Tangle - The Los Angeles fires.

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

On Tuesday, a catastrophic wildfire began in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In the days since, multiple fires have caused widespread devastation in the region; as of Monday morning, at least 24 people have died and over 12,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed in the fires. The disaster has prompted debate about the primary cause of the fires and whether their impact could have been mitigated.Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Take the survey: What do you think is responsible for the Los Angeles wildfires? Let us know!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

New year, new me. Season is here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it. They connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners

online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca that's felix.ca From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. And welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and we've, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Sull, and we've got something a little different for you today.

We are gonna be covering the Los Angeles wildfires, a truly devastating, apocalyptic-looking tragic story that is just horrifying to watch from the East Coast. So I wanna say upfront, thinking of my family who lives out in LA, friends who I know are in Southern California, the entire population of Los Angeles and the surrounding area, genuinely horrific time.

But also we have something a little different today because Ari Weitzman, our managing editor, is going to take the take today. He's gonna be here recording the my take. He's a former California resident who, as you'll see in his take, has had some experience with California wildfires and also is just kind of an environmental sciences geek

who has lots of thoughts about what California has and hasn't done and who and what we should blame for what's happening right now. And he asked to grab the take today and I granted him that because I think he's got a much better understanding of this issue than I do. And he had some interesting thoughts to share. So we're going to bring Ari in for the My Take section

on the podcast today. Before we do that though, a couple of things at the top. First of all, a correction. In Thursday's edition on President Jimmy Carter's life and legacy, we wrote that President Richard Nixon had resigned in 1972. Actually, he resigned in 1974. This error resulted from an errant keystroke,

according to our editor, Will K. Back, who took some responsibility for what happened. But Ari and I and the rest of the editorial team own the fact that we missed. Unfortunately, our editors did not catch it during the final review. So we've corrected the mistake in our online edition. This is our 125th correction and tangles 284 week history

and our first correction since January 9th. We track these corrections and put them at the top of the podcast and try to explain them in an effort to maximize transparency with our listeners. So apologies again. Speaking of corrections and critical thoughts about our work, on Friday, in case you missed it, we did a big grading of our 2024 takes.

So we went back and looked at a bunch of the My Take sections from 2024. We looked back on them with a critical eye, reviewed where things are that we got right and where things are that we got wrong. We released this all as a Friday edition podcast. We also released an expanded version on our website, readtangle.com. There's a part one and a part two.

The part one is partially paywall. The part two is completely behind a paywall, but they're a bit lengthier than the podcast if you're interested in reading that. I think they're really worth checking out. This is always one of the favorites of our annual editions that we do. So I appreciate all you guys engaging.

And of course, we're always open to your feedback and criticisms and thoughts about stuff that we covered in 2024. So with that, I'm going to send it over to John for today's main podcast. Then Ari's going to jump in for his take today and I'll be back for our reader question. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome, everybody. Hope you had a wonderful weekend.

And for those of you in Los Angeles, again, my prayers and thoughts are with you. I hope these fires, especially the Palisades and Eaton fires, are controlled and extinguished soon. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, the Supreme Court appeared skeptical that a law requiring the owner of the social media app TikTok to sell its U.S. business by January 19th violated free speech protections, raising the prospect that the app could be banned next week. 2. Judge Juan Marchand sentenced President-elect Donald Trump to an unconditional discharge for his conviction of falsifying business records in New York. The sentence means Trump will receive

no jail time, fines, or probation. Separately, special counsel Jack Smith formally resigned from the Department of Justice on Friday. 3. Job growth in the United States exceeded expectations in December, with a 256,000 increase in non-farm payrolls. Additionally, the unemployment rate decreased from 4.2% to 4.1%. 4.

A federal judge struck down President Joe Biden's proposed Title IX reforms, which would have expanded protections for transgender students and changed rules governing sex discrimination in schools. The judge ruled that the Education Department had violated teachers' rights by requiring them to use students' preferred pronouns. 5. The U.S. State Department increased its reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to $25 million.

Maduro is wanted for his alleged involvement in drug trafficking and narco-terrorism. Everywhere you look in fire ravage LA, scenes of apocalyptic destruction as six different wildfires turn some of the most iconic neighborhoods in the world into moonscapes. On Tuesday, a catastrophic wildfire began in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In the days since, multiple fires have caused widespread devastation in the region. As of Monday morning, at least 24 people have died and over 12,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed in the fires. The disaster has prompted debate about the primary cause of the fires and whether their impact could have been mitigated.

The largest is the Palisades Fire, which has burned 23,713 acres and is 14% contained as of Monday morning. The fire already ranks as the most destructive in Los Angeles history. Additionally, the Eaton and Hurst fires continue to burn in the area with 33% and 89% containment, respectively. Overall, roughly 150,000 people were under evacuation orders on Saturday, and hundreds of thousands more were without power during the week. The fires have been exacerbated by the Santa Ana winds that persisted throughout the week and have severely hampered firefighters' efforts to contain the blazes.

On Friday, firefighting helicopters and airplanes rapidly deployed to the Brentwood and Encino neighborhoods after a change in the winds shifted the path of the Palisades fire, which grew by 1,000 acres between Friday night and Saturday morning. Meteorologists expect another wind surge early this week. A lack of accessible water has also hindered containment efforts. In particular, all water storage tanks in the Pacific Palisades area ran dry on Wednesday morning, and water flow to hydrants and higher elevations was significantly reduced. City officials said the extreme demand for water

strained the city's system, but some lawmakers, including the Los Angeles City Council member representing Pacific Palisades, blamed a lack of investment in fire mitigation resources. Los Angeles Mayor Democrat Karen Bass has faced scrutiny for her handling of the crisis. Bass, who said in 2021 she would not travel abroad while mayor, was on a diplomatic trip to attend the inauguration of Ghana's new president when the fires began and left the event early to return to the US. Some critics suggested she should have cut her trip short once the National Weather Service began forecasting destructive fires in the area.

Bass said she was in constant contact with city officials during the onset of the fires and took the fastest route back to Los Angeles. Separately, Bass has been criticized for a 2.7% spending cut to the Los Angeles Fire Department, mostly focused on reducing equipment purchases. However, the equipment cuts coincided with a pay raise for city firefighters, along with $58 million for new fire trucks and other department

purchases. With those items added to the budget, the city said the fire department's new operating budget grew by roughly 7% from the year prior. The disasters also prompted many to examine decisions made by insurance providers in the area in the months before the fires broke out. Over the summer, State Farm canceled hundreds of Pacific Palisades homeowners' policies, citing the financial risk of insuring homes in the area amid increasingly frequent and severe wildfires. On Friday, California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara announced a one-year moratorium on insurance companies cancelling or not renewing policies for homeowners affected by the Palisades and

Eaton fires, backdated to October 9, 2024. Today we'll share perspectives from the right and the left on the Los Angeles fires. Then Ari Weitzman, Tangle'saging Editor, an Environmental Studies major and former California resident, will give his tape. We'll be right back after this quick break. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative and that's where Felix comes in. Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter, more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals this year.

Losing weight is about more than diet and exercise. It can also be about our genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix connects you with online licensed health care practitioners who understand that everybody is different and compare your healthy lifestyle with the right support to reach your goals. Start your visit today at Felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. The police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back.

CBC News brings the story to you, live. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canada. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. Download the free CBC News app or visit cbcnews.ca. For four years, I lived in San Francisco.

In that time, I saw firsthand how the Western edge of our country has struggled to respond to wildfires. In 2016, I volunteered with some co-workers to plant trees in a burn scar in Nevada that was left by the Little Valley fire. That fire was caused by a prescribed burn that had gone wrong. The fire showed how hard it can be to prevent windstorm fires, which utterly destroy some homes while leaving others eerily intact. Residents I worked alongside described the hopelessness they felt watching embers carried by the wind for over a mile across the Washoe Valley, just hoping their homes wouldn't be

hit. The number of lives upended by the burning of the California coast is heart-wrenching. I'm writing this editorial for my almost- home in the Vermont mountains reflecting on how devastating its loss would be, thinking of all the people in California having to flee their homes now. Before we talk about the causes of this fire, I want to clear the air by listing a few things that are easy to criticize but whose importance is being overstated or invented. First, the Delta smelt. You may have seen accusations led by President-elect Donald

Trump online that efforts to conserve this little fish caused the failure to contain these wildfires. The smelt lives in brackish estuary zones. Its habitat doesn't have much to do with Los Angeles's water access strategy. Second, dam removals. Environmentalists would do well to consider the trade-offs required in local conservation

at the expense of hydroelectric power and water access more broadly. However, criticism against Governor Gavin Newsom for his massive dam removal initiatives is also not that relevant here. California worked with Oregon to remove dams on the Klamath River, which is nowhere near Los Angeles. Third, Mayor Bass's trip.

It was terrible optics for Los Angeles's mayor to be on a diplomatic trip to Ghana during the fire. I'm sure the mayor's absence during the emergency made matters worse, and her response to criticisms has been disappointing. But the mayor's comportment is pretty far down my list of contributing causes. Lots of blames going around causing a great deal of confusion about what happened in Los Angeles County. The full story isn't that

hard to tell. It just requires that you take the time to understand it. Let's start at the beginning. Parts of California, including Los Angeles, are just hazardous places to live. Some of the most beautiful places in the world, Los Angeles included, are constructed on the precipice of nature's wild edge, where civilization can look off into the dangerous wild from relative safety. But the price of that proximity is a greater risk of calamity. Southern California is home to the Santa Ana winds,

a periodical reversal of normal wind patterns that brings hot and dry air inland from the desert and gusts that can reach over 60 miles per hour. These winds can stoke wildfires and make them hard to fight. The list of the state's deadliest fires spans the decades, and many of them occur during natural dry wind events like the Santa Ana's. However, an obvious trend emerges when you sort California's fires by most destructive and list the years they occurred, starting from the top. 2018, 2017, 2025, 2025, 1991, 2003, 2020, 2015, 2007, 2020.

Simply put, these fires are getting more common, and they're getting worse. And there are three reasons for that. Part of it's fluke-ish, another part is climate, and the third part is infrastructural. First, the fluke-ish. Last year, California had an incredibly rainy wet season with historic rainfall that filled the state's reservoirs. This wet season has been rainy again in Northern California. However, southern California is experiencing an incredibly dry winter. When you put a year of

high rains causing productive vegetation in front of a dry year that turns that vegetation into fuel, then add the Santa Ana winds, you get a tinderbox. We still don't know what caused these fires, but in that kind of environment, a small spark can grow into a racing inferno with terrifying speed. Wind speeds at the start of the wildfires reached 100 miles per hour. That not only made the blaze expand, but also impossible to fight. Second, the patterns.

When fluke-ish events like a huge wildfire in January become common, there are no longer flukes. The state's weather patterns are changing, regardless of whether or not you believe climate change is causing them. However, if you don't think that increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere resulting from human emissions are driving these changes,

I urge you to interrogate that belief for bias. When climatologists tell us for decades that global temperatures will get warmer and cause wilder swings of precipitation and more extreme weather events, especially in the South and West of the United States, and then average global temperatures increase and extreme weather events become more common, then their models are validated. Third, the infrastructure. Our national infrastructure is failing to adapt to meet the trends of more dangerous wildfires. California and Los Angeles are part of this failure. California experienced record rainfall last year. Where is that water now when firefighters need it to combat a blaze on the doorstep of the country's second largest city? The answer is simple.

It's in the ocean. The state's reservoirs filled up to their capacities and excess rainfalls flown into the Pacific. At a state level, why have the reservoirs not been increased? Why was the Pacific Palisades reservoir offline and empty before the fire? What exactly did the budget cuts to the LA Fire Department affect and how much did those cuts impact the emergency response? Why hasn't Los Angeles County invested in pumping stations to get water uphill and service the fire-prone Pacific Palisades and Alta Dena communities in their time of need?

Pumps are expensive, but you could argue that investing in that kind of infrastructure would be partially offset by decreasing the massive insurance costs that are causing private insurers to flee the state. Lastly, why didn't LA County introduce some buffer between local vegetation and nearby neighborhoods as required by state regulation? While cutting and buffering wouldn't have prevented the windstorm fires from growing, it could have greatly mitigated the damage. California's leaders from Gavin Newsom to local boards and palisades, are all responsible

for these failures. California is a state capable of extraordinary responses. Since an earthquake leveled San Francisco in 1906, the state has literally written the book on how to develop seismic safe buildings. As it faces a future likely to be filled with more dangerous wildfires, the state once again has an opportunity to lead the way with improvements in civic infrastructure and wildfire fighting and prevention. Hopefully, they answer the call.

We'll be right back after this quick break. New year, new me. Season is here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it.

They connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. All right. That is it for our take today. Thank you, Ari, again for hopping on the mic. You know, it's funny Ari and I and Will and Sophia and Magdalena and John and our whole staff, you know, we don't always agree on everything. In fact, we disagree a lot. That's kind of the point. But today I'm really, you know,

I was really compelled and convinced by Ari's take and I agreed with a lot of what he wrote. So I appreciate him jumping in with that and making me think on this issue that is not simple, you know, not as simple as you want it to be. With that, we have a listener question from John in Los Angeles, California. John said, Elon Musk has been tweeting,

if that's still a word, about Pakistani rape gangs in the United Kingdom and the failure of woke United Kingdom law enforcement to investigate, prosecute the gangs. It sounds outlandish. What's really going on? Okay, so earlier this month, Elon Musk criticized the decision of Jess Phillips,

the United Kingdom's Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for the Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls. The Brits are always very extra with their titles. He criticized Phillips for declining to investigate quote unquote, grooming gangs. That's groups of Pakistani men who groomed and sexually abused young girls in cities in the Midlands of England. Elon Musk tweeted his criticism, suggesting UK Prime Minister Keir

Starmor is implicated in a massive cover-up and obstruction of justice related to immigrant crime. Starmor responded, calling Musk claims lies and disinformation. So first of all, these crimes are real. South Asian men did groom and sexually assault girls in the Midlands for decades. Even Nazir Afzal, a chief prosecutor of Pakistani heritage in Northwest England from 2011 to 2015, said South Asians were quote, disproportionately involved end quote,

in the kinds of street grooming Musk is talking about. Furthermore, law enforcement was woefully negligent in its response to these crimes and the individual accounts are genuinely harrowing. In the context of police responding to young girls reporting being raped, they called them tarts and dismissed them. And it's now easy to understand why this story,

which has been going on for years, would stoke anti-immigration responses. Critically though, Afzal was talking about crimes in this specific region of England. Extrapolating a national trend from the very real stories about these gangs in this kind of local context, generally Pakistani men is really truly old fashioned cherry picking.

For instance, a 2020 home office report found that at a national level, there was no evidence to suggest that any racial subgroup had been committing these crimes more often than another. And in a 2022 report, they actually found the opposite, that South Asian men were underrepresented in child sexual abuse crimes. We included an image about this that sort of illustrates this in today's newsletter. So I can understand how anyone just learning about these stories would be furious.

I just learned about them recently. Obviously we don't cover news from England regularly. And in the last couple of years, these stories were in the news a lot and I'm furious too reading them. I mean, like I said, it's horrifying. The improper response by governments in the Midlands is a really big deal.

And it does seem like it was encouraged in part by racial sensitivities, as well as old fashioned misogynistic beliefs that these young girls were just sexually promiscuous, not victims. But it isn't exactly breaking news in the United Kingdom. Musk is fundamentally criticizing Phillips for declining another major investigation of these crimes when we've had investigations, we've had trials, we've had tons of reports from the government about what happened. So learning the full context of the years of reports

in response does help to explain why Phillips doesn't think this is all worth rehashing now. All right, that is it for our reader question. Big thanks again to Ari for today's My Take. I'm gonna send it back to John for the rest of the pod and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Peace. Thanks, Isaac.

Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. Newly released documents by the Central Intelligence Agency revealed that the agency secretly monitored Mexican-American and Puerto Rican civil rights activists in the 1960s and beyond. The documents released in late December showed that the CIA surveilled members of several major Latino civil rights movements, even using undercover agents to infiltrate student activist groups. The release confirms, in part, Latino civil rights leaders suspicions that the

federal government was monitoring their activity during the civil rights era. This document release is an important window into the government's efforts to surveil and disrupt peaceful Latino organizing in the 1960s and 70s, Rep. Joaquin Castro, the Democrat from Texas, said. Axios has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of Los Angeles Fire Department stations within city limits is 106. The number of uniformed LAFD personnel is 3,510. The estimated number of structures, homes, businesses, and other buildings destroyed or damaged by the Palisades Fire is 5,300. The estimated number of structures damaged

by the Eaton Fire is 7,000. The number of structures destroyed by the 2018 Camp Fire, the most destructive fire in California history, is 18,804. The average amount of acreage burned by wildfires in California in January between 2013 and 2024 is 1,360. The approximate amount of acreage burned by the Palisades, Eaton, and Hearst fires in January 2025 to date is 38,629.

The number of home insurance policy non-renewals for residents of the 90272 zip code area, which contains Pacific Palisades, between 2019 and 2024 is 1,930, approximately 28 out of every 100 policies. And the total exposure of California's fair home insurance program is $458 billion, a 61.3% increase since September of 2023. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently released its annual report on homelessness, revealing a hopeful new statistic.

In 2024, veteran homelessness dropped to an all-time low. Compared to the previous year, the number of veterans experiencing homelessness dropped by 7.5% and has fallen 55.6% since 2010. Veteran Affairs Secretary Dennis McDonough noted that the report was encouraging, adding that we still have a long way to go, but we will not stop until every veteran has a safe, stable place to call home. The VA has the data and there is a link in today's episode description. The VA has the data and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to ReadTangle.com and sign up for

a membership. You can also go to TangleMedia.Supercast.com and sign up for a premium podcast membership where you get access to ad-free daily podcasts, Friday editions, Sunday editions, interviews, bonus content, and so much more. We'll be right back here tomorrow for Isaac, Ari, and the rest of the team. This is John Lahl signing off. Have a great day, y'all.

Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by Duke Thomas. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Will Kavak, Gail Esol, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was made by Magdalena Bikova, who is also our social media manager. The music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go check out our website at reedtangle.com. That's reeddangle.com.

New year, new me. Season is here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it. They connect you with licensed health care practitioners online who create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support.

Start your visit today at Felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A.