping safety regulations kind of overnight. And we fortunately don't see those kind of disasters anymore. I really hope that we use this moment to think about how to better live with fires. That would be the best outcome.

[Danielle Venton]

And I hope that it doesn't escape public consciousness when the next thing comes along. Because if you look at the last big hard conversations that people had, it was like police brutality in 2020. A couple years later, the Middle Eastern conflict breaks out. That conversation disappears into obscurity. So I guess the worry is, you know, maybe there's a hurricane next year or a tornado and people stop talking about fires.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Well, I'll keep talking about fires.

[Danielle Venton]

That's good. I'm never gonna stop talking about fires.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Excellent.

[Danielle Venton]

So if somebody wants to find your work, where can they keep up with you?

[Steve Gutierrez]

So I work for kqed, which is an NPR member station. I'm on Blue sky sometimes still on Twitter or X, but if you go to the KQEDIES website or just Google me, I'm super easy to find.

[Unknown]

Is.

[Danielle Venton]

Is Blue sky like Twitter, but, you know, less like Nazis and whatnot?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Is that what it is?

[Danielle Venton]

Everyone says you gotta get on Blue sky, but I went on there and I'm like, where's the diversity?

[Steve Gutierrez]

That is my problem with Blue sky there. I felt like there was a while where Twitter did Seem like kind of the common. You could get a diversity of opinions. And Blue sky right now feels like kind of a lot of people just, you know, kind of echo chamber.

[Danielle Venton]

They need some dei.

[Steve Gutierrez]

They do.

[Danielle Venton]

But to include true. Yeah, include conservative reactionaries for the court of public opinion.

[Steve Gutierrez]

They could sign up.

[Danielle Venton]

Yeah, Blue sky is kind of the answer to, like, Rumble and a lot of these alternative conservative platforms that emerged during the great censorship of 2020.

[Steve Gutierrez]

What do you use?

[Danielle Venton]

I just use YouTube and Instagram. I'm traditional. I feel like a 1800s Quaker, you know, because everyone's like, have you been on TikTok and Blue Sky? I'm just like, I stick to my. My morals, but I'm not hating on you for going on Blue Sky. I'm gonna make a Blue sky account, but I don't go on X or Twitter because it's so negative. And Liam, our producer, goes on Twitter all the time, which is important for our business because he gets informed about these cultural happenings. But I stick on the Instagram.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Oh, my God, I'm. I mean, Twitter has. X has changed so much. Like, it used to be a really supportive fireplace. There used to be, like a great fire Twitter. And I still have people who tweet there now. So I'm like, I can't quite leave it, but I was doing some reporting after the layoffs of, like, all of the probationary federal workers and, like, interested in how it was going to impact fire safety programs. And, like, I got get bullied by people.

[Danielle Venton]

What were they saying to you?

[Steve Gutierrez]

That I was like an opportunist and that I only cared about prescribed fire because Trump was in office. And I was like, I have been doing this for years.

[Danielle Venton]

Yeah, it's certifiably not true. Yeah, that's not cool. How do you deal with cyberbullying?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I engaged with each and every person, actually and sent them links of like.

[Danielle Venton]

Damn, no wonder you're on Blue Sky. You can't feed the trolls. They'll just come back ten times hard.

[Steve Gutierrez]

You know, no one said like, oh, Danielle, you're right, I was unfair. But they did stop, like, it was like kind of metastasizing and I stopped the metastasizing.

[Danielle Venton]

That's good. You stopped the bleeding before it got out of control. Do you cover any water related stuff or mostly just fire sometimes?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I spent a year trying to cover water stuff and it's so complicated. Like, have you ever tried to do a fish story?

[Danielle Venton]

I'm doing one right now on the Salton Sea.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Oh, good for you.

[Danielle Venton]

Yeah, but it's so complicated. It's mostly about how the farmers in Imperial Valley are being, you know, they're being disincentivized by the state of California to sell all of their water to San Diego and in la because there's a water shortage here, which is causing the saline levels of the Salton Sea to go up. And it's also causing the water level to go down which is releasing this toxic silt that's ancient from the floor of the Salton Sea. Now they have an asthma rate that is six times higher than national average. So if you go there, there's not a bird in the sky, there's not a fish in the water and everyone's coughing up a lot. But it's cool. It's very post apocalyptic Mojave vibes. I wanted to move there, but then after two or three days of living in my RV outside of a bar called the Ski Inn, I could barely breathe.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Oh my God. Are there good solutions to that? Like the nice thing about fire is like there are good solutions. Like there's a workable way to do it. Is there?

[Andrew Callahan]

It would be the process, it would.

[Danielle Venton]

Be the process of desalination which is an extremely expensive procedure that would have to remove the salt content from the entire salt, like mechanically, mechanically reprocess it, bring fish back into the environment, fix the Colorado river problem to get fresh water back into the Salton Sea. And then the problem is the land is so non valuable that there's no incentive. But on the, on cash, if you have more money, the government cares more about your property.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah, that's true, of course.

[Danielle Venton]

And the Salton Sea, because it's historically been so neglected, some of those communities like Slab City and Bombay beach, the state of California is not concerned with protecting the Imperial Valley and Imperial county air. There's so much more they have on their plate. I mean they, they can bar figure out the Palisades. Can you imagine? They want to go to this lawless Mojave Desert town and try to desalinate this dead lake bed. It's not going to happen.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Is the Salton Sea man made or is it okay?

[Andrew Callahan]

It's crazy.

[Danielle Venton]

It was actually a result of error. They were trying to divert the Colorado river to be able to bring fresh water to LA and San Diego in the 1930s. And there was a guy, I don't know if he was drunk at work or something, but a dam collapse that he made and he was like, oh, he's alive. Or he lived for a long time in Shame. And all that water filled up a dry lake bed that was only full during the time of dinosaurs. And it just kind of was there for a long time. They created a small resort town called Bombay beach that lasted for about 30 or 40 years. And then because there was no fresh water coming back into it, all the fish started dying. So there was these mass die offs of fish. We're talking thousands of fish would wash up on the shores. And it smelled so bad, like a thousand dead fish.

[Andrew Callahan]

So everybody moved out.

[Danielle Venton]

And then the LA Times came and wrote the stinkiest beach town in California article. So it became the laughingstock and ire of the state, leaving behind only a few brave soldiers, all of whom were like in deep poverty. Now it's having a revitalization because a lot of the Burning man people move there so they can build like Mad Max style art. But even those people are broke, so the state doesn't care.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Is it a source of lithium? Are there lithium deposits there or.

[Danielle Venton]

That's what I was hoping you could tell me.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Oh, I don't know. I tried to do a story about like, why are salmon, you know, numbers so bad this year? And I don't, like, I don't think my manager ever wants me to do another fish story. Cause it was like four months of trying to be like, what is going on? I'm so confused.

[Andrew Callahan]

So there's a salmon shortage.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah. So it was about like the salmon return. So salmon season was canceled. I care a lot about fish. Like, my dad was a big fisherman and so salmon season was like totally canceled for, for like, for everybody. Except, you know, some like, tribal people could take a couple. And it was like, why is it canceled? And so, you know, some advocates were like, it's canceled because of the mismanagement from the Bureau of Reclamation. And like, they didn't release enough water. And so the baby fish cooked, you know, in like this reservoir, you know, in this critical time. And that's, that's why. And then it was like, well, okay, but like, did they. And like, could they have released more water? And there's like no one who's impartial to talk to in kind of everybody.

[Danielle Venton]

In the salmon sphere is compromised by separate interests.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah. They either like care about giving water to farmers or they care about fishermen and the fish. Super interesting.

[Danielle Venton]

But it's like nobody cares about the damn fish. For real.

[Steve Gutierrez]

I think people care about the real. About the fish.

[Danielle Venton]

Yeah. But not the people involved in that catastrophe.

[Andrew Callahan]

Right. Was there people on the front lines.

[Danielle Venton]

Just yelling at everybody, being like, salmon.

[Andrew Callahan]

Have a nervous system.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah. I mean, there was, you know, people who were, like. Who work, you know, work as fisher, Fishermen, fisherwomen.

[Danielle Venton]

My mom used to work in a corporate company called Salmon Safe, and it was her job to secure the Duwamish and Willamette waterways and make sure that salmon had a safe passage without being illegally fished by Oregonian bastards.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah. So, like, the best environmental story of the past 10 years in California is the climate, like the dams coming down and the fish returning to these areas that they haven't been for more than 100 years. I don't know if you've, like.

[Danielle Venton]

It was a feel good story.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah.

[Danielle Venton]

Okay. That must be nice.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

What percentage of stories do you feel like are.

[Danielle Venton]

Feel good in the environmental sphere?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Not a lot. Sometimes I just do, like a space story to have, like, about outer space. About outer space. Yeah.

[Danielle Venton]

What's going on up there?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I haven't done one in a while. Been a lot of not good feel stories. Not feel concerned.

[Danielle Venton]

Seems like there's nothing going on.

[Steve Gutierrez]

There'll be a comet or, you know, more exoplanets discovered. There was one that was really cool. This high school student sonified supernova data and turned it into this, like, jazzy, like bluesy, jazzy beat. And she won a prize for that.

[Danielle Venton]

How do you turn data into a beat?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Look for patterns, and that can be your beat. You just make choices about how you use that raw data and then apply, like, artificially. You're like, all right, that's my baseline.

[Andrew Callahan]

Did you interview her?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah. Yeah, she was really cool.

[Danielle Venton]

What's she doing now?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Off to college.

[Danielle Venton]

Oh, nice. Do you know where she's going?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Oh, man, I forgot.

[Danielle Venton]

Well, shout out to her if you're watching this.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Yeah.

[Andrew Callahan]

If you.

[Danielle Venton]

If we can find access to that song you created, that'll be our outro song. Everybody wants to know what supernova data and blues sounds like, Mississippi, Worldwide. Do you have any message to the people out there who may be watching and thinking, how can I keep my house safe from a future fire in the lake basin?

[Steve Gutierrez]

Think about hardening your home. Think about defensible space. Think about fire year round and be safe.

[Danielle Venton]

Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. It was an enlightening conversation and I hope that some prescribed burns happen sometime in the near future.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Me too.

[Danielle Venton]

Shout out to the burn bosses out there.

[Andrew Callahan]

Thanks so much.

[Danielle Venton]

Thanks so much for the great conversation. I learned so much.

[Steve Gutierrez]

If you ever. If you ever get the chance to go on a prescribed burn, you should. It is like the opposite. Feel. Feeling of being on a wildfire. It's like joyful and fun and not stressful and, you know.

[Danielle Venton]

Can you put me in touch with a burn boss? Is there one that you like?

[Steve Gutierrez]

I like them all.

[Danielle Venton]

There's got to be a spectrum of personalities.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Well, let's see. I mean, I would say just anyone that you can get on, you know? Okay. They're really. They're. They're. They're neat people.

[Danielle Venton]

Channel 5 live worldwide, Hollywood and Vine.

[Andrew Callahan]

Fuck the authority.

[Steve Gutierrez]

Channel 5 news.

[Richie Nguyen]

Channel 55. We don't with custers, and 5 is the best number.