Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: So Robert Kerbak, you were just saying that Kevin Dylan,
Speaker 2: I mean, what could have been a thing where one
Speaker 2: fire leads to another fire and needs to another fire
Speaker 2: in the high fire spreads, he took a stat he
Speaker 2: drew a line in in the in the lawn, as
Speaker 2: it were, to keep it from going. Am I right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And it just, you know, it blew me away
Speaker 3: when I heard that story and when I interviewed Kevin,
Speaker 3: because you know, you just don't think you know, he
Speaker 3: you know, was putting his life at risk, his career
Speaker 3: at risk for strangers.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: And I just was really impressed with that. And that
Speaker 3: was one of the things that and I'm sure the
Speaker 3: people in Maui are finding that out too, is they're
Speaker 3: learning these stories about you know, people doing things for
Speaker 3: strangers that save people's lives. And you know, when you
Speaker 3: were talking before about you know, standing by people in
Speaker 3: a difficult time, you know, it means so much. And
Speaker 3: that story in my book, the story of Kevin doing that,
Speaker 3: you know, it seems to have so much you know,
Speaker 3: basically sacrificing everything. I just was really impressed with that.
Speaker 2: Well, let's add your chapter to Amy's book. She was
Speaker 2: when we spoke to last night during Open Life and
Speaker 2: Amy ken you hears.
Speaker 4: Okay, yep, I can hear you.
Speaker 2: You're talking to Robert Kerback.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 3: Robert, Hi, Amy. I'm so sorry for everything you're going through.
Speaker 2: Thank you. How are things going for you today? A little?
Speaker 2: I mean you were last night, you were just kind
Speaker 2: of still assessing. But what do you know now that
Speaker 2: you didn't know twenty four hours ago?
Speaker 4: Well? Today, I don't know. I just had this feeling
Speaker 4: of just goodness wash over me. What do we know now?
Speaker 4: You know, we know that they're pulling bodies out of
Speaker 4: the water. Still, they're still looking for bodies. They confirmed
Speaker 4: that gunfight with the police that I told you about
Speaker 4: last night. You did, Yeah, they I see them on
Speaker 4: the lower roads putting in all of that. Powerful and
Speaker 4: amazing to see that they have cut off access from
Speaker 4: to the west by from our main route and people
Speaker 4: if they I don't know if they're allowed to build
Speaker 4: the backway, but where people are going the back way,
Speaker 4: I don't know. It's just a beautiful community today. It
Speaker 4: was just everybody just seems like they're brighter spirits, you know.
Speaker 2: Proverta to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, I'm I'm speechless because it's I
Speaker 3: you know, look, I went through it. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: not on the scale that you guys are going through
Speaker 3: because as we've learned now, this is the deadliest wildfire
Speaker 3: in American in modern American history, and it's horrific, and
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry for you and your community. It's a community.
Speaker 3: I know. I have a friend who lost their home.
Speaker 3: So I'm heartbroken for you and I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: Amy.
Speaker 2: What Amy, your father's doing all right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's well, So the place that we're staying has
Speaker 4: stared and his need to pain everything ever, thing's a
Speaker 4: little more difficult with him. But we've got we actually
Speaker 4: had ties of permanent intakes down to the door today
Speaker 4: and so they're going to bring his influence tomorrow, his
Speaker 4: sins and anything else we need. So he's doing okay,
Speaker 4: a little stumbling and a little out of sorts, but yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and you're there's a story of two dogs tonight.
Speaker 2: There's the story of your dogs who were that you
Speaker 2: were able to save, but there's also the story of
Speaker 2: the cadaver dogs that they are using that must I
Speaker 2: can't imagine what that would be like to know that
Speaker 2: that's the purpose of those dogs that are out there
Speaker 2: in the rubble.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the you know, it's it's just it's just
Speaker 4: it's horrible. It's horrible. You know, the number keeps rising
Speaker 4: and it's just going to keep going up.
Speaker 2: The death stole stands at eighty nine tonight. But as
Speaker 2: you say that, any idea, what how the locals if
Speaker 2: you will mean that? Uh, well, what they what they
Speaker 2: would say? Would they do you think could end up
Speaker 2: being the higher number other than eighty nine?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's uh, I have no clue on how to
Speaker 4: guess that because I don't even know what the number
Speaker 4: is on the missing right now. But like I said,
Speaker 4: last night, they were cutting the tops off of cars
Speaker 4: and finding a whole family. And there's bodies, you know,
Speaker 4: I just heard stories about bodies and bodies and it's
Speaker 4: just it's horrifying. You know, they're looking for bones, so
Speaker 4: having those cadavers is really important to find teeth, Yeah,
Speaker 4: bones they have been they have to identify people with
Speaker 4: her teeth and it's just.
Speaker 2: Robert, you said, Robert you said you've been in lo
Speaker 2: Ina like twenty times, what was your favorite place there
Speaker 2: that you would go to visit or that you would see, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I mean they you know, Amy knows this. That
Speaker 3: Banyan tree there is just unbelievable. You know, it's it's
Speaker 3: shoes huge, it's spectacular, it's beautiful. It was kind of
Speaker 3: in the center of town, and I I, you know,
Speaker 3: I hope that the tree survives so that at some
Speaker 3: point down the road, you know, it can be some
Speaker 3: sort of symbol of of you know, how we how
Speaker 3: we persevere in spite of the terrible thing.
Speaker 2: That happened, like Chicago's water tower.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, the Banion tree is still there, and I
Speaker 4: think it's going to come back stronger. Uh you know,
Speaker 4: we're gonna going to have tourists slimbing all over it
Speaker 4: for a while.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that'll. I think my memory of the conversation
Speaker 2: of those so many that we had last night was
Speaker 2: that I got I had the privilege of telling you
Speaker 2: the good news that the tree had survived, and you're
Speaker 2: a lot closer to it than I was, but I
Speaker 2: had just seen it on a news story And so
Speaker 2: are communications improving starlink at all?
Speaker 4: Ah? No, I mean it's hit or miss Oh, Robert,
Speaker 4: the tree just turned one hundred and fifty years old
Speaker 4: this year, so you know that's a big deal. But
Speaker 4: as far as communication, I don't know. We just got
Speaker 4: power back today and I think that's a lot to
Speaker 4: do with my moods. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. But I
Speaker 4: mean I haven't gotten internet all day today, but yesterday
Speaker 4: I was just able to get it. They just like
Speaker 4: hit or miss and whatever. So allegedly tomorrow we should
Speaker 4: be getting it, which would be amazing. Yeah, way faster
Speaker 4: than I assumed it would.
Speaker 2: What was the what was the most uplifting moment? I
Speaker 2: know it sounds hard to think about it, but Robert
Speaker 2: was talking about that. No, just in general, where you
Speaker 2: where you see the human spirit coming through in a way.
Speaker 4: Which So I was just driving on the Lower Highway
Speaker 4: and I was going by the ABC store and there's
Speaker 4: just a bunch of local boys from the other side
Speaker 4: and they just had this huge, huge thing of gas
Speaker 4: and they weren't with anybody. It was just local boys
Speaker 4: and they I went to stopped there and I was like, wait,
Speaker 4: are you guys giving away gas? And they're like yeah.
Speaker 4: And it wasn't on the radio because it's just localist, right,
Speaker 4: they're not advertising it and they're like just partying up
Speaker 4: to drink coronas and just like music going and just
Speaker 4: and buff Hawaiian dude give and everybody, Yash. It was
Speaker 4: the greatest. That's just so good because they were just
Speaker 4: so happy and it's just good to see that the helpers,
Speaker 4: how happy they are to help and how happy. You know,
Speaker 4: it's just a visual feeling of camaraderie.
Speaker 2: Love that May it last forever. Yeah, thank you so much,
Speaker 2: Amy for joining us back in the conversation that we
Speaker 2: started last night. Uh, there you go, Robert. In a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, that's an echo of Malibu burning too,
Speaker 2: just the ways in which you wouldn't expect people to
Speaker 2: step up at a time when there could be work.
Speaker 2: It could be Uh, you know, there are lesser angels,
Speaker 2: but they're not.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Look, I recently had a birthday. I had every single
Speaker 3: neighbor at my party. Now, before the fire, would I've
Speaker 3: had every single neighbor. No, I would not. You know,
Speaker 3: I would have had some of the neighbors, the neighbors
Speaker 3: that I liked. I had every neighbor.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: In a terrible time. You know, it doesn't matter whether
Speaker 3: you love somebody or you don't love somebody, whatever, but
Speaker 3: you need people to be there for you, and they
Speaker 3: will be there for you. The only ones you can
Speaker 3: count on, and these tragedies are not the authorities. It's
Speaker 3: your neighbors, right, And that's a big lesson.
Speaker 2: I mentioned from time to time. I have a studied
Speaker 2: Hebrew for a while, and that concept of neighbor originally
Speaker 2: meant not in terms of geographical proximity, but it was
Speaker 2: the people you cannot avoid, Those are your neighbors. And
Speaker 2: so I think that's kind of what these type of
Speaker 2: situations do. They remind us that it isn't about whether
Speaker 2: you're eight feet, twenty feet, fifty feet a mile away.
Speaker 2: If you need them, they're your neighbor and you're theirs.
Speaker 2: This is you know, and it makes everything else, any
Speaker 2: other preconception sort of just melt away. But now, so
Speaker 2: looking forward, though, the lessons learned from the from Malibu burning,
Speaker 2: what should they take from that into Maui to avoid
Speaker 2: another situation like this?
Speaker 3: Well that's a fantastic question. And you know I'm here
Speaker 3: to report. You know, Malibu I believe is far more
Speaker 3: fire safe today. You know, when they rebuild these homes now,
Speaker 3: they use much more concrete. They build these homes so
Speaker 3: that they're fire resistant. You can see the people that
Speaker 3: lost their homes when they rebuild them now, they're not
Speaker 3: planning all the kind of flammable landscaping that can catch
Speaker 3: on fire and then obviously drop hot embers onto your
Speaker 3: house and then catch your house on fire. So you
Speaker 3: can really see the difference, especially in Western Malibu where
Speaker 3: the fire was the worst. So I think when they
Speaker 3: rebuild in Lahina, and they will, you know, they're going
Speaker 3: to have much better standards in terms of the the
Speaker 3: businesses and the homes, because of course they lost all
Speaker 3: of the businesses in all of the homes, which is
Speaker 3: why that fire is even more horrific. You know, if
Speaker 3: you imagine losing your home and your job. So so
Speaker 3: you know, I think moving forward, But you know what
Speaker 3: would be great is if we didn't have to lose
Speaker 3: towns to do that, right, That would be the great
Speaker 3: thing is if we could go, hey, let's let's start
Speaker 3: implementing these hardening things. You know, in California, you're required
Speaker 3: to have your water heater strapped so in case of
Speaker 3: an earthquake, you know, you know, and your and your
Speaker 3: gas heater, you know, so that you know you're not
Speaker 3: having you know, gas explosions and you know whatever, you know,
Speaker 3: and you know all these other things. And there are
Speaker 3: simple things you can do with the home hardening for
Speaker 3: wildfire too, and that's something that I think more states
Speaker 3: need to to to.
Speaker 2: Do, yeah, especially esthetically speaking, when there's been huge improvements
Speaker 2: on metal roofs uh and there are a lot of
Speaker 2: communities that that do require metal roofs now because that
Speaker 2: was one way that but you know, there was a
Speaker 2: time when it looked like you had a corrugated steel roof,
Speaker 2: you know, or you had a blue roof with ridges
Speaker 2: on it or something. But now they they're they're replicating
Speaker 2: the sort of the classic asphalt tile style, and they've
Speaker 2: got all of these other shape, you know, cedar shakes
Speaker 2: that are actually metal. And the only reason I mentioned
Speaker 2: it is because we were looking at that. We live
Speaker 2: kind of in the woods a little bit, not much
Speaker 2: of one, it just but there's enough trees around that
Speaker 2: if something went up, our house would seemingly be looming,
Speaker 2: you know, that would be looming over our very own roof.
Speaker 2: And that's not a good feeling.
Speaker 3: No, it's not and and and you sound like the
Speaker 3: perfect candidate for you know, you know, a fire pump.
Speaker 2: And oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3: You know you literally, like I said, twenty minutes, you
Speaker 3: spray your house, you spray everything around your house, and
Speaker 3: you know, you have given yourself a you know, you
Speaker 3: and your home a really strong chances of surviving a
Speaker 3: massive wildfire. Right.
Speaker 2: What was the There was Amy was like said about
Speaker 2: looting and I don't remember was there a lot of
Speaker 2: that during the Malibu fire.
Speaker 3: You know, I wouldn't say there was a lot of it.
Speaker 3: There was some, And of course it was a great
Speaker 3: fear because again, you know, as you pointed out, you
Speaker 3: know there are there are some wealthy people in Malibu,
Speaker 3: and of course, you know, most people evacuated and then
Speaker 3: the roads were shut down, so you know, homes were
Speaker 3: sitting empty, and that was a really great fear. You know,
Speaker 3: there were a couple of cases of people that were
Speaker 3: you know, using motorcycles to you know kind of come
Speaker 3: on the back roads, the dirt roads over the hills
Speaker 3: and the canyons to get you know, theoretically go into
Speaker 3: a home and get the jewelry, the you know, the
Speaker 3: you know, the valuables, and and get out. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't think that's going to be quite I hope
Speaker 3: I'm wrong. I don't think that's going to be the case.
Speaker 3: In line it because again, and I know the town
Speaker 3: a little bit, and you know, it's small. It's a
Speaker 3: very small contained area. You know, Malibu is very long,
Speaker 3: you know wide, you know, it's twenty one miles wide.
Speaker 3: And then of course it goes up into the hills.
Speaker 3: The line is very very small, very tight area. Yeah,
Speaker 3: don't see how people are getting in there to do
Speaker 3: any looting. And then again and that this is tragic.
Speaker 3: There are just not many homes that survived, right, So
Speaker 3: there's really you know, anybody that has lived through wildfire
Speaker 3: knows that when the wildfire burns your home, there is
Speaker 3: nothing left. There is nothing. The cars are gone, everything
Speaker 3: is gone, you know it. Maybe the chimney survives. That's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Malibu fire, I had to go back and
Speaker 2: really look at it. Where is it ranking now? The
Speaker 2: Woolsey fire in terms of it was at the time
Speaker 2: of the publication, it was the worst wildfire in La history.
Speaker 2: Is it still?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's still the worst wildfire in La County history.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the most expensive wildfires in history,
Speaker 3: of course, again because Malibu is Malibu, right, and the
Speaker 3: property are expensive or you know, many of the properties
Speaker 3: are expensive. In terms of acreage, it was one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand acres, so again, you know, that is a massive
Speaker 3: amount of acreage that burned. You know, I mean, if
Speaker 3: you look at the line of fire in terms of
Speaker 3: the amount of acreage that burned, it's extremely small. And
Speaker 3: yet you've had so many people die and so many
Speaker 3: structures you know, lost, because again it's a very tight community.
Speaker 3: I think. You know, in Malibu, we were fortunate we
Speaker 3: did not have the deaths, the fatalities that the campfire had,
Speaker 3: which was up in Paradise, which was the same day
Speaker 3: as the Malibu fire, and you know, obviously this horrific
Speaker 3: the you know, these numbers of fatalities in the line
Speaker 3: are just staggering, and I think again one of the
Speaker 3: reasons we didn't have those fatalities in Malibu is because
Speaker 3: people here have lived through wildfires, and they know, what
Speaker 3: do you do. You get down to the beach, you
Speaker 3: get down to the water. Now we are seeing it
Speaker 3: looks like you know, people did get to the water
Speaker 3: in in Lahina and still perished. I want to know
Speaker 3: more about that. Yeah, you know, I would think once
Speaker 3: you're in the water, but I guess if you can't breathe,
Speaker 3: if the air you know, in other words, that smoke
Speaker 3: and fire above you and you're you're breathing, you know,
Speaker 3: you're inhaling that, then yeah, you know you're you're not
Speaker 3: going to make it. You know, I'm a swimmer, so
Speaker 3: I mean, I you know, i'd be swimming across the
Speaker 3: channel to the Lanai. But you know, again, I wasn't there,
Speaker 3: so I don't know. But you know, I feel like
Speaker 3: if if you know, so many people that so far
Speaker 3: that I've read, they were in their cars. They burned
Speaker 3: alive in their cars. And and I'm here to tell
Speaker 3: your listeners the worst place to be in a wildfire
Speaker 3: is in your vehicle. It seems like it's safe and
Speaker 3: it's not.
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