Seeking Truth: The LA Wildfire Crisis

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Seeking Truth: The LA Wildfire Crisis"

Episode: Seeking Truth: The LA Wildfire Crisis
Release Date: July 31, 2025
Hosts: Spencer Pratt, Heidi Montag, & Gabriel Mann
Guest: Sheriff Alex Villanueva, Los Angeles County Sheriff

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1. Introduction and Personal Updates

The episode begins with Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag sharing personal anecdotes and recent life events. Spencer humorously discusses potential sponsorship ideas, mentioning a fly swatter brand, and recounts attending Heidi’s sister’s wedding in Colorado. He highlights the beauty of the event and the productive time spent in Colorado, including photo shoots with his glam squad.

Notable Quotes:

• Spencer Pratt [00:23]: "I was just thinking one of our sponsors for an upcoming episode could be a fly swatter."
• Heidi Montag [00:02]: "Please tell me you didn't get plastic."

2. Introduction of Sheriff Alex Villanueva

The hosts introduce Sheriff Alex Villanueva, Los Angeles County Sheriff, who joins to discuss the recent Palisades Fire crisis and broader issues related to wildfire management and homelessness in LA County.

3. The Homeless Industrial Complex and Nonprofit Mismanagement

Sheriff Villanueva delves into the financial mismanagement surrounding homelessness in LA County. He reveals that between 2011 and 2021, the county spent $6.5 billion of taxpayers' money addressing homelessness, yet the population of homeless individuals doubled during that period.

Notable Quotes:

• Alex Villanueva [17:14]: "Between 2011 and 2021, the county of LA spent six and a half billion dollars of your tax dollars to address the homeless in LA County. And the population of the homeless doubled in size in 10 years."
• Spencer Pratt [18:50]: "People are being defrauded."

Sheriff Villanueva criticizes the inefficiency of existing nonprofits, pointing out that CEOs of top homeless-related nonprofits earn exorbitant salaries (averaging $800,000 annually) while the actual impact on homelessness remains minimal.

4. The Palisades Fire: Causes and Mismanagement

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the Palisades Fire. Spencer shares his personal lawsuit against LA County, LA DWP, and Governor Gavin Newsom, alleging mismanagement in wildfire response efforts. He claims that mishandled flight restrictions and inadequate water supply critically hampered firefighting efforts.

Notable Quotes:

• Spencer Pratt [18:50]: "The Georgia's a Palisades legend... The Palisades is actually so lucky. It was not a tragic loss of life. ... it could have been hundreds and kids."
• Alex Villanueva [27:04]: "Every second counts because every second, just like when you have a patient in paramedics, every second means more blood going out and you're gonna lose your patient."

Heidi Montag contributes by discussing her film "Hotshot," which explores the failures in wildfire management. She emphasizes the lack of prescribed burns and vegetation management, which significantly increase wildfire risks.

Notable Quotes:

• Heidi Montag [30:14]: "I spent six years on the fire line filming this thing... there's a very criminal divide between reality and what's conveyed to the general public."
• Spencer Pratt [53:28]: "What do you say to those people that, you know, say you can't maintain this brush?"

5. Impact on the Community and Future Plans

The hosts and Sheriff Villanueva discuss the profound impact of the Palisades Fire on the local community. They highlight the emotional and financial toll on residents, many of whom have lost their homes and cannot afford to rebuild due to skyrocketing real estate prices and mandatory high-density housing legislation.

Notable Quotes:

• Heidi Montag [38:26]: "You have to enforce personal responsibility... because you never know when your utility company is going to drain your reservoir and leave you without water."
• Spencer Pratt [44:55]: "This is an emotional... I can't just let them take this magical place and turn it into this experiment."

6. Heidi Montag’s Film: "Hotshot"

Heidi provides insights into her film "Hotshot," which documents the realities of wildfire management and the systemic failures that exacerbate fire crises. She underscores the importance of prescribed burns, a technique historically used by Native Americans to manage vegetation and prevent large-scale wildfires.

Notable Quotes:

• Heidi Montag [49:18]: "Your next door neighbor, it's got basically a concrete bunker. That's a model for how you do it."
• Spencer Pratt [51:36]: "One of the great things about your film is you go back to the Native Americans who were the first firefighters."

7. Best Practices for Fire Protection at Home

The discussion transitions to practical advice for homeowners to protect their properties from wildfires. Heidi emphasizes the importance of maintaining clean gutters, removing flammable vegetation near homes, and using non-combustible materials in construction. She also advocates for the installation of roof sprinklers to mitigate ember-induced fires.

Notable Quotes:

• Heidi Montag [53:18]: "The weakest points in your home are going to be the gutters... vegetation right up against your home is going to be very problematic."
• Spencer Pratt [55:37]: "If you can't see on camera, but there's a house behind this tree... a big chunk behind their backyard."

8. Conclusion and Future Episodes

The episode wraps up with the hosts expressing gratitude to Sheriff Villanueva for his insights and emphasizing the importance of ongoing investigations into wildfire management. They tease future episodes that will delve deeper into Los Angeles public safety and the broader implications of the wildfire crisis.

Notable Quotes:

• Spencer Pratt [54:55]: "We're going to have a longer episode the next few weeks to really get into Los Angeles and public safety and the future."
• Heidi Montag [58:14]: "This is your birthright... something's definitely off. And the question becomes, why?"

Key Takeaways

• Financial Mismanagement: Los Angeles County has invested billions in addressing homelessness, yet the problem persists and worsens, highlighting significant inefficiencies and mismanagement within nonprofit organizations.

• Wildfire Mismanagement: The Palisades Fire exemplifies systemic failures in wildfire response, including delayed firefighting efforts due to inadequate resource allocation and flight restrictions. Preventative measures like prescribed burns are severely underutilized.

• Community Impact: The wildfire has devastated the Palisades community, displacing long-time residents who cannot afford to rebuild amidst rising real estate prices and mandatory high-density housing policies.

• Personal Responsibility and Prevention: Homeowners must take proactive steps to protect their properties from wildfires, including vegetation management, maintaining clean gutters, and using fire-resistant building materials.

• Advocacy and Accountability: There is a pressing need for greater accountability in how funds are allocated for homelessness and wildfire prevention. Transparency and effective use of resources are crucial in addressing these crises.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Spencer Pratt [17:14]: "People are being defrauded."
• Alex Villanueva [27:04]: "Every second counts because every second... you lose your patient."
• Heidi Montag [30:14]: "There's a criminal divide between reality and what's conveyed to the general public."
• Heidi Montag [53:18]: "The weakest points in your home are going to be the gutters."
• Heidi Montag [49:18]: "Your next door neighbor, it's got basically a concrete bunker."

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This episode of The Fame Game with Heidi & Spencer provides a critical examination of the intertwined issues of wildfire management, homelessness, and governmental accountability in Los Angeles County. Through candid conversations and expert insights from Sheriff Alex Villanueva, the hosts illuminate the systemic challenges and advocate for more effective and transparent solutions to safeguard communities and the environment.

Transcript

[Heidi Montag]

Please tell me you didn't get plastic.

[Spencer Pratt]

Surgery to pull up the album.

[Gabriel Mann]

Oh, no, that's all good.

[Spencer Pratt]

Hey. Welcome back to the Fame Game with global pop superstar Heidi Montag and her husband, Spencer Pratt. Myself so grateful to be recording in our house here in the Palisades. How are you, honey?

[Gabriel Mann]

Oh, that's a loaded question. Great, great, great. Everything's great. Everything's awesome. Great. How are you?

[Spencer Pratt]

I was just thinking one of our sponsors for an upcoming episode could be a fly swatter. So you got a fly swatter brand. You want to be in a lot of content, Reach out to the team. A lot of big things happen in the world. Let's, let's bring it down to just more basic life. Heidi's sister got married. We went and flew to Colorado to one of the most beautiful weddings I've ever attended. I, I, it was a, it wasn't a beautiful. It was, it was, I'm joking, but it was, yeah, it could have been worse, you know, it was great. Yeah.

[Gabriel Mann]

I'm so excited for her. Her husband is amazing. The kids are awesome. So it's nice to have that family time. And then we were able to put go to the rest of Colorado, which is great. We're on a whole tour. Went to Crested Butte and we rented a house. And then I had Ty and Mylan and Tomas, my glam squad, come and we did some incredible photo shoots. So it felt productive. I got those Colorado photos I always wanted.

[Spencer Pratt]

So make sure the new issue, I don't think it has come out yet, but Interview magazine, Heidi has a four page spread shot in Colorado. It's beautiful. Thank you. Mel and Alex, the team at Interview, for that incredible opportunity. And then we had so much fun. There was a bear in our house the week before. We were kind of, I was hoping for my tick tock that a bear would come in again, but ended up no bear. Yep.

[Gabriel Mann]

And then we went to Aspen for one night to see my dad, who lives nearby. So that was great. And that was the Colorado chapter.

[Spencer Pratt]

And Brody got married. A lot of people were concerned we weren't at the wedding. He did invite us to this wedding, his real wedding, his only real marriage. So that's, I'm so happy for him and Tia. But it was the same day as Heidi's sister in Colorado. But that's so beautiful. They got married. Another big relationship I saw in the news is Heidi's protection for her Stanley Cup. John Shrek, Sheriff of Baghdad McPhee, was seen out in Hollywood with another pop star, reality TV Icon Erika Jane. I don't know anything about it. You know, I just see what's on the news. But they looked very, you know, he could have just been holding her hand to help her through the parking lot. I don't know. Maybe she.

[Gabriel Mann]

Maybe she hired him for.

[Spencer Pratt]

Oh, yeah. So everyone's assuming they're dating.

[Gabriel Mann]

They actually we met Erica Jane briefly at Mighty hoopla in London. So it was so nice to meet her. She congratulated me on performing and said it was great to see you out here. And you know, maybe she was with us. So maybe they met there.

[Spencer Pratt]

Yeah, I don't know. It would be hard for her to meet him there because he was very serious about your Stanley cup. And no one. Yeah, I mean, you know, sequins looked.

[Gabriel Mann]

Away from that top.

[Spencer Pratt]

So they definitely nothing happened there because I. He never left our sides. But who knows? Maybe they bumped into each other and got numbers.

[Gabriel Mann]

He needed some security.

[Spencer Pratt]

But hopefully we can get them on a future podcast if they became a like a relationship and that'll be. Or friends, you know, who knows?

[Gabriel Mann]

Who knows.

[Spencer Pratt]

I don't know anyone's business. And then my book, it's out. So pre order it, please.

[Gabriel Mann]

10 copies if you want.

[Spencer Pratt]

Yeah. You can give them as gifts for stocking stuffers. It's called the guy you loved Past tense to hate. Because clearly right now I'm fighting for California's future against our. Our governor Newsom and fighting for air traffic.

[Gabriel Mann]

This is unreal how much air traffic there is. Like, what the heck? Air pollution.

[Spencer Pratt]

You know, I wonder if they changed the flight plan. Now there's no town or may.

[Gabriel Mann]

We're just not as used to as.

[Spencer Pratt]

How many planes we heard all day.

[Gabriel Mann]

All day long. Feel like we're at the airport.

[Spencer Pratt]

And then big news. Heidi's performing. If you're in Canada, Vancouver. Isn't that Canada?

[Gabriel Mann]

Yeah.

[Spencer Pratt]

Okay.

[Gabriel Mann]

I was announcing the where in Canada. So you know it's Saturday. Yep. I've been rehearsing and I am premiering my new single. There will be the first performance of it.

[Spencer Pratt]

And if you're in the audience, make sure to really wear a great outfit because we're shooting the music visualizer or a piece of it at the live performance. So if you wanted to get a little bit famous, make sure you have like a really good outfit and scream really loud right the front to be in the music video Visualizer. What a working on that outfit.

[Gabriel Mann]

It's very overwhelming what to wear. These performances, we kind of look at what we have done. We want to do Some. Something different. Different designers get a custom, but I don't have the budget to really get what everyone else is getting custom. So, you know, it's a lot that Tomas and I continue to plan. I've been also rehearsing with Enrique, so I have done four rehearsals, and then I have four ahead. I have sound check on Wednesday. So it's a lot that goes into these performances. And this is, as of right now, my last pride for the summer closing out. Summer, spring, summer pride. And it's so bittersweet because it's been incredible to have that focus and that drive and feeling productive and kind of taken out of the destruction and the sadness of losing our home and funneling it into something positive and productive and feeling like it is on a road to rebuilding our lives. Even if it's not true, you know, it doesn't necessarily translate into money, but hopefully it will and just kind of the rebrand. But it's been really great and fun and amazing to have such a strong team and to have another focus and to have a part of my dreams come true through such a. A hard shift of life. So, yeah, it's been amazing. I'm really thankful for every person who's come out to the shows. The energy it's had, the life, it's us, the experience that I'll always remember. So I'm just. I'm thankful for that. And what I know is I don't know what the future holds. So I'm just going to be grateful for those moments and times and hope that there's more to come and we will see what's ahead. And the pop star and I have great new songs coming out regardless.

[Heidi Montag]

Okay, great.

[Spencer Pratt]

Yeah, yeah. On that note, please continue to stream all of Heidi's music and add it to your playlist just for full transparency. Pretty much the math is $1 million equals $3,000. And to put it in perspective, not one of Heidi's new songs has hit a million streams.

[Gabriel Mann]

Right?

[Spencer Pratt]

So thank you to everyone who keeps streaming her album from 2010. But it would be truly incredible if you add all the Heidi Wood music to your playlist and stream it.

[Gabriel Mann]

But you don't even have to listen. You just, like, put it on silence.

[Spencer Pratt]

No, I think maybe a little low volume, maybe. Who knows? Maybe you have to have it. I'll look into that. I'm also, you know, because I've been very focused on our fight for saving the Palisades. I am not totally up to date on everything but Love Island. The only thing I do Care about. I don't watch the show yet. We're going to get into that maybe one day in the future. But I'm always excited for reality television people to get any type of platform that they can monetize. And the fact that this huda. Excuse me if I'm saying your name wrong. Got over 5 million Tik Tok followers this season. Round of applause. That's so. I love seeing that. The power of reality tv. Still.

[Gabriel Mann]

Fame Game, girl. You got the Fame Game of the week or of the month, whatever it is. Congratulations. We are awarding you the Fame Game.

[Spencer Pratt]

Oh, is this a new bit?

[Gabriel Mann]

I just thought I.

[Spencer Pratt]

Okay.

[Gabriel Mann]

Thought that was a good idea.

[Spencer Pratt]

You got it.

[Gabriel Mann]

You got it.

[Spencer Pratt]

Let's. Big, big news. Also in the fame. I'm so glad that I had already been bought off by Ryan Reynolds and his Mint Mobile. So I never got involved with the Blake Lively Justin Baldoni drama and made TikToks because Blake and her legal team have subpoenaed. I only know this because of our friend, dear friend, Perez Hilton did a very serious post about how upset he is that they're subpoenaing all of his, like, records and information that he feels is going to put his children at risk to this. All this public information. So very glad we were in that Mint Mobile commercial because I for sure would have had a lot of commentary. And the takeaway is moving forward from this experience, I'm going to figure out how to avoid, you know, being a tick tock or a podcast and then getting all your information sent subpoenaed for, like, laws. It's pretty crazy.

[Gabriel Mann]

Wait, they're suing him?

[Spencer Pratt]

They're subpoena. Sub. That word. All their. His records. His. I don't. I don't. You have to watch pres.

[Heidi Montag]

Video.

[Gabriel Mann]

Wow, that's.

[Spencer Pratt]

And Google and Tik Tok and I.

[Gabriel Mann]

Don'T know anything about any celebrities or care. Don't come at me.

[Spencer Pratt]

You do. You're the host of a podcast called the Fame Game. Okay.

[Gabriel Mann]

So, you know, positive, positive person. You can't subpoena something for being positive.

[Spencer Pratt]

Nope. Can you?

[Gabriel Mann]

I don't know.

[Spencer Pratt]

Oh, we had a great day. I had a great day. The other day, Brandon and Courtney from Georgia came in down to make sure, you know, cheer my spirits up. So I got a day off. Some shrimp for you?

[Gabriel Mann]

Yeah.

[Spencer Pratt]

Well, that's it.

[Heidi Montag]

Thank you.

[Gabriel Mann]

Have a great day tomorrow.

[Spencer Pratt]

What's tomorrow? You went on a date night last night with leash. You had fun.

[Gabriel Mann]

Yeah, I had a great night.

[Spencer Pratt]

A lot of people also Been reaching out. They're concerned about my safety. Just know everywhere we go, we have the 2023 world champion KNVP police dog. So he's. It looks like he's napping right now, but he's always lurking, so. And I've learned not to use doorknobs. People have told me, don't take any baths. We check the brakes. I'm no longer eating at public restaurants because I think they did poison Brandon's food because we ordered the same thing. And I think they got him because he got scary sick and I did like. So thank you for everyone's concern.

[Gabriel Mann]

You know, you don't have to worry. You have me. I'll protect you. You, of course.

[Spencer Pratt]

Hello.

[Gabriel Mann]

Just don't let the dress fool you.

[Spencer Pratt]

Yeah, she's got weapons underneath. All right, well, thank you to our incredible team. We should start thanking our producer, Anna. Yeah, we already did, like, three podcasts.

[Gabriel Mann]

Wow.

[Spencer Pratt]

What else you got to talk about? Thanks, Shane. Shane should be. What's your tiles? Producer, cinematographer, lighting. We should roll credits like it's a movie.

[Gabriel Mann]

Oh, my gosh, that's such a good idea.

[Spencer Pratt]

Yeah, like spider special things to get, like, you know. Yeah. Hey, if you're worried about getting subpoenaed for a lawsuit, buy Mint Mobile phones as burner phones and then throw them away after each use because Mint Mobile has great SIM card type things, so you can post whatever you want. And you worry you're gonna get a lawsuit, throw the phone away in the trash. Back to all companies that end up watching this. If you pay enough money, I will have a famous artist repaint over the hidey wood billboard and you could have your brand. You know, just throw out some names. Coca Cola, McDonald's, Taco Bell, Pepsi. Pepsi. We'll. We'll do alcohol too. A Como Stquila. You know, we're just throwing any. We love lots of brands. So this could be. We could do the lower piece, too, for less money if you want that piece.

[Gabriel Mann]

State Farm Insurance.

[Spencer Pratt]

Speaking of insurance, we can't shout out Nick Malloyan law firm. He helped us fight California Fair plan for the last six months because we had a fair plan structure policy. That was embarrassing. And they didn't even want to pay the policy limit. Shout out, Nick. Shout out Edwin Najmi, my Jiu Jitsu BFF to introducing me to Nick, his childhood best friend. And he's like, spencer, you're gonna need this. And I'm like, no, we already had this Fair plan policy. There's nothing we can do. It's just locked in for the structure. Oh, you need a lawyer. Let me tell you. These insurance people, please tell me you didn't get plastic. They're like Gavin Newsom.

[Gabriel Mann]

Oh no, that's all gu.

[Heidi Montag]

On WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Knowing you could be saving money for.

[Spencer Pratt]

The things you really want, like that.

[Heidi Montag]

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[Spencer Pratt]

My normal co host, my beautiful global pop star wife is off. We only have three chairs today, so she'll be here in a second. This is a special treat. We have the sheriff of Los Angeles county in my heart always. Currently, due to the rules he has to be re running because of, long story short, Katzenberg and his dark money and scamming all sorts. Okay, but this is Alex, the sheriff of Los Angeles County. Villanuevo just announced he's running again. We have Gabriel Mann who right now, one of my favorite documentaries I've ever watched. The director, cinematographer, artist of Hotshot. Is it Hotshot the movie dot com?

[Heidi Montag]

Hotshot movie dot com.

[Spencer Pratt]

Hotshot movie dot com. Make sure you watch that. How I met Gabriel. We'll get into it. This is like a quick cold opening. He was the only person online that I saw defending with a brain while why the Palisades didn't need to burn down because everybody in the comments section will talk about, oh, the winds. Oh, you don't need water. Oh, you don't need brush clearance. It's just supposed to burn because we live in California. That's our choice. You wanted to live in California, your house could burn down. And then Gabriel, with so much knowledge, started helping me guide the actual truth. So we'll get into that later in the pod, but the sheriff was in town checking out what happened to the Palisades and I heard he was a town. I said please Stop by. So we are going to have a longer episode the next few weeks to really get into Los Angeles and public safety and the future. But really why it's such a treat to have him here today is he brought to everybody's attention when he was the sheriff of Los Angeles. The conspiracy. People love the word conspiracy, but it's not. It's the truth about what these nonprofits do with the money that people donate thinking they're doing something good. And why I bring that up is we'll get into fire aid and Governor Newsom, but Alex found this going on with the unhoused industrial complex or the fear of wildfire hotshot, the wizard industrial complex. And he brought that to attention. So the parallels are here today. Perfect. To discuss fire aid, which. Here we go. And usually we're gonna have three microphones, but I think squatters in the Palisades may have allegedly taken two of the mics. So next episode, I won't hold the iPhone. Hello gentlemen.

[Heidi Montag]

Thanks for having us.

[Spencer Pratt]

Oh my gosh, what a treat. Sheriff, please tell our audience, listeners, viewers about what you dealt with with the unhoused industrial complex and seeing how this money that just goes into these things and they build 11 million dollar units or they. And take it away.

[Alex Villanueva]

Well, first of all, I want to say I don't. I'm not going to ask you how you're doing because I'm standing in the rubble of your home. I think that self explanatory. I can tell you this, what you rely on normally, what people think of, oh my God, we have all these public entities are going to come out and ride to our rescue when in times of need. No, that's not the case. You look at how much money between 2011 and 2021, the county of LA spent six and a half billion dollars of your tax dollars, which includes part of your property taxes that you paid right here, six and a half billion dollars to address the homeless in LA County. And the population of the homeless doubled in size in 10 years.

[Spencer Pratt]

Well, speaking on that just yesterday because obviously I'm a plaintiff suing LA County, L.A. dWP and the state parks, Gavin Newsome. And somebody was like, it's so sad. Even if you win, you're going to be taking tax money. And I wrote back to them. Oh, you won't notice because $30 billion to Unhouse, they actually didn't track that. So you're not concerned about that $30 billion. So maybe all the people that they let their houses burn down that actually paid taxes and that is our money I put into the state and LA County. I'll just get that back since. So don't worry about that, because that was an issue. But exactly.

[Alex Villanueva]

That's exactly how it's working. And you look at the money that's flowing to all these nonprofits, they do not track how they spend the money. They don't show the receipts of how the money was spent. The results of it. We know it. The problem gets worse. And what is the reaction from the County Board of Supervisors? Let's do it again. In fact, you know what? Yeah. The LA Homeless Service Authority isn't quite working. So we'll pull our money out and we'll create a new bureaucracy to do the exact same things. And who do we put in charge of the new bureaucracy? The same people in charge of the homeless industrial complex. Woohoo. I mean, that mentality, you gotta wonder, oh, my God, no. One of these people in the public sector and not in the private sector. We gotta either deliver results or you're gone.

[Spencer Pratt]

Yeah. And then here's like with. We'll get to Fire Aid. So for our listeners or viewers who don't know what Fireade is, I think it was January 20th. I just looked because I made a tick tock because I was so upset. My wife had a number one song in the world with Pitbull. And they didn't ask Heidi to perform at this. This fundraiser that all the stars were performing to for the victims of the Palisades and Altadena fire. And I was like, why wouldn't they use Heidi? I know why. Because they knew they weren't giving the money to the fire victims. And I would have been there backstage and I would said, where's the first check? Can I leave with it tonight? They would have been like, oh, no, no. It's going to Gavin Newsom's Cal Volunteers and his wife, who's an honorary board member. And it's also going to 150 different charities. Most of them aren't even in LA. And then when the LA Times, which I've now learned in the last week of being attacked, which is really just Newsom's propaganda PR establishment, from my experience, this week, they ran this deep dive and they talked like three. We called 150 people and it all went to church. You're missing the point. LA Times, it's not going to the Pacific Palisade's fire victims. And then they're like, oh, this person gave 500 cards to vendors and landscape. Like, oh, that's cool. So I was out here, according to the LA Fire Department, clearing my brush or I was going to get fined. Technically was a landscaper with Luke, and I didn't get a 500 thing. So that's what I've learned about these non profits. And then you deep dive it even deeper. They're all getting salaries of $700,000 a year, $150,000 a year. So first off, even if they were going to give some money, the fire victims, a big chunk is coming out to these people. Why didn't we just skip this little scam con and have it? If we needed a non profit, we should have had Palisades Community center, non profit created and the money goes actually into the community. And then the town can have their own meetings and they can figure out how to disperse the fund to the actual victims. But here's the best part about all this. Newsom and his press office is now saying, oh, we have nothing to do with the nonprofit. Nobody said you did. But you took the money and then you deleted it off your website. So don't worry. Thankfully, the Congressman is asking for an investigation with the Attorney General. So Kevin, Kylie, shout out. Kevin, Kylie, hope to have you on the pod once you get all the scoop.

[Alex Villanueva]

Very true. We found out in the top 10 nonprofits in LA dealing with the homeless, the CEOs were making on average 800,000. If we went to the top 25, it only reduced to 625,000 a year for the CEO. I mean, these nonprofits are a name only and it's just staggering the amount of money that goes to them. But you look at what actually the output or the outcome, what they produce, it's like a little trickle and that we just got to stop there. We need to actually hold people accountable because resources are scarce, they're hard to come by, and we should make sure we get the most, you know, the biggest bang for the buck. What we're getting and we're not getting that taxpayers are being defrauded.

[Spencer Pratt]

And that's the best part about this whole. Like people always used to say, the military industrial complex, you got to have war. So you keep making the bombs. What people don't connect is the homeless industrial complex. They don't want people to not be homeless because then they don't get $800,000 a year. And then ready for this, there's the Wildfire industrial complex in California. They don't actually want the fires to stop because after you watch Gabriel's film, you'll see that's how many Billions a year just in California, 1.5.

[Heidi Montag]

Oh, they just, they just upped it with what happened in January 7th. So it used to be a 12 billion dollar a year industry in California.

[Alex Villanueva]

Prime example. And on the homeless side, Venice, the Venice boardwalk was being destroyed by the homeless. We come in and we basically shame the city into cleaning the whole thing up. And we got, the citizens were excited, the business owners were excited, the tourists came back, it all came back to life. And what was the reaction from the political establishment? How dare he? I mean, you can't make this stuff up.

[Heidi Montag]

And the sheriff, you had barbers coming down and giving people haircuts to try to set them up for success.

[Alex Villanueva]

Joe the barber, they did a wonderful job. And when we first went there, about 50% of the stores were closed. There was hardly anybody on the boardwalk. And the few that were on there, they were going by at 20 miles an hour on a bike and looking scared. And you had people with different stages of mental illnesses screaming and throwing things at each other. And that was it, that was the board and everything. 200 plus tents lining. You could not even see the ocean from the boardwalk. And you're right there. And now it all changed. When we cleaned it up, it came back to life. You saw people using the boardwalk, which meant dollars are coming in to the coffers of the city of la and you'd think that's a good thing, but in their eyes, no, they were only worried about, oh well, he's there with a cowboy hat and you know, he doesn't know his jurisdiction. I mean, I just don't know what these people are thinking really.

[Spencer Pratt]

Well, they're making all this money, so that's what they're thinking and they don't want, they don't want it to change. I mean if you're making 800 grand a year, you don't want change, you want it to be worse, to make a million a year. So once people really, and I think thank God for this fire aid thing is, I think it's blowing the lid off it because when you see these non profits are all taking the money and doing it, whatever they want with this money and it didn't go to victims, I think this could be a tipping point. I'm going to keep pushing for that. This is a breaking news. This is a viral moment. Can't give you my sources. It's going to come out very big, but I'm going to tease it. It's very, I can't even say the source, but it's factual. That the morning of the Pacific policies fire, President Biden was flying in and there was a complete air grounding and the helicopters that were putting water on the fire had to stop. And once they did take it away, it didn't immediately get the helicopters back because allegedly the new sheriff Luna had never dealt with a major fire and never been ahead of a command center. And the mayor was in Africa. So there was this disconnect between the people in power. And so once the actual flight restrictions were lifted, they still didn't get the helicopters back on target. And that's the first line of attack which you'll learn when you do your research. That's our only chance is getting that water on the fire and this little mishap. And from my sources it looks like it was our. The Luna didn't respond. We'll get exact facts coming soon in the case. But from your experience actually leading command centers, how important are these? I mean it's obvious question. It's. These are seconds we need to be making these decisions. Not an hour.

[Alex Villanueva]

Definitely. Every second counts because every second, just like when you have a patient in paramedics, every second means more blood going out and you're gonna. You lose your patient. And same thing with wildfire, with civil unrest. Any matter the more you delay the response, the worse the problem is gonna get. And this one got a tipping point where it exceeded the capacity of everybody to deal with it. But you had a narrow wind of opportunity at the very onset can it be addressed?

[Spencer Pratt]

And that is exactly what we will keep deep diving into this investigation. So stay tuned. I'm gonna get time stamps, I'm getting the FAA calls, it's all coming out. So just stay tuned. That's not just. We're calling it allegations right now, but I got the facts. Well, why we still have the sheriff here there. Is there any things you just want to knock out connecting to the Palisades fire from your observations, the response, the what led up to it?

[Alex Villanueva]

Just my biggest concern, and this is the same as the Palisades as it was for the Eaton Canyon fire, is that the lack of an evacuation plan because all right, say the fire is too big for the human capacity to put it out because of the wind conditions, the fuel and all that stuff. Right. However, losing life is inexcusable because there has to be an evacuation plan, there has to be implementation. You have to people on the ground getting people out of harm's way with obviously the people that are homebound, the people with, you know, animals and all these things. Get them going first at the first hint of okay, this could go sideways. There was no semblance of an evacuation plan. And in Eaton in particular, people had to do self evacuate on their own and figure it out. And you know what? 19 people didn't figure it out. And that all falls on law enforcement leadership, fire leadership.

[Spencer Pratt]

Well, if you look at how lucky the Palisades was on the Palisades drive where I know so many friends and family members that had to abandon their cars, they didn't know what to do. So they're also leaving their keys in the car because there's nobody from law enforcement or emergency personnel telling them leave your keys in the car. You know, they're just all dropping their bags, running with their kids because flames are on both sides of the street. So the Palisades is actually so lucky. It was not a tragic loss of life. Obviously over, I think 33 people did die that day, but it could have been hundreds and kids. And so they, we got lucky. And also it was at 10:30 in the morning. If this has happened in the middle of the night, it's, it's truly beyond. It's. You can't even fathom what would have happened. So. Well, we're going to bring Heidi on. It was. It's great to see you. We'll see you in a few weeks and we'll talk about your campaign and all of la. Any other where can they get you right now? I know your Instagram, the Instagram, Facebook.

[Alex Villanueva]

Sheriff, you know, 33, you can get me there for the campaign. Alex villanueva2026.com all right, Sheriff.

[Spencer Pratt]

Well, it's beyond a pleasure. Thank you so much. Oh wait, one last thing, One last thing, one last thing, one last thing. When our house, when we actually knew our house was probably going to burn down, there's only. I can think of one person they actually called to ask if we needed help evacuating a place to stay. And it was the sheriff and his.

[Gabriel Mann]

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[Heidi Montag]

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[Gabriel Mann]

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[Heidi Montag]

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[Gabriel Mann]

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[Heidi Montag]

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[Spencer Pratt]

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[Heidi Montag]

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[Spencer Pratt]

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[Heidi Montag]

You brought it back.

[Spencer Pratt]

Ranch snack wrap. Spicy snack wrap. You broke the Internet for a snack. Snack wrap is back. Okay, my favorite Internet defender that I've only known on social media now, but it feels like 20 years. But it's been a week and a half. Shout out Keegan Gibbs, who's the head of the Malibu Community Brigade that probably get on a podcast as well. But he sent me Gabriel's live Twitter stream when he was breaking down our lawsuit against California State parks, the county, L.A.DWP and just showing how insane what really happened in the Palisades. And his background. He's a filmmaker, made an incredible movie Hotshot.

[Heidi Montag]

You can get it on Amazon, Apple, hotshotmovie.com whatever you whatever 10 out of.

[Spencer Pratt]

10 you will never look at fires the same like it should be everyone's homework just period to just know what's going on. And let's just start as a thank you for defending me and against LA Times. You've defended me against. You've defended me against Gavin Newsom. And again this is out of just this is a stranger, I just met him but he felt compelled to do hard hitting live streams where he brings out all the facts and you can go check out his Twitter later and they're all archived and you can watch what I'm talking about. But okay, what's up?

[Heidi Montag]

Well, look, I don't want to burst your bubble. I'm not here to defend you honestly like I, I'm just here to stand up for reality. This is kind of what motivated me to make my film and especially I spent six years on the fire line filming this thing and I spent 10 years in total on this production. So you can imagine I learned a lot being surrounded by these firefighters. The gulf that there is between the reality that the firefighters experience, what's actually happening with these fires and what's communicated in these rags like the LA Times that used to be a respectable newspaper but now it's, you know, it's just a supplicant media arm for the governor at this point. That divide between reality and what's conveyed to the general public, it's almost criminal. Because, you know, I think you don't necessarily need to be a fire expert to understand that something went wrong here. I think everybody could smell it. You know, even if you know nothing about wildfire, I think everybody in the Palisades could smell something was wrong with this fire. This didn't go down the way that it should have. And you may not be able to identify it, but in the same way, like, you don't need to be a chef to know what a bad souffle tastes like. You know, you may not be able to make it yourself, but you know that something's wrong. And I felt this need to chime in and talk about all the things that did go wrong because there's so many conspiracy theories that, you know, talk about. Oh, they're trying to cover up, like evidence of crimes or space lasers. That's always a big thing. The reality is, government loves these conspiracy theories because it distracts you from ever realizing that the biggest threat to your life is just bureaucratic incompetence. And I know that's boring. It's not sexy. But as we've seen, as we learn more about what happened with this fire, you've got not one empty reservoir. You have two empty reservoirs. You have aircraft being shut down. Not because the wind. They were still operating. They were shut down because of a flight restriction. The power wasn't shut off. So that's two strikes against ladwp, which runs the water system here, and they also run the power lines. There wasn't just one ignition. Like, we've all been focused on what started the Palisades fire. There were multiple ignitions. And those homes up in the highlands, they were. They were out of danger in the initial push of this fire. But then a bunch of homes burned down later that night. How does that happen?

[Spencer Pratt]

Well, shout out Mike gtv a Palisades legend. His house didn't burn down in the highlands till the next day.

[Heidi Montag]

Unacceptable.

[Spencer Pratt]

The next day. Like, that's.

[Heidi Montag]

That's because there were secondary ignitions because they didn't shut down the power. And look, there's two problems with not shutting off the power, which you always do on a wildfire, because operators cannot work under energized power lines. It's too dangerous because they might come crashing down on their heads and kill them. And so fire line work had to be halted up in the highlands because the power lines were still energized. And so what does that mean? Well, now the fire is going to slip out the back door. So the first thing that they always do when there's a wildfire is they go straight to the heel of the fire and they try to at least button up that side, right? Because that's where the lowest level of fire activity is. The wind's pushing it towards the ocean. That's the worst fire activity. You can't get anywhere near that, you're not going to stop it. Right. But on the heel, you can put that out pretty easily, cut some line. And at least we know, okay, this back door is closed. We can look just in one direction. We don't have to look at 360 degrees. They had to shut down work on that fire line on the hill. And then they had another ignition because the power lines were still throwing hot slag everywhere. This is like unacceptable, especially in 2025. Like, this is fire country. I always refer to this whole area, Malibu area, Malibu Canyon, as Fire Alley. Like, I grew up just across the way in Agora Hills at Malibu Lake. And I remember in 1993, we had basically the exact same fire as the Woolsey Fire. 25 years later, these patterns keep repeating themselves. And because there's not this good information coming through the mainstream press, people who live here in fire country have no idea what to expect and they get blindsided every time. So I look at this and then I see, you know, the LA Times attacking you when you're in the right. And then I see the governor inexplicably coming after someone who's not just a victim of like one of the worst fires that we've ever seen. But my God, dude, you're suing him. Like, why? How is his counsel not, like busting down the door of whatever blue haired intern is running that social media account and saying, you need to stop it is absolutely inexplicable and shameless behavior. I cannot fathom how a governor would think that it's okay to be attacking fire victims. You guys are entitled to be upset. And as we've found out, the more we learn about what happened to this fire, it's like, this isn't just upset because you lost your home. They're upset because this never should have happened. And we're gonna, we're gonna find this out.

[Spencer Pratt]

That's what's so exciting. And, and I just like every day, I'm like counting days because once everyone actually sees, like the evidence that's in the case that you don't show until the end, you know, once you just get ready. So knowing what I know, I'm like, you guys are in big trouble.

[Heidi Montag]

Yeah.

[Spencer Pratt]

And then, like, for somebody to come after me is one thing, but the wildest is they try to then blame me for stopping the. This bill that was going to help my community. And they. They tried to not only shame. They said, how shameful. I forget the misquote, but the governor's office is like, that this was going to help your community. And now it's not. First off, this bill is only paused. So that's also just. Gaslighting is the term I now like to use.

[Heidi Montag]

But still think. Think of how disgusting that is, that they're not just attacking you. Right. They're trying to sow discontent amongst the entire plaintiff class. They want your entire neighborhood and your fellow victims here to be mad at you. So that way, they come here with the pitchforks and say, oh, Spence, you ruined this for us. We were going to. They were going to rebuild our homes for free, and you ruined it. It's a complete lie. And it's. It's shameful.

[Spencer Pratt]

And here's what they don't get, which is so funny. I'm in. Every single victim, WhatsApp, every single street has like a. A captain. I'm. The amount of texts and messages I get from locals, victims, asking me, telling me, please bring attention to this, please. It's like, I'm not just like, oh, let me go do this. I feel obligated as the only one with a platform in this town that wants to speak on behalf of the community. So that's the other thing. They think like, oh, this is just some C list reality star. Make them like, I got 10. I was gonna say 10. There's like 70 lawyers. It's called the Pali Legal Chat. Shout out. These are all partners at law firms whose houses burned down, and they're. They don't have one. Like, they're not this type of politics or that type. It's victims. That's what people are missed. Like, this is victims that want the answers.

[Heidi Montag]

This is a unifying event.

[Spencer Pratt]

Exactly.

[Heidi Montag]

You're dispenser. The dispenser. The dispenser of truth. And this is really key one thing that I've observed that's really tragic about fires in California. They. They follow the same pattern over and over. There is a very brief window where you guys have the social and political capital to make a change so that this stuff doesn't happen again. That first two weeks where everybody is so stunned by the destruction. That's kind of your only window. Because immediately after that, all the attention all the empathy falls off precipitously and then you're just going to fall through the cracks. The same thing happened with Paradise California. Like my old hometown in Malibu Lake, there's still homes there that haven't been rebuilt seven years later. So it's really easy for this stuff to just disappear. So it's important that you raise a fuss. And it's good that you have the mental fortitude to take the slings and arrows, because as you can see, the sheriff will attest to this as well. They're dirty. They will resort to the dirtiest tricks just to attack you, just because they might assume that you are aligned against them politically. I have no idea what your politics are. And the thing is, like, the Palisades is a very mixed community, you know, very mixed community. At the end of the day, we had a tragedy and it's going to be a unifying event. I just hope that people don't fall prey to the tricks by the media, because it's really bad. Like, we talked about the conspiracy theory angle and how that's always distracting from the truth. But, like, what's really disturbing is what they're planning to do with the Palisades afterwards. You know, when I was riding up here, my driver was saying is the first time he had seen the Palisades at the fire. And he's from South Central and he came in and he was like, I knew it. I knew they did this on purpose because he saw all the construction that's starting and he's like, they did this on purpose. They're going to build all these high rises. He's not like plugged into any of this stuff. But just instinctively, like I said, people can smell when something's off, and something's definitely off. And the question becomes, why? Why is everybody in Sacramento trying to do so much? Why not just rebuild what we had here? Why are they trying to add stuff to it? Like, and the thing is, you can see the vultures circling. You could see them right away, right? They're circling to pick the carcass clean of the Palisades. Because when you look at this real estate, the views that you guys have, you imagine how long developers have been lusting after this land and all they needed was somebody to shake the Etch A Sketch. And now they have this foothold where they can come in and slam in high density housing. The thing that people don't understand is existing legislation in California from 2008 mandates that they build homeless housing in the Palisades. It's Mandatory, and it's hidden in a transportation bill. What does this have to do with transportation? Well, you have to understand that they see high density housing as the fulcrum point for solving greenhouse gas pollution because, well, if everybody's living in the same place, they don't need to drive everywhere. And so that's their plan. I can't fathom anyone, except like maybe a California politician who would look at that cluster F of an evacuation where you had everybody slammed on Palisades Drive, had to abandon their cars. We had to get an LA county dozer to clear out these vehicles. Who would look at that and think, hey, you know what would make this better? 50,000 more people. Like, what we should be doing is we should be banning more density in a fire zone. The idea that you would add more people to this is it's a recipe for disaster. And like you said, we're so lucky this didn't happen in the middle of the night. Right? At least people were awake and they were ready to boogie. Maybe a lot of people were at work. So, yeah, they lost their home. Maybe they lost a bunch of possessions and stuff that they could have taken with them if they were here, but they got out with their lives.

[Spencer Pratt]

Just yesterday I got so many messages. The new thing that now everyone's asking me to try to fight and bring transparency is a developer just right here in the Alphabet streets bought up all these lots of and already applied to put duplexes on them. So already forget even the like, oh, the big scale Sacramento develop smaller scale. I mean, I guess they're not small scale. They're buying up lots, but they're already buying up lots to try to split them up and add double. There already wasn't any parking on these streets. Like when the sheriff was. He's like, where did you guys park? It's like we all had to park on the streets you had to go through because, you know, it was already too many people here and now we're going to have duplexes and high rises or whatever. So when people keep asking me, oh, do you want to rebuild here? I'm like, God willing, only if I can do everything in my power to get the Palisades back closest as it was or I want nothing to do with it. So it's this emotional that, you know, because Heidi's like, why would you want to come back? And I was like, because I grew up here. This is where I don't they win. If I let them take this magical place and turn it into this experiment.

[Heidi Montag]

It's your birthright. Yeah, that's the thing. So, you know, half my family lived here in the Palisades. The thing is, I come from a middle class family. Like we think of the Palisades now, it's a very wealthy community. Sure. The median house I think is like three something million dollars. It wasn't always like that. So, you know, people like my grandmother, my aunt, my cousins, they, they bought in like 30, 40, 50 years ago, back when it was cheap, frankly. And they can't afford to rebuild in modern prices. A lot of them are retired. You know, they're only making a few thousand dollars of Social Security every month. They're never going to be able to come back ever. And so you have a lot of generational homeowners in the Palisades. They're going to have to move out to Lancaster because over the course of those 40 years, all the prices just ran away from them. And you know, they're not property owners. Right. They were leasing, they were renting. And so they don't have any equity, they don't have any claim. They just lost everything and they'll never be able to come back. And this, this idea of embedding high density housing, this isn't like a conspiracy theory. Like I said, this is mandated by law. And so you guys really need to be on guard because they are going to try to funnel this in some way because they say, okay, we tabled this. This bill that you brought attention to, that already is really suspect. If all it's meant to do is help you guys, why would you table it?

[Spencer Pratt]

Yeah, they would have said no, Spencer's a liar. This is going through read. This is the best.

[Heidi Montag]

Read it like you would show everybody, hey, here's how it's going to help. Oh, if you guys are hung up on this one little clause that talks about homeless housing, we'll get rid of that. Okay, we'll get rid of that. We'll figure that out later. But why would you table the whole thing? Well, clearly it's because the gig is up, right? They got caught. And the way they were trying to sneak this in, they weren't referencing this mandatory housing element directly in the bill. They were hiding it by referencing previous legislation. So you got to understand that this infrastructure has been built up over years and years to do exactly this. And you know the owner of the Shell gas station over on Sunset, that gas station burned down. He's already said that he wants to put a hundred unit housing in the footprint of a gas station. That's Going to be a high rise.

[Spencer Pratt]

Here's what's so ironic about that. He was fighting that area. He just wanted to tear it down and do a second story, like mini mart on top of it. And the town fought that. So that's how far we've already jumped in the Matrix to the town didn't want him to add another floor to the gas station. And now he's going after that. So before, you know, you catch your flight, he flew in for this, a real one. So Heidi and I, just on the way here, we went to the other side of Topanga State Park. So for people that don't know there, there's. There's supposed to be this big investigation that I realize Gavin Newsome on January 10 said he was investigating. Who knows where that is? But there allegedly. What our lawsuit's going to show is there was this reignition of a New Year's Eve fire, and that's in Topanga State Park. So we drove to the other side of Tanga Topanga State park today to look at what that looks like. And it looks like, as you'll watch his film, lots of fuel, 40 years of fuel, meaning dry brush, no maintenance, no clearing. And people will argue there's nothing you can do. What do you say to those people that, you know, say you can't maintain this brush?

[Heidi Montag]

They are dead wrong. We have a scene in our movie Hotshot where we showed a fire that was very similar to the Palisades Fire back in 2020, the Silverado Fire. And it ran with 85 mile per hour winds straight towards Orchard Hills. But they had cleared out a 300 foot green belt around their community. And so as soon as the fire hit that green belt, we're talking like, you know, succulents, things that don't burn. The firefighters didn't even have to pull out their hoses because the fire just stopped dead in its tracks. And look, it threw some spots into a few palm trees because palm trees are fire magnets, by the way. Like, nobody should have palm trees in their yard, but they were able to knock that down really quickly. The thing is, if you were to clear out 300ft of all this brush in these, these hills around here, you would have a fighting chance.

[Spencer Pratt]

Because I was gonna say this if you can't see on camera, but there's a house behind this tree. And I always was so like, God, they're so smart. They obviously did their own back of the hill and they cleared it always up, and it was just this big chunk behind their backyard. That I bet they shouldn't even have legally done because I'm sure that wasn't their property. And you can't just cut the. You see, there's these weird.

[Heidi Montag]

There's all. There's a very complex regulatory process for people to step into state property. But look, this is Topanga State Park. This is state property that's totally overgrown, totally mismanaged. It is in desperate need of fire, which this, look, this area is fire dependent. So it's, it has to burn. You can see that there's already regrowth, right? And it's nice and green. Actually, that's what it looks like after a fire. What you saw on the edge over near Topanga is a rat's nest. And that is going to go. And I keep warning everybody in Topanga that they're next and they need to push on the governor who is in charge of Topanga State park, that they need to clear out some of those fuels. They need to cut a barrier, they need to do some prescribed fire. They didn't do it. And the Palisades got wrecked because of it. We drew out a sample burn plan that the Palisades could have done or at least, you know, the state authorities could have done around the Palisades. It would have only been 750 acres. That's it. It's really small. That would cost the state $500,000 to do that firing operation. And the thing is the ignition of the fire would have been within that boundary. So this fire never would have happened. But let's just pretend, you know, it started deeper in. It would have stopped. I'd put everything I have on it because I've seen it too many times. When you do prescribed fire, it works. It actually reduces the risk of devastating wildfires by 90%. 90%.

[Spencer Pratt]

One of the great things about your film is you go back to the Native Americans who were. They created fire. They're the first firefighters. They created these prescribed fires and they were experts in it. And what did we do? I learned from your film, right? When we took over all these parks, we did the opposite of what the Native Americans had done of years of living in a fire. Whereas people say in the comments section, you deserve it because you live in a fire. Like, no.

[Heidi Montag]

Yeah, dude. My barefoot ancestors were able to live here for 12,000 years without a problem. They didn't have helicopters, they didn't have bulldozers. They understood this natural process and they did it proactively so they would burn out. Like for example, the Carrick Indians in Yosemite Valley. They would burn out their Yosemite Valley every single year, ritualistically. And it did a lot of things. Of course, it protected them from wildfire, but it also, it cleared out all this brush. They were able to see predators more easily. They were able to hunt, because you can shoot an arrow straight through the forest now and then you get a bunch of wildflowers that grow in, in that burn scar, and so that attracts pollinators and more growth and more robust growth. And that's pasture land that's going to draw in, you know, grazing animals that you can hunt and have for food. So there are a lot of benefits. And they did this for 12,000 years. Every single forester in the country, every fire chief in the country understands this. And in Florida, they burn 2 million acres a year proactively. That's more than California has done with prescribed fire in the last 50 years. And every time that Gavin Newsom touts how much prescribed fire they've done, notice the trick that they do. If you ever ask, how much prescribed fire have you towed, they'll say, We've treated 700,000 acres. They'll never say, we burned 700,000 acres, because when they say treated, they're lumping in a whole bunch of other things that aren't prescribed fire. So that way they can hide the embarrassing amount of prescribed fire that they're actually doing, which is closer to 36,000 acres. The thing you have to understand, with the fire regime that we have here in California, you need 4 to 11 million acres of prescribed fire every year. 4 to 11 million acres. They're only doing 36,000 a year. It's leaving everybody vulnerable.

[Gabriel Mann]

So what could people do to protect their own homes if they're not going to be protected? What is something proactive? What is something we possibly could have done to protect our own the most?

[Heidi Montag]

The weakest points in your home are going to be the gutters. If there's leaf litter in your gutters, or if there's leaf litter collecting in some of the angles on your roof, that's going to be the most vulnerable, where you're getting fire directly against the roof. Also, vegetation right up against your home is going to be very problematic. Obviously, if you have agave, those aren't going to catch on fire. There's, you know, certain kinds of bamboo that aren't going to catch on fire. The other thing is vents, so gabled vents, the eaves, anywhere where embers can find their way through. Now, you'll notice that when you drive through the Palisades. There are a lot of areas where you see five burned out homes and then one home that's just totally fine. There's a lot of randomness to the way that these fires unfold. Right. I think everybody envisions a wildfire coming through a community like a tsunami. Like, it's just bulldozing everything. That's not how it happens. It's really spotty and random because it sort of depends on those embers finally finding their way into your home in some Rube Goldberg kind of way. This speaks to why the water factor was such a huge factor on this fire. Because, look, when you have a giant fire front like we've seen in some portions of the fire, yeah, water's not going to do anything for that. But if you have a couple of embers that just caught your gutter on fire, water is absolutely going to stop that. If it's unchecked 15, 20 minutes later. Yeah, that little fire in your gutter is going to spread to the rest of the house and it's over. That's why the water element was so critical, especially with that reservoir being empty. The most important asset on your fire, especially at the beginning, is that aircraft, and they. They had to fly three times farther to refill with water. So that reduced the amount of time that they were actually fighting fire. They. They might have had a chance with this thing. Once it gets to a certain threshold, there's. There's kind of nothing you can do. But as we rebuild the Palisades, if people are using, you know, non combustible materials, like we're not going to have wood shingle roofs. Your next door neighbor, it's got basically a concrete bunker. That's a model for how you do it. Now we got to find a way to make it look prettier.

[Spencer Pratt]

He's the architect.

[Heidi Montag]

I like traditional architecture. And the thing is, there is a way that you can do it. We should have Spanish tile. We're in California. We should have Spanish tile roofs. But honestly, if. Look, if you. If you live next to Gavin Newsom's property and they've done no prescribed fire, and he set you up for a devastating wildfire, if you could just do a few things, remove the stuff that's flammable from the side of your house, clean your gutters, and close up any vents. If you have a gable vent, that is the easiest way for embers to get inside. What I did when I was living in Santa Clarita was I just put a plastic cover over it. That's it and there's no chance of embers getting through. We had the tick fire pushed through my neighborhood with like 45, 50 mile per hour winds. Nothing happened. So we, we can live here. Anybody telling you that you just can't do this? Like I said, my barefoot ancestors lived here for 12, 000 years. They figured out how to do it. I think we can figure out how to do it.

[Gabriel Mann]

Would you also live here without insurance?

[Heidi Montag]

I don't.

[Gabriel Mann]

A whole nother level.

[Heidi Montag]

I don't even know if, if this is going to be insurable anymore. But I think the insurers have a responsibility to have a more cooperative approach with the homeowners. And I think if the homeowners take personal accountability on their property and they do all the things to try to fire harden their homes, there should be a little bit more wiggle room. Now if someone is being totally neglectful, they're not clearing any of their vegetation, they're not cleaning their gutters, they don't have any protective measures, then okay, that's a different story. We have to take personal responsibility for these things because you never know when your utility company is going to drain your reservoir and leave you without water, right? Or not shut off the power or they're going to ground aircraft because of a TFR for some reason. So you have to be ready for this on your own because they ain't going to save you. They might by chance, but you can't count on that. The other thing we should consider is having sprinklers on people's roofs. Honestly, like if you just wet stuff down when that ember lands in the gutter, what's it gonna do? It's just gonna go.

[Spencer Pratt]

Gotta make sure water comes out of the sprinklers though. All right, well, you gotta catch your flight. Anybody who's watching this, his film is phenomenal. Like one of the best movies you can watch. So definitely watch it on Amazon, Apple app everywhere.

[Heidi Montag]

Hotshotmovie.com if you don't want to give Jeff Bezos his pound of flesh.

[Spencer Pratt]

Or do it because we love prime and Amazon.

[Gabriel Mann]

We love Amazon.

[Spencer Pratt]

Amazon sponsors podcast next week. All right, well, that's it. We'll maybe see you next week, but make sure you like, subscribe.

[Gabriel Mann]

Share kind comments.

[Spencer Pratt]

Oh, kind comments are beautiful.

[Gabriel Mann]

Always want.

[Spencer Pratt]

Even if you don't watch it, just you can write something nice. Okay, thank you.

[Gabriel Mann]

Thanks for coming to the theme game.