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The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
L.A. Burning. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired January 12, 2025 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[20:00:00]
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Hotels interact or people see each other for the first time going back to those communities, here about a thousand people were fed by local organizations, first responders. I mean, it is incredible to see that even as they are still in the face of fighting these.
And thanks so much for joining us tonight. I'm Erin Burnett in Los Angeles. And join me. I'll be back here again tomorrow night of course covering all of these fires, Jessica.
JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: All right. Erin, thank you so much.
I'm Jessica Dean here in New York. I'll see you right back here next weekend.
Up next here on CNN, it's a special hour on the deadly fires in Los Angeles and the residents thinking -- facing unthinkable tragedy. Join Anderson Cooper for "THE WHOLE STORY." It starts right now.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to THE WHOLE STORY. I'm Anderson Cooper in Topanga, California.
This is the northern edge of the Palisades Fire, which began early Tuesday morning. Thousands of structures have burned. Tens of thousands of acres have been destroyed. Firefighters have been working around the clock. They're putting water down now on a fire that just has -- they've been trying to battle for the last hour or so to try to protect a community nearby from here.
Over the next hour, we want to tell you the story of these fires. What happened, how the fire moved so fast, what we know about how it started at this point, and the stories of people who had to flee for their lives.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: 18 million people are under a red flag warning.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The National Weather Service is calling this a destructive and life-threatening windstorm.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: A small spark could turn into an inferno in a matter of minutes.
COOPER (voice-over): The warnings were ominous, frequent and at times dire.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: We knew that this was going to be an extreme event. They were talking a once-in-a-decade event three days in advance.
NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We knew the winds were going to be terrible. We knew that we hadn't seen rain for months. I certainly and everybody I know we did not think it was going to be this bad.
GOV. GAVIN NEWSON (D), CALIFORNIA: We pre-positioned hundreds of assets and personnel on Sunday in anticipation of this wind event.
COOPER: They talked of a big wind event, but that wasn't their only concern.
MYERS: Last winter was very wet, so things grew very well. And then the rain shut off. At the end of March, it was over. And so what happens to plants that don't get water for nine months? They die, they dry out, they become tinder.
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: So by the time the Santa Ana's kicked up, there was so much tinder dry fuel in these canyons. And one spark is so hard to contain.
CHIEF KRISTIN CROWLEY, L.A. FIRE DEPARTMENT: At 10:30 this morning, a brush fire was reported at 1190 North Piedra Miranda Drive.
COOPER: Satellite images show a plume of smoke around the Santa Monica Mountains. What caused the fire here is still unknown.
WATT: That morning, I went for a swim in the ocean. I got out about 8:00 in the morning. The wind was beginning to pick up.
MYERS: I saw a puff of smoke and I said, oh, no, oh, no, please, because I knew Pacific Palisades was in the way.
COOPER: Pacific Palisades, a picturesque seaside neighborhood perched on the ocean.
WATT: It's just a really, really nice place to live. And frankly, if you didn't live here, you were a bit jealous of people that did.
I got here, it was unlike anything I've ever seen. This looked more like a war zone than a fire zone. This was unlike any fire I've seen in the Palisades. This was unlike any fire I have seen anywhere.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's coming over the ridge. It's got a couple houses. If you're up here, get out of here.
NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We've seen palm trees on fire. We saw a structure up on the hill on fire earlier this afternoon. And personally, I heard an explosion when I was standing closer to the street. So it's been very active, very difficult for the people who live in those foothills because they have one way out here.
COOPER: One way out that was soon filled with traffic. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This could be the difference, you know, in
someone's life or death, if we can get people safely evacuated.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When we got in the car to go and then all the cars were abandoned. So I had nowhere to go. So I decided to get out of my car and start walking. The smoke is so bad I don't -- I have no idea where we're going. I'm scared for my life. It was -- it's terrifying.
RACHEL SILVER, PACIFIC PALISADES RESIDENT: We were running down. You could see palm trees just like random palm trees on fire. So I'm sure leaves are burning and falling down. And it's literally apocalyptic.
WATT: It was otherworldly. It looked like the end times. I'm not a religious person. It looked like the end times.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The fire came right down to the road.
[20:05:03]
COOPER: As fires closed in firefighters and police told people to abandon their vehicles and head toward the ocean. Those abandoned cars, often on winding roads, made it hard for emergency vehicles to get through. Bulldozers were used to create a path.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Got a lot of unchecked fire on the left flank.
COOPER: By late afternoon, the Pacific Palisades Fire had spread to 1200 acres. More than 250 firefighters were on scene in the Palisades, and the city of L.A. declared a state of emergency. Some residents stayed behind trying to save their homes and help their neighbors.
GREG YOST, PACIFIC PALISADES RESIDENT: We had a fire pump and, you know, we were able to, I think, probably saved one or two houses working with the firemen. But three houses have gone up right around us.
COOPER: But the water tanks in the Palisades were running dry, making it difficult to maintain water pressure needed to supply the hydrants.
JANISSE QUINONES, CHIEF ENGINEER, L.A. DEPARTMENT OF WATER AND POWER: We have three large water tanks, about a million gallons each. We ran out of water and the first tank at about 4:45 p.m. yesterday. We ran out of water on the second tank about 8:30 p.m., and the third tank about 3 a.m. this morning.
CHEN: We're trying very hard not to breathe in smoke and ash that's billowing everywhere. The wind is strong enough to knock things over easily.
WATT: The sun has not set here, but you wouldn't know that because you cannot see a thing. But this black, acrid smoke. This house here was fine. About 20 minutes ago I was walking down this road suddenly, bang. It was up.
COOPER: When the sun did go down, the wind picked up and the flames roared to life.
WATT: The issue, this wind, Anderson, you can see it whipping that smoke.
COOPER: All the stuff around you, is that going to erupt in flames? I mean, those flames look very close, Nick.
WATT: Well, I mean, I mean, it might. Chris, let's come down here. I mean, all of this stuff is green, OK? Which, listen, that's no guarantee. But, you know, we've obviously parked our vehicle just up the road. We're facing the right way. So if we need to get out, we can get out.
COOPER (voice-over): Streets.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Man, you can feel the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) heat.
COOPER: Became infernos.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my God. If we could just get past these. Holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Oh, my, God. Oh, my gosh. Shit!
CHEN: I'm just holding my breath and I can feel the heat from inside the car. And just watching the embers fly across the windshield. So not ideal. In that kind of, you know, we get -- put on a lot of kind of risky assignments and in this situation, we had to make a calculated risk for the best way to leave. And I think, you know, thankfully, we got out of there.
COOPER: Downtown Palisades was ablaze as well.
WATT: We've now come down into Palisades Village, the center of this community. That was an apartment building that we have watched. Jesus. Whoa! Sorry. I nearly got hit by something there. Yes. Whoa. We're going to have to get back. And we've just watched this building just disintegrate. And a little part of that building nearly hit me there.
The fact that the wind can move around adds to the uncertainty and the danger. For sure, when you've got winds that strong, it's different than covering, you know, a fire on a nice, calm day because you don't know where the flames are going to go.
COOPER: At around 6:18 p.m., a new fire erupted some 40 miles east of the Palisades in the Eden Creek area in the San Gabriel Mountains.
POLO SANDOVAL, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news out of Southern California, where dangerous and fast-moving wildfires are raging, the Eaton Fire has now doubled in size, and that is burning at a rate of over one football field a minute since beginning just a few hours ago.
DANIEL SWAIN, CLIMATE SCIENTIST, UCLA INSTITUTE OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY: Quite frankly, it was exactly the news that I didn't want to hear. It was immediately clear that this fire, too, much like the Palisades Fire was earlier in the day, was in a very bad spot with a high potential to go on to create a great deal of damage and threaten people's lives. COOPER: In just one hour, the Eaton Fire exploded, burning 400 acres.
95 residents of an elderly care home had to be heartily evacuated in wheelchairs and on gurneys, some wearing thin gowns and shawls in the cold.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So we got to get everybody out of here.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Yes, everyone got out safely as far as you know?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
COOPER: But 10:30 p.m., a third blaze, the Hurst Fire, had erupted in a neighborhood between Palisades and Eden.
MYERS: And then we had two or three more starts that night. And it's kind of like, I've heard it called whack-a-mole. We need to get assets here. Oh, wow. Now we have nothing over here. And then you're trying to move assets one, two, three, four.
[20:10:05]
WATT: I mean, once you started seeing other fires popping up, it was like, oh, my goodness, this is Armageddon.
COOPER: Fierce winds and hurricane force gusts meant choppers and planes couldn't be used to drop water and fire retardant. Containment was impossible.
WEIR: Once those flames hit 60, 70, 80 mile an hour, there is no fire crew in the world that's going to fly into that. And so then you're completely at the mercy of physics, of wind direction and moving through these canyons with such ferocity that human crews didn't stand a chance.
COOPER: By midnight, 4,000 acres had burned and some 30,000 people had evacuated.
MYERS: So as we were all focusing on the Palisades Fire, more fires broke out. We could not fathom what was about to happen.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We begin with breaking news from California. It is shortly before daybreak there and large parts of Los Angeles are on fire.
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Apocalyptic conditions across Southern California as crews battle a life-threatening firestorm. Three wildfires raging in L.A. County from the hills to the valley, all of them zero percent contained and spreading rapidly.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This Palisades Fire has been burning at five football fields a minute. The worst is definitely not yet here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a particularly dangerous situation. We're in the midst of a destructive windstorm. Winds now gusting upwards of nearly 100 miles per hour.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've never seen fire behavior like this. It's moved so fast, and the wind is so powerful.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I really feel like I'm in a hurricane the way the winds are blowing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An ember being driven by 100 mile per hour winds will start additional fires. That is why it's so hard to contain what is happening on the ground.
COOPER: By Wednesday morning, the Eaton Fire had spread to the nearby community of Altadena, north of Pasadena. This was recorded around 11:30 a.m.
[20:15:08]
On this street in Altadena, you have this house which is completely engulfed in flames. There's a tree down, blocking part of the street, and then just across the street you have another fire. Another house that is just completely gone. A second house down there is also gone. I mean, there is not a block in this area that you go down. That you do not see some houses just completely engulfed in flames.
I mean, this house is completely gone. We've watched this entire house burn down.
(Voice-over): Over the next six hours, at one intersection, my crew and I watched the firestorm spread, destroying dozens of homes and vehicles.
This is very active. This is recently caught. I mean, this is now completely engulfed. OK. Yes. And now you see it. Now this house, which relatively untouched, now this house is being destroyed.
(Voice-over): Fire crews did what they could, but water was an issue here, too.
CAPT. CHRIS DONELLI, L.A. COUNTY FIRE DEPARTMENT: Our hydrant ran dry about two minutes ago.
COOPER: And is that the water pressure issue or --
DONELLI: We are, because there's so many engines tapping the grid and multiple grids were basically just taking all the water out of the grid.
COOPER: On a scene like this right now, what can you do?
DONELLI: We can clear brush away from fences, things that we can do with our hands or with tools, and we just help some homeowners get out. So just, I mean, first thing is rescue operations. We want you out. Houses can be replaced. All that lives cannot.
COOPER (voice-over): This satellite image of Altadena shows just how many buildings were on fire.
There's a lot of bushes. There's a lot of lawns. Whoa! OK. So there's a lot of explosions also, obviously, as vehicles, as gas tanks, as vehicles ignite gas tanks explode.
(Voice-over): By 4:00 p.m., most of the houses at this intersection were destroyed.
You can't even see the sun. There's a surrealness to it. I mean, I was in, you know, I woke up in a hotel in, I don't know, the Hollywood area, and looked out my window and you could see black smoke, but there was a Starbucks open. And, you know, people are going about their business. It's surreal. It's ominous seeing that in the sky.
You drive 30 minutes and, you know, people aren't allowed in this area thankfully. It's all cordoned off. But 30 minutes away, there is this inferno, and this entire neighborhood is just been devastated. It is -- it's hard to wrap your mind around it.
They're essentially trying to see if there's some houses they think they can save by clearing brush. But this thing, again, just turn around if you can here, look, they've been watching this house go up in flames. A number of houses here. And now it has spread to this structure. It spread a while ago, but this structure is almost completely gone.
The question is, will this house survive? There's no brush around it but, now, look it spread down. This is new. Yes, we've been watching. It then spreads from these trees. Look at all these embers. Just -- I don't know if you can pan up, but look at all these embers just flying up. You see them in the smoke. All of that, those -- the winds are a little or have died down here. But those can just get picked up by winds for miles.
SWAIN: The images coming out of Altadena, frankly, you know, they are horrifying. Just this unceasing sea of windborne embers igniting dozens and hundreds of spot fires downwind. At that point, it was just a matter of fervently hoping that the losses weren't as bad as feared, and that at least the loss of life could be minimized as much as possible.
COOPER (voice-over): By nightfall, five fires were raging. Eaton, Palisades, Hurst, and two new ones, Lidia and a fire in Runyon Canyon called the Sunset Fire.
WATT: The heat coming off this thing is intense right now.
COOPER: CNN reporter Nick Watt had been working around the clock. He lives in Santa Monica far outside of what is normally considered a fire zone.
WATT: I'm going to go to my house. I'm going to hose the whole thing down. Just hoping that if everything is wet, if an ember lands on it, it won't ignite.
COOPER: His wife and children had already evacuated. WATT: It's extraordinary to cover something like this in your own
community. I've been covering fires for a long time. You have sympathy for people. Now I have empathy.
COOPER: Thursday morning, the scale of destruction became clear.
This was the Altadena community church. It was consumed by flames. Will Rogers State Beach Park set ablaze.
[20:20:03]
A Starbucks in the Palisades reduced to a charred out frame.
MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: The forecast is calling for more gusty winds again today as firefighters try to bring the blaze under control.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Based on the devastation that is clear it looks like a bomb. An atomic bomb dropped in these areas.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is safe to say that the Palisades Fire is one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of Los Angeles.
COOPER: According to officials Thursday morning, the Palisades Fire was zero percent contained, as were the Eaton and Hurst Fires. The Lidia Fire was at 40 percent containment and firefighters had stopped the Sunset Fire from spreading.
Crews battling the northern edges of the Palisades Fire were working in and around Topanga Canyon, trying to put out spot fires and save small communities that are hard to reach.
It's an area around Topanga Canyon, a lot of winding roads here up into the mountains. This fire here is moving up this side of this mountain really quickly. Just it's moved fast just in the last couple of seconds that I've been standing here. There's a number of firefighters up here. They've got bulldozers. They're getting into place. And they are watching this and getting kind of pre-positioned so that they'll be able to deal with this as it gets here.
Over on this ridge, a large crew of inmates who have volunteered to learn firefighting skills, they are working, clearing. You see the road they're on, that's a road likely created by bulldozers earlier to kind of create a fire line. They are now widening that road, clearing out more underbrush, and then they will move to other locations.
(Voice-over): They were able to use choppers and fixed wing aircraft because the winds had died down temporarily. But minor wind shifts made a big difference in where the fire spread.
They've dropped a lot of water from helicopters over the last hour or so. It seems like the wind shifted and suddenly the fire just erupted.
CHIEF JEFF GILBERT, WILLIAMS FIRE PROTECTION AUTHORITY: Exactly. You know, afternoons they get the wind shifts up here. So that's exactly what's happened. And they had to vacate the line that we thought we're going to put in. So back to a contingency line. Come down around these houses and just try to cut this bowl off.
COOPER: Coming up, how residents managed to survive and the stories of those who died in the fires.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:27:59]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh. All right, then. Yes. Let's get out of here. We tried, we tried, bro. Sorry.
MYERS: A forest fire can run through city blocks. Block after block after block. Not just forest. Tree after forest tree.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm sorry, bro. Can I get out of here?
COOPER: With nothing left to do but run away.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: God protect this house in the name of Jesus.
COOPER: And pray.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Protect this neighborhood, God.
COOPER: Tanner Charles and his friend Orly Israel barely made it out of Israel's burning home alive. The two friends tried to save Orly's home, but finally had to flee.
ORLY ISRAEL, ESCAPED PALISADES FIRE WITH FRIEND: You can see the sparks in the air. It's like a snowstorm, but the snow hurts your skin. Every time I watch this video I got to watch myself running away from the battle of a lifetime. We stayed there way longer than anyone should have and still lost.
COOPER: Many Los Angeles residents armed with garden hoses, pool pumps and buckets, tried heroically to save their homes. But getting out with the fires close wasn't easy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's time, Mom. Just get out of the house.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where are the car keys?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mom?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turn around. Turn around.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my god.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turn around, Mom. NIKKI RIFKIN, EVACUATED AND LOST HOME IN PALISADES FIRE: People just
abandoned their cars and people running down the streets with their babies and their dogs and running towards the ocean.
NATALIE MITCHELL, ESCAPED PACIFIC PALISADES HOME: There's only one road to get out. But at the time that we needed to evacuate, there was more fires on that road.
COOPER: For Natalie Mitchell and her family --
MITCHELL: We got to get out of here. We got to get out of here.
COOPER: -- the only way out was to drive down the road surrounded by flames.
MITCHELL: It was just like Armageddon. I can't even describe.
[20:30:02]
Raining fire embers everywhere. The hillside on both sides was completely engulfed in fire.
COOPER: At least 16 people died as a result of the fires. But the death toll is likely to climb.
SHERIFF ROBERT LUNA, LOS ANGELES COUNTY: We will be able to bring in K-9s and other things to help us, hopefully not discover too many fatalities. That's our prayer.
COOPER: Human remains were found amid the rubble of this beachfront home, decimated by the Palisades Fire. Roughly 30 miles inland, a 66- year-old man, Victor Shaw, lived with his sister, Sherry. In an interview with local news channel KTLA, Sherry said she narrowly escaped the Eaton Fire. Victor, her brother, stayed behind.
SHARI SHAW, BROTHER KILLED IN EATON FIRE: When I went back in and yell out his name, he didn't reply back and I had to get out because the embers were so big and flying like a firestorm.
COOPER: Victor's body was found by his neighbors. They said he was lying near a garden hose.
82-year-old Rodney Nickerson lived less than 10 miles away from Victor in Altadena. Nickerson's daughter said all that was left of his remains were his bones.
KIMIKO NICKERSON, LOST FATHER IN EATON FIRE: He said he'll be fine. I'll be here when you guys come back. He was in his bed when I found him.
COOPER: In that same community, the family of 67-year-old Anthony Mitchell believes he died trying to save his son's life.
RITA COOK, COUSIN LOST IN EATON FIRE: He was such a jewel. So this is going to be a great loss.
COOPER: Rita Cook is Mitchell's cousin.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What happened to him? He was with his son, who was bedridden?
COOK: Yes.
COOPER: Mitchell's son, Justin, had cerebral palsy, and Mitchell was an amputee who used a wheelchair. Another family member told the "Washington Post" the two were waiting for an ambulance to rescue them. The family said authorities told them Mitchell was found by the side of his son's bed. They both died in the fire.
WEIR: You realize covering these stories is that when the smoke clears and the sun comes out, the nightmare is just beginning.
COOPER: For those who survived, many returned to this.
WILMER GARCIA, LOST HOME IN EATON FIRE (through text translation): This was my apartment here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through text translation): Who did you live with here?
GARCIA (through text translation): With my wife and my two children. My 7-year-old baby and my son of 18. We forgot our bird inside. Our parrot, we left him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through text translation): How long have you lived here?
GARCIA (through text translation): Five years. Everything is gone now.
COOPER: Everything is gone.
Los Angeles County officials estimate at least 12,000 structures have been destroyed.
N. RIFKIN: We have no home and no clothes or anything.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's my whole life.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everything was in there. We've lost everything.
YVETTE ANDERSON, ALTADENA RESIDENT: Oh, my god. Pots and pans and stuff right there. Oh! Oh, my god.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
TONY RICH, ALTADENA RESIDENT: 25 years I've been here. Easy 25. Gone. Less than three hours.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you look out at your neighborhood, what happened here?
RICH: It just looked like a war zone here. This is a war zone.
ANDERSON: There's nothing. There's nothing left. I literally just have the clothes on my back.
JESSICA ROGERS, LOST HOME IN PALISADES FIRE: We lost everything. Everything burned to the ground.
COOPER: What do you want people to know about what happened here?
ROGERS: It shouldn't have happened. However, here today, I'm bringing a message of hope. I'd like for everybody to remember that what we need to focus on is that the love in our heart lasts forever. And it is enduring and we have an opportunity to rebuild. And so regardless of what happened, we can move forward.
COOPER (voice-over): When we return.
DONELLI: Our hydrant ran dry about two minutes ago.
COOPER: Why wasn't there enough water to battle the fires?
What is the situation with the water? Obviously in the Palisades it ran out last night.
[20:35:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:40:12]
N. RIFKIN: In the Palisades, we were at a deadlock and the fire came down on my car on both sides. And the firemen started running in between all of the cars, screaming, get out and run! Get out and run!
KAI RIFKIN, EVACUATED AND LOST HOME IN PALISADES FIRE: We were just stuck in four hours of traffic, not knowing which way to go. No one knew which way you should go because everyone was just being evacuated different ways. It was just a panic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Where's LAPD and where's everybody? There's no one out here directing traffic. This is getting really bad.
CELINE CORDERO, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF, CITY OF LOS ANGELES: The mayor will be on the ground shortly, very shortly this morning, and engaged.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: The mayor is facing criticism from people in the city in L.A. that she was out of the country when the fires broke out given that the weather service has been warning for days that this could be coming.
COOPER (voice-over): Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who was overseas for the inauguration of Ghana's new president, returned to L.A. on Wednesday afternoon after the fires were already out of control. By that point, more than 100,000 people had to evacuate.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning?
MAYOR KAREN BASS (D), CITY OF LOS ANGELES: I've been in constant contact with our fire commanders with county, state and federal officials. I took the fastest route back, which included being on a military plane, which facilitated our communications.
COOPER: She's also had to defend approving a $17 million cut to the fire department's budget for 2025. She insisted the cut did not impede the response to these fires.
BASS: There were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation that we were dealing with over the last couple of days.
COOPER: But that's not what the fire chief said last month in this memo and again this past week with Jake Tapper.
CROWLEY: Let me be clear. The $17 million budget cut and the elimination of our civilian positions, like our mechanics did and has and will continue to severely impact our ability to repair our apparatus. So with that, we have over 100 fire apparatus out of service. And having these apparatus and the proper amount of mechanics would have helped. And so it did absolutely negatively impact.
COOPER: The resource they needed the most was water, and it was unavailable in some hydrants at a critical time.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've lost most of the hydrant pressure.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Multiple homes threatened. I need about two or three water tenders. And there were some engines that got dry hydrants.
WEIR: We've been watching as a crew from Kern County in another part of the state has been spraying water on the hotspots around this former mansion. There's obvious water pressure here, but so many questions about water pressure around L.A. County as multiple crews try to tap in.
CHIEF ANTHONY MARRONE, L.A. COUNTY FIRE DEPARTMENT: Your viewers must understand the water system really isn't designed for a large scale, ongoing fire fight.
WEIR: The firefighting hydrant system in Southern California, a lot of it is gravity fed. So you pump water uphill, and when you need it, it flows down. But that is a system designed for one or two house fires at a time, not for multiple wildland fire crews tapping the same grid system and sucking it dry faster than it can be refilled.
It's hopeless. And can you imagine the frustration and the panic of being a fire crew realizing the pressure in your hose is dying in real time, as entire neighborhoods are going up in front of you? It's the worst.
DONELLI: We do have water tenders, vehicles that shuttle water to us that carry 2500 gallons of water. But again, they're stretched thin as well. So they have a lot of demand placed on them.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Governor. Governor, I live here, Governor.
COOPER: And it had one distraught resident demanding answers from California Governor Gavin Newsom.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just fill the hydrants. I would fill them up personally. You know that. I would fill up the hydrants myself.
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D), CALIFORNIA: I would -- I understand.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But would you do that?
NEWSOM: I would do whatever I can.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why do I have to ask the governor why there's not water in the fire hydrants? I paid for it, didn't I? I paid for it. I paid for this.
COOPER: On Wednesday, during the fire in Altadena, I asked Governor Newsom about the problem with getting water from the hydrants.
What is the situation with the water? Obviously in Palisades, it ran out last night and the hydrants. I was talking to the firefighter on this block. They left because there was no water in the hydrant here.
NEWSOM: The local folks are trying to figure that out.
COOPER (voice-over): Two days later on Friday, he called for an independent commission to investigate the water problems. One potential issue might have been that a reservoir near the Palisades Fire that could hold millions of gallons of water was shut down. The L.A. Department of Water and Power said it was required to take it out of service to meet safe drinking regulations.
[20:45:04]
In a statement, the department said, quote, "Extreme water demand impacted our ability to refill the three water tanks supplying the Palisades, causing the loss of suction pressure. The department said it meets all federal and state codes, but will review and investigate what happened.
Experts told CNN steps could have been taken to potentially lessen the devastating impact, which include better planning and management of aging infrastructure and vegetation in the area.
WATT: One expert in the field told me that there's not a water system in any city on earth that could have handled what happened here.
SWAIN: And when it comes to the winds themselves, even if you had a functionally infinite supply of water, even that probably wouldn't have resulted in a greatly different outcome once the fire started burning.
COOPER: Winds that carried fire from tree to tree, house to house, neighborhood to neighborhood, also grounded aircraft that were supposed to drop water on the burning areas for the first few days of the fire.
The houses and structures in areas like the Pacific Palisades were mandated to have ignition resistant roofs and fire resistant siding, but the majority of homes in the areas where the fires broke out were built before these mandates went into effect in 2008.
CROWLEY: As for where the start of the fire was in the Palisades Fire again at currently under active investigation. We have our arson investigators that are out right now as we speak.
COOPER: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is taking the lead to find out what caused the first fire in the Palisades.
Next, the firefight continues and what's in store for the future of the region?
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[20:51:33]
COOPER: What's going on now?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got a set of structures that just got fired. We got air attack. We got structure protection, trying to get everything out. Looks like we got to go.
COOPER: You can hear the sound, like kind of a siren going. That's the warning that they're about to drop water. They've been hitting this fire here in Topanga with a number of aerial assets. Fixed wing aircraft. That was a large one. There was a smaller fixed wing aircraft.
They just dropped retardant. Fire retardant. That's what the reddish pink color is. They've also brought in helicopters have been dropping water on this spot as well. They have a lot of assets in this area on the ground. They're also putting water on it from fire trucks down there.
(Voice-over): On Friday, the winds had died down. But spot fires around the Fernwood community in Topanga Canyon continued to flare up. It looks like from this vantage point that there now may be another issue, another fire over this ridge. You can see the dark smoke rising from there as well. So there's a fire that they believe is a structure down off to the right. And then over that ridge looks like there is now another fire to deal with.
And obviously on the horizon you can see some other smoke trails as well. They are trying to save this community. That is where the battle has been joined. A lot of air assets, trucks on ground, fixed wing aircraft like that.
Wow. It is extraordinary to be standing here and feel the power of that aircraft go right over you and watch it just swoop down so low. It is rare in life. You see an aircraft swooping that close to houses, dropping that retardant. You see the fire trucks still pouring, pouring water. The retardant they're putting down is in a different location than it was just several minutes ago, which we believe was that structure fire. (Voice-over): Four days into the blaze and L.A. was still burning. The
scale of the destruction still hard to comprehend.
WEIR: It is unbelievable. It looks like a war zone here in the central village of Pacific Palisades. This reminds me so much of covering the Paradise Fire up in California over five years ago.
COOPER:: Before this record setting fire ripped through Los Angeles, there was another record setting one further north in 2018, the Camp Fire.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Camp Fire in northern California is now the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is nothing like what we've had before.
Heavenly Father, please help us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When this occurred in 2018, it was widely seen as essentially the benchmark, the worst, most destructive and deadliest modern American wildfire.
[20:55:12]
COOPER: 85 people died in the Camp Fire that virtually destroyed the entire town of Paradise. Nearly 19,000 structures burned to the ground.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is absolutely incinerated.
WATT: That town of 27,000 people virtually burnt off the map.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're going to need to rebuild this whole city from the ground up.
SWAIN: Sometimes you'll hear folks say that why does anybody live in a high fire risk zone? Well, that's a pretty tall order because millions of people today live in those places. Cities and towns are where they are. Suburbs have been built where they have been. And so the question is, then, I think a more interesting one, when you do have a devastating event like this, which burns whole neighborhoods and towns to the ground, how do you rebuild or do you rebuild?
COOPER: Many in Paradise have not returned more than six years after the fire. The population is about a third of what it once was.
WEIR: These communities know it is part of the bargain. It is table stakes. If you want to live in Paradise that you're going to live with fire. Things are changing. We have to think differently about how we build, about how we prepare, about how we respond to these multiple disasters at the same time.
REBECCA APPEL, PARADISE RESIDENT: Nobody's here by accident anymore. People who live here are here because they're fighting to be here. They want to be here. And there's this real sense of community that I think is much stronger now than it was before the fire. And I think that that's really hopeful.
COOPER: Hope is critical, but so is fire insurance, which is essential if you live virtually anywhere in California. But the industry itself is imploding.
APPEL: I think our premium on our house prior to the fire was, I think it was around $500 a year, and we were on 11 acres of multiple buildings, about $500 a year purchasing this about a year ago. And then we've now had an increase in our policy.
WEIR: So how much do they want?
APPEL: Between 20,000 and 30,000 a year additional. Yes. For less coverage.
WEIR: We're living through sort of real-time forced adaptation, changing building codes, changing property values, to be sure, but certainly changing insurance rates. That's a massive crisis. So many big insurance companies have pulled out of California because they've lost so much money here. This when you consider the billions of dollars of property just in this part of this fire, well, add another layer to that.
COOPER: It's just incredible. I mean, you get used to it. It's incredible to see this up close, to see what you guys are doing.
JAMES LARSEN, FIREFIGHTER: It really is.
COOPER: It's remarkable what you're doing.
LARSEN: Yes, it makes you proud to be a firefighter.
COOPER (voice-over): Back in Fernwood in Topanga Canyon, firefighter James Larsen, a 30-year veteran, was watching to see where the flames might spread.
LARSEN: The ground is still superheated. You have the stuff down on the ground called duff and that could stay heated for weeks and all that. So there's going to be a lot of cleanup ahead.
COOPER: Yesterday they were putting a lot of water down from the aerial assets on one area, but it kept coming back like, you know, and they must have put at least six while I was there.
LARSEN: You literally have to get boots on the ground. Love that term. And was scraping tools and scrape it and water and it's very, very --
So after you put the water down from the air, folks have to -- people have to go in and actually scrape.
LARSEN: Yes. When it's safe in our fuels, we want to stay in the black. If it's all burned, it's fine. We don't want to get into the green fuels because we have people in there. We can, you know, they could get burned and it could be a real hazard to us. COOPER (voice-over): Battles like this are playing out all over Los
Angeles County. Multiple fires are still burning. They're harder to see in the daytime, but at night, from the air, the scale and the horror of what's happening is clear.
SWAIN: I think events like this have been inevitable in Los Angeles and in some regions at similar risk nationally and globally for some time. And the reality is that there will be more fire on the landscape in a warming world. There's really no way out of that. What does the future hold? What will the extreme risk days in 20, 30, 40 years look like? It's pretty clear that they will be even more extreme than what we're seeing today.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
