Morning Wire - Adam Carolla On Fires, Failures & Urgent Need for Change | 1.18.25

Episode Date: January 18, 2025

Comedian Adam Carolla shares his harrowing experience evacuating from the Palisades Fire and critiques the failing fire policies in California. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Los Angeles fires have wreaked havoc on parts of Southern California with more than 10,000 homes destroyed in the Palisades Fire, Eaton Fire, and others. In this episode, Daily Wire investigative reporter Spencer Lindquist sits down with comedian and actor Adam Carolla to discuss his experiences evacuating from the Palisades fire and its devastating aftermath. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's January 18th, and this is a Saturday edition of Morning Wire. The following is an interview between Daily Wire reporter Spencer Lindquist and comedian Adam Carolla. Adam, so thanks for sitting down with us to talk about these fires. There's a wide range of different topics on the policy level that we definitely like to discuss. But I think first off, I just wanted to hear a bit about your experience with the fires. I know that you evacuated and you've got a condo that you've been concerned about.

If you can just walk us through what it's been like personally so far. Tuesday morning, I was leaving the gym that's on sunset and PCH, which is Pacific Coast Highway. And I walked, I left the gym about 1045, 1050 in the morning, and I walked down on this open terrace. I looked at my left and I just saw smoke at the top of sunset. And that's exactly when the fire started. So I got my car and I came here, which is in the San Fernando. Valley, which is 25 miles away, to come here to work. And as I was going down PCH, I was seeing fire trucks coming in the other directions at hearing sirens and, you know, all that goes along with

it. And then I got here. And by the end of my work day, probably about three or four o'clock, I'd heard that the fire had spread and, you know, but it still wasn't imminent danger. Because there was a fire three weeks earlier in Malibu as well. And we had to evacuate, but it just not what this one was. Then at a certain point, I drove for about an hour and a half back to Malibu not being able to use my normal route, but having to go around through Pepperdine, Los Verginis, Malibu Canyon area, and come back sort of backside to my condo, which is up the hill and sort of right in the middle of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. And then I got there and I sat down and about 20 minutes later, my girlfriend said she got the alert on her phone and we have to clear out.

So then we get back in the car and drove back here, but the power was out here. So then we had to check into a hotel. And, you know, that was about a week ago and I've just been sort of monitoring it ever since. But found out that my actual unit or my building is only a duplex. So it wasn't a big complex. Did not burn down. Everything in front of it burnt down. And, you know, when you toured Pacific Coast Highway, when you passed Dukes, that's sort of the area that I'm in. And you'll probably recall that everything had passed Duke sort of burned down. Yeah. And you said that your area didn't burn down. How long? My condo didn't burn down. The area is gone. And so I started seeing little

dribs and drabs. I think when I woke up in a hotel room. on Wednesday morning, I was seeing footage because all you would get is what they would give you. The restaurant beneath me was completely engulfed in flames, and much of the stuff

on the other side of the street was completely gone. So I was doing the math, which is the fire starts on the mountain. It comes down the mountain. It burns everything in its path, and then eventually it crosses PCH, if it does, burns everything there,

and then it hits the water. There's nowhere else to go. But I'm in between the mountain and the water, and everything in front of me is gone. So I'm just assuming that my structure's gone as well, since I'm in the path of the fire. And then it took several days past that to realize that somehow my structure was not hit.

Right after the fire broke out, there was all this coverage of the past comments from the current fire department chief, about equity, about the gender balance, of the fire department. I'm sure that's what was on your mind when you were thinking about the condo.

What is the sex of the firefighter in that area? Could you speak a little bit about those concerns, those equity concerns, the prevalence that they have in the fire department and the public response, the backlash to those comments? Yeah, they speak freely about it. I have experience with it

because I tried to be a firefighter, you know, when I was 19 and was told I wasn't black enough or Hispanic enough or female enough to be let on to the crew. So I did have a little kind of special place in my heart for equity because I was poor and needed a job and was willing to work. It's strange that it's discussed as much as it is. And I guess what I'm saying is the people who just want their property saved or just

want their kids saved or their pets saved or their husband or their wife saved don't care about equity. And I also don't think people in 2025 America care at all. We just sort of want the best qualified person to do the job. I think it's racist and a lot of projection when they would say, you know, I used to have said it a million times when they go, the fire department needs to resemble the community that it serves. I always go, I don't know. Why? Who cares? You know, you go to the hospital here in Los Angeles. There's a lot of Filipino nurse. It's almost all Filipino nurses. I don't know why.

They're attracted to this business. Evidently, nursing's a good job. Evidently becomes sort of a Filipino family business almost. And I worked with a Filipino guy, and I said, this Filipino. And he goes, yeah, my mom's a nurse. And I go, oh really? He goes, she wanted me to be a nurse. And I'm like, yes, okay, it's a thing.

I don't care. You know, my dad would go to the hospital. He'd get a Filipino nurse and she would take good care of him. Don't care. He didn't care. Don't have to look like you. You go to LAX. Security's 70% African American. I don't know why it is. It's racist to think you would have an issue. And they always do it with white people. Like, oh, I'm going to have an issue with this nurse that looks like this or this TSA guy looks like that. No, we don't. That's all we see all day, every day. By the way, Los Angeles, you call someone to come unclog your toilet. You're not going to get somebody looks like you who shows up that you welcome in your home. You call a TV repair guy or an electrician or plumber or whoever. You're not going to get anyone who looks like you. That's L.A. That's how it works.

Nobody cares. Everybody whose home was destroyed is going to be rebuilt by somebody who doesn't look like that. And that'll be that. Yeah. And that constituency, I mean, especially post-2020, DEI, woke generally speaking as a broad term, that was all the rage. There was an institutional takeover. It spanned government, it spanned media, it spanned corporate America. Do you think that that group of people, the Palisade, Santa Monica, if we look at that almost as an interest group in and of itself, right?

Do you think that'll be powerful enough for government leaders to say, you know what, we're going to, we're actually going to pull back on the red tape, we're going to pull back on the regulations, we're going to pull back on these overly burdensome permitting processes? Do you think that's going to be sufficient, or do you think they are still going to have these policies that are going to push people out? I think that in conjunction with Trump and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswam, I mean, that whole cadre of people is going to turn it. Same way, you know, there were all nuts with COVID and that sort of turned around. They were all nuts with BLM. And that sort of turned around. there were nuts with the pronouns and all that crap that sort of tacked to the right

or towards sanity or whatever direction sanity is. So, yeah, I do think it will have a kind of a renaissance with that. You know, they do kind of say, you know, whatever direction California goes, so goes the nation, you know. And some of that is true with fashion and design and arts and things like that. I think it'll be more Trump and more Musk that are sort of banging that drum because most people think that regulation and red tape is sort of invisible. Like, it's really invisible to most people. They don't really see it. Like, I talked to a guy years ago, and he was an Uber driver.

He used to sell private jets. And he said, half the cost of every private jet is just lawyers. lawsuits and regulations. Like, most people just go, that jet's $10 million. But what if that person knew that was really just a $5 million jet with $5 million worth of red tape

and lawyers tacked onto it? You know what I mean? They would change their mind, you know? And so it's invisible, and most people don't get it, and they don't understand it. My background is in construction and building, and I worked in L.A. my whole life,

so I had a front row seat to, like, really bad regulatory systems and lots of overreach and too much intervention by the government early. And I've complained about it my entire radio career, but no one else cared because they just didn't come from that world. So they didn't really experience it. But I think now they're getting a little bit of a front row seat to it. And so I hope sort of globally it is impactful. And then just last question in the couple minutes more that we have. could you just tell us a story of, you said your background is in construction. You tried to have your background being firefighting, right?

You tried to go into firefighting as a career. Could you tell us a story of your attempt to get into firefighting and what exactly occurred there? Yeah. So I was a sort of jock football player, kind of just dude, you know, hung out in a weight room, played football. And it was like a physical guy when I was in high school and getting out of high school. and the economy was real bad. It was early 80s, and there was no jobs to be found, and I didn't know anybody who had any kind of business or anything.

I was really kind of adrift financially. I graduated high school barely. I wasn't going to college. I didn't have any gainful employment, and I just didn't really have anywhere to go or anything to do. I mean, honestly, should have just joined the Army a bit. And I was just living in my dad's garage in North Hollywood, and my stepmom wanted me out of the house.

And I was just going to a job. I was going to supermarkets and putting in applications, going on a construction size, asking if they need labor jobs, you know. No one was hiring. But I had always heard about like firemen. And I was strong and I was in good shape. And I didn't care about it. I'd go into a burning building.

I didn't really think that. I didn't have a lot of regard for myself. So I walked, I didn't even have a car or anything, but I walked to the North Hollywood Fire Station. and it was the one across street from the park in my neighborhood. And I just kind of wandered in. Like I just went, hey, who's in charge here? And I go, hey, could I fill out an application to be a fireman?

And the guy went like, yeah, go ahead, fill it out. But don't expect the phone to ring for a while, you know. And I was like, why wouldn't you call? He was like, we're hiring women, we're hiring black, we're hiring Hispanic, we're not. This is a long time ago, too. early 80s? This is the early 80s. And I go, okay, but I could just fill this out and give it to you, right? He's like, yeah, but we're not calling. I don't expect anything. I was like, all right, well, I walked here, so I don't care. I don't have a job. My time's not worth anything.

So I was just like, fill it out, hand it in, and I leave. You know, I ended up getting a job as a laborer on a construction site. Literally just digging ditches. And I did that, and then I kind of worked my way up to carpenter, and then I worked my way. up to doing earthquake rehab work for the city, which actually paid a little bit because it was a city job. It paid us like 18 or 19 bucks an hour. You know, now we're getting into the mid-early 80s. Sorry, later 80s. It's been years.

I've forgotten all about it. I'm drive a truck. I have my tools. I'm a carpenter at this point. And at some point, I go out to lunch with my dad. And, you know, he's got an envelope with him and he kind of like sets it across the table. And I go, well, what's this? I know, I got a letter to the house from you, you know, made out to you.

This is, you know, Tuesday. I haven't lived in that house in six years, seven years. It's been years since I moved out. I moved to an apartment. I work now. I got my own life. I said, what is this? You know, open up.

It's the fire department. You have a test date. This Saturday, Hollywood High. Come and take your test to be a fireman. Now, you have to keep in mind 18 or 19 to 25, 26, that is a lifetime, you know. So I go, all right. So, you know, my feeling was I was a carpenter at that point, drove a truck, had my tools, had a profession, had a skill.

But I was like, hey, man, I've been waiting six years for this day, sort of. I'm taking the test, you know. Who knows? It's a Saturday at Hollywood High. Beautiful day, sunshine, and outside of Hollywood High, just waiting in lines, a line of 150 people trying to go into some bungalow and take their written test. I'm just staying there and look at my paper, you know, from six years ago. around. And there's a woman behind me, woman of color, and diminutive, like Paul Abdual size.

And I'm like, I can't get over it. I'm like, when did you? So I turned to her and I was like, when did you sign up? I signed up six years ago. When did you sign up? She goes, Wednesday. And I was like, and that's when I learned. Like, oh, that's what we're dealing with. Now, you by no means wanted this person coming into your she didn't look like she could lift her arms if she put a bracelet on but that's who's coming to save you because

no no waiting and that's when I sort of realized oh the system not good he wasn't lying no well great thank you very much appreciate you taking the time and telling us your story and your thoughts

I'd say thanks for having me but get to hell on in my studio yeah appreciate you Sure. That was Daily Wire's Spencer Lindquist interviewing comedian Adam Carolla, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.