“Nothing there but the chimney.” L.A. evacuees return to rubble.

Summary

Apple News Today: “Nothing there but the chimney.” L.A. evacuees return to rubble
Release Date: January 13, 2025

Hosted by Shemitah Basu, Apple News Today delivers a comprehensive overview of today’s most pressing stories. In this episode, Basu delves into the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, President Biden’s domestic policy legacy, the challenges of recycling old electronics, and emerging trends in dining and archival work.

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1. Los Angeles Wildfires: Evacuation and Devastation

The episode opens with a harrowing report on the ongoing wildfires ravaging Los Angeles County. As of January 13, 2025, the fires have claimed at least 24 lives and destroyed over 12,000 homes and structures. The Los Angeles County Sheriff warns that with heavy winds and continued dry conditions forecasted for the week, containment efforts are likely to falter, potentially increasing the death toll.

Personal Stories Amidst Destruction:

• Les from Altadena shares his surreal experience:

  "It was surreal. It's like stuff happened so fast." [01:14]
  "Our home is nothing there but the chimney. I hope we bounce back. It's gonna be a hard process, a slow process, but it's just going to take time." [01:23]

• Dale, a 91-year-old Pasadena resident, reflects on his long-term loss:

  "Entire history is in the house. I'm going to break down again. That's what I feel. It's, it's my whole life. I'm okay, I'll be okay. I'm tough. And even though I'm 91 years old, I'll start over again." [01:45]

• An unnamed woman from Altadena recounts her frantic escape:

  "We were having dinner. I told my three-year-old, my one-year-old that we're having a fancy candlelight dinner because the power went out. And then we looked outside, we saw a huge fire and we just passed, packed whatever we can and we ran out. It was chaos." [02:08]
  "I'm trying to figure out how to tell my 3-year-old that we don't have a home." [02:29]

Despite the chaos and loss, the community rallies to support firefighters, exemplified by a touching moment at a California In-N-Out Burger restaurant where firefighters received a standing ovation.

Call to Action: For those looking to help, Basu mentions that KQED provides a list of organizations where contributions are needed, with links available in the show notes.

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2. President Biden's Legacy on Domestic Policy

Shifting focus to Washington, the episode examines President Joe Biden's domestic policy achievements as he approaches his final week in office. Basu outlines Biden’s significant legislative milestones:

• American Rescue Plan ($1.9 trillion): Aimed at economic stimulus during the pandemic, including the third round of direct relief payments.

  "It's not hard to see that we're in the middle of the once in several generations economic crisis with a once in several generations public health crisis... There's no time to waste." — Joe Biden [03:41]

• Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill: Over $1 trillion allocated for bridges, airports, roads, and highways.

• CHIPS and Science Act: Focused on boosting domestic semiconductor manufacturing to reduce reliance on foreign sources.

• Inflation Reduction Act: Encouraged $500 billion investment in low-carbon energy and manufacturing, benefiting even red states.

Despite these accomplishments, Biden faced criticism from Republicans over perceived excessive government spending and concerns about economic implications.

Expert Analysis by Franklin Foer:

Franklin Foer of The Atlantic assesses Biden’s impact:

"He made all this investment in restoring American manufacturing. The country is in actually quite good shape." [05:16]

However, Foer points out a disconnect between legislative success and political popularity:

"His idea of persuasion and compromise... wasn't that successful in his presidency. It wasn't politically successful." [05:42]

Foer further argues that Biden's inability to prevent Donald Trump’s return to the White House overshadows his legislative achievements:

"Whatever great successes Joe Biden might have had... they're kind of erased by the fact that he failed on his largest objective of them all." [06:36]

Nevertheless, Foer suggests that Biden’s legacy will be re-evaluated over time, much like President Carter’s, indicating that historical perspective might offer a more favorable view of his presidency.

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3. E-Waste Recycling: How to Dispose of Old Electronics Safely

Transitioning to environmental concerns, Basu addresses the growing issue of electronic waste (e-waste). With technological advancements, households accumulate numerous outdated electronics that pose significant recycling challenges.

Reporter Adam Clark Estes shares his dilemma:

"I had an old electric toothbrush and I didn't know what to do with it." [08:14]
"I knew that it had a big battery in it, and I didn't want it to go in the trash can and end up catching on fire somewhere." [08:20]

Key Statistics:

• Only 12% of small electronics are recycled worldwide (2024 UN report).
• Each person produces approximately 17 pounds of e-waste annually.
• E-waste poses fire risks and contains harmful metals and chemicals that can contaminate soil and groundwater.

Recycling Solutions:

• Certified E-Waste Recyclers: Estes advises using certified facilities, many of which are available at big-box stores like Best Buy, Staples, Home Depot, and some Goodwill locations.

  "Best Buy does, Staples does, Home Depot takes stuff like light bulbs and even Goodwill will take a lot of E waste. Just check to make sure that your local Goodwill is equipped to do it." — Les [09:37]

• Reuse and Refurbishment: Estes emphasizes the importance of reusing materials to lower greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change impacts.

"Buy refurbished. It's going to be cheaper and you're giving a second life to a product that was really resource intensive to produce." — Les [10:12]

Encouraging Community Action: By adopting recycling habits and promoting them, Basu suggests, e-waste recycling can become as routine as recycling aluminum cans.

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4. Other News Highlights

a. Donald Trump's Cabinet Picks:

With the new administration forming, President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations are under scrutiny. Senate confirmation hearings are set to begin, emphasizing loyalty to Trump more than during his first term. Notable nominees facing hearings include:

• Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary
• Marco Rubio for Secretary of State
• Christy Noem for Homeland Security Secretary

b. Decline in Tipping Rates:

The episode highlights a significant decrease in tipping within restaurants. Tipping reached its peak in 2021, with 56% of patrons tipping 20% or more. By 2024, this figure has dropped to 38%. Factors contributing to this trend include:

• Rising Menu Prices: Leading to tipping fatigue.
• Tipping Prompts: Especially in establishments where tipping was previously uncommon.

c. National Archives Seeks Volunteer Transcribers:

The National Archives is seeking volunteers to assist in transcribing 200 years of digitized government documents. The challenge lies in deciphering large, loopy cursive writing prevalent in historical records. Interested individuals can find more information through links provided in the show notes.

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Looking Ahead:

Basu concludes by previewing upcoming content:

• A narrated article from The New Yorker exploring America’s relationship with ultra-processed foods and the scientific challenges in understanding their health impacts.

Listeners are encouraged to follow Apple News Plus Narrated for access to this and other in-depth stories.

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For more detailed insights and additional stories covered in today’s episode, please refer to the Apple News app’s Show Notes.

Transcript

[Shemitah Basu]

Good morning. It's Monday, January 13th. I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, Biden's legacy on domestic policy, how to safely recycle your old electronics and why people are tipping less in restaurants. But first to Los Angeles, where crews continue to battle wildfires that have killed at least 24 people and burned more than 12,000 homes and structures. The Los Angeles county sheriff says reports of missing people are rising and that the death toll is likely to go up. Heavy winds are expected to pick back up in the first few days of this week. Coupled with ongoing dry conditions, authorities worry that could slow down containment efforts and threaten new commun. A more complete picture of the devastation for residents of Los Angeles is also starting to emerge. More than 100,000 people are under evacuation orders. And for some, there isn't much to go back to.

[Les]

It was surreal. It's like stuff happened so fast.

[Shemitah Basu]

That's an Altadena resident named les talking to Fox 11 Los Angeles.

[Les]

Our home is nothing there but the chimney. I hope we bounce back. It's gonna be a hard process, a slow process, but it's just going to take time.

[Shemitah Basu]

A man named Dale, who's 91 years old, lost his home in the Pasadena area where he'd been living for 60 years. He spoke to KCAL News after sitting outside and watching the smoking remnants of where his house stood.

[Dale]

Entire history is, is in the house. I'm going to break down again. That's what I, that's what I feel. It's, it's my whole life. I'm okay, I'll be okay. I'm tough. And Even though I'm 91 years old, I'll start over again.

[Shemitah Basu]

One woman in Altadena described to KCAL how she and her family escaped the fire.

[Unnamed Woman]

We were having dinner. I told my three year old, my one year old that I told them that we're having a fancy candlelight dinner because the power went out. And then we looked outside, we saw a huge fire and we just passed, packed whatever we can and we ran out. It was chaos.

[Shemitah Basu]

She's now struggling with how to explain to her child what's going on.

[Unnamed Woman]

I'm trying to figure out how to tell my 3 year old that we don't have a home.

[Shemitah Basu]

It's been an exhausting few days for evacuees and for the firefighters trying to contain the fires and save people's homes. But even as conditions remain difficult, the community is letting those firefighters know they're appreciated. At one California in n Out Burger restaurant. A group of firefighters who stopped in for a meal were met with cheers and a standing ovation from people.

[Dale]

Thank you.

[Shemitah Basu]

If you would like to help. KQED has a list of organizations and how you can contribute. We'll link to that in our Show Notes page. Now to Washington, where it is President Biden's final week in office. And all week long we'll be digging into different parts of his legacy. Today we look at his domestic agenda. When Biden took office, it was the height of the pandemic and one of his first moves was to announce the American rescue plan, a $1.9 billion economic stimulus package.

[Joe Biden]

It's not hard to see that we're in the middle of the once in several generations economic crisis with a once in several generations public health crisis. The crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight. There's no time to waste.

[Shemitah Basu]

Biden's plan greenlit the third round of direct relief payments sent to people during COVID The first two rounds were approved under Trump. But Biden's plan was not popular with Republicans who felt the federal government had already spent too much money on Covid response and were concerned more government spending would contribute to. Biden also signed into law a major bipartisan infrastructure bill. It put over a trillion dollars toward American bridges, airports, roads, highways. And he oversaw the Chips and Signs act, which helped move more manufacturing for semiconductors to the US to make American industries less reliant on China and other countries for critical computer chips. Arguably his greatest legislative achievement, the Inflation Reduction act, incentivized businesses to invest around $500 billion in low carbon energy and manufact manufacturing, with a lot of that money going to red states. Now, as Biden gets ready to leave office, unemployment is at historic lows. The economy added more than 250,000 jobs in December, far outpacing expectations. Medicare recipients have seen the price of insulin fall. And while Americans felt the large impact of inflation and with it high interest rates, it's been far lower here than in many countries around the world.

[Franklin Foer]

He made all this investment in restoring American manufacturing. The country is in actually quite good shape.

[Shemitah Basu]

That's Franklin Foer at the Atlantic, who's written extensively about Biden.

[Franklin Foer]

I mean, he's leaving Donald Trump with material economic conditions. For Donald Trump to be a very successful president if he doesn't lift a.

[Shemitah Basu]

Finger for told us despite all of Biden's legislative accomplishments, something didn't quite connect for many voters.

[Franklin Foer]

His idea of persuasion and compromise and searching for something in the middle that actually gets done as opposed to demonizing one's enemies. I'd say that that approach wasn't that successful in his presidency. I mean, it was successful in producing legislation, but it wasn't politically successful.

[Shemitah Basu]

And ultimately, he says that disconnect is what made Biden unable to deliver on one of his original campaign promises when.

[Franklin Foer]

He ran for office. He said that his primary mission was to defend democracy against autocracy.

[Joe Biden]

Let's get together and demonstrate to our great, great grandchildren when they read about us that democracy, democracy, democracy functions and works, and together there's nothing we can't do.

[Franklin Foer]

He was saying that he was not going to allow Donald Trump to return to the White House. And so whatever great successes Joe Biden might have had over the course of his first two years, where he produced a bounty of domestic legislation, they're kind of erased by the fact that he failed on his largest objective of them all.

[Shemitah Basu]

Still, Forer says a president's legacy is hard to know when they first leave office. It takes shape over time.

[Franklin Foer]

I think that there still is a pretty good shot for Joe Biden that he gets rerated over the course of the coming decades by historians in the same sort of way that Carter comes out better now than he did in the immediate aftermath of his presidency, where his name was kind of synonymous with. With failure. I think there's a lot more similarities in terms of the economics of the economic nationalism of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They're both guys who kind of sat at the threshold of new epics in American history, and I think they both played pretty significant roles in the birth of the new political orders.

[Shemitah Basu]

Let's talk about that one weird drawer that a lot of us have in our homes, the one where we throw old electronics, phones, cords, things that we know we need to throw out, but we kind of don't know how to.

[Les]

Recently, I had a strange conundrum where I had an old electric toothbrush and I didn't know what to do with it.

[Shemitah Basu]

That's Vox reporter Adam Clark Estes, who covers tech and as a result has accumulated a lot of accessories over the years.

[Les]

I knew that it had a big battery in it, and I didn't want it to go in the trash can and, you know, end up catching on fire somewhere. So I started looking into e waste and then realized that I actually have a lot of it. I haven't wanted to send them to a landfill, but hadn't taken the time to figure out where to go.

[Shemitah Basu]

Neither have most people. According to a 2024 report by the UN only around 12% of small electronics get recycled worldwide. Billions of pounds just get tossed in the trash and by one recent estimate, each person produces roughly 17 pound ounce of E waste per year. That can be dangerous for a number of reasons. As Estes mentioned, there are fire risks that come with tossing out certain electronics, and our electronics are filled with metals that can end up in landfills, with dangerous chemicals that can leach into the soil and groundwater and harm our health. As Estes started to look into how to safely get rid of the E waste in his home, he learned recycling old electronics is complex, more than your average recycling, which is partly why so few people do it. His advice? Look for businesses that are certified E waste recyclers. A lot of big box stores are, including some recycling centers.

[Les]

Best Buy does, Staples does, Home Depot takes stuff like light bulbs and even Goodwill will take a lot of E waste. Just check to make sure that your local Goodwill is equipped to do it.

[Shemitah Basu]

A certified E waste recycler will know how to tear down old phones, laptops, accessories, even things like light up kids toys safely to get at the reusable parts. And Estes explained it's important to find ways to reuse those materials because it helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protects vulnerable parts of the world from the impacts of climate change.

[Les]

One thing that I tell just about everybody I know when they're looking to buy a new phone or a new watch or even a new laptop is buy refurbished. It's going to be cheaper and you're giving a second life to a product that was really resource intensive to produce. But by getting into the habit of recycling your E waste and telling other people to do it so that it becomes just as common and automatic as recycling aluminum cans, it's going to make a big difference.

[Shemitah Basu]

Before we let you go through other stories being featured in the Apple News app, It's a big week in Washington for President elect Donald Trump's Cabinet picks. Senate confirmation hearings are set to begin, CNN reports. This wave of nominations is different than Trump's first term. Loyalty to Trump is likely to feature much more prominently than it did in 2016, when many nominees try to distance themselves from what Trump said on the campaign trail. Notable hearings include Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee for defense secretary, who's faced a number of serious misconduct allegations and who scheduled for Tuesday and on Wednesday, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who's nominated to be secretary of state, and South Dakota governor Christy Noem, the pick for homeland Security secretary, will have their hearings. The Wall Street Journal reports people are tipping less in restaurants than they have in past years. Tipping peaked in 2021. That's when 56% of people said they tipped servers 20% or more, according to one survey. In 2024, only 38% of people tipped. As Gener Journal says, some of the reasons for the tip dip is fatigue over rising menu prices and tipping prompts at places where tips aren't normally expected. And finally, if you can read big, loopy cursive writing the National Archives needs your help. About 200 years of digitized government documents ranging from 50s census records to 19th century immigration documents are in need of transcription. One worker with the National Archives catalog told USA Today, reading cursive is a fading skill and looking for citizen archivists who are up for the task. We'll link to that story for details on how you can volunteer to help the National Archives and all the stories we talked about today in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app, right now, we've got a narrated article Coming up next, The New Yorker looks into America's relationship with ultra processed foods and why it's taken scientists so long to understand their harms. If you're listening in the Podcasts app, follow Apple News plus Narrated to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.