Palisades Fire

Billy Crystal finds laughter in the face of loss in his moving Broadway show, 860.

Billy Crystal pays tribute to the house lost in Palisades Fire in hilarious, heartbreaking one-man play.

The Palisades Fire took his home, but not his humor.

Billy Crystal turns loss into Broadway magic.

That's

Today's episode is about community in action, and it has some people that I so admire in it.

Tony Hocking is from Team Palisades, and he lost his home in the January 2025 Palisades fire, and he took on a very big leadership role in his community through the Block Captain program.

Kasey Earnest is the executive director of the Malibu Boys and Girls Club.

Casey is one of the most experienced people in the nation on how to do local recovery.

And the third one is Lauren Sandidge.

And Lauren set up this really cool organization after the Los Angeles fires in January of 2025.

And after the Eaton fire in particular, which is at the same time as the Palisades fire, it's called Altadena Girls.

And what it is is that it's giving a space for young women to go to be together to initially was to replace everything they had lost and to give them space.

And I'm optimistic that we may be able to pick up and kind of close that gap as well.

What could have been learnings or what should be learnings going forward to hopefully we never see a disaster like what you saw with Woolsey and with Palisades Fire, but should we... confront ourselves with something like that, what are things that we should be looking at to do differently? Are you talking about fire prevention or rebuilding? Both.

Well, let's talk about rebuilding first.

We'll get to fire prevention a little bit later in the discussion.

If they wanted to do an addition while they were doing construction.

If they wanted to do a completely different home.

That was kind of eliminated in the Palisades fire.

You want it fast, you want it quick, you do like for like, and things are going to be streamlined.

In Culver City, he was honored this past week by the German government receiving the Cross of the Order of Merit to the Federal Republic of Germany, one of the nation's highest honors, for his contributions to preserving and interpreting historical collections through his work with the Wende Museum.

He also preserved cultural heritage by moving beyond the museum walls during the January 2025 Palisades Fire when the Wende Museum helped save...

Precious items from Villa Aurora, the historic Los Angeles residence and cultural center for German and Austrian exiles.

The award was presented by Germany's Minister of State for Culture and the Media this past week.

Please come on by and see.

And as again, the great, probably one of the best shows we've ever done will open November 7, called Competing Cosmologies, Interpreting the Sky, All About the Cosmos.

And it is to be noted, you did heroic work during the Palisades fire there, preserving important relics from Villa Aurora, which is an important German cultural center, as was noted by the German Consul General Andreas Sasse here in Los Angeles.

Tell us about what happened and what you did.

Former San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim joined the show last month.

Today, we share our conversation with State Senator Ben Allen, whose district includes the footprint of the 2025 Palisades fire.

We recorded this interview yesterday afternoon.

State Senator Allen, thank you for taking the time here on Insight.

But it's a place that was created as an elected position.

So we'd have somebody there who's going to look out for consumers and look out to make the system work better for working people.

The wildfire you're talking about is the Palisades Fire.

This January will be a grim two-year anniversary of that wildfire.

But I want to take you closer to home.

We now have this flood watch in place, not only at the I-5 near Fraser Park, but look, this is western portions of L.A., even along the 405. into parts of Malibu, Santa Monica, our Palisades burn scar.

So this is not something you want to see, of course, but we are looking at, especially if we see any of those thunderstorms, rainfall rates between a half an inch to up an inch of rain per hour are going to be possible.

So just make sure you're being cautious as you head into the coming days.

This is going to be going into place this afternoon.

Up the 405 across PCH into Malibu and even Santa Monica.

Now keep in mind this also includes our Palisades burn scar area.

So this is just not something you want to see of course, but we are looking at pretty decent totals with the storm system.