just jumped from a very small fire in the backyard it ran up a ridge once it hit that Ridge we had these erratic winds and it just had an ember cast that just pushed this throughout all the Palisades all those forest fires in California and all they have to do is
clean their Forest meaning break it up welcome to technology Brothers the most profitable podcast in the world today we're breaking down the Palisades fire I am without a co-host today Jordy has had to evacuate Malibu I had to evacuate
Pasadena uh last night but I was still able to make it to downtown and uh record and do a little breakdown of what people are saying about the fire it's a really crazy story it's a really crazy event it feels I mean it's a natural disaster it feels really weird there's
smoke all over Los Angeles uh just walking around it's pretty disgusting and uh it happened really really fast I mean uh I'm I'm looking at some data here the uh the fire started at it was first reported at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time yesterday January 7th covering
around 10 acres I think we hit record at 10:30 and then if you listen to the show yesterday we it was an hour and a half by noon 12:30 Jordy got a text message hey that 10 acre fire is now 200 Acres you got to come home a lot of other
people are are leaving Malibu so he had to get out of here we wrapped up and uh everyone in La has been in complete chaos especially if you're in Pasadena where the eaten fire has been really bad or out in the Palisade which has been by far the most insane video I'm sure
you've seen a ton of it we'll go through some of it here on this show um but it's so far one of the four wild the largest of four wildfires being driven by extremely powerful Santa Ana wind event according to reports from CNN it's already possibly the costliest wildfire
in US history it's definitely the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history surpassing uh a fire that happened in 2008 uh as a mentioned uh within 20 minutes the fire Grew From 20 acres to 200 acres and the blaze had reached more than 700 acres by 2m which is kind of
when Jordy was driving home yesterday with over 250 firefighters tackling it uh to reach it started to reach homes out in the Palisades they don't even have water coming out of the fire hydrants it's a complete disaster and I'm sure you saw a ton of crazy video of
whole areas of houses just being burned to the ground and uh a lot of people struggling to get out and then deal with what this means for their homes and they really can't do anything it's really really sad um and so uh there have been a big part of what's driving this is
this uh concurrent wind storm at night that forced the grounding of firefighting aircraft so they couldn't drop huge buckets of water on a lot of this stuff because it was too windy I mean in Pasadena the winds were getting up to 70 80 miles an hour and they were
blowing over trees so you couldn't even drive around the city because you would drive and then a whole street would just be BL blocked by some massive tree and they there's no way that they can remove all the trees cuz every single Street
has a tree falling down on it and there's just leaves and and twigs like everywhere it's a complete chaos um uh today January 8th the calfire status reports said the fire had grown to 2,921 acres hours later 1,400 firefighters had been assigned to the
fire which continued to grow as several injuries were reported including a 25-year-old firefighter with a serious head injury several beachfront properties in Malibu were destroyed by the Wildfire um which if you you will pull up a map but um Malibu is not
particularly close to the Palisades uh I mean it's somewhat adjacent but uh the fire is really just spreading all over the place and we'll go into some of the the ideas and and theories for how this happened uh so there's been massive
evacuations going on uh over the last day I got an evacuation notice in Pasadena because of a separate fire but related in Eden Canyon and as we were driving out on the freeway you could just see this massive the whole mountain side is just on fire it's crazy and I
think uh we unfortunately know some people whose homes were burned and some friends of friends and relatives of friends uh have all had to evacuate it's been really really rough uh so the uh mayor of Los Angeles has declared a state of emergency and amid the
evacuations large amounts of traffic quickly built up as flames moved closer to roads people left their cars and bulldozers had to move almost 200 abandoned vehicles as they blocked evacuation routes the LAPD sent about 140 officers to assist with evacuations
in gridlock and everywhere you go in La there's just blaring Sirens because uh cops ambulances fire trucks are just driving all over La trying to help with uh the response here um the fire department issued an emergency alert system message which was relayed to the
National Weather Service to notify residences of the evacuation so fortunately everyone has a pretty strong uh warning system in place and everyone kind of knows to get out at the right time and we'll get into some of the other things that people are doing to
adapt and understand what's going on but it is extremely rough we barely know the full impact but um it's uh it's already destroyed at least a thousand structures really really crazy and a bunch of uh really iconic buildings the Getty Villa
has been threatened although the and the ground's caught fire but I don't think it's burned down yet um but if you look at the uh the poly Market we are in the middle of this uh the poly Market has um a uh a market on will the Palisades Wildfire be contained by Friday and
there's just a 3% chance of that and they're uh using as the Oracle the uh the calire uh website um which they're trying to contain this fire but I mean that it's just seems like that's days away and there's only a 3% chance that they actually uh contain it by then it's
always crazy when this uh stuff happens and we'll get into some of the backlash and some of the uh some of the political aspects as well as uh some people having fun and just kind of you know trying to make the most out of it uh and keep
their chin up in a really hard situation so in terms of theories we'll get into some of the theories but uh the mo the current one that I'm seeing going out this one just went out uh last night uh the LA fire captain said on local news
that this started as a very small fire in the backyard this has jumped from a very small fire in the backyard it ran up a ridge once it hit that Ridge we had these erratic winds and it just had an ember cast that just pushed this throughout all of Palisades and so
there's a lot of people throwing around a bunch of different theories uh we'll get into some of those but that's kind of the current one that's taken hold in the narrative and we'll see how that shifts over the time over the next few
days um so let's go to some of the crazy videos and we'll pull these up on the video uh CIA cordani says uh this is by far the craziest video from the fire in Los Angeles this guy is filming huge walls of fire surrounding a house they're in and there's another person
and a dog I have no idea why they didn't evacuate or what happened to them let's hope they're okay I mean there's a bunch of reasons why someone would um want to kind of stand their ground and maybe hope for the best but it's extremely rough and this video is insane I mean
just walls of fire everywhere extremely terrifying you got to get out in that situation uh Benny Johnson says Malibu is unrecognizable beachfront homes along Pacific Coast Highway have been completely destroyed this is always crazy because you're so close to the
ocean you just want to pull the water in and solve the problem um Mike salana put together kind of the master thread on the the defining kind of news tracker since uh X has a few different tools for finding tracking stories and of course
that you know this story took over the timeline but uh he called upon people to uh put everything in one thread so he says if you're living in LA and safe please share footage of what you're seeing in the comments here think it would be good to have a single easy
thread to read to help people understand how bad it is right now and hilariously he got some push back for this oh you're just like farming uh you know monetization or whatever and it's like uh no like this thread I mean it did very well 7 million views 43,000 likes
clearly people wanted this and they enjoyed it but um uh you know that we all know that the X payout from that is not going to be uh super significant uh and it is extremely uh beneficial so board Elon Musk shares uh some ring or Nest footage saying last thing I saw
before our home cameras went out not optimistic about what we find tomorrow and it's just um some insane footage of uh fire encroaching upon uh their house uh Mary says the Palisades fire from a flight arriving at LAX there are some really crazy videos
of people flying into LAX fortunately LAX is unaffected and so people are getting in and out um and some crazy footage is coming from uh folks who are on planes and can see the footage from the sky I was I if I had know was more of like a Gonzo journalist I'd be out
there with a drone I'm surprised I haven't seen more Drone footage of people flying drones around uh getting footage of the of the wreckage but there's Pro it's probably interferes with a lot of the the planes that are putting out you know dumping water on
the fire so you don't want to interfere with any of that but I personally want to get a better lay of the land and understand the wreckage because you see people driving around you see people uh show you know rows and rows of burnt out
houses but it's hard to fully illustrate I want to see the Google Maps view essentially and and that's what I'm sure we'll get with a drone in the next few days um and so Sal uh uh another replies from West Nichols he says I just left the hellscape formerly known as the
Pacific Palisades where I lived for 26 years I'm mad at what I saw our politicians have failed us unprepared unimaginative understaffed now overwhelmed heads must rooll for This Disaster I personally saw 100 plus homes fully engulfed in flames I presume uh
and yeah we'll go into some of the political backlash here it's uh it's fascinating so Sunrise from Santa Monica beach and this is all over La no matter which way you look it particularly crazy I was in TCA Lake like Studio City area
last night and you if you look to the east you see the Eden fire that just just engulfed the sky and then if you look to the West you see the Palisades fire which is engulfed that part of the sky and so it's just like this crazy black purple smoke closing in on you
from every direction uh fortunately Molly OA got out of here she says decided to leave LA to wait this out a bit very eerie all smoke LAX is operating fine if you're considering it it was pretty seamless grateful for amazing SF friends for offering to take
me in so yeah I mean if you if you don't want to run the risk of having to dodge around town and you have friends in another city why not get out I love it uh Lincoln I thir says before and after I lost my dream home in Malibu lafd didn't tell us anything zero notice zero
warnings in person nothing LA PD HQ did the same nothing obviously very very upset wow what a crazy crazy sight really really sad so there are some uh theories somebody was asking me uh I was talking to bology and he was saying like what's going on because he's not uh in
California and just probably woke up and saw the timeline erupting with chaos in Los Angeles and uh it was kind of like what's going on so I tried to think about like what are all the factors that people might want to trace through and
understand the waiting of and so I came up with kind of eight bullet points here that I sent in to uh group chat and uh I said number one it's been a very dry Year and that was something that was confirmed I guess it was the driest year
on record it was a 9month drought to get here uh there's very high winds all of a sudden this is Santa anas this is this happens all the time but it's particularly bad this year I've never seen 70 M hour winds in pasadia before but it's been really really bad and it's
really really crazy and so obviously it's literally Fanning the Flames uh and it's also blowing around small Embers so you have some small backyard fire bonfire or even just a house that caught fire th those Embers are going to fly
all over light up everything um and so number three the government has been terrible about brush management because of environmental concerns uh we can go into this a little bit more in the future uh number four there's lots of homeless encampments in LA and a lot of
those run on open Flames um and so there's been previous fires this one hasn't been confirmed but there's been previous fires where a homeless encampment has had a fire going and one of the Sparks goes and lights some brush and then that grows and grows and grows
into a massive Wildfire uh so uh that's a big problem uh number five the above ground power lines uh sometimes aren't maintained properly and so they blow around in lit in the wind and then they explode and there's some crazy videos out there of uh power lines just
sparking sparking sparking right next to trees and so obviously that's going to start a fire and then the Fire gets blown around uh number six once fires are burning this is an interesting Theory pyromaniacs get inspired to go start more fires and it's easier to get
away with it so if you are obsessed with fires and you're pyromaniac and you love fires um uh this is the best day to go light a fire and get away with it because everyone's going to be oh it just blew from the Palisades fire over
here uh and there's a couple structure fires that came up like like a single house caught fire all of a sudden in somewhere in La kind of far away from Palisades or eaten and everyone's wondering like why did that F why did this particular house go up and it might
be somebody just saying hey tonight's the night I'm going to go torch my enemy's house or something like that little bit of a conspiracy theory but uh you know possible possible uh number seven wind continues to literally fan the Flames talked about this like the
the the the wind has not stopped so even after the fire has blown from one place to another lit the house on fire started the brush fire somewhere else well then the F the wind just keeps the fire going and just really really amps it up and that's how we got from 20 acres to 200
acres to 2,000 acres like that um and then lastly number eight all firefighting services are way over capacity there's no option but to let the area is burn and we heard a bunch of weird things where private firefighters weren't allowed to get into places like
the police weren't letting them go in if you wanted to have private firefighters defend your home that was not an option and so it just seems like it's a lot of chaos not a lot of drills or dry runs for something like this and just an overall uh chaotic moment for Los
Angeles and um then I kind of closed out with like look I have these eight you know things that are going on but some of these have higher waiting than others like you know there's there's no real evidence right now that the pyromaniacs
have anything to do with this um but uh you know so so but everyone kind of agrees that like the high winds are really important here and then uh and also the dry dry brush um and then some of these are extremely major lightning rods for culture War issues obviously
homelessness is a big culture War issue a big political issue uh same thing with um uh how the government manages brush and will'll go into that and so I think the narrative on both the left and the right is still taking shape you could
see it last night on X most people were just saying you know thoughts and prayers thank you to the firefighters uh this is really important uh we hope everyone's safe but now that we're you know 12 24 hours out from the fire starting people are starting to say how
does this fit into my political philosophy how does this fit in with my ideology what how how does this uh uh how does this you know narrative take place and how do we get here and are the politicians to blame if so which politicians are to blame uh and so back
to what caused this obviously we have the the main Theory being espoused by the uh fire department which is just started as backyard fire Grew From there very bad uh but I asked Chachi PT to pull some historical base rate probabilities for how fires like this
get started uh to give me just some overall uh you know historical context because these can come from both nature and manmade um and so uh the first cause of fire lightning strikes uh historically that's been about 5% of all wildfires and obviously there's nature
caused that and not really much you can do about that except protect the brush and make sure that there isn't Tinder for the lightning to strike um but we haven't had a lot of lightning in La so that's probably not the reason for this
uh power lines and electrical infrastructure this was a big thing up in SF uh a few years ago about 20% um waiting towards that from chat GPT and obviously that's human caused um and there's a lot of questions about do the electrical companies have the right
incentives to uh M to do all the maintenance and proper uh work on their electrical lines to prevent Force fires are they incentivized where if they start a fire that that externality will be internalized by the company and they
actually have the right shareholder uh alignment and economic incentives to really do the work because obviously it's expensive to trim all the trees around every Power Line uh there's another question about like can't the power lines just be underground but then
that costs a lot of money put the put them underground but obviously they wouldn't start fires then and there's a lot of other stuff going on then arson the liberate setting of fires that's 10% by chat GPT homeless encampments 10% equipment use mowing welding
construction 15% recreational negligent activities like campfires fireworks cigarettes 15% vehicle accidents car fires or Sparks from brakes that's 5% and then other unknown is 20% and I don't even know if that adds up to 100% but it gives you an idea of some of the
different places that a big fire like this could come from um and then in uh this group chat there was an interesting post from a friend who said this feels like it could be an October 7th level moment in terms of political shifts in
Los Angeles and California a bunch of the most influential folks in Los angelescalifornia just experienced one a fire that at minimum was significantly exacerbated by terrible Forest management and some probability traced back to homeless encampments or similar
uh two a state level insurer that will be completely wiped out after this California FAIR Plan has 5.9 billion of exposure in the Palisade AES and 200 million on the balance sheet plus 2.5 billion in Statewide reinsurance resulting in at best a protracted
process for their claims to be settled and at worst claims going unpaid and perhaps a state or federal bailout to avoid that and so yeah I mean if they if they if six billion worth of homes burn and then they all those people show up asking for their uh insurance claims and
they say hey we only have 200 million on the balance sheet and we only have 2.5 from the state uh yeah you you're you're going to get cents on the dollar at best um and maybe there's a you know a state or federal bailout maybe they raise more
money issue more debt to fund those but it's going to be rough for everyone involved um and then third a local far-left government response that will inevitably be ripe for valid criticism and so this is going to be a uh a major political hot button issue for the next
uh few weeks at least I I imagine and so aot Gil broke down the uh the uh the situation in a great thread where does this start um I don't know if I have the start but he said very sad to see this current fire in Los Angeles and worried for friends in the area hope the county
state and Country realize that they should put their Citizens First in more ways including fire management Public Safety Etc said California had a 97 billion Surplus in a single year there was money to be proactive on these problems particularly given the large
fires in California in the same time frame as the Surplus and that is a crazy stat I think that was driven a lot by the IPO market and a lot of liquidity coming into California Tech employees and Founders uh and then being taxed um but uh it seems like the money didn't
get to the right hands um massive fires in highly populated areas are preventable it's a policy it's policy decisions that allow them to happen California continues to put citizens lives and property at risk for no good reason historical strategies include
controlled Burns removal of Fallen wood clearing dense areas aging water Reservoir infrastructure all our policy choices no it's not just climate change and there's a lot of focus on the Los Angeles mayor right now uh here's a quote from Newsweek Los Angeles mayor
Karen bass has been criticized after it emerged that she was out of the country attending a presidential inauguration in Ghana as northern and western suburbs of her city were hit by devastating wildfires fanned by high winds and uh
yeah it's got to be tough being a politician and taking any vacation because if something breaks out and you're like in some embarrassing Place uh you're never going to hear the end of it but at the same time like you got to travel for business sometimes um so I
don't know how big of a narrative that will be going forward but um certainly rough right now I think the main thing is uh if you're the mayor Karen bass you got to put out a statement immediately hop on a plane get back really show that you're on top of this show that you're
being aggressive that you're moving that this is your number one priority I don't think anyone really fault you for just taking a business trip and then a a freak accident you know natural disaster happens but if you stay there for a
couple extra days and you're not talking and you're not in the loop and you're not you know pulling out all the stops to get on the ground and have an impact that's going to be a problem and so uh he also shares La had just cut its fire department budget and uh shows uh some
of the uh the department budget uh operational budget increases and decreases and so um fire was one of one of the few to actually get cut police went way up library went up housing went up but fire and sanitation went down and so I'm sure a lot of people will be
upset about that uh Brian Johnson show shared a video uh showing the fire destruction in La is surreal the scale of the destruction was preventable we need societ we need societal systems built that we can trust that is a good point um you know you pay all these
taxes you want to count on the government to step up and prevent things it's like being a defensive back in the NFL you don't know how the fire department is working until something like this shows up and uh and then and then the training all comes out and so
uh a lot of people are going to uh a clip from Donald Trump on Joe Rogan where Donald Trump was mocked for sounding the alarm on California waterfire crisis during his interview with Joe Rogan when they fall right they're like you know it's like lighting
a match yeah and you got to be able to clean they call Main Forest so I was with the head of Austria he said you know it's a shame I see all those forest fires in California and all they have to do is clean the forest meaning rake it
up turns out he was right Trump spent nearly seven minutes ranting about the issue blasting Nome for doing nothing to fix the problem Trump specifically discussed the Californian Delta smelt controversy where rainwater is being wasted by uh by being directed into the
Pacific Ocean to protect a tiny fish species you know in Los you can't get proper amounts of water in order to protect a tiny little fish the water up north gets routed into the Pacific Ocean millions and millions of gallons of water get poured into the Pacific uh I
got it all done nobody could believe me it was all done I got it we'll just play the clip but you get the idea every time I go to California I say you have so much water they don't know it I'm telling you people live people living in
Beverly Hills they turn off the water same thing with the electric and so uh little bit of a of a I Told You So Cassandra moment for Trump uh here's Elon Musk sharing a post from uh truth social that Donald Trump posted during the uh the fire just today uh this
morning says Governor Gavin nkum he has a name for everything uh refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water from excess rain and snow melt from the north to flow daily into many parts of California
including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalypse cytic way he wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt by giving it less water it didn't work but didn't care about the people of California uh
now the ultimate price is being paid I I will demand that this incompetent Governor allow beautiful clean fresh water to flow into California he is the blame for this on top of it all no water for fire hydrants not firefighting planes a true disaster uh yeah it's a
really good point um a lot of this is like yes when you turn on the tap water in La like yes can get water like there's the the water's not gone uh obviously the fire hydrants are a bigger thing because they need a reservoir for that but also there's a there's a
there's a culture in Los Angeles where you shouldn't water your lawn that often and we don't just soak the ground with water constantly and all of that changes what types of plants you grow a lot of people have like dirt with cactus in
their Gardens instead of you know grass because it's uh it's more drought tolerant and it uses less water and there's this conservation mindset but the flip side of that is that if you don't have a lot of groundwater everywhere and and the and the land
around around Los Angeles and in California is not just moist all the time well then it's prone to Fire And so there's a trade-off there that I think people maybe aren't really considering because you are thinking about well you know we should use less water every
single day and this will add up but then you get the one big fire and it resets all the progress you made and like this fire is probably way worse for the environmental uh considerations than uh than just using a little bit of extra water and rerouting it from the ocean or
whatever um here's Mike salana again saying global warming Ate My Homework it doesn't work anymore literally every s single politician in California responsible for the catastrophic failure to prepare for this from Water Management to control burns to the fire
departments is a Democrat and he's uh he's sharing a post from Bernie Sanders who said 880,000 people told to evacuate Blaze is 0% contained 8 months since the area has seen rain the scale of this damage and loss is unimaginable climate
change is real not a hoax Donald Trump must treat this like the existential crisis it is so yeah you can see the political battle lines forming is it climate change or is it government mismanagement and uh and this is going to be uh something that we're fighting
about for weeks um James Woods here says uh the most the most important task ahead is not to be bitter but and shares a post from uh LA mayor Karen bass cut fire department's budget by 17.6 million months before wildfires turned the city
into a hellscape and so a lot of criticism on Karen bass for cutting budgets uh this is an interesting thing I think we should shift into kind of like what should you do if you're here what are the recommendations obviously there's uh a bunch of really interesting
things so Sean Maguire shares this he says I live in Los Angeles this is the view from my office in the pal as the Palisades fire starts to move East towards Brentwood the fiber internet at my house went out but we have starlink so my wife is still online it's a
life-saving product I couldn't agree more we talked about this on the show everyone should buy a starlink um and they're still available in La I picked one up just today from Best Buy and um it's very interesting whenever these chaotic moments happen this is the same
thing that happened with Co where if you're just like obviously moments like this everyone's like oh I should have been the prepper I should have had you know the the Thousand gallons of water and the gas generator and the electric
generator and just been completely set up for this and had an extra house and a bugout bag and all this stuff and yeah you could this is a good wakeup call maybe you want to do that uh and maybe this is the thing that you hopefully carry that energy and that reminder
through over the next you know 12 months and build out your your your plan for the next big fire but even just being on X and monitoring the situation and being on these apps and really understanding what's going on you can just be ahead of the curve by a little bit I bet
starlinks are going to be sold out in a day or in by Friday because if the internet really does go out seriously people are going to be swarming for those and but if you just get one today you'll be great and you'll be one one that has them and uh it was the same
thing with like when people wanted to stock up on masks or stock up on food or toilet paper like if you were just a little bit ahead of the curve like you were at the front of line and they had they had it in stock uh and so uh yeah uh highly recommend starlink uh Ryan
Peterson says friends in La download the watch Duty app to track the fire in real time it's the official Wildfire app being used by the firemen in California with very granular real-time updates video feeds and evacuation Maps stay safe you have no concept of how fast a
fire can spread until you've been through one I survived a house fire 24 years ago wow you must have been really young and we'll never forget the speed get as far away as you can with your loved ones forget your possessions they don't matter and uh yeah this is a great
recommendation i' I've been seeing a lot of screenshots from the watch Duty app everyone's you know obviously it's extremely nerve-wracking to hang out an app that's just telling you everything's burning constantly but it is a little
bit reassuring to know okay where is the fire where are the evacuation zones um where do people go and uh Raj Vier says number one on the App Store in growing like wildfire watch Duty Wildfire Maps check out their strategies that went
viral on Tik Tok I don't know if he's joking or serious I mean congratulations to the watch Duty team I mean if they did if they did go viral on Tik Tok that's great it's kind of funny to be posting you know what this taught me about B2B SAS or or how I how I hacked
consumer you know Tech but um I think it's good like it's clearly a valuable app and they built something that was extremely useful to people and it's doing a lot of good and so yeah celebrate it I hope they uh raise more money and make more money and and become
a very profitable uh company and this is uh something that seems to be feeling a a very acute need and and solving a lot of problems so so we love to see that um and uh we'll close with growing Daniel who got 29,000 likes on this absolute Banger bringing some bringing some
levity to the timeline during a very dark time people have lost their houses and he says I found a solution to fires in California it's called water and he shows the Pacific Ocean right off the coast of California just take the water from the ocean and put it on the fire on
land and uh that's the type of thinking we look for with Daniel and that's why we're so thankful for you to be on the timeline and uh never never losing sight that humor and X monetization payouts are really the most important thing at a
time like this uh get the bag Daniel and we appreciate everything you do we will be back with a full show hopefully tomorrow I think jordy's re uh relocating now hopefully to downtown and we can run a full show tomorrow we have a bunch of good deep Dives and a bunch
of great content bunch of good uh good tweets that are more about business and the usual stuff but we wanted to give you a little update hopefully educate you about what's going on with the fire and stay tuned for more thanks for watching