Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing from iHeart Radio. In twenty twenty one, I
Speaker 1: spoke with documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker about her film Bringing
Speaker 1: Your Own Brigade, which focuses on the two La wildfires
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, the Campfire, which nearly destroyed the town
Speaker 1: of Paradise and killed eighty five people, and the Woolsey Fire,
Speaker 1: which erupted on the same day and destroyed large parts
Speaker 1: of Malibu. At the time, those wildfires were the largest
Speaker 1: in California's history. You can find a link to that
Speaker 1: conversation with Lucy Walker in the show notes of this episode.
Speaker 1: In January of this year, Los Angeles suffered more devastation
Speaker 1: from out of control wildfires that destroyed the Pacific Palisades
Speaker 1: areas of Altadena and killed twenty nine people. Incredibly, the
Speaker 1: recent fires eclipsed the size and devastation of the two.
Speaker 1: I was eighteen disaster and have left all of Los
Speaker 1: Angeles in mourning. I asked Lucy Walker to join me
Speaker 1: again to see how she's doing and to ask if
Speaker 1: anything can be done to try to prevent this part
Speaker 1: of the country from burning so predictably on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: For Walker, it's been a traumatic revisiting of recent history.
Speaker 2: It was horrifying watching it happen to my friends in
Speaker 2: my town and knowing so much but feeling so powerless
Speaker 2: to stop it. And that was such a terrifying couple
Speaker 2: of days. And I was supposed to go I was
Speaker 2: here when it happened, and then I had to go
Speaker 2: straight to New York and go straight to an award show.
Speaker 2: I was supposed to be on stage, and I actually
Speaker 2: felt so panicked and upset I actually couldn't go on stage.
Speaker 2: It really was such an upsetting time to be in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, and for everyone who loves the city and
Speaker 2: who has friends involved.
Speaker 1: In your film, bringing your own brigade, and you see,
Speaker 1: of course that infamous section where they bring in the
Speaker 1: advisor and they give them the very simple boilerplate of
Speaker 1: things they needed to do to likely avoid at least
Speaker 1: that level of severity again, and they refuse. What did
Speaker 1: you understand was the reason why did they refuse? I mean,
Speaker 1: it was something as vital as that. What was that
Speaker 1: element of human nature as far as you were concerned.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the simple answer is that you know
Speaker 2: The fabulous thing about this country and what I chose
Speaker 2: to immigrate from the UK, is that this is a
Speaker 2: country of people striking out on their own and doing
Speaker 2: their own thing and not sort of bound by old
Speaker 2: community sort of get togethers, and really excited to kind
Speaker 2: of progress and do their own thing. And the bad
Speaker 2: news about that is when you try to get people
Speaker 2: together to kind of rain in their individuality and you know,
Speaker 2: for example, not have fammable plants, you know, three feet
Speaker 2: from the house, or not have gutters or something like
Speaker 2: that which are kind of low cost or no cost
Speaker 2: anti fire measures, the instinctive reaction is I don't want
Speaker 2: to be told what to do. But I think there's
Speaker 2: a deeper issue, which is that the fire issue is
Speaker 2: really counterintuitive. I went in such a learning journey when
Speaker 2: I made the movie, and it wasn't intuitive. You know.
Speaker 2: It's so when I've watched my dear beloved friends go
Speaker 2: through this, it's so obvious that it's the fault of
Speaker 2: the firefighters, or the fault of the water or the
Speaker 2: mayor or something like that, right, the evacuation system. And
Speaker 2: yet it's really hard to take in this bigger picture
Speaker 2: because it is a layered story. Yes, it's climate change,
Speaker 2: but it's also where we're building, and it's also how
Speaker 2: we're building, and it's just kind of a complicated picture.
Speaker 2: And you know, I've seen the same sort of things
Speaker 2: kick in with my smart friends here in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: sort of seeing a part of the picture very clearly,
Speaker 2: but not the whole picture. And so I really was
Speaker 2: so grateful through this that I'd had financiers and colleagues
Speaker 2: when I was making my film that actually supported me
Speaker 2: to go on this kind of hard journey of finding
Speaker 2: out the whole story because it's inconvenient and it's complicated.
Speaker 2: But now in a situation like this, this is exactly
Speaker 2: why I made the film with all the rigor and
Speaker 2: work so so hard, and our team worked so hard
Speaker 2: because I wanted, I felt a responsibility to get it right.
Speaker 2: I felt like lives are at stake, homes are at stake,
Speaker 2: and I felt like if I didn't get it right,
Speaker 2: it would you know, I don't want to be grand
Speaker 2: and said in danger lives, but I really felt like, gosh,
Speaker 2: I just want to get the story right so that
Speaker 2: people can understand, because it isn't easy to I knew
Speaker 2: for myself when I started making the film, I had
Speaker 2: this naive I did just put out the fires and
Speaker 2: another simple idea, Oh it must be just climate change,
Speaker 2: And neither of them are quite true and understanding now
Speaker 2: as I do when I looked at the fire in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and all the dreadful things that have happened,
Speaker 2: if you understand what's going on, I can understand everything
Speaker 2: that's happened in this dreadful last few weeks. I can
Speaker 2: see when someone opens their mouth, I can almost tell
Speaker 2: you what they're going to say, because I know this
Speaker 2: story so well, and I think it's hopefully going to
Speaker 2: be a real resource and help to people that if
Speaker 2: they do watch the film. I think it is hopefully
Speaker 2: clear information that really gives you a three sixty picture.
Speaker 1: When I live there, I got absorbed in southern California living,
Speaker 1: and when you told me this happened in this area
Speaker 1: of this can't be true, so much of it being gone,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering, do you think these people will be
Speaker 1: different from the people in the campfire and they'll adhere
Speaker 1: to some new code of how that might be restored.
Speaker 2: I've been reflecting deeply on this and have some absolutely
Speaker 2: some of my favorite closest friends who've lost their homes
Speaker 2: and their animals and of their kids' schools and just
Speaker 2: so profoundly impacted. And I'm hearing something a little bit different.
Speaker 2: And I guess my prayer is that this is an
Speaker 2: opportunity for some really well informed and well resourced people
Speaker 2: to have this hard, hard conversation that I do believe
Speaker 2: we're going to have to have sort of one way
Speaker 2: or the other. This conversation is pressing up against us,
Speaker 2: is are we going to do something a little bit differently,
Speaker 2: Because I do think that the fundamental proposition of living
Speaker 2: in the wildland urban interface in Los Angeles and perhaps
Speaker 2: more broadly in California has changed. And part of that
Speaker 2: is going to be the insurance companies, which in the
Speaker 2: short term are going to be prevented from pulling out
Speaker 2: and changing coverage and things like that. But I don't
Speaker 2: think that's going to last very long. I don't think
Speaker 2: you can kind of force insurance companies to, you know, expose.
Speaker 1: Themselves for these changes for risks for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a change of circumstances and it's been kind
Speaker 2: of creeping up, but I think this has really changed
Speaker 2: things with the amount of money, and yeah, so I
Speaker 2: think that the hope is that we will have less
Speaker 2: of these in future, and we might build back smarter
Speaker 2: and have opportunities to live in a way that will
Speaker 2: have less of these just devastations moving forward, because it's
Speaker 2: not just I can't even say it's not just because
Speaker 2: we're just in the middle of this horrific shock where
Speaker 2: it seems so overwhelming and everything that we've lost. But
Speaker 2: we've lost animals, we've lost homes, all my neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: If people only knew that area how it is, I
Speaker 1: mean California living among many things involved. You know, if
Speaker 1: you've got two acres and a paddock in a Goa
Speaker 1: or North Hills, you've got a horse, you know, people,
Speaker 1: animals or a big part of people's lives out there
Speaker 1: because of the weather in a way they can't be
Speaker 1: other places.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's not just that people have lost so much
Speaker 2: in the short term. In the long term, it's also
Speaker 2: these neighborhoods are not going to go back quickly. The
Speaker 2: trauma can really last a long time. People have health
Speaker 2: impacts actually after, you know, because you imagine the shock
Speaker 2: and the stress of being homeless and finding new places
Speaker 2: and moving around and just having to cope. You know,
Speaker 2: will continue to see people have health problems that are
Speaker 2: not actually they won't be traced to the fire. But
Speaker 2: I remember, you know, to be absolutely brutal about it,
Speaker 2: but let me say that two of the people I
Speaker 2: was following in the aftermath of the Paradise fire died
Speaker 2: of causes that you wouldn't recognize connected with the fire
Speaker 2: in the year following as we kept filming heart attacks
Speaker 2: in particular stress from the stress. Absolutely, you can never
Speaker 2: kind of pin those things, right, but it did seem
Speaker 2: like a lot of people, you know, it makes absolute sense, right.
Speaker 2: So the thing I've been really praying is that the
Speaker 2: people impacted can really try to sort of really take
Speaker 2: care of their health and really prioritize just trying to
Speaker 2: recover themselves because it's kind of a long haul.
Speaker 1: Filmmaker Lucy Walker. Listen to our twenty twenty one conversation
Speaker 1: for more in depth discussion about the LA fires and
Speaker 1: Walker's documentary film, Bring Your Own Brigade. The title is
Speaker 1: a reference to wealthy residents who hire their own private
Speaker 1: firefighters to protect property during wildfires.
Speaker 2: What I want to understand is, well, how are we
Speaker 2: stopping it, and why are people living in these areas
Speaker 2: and building these houses that burn over and over and
Speaker 2: over again. Could we do better? So you would think
Speaker 2: that when people look at developing an area for housing,
Speaker 2: they would think about fire safety, but nobody's actually thinking about,
Speaker 2: well are they going to be able to ensure these
Speaker 2: homes and who's going to pay if these homes burn down.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Lucy Walker, go
Speaker 1: to Here's Thething dot org. After the break, Lucy Walker
Speaker 1: details why she believes residents who choose to rebuild in
Speaker 1: fire prone areas are taking on enormous risk to both
Speaker 1: their financial stability and their lives. I'm Alec Baldwin, and
Speaker 1: this is Here's the Thing. I first spoke with filmmaker
Speaker 1: Lucy Walker in twenty twenty one. I was curious if
Speaker 1: she stayed in touch with any of the subjects that
Speaker 1: she was acquainted with while making her film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I absolutely. The film came out and it really
Speaker 2: followed not just the fires, and it sort of talked
Speaker 2: about fires in general and actually, if anything, it was
Speaker 2: specific about could Los Angeles burn? Because that's where I
Speaker 2: live and that was my sort of naive question that
Speaker 2: I kind of sparked the conversation into the movie with.
Speaker 2: But the Fire looked at those twin events that happened
Speaker 2: in November twenty eighteen, but it didn't come out till
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, so I was filming a couple of
Speaker 2: years after the events and put that in the movie.
Speaker 2: But actually, you get really close with people when you
Speaker 2: film with them, so I have absolutely kept in touch.
Speaker 2: And it's a really slow journey back, and these neighborhoods
Speaker 2: don't recover all at once. And what we're seeing now
Speaker 2: is people have to live or make that decision, and
Speaker 2: it's toxic for a very long time, and these are
Speaker 2: going to be very slow, hard decisions about building. And
Speaker 2: then it's a very slow process.
Speaker 1: So what's it like there now in your campfire area?
Speaker 2: In the campfire area, it's coming back in that neighborhood.
Speaker 2: The spirit was just rebuild back as fast as possible.
Speaker 1: In the same exact way.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's a strange thing that happens where real estate
Speaker 2: goes up. They call it fire gentrification because you get
Speaker 2: a lot of displaced people and so it's kind of
Speaker 2: like things actually kind of escalate. What cuts off this
Speaker 2: is the insurance. What people are up against is that
Speaker 2: the insurance companies are really pulling out of these areas.
Speaker 2: And there is this thing called the California Fair Plan,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, the state gives you this option
Speaker 2: of getting very expensive and very restrictive. You have to
Speaker 2: sort of trim and do certain things to get your
Speaker 2: fire insurance. But it does give people a backup option
Speaker 2: to get insurance rather than not be insured at all.
Speaker 2: But it's increasingly true that I think in that area
Speaker 2: people are choosing to go without insurance. And of course
Speaker 2: going without insurance is a nice affordable strategy until it
Speaker 2: all goes wrong. I think some people there are individually
Speaker 2: choosing to build back in a more fire safe way.
Speaker 2: And what we've seen as these stories have emerged from
Speaker 2: these New Los Angeles fires is there are stories that
Speaker 2: the home that was fire hardened has survived. Now that's
Speaker 2: not fool proof. My understanding is that even if you
Speaker 2: have a far hardened home, it's not sort of impossible
Speaker 2: that it'll burn, but it's way less likely. And so
Speaker 2: I think these stories they did get through to some
Speaker 2: people in Paradise, and some people did build back in
Speaker 2: a more sort of hardened way, and they had a
Speaker 2: fire that came through already I think it was two
Speaker 2: summers ago, and they managed to put it out so
Speaker 2: it wasn't a huge, uncontrollable one, but that area is
Speaker 2: likely to burn again very soon.
Speaker 1: Again. I'm very curious also as to what comes back afterward,
Speaker 1: where the campfire people were like, well, no, we don't
Speaker 1: want to change a thing. And I'm wondering, do we
Speaker 1: wind up in a situation where you almost have to
Speaker 1: have an AI capacity to develop what the next palisades
Speaker 1: will be? Like the road you drove up to go
Speaker 1: to your house, that road doesn't exist anymore. Do they
Speaker 1: replan the whole thing, every square foot of it as
Speaker 1: to access density, vegetation, building materials. This is an opportunity
Speaker 1: to have, like an almost lab experiment. Do you agree absolutely?
Speaker 2: What the movie showed was that the town leadership, the
Speaker 2: town council, and the firefighters in that town in Paradise leadership,
Speaker 2: the firefighters in the town, and all the organizations involved
Speaker 2: really came together and had this really good process of
Speaker 2: imagining how they could rebuild back differently and presenting it
Speaker 2: to the town, and the town actually voted it down.
Speaker 2: The town pressured the town council to vote down these
Speaker 2: initiatives one by one, which was very disheartening to watch.
Speaker 2: In the movie, however, they did have that dream. But
Speaker 2: I think that exactly what you've described will happen in
Speaker 2: these areas in Los Angeles that I think that people
Speaker 2: are going to come together and say, how can we
Speaker 2: do it a little bit differently? And I don't think
Speaker 2: it'll be as radical as in the movie. There's a
Speaker 2: section where Mike Davis, who's since passed away but wrote
Speaker 2: a lot about fires, and he talks in the movie
Speaker 2: about how when Los Angeles was designed, the most famous
Speaker 2: sort of town planners of Los Angeles were these guys
Speaker 2: called the Olmsted Brothers, and their vision was that these
Speaker 2: areas that were burned repeatedly, such as Malibu, but that
Speaker 2: were so beautiful that we wanted to be there, let's
Speaker 2: be there, but let's only build sort of carefree cabins
Speaker 2: where we can let it things burn, not keep our
Speaker 2: great treasures there and not sort of disposable homes and
Speaker 2: to enjoy for as long as they might be there.
Speaker 2: But if the winds line up and the rains haven't come,
Speaker 2: just get out of the way and let nature take
Speaker 2: care of cleaning up, and then come back and build
Speaker 2: another cabin again once that's past. And of course that's
Speaker 2: not what we've done. These areas are so beautiful. We've
Speaker 2: built these absolute palaces of homes within great artworks and
Speaker 2: so forth there, and then of course we get terribly attached.
Speaker 2: And then we've got also all this fantastic you know,
Speaker 2: shrubberry and all these quite flammable plants and other flammable stuff,
Speaker 2: and so we've kind of built up this huge problem
Speaker 2: for ourselves. But I think now there is sort of
Speaker 2: a blank slate about how we come back. I don't
Speaker 2: expect that we'll get the carefree cabins, but I do
Speaker 2: hold out hope that there will be positive conversation about
Speaker 2: doing things a little bit differently so that we don't
Speaker 2: have our hearts broken to this extent.
Speaker 1: Again, at what point, in terms of public policy, to
Speaker 1: people in every area like this, if you're building in
Speaker 1: flood zones and the East Coast, and you're building in
Speaker 1: fire zones on the West coast, how much do you
Speaker 1: say to people you're on your own. You're going to
Speaker 1: have to take care of all your costs, no insurance,
Speaker 1: don't ask the federal government to come in and you know,
Speaker 1: save your neighborhood the more important. Yes, save it on
Speaker 1: a safety level, but not to pay for it to
Speaker 1: rebuild it.
Speaker 2: That's right. One thing that I heard from people, particularly
Speaker 2: in Paradise, I think because it is this quite rugged,
Speaker 2: anti big government area, was like, Oh, we don't want
Speaker 2: to pay taxes, we don't want government. What does government
Speaker 2: give us? But in the same conversation they say, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm waiting for my FEMA money. I wish my FEMA
Speaker 2: money was more, and not making that connection that FEMA
Speaker 2: was a great gift of the government really and that
Speaker 2: is what government can provide. And yet what is that
Speaker 2: question about wanting to sort of pay into this kind
Speaker 2: of common resource and pay out, you know. And now
Speaker 2: we're dealing with insurance, it's like, well, this is a
Speaker 2: very expensive incident. And moving forward, now that we are
Speaker 2: starting to know more, are other policyholders who live in
Speaker 2: safer areas going to want to subsidize these homes in
Speaker 2: less dangerous areas? And are insurer is going to be
Speaker 2: able to even afford to ensure homes in safer areas
Speaker 2: if they keep being exposed to these incidents in more
Speaker 2: dangerous areas. What I hope, and maybe that sounds naive
Speaker 2: of me, but what I hope is that people can
Speaker 2: be really helped through this really complicated change because it's
Speaker 2: really not intuitive, and it's really new, and we love
Speaker 2: these areas. I mean, what a gorgeous landscape, and it
Speaker 2: is heartbreaking to think that we're not safe in this
Speaker 2: place that we think of as the most beautiful home, imaginable,
Speaker 2: full of nature and inspiration. And to sort of really
Speaker 2: fundamentally change our relationship with how we think about risk there.
Speaker 2: We're not very good at that human beings, and that's
Speaker 2: before you add in commercial pressures like the realtors. I
Speaker 2: remember I started out my project, as I remember telling you,
Speaker 2: during the terrible months slides in Montecito and the terrible
Speaker 2: what was at the time the worst fire in California,
Speaker 2: which was the Thomas Fire around the Santa Barbara and
Speaker 2: Ohai area. I had a shocking experience during that when
Speaker 2: I saw a realtor selling the property to a new
Speaker 2: customer who wasn't aware that the previous residents had been
Speaker 2: killed in this mud slide and this property was really
Speaker 2: where it was situated geographically because of the potential for
Speaker 2: slides in certain you know, Santa Barbara being under very
Speaker 2: steep sort of mountains that go down to the ocean,
Speaker 2: and that after a fire, these hillsides can really collapse
Speaker 2: in quite predictable sort of places. And so this property
Speaker 2: was really very dangerous.
Speaker 1: Boulders sliding down hills.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yes, exactly, it does have these predictable slides. After
Speaker 2: the vegetation that kind of holds the hillside together gets
Speaker 2: burned off when the rains come, the boulders can kind
Speaker 2: of get loose and really land on houses and sweep
Speaker 2: them all the way down to the ocean. It's absolutely horrifying.
Speaker 2: So I think that the way they're kind of you know,
Speaker 2: the way that it all works because people have property
Speaker 2: values and they want to keep things going. And obviously
Speaker 2: everyone understandably is in this. But I think that we're
Speaker 2: going to need some help, you know, so that individuals
Speaker 2: are helped who are involved and impacted to really get
Speaker 2: with this new reality that there are really dangerous places
Speaker 2: to live that unfortunately the risk is perhaps just too
Speaker 2: high now and too expensive to live in the way
Speaker 2: that they might want to live right there. And there's
Speaker 2: also another problem but the other opposite end of the
Speaker 2: economic spectrum, which is it's not just the well resourced
Speaker 2: people who have this choice of living in this most
Speaker 2: spectacular part of Los Angeles, that's the hilly part that's
Speaker 2: very far prone. It's also true that the cheaper areas
Speaker 2: that California is building into, and not just California, you know,
Speaker 2: looking at other states too. It's not just California, many
Speaker 2: states and Canada and Maui and other countries certainly, especially
Speaker 2: in Mediterranean countries, are really being impacted by these increasing fires.
Speaker 2: So what we're seeing is that actually affordable housing further
Speaker 2: out of town is also being built in these areas
Speaker 2: that are hilly and fire prone. This wildland urban interface.
Speaker 2: And we saw for example during COVID, where a lot
Speaker 2: of people were moving further out of the cities into
Speaker 2: places with more space, they were almost all moving into
Speaker 2: these areas that are very fire prone. So you've kind
Speaker 2: of got more rich people living in these spectacular areas
Speaker 2: that are fire prone, and you've also got a lot
Speaker 2: of people who are much less wealthy. For example, Paradise
Speaker 2: communities or some of the communities that are much further
Speaker 2: out of Los Angeles where a lot of the more
Speaker 2: affordable homes are being built, and developers are building huge
Speaker 2: amounts of homes there because there's a lot of people
Speaker 2: that want homes in California. But unfortunately that development is
Speaker 2: into exactly the areas that might be affordable now but
Speaker 2: aren't going to be ensurable and are really prone to
Speaker 2: burning soon. So I really hope that we can get
Speaker 2: our heads around this, because unfortunately the fires are not.
Speaker 1: Going to stop. Filmmaker Lucy Walker. If you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. When we come back, Lucy Walker discusses the
Speaker 1: most recent devastation to befall Los Angeles and why she
Speaker 1: feels the twenty twenty five fires feel like LA's own
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. After the most recent twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: fires devastated huge parts of Greater Los Angeles, I was
Speaker 1: curious how individual communities had been impacted. I asked Lucy
Speaker 1: Walker if she's noticed they shared sense of grief among
Speaker 1: residents across LA.
Speaker 2: I have never felt this city more united and that
Speaker 2: spirit of nine to eleven. Actually it was ironic because
Speaker 2: sort of after the fires, I had to go to
Speaker 2: New York for this awards show and they gave me
Speaker 2: hotel room number nine to eleven, and I looked at
Speaker 2: them and I thought, that is exactly what I feel like.
Speaker 2: This is Los Angeles is nine to eleven. And what's beautiful,
Speaker 2: I do think, and may it last, is this really
Speaker 2: open hearted feeling of just infinite kindness and compassion for
Speaker 2: those caught up in it. So many people affected, so
Speaker 2: many people know, so many people affected. It's absolutely overwhelming.
Speaker 1: Almost like everybody knows somebody. Are you on the east
Speaker 1: side of the West side.
Speaker 2: I'm in sort of southern Santa Monica on the Venice
Speaker 2: border and an area I never thought could burn Ocean flats. Yes,
Speaker 2: I'm exactly in Ocean Park, So I'm a good sort
Speaker 2: of five miles from where the far perimeter in the
Speaker 2: Palisades was. But my experience that first night when the
Speaker 2: fires erupted and I'd been watching them, and I'd been
Speaker 2: like five hours ahead of the news because I was
Speaker 2: looking at the winds and I knew what we're up
Speaker 2: against and nobody could get planes in the air to
Speaker 2: see it. But just from following X and radio traffic
Speaker 2: and looking at the winds, and I just knew what
Speaker 2: I was looking at, and my firefighter friends just this
Speaker 2: horrifying feeling of knowing what we were in for and
Speaker 2: watching an unfold. But there was this moment that night
Speaker 2: when I looked out of my window and it was
Speaker 2: orange and I smelled smoke, and the wind was knocking
Speaker 2: you flat if you walked outside your door. And I
Speaker 2: found myself for the first time in that position of thinking,
Speaker 2: oh grief, I'm going to have to figure out what
Speaker 2: I need to take. And I am in the opposite.
Speaker 2: If there was an area in Los Angeles that would
Speaker 2: be the lowest fire risk, that's where I live. And
Speaker 2: I'm a good you know, four or five miles from
Speaker 2: the hills here, and yet even here because these sort
Speaker 2: of ember driven windstorm type events, you know, once those
Speaker 2: embers get going and those kinds of winds, you know,
Speaker 2: there's kind of no stopping it. And I was sort
Speaker 2: of paranoid and traumatized to sort of be afraid of thinking.
Speaker 2: I didn't really think it would get this far, because
Speaker 2: if it got this far, you know, it'd been sort
Speaker 2: of the whole city would have been at risk, but
Speaker 2: to actually have to go through for the first time,
Speaker 2: for myself that situation, and I think most people in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles had that experience, was like, oh God, could
Speaker 2: it get here? And how many people do I know?
Speaker 2: And so many people have friends living with them now
Speaker 2: who are helping people. So many people have stepped into
Speaker 2: that role. And that's obviously what's beautiful about these disasters,
Speaker 2: and that my prayer is that there are gifts in
Speaker 2: this for people. And I did film people not just
Speaker 2: during the fires and the immediate horrific aftermath, but on
Speaker 2: the long term for the next couple of years following,
Speaker 2: and have kept following up with them even since filming.
Speaker 2: And the beautiful thing of course humans being resilient. You know,
Speaker 2: our movie ends with the wedding of two people who
Speaker 2: would not have come together had it not been for
Speaker 2: their fire. And so I hope that there will be
Speaker 2: gifts in this, even for the people that at this
Speaker 2: point just feel so overwhelmed with the grief of what
Speaker 2: they've lost.
Speaker 1: Are people out there are their beliefs that the power
Speaker 1: authority was indeed involved in this in terms of the
Speaker 1: arcing and the where the origin of the fire was.
Speaker 1: Do they think that that might be a suspect? Is
Speaker 1: that still being discussed.
Speaker 2: I think that it does seem like that's being discussed.
Speaker 2: And I will say from my observations is that the
Speaker 2: learnings about, you know, what causes the fires and what
Speaker 2: went wrong, sometimes they're really slow to come out, and
Speaker 2: that can be frustrating for people who you know, in
Speaker 2: their anger and grief, very natural, but you know, the
Speaker 2: impulse is to point fingers sooner. And what I've observed
Speaker 2: is that the firefighters and especially are very good at
Speaker 2: being incredibly accountable and responsible, and even when it's tough
Speaker 2: to sort of realize mistakes were made and to discuss failings,
Speaker 2: they do it unflinchingly, and they do it because their
Speaker 2: own lives are at stake.
Speaker 1: I'm not even referring to the fire. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the electric company.
Speaker 2: The electric companies are slower. I would say, to get
Speaker 2: into it, but I hope that it does seem like
Speaker 2: the story, even with the electric companies, is that they
Speaker 2: will be held to the fire. I guess can I
Speaker 2: use that pun I do think that you know, it
Speaker 2: does seem like people are going through the evidence pretty thoroughly.
Speaker 2: The one thing that I'll say that's kind of a
Speaker 2: bigger point, though, is that things will burn even if
Speaker 2: we had no electric companies, no matter what you do,
Speaker 2: no matter what you do. When the European the first
Speaker 2: European boat sailed up to the coast of Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of how I opened my movie. It
Speaker 2: was on fire. They called it the Bay of Smoke
Speaker 2: because it was a fire. Now, there weren't any electric
Speaker 2: companies here when the Europeans first sales out. Obviously that
Speaker 2: would have been a lightning strike probably right.
Speaker 1: It's meant to burn.
Speaker 2: It's meant to burn. It is a fire landscape, whether
Speaker 2: it's a firework or a cigarette butt, or just the
Speaker 2: way that the sun magnifies through somebody's discarded glasses. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a gender reveal party that winds up setting a
Speaker 2: big at fire and killing somebody that we show in
Speaker 2: the movie, And so there's always going to be something.
Speaker 2: And the other thing that I observed, which is kind
Speaker 2: of hard to get your brain around, but true, is
Speaker 2: that it's a disaster and things are going to go wrong,
Speaker 2: and that might be a water reservoir, or it might
Speaker 2: be an evacuation system. It might be a bad call
Speaker 2: that in retrospect turned out to be not the right one,
Speaker 2: but was made under juress by a firefighter who had
Speaker 2: to just go one way or the other in the
Speaker 2: moment and has to make decisions that in our jobs,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not faced with those kind of life
Speaker 2: and death decisions in the course of my work. Right,
Speaker 2: So it's a disaster, and things will sometimes go awry
Speaker 2: even when they're pretty well set up. And ironically, they
Speaker 2: had a really robust evacuation plan that they'd worked on
Speaker 2: and rehearsed that you kind of if the fire hadn't
Speaker 2: come through and killed eighty six people, you would have
Speaker 2: textbooks and they'd point at paradise and say they were
Speaker 2: well prepared. But things go wrong. That's actually the nature
Speaker 2: of accidents and disasters. And so I sort of had
Speaker 2: this bigger picture where, yes, there's going to be failings,
Speaker 2: Yes we definitely need to learn from them, but we
Speaker 2: also perhaps need to face into the very challenging reality.
Speaker 1: Do you have animals.
Speaker 2: I don't because I travel the time as a documentary
Speaker 2: because but I love animals, and my heart's been absolutely
Speaker 2: broken for my friends that have lost their animals, but
Speaker 2: I feel lucky to be surrounded by these people with
Speaker 2: great spirit. I was just at physical therapy and I
Speaker 2: saw a friend of mine who lost everything in the
Speaker 2: Palisades and has three kids and has this great stoic attitude,
Speaker 2: you know. But he said to me, I don't think
Speaker 2: we're going to rebuild in the Palisades. I kind of
Speaker 2: like Venice now. I don't think we can do it
Speaker 2: the same way anymore. And I do think that this
Speaker 2: could be the moment which when my film came out
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one, I don't think we were there yet,
Speaker 2: but I think this episode has been so hallacious. I'm
Speaker 2: really glad for you for having the vision to have
Speaker 2: this conversation four years ago and then to revisit it now.
Speaker 2: And I think more people may be actually looking for
Speaker 2: this kind of information and conversation, and it may be
Speaker 2: time to have a conversation that we really don't want
Speaker 2: to have. And I get it, but I think that
Speaker 2: we will be better off the sooner that we can
Speaker 2: get our heads around it.
Speaker 1: My thoughts are with you and stay safe.
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful for this outpouring of love for Los
Speaker 2: Angeles and for you for highlighting the hopefully good information
Speaker 2: that the film contains. And it's really that's the sweetest
Speaker 2: thing about this is to feel your support and I
Speaker 2: really really appreciate doing this.
Speaker 1: Thank you. My thanks to Lucy Walker. Her documentary about
Speaker 1: the California wildfires, Bring Your Own Brigade, is streaming on
Speaker 1: Paramount Plus. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in
Speaker 1: New York City. Were produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice,
Speaker 1: and Victoria De Martin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial and
Speaker 1: our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.