60 Minutes - 03/30/25: Hostages, Voice of America, Left Behind

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Correspondent Lesley Stahl dispatches to Israel for her 5th report since the Oct. 7 terror attack to interview freed Israeli and American hostages, including Yarden Bibas and Keith Siegel, who are speaking out to share their experiences in captivity and what they witnessed at the hands of Hamas. Correspondent Bill Whitaker reports on Voice of America (VOA), the U.S. government-funded international broadcaster that is now off the air thanks to a Trump administration executive order and lockout of hundreds of its employees. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi goes behind the scenes of the Environmental Protection Agency's massive cleanup effort after wildfires tore through several Los Angeles neighborhoods three months ago. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now streaming. Everyone who comes into this clinic is a mystery. We don't know what we're looking for. Their bodies are the scene of the crime. Their symptoms and history are clues. You saved her life. We're doctors and we're detectives. I kind of love it, if I'm being honest.

Solve the puzzle, save the patient. Watson, all episodes now streaming on Paramount+. can don't miss a moment culture's in trouble i can feel it of tv's number one show these people are dangerous i'm doing this alone not at all every bad man gotta have their robin culture justin hartley stars i made a promise i would never stop looking in tracker all episodes now streaming on paramount plus and returning cbs fall Israeli hostages recently released by the terror group Hamas share their pleas for a ceasefire and return of those still held in Gaza. If you could say something to President Trump, what would you say? Please stop this war and help bring all the hostages back.

And you think he can help? I know he can help. I am here because of Trump. I'm here only because of him. The Voice of America was launched during World War II to counter Nazi propaganda and was broadcast around the world uninterrupted for 83 years until two weeks ago.

So what do you think that says to your listeners and viewers? I think it would make them wonder what the hell is going on in the United States. These are the remnants of all the synthetic stuff that makes up modern life after it burned in the Los Angeles wildfires. 60 Minutes was with the Environmental Protection Agency as it began removing all the hazardous waste, including electric vehicles. Their batteries can explode when damaged.

It sounds like you're treating these batteries almost like a live grenade in the field. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega.

I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. Is every fabulous item I see from Winners? Like that woman over there with the Italian leather handbag. Is that from Winners? Ooh, or that beautiful silk skirt. Did she pay full price? Or those suede sneakers? Or that luggage?

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Learn more at Visa.ca slash fintech. Statistics tell the grim story of the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. 1,200 civilians and soldiers slaughtered that day. 251 taken hostage, men, women, and children. Since then, an estimated 50,000 Gazans have been killed. Twelve days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu resumed the bombing of Gaza, breaking a fragile ceasefire that was exceedingly popular with Israelis. Two dozen hostages came home alive in that ceasefire. Now, instead of quietly healing,

many of them, frail, traumatized, and in in pain are out campaigning for the release of all the 24 remaining hostages still believed to be alive suffering in the Gaza tunnels this weekend new talks around a possible ceasefire have been reported that would include releasing a handful of them. The anguish of Yardan Bibas, forced to sit on camera after he's told by Hamas that his wife and sons were blown up in an Israeli air raid. Though he now knows that the boys were killed by their captors. They were murdered in cold blood, bare hands.

They used to tell me, um, ah, doesn't matter, you get a new wife, get a new kids, better wife, better kids. They said that to you? Yeah, many times. Many times. His wife, Shiri, and two red-headed sons, four-year-old Ariel and nine-month-old Kafir, became the symbol of the horror of October 7th when they were kidnapped out of their home

while Yardan was driven off to Gaza on a motorcycle, swarmed and beaten by an angry mob. He was released last month in a staged ceremony, sent home thanks to a ceasefire. The bodies of his wife and sons were returned later. Just four days after burying them, he made a public appeal. You wrote a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu that was read aloud,

and it was really a plea to stop the fighting. Yeah, because we still have people there. But don't you think that the fighting will encourage them to release the hostages? No. No? No. The fighting resumed despite a ceasefire agreement in place

that would have eventually ended the war in exchange for all the remaining hostages. This is Bibas' first interview. He chose an American outlet, he said, so the White House would hear his message. If you could say something to President Trump, what would you say? Please stop this war and help bring all the hostages back. And you think he can help? I know he can help. I am here because of Trump.

I am here only because of him. I think he's the only one who can stop this war again. So you think he can bring about another ceasefire? He has to convince Netanyahu, convince Hamas. I think he can do it. The lives of the hostages still there, Biba says, are jeopardized every moment the bombing continues. And he knows.

You were held mostly in the tunnels? Yeah. So when there was fighting going on, when the IDF was bombing, life got worse? It's scary. You don't know when it's going to happen. And when it happens, you're afraid for your life. The whole earth would move like an earthquake but underground.

Oh my God. So everything could collapse any moment. Weighing on Bibas is that his best friend is still in Gaza. David Cuneo was kidnapped with his wife Sharon and two kids. They came home. He did not. This is David. I know him from first grade. And this is his younger brother Ariel. And they're both still in captivity?

They're both still in captivity. And I don't know if they gave enough food, enough water, especially now when the war is back on. Tell us about the friendship. We did everything together. He was with me in every big thing in my life. He was in my wedding, and now I'm having probably the hardest thing I have to move with my life, and David is not with me.

I lost my wife and kids. Sharon must not lose her husband. Hours after the bombing resumed, Biba stood in silent protest alongside another recently released hostage, Keith Siegel. This war must end. Keith, who's Israeli-American and his wife Aviva, had gone to the White House to thank President Trump for their release.

Mr. President, please take care of yourself. This is your house? This is my house. They showed us where they were kidnapped, their old house in a kibbutz near the border with Gaza. I stood here. They forced me out of the window, and they pushed me out of the window while I had to go all the way there.

Oh my God. I was in a shock. I was in a shock. We were driven into Gaza and then taken into a tunnel, feeling in danger, feeling life threatened, terrorists around us with weapons. Could you breathe? Was there enough oxygen down there? We were gasping for our breath. Aviva was with her husband for 51 days until she was released during a brief ceasefire in 2023.

They were held with several women and children and said there was constant abuse. I witnessed a young woman who was being tortured by the terrorists. I mean, literal, you know, torture, not just in a figurative sense. They made you watch it? Yeah.

I saw sexual assault with female hostages. Keith says things got worse for him after Aviva was released and that early ceasefire collapsed. The terrorists became very mean and very cruel and violent. More so? Much more so. They were beating me and starving me.

Do you think they starved you or they just didn't have food? No, I think they starved me, and they would often eat in front of me and not offer me food. Did they let you take showers? Once a month. It was like a half a bucket of water with a cup to, like, pour over our body, cold water. I had heard that they shaved the men's heads

and private parts. Yes. This is true. Do you know why? I think they thought it was maybe it amused them or, you know, humiliated. I felt humiliated. You told us that your spirit was broken. Yes. I felt that I was completely dependent on the terrorists, that my life relied on them,

whether they were going to give me food, bring me water, protect me from the mobs that would lynch me. I was left alone several times, and I was very, very scared that maybe they won't come back and I'll be left there. And what do I do then? Oh, my goodness. What do I do then? So maybe that was a way for them to torture me in that way, in a psychological way.

Make me think, okay, should I escape? Should I not escape? Should I try to escape? But I'm pretty sure they knew I wouldn't dare to do that because I needed them. They murdered and they kidnapped and they also burned. Back at their destroyed kibbutz, Aviva spoke of two neighbors still languishing in Gaza. There needs to be a deal that will bring them back and finish with this whole thing. Also still in Gaza, best friends Guy Gilboa Dalal and Eviatar David. Hamas kidnapped them from the Nova Music Festival,

taking them deep into enemy territory. Recently released 40-year-old Tal Shoham spent 471 days with them in captivity. After I met a guy in Eviatar... He met their parents to tell them about their sons. There are families in situations like this now, all over Israel, where released hostages are telling families

the conditions of their children. It's important for us to know exactly what's going on with our children. You're prepared? Yeah. You think? No. Maybe. It's hard for anyone to be prepared,

especially when it's your kids. And Tal didn't hold back, telling Guy's parents... One moment is like parting in the Nova. The second moment is in the worst place in the world. And it took him, I think, five or six days just to stop crying, to start to realize that this is the reality now. Tal said they were mostly confined

to a narrow tunnel like this, beaten every day, and made to share minute amounts of pita, rice, and water. Like, sometimes the water tastes like blood, sometimes like iron, sometimes it was so salty that you could not drink it, but you don't have anything else. You don't need too much to stay alive. You can eat only one bread every day

and have like 200 milliliters of water every day and you will stay alive. You proved you could do it. Yeah. The main guard, he actually said, I can bring you this kind of amount of food and you will survive and you will keep like that for five years and you won't die, but you will have like the worst time. But they were resourceful, coming up with odd ways to win favors. For instance, they discovered one of the guards liked back rubs.

So we did exchange. The exchange was that he will get a massage every day and he will bring us more food and different food, like a can of meat. You barter. Yeah, exactly. The can of tuna or sardines. How are you listening to this? I want everyone to listen because this is the reality.

Maybe someone will hear it and it will save our sons. I don't know. It was the... how to treat animals. One of the toughest things that I heard from them, they told me more than once that why to stay alive now? I mean, why just to not take their own life with their own hands and to finish it? I mean, to get released from this. And they will do it together if they decide to do it. They are not children, but from time to time I felt like a father. They are replaced.

Sorry. They are children. I really, really fear that they are now alone. Tormenting them further for the world to see, Hamas brought Guy and Evia in a van to watch fellow hostages leave and beg for their own release. Please, all I want is to go back home. And then they move them back to the tunnel, so this can be devastating to them. I don't know how you could watch that.

It was a sign of life. There's so much trauma. Now home, Keith Siegel spends his time at vigils and protests instead of quietly healing. So in a way, you're still there. Your mind is still there. It is. Every day. Most of the day.

Every day? You're thinking about who's left behind. He and the others are fighting for those left behind while still in their own pain. Feeling a sense of urgency and fear that time is running out. A reunion with an Israeli soldier held hostage So much fear, but we were together at 60minutesovertime.com What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door.

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Tonight, the voice of America is silent. The storied broadcaster was launched in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda. But two weeks ago, President Donald Trump usurped Congress's authority and signed an executive order, effectively shutting down the taxpayer-funded broadcaster for what the White House calls radical propaganda. Friday, a federal judge put any further actions by the administration on hold. Over the decades, VOA has projected American values globally, and for hundreds of millions, it was the place to find fact-based news about America and the world in their own languages. It all came crashing down in a single day. that 1,300 of my colleagues had been suspended immediately with pay in an email saying that they couldn't do any more work, couldn't go into the building. I knew at that point

the Voice of America was going to die very quickly. Steve Herman is chief national correspondent for Voice of America, and perhaps its best-known journalist. Americans may not recognize him since VOA is prohibited by law from broadcasting in the United States. People say, oh, international broadcasting, it's archaic, it's obsolete. Why are the Chinese spending so much money and broadcasting in dozens of languages over radio and setting up all these TV services. You know, are they wasting their money? I don't think so.

VOA is probably the best bang for our buck that we have in terms of public diplomacy. I'm in the middle of an intersection in downtown Namie. After joining VOA in 2002 as a Tokyo-based foreign correspondent, Herman spent the next 15 years covering the globe for America's flagship international broadcaster before landing at the White House in 2017. He told us he decided to take the job as a federal employee because of VOA's charter, which requires accurate, objective it and they heard it's from the United States that it must be propaganda because that's what their broadcasters do. And then they heard us talking about America, warts and all, and they also heard us reporting about their own country and telling them things that they could verify with their own eyes

that their own media wasn't telling them. And a light bulb goes off when they realize what it is like with the media in the United States, that you can criticize your own government, have opposition politicians on the air. That doesn't happen everywhere in the world. Our mandate was never to present the administration's story. Our mandate was always to present America's story.

Patsy Wida Kuswara is VOA's White House bureau chief. A native of Indonesia, she started working for VOA in its Indonesian service in 2003. Growing up under the dictatorship of President Suharto, she understands the value of VOA. What's the size of the audience? All around the world, it is 360 million, weekly unduplicated. Listening and watching VOA. Multi-platform television, radio, digital,

social media. And 86% of its worldwide audience tell pollsters they find VOA trustworthy. Two weeks ago, those millions of viewers and listeners were getting daily news in

49 languages. Turn on VOA today, you get this. On a loop. Bill, you and I have both been in a lot of countries. And if you're in a country and all of a sudden television or radio switches from regular programming to music, you know something's up. So what do you think that says to your listeners and viewers? I think it would make them wonder what the hell is going on in the United States.

Here speaks a voice from America. The Voice of America spoke its first words during World War II, beaming German-language broadcasts into Nazi Germany to counter Hitler's propaganda machine. During the Cold War, it expanded in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China to challenge communist disinformation with straightforward reporting on American life and politics, our highs and lows, an approach President John F. Kennedy praised at VOA's 20th anniversary. We compete with other means of communication of those who are our adversaries who tell only the good stories. But the things that go bad in America, you must tell that also. With bipartisan support, VOA grew to spread American news and values across the globe.

My fellow Americans and fellow citizens of the world, this is Ronald Reagan, President of the United States, speaking to you live from the broadcast studios of The Voice of America in Washington, D.C. VOA told the Chinese people about the military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square and the deadly COVID outbreak in Wuhan when their own government wouldn't. It beamed reports into Iran about the democracy protests in 2009. It told the people of North Korea about their government's gulags and Russians about atrocities in Ukraine. VOA has been supported by every president since 1942, Republican and Democrat, all but one.

If you heard what's coming out of the voice of America, it's disgusting. What things they say are disgusting toward our country. That was President Trump in 2020. He complained VOA's coverage of the COVID epidemic parroted Chinese propaganda. Two weeks ago, the White House released a statement called The Voice of Radical America, listing a dozen specific grievances like VOA reports on white privilege, transgender migrants, and Hunter Biden's laptop. They've got national security risks inside this agency. The rot is so bad, it's like having a rotten fish and trying to find a little portion you can eat. It's unsalvageable right now.

In February, President Trump installed Carrie Lake of Arizona, a former TV anchor who lost two statewide political races, as senior advisor at the Agency for Global Media, the entity that oversees VOA and its sister services covering Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Cuba. She says they've grown too large. We are going to be slimming this agency down, way down. It's going on an ozempic diet. VOA's budget is $267 million a year.

Lake is now moving to implement President Trump's executive order to eliminate the broadcaster to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law. We asked Lake for an interview to discuss her findings and plans for VOA. She declined, responding, I won't do an interview with a disreputable news outlet like 60 Minutes. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn't be working for CNN. The president has a well-known animus toward the press, but he seems to hold special disdain for Voice of America. Under his administrations, Steve Herman has been investigated twice for his copious social media posts, including this link to a critic of the dismantling of USAID,

which one senior administration official suggested was treasonous. What do you say to people who would say that your Twitter activity, your social media activity as a foreign service officer, technically part of the government, that perhaps you shouldn't be criticizing the president? I wasn't criticizing the president. I wasn't criticizing his policies. I was quoting people who didn't like those policies. But I also put out what the president says verbatim.

I put out links to the president's executive orders. Does that mean that I'm supporting or praising those statements or policies? No. And I think any reasonable observer understands that. On the 12th of this month, Patsy Weta-Kuswara, working her White House beat, asked the prime minister of Ireland a question President Trump found impertinent. What about the President's plan to expel Palestinians out of Gaza? Are you discussing that with him and giving him your opinion?

Nobody's expelling any Palestinians. I don't know. Who are you with? I'm with Voice of America. Oh, no wonder. Okay, Voice of America. So when the President turns around and says, who are you with, what did you think? Honestly, my heart sank a little bit.

Two days later, the president signed that executive order all but eliminating VOA. In following days, Carrie Lake suspended hundreds of journalists, banned them from the building, and halted transmissions overseas. For the first time in 83 years, the Voice of America was silenced. Do you think your question had anything to do with that? I think it's impossible for me to know the answers to that question. This is happening to all federal agencies. Honestly, when I was at the Oval Office, it was just my reporter's instinct.

And I wasn't thinking about anything else. It was just... Just doing your job. Two world leaders in front of me. What am I going to do if not ask the questions? Steve Herman questions whether the president's executive action is legal. There are those who want to make the voice of America the voice of the president. Now that's not up to the executive branch of government. That's up to the Congress. We're following the laws that Congress passed. Republican Congresswoman Young Kim of California is a South Korean immigrant, a Trump supporter, and a longtime champion of Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

I encourage President Trump to reconsider his executive order. Kim is one of the only Republican members of Congress to challenge the administration on VOA. When we are in an information war and we stop broadcasting into those repressive governments and into repressive societies, they're not going to hear the truth. Why are we ceding our soft power that helps us to stay as a free world leader?

We're just playing right into Xi Jinping's hands. Since President Trump's executive order, media in China and Russia have been celebrating. Oh yeah. I'm not surprised. Does that concern you? That concerns me because we're losing that information war. So we pull back. Who fills the void? China, Ayatollahs, Kim Jong-un's dictators.

And we're not there to counter that disinformation. Patsy Wida Kuswara is lead plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to resuscitate VOA, but she fears the damage has already been done. Patsy Wiedekuswara, V.O.A.: If they bring back everybody next week, what kind of newsroom would that be? How can we continue to report without fear or favor with this hanging over us? Would we only have to report on things

that pleases the president? It's not something that I signed up for. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra.

It's been almost three months since a series of wildfires, fueled by strong winds, destroyed more than 11,000 homes and 37,000 acres in Los Angeles, reducing much of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods to ash. City, state, and federal leaders promised to expedite the rebuilding process and in February completed an important first step. The Environmental Protection Agency cleared more than 9,000 properties in 28 days. The EPA says it is the fastest hazardous debris removal in its history.

Tonight, we'll show you exactly how they did that and why some residents, including those with homes still intact, say they still don't feel safe to return. They're worried about what the wildfires left behind. Brick chimneys and burnt trees are the sole markers of what were once picture-perfect Southern California neighborhoods. House after house on this Pacific Palisades block was destroyed by wildfire. Except for this one. On the corner of Iliff Street, we met Lynn McIntyre. Her 1940

stucco home is inexplicably intact. Everything around you is gone. Every single house. I look at it and I said, why? Why was my house spared? I call myself one of the left-behinds because I don't have the same set of issues that all of my neighbors have. They're cut and dried. Their properties have burned to the ground. My home did not. Some people would look at you and go, oh, she's one of the lucky ones. But now you're dealing with what? I don't feel as lucky as people think. The firefighters said that this fire was like a blowtorch. They've never had anything so hot before. and it cooked everything inside my home

at I don't know how many hundreds of degrees for I don't know how many hours. How do you salvage anything from that? There are 10,000 houses still standing in the burn zones. The strong winds that fueled the wildfires pushed smoke and soot into those homes and left tons of toxic ash and debris at their doorsteps. These are the remnants of all the synthetic stuff that makes up modern life. Appliances, clothing, and carpets after it all burned at high heat. It's a unique component of urban fires that is complicating cleanup efforts. We were with the Environmental Protection Agency as it took the first step, removing all the hazardous waste, propane tanks, cleaning supplies, and paint cans, while negotiating the newest challenge, electric vehicles.

Chris Myers runs the EPA's Lithium-Ion Battery Emergency Response Team. He says batteries in electric vehicles can explode or ignite when damaged. Uncontrolled, out in the field, in the public access, is very, very dangerous for anyone who is on site. Not just our workers, but the public at large. And Myers says just identifying electric vehicles after they were incinerated was a challenge. It used to be fairly simple.

If there was not an internal combustion engine with that vehicle, it was an EV. But now we have plug-in hybrids, hybrid vehicles, a tremendous amount of different platforms in which batteries are included in those vehicles. I mean, there's not stuff left. You barely tilt the car a lot of the time. Exactly. So the EPA conducted reconnaissance. Dozens of teams fanned out across the burn zones, searching for the skeletons of electric vehicles in the debris and calling power companies and manufacturers to locate the power walls that

were often attached to homes to charge them. EPA teams found about 600 EVs, most of them in Lynn McIntyre's Palisades neighborhood. We watched as an EPA team approached one of them. Our crew was instructed to stay back 75 feet. Because even weeks or months after they're damaged, lithium-ion batteries can explode, emit toxic gases, or reignite. It sounds like you're treating these batteries almost like a live grenade in the field, that you don't know exactly what you're dealing with. That is a way that we actually speak about damaged or insulted lithium-ion batteries. Because they are delicate, they're fragile, they're unstable. Because they are unstable, extracting the batteries from one electric vehicle can take

a six-person team up to two hours. It's a delicate surgery performed with heavy machinery. First, the top of the car is sawed off. Then, an excavator flips it, exposing the battery underneath. Thousands of cells that make up the battery are scooped out and placed into steel drums. Those drums, up to six are needed for each car, are then transported here, to this temporary processing site, where they are plunged into a saltwater bath for three days. The saltwater gives any trapped energy a place to go, so they're less likely to reignite.

See those bubbles? That's energy releasing from the batteries. Those cylindrical cells are from generally the vehicles or other energy storage systems, but it is the same battery from a toothbrush to a hoverboard to an e-bike to a scooter to a golf cart to a vehicle to a power wall. That's a battery-powered scooter. Meyer shared this simulation video to show how smaller lithium-ion batteries,

when damaged or overheated, can explode and spark a fire. Meyer says even batteries that don't appear damaged, such as this Powerwall, can be dangerous. Intact batteries are typically more volatile, so they have to be brined before their cylinders are removed. After a thorough soaking, the cells are scooped out, shoveled onto a steel plate, and steamrolled. After you've smashed them up, then where does that waste go? So that waste goes to either a recycling facility or disposal. How much of the waste can be recycled?

Well, it's tough because there's so much damage to these batteries. Oftentimes they're burned up, they're covered with ash, there's a lot of contaminants. It's actually probably ejected most of what would be recoverable during recycling into the air and surrounding area. So it's not a lot. There's not a lot. There's not a lot of value still left in what we have here. And what is left is technically still a hazardous material under California's strict environmental regulations. But here's why that is complicated. There were only two landfills in California certified to take hazardous materials. And even before the fires, they couldn't hold all of the state's hazardous waste. So we wondered, where was all of this battery waste going? We found the

answer 600 miles away in Knowles, Utah. About half of California's hazardous waste is trucked hundreds of miles away and buried in nearby states, mainly Utah and Arizona, which rely on more lenient federal waste standards. Back in California, a cavalry of trucks arrived to start the second phase of the cleanup, removing the rest of the debris, about 9 billion pounds worth. I anticipate having all fire ash and debris removed by the one-year anniversary of this fire. Colonel Eric Swenson is a commander

for the Army Corps of Engineers. It was tasked by FEMA to clear the 13,000 properties destroyed by the fires, removing everything from concrete foundations to furniture. More than 9,000 homeowners have opted for their help, and as of last week, about 900 parcels had been cleared. How long does it take to do a single house? So it takes anywhere from, you know,

one to four days to do a standard-size house. If we have a house that's pinned on the side of the mountain, those properties could take us six, eight, ten days to do a standard-sized house. If we have a house that's pinned on the side of the mountain, those properties could take us six, eight, ten days to do because we're going to need some specialized equipment to get in there. All that remaining debris from burned-down homes is headed to 17 landfills and recycling centers across California.

After the property is cleared, six inches of soil are removed in an effort to get rid of any contaminants that may have seeped into the ground. In your mind, six inches is deep enough to remove the soil to make the area safe? Absolutely. And I know previously in other fires, more soil has been removed. Why not remove more soil now? We find that it's not necessary. If you over-escavate a property and continue to dig down deeper, maybe you'll find a lead pipe that was installed for drinking water 80 years ago that was never properly removed.

And so all we're doing is economically disadvantaging that owner because now they're going to have to replace all of that soil we excavated from that property. California Governor Gavin Newsom doesn't think removing six inches of soil is enough. His office asked FEMA to test the remaining soil for toxic contaminants, as FEMA has done after previous wildfires. But FEMA says the agency changed its approach to soil testing in 2020 because it found that contamination deeper than six inches was typically pre-existing and not necessary for public health protection. I think it's pertinent that we test inside, outside, soil. Do as much testing. Get as much data as we can.

We need to know what we're working with. Matthew Craig lived here in Altadena with his wife and son. Fire destroyed the homes across the street from them. But with the help of neighbors and, he says, a comically short garden hose, Craig was able to save his home. But we haven't spent more than an hour in the house since the fire started. Why haven't you gone back into the house for longer than an hour? What's inside?

These houses are filled with asbestos. They're filled with lead. The Teslas and the EVs, those batteries were exploding. They sounded like hand grenades, right? So that's all in the atmosphere as well as all over the ground. So there's a ton of debris, and you'll see that debris all over my house. And you can smell it as soon as you open the door. Craig's home is frozen in time.

A fine film clings to everything, leaving an outline of the teddy bear he tried to salvage for his son. It's so deceiving because outside the house looks like it's pristine, and inside it really isn't. It's everywhere. It's under your feet. It's on all of this. Craig's insurance company has agreed to test the inside of his home for toxins, and he's waiting to hear whether they'll cover his cleanup costs. If someone was to look at this and say, it's dust, right? Clean it up, move on. Yeah.

What would you say? The house is filled with the ashes of thousands of homes that are hundreds of years old. It's not just dust. It's 100,000 gallons of pesticides. It's a million gallons of lead paint. It's a million pounds of insulation. Back in the Palisades, Lynn McIntyre has theories about why her house was somehow spared in the fires. But what she is desperate for now are some definitive answers.

What are you being told about the safety of your air, of your soil, of the inside of your home? Nothing. Nothing. There's no guidelines for moving back. There's no guidelines for what you should be looking for. There's no guidelines telling you who to call or regulate. Testing is like it's a Wild West out there with the testing, with the remediation companies. People are just grasping at straws with no guidance from government.

So she decided to pay $5,000 out of pocket to have her home tested for toxins. The tests revealed arsenic in her home and lead levels 22 times higher than what the EPA considers safe. Her insurance company says it will not cover the cost of cleaning it all up because it says it does not constitute, quote, a direct physical loss. Lynn McIntyre signed an 18-month lease on an apartment out of town, anticipating the road home for her and her neighbors will be a long one. Now, the last minute of 60 Minutes. Next week on 60 Minutes, we'll explore the fascinating life of the whiskey barrel,

an ancient product that still plays a vital role in global commerce. Millions of new oak barrels are built in America every year, fired up and then filled with what will become bourbon through years of aging as the wood delivers magic to the whiskey. Smell that. Smell that. I mean... That does smell delicious. It's incredible. It really does. It's amazing. There's a reason why people still use oak barrels 2,000 years later. So when I'm sipping the bourbon, I'm sipping this barrel.

That's right. Absolutely. I'm Bill Whitaker. That story and more next week on another edition of 60 Minutes. Now streaming. Everyone who comes into this clinic is a mystery. of 60 Minutes. I kind of love it if I'm being honest. Solve the puzzle, save the patient. Watson. All episodes now streaming on Paramount+. Now streaming. When people go missing, I get hired to help find them. When lives are on the line. Coulter, please find my daughter.

He's the man for the job. I'm going to do everything I can. Don't miss a moment. Coulter's in trouble. I can He is the man for the job. I'm gonna do everything I can. Don't miss a moment. Coulter's in trouble. I can feel it. Of TV's number one show. These people are dangerous. I'm doing this alone.

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