Speaker 1: Sara Dar Salcedo grew up in a rancho in rural northern.
Speaker 2: Mexico in a beautiful ranch.
Speaker 1: When he was a teenager, his family moved to the
Speaker 1: La area, a far cry from ranch life, but Sal
Speaker 1: took to his new home and found his life's work.
Speaker 3: I worked on some of the best salons in La
Speaker 3: as an assistant, and then I got my own chair
Speaker 3: and I decided to open up my own space at
Speaker 3: age twenty eight. And my salon is about to be
Speaker 3: seven years old and Carnovo Art Salon, and I love it.
Speaker 2: It's a safe space where everyone's welcome.
Speaker 3: When where people can come in and make the dreams
Speaker 3: come reality.
Speaker 1: Sal also moved to a neighborhood that he really.
Speaker 3: Loved, Altadina. It's the most in my opinion, the most communal,
Speaker 3: beautiful place.
Speaker 1: Two weeks ago, Sal took a vacation in Baja, his
Speaker 1: former hometown, and as he drove back to his home
Speaker 1: in Altadena to his family, his partner called him, she's.
Speaker 2: Be really careful. The wind's getting crazier getting clothes. Maybe
Speaker 2: like about an hour away from Altadena, and.
Speaker 3: I call another friend of mine who lives really close
Speaker 3: to the mountain I said, Jess, how are you? She says, dude,
Speaker 3: look at this and the fire's like right outside her house,
Speaker 3: and she's like, we're grabbing everything.
Speaker 2: Where are you?
Speaker 3: And just start really just feeling, you know, like, oh
Speaker 3: my goodness.
Speaker 2: I start speeding up.
Speaker 3: I started driving faster and faster, skipping trees and branches,
Speaker 3: and all I see is lines of cars getting out
Speaker 3: of Altadena.
Speaker 1: Sal was heading towards the fire as people were fleeing
Speaker 1: from it. He got home to his six year old
Speaker 1: son and his partner. It was around seven pm and
Speaker 1: the power had been out for hours, so they all
Speaker 1: put headlamps on and started packing, grabbing clothes, documents, water,
Speaker 1: and crates for their pets.
Speaker 2: We have about three cats and a dog.
Speaker 1: They spent about thirty minutes loading up the car.
Speaker 3: Oh, I did grab honey, honey in a pack of butter.
Speaker 3: That's what we grabbed because we love honey and butter.
Speaker 3: We figured it will be all right.
Speaker 1: They hugged, prayed, and left. Sal was headed for his
Speaker 1: hair salon in downtown LA without a plan. During the drive,
Speaker 1: friends started calling asking if he and his family had
Speaker 1: a place to go, and a couple of hours later
Speaker 1: they ended up going to a close friend's house in Crenshaw,
Speaker 1: an area safe from the fires. Sal didn't sleep much
Speaker 1: the first night away from home.
Speaker 4: I kept waking up. I will fry it.
Speaker 3: At one point I had a dream myself us like
Speaker 3: my family on fire.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 2: The next morning I just felt like I had to go.
Speaker 1: So he drove to Aldadina alone. Police cars, firefighters everywhere,
Speaker 1: houses still on fire. His neighborhood turned to ashes.
Speaker 2: I didn't know emotionally what to do. You know, it
Speaker 2: was just odd. It was odd.
Speaker 3: Some houses were just completely gone nothing. There was a
Speaker 3: lot of chimney standing.
Speaker 1: And then South saw what was left of his house.
Speaker 3: So my chimney was standing, maybe like parts of the
Speaker 3: wall were standing, like the arches. Mainly all the ceramics stay,
Speaker 3: you know. So there was this wall, the entrance of
Speaker 3: a wall. I have a Buddha, a Buddha statue. He's
Speaker 3: there meditating, and then there's a sun in the moon
Speaker 3: that I got in and baja like little clay, and
Speaker 3: all the pots from my plants are there.
Speaker 1: South thought of all the things he wished he had
Speaker 1: brought with him.
Speaker 3: It's almost like when you you know, life flashes before
Speaker 3: you looking at things like I have some pictures of
Speaker 3: my parents. Pictures that we have are pieces. I mean,
Speaker 3: I love boots. I have these beautiful leather boots. If
Speaker 3: I would have done, I would to grab my boots
Speaker 3: because those probably were my precious things.
Speaker 2: But I didn't, you.
Speaker 3: Know, because you're looking at your your animals, and you're
Speaker 3: looking at your family, and I kept checking on my
Speaker 3: son that he's okay, and so it's almost like every
Speaker 3: time you're thinking about grabbing something, you just don't, at
Speaker 3: least for us, because it's just a sense of like, no,
Speaker 3: let's make sure that.
Speaker 2: We get out of here.
Speaker 3: We did not think for a one second that our
Speaker 3: house would have been burned. We're very very faithful people,
Speaker 3: very spiritual people. You start thinking of beautiful things that
Speaker 3: happened there, you should thinking how do I share those
Speaker 3: with my family?
Speaker 2: How do I tell my son? How do I tell
Speaker 2: my parents?
Speaker 3: That's really when I broke down, when I called my
Speaker 3: my dad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sal remembered the first time his dad came to
Speaker 1: see his new house. How his dad joked with Sal
Speaker 1: telling him that he'd never be bored as a homeowner
Speaker 1: now because it would always be something to fix. The
Speaker 1: landlord who no more landlords.
Speaker 3: Son, I learned to love our house because I was
Speaker 3: always on the move, you know, I've always I never
Speaker 3: owned anything, And so for me, the idea of loss
Speaker 3: is very interesting because I did allow myself to attach
Speaker 3: to this beautiful place where it's the American dream.
Speaker 2: Really, you know, I came from another country.
Speaker 4: I made it.
Speaker 3: I thought I have a place, I have a business,
Speaker 3: I have a beautiful family, and then just to see
Speaker 3: it be gone in a matter of hours. I still
Speaker 3: don't comprehend what it's like. Like, like I said, the emotions,
Speaker 3: like you hear me, I'm like laughing, I'm biggling and
Speaker 3: I'm crying.
Speaker 2: Like it's really hard for them mind to wrap around it.
Speaker 4: So we are.
Speaker 3: A thin that sadds me the most is my son's
Speaker 3: school being gone, because those people, those children are just
Speaker 3: amazing and so all the parents. You know, it's I
Speaker 3: call a heaven on Earth.
Speaker 1: From evacuation day on every day, sal has been happily
Speaker 1: overwhelmed with support. Support that shows up in different ways
Speaker 1: social media fundraising efforts, surprise visits at his hair salon
Speaker 1: from friends and clients, and in the kind of cross
Speaker 1: cultural solidarity that's very on brand for La. He has
Speaker 1: his Chinese in laws dropping off Chinese Tamalis and his
Speaker 1: Mexican family dropping off Mexican Damalis. Sal says he's grateful
Speaker 1: for the love he has experienced and is trying to
Speaker 1: focus all his energy on rebuilding.
Speaker 3: Like my son, the beautiful things I heard, he was sad.
Speaker 3: He said, oh man, my school burn. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to be able to go play anymore. And then a
Speaker 3: couple of seconds lighter, he said, well, maybe I'll buy
Speaker 3: my friends to go play in the ashes. You know,
Speaker 3: I think children get it as always possibilities. I hope
Speaker 3: we can continue to see possibilities.
Speaker 1: Los Angeles has never seen this level of destruction, this
Speaker 1: level of loss, and with social media, many of us
Speaker 1: are seeing things that are breaking our hearts from afar,
Speaker 1: like that video outside of the McDonald's when the winds
Speaker 1: were so extreme that the flames seemed to be spreading
Speaker 1: sideways by a blowtorch, or the aerial images of thick,
Speaker 1: red and orange clouds moving like a strong undersea current.
Speaker 1: Local TV outlets have allowed us to witness moments of solidarity,
Speaker 1: like when this Telemundo reporter Alex Basquez walked through the
Speaker 1: rubble in Altadena wearing a face covering. He panned the
Speaker 1: camera to residents who were using a garden host to
Speaker 1: put out the leftover.
Speaker 4: SMOKEAVSCA, no there in the karade.
Speaker 1: The firefighters have told people not to stay home.
Speaker 2: He says, you live.
Speaker 4: Here right I live right there. Okay, they saved your house,
Speaker 4: Your neighbors saved your house. My neighbor, I work for him.
Speaker 5: I work for my neighbor, and I helped his family,
Speaker 5: and he helped mine.
Speaker 1: Subasino or moments of strength, like this young Latina nurse
Speaker 1: standing in a light haze outside of a nursing home.
Speaker 1: She spoke to Chris cavezas a reporter from Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Telemundo about helping elderly folks evacuate.
Speaker 6: Cos because I got up Alidad and suskas Perianos or
Speaker 6: the La Silla.
Speaker 2: Wou See.
Speaker 1: She says, they had to help patients who couldn't move.
Speaker 1: It was four of us, she says, me, someone who
Speaker 1: works in the kitchen, and two police officers struggling to
Speaker 1: get people out.
Speaker 2: And most persona's Joe.
Speaker 1: She said she hadn't fully processed everything that happened. I
Speaker 1: mean how do you process something of this magnitude. Dozens
Speaker 1: of people dead and over two hundred thousand people displaced,
Speaker 1: entire communities burned to ashes. This is reportedly going to
Speaker 1: be one of the costliest natural disasters in US history,
Speaker 1: and it's happening in the city with the largest Latino
Speaker 1: population in the United States. From Futuro Media and PRX,
Speaker 1: it's Latino USA. I'm Fernande Chavarri in for our host
Speaker 1: Marino Jos today the devastation of the Los Angeles fires
Speaker 1: and the solidarity that has sprung from the places to
Speaker 1: help us get some context and a better understanding of
Speaker 1: what things have been like in Los Angeles for the
Speaker 1: past couple of weeks. We are joined by my dear
Speaker 1: friend and former Latino USA producer, Antonia Si Djuilo. She
Speaker 1: is the host of Imperfect Paradise out of LAist, Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Public Radio station. Thank you so much for your
Speaker 1: time and for all the work that you and your
Speaker 1: colleagues are doing day in day out on this story,
Speaker 1: and so thank you for taking the time and for
Speaker 1: joining us today.
Speaker 5: Of course, thank you so much, and I mean the
Speaker 5: outpouring of support nationally for Los Angeles and our city
Speaker 5: has been really moving, so I'm also really grateful for
Speaker 5: everyone sending love and support our way.
Speaker 1: Of course, can you start by giving us an idea
Speaker 1: of just the scope of destruction up until this point,
Speaker 1: you know where we're not in the first few days,
Speaker 1: anymore more than a week has gone by. What are
Speaker 1: we talking about here?
Speaker 5: I think we're still a ways away from fully understanding
Speaker 5: the scope of what has happened. The death toll is
Speaker 5: at least twenty four people. Two hundred thousand people had
Speaker 5: to evacuate, and tens of thousands of structures, so that
Speaker 5: includes businesses, schools, homes, They were all destroyed. It's really
Speaker 5: an incalculable loss that the city has gone through. It's
Speaker 5: still not over, so we're very much still in this devastation,
Speaker 5: still don't know what's to come, and hopefully the fires.
Speaker 7: Can continue to be somewhat contained.
Speaker 1: And are there stories of people that you and your
Speaker 1: colleagues have met that sort of show us the different
Speaker 1: levels of devastation that we're talking here, loss of structures,
Speaker 1: loss of history, loss of jobs, loss of community that
Speaker 1: you can share with us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we're just hearing these overwhelming stories from folks
Speaker 5: one of my colleagues, Aaron Schrenk, spoke to a USC
Speaker 5: professor named Laura Muskita, who's an expert on geriatric care.
Speaker 5: She was volunteering at the Pasadena Civic Center where a
Speaker 5: lot of nursing home residents had been evacuated.
Speaker 8: To you have nursing home residents who are developing pressure
Speaker 8: ulcers or their pressure ulcers getting worse because they're left
Speaker 8: sitting upright because they've run out of cots. They brought
Speaker 8: in cots last night that were the height of massage tables.
Speaker 8: You know, they're higher than my waist. You can't lift
Speaker 8: somebody who's ninety five years old and put them up
Speaker 8: on there and expect they're not going to ball off
Speaker 8: onto the concrete floor.
Speaker 5: People who you know, need assistants using the restroom, and
Speaker 5: they don't have access to bathrooms or in continence care,
Speaker 5: and so they're having to change in public, in front
Speaker 5: of everyone.
Speaker 7: With no privacy. So just a really difficult scene.
Speaker 5: Of course, another aspect of this fire that is really
Speaker 5: heartbreaking is that Alta Dina is one of the places
Speaker 5: that's been most affected. This is a historic black and
Speaker 5: minority neighborhood during the Civil rights movement. It was one
Speaker 5: of the few communities that offered housing loans to Black
Speaker 5: Americans that were redlined out of other parts of Los Angeles.
Speaker 7: We spoke to people whose.
Speaker 5: Homes held four generations of a black family that had
Speaker 5: been redlined, and now that home is gone. So to
Speaker 5: think of the history there that has lost the community,
Speaker 5: it's staggering.
Speaker 4: My concern is worth the black Alcademians who have bought
Speaker 4: a home and we can't come back to that home.
Speaker 3: And I was exciting that my parents were red.
Speaker 1: Lines to live where they lived. They couldn't live on
Speaker 1: the east side of Lake, they had to stay on
Speaker 1: the west side. That's why I'm real estate.
Speaker 2: And they bought it in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 4: Or one hundred and thirty five thousand dollars, so that
Speaker 4: was worth like what a million? One million?
Speaker 8: May we can't love that, I can't come back.
Speaker 5: And another story that's sort of sticking with me is
Speaker 5: Fernando Lopez. He's one of the founders of leg Lagazza,
Speaker 5: which is a very popular Wahakan restaurant here in La
Speaker 5: He started a mutual aid fund for domestic workers. So
Speaker 5: his mother was a domestic worker and he immediately realized that,
Speaker 5: you know, we're seeing a lot of these images of
Speaker 5: these really fancy mansions, specifically in the Palisades on the
Speaker 5: West Side, being burned down. And while you think, okay,
Speaker 5: that's a really wealthy person who's affected, a lot of
Speaker 5: people who work in that neighborhood are gardeners, are house cleaners,
Speaker 5: and they're people who have, you know, their route where
Speaker 5: they travel every day. And there's people who've lost all
Speaker 5: of their clients because it's on their gardening route, it's
Speaker 5: on their on their house cleaning route, and they're going
Speaker 5: to have to start from zero. And so Lopez created
Speaker 5: a mutual aid fund for people who want to specifically
Speaker 5: help domestic workers during this time.
Speaker 1: That really is, you know, something to pass in think about,
Speaker 1: because there are folks landscapers, house cleaners that are completely
Speaker 1: out of income.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know, we're still we're starting to get
Speaker 5: stories of farm workers that are affected, that are still
Speaker 5: picking crops during these fires. Who you know, it's already
Speaker 5: because of pesticides and other issues, the air quality in
Speaker 5: those areas is not the best. And on top of that,
Speaker 5: now with these wildfires and the burning embers, so people
Speaker 5: doing really difficult things to make sure that all of
Speaker 5: us get fed under very dangerous conditions for themselves.
Speaker 7: There's a lot of gratitude.
Speaker 5: And a lot of sadness, I think when you think
Speaker 5: about what they're enduring right.
Speaker 1: Now, coming up on Latino USA.
Speaker 5: In the middle of all of this anxiety, I hear
Speaker 5: the horn of my local Chicharroun guy that comes around
Speaker 5: once a day.
Speaker 1: Will be right back, Welcome back. I'm Fernande Chevri in
Speaker 1: for our host Marino Josa. Today we're talking about the
Speaker 1: devastation and solidarity in Los Angeles after the historic fires
Speaker 1: this month. We're going to get right back to our
Speaker 1: conversation with Antonio Sirijido, host of Imperfect Paradise out of LAist,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Public radio station. Can you tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about I know your newsroom, the LAIS newsroom
Speaker 1: is in Pasadena. What's it like in your newsroom and
Speaker 1: with your colleagues because you're all reporting on this, but
Speaker 1: you're also living in the areas. Some of you might
Speaker 1: be living in the areas where where you're directly affected
Speaker 1: by it and the newsroom itself.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I know of at least three of
Speaker 5: my colleagues that have lost their homes last week and
Speaker 5: they're continuing to work through this moment. A lot of
Speaker 5: us were evacuated filing stories. And then our building is
Speaker 5: in Pasadena, like you said, and so the second floor
Speaker 5: right now, no one's using it.
Speaker 7: It's so full of smoke.
Speaker 5: And on the first floor we're only using two studios
Speaker 5: right now. We're running these like industrial air purifiers twenty
Speaker 5: four to seven to make sure that our hosts are
Speaker 5: able to get in and continue to broadcast. And there's
Speaker 5: very limited access to the building in general. So thankfully
Speaker 5: the building is safe. We're all really grateful for that.
Speaker 5: But the work, we don't know how long it's going
Speaker 5: to be before we can go back into our office.
Speaker 1: And there's no way that we could talk about this
Speaker 1: without talking about climate change. And we know, because a
Speaker 1: science is there that natural disasters are intensifying hurricanes, blizzards, wildfires.
Speaker 1: So what do we know about the conditions that made
Speaker 1: these particular fires spread to this magnitude? Like how how
Speaker 1: did they get this bad?
Speaker 5: That's a great question, And the answer to that is
Speaker 5: this phenomenon that is being called weather whiplash. So here
Speaker 5: in Los Angeles, the past two years were record amounts
Speaker 5: of rain, which was surprising for southern California, which is
Speaker 5: a place that people normally think of as where it
Speaker 5: doesn't rain a lot, but very heavy rain, which meant
Speaker 5: that a lot of vegetation grew on mountain sides around
Speaker 5: Los Angeles area. And then this year there's been very
Speaker 5: low amounts of rain, and so what happened is all
Speaker 5: of that vegetation that grew over the last two years
Speaker 5: it dried out, so you have a ton of vegetation
Speaker 5: that is highly flammable, and the impact of climate change
Speaker 5: on that is that both the rain and the drought
Speaker 5: is more extreme than normal. Fires here in southern California
Speaker 5: have always been very normal, but that's what's intensifying things.
Speaker 5: And then the other thing that was very unique to
Speaker 5: what happened here in Los Angeles is that these were
Speaker 5: extremely extremely fast winds like the Santa Anas, which are
Speaker 5: the winds that come from the desert to the ocean
Speaker 5: that are very hot and dry. Those winds are very
Speaker 5: intense winds, like higher than a regular Santa Ana year.
Speaker 5: So all of those things together really led to a
Speaker 5: very unique and terrifying combination of conditions that allowed for
Speaker 5: these wildfires to spread.
Speaker 1: I want to end with just talking about LA because
Speaker 1: La is such a special place. The cross cultural solidarity
Speaker 1: that can happen in LA is really unlike many other
Speaker 1: American cities. I want to know what you have seen
Speaker 1: that sort of crystallizes the spirit of solidarity among Angelino's.
Speaker 7: It's been so beautiful in LA.
Speaker 5: To me, is like the dream inside the American dream.
Speaker 5: It's like, I mean, my show is called Imperfect Paradise,
Speaker 5: and it's really about how this city is a place
Speaker 5: made up of like dreamers and schemers and people who
Speaker 5: are like here because they want to enjoy the beauty
Speaker 5: that a place like Los Angeles has to offer, but
Speaker 5: also because they want to create beautiful things. I mean,
Speaker 5: I think people forget Black Lives Matter started in Los Angeles, Hollywood,
Speaker 5: the factory of dreams started in Los Angeles. Like, I
Speaker 5: think all of us who live here are feeling tremendous
Speaker 5: amounts of pride to live here. Another moment sort of
Speaker 5: you know this this, we're in this terrifying situation. We
Speaker 5: I'm at my house, you know, figuring out how to
Speaker 5: do the best coverage, whether my husband and I have
Speaker 5: to evacuate where what we're going to do with the cats.
Speaker 5: In the middle of like all of this sort of
Speaker 5: anxiety on the edge of my seat, and I hear
Speaker 5: the bossina, like the horn of the my local chicherrun
Speaker 5: guy that comes around once a day.
Speaker 7: And this guy is he's so inventive.
Speaker 5: He has a golf cart where he has all of
Speaker 5: his accouterments.
Speaker 9: So this this this guy is honking the little like
Speaker 9: horn to alert the neighbors to come out and buy
Speaker 9: his snacks when the air pollution is like, do not
Speaker 9: go outside, do not know?
Speaker 1: And this guy's like, listen, you want a snack? And
Speaker 1: I got to make money exactly.
Speaker 5: And I think that that's like it's a very resilient city.
Speaker 5: It's a city full of hustlers. I just want to
Speaker 5: say that I love la I love everyone here. It's
Speaker 5: such a beautiful place. I'm so proud to live here.
Speaker 5: And I'm really proud of my colleagues. They've really been
Speaker 5: working under extreme duress to keep people informed, to give
Speaker 5: people information, to keep them safe. And I hope that
Speaker 5: we don't have to do it for much longer and
Speaker 5: that the city doesn't have to go through much more.
Speaker 1: I hope so too. Antonio Sidehi, the host of Imperfect
Speaker 1: Paradise for Last Los Angeles Public Radio Station, thank you
Speaker 1: again so much for your time, stay safe, and thank
Speaker 1: you for all the work that you and your colleagues
Speaker 1: are doing day in and day out in Los Angeles.
Speaker 7: Thank you foranana.
Speaker 1: As the wildfires in LA have continued, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of information shared on social media about how about
Speaker 1: a third of the firefighters out there are incarcerated individuals.
Speaker 1: Many of these firefighters are young men of color who
Speaker 1: are risking their lives to save homes and communities, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they become so committed that they continue the work
Speaker 1: even after detention. Latino USA spoke with someone a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago who is part of an elite hotshot crew,
Speaker 1: someone in his early forties who was first introduced to
Speaker 1: firefighting in his mid teens at an unexpected place, juvenile detention.
Speaker 1: Here's his story of perseverance, which we first brought you
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 6: Dear listener, before we start, a quick warning, there's a
Speaker 6: brief mention of suicide.
Speaker 1: Take care.
Speaker 4: My names are Mondo Perez and I am a hot
Speaker 4: shot for the Eldorado hot Shots.
Speaker 6: Are Mondo Perez, or Mando, as he likes to be called.
Speaker 6: Never imagine that he would be responding to some of
Speaker 6: the worst wildfires in US history, But for the past decade,
Speaker 6: Mondo has worked as a wildland firefighter with the El
Speaker 6: Dorado California hot Shot Crew. Hot Shots get that name
Speaker 6: because they work on the hottest part of wildfires. Mondo's
Speaker 6: career in firefighting wasn't just unexpected, it had a pretty
Speaker 6: unusual start as well.
Speaker 4: When I started getting to my teenageers young teenageers, I
Speaker 4: started running around with my local friends and we started
Speaker 4: getting into trouble. When I was sixteen, I got sent
Speaker 4: to juvenile detention and I did two years, and that's
Speaker 4: where I kind of got introduced to firefight.
Speaker 6: At least thirty states in the country have laws that
Speaker 6: allow for the employment of the incarcerated population in emergencies
Speaker 6: and disasters, and the work is not always voluntary. The
Speaker 6: constitution explicitly denies incarcerated people the right to refuse to work.
Speaker 6: Prisoners only get paid one or two dollars per hour.
Speaker 6: In some states, like Texas and Georgia, they don't get
Speaker 6: paid at all. And then, perhaps the worst part of
Speaker 6: it all once they get out of prison. Many of
Speaker 6: these firefighters have extreme difficulties pursuing a career because of
Speaker 6: their background, but Mondo persevered and became an exception. He's
Speaker 6: an example of the paradox and transformative potential that this
Speaker 6: kind of work represents.
Speaker 4: I mean that work was hard work, but it was worked.
Speaker 6: To understand why Mando and thousands of other wildland firefighters
Speaker 6: continue to risk their lives under increasingly difficult and record
Speaker 6: breaking fires. Mando is going to recreate what a typical
Speaker 6: day for him is going into the fire and also
Speaker 6: coming out of it.
Speaker 4: I don't want to come off as bragging or cocky,
Speaker 4: but like the top of the wildland firefighters, we're considered
Speaker 4: a type one fire line crew, right, you're a national resource,
Speaker 4: so we get scooped up pretty fast. We're starting to
Speaker 4: see fires when we normally didn't see him around January February,
Speaker 4: so it's year round and it's starting to be more common.
Speaker 4: So it never gets easier, it's actually getting harder and harder.
Speaker 4: I wake up in the morning, I hug and kiss
Speaker 4: my wife, go downstairs, get my coffee, lock up, and
Speaker 4: then jump in my car and take off and then
Speaker 4: I'll see them in two weeks. You get there a fowl,
Speaker 4: you guys get all geared up. Okay, it's game time, right.
Speaker 4: You get that feeling like oh man, you start looking up,
Speaker 4: you see the fire. Then you break down into your
Speaker 4: squads or your mods, and one mongo's going away to
Speaker 4: the mogos the other way, and you kind of try
Speaker 4: to attack the flank of the fire. Right. You just
Speaker 4: start hearing the chainsaws fire up and start cutting brush,
Speaker 4: and then you know it's like, okay, we're here, we're
Speaker 4: doing it. The biggest thing is going out there and
Speaker 4: making sure the guys can cut line right efficiently. It's
Speaker 4: pretty much the act of removing fuel. So let's say
Speaker 4: you got a forest, right, and you got brush or
Speaker 4: bushes and trees, just continuous fuel. We're trying to get
Speaker 4: on one side of the fire and remove a line
Speaker 4: of brush sec a fuel break, and we're going over
Speaker 4: with the chainsaws. Chainsaws do cutting right, and then you
Speaker 4: have a group of folks behind the chainsaws, which are
Speaker 4: the scrapes or the hand tools, and they scrape back
Speaker 4: show organic material, so it ends up looking like a
Speaker 4: trail good enough for us to get in and out
Speaker 4: and then create that fuel break. I'm just running around
Speaker 4: and then listening to the radio traffic. People on the
Speaker 4: other side of the fire, the other side of the
Speaker 4: line down the road. They're throwing bits and piece out there,
Speaker 4: and you kind of get all that information you start
Speaker 4: putting together as you're going up and down these hills
Speaker 4: and trying to find time to squeeze in a snack
Speaker 4: while still trying to get productivity out of your folks.
Speaker 4: You got people sweating, hard, tired. If you're close enough
Speaker 4: to the fire, it gets extremely hot. You're like, man,
Speaker 4: my face is burning every now and then you pop
Speaker 4: out trying to get a little bit of fresh air
Speaker 4: away from the heat, get back in it, start thinking like, man,
Speaker 4: it's almost quitting time. I hope nothing crazy happens. Nowadays,
Speaker 4: the fires are too intense or too complex to get
Speaker 4: in there and do it safely. So we've been doing
Speaker 4: more burning operations than anything, where we go in there
Speaker 4: and light to fire ourselves, kind of keep ourselves a
Speaker 4: buffer zone so when the fire does come, it kind
Speaker 4: of just peters out there and it doesn't continue. On
Speaker 4: a fire, our shifts are typically sixteen hours, but if
Speaker 4: the need should or ride. You will do whatever you
Speaker 4: need to do twenty four thirty two. We've done seventy
Speaker 4: two hour shifts before. They're not the best, but when
Speaker 4: you're lacking resources and the fire is just pushing your hand,
Speaker 4: you have to do what you got to do. And
Speaker 4: as long as we kind of secure the edge and
Speaker 4: they feel good and you could say it's not out,
Speaker 4: but it's contained, right, the hotchhogs can walk away and
Speaker 4: then it can bring another resources behind us and they
Speaker 4: could monitor it until they put it out computing. Once
Speaker 4: the fourteen days come up, we're done. They send us
Speaker 4: home and when you start driving home, I got thirty minutes,
Speaker 4: thirty five minutes to kind of start winding down, because
Speaker 4: you go from going to one hundred miles an hour
Speaker 4: like intense fighting fire, and your brain's always going to
Speaker 4: coming home and you have to find that shut off. Right.
Speaker 4: It used to be two days they just passed on
Speaker 4: recently where now we get three days off mandatory, which
Speaker 4: is awesome because two days was not enough. My kids
Speaker 4: they love what I do, even though that they miss me.
Speaker 4: I think they get a sense of pride knowing that
Speaker 4: their dad is a wildlamd firefighter or even more than
Speaker 4: that a hot shot. So you get home, you try
Speaker 4: to decompress. You sit there with your family, try to
Speaker 4: absorb what they're doing, and you're trying. You're trying to
Speaker 4: fill in two weeks of time you missed in two
Speaker 4: or three days, and it's impossible. It's impossible. So you
Speaker 4: just got to kind of slow down and just take
Speaker 4: what's there and make the best of it. It's fire stressful, man,
Speaker 4: it's extremely stressful. Not to get all dark and gloomy,
Speaker 4: but the suicide rate for a wildlam firefighter is high
Speaker 4: for any firefighter. Actually, you do this long enough, you
Speaker 4: start seeing too much, right, You start seeing people pass away,
Speaker 4: you start seeing people get hurt, and then you feel
Speaker 4: like you don't have the support from everyone around you,
Speaker 4: and it kind of starts bothering you and you start thinking, like, man,
Speaker 4: is this really worth it? Everybody got to find that
Speaker 4: help what works for them, whether it's actual medical help,
Speaker 4: mental health. I don't know. Obviously, as you climb the ranks,
Speaker 4: you get paid better, but I mean, starting off, I
Speaker 4: wouldn't say it's the dream job as far as the
Speaker 4: finance part of it goes. I definitely don't do this
Speaker 4: for the pay. I don't love fires, but I love
Speaker 4: fighting the fires. I feel like I'm good at what
Speaker 4: I do right. I love being outdoors. I love being
Speaker 4: a new country out there, seeing what's out the nature.
Speaker 4: It's beautiful. The challenge, it makes you step up, right.
Speaker 4: I want to stop this. I want to help out
Speaker 4: and knowing that you're saving someone's property or someone's livelihood,
Speaker 4: like you're doing sort people you never met, right, and
Speaker 4: it feels good. Crews are having hard time staffing for
Speaker 4: whatever reasons, but there's still a bunch of us out
Speaker 4: there that care and are continuing to do the hard
Speaker 4: work people around me, and I think that's what keeps
Speaker 4: me coming back. I don't see myself doing anything else
Speaker 4: other than hotshoting for a while.
Speaker 1: That was Armando Perez, a hot shot firefighter, sharing his
Speaker 1: story with us back in twenty twenty two. Today, he
Speaker 1: continues to fight fires and has since been promoted to
Speaker 1: captain with El Dorado Hotshots in Northern California. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by me Fernando chavarri In for our host
Speaker 1: Marie J.
Speaker 2: Josa.
Speaker 1: It was edited by Maria Garcia. Production assistance by Noor
Speaker 1: Saudi and Andrea Lopez. Gruzzlo. It was mixed by Stephanie Labaud,
Speaker 1: Julia Caruso and j J.
Speaker 3: Carubin.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Lays to Report, Aaron Schrenk, Aaron Stone
Speaker 1: and Brian de Losantos, and extra shout out to Janis Yamoca.
Speaker 1: The Latino USA team includes Jessica Ellis, Victoria Stradra, Dominique
Speaker 1: Estrosa Renaldo Lanz Junior, Dasha Sandoval, Luis Luna, Marta Martinez
Speaker 1: and Nancy Trujillio, Maria Jojosa, Penille Ramirez, Marlon Bishop and
Speaker 1: Maria Garcia are our co executive producers. Join us again
Speaker 1: next time, and in the meantime you can find us
Speaker 1: on social media and at Latino USA dot org. Laios.
Speaker 1: Latino USA is made possible in part by California Endowment,
Speaker 1: building a strong state by improving the health of all Californians,
Speaker 1: the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for more than fifty
Speaker 1: years advancing ideas and supporting institutions to promote a better
Speaker 1: world at Hewlett dot org, and funding for Latino the
Speaker 1: USA is. Coverage of a culture of health is made
Speaker 1: possible in part by a grant from the Robert Wood
Speaker 1: Johnson Foundation,