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- [00:00]
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- [00:53]
Radio or Podcast Advertiser
on May 29 from focused features and the producers of Darkest Hour comes the untold true story of D Day. Facing the wrath of nature and with the largest seaborne invasion in history at stake, the fate of the war rests on the shoulders of two extraordinary men. One impossible decision. Featuring powerful performances from Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon and Damian Lewis, the untold true Story of D Day Only in theaters May 29. Rated PG13 may be inappropriate for children under 13. Experience it in Dolby Cinema
- [01:26]
Mike Pesca
it's Wednesday, May 6, 2026. From Pete Fish Productions it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. I like the Abundance Agenda a lot. I like the Abundance book too, just not as much as the big idea of the Agenda itself. And also, I got to say, not as much as the book by Mark Dunkleman. Why Nothing Works. Dunkleman was a guest of the Gist as Recline and Derek Thompson, who wrote Abundance, weren't. That didn't really play a big role in my choosing what I like and what I don't like. But recently I was listening to Klein and Thompson and Dunkleman on an episode of Klein's podcast and they were talking about what their books got right and what their books missed. Some good stuff there. Two hour conversation. A lot of good stuff there. But I got fixated not just on the points they made, but how they made the points. Klein and Thompson are very eloquent guys. They're smart, really super, kind of off puttingly smart and they do speak with great fluidity. But there is something about the words they sometimes use that I think might strike an audience as more admirable than Engaging something to marvel at rather than connect to. More Cicero than Pericles. And to some I got to think the words might be a bit confusing. So there are a couple of words that I just think are too smart. Too smart to allow to come out of my mouth. One such word, Reify, and I started getting said a lot a few years ago. Doesn't do anything for me. I'm not a huge fan of orthogonal. I've used it a couple times. I've got friends who use it well. I understand. I'd rather say something else. But this one, this next one, this is a big one that we miss.
- [03:13]
Jonathan Vigliotti
Other instantiations of power and a neighborhood can in strange way be an instantiation of power.
- [03:20]
Mike Pesca
Instantiations. That was Derek, this was Ira.
- [03:23]
Jonathan Vigliotti
Progressivism already has like the right view
- [03:25]
Mike Pesca
on this, but it has not been
- [03:26]
Jonathan Vigliotti
able to instantiate this view into policy.
- [03:29]
Mike Pesca
I don't know instantiation. I don't know when a noun. How about embodiment? It's the embodiment. Embodiment still a pretty highfalutin word. You can't feel you're letting anyone down if you say embodiment or embodiment as a verb. Instantiation maybe is a little more needed because not a perfect synonym. As a verb maybe like represent or to make real two words, but that works. To one syllable words. It's more acceptable to use instantiate as verb. But then on to Dunkleman, my main man Dunkelman. He thrilled me, I do have to say on this podcast, by being the rare speaker to use the full and actual idiom.
- [04:07]
Radio or Podcast Advertiser
Ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
- [04:10]
Mike Pesca
Yes, yes. I love it. I say this to the proof of the pudding is in the taste. That's how I say it. That makes the saying make sense. I get. Thank you. When I say that. Wait a minute. The proof is in the taste. I never knew that's what it meant. Now I get it. That's how communication supposed to work, right? Maybe not. Maybe people aren't supposed to stop and say, wait a minute, that phrase you used, I'm pulling it out of the overall meaning of the sentence and marveling at it. In this instance, the proof of the pudding is not resting in the instantiation of pudding theory into say, pudding deliverables on the show today. Okay, I'm going to get far less abstract than that. In fact, we are going to get downright natural and destructive. We go to L. A, the L. A wildfires. And we will now engage in an accounting of mistakes, fallout and and accountability Jonathan Vigliotti is here. He is the author of Torched How a City Was Left to Burn and the Olympic Rush to Rebuild LA.
- [05:22]
Radio or Podcast Advertiser
On May 29. From focused features in the producers of Darkest Hour comes Pressure, the Untold True Story of D Day. Facing the wrath of nature and with the largest seaborne invasion in history at stake, the fate of the war rests on the shoulders of two extraordinary men. One impossible decision. Featuring powerful performances from Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon and Damian Lewis, the Untold True Story of D Day Only in theaters May 20th. Rated PG13 may be inappropriate for children under 13. Experience it in Dolby Cinema.
- [05:55]
Mike Pesca
Well, one of the best books I've read in a while about one of the topics that I couldn't be more interested in is Torched How a City Was Left to Burn and the Olympic Rush to Rebuild. It is an account of the LA fires that is like no other because, well, you know, to use the phrase, it brings the receipts, it lays the blame, it talks about history. And there is a lot about the power structure of Los Angeles that has nothing to do with a spark bark, an ember, a blade of grass, a dried patch of land. Jonathan Vigliotti, who is the CBS correspondent from the area who's been covering this for a while, is the author of the book. Jonathan, thanks for joining me on the gist.
- [06:42]
Jonathan Vigliotti
Yeah, thanks for having me. And thank you for that introduction. That's very kind.
- [06:46]
Mike Pesca
Tell me, just tell me about the personal where were you when the flames started?
- [06:51]
Jonathan Vigliotti
I was at the bureau. So the CBS News Network bureau is Studio City. I was not supposed to be in that day. My bureau chief had me on standby. I was actually supposed to be in Hawaii on a different story, but I was held back because of the warnings that were growing and escalating in severity. And I was initially at home. And then a fire broke out in West Hollywood, a very small fire. It was contained very quickly, but it was a sign of the threat to come. And so I was called into the bureau. I remember being in my bureau chief's office. We were looking at the monitors where we get all the live feeds from helicopters, from ground crews of all of the fire and the battle that was happening in the West Hollywood hills. And we looked and she said, you know, this is the day is young. And sure enough, it was as we were there. I have this app called WatchDuty. It's an invaluable resource here in Los Angeles and in the west where wildfire is prevalent. And as we're watching that one fire The West Hollywood fire where crews were quickly gaining control. I got an alert that said there was a fire in the Palisades at that point. And this is, this is 10:30ish in the morning on January 7. The fire was so young, literally just a spark in the grass. It didn't even have a name yet. And that's when my team and I were dispatched. It took us, you know, we're about a 30 minute drive from Studio City to Pacific Palisades. We got within the region pretty quickly. But as I detail in the book, once we got to really the perimeter of the Palisades, it was already bumper to bumper traffic. And I've covered many fires in my time. Here is a correspondent in the West. I don't think in my 10 years doing so, I have responded to a fire so quickly where there was already so much chaos.
- [08:50]
Mike Pesca
Right. And so that gets to my question. There is something called fire season. It is not unknown. Yeah. In the day, days before the fire was there. Can there be any indication that this season things can get worse than others or does that indication have to come when the fires start?
- [09:10]
Jonathan Vigliotti
Yeah, you know, it's a great question and you follow the science. So fire season typically is in the hotter months, the summer months. When you get into the winter, it's, that's typically the rainy season here in Los Angeles. So in a sense you could say maybe there's a reason people have their guard down. But if you reflect back on that time, as I did in the reporting of this book, we had gone for eight months without measurable rainfall leading up to the Palisades fire. There were several other fires in December and in November. One which torched dozens of homes in Malibu, another one in Ventura county, in Camarillo which destroyed multiple neighborhoods. So the warnings were clearly there, that traditional wildfire season. And of course with climate change, with the way our weather is becoming more extreme, there's that saying that there is no such thing as fire season anymore. It is year round. But even in the winter there is kind of that idea that you can take a break. This specific winter though, all the signs indicated that this was going to be a year round fire season. And forgetting just about those examples, you know, in November and December and we can talk about this in more detail. You had the National Weather Service and when I talk about the science really sounding the alarms for more than a week leading up to January 7th, saying specifically this was going to be historic weather, it obviously escalated as the days got closer to ground zero, to that day of detonation but 100 mile per hour winds, which was what was in the warnings leading up to this fire, that's historic for Los Angeles. They've never experienced, this city has never experienced 100 mile per hour gust. And then you add to that just how dry it's been. All of that vegetation which grew because of the rain, dried out because there was no rain after a long period of time. It was a tinderbox waiting to explode. The warnings were there, all of the signs were there. The personnel, the government, the. They were. According to those that I have spoken with extensively for this book. From my own perspective. They're covering the fire from the ground. I think it is fair to say, asleep at the wheel.
- [11:25]
Mike Pesca
When you were talking about it being January and this being months after fire season usually. But also the fact that there hadn't been rain in many, many months. There is a sort of municipal schedule and a municipal cadence to things. And sometimes in January you don't fill up all the reservoirs and sometimes in January you don't trim the trees beforehand because it's January. It's just not what's done. Now you paint a picture of this should have been done because it was very unique. I shouldn't say very unique. It was a unique January because of the circumstances. Was that going on that they were or enough people were treating it as a normal January as opposed to a, an acute fire season.
- [12:11]
Jonathan Vigliotti
This was a normal January. The way that the response felt, the pre planning and the book details all of this. There was nothing to indicate that this was being treated as an extended wildfire season. Now you could say this caught us off guard, right? If we, if, if we kind of let some of the rhetoric take control and take over. Oh, you know, there was nothing we could have done to stop this, to prevent this, to plan for this. I have heard that said by certain officials time and time again. But then I again point to the timeline laid out by the National Weather Service. Sure this is traditionally the rainy season, right. But when you have a weak heads up and you already have history proving that this is going to be a risky time because of the fires that happened earlier in December and November, that's time to step up and to take action. It does not take a lot to mobilize city tree trimming crews. That, that, that is an operation that can pick up very quickly when you talk about the rest was done on
- [13:14]
Mike Pesca
what's called a red flag day.
- [13:16]
Jonathan Vigliotti
And a red flag day.
- [13:18]
Mike Pesca
Red flag day is since you said shit already and I like the shit is Hitting the fan today. The fan needed to be prepped days earlier. Yeah.
- [13:27]
Jonathan Vigliotti
And I mean, also, it was. It was declared a particularly dangerous situation by the National Weather Service. So this wasn't just like any normal red flag day. This was an incredibly rare, rare and dangerous red flag day. You only have a particularly dangerous situation. PDS issued once every three to five years. And so to have that issued here, and it was the third time in three months there was a PDS issued. The other two times were those two other fires I told you about. So already the recipe for disaster was very clearly written down, you know, in the cookbook, like it was there. And all of the signs pointed very early on a week's head up, heads up to take action. And that was not taken. You mentioned the reservoir because I do think the reservoir was closed down for planned maintenance, which at the time made sense because it is typically the rainy season. I don't know fully what the process is for reactivating, like opening that back up, but I can tell you a week's notice, everyone that I have spoken with said there was no way that they would have been able to fill that reservoir back up, fix it, and fill it back up in time to address and adequately provide water pressure, which became a critical component of all this.
- [14:44]
Mike Pesca
And that did. That did affect some of the firefighting capacity in those neighborhoods that it did ran out of water. And had the reservoir been filled, filled, though perhaps relatively, I'm not going to say a drop in the bucket, a small percentage of the overall need, you can still make the case that in those neighborhoods, some amount of land and houses would have been saved, most likely.
- [15:07]
Jonathan Vigliotti
Certainly, you know, that reservoir was part of an arsenal that firefighters have at their disposal to fight fire high up in the hills there, where water pressure has historically always been an issue. The Santa Ana's reservoir that was actually put in in the 1960s, into the early 1970s after the Bel Air fire, which burned homes, I think hundreds of homes were lost. And one of the big issues was water press. Firefighters back in the 60s responded to a fire and because of water pressure issues, could not get water out of the hydrants. And so now here we are all these years, decades later, and you have history repeating itself. But there was another component to all of this, too. The reservoir played an issue, but also the failed response. Firefighters did not get to the point of ignition fast enough. They did not get into the neighborhoods where the flames jumped from that wild land into those neighborhoods fast enough. And what ended up happening, you know, every home is essentially A band aid over a series of pipes and infrastructure. And among those pipes, water lines. So when you lose a home, that water line is severed and it bleeds out. And that becomes a critical issue with water pressure. The more homes you lose, the more demand and pressure you're putting on the fire hydrants. So imagine it's like you've got. You're bleeding out everywhere your heart is failing to pump. Even if you had that reservoir full, it would have struggled to feed those hydrants because the failed response did not get to the places where the fire began fast enough to act as a tourniquet to stop this fire from tearing apart these homes and exposing those water lines. So it was really a perfect storm. A perfect storm that could have been prevented. A man made storm in more ways than one.
- [17:00]
Mike Pesca
Those conditions were there, but the mayor wasn't there. Now, want to be clear, you, as a correspondent for a network, were told not to go to another story because. Am I getting this right? They thought there was a big chance that there would be a bigger story there in Los Angeles. Whereas the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, was in Ghana at the time. Yeah.
- [17:23]
Jonathan Vigliotti
So let me take you through my personal experience. This is, you know, right after New Year's. Now, I had this trip to Hawaii planned. A work trip to go into the rainforest to film birds, endangered birds. It was the kind of story that I had spent months setting up, Very excited to do. It was January 2nd or 3rd. The first alert from the National Weather Service had gone out on X, formerly Twitter. And my bureau chief calls and says, you can't go to Hawaii. There is this warning. It is for next week. It seems serious. And I remember thinking, I don't even hear anybody talking about this. You know, the mayor's office isn't sending out any kind of messaging on this. The fire department not sending out any messaging on this. This is crazy. Why am I staying behind when this is a week away? You know, the forecast isn't always accurate. And I was frustrated. But as the days continued on, you know, that was, I think that was a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, everything started to escalate over the weekend. Then you have this 100 mile per hour prediction. And it was clear that my bureau chief had read the signs and the science clearly. Now let's do a parallel to this because you have the mayor's office at the same time as I am being told that I can't go the mayor's office. And Mayor Karen Bass receives word from then President Biden's office announcing that she's going to be part of a delegation to Ghana. The warnings were out. Those that I've spoken with, very close to the mayor's thinking said she knew of the warnings. She received word of this trip on a Friday and then left 24 hours later with giving no notice to her greater cabinet. She had her team send an email to a small group of people, the emergency response agencies, specifically saying that she would be out of state, not specifying that she would be out of the country. She included the council president, Marquis Harris Dawson on that he is to serve as the acting mayor whenever the mayor is out of the out of the city. It was not very clear though in this very brief note that he would be taking over the job.
- [19:40]
Mike Pesca
Did your reporting indicate he didn't know that she was in Ghana? Just vaguely out of state?
- [19:45]
Jonathan Vigliotti
Yep, just vaguely out of state. Everybody that I have spoken with said it was unclear where the mayor was, that it was, but there were news
- [19:53]
Mike Pesca
reports of her in Ghana right in ceremony there.
- [19:58]
Jonathan Vigliotti
So what happened? There was an email that was sent and this is part of Transparency Law. It's the calendar and the agenda for where the mayor is going to be. And the mayor's office actually sent several out about where she would be that weekend specifically into the following week when this fire weather was forecasted to hit. The first few notes made no mention whatsoever of Ghana. But then came this last minute, no, that kind of buried within it mentioned that she was going to be part of this delegation to Ghana. It was not picked up by the LA Times, it was not picked up nationally. Very different from when she went to Paris for the closing ceremony for the Olympics. Instead you had one Saturday morning local news broadcast put it in their story as a 22nd, what they call a reader that she was going. That was the only thing though that I have been able to find that reported where she was and this trip, you know, a trip that was given to her, she was chosen, hand picked by President Biden. This was very significant for her. It was something that was very much part of her agenda. Her desire to go to it was very unusual for her not to broadcast it. And we could go one step further. And as I report in the book, several sources close to the mayor's office even went further in the way that they characterized this. The mayor knew the conflict. I think we've all kind of been there before in this psychological sense where you have one commitment but then you get another commitment and you're like, oh, I really want to do that second commitment. I really want to go to that party and the way it's been described to me, the mayor was aware of the weather, knew that the conditions were escalating, had the belief that maybe it would not materialize, and said, I'm going to go on this trip. And instead of broadcasting it, made it appear through social media posts. While she was in Ghana, she had her team post social media posts, photos and videos of her here in Los Angeles, making it seem like she was here when she was actually more than 7,000 miles away. And notably in all of this, you have the mayor in Ghana as part of a presidential delegation and there was not a single photo that was publicly released showing her there at any step of the way. So there was a lot of confusion about where she was and when shit hit the fan. There was a lot of confusion about who to get in touch with and how to respond accurately.
- [22:29]
Mike Pesca
She should have been there. She wasn't. But because she wasn't there, give me a sense of what capacity the mayor of the city of Los Angeles, which is a well resourced institution, but perhaps not perfectly. I'm sure she doesn't have a real mobile situation room. So what, Reese? What capacity would she have to manage things from afar other than the fact that she's, you know, thousands of miles away? How much behind the eight ball did her being in Ghana put her?
- [23:02]
Jonathan Vigliotti
You know, I believe she should have been there, but I also believe she could have been in Ghana. She could have chosen to go as long as she laid out that blueprint for how to attack and respond to this disaster. Instead, what happened, she left pretty discreetly. No one was aware of what was going on, who was where. It was very unclear to many people where the mayor was. Again, Ghana, more than 7,000 miles away. The fire breaks out January 7th. She gets a call from the fire chief, then fire Chief Kristen Crowley. Kristen Crowley did not know that the mayor was in Ghana until that call was set up by her team who informed the chief that the mayor was in Ghana. So already you have the fire chief reaching out to who is supposed to be the commander in chief. That is the role of the mayor. And she's being put on delay essentially because she's got to now wait for the mayor to be available because she's 7,000 miles away in Ghana. The chief doesn't even know to reach out to Marquis Harris Dawson at this point, who is on the ground in Los Angeles. She finally gets a hold of Mayor Bass. She tells Mayor Bass about what's happening. Mayor Bass says, you've got the full Support of the city. Mayor Bass reminds the chief that Marquis Harris Dawson is the acting mayor and to reach out to him for any support at that point. And this is what City hall and her communications team have previously said, that the mayor was tuned in, was coordinating, was conducting this fire response from that moment on. Except that's not true. And my reporting has sussed that out. I have spoken with several people that were inside this reception, this cocktail reception where the mayor was in Ghana. She went after she had this phone call with the fire chief for more than an hour to this reception where she was not on her phone, she was not responding. And as she was not responding, her teams. And all this is proven through text messages from public records, requests from interviews that I have conducted. The teams were scattered. The teams had no idea where to go. The hierarchy, the chain of command. And you talk to anybody that responds. Whether it's a disaster of this scale, a war, chain of command is critical because it prevents confusion. But without, without this conductor, and that is the role of the mayor, Everything was scattered, everything was out of tune. Perhaps most significantly, the mayor has the power to declare a local emergency. And that did not happen. It took many hours before that happened. And that's important because it mobilizes additional crews. It frees up critical money to bring in apparatus, to bring in people, men and women who could fight this fire. That did not happen because she was not around. There was confusion about the language of evacuations. Those evacuations took hours to happen. And by the time they were really released and the evacuations were made official, you already had residents in chaos mode evacuating themselves. And part of that chaos is what prevented the few crews that did try to respond, fire crews, from actually gaining access because the roads were blocked. The mayor, and this comes not from me, and not from me assessing my reporting, but from officials that know how to respond to disasters. If the mayor was tuned in from the very beginning, I am told this would have been a very different response. Because instead you had everyone operating in the fog of war. You had nobody from that 30,000 foot perspective. And that is the mayor's role as commander in chief. Looking at this war zone and figuring out how to mobilize. What agency needs to be contacted here? What agency needs to be contacted here. The fire chief didn't even know that the Santa Ana's reservoir wasn't full.
- [27:02]
Mike Pesca
Right?
- [27:02]
Jonathan Vigliotti
That is something that the mayor's office should have informed in a game plan days before the fire even sparked so that crews could have been pre positioned. These are all things that the mayor is responsible for. For.
- [27:14]
Mike Pesca
Back in a minute with more of Jonathan Vigliotti.
- [27:23]
Radio or Podcast Advertiser
On May 29. From focused features in the producers of Darkest Hour comes Pressure, the untold true story of D Day. Facing the wrath of nature and with the largest seaborne invasion in history at stake, the fate of the war rests on the shoulders of two extraordinary men. One impossible decision. Featuring powerful performances from Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon and Damian Lewis, Pressure the Untold True Story of D Day Only in theaters May 29. Rated PG13 may be inappropriate for children under 13. Experience it in Dolby Cinema.
- [27:55]
Mike Pesca
Jonathan Vigliotti is the author of Torched How a City Was Left to Burn and the Olympic Rush to Rebuild L. A. So before the break we were talking about Mayor Karen Bass. The mayor was not in theater at the time. At one point Vigliotti analogizes her to an orchestra conductor who was absent but also a general who is not there during the war. Which brought me to Kristen Crowley. She was the former chief of the LA Fire Department. And my question to Vigliotti, what did Crowley get right? What did Crowley get wrong?
- [28:28]
Jonathan Vigliotti
It's a great question. Those that I've spoken with and those that know her well and she has even acknowledged this to some degree, she was in over her head. She thought that she was prepared for this firestorm. She thought that the signals she was getting from the mayor's office, from the emergency operations center, Carol Parks, who runs that center, she thought that all of that was correct information to their by. Go go on. She had teams pre positioned. She did not have teams pre positioned in the right places. She did not have teams pre positioned in the Palisades. Specifically the Palisades, according to the National Weather Service was in this framed gold framed box in the map of Los Angeles as the target, one of the hotspots for fire danger. And she failed to pre position her teams there. What she did well was try to communicate with other agencies. She did reach out to the mayor's office. She did reach out to Carol Parks and the operations center. And this was days before the fire started. But she didn't hear back. She didn't hear back from Carol Parks until a text message was sent out late the night before about starting and activating the EOC at a level three, which is the lowest level to operate at. I have spoken with close colleagues of the chief who say she regrets not pushing back harder on a higher activation, an activation two or an activation one that has been done before during Hurricane Hillary which hit Los Angeles. I Think it was two and a half years ago now as a then tropical storm with 43 mile per hour winds. They activated at a level two and I think actually escalated to a level one before it even arrived. There were press conferences that were held for days leading up to the hurricane hitting, where you had the mayor, you had the governor, you had the fire chief, you had every emergency manager on television answering questions, warning the public. It was like true hurricane coverage that did not happen during this fire. To Kristen Crowley's, you know, I think to, to. To show what she did, perhaps right. And to her credit, she pushed her teams to reach out to local newsrooms and to go live during interviews and warn the public.
- [30:58]
Mike Pesca
Unfortunately, yeah, she was, for many, for much of it, the face of it, she was doing a lot of orchestration. She was also doing press conferences.
- [31:06]
Jonathan Vigliotti
It just wasn't enough. It ultimately wasn't enough. And she should have pushed harder. She also could have held over some of her teams. You know, a thousand firefighters that were coming, they weren't.
- [31:16]
Mike Pesca
They weren't working those 24 hour shifts,
- [31:18]
Jonathan Vigliotti
and she could have kept them over. That's exactly what the county ended up doing. I spoke with Fire Chief Maroney, who is on the county side of things, and he was. He was very clear there's a lot of risk that comes with doing so. First, you have teams that are exhausted and you're telling them you got to work longer. And then there's also the financial cost, more than $1.5 million to do so. When you're holding over about a firefighters, Kristen Crowley did not have the other voices in the room to bounce these ideas off of. And suddenly when you're working and operating in an echo chamber by yourself, $1.5 million to pull a handle on and say, let's do that, that's scary. That's frightening. And from those that I've spoken with, that weighed on Chief Crowley. She also, though, in her defense, and she's come out and spoken about this quite publicly, said even if she did so, there weren't the fire trucks around for these crews to respond in because there was a backlog on maintenance because the budget had fallen short and there just simply weren't enough people to repair these vehicles. Now, I've spoken with people who are critical of that comment, saying you could still have your bench ready even if you don't have the vehicles for them to launch in. You have them there on standby ready to launch however they need to launch, and that that was ultimately a failure and an oversight and the sense I get from the sources I've spoken with, Chief Crowley would do things differently, obviously, in hindsight.
- [32:51]
Mike Pesca
So tell me about Newsom. He was there earlier than Bass. He's good. At a press conference, he would rattle off all the assets that are. That were in place, leaving out just how inadequate those assets were. Why did he, to my mind, look at where he stands in the presidential prediction markets right now. Why did he mostly escape responsibility for this. This gigantic disaster that happened in his state and on his watch?
- [33:20]
Jonathan Vigliotti
You know, it's. I think the mayor was taking so much heat, Ghana became such a big headline. And I think this book makes Ghana even bigger than people understand. But even on day one or two. Yeah.
- [33:34]
Mike Pesca
I'll just interrupt to say, well, that was a poor choice or a bad ch, but what are you going to do? And your book answers that question. There's a lot she could have done, but. Sorry.
- [33:41]
Jonathan Vigliotti
Yeah, and, and, and it's. And you know, it just. That took the oxygen. And the governor knew it. The governor knew it. And those that I've spoken with, they. There was a reason you didn't see the governor that often with the mayor. There were a few times. And in those few times, you had discussions that were focused on how to change the optics of this disaster. The governor may have avoided a lot of finger pointing early on and continues to because the mayor took so much attention away from it. But the governor also understood if the optics did not change quickly, if there wasn't this discussion about rebuilding and resilience, then soon there would be frustration. And that frustration would turn from. And shift from Mayor Bass to anyone, including himself. What struck me, because I was again, I was there throughout all of this. I remember January 8th. This is 24 hours after the fire sparks. You still have homes burning. The wind is calmer now. You have the downtown area, the commercial district of the Palisades still going up in flames. You have people still in their homes, not sure if they should evacuate. And then you have, as this is all happening and as fire crews are still struggling to even arrive. It was. I did not see many fire crews. Even 24 hours into this. You have the governor and you have the mayor walking through this. This wasteland still on fire. And it was a wasteland at that moment. This was where the, you know, the business block building, this historic building that really anchors downtown. It was just the skeletal remains of itself at this point. You have flames everywhere and you have the mayor and the governor walking there as if it's some kind of stage. I Have never recalled a time where a leader, let alone two leaders, show up as the fire is still burning. I liken it using a source to a crime scene. It was like walking through a crime scene.
- [35:45]
Mike Pesca
Well, show up while it's still burning and talk about it as if. If we've gotten past the hardest part,
- [35:50]
Jonathan Vigliotti
as if we've gotten past. And. And in that conversation, from those that I've spoken with that were privy to it, the discussion, of course, was about the response. We need to get more agencies here from all over the west to respond to this. And that was underway. But of course, it takes time to get crews in from hundreds and in some cases thousands of miles away. But just as quickly as they were talking about the response, they were talking about rebuilding. And the true toll hadn't even been calculated at this point. It was impossible to measure because the fire would burn for nearly a month longer. And they were talking about rebuilding and, and rebuilding specifically because of the Olympics.
- [36:30]
Mike Pesca
They knew, yeah, this is what we want to get to. And it's even in the subtitle of the book. So the other, the other main character is Casey Wasserman, who I want to do an update on him. He was leading the charge to get and to secure the Olympics. They got the Olympics. Why is that so important in this story?
- [36:48]
Jonathan Vigliotti
Because he becomes a direct leash to President Trump. He has a decent. He had at the time a decent relationship with the president. The governor knew and the mayor knew that they would need to rapidly rebuild to cut all regulations, not just local, not just state, but also federal regulations, to make this happen. Casey Wasserman, a very close friend to both Mayor Bass, he was photographed with Mayor Bass at the Paris Olympics closing ceremony and several days while in Paris together, also very close with Newsom. Newsom reached out. Actually, it was Casey that first reached out to the governor. The governor said this during one of several press conferences he held where he acknowledged it was one of the first calls he received. And that was a very specific call. That was a call about how to keep the Olympics in Los Angeles. Because at the time, you already had critics saying there is no way Los Angeles can host the Olympics. How can you host the Olympics? And what is now an ashtray. That kind of language was really starting to ramp up. They already knew, and by they, I mean Bass and Newsom. They had taken a huge hit for losing the Palisades. They knew that if they lost the Olympics, it would be game over for their ambitions. Knew some obviously very eager, it appears, to be elected president and to Lose the Olympics, that would be it. And so Casey Wasserman became this lifeline. He flew to Mar A Lago, met directly with President Trump, confirmed eased any concerns that the rebuild would be fast. We need your help and that this place will be ready, this place, Los Angeles, ready for the Los Angeles Summer Games. And it worked. The president supported the Games going on in Los Angeles, vowed and promised his full support to Los Angeles. And that laid down the groundwork behind the scenes. They became unlikely bedfellows behind the scenes where they were working together for the common goal. And it is a. No one's going to argue it's bad to have the Olympics in Los Angeles under normal circumstances when you have what's happening here now after this fire and the slow rebuild, and it's been slow, even though they've called for a fast one, we could talk about that, but it hasn't, it hasn't landed well. What has unfolded and well, yes, let
- [39:19]
Mike Pesca
me ask you about that. In your estimation and reporting, how did yoking their ambitions to the Olympics warp what should have been the best practices in rebuilding?
- [39:31]
Jonathan Vigliotti
So instead of following the science, instead of taking time to do so, to really understand how this fire started, where it spread, how it spread as fast as it did, what trajectory it took, instead of understanding that, instead of taking the measures to give people the right tools, the right materials to rebuild a blueprint for resiliency, instead, what happened was permitting was really escalated in terms of how fast the permits were issued. We're talking in less than a month. You have major environmental review boards that were suspended. These dictate where and how you build to make sure that you're not threatening your neighbor, to make sure you're not too, too close to wildland where fire can jump. To also analyze evacuation routes and right of ways. There were so many issues with fire trucks even getting to some of these neighborhoods because the roads had become just too narrow over time. None of that review unfolded in this mad dash to rebuild rapidly. Beyond that, there's testing that unfolds. It normally takes about 18 months after a wildfire to clear the land of a community destroyed, to begin safely rebuilding. 18 months here as a result of this, you know, whatever we want to call the friendship behind the scenes that seem to be there that really had everyone from the president to the governor tethered to the same torch. You had an 18 month process distilled down to just three months. And how did that happen? A lot of red tape was cut. You had crews come in and remove hazardous waste without Proper areas to even store that hazardous waste. FEMA for the first time in 20 years, stopped testing for toxins in the soil. Those toxins can spread carcinogens very easily. And that is a process that takes time to clear. When those carcinogens exist, if they exist, if the testing shows they exist, it can stall the entire effort. Without that testing, families were allowed to return very quickly. And permitting was a very quick process. As promised, 20% of homes lost were issued permits in the Palisades in the first year. When you compare that to other fire zones where you don't have the Olympics as a timeline, it's a very different eye opening experience. In Lahaina, only 2% of homes lost got permits in the first year. In paradise near Chico, destroyed by the campfire, 5% of homes got permits in the first year. Here in the Palisades, 20%.
- [42:14]
Mike Pesca
So there is this defiant impulse after taking a hit, a shock from a natural disaster or in the case of say 911 terrorist attack. And I covered 911 and I wasn't there when the levees broke in New Orleans, but the next day I was for many weeks. And that defiance in New York is we're going to build the towers bigger and that kind of works or worked for the Freedom Tower because of a lot of things like the economics of New York and for New Orleans. It didn't. But I think that there was some understanding of trying to be a little more humble, build with some humility. And a quarter is something like a quarter of the population hasn't returned. And my son goes to school there and when I visit him, I compare it to pre Katrina New Orleans. You can really see the differences and it's heartbreaking, but inevitable also. And I know Obama's quoted early in your book, what is going to be the lasting lesson of Palisades?
- [43:10]
Jonathan Vigliotti
You know, I think there are a few. I think it's all about the before, during and after of this disaster. I hope the legacy is this can never happen again. I hope the legacy is this is not Mother Nature. This is our failure to imagine and to prepare. I hope the legacy is the next time the National Weather Service sounds the sirens, we listen, we understand and remember what happened in the Palisades and prepare accordingly. We have the right teams sent in, we have the right agencies tuned in. We have our commander in Chief there. I hope the legacy for during a response is how to be better prepared at responding and containing chaos. This isn't the first time evacuation orders have failed. We saw it with the woolsey fire in 2018, similar chaos, similar trauma. You talk about the lasting impacts of that ptsd. People struggle to even move back to these places, even though they're being asked to move back and rebuild quickly and, and being promised to rebuild quickly. A lot of people struggle because they lose trust that they will be protected. They lose trust in their government. I hope the legacy for after a disaster like this, God forbid what happens here and the legacy of before enduring are ignored once again. I hope the legacy is to rebuild stronger, with more resilience, that we can't do the same old routine, the same blueprints. Yes, we have a fire coat and it's the strongest in the country. California has a strong fire code, but it is not strong enough. As we have seen, many homes lost in this fire were built to fire code. I hope the legacy of this fire is exactly that. Paying attention, I think ultimately is what connects all three of those together. Eyes wide open, instead of just hoping we'll get by the next time a fire starts.
- [45:08]
Mike Pesca
Jonathan Vigliotti is a national correspondent for CBS News and is the author of the new book Torched How a City Was Left to Burn in the Olympic Rush to Rebuild la. Thank you so much, John.
- [45:20]
Jonathan Vigliotti
Yeah, thank you, Mike, for the conversation. I appreciate it.
- [45:28]
Mike Pesca
And that's it for today's show. Corey War produces the gist. Kathleen Sykes runs the gist list, Ben Astaire is our booking producer, and Jeff Craig runs our socials. Michelle Alpesca oversees it all benevolently. And thanks for listening.