WSJ What’s News - L.A. Wildfires Rage Almost Unchecked

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

A.M. Edition for Jan. 9. WSJ editor Ben Fritz joins us from Los Angeles with the latest on a series of blazes that have many residents feeling like the city is “teetering on the brink of destruction.” Plus, dockworkers and port employers reach a labor deal that could avert potentially costly strikes. And Blackstone makes its latest bet on AI with a $300 million investment in DDN. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's in this McDonald's bag? The McValue Meal. For $5.79 plus tax, you can get your choice of junior chicken, McDouble, or chicken snack wrap, plus small fries and a small fountain drink. So pick up a McValue Meal today at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. Prices exclude delivery. We get the latest from Los Angeles, where devastating wildfires remain out of control. It's almost like an arc going around the north of Los Angeles, where devastating wildfires remain out of control. It's almost like an arc going around the north of Los Angeles. There's just one fire after another after another.

And it's very scary and the conditions are, from the fire perspective, they're optimal and the human condition, they're terrible. Plus a tentative labor deal to avert strikes at some of America's largest ports and Blackstone makes its latest bet on AI. It's Thursday, January 9th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

Firefighters around Los Angeles are continuing to battle a series of wildfires that in the span of just two days have burned almost 30,000 acres and damaged or destroyed more than 2,000 buildings. At least five people have died, more than 200,000 have lost power, and the two largest blazes in Pacific Palisades and north of Pasadena remain 0 percent contained as of early this morning. Complicating matters are wind gusts that Pasadena Fire Chief Chad Augustine said are reaching 70 miles an hour, causing embers to soar two to three miles ahead of the fire.

And LA Mayor Karen Bass said firefighters need conditions to improve. Hurricane force winds are usually accompanied by rainstorms. But these are hurricane force winds that are combined with extremely dry drought conditions. And with more, I'm joined by Wall Street Journal editor Ben Fritz in Los Angeles. Ben, thanks for the time. Where are you today? I'm in Los Angeles in our neighborhood in the Northeast called Eagle Rock. And Ben, what is going on there? Well, what are you able to see firsthand?

Well, from my house, you can see multiple fires in the area. The closest one is called the Eaton fire, which is burning in and around Pasadena, which is right next door to my neighborhood. Luckily it's on the other side of the freeway from me. So far, my home is safe, although the air is very smoky and there's embers occasionally floating down from the air. And my parents-in-law are actually staying with us. They live in the Pacific Palate neighborhood and they were evacuated yesterday. Ben, our colleagues on the PM edition of What's New spoke to journal reporter Sarah Randazzo, who was saying that kind of a worst case scenario for firefighters would be if continued high winds started even more fires

and it sounds like those worst fears have come to pass overnight. Yes, there have been more fires. Most notably, there's one that went off in the Hollywood Hills just above the neighborhood of Hollywood itself, right by the famous Hollywood sign. They got it as big as 60 acres and a big chunk of Hollywood was evacuated. It's a very populated neighborhood and obviously a lot of businesses and tourists and hotels. So that was a huge deal, very scary. One good thing is that the winds have died down enough that the fire department is able to use helicopters to drop water and retard it from the air. They weren't able to

do that earlier because the winds were too strong, and that makes a big difference in containing the fires. Ben, we keep hearing from officials that this fire is unprecedented. Expand on that if you could. It's not because of the size of the fire, but because of where it's occurring in a heavily populated area.

Yeah, I mean, this is the second biggest city in America, and there are multiple large fires threatening major population centers, and in some cases, it burns entire neighborhoods. And these fires, at first, there were the two major fires in two different corners of LA, the Eaton Fire in the east and the Pacific Pesle Fire in the west. And we had a couple of small fires that started up in the San Fernando Valley on the north side of the city. And then we had this Fernando Valley in the north side of the city. And then we had this Hollywood Hills fire in the center of the city.

So it's almost like an arc kind of going around the north of Los Angeles. There's just one fire after another after another. And you know, it's very scary and the conditions are, from the fire perspective, they're optimal from the human's condition. They're terrible. It's been very dry. It hasn't rained here in a long time. And the winds have been extremely strong and very erratic.

What then, Ben, is the mood like there? The anxiety level just must be through the roof. The anxiety level is very high. Everything suddenly, I would say, feels very tenuous. Like oh my God, a couple of days ago, everything seemed fine. And now tens of thousands of people are evacuating. Millions of us are breathing in all the smoke, seeing these flames, scared that our homes might be next. Everybody knows somebody who's been seriously affected. So this feels like we're kind of teetering on the brink of destruction in the city, I would say.

What then is the message from officials? Is it to evacuate? Just given the fact these fires are so poorly contained at this point, some of them not contained at all, beating them back is not really even an option right now. Yeah, certainly not in the very short run. No, the winds are supposed to continue basically through Friday at least.

So the officials are, what can I say? They're being very stern in their warning to people. If you get an evacuation order, warning to people. If you get an evacuation order, you better leave. If you don't get an evacuation order, be prepared to leave, but don't leave your house. Stay off the roads. And then you have firefighters from Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, all coming in. This feels like the entire Western US at minimum is rallying to help us doing everything they can. But I personally feel, and I think the city, whole city feels very uncertain about whether or not we can actually beat back

nature. Right. And conversations about rebuilding will come in the days and weeks to come, but already just from the damage we've seen that is going to be an incredibly daunting task. The daunting one in particular, I'll say for the neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, has just been, it's, a big chunk of it is gone.

So it's going to be a massive rebuilding task or a question of whether and how to rebuild it. That was Wall Street Journal editor Ben Fritz in Los Angeles. Ben, stay safe. Thank you so much for the update. Thank you. And for much more on the situation in Los Angeles throughout the day, head to wsj.com. Coming up, the rest of the day's news as Panama and Denmark respond to Donald Trump's threats

to take over parts of those allies' territory and dock workers and ports reach a labor deal that could avert potentially costly strikes. We've got those stories and more after the break. Officials in Denmark and Panama are responding to comments from President-elect Donald Trump earlier this week in which he refused to rule out the use of force to seize control of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory and the Panama Canal. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Luka Rasmussen signaled yesterday that some change to how Greenland is governed could be in the cards.

For the present we have a national Commonwealth and we fully recognize that Greenland has its own ambitions. If they materialize, Greenland will become independent, though hardly with an ambition to become a federal state in the United States. But at present, there is no such materialized vision. According to people close to Trump's transition, his advisers hope to launch negotiations involving Denmark and Greenland after he takes office, a process that could resemble the compacts of free association agreements that bind the U.S. with several Pacific Island nations. Meanwhile, the CEO of the Panama Canal Authority told the Journal yesterday that it does not

charge U.S. vessels higher rates to transit through the waterway and he pushed back on accusations by Trump that China was running the canal, saying that Beijing, quote, has no involvement whatsoever in our operations. Panama's foreign minister has said the sovereignty of our canal is not negotiable. Back in the US, dock workers and shipping companies have reached a tentative labor deal, averting a repeat of an October strike that briefly closed major ports and sent a shockwave through the economy. According to people familiar with the talks, the agreement still needs to be

ratified by port employers and by tens of thousands of union members. A big sticking point in the negotiations has been disagreement over the use of automation at ports. Details of the tentative deal aren't known, but the two sides said the deal protects existing jobs and, quote, establishes a framework for implementing technologies that will create more jobs while modernizing East and Gulf Coast ports. We are exclusively reporting that Blackstone is investing $300 million in DDN, a California-based company that helps firms to manage and analyze large amounts

of data used to train artificial intelligence models. DDN's products, which it says make AI more cost-effective for clients, are used in some of the biggest deployments of AI infrastructure, including the colossus supercomputer being built by Elon Musk's ex-AI startup in Memphis. Blackstone's investment values DDN at $5 billion and according to people familiar with the matter, the company could be a candidate for an IPO in the next few years. And it's likely to be a quiet day for U.S. equities as the stock market will be closed today to mark the death of former president Jimmy Carter, whose funeral is being held in Washington.

The bond market will close early at 2pm Eastern. And in global markets, Asian stocks end of the day lower and European stocks are mixed. In the UK, government bonds are continuing to sell off this morning. While the move mirrors a global rise in bond yields in recent days, the pound is also down to a one-year low, which suggests that investors are on edge about Britain's fiscal health. And that's it for What's News for this Thursday morning. Additional sound in this episode was from Reuters. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rocca, and I'm Luke Vargas for

The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. And until then, thanks for listening.