Investigating the Devastation of the Palisades Fire

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. What is today is Rob Monts, a friend of one of my family members, and he’s from Palisades in California, and there’s been a lot of controversy about what’s going on in the Palisades, and he did a new documentary and the documentary’s called The Untold Truth behind the Pacific Palisades Fires. Well, Rob, give us an update

0:29 what the heck is going on in California. A lot of people are upset. President Trump has assigned lee Ze Elden to go there and keep him aware of what the heck is going on and how he can move the process going forward. So Rob months you tell us, Yeah.

0:50 Speaker 2 So the documentary is just on my YouTube channel for people that want to check it out at Rob Monts, so they can just go to Robmonts dot com. I was born and raised in the Palisades and my childhood house burned down, So the documentary is meant to be the definitive investigation into house. Something so crazy such as

1:09 a couple of sparks in some dry grass a couple of blocks from my house could have ballooned into this gigantic wildfire that essentially incinerated the most desirable real estate in Pacific Palisades. I have to tell you the main thing I want to update your audience about, and this is probably why Lee Zeldenga hauled in, is because the

1:35 political leadership in California is still studiously fighting any attempts for any sort of transparency of your accountability for the fire. That’s a huge part of the story and remains a perpetual source of frustration with the people of the Palisades that if you listen to Gavenoussom or you listen to Marytaron Bass, whenever they’re pressed on the fact that something

1:58 so catastrophic could have happened under their watch, almost always they paint it as a inevitable result of the laws of nature, or they put it on the easy boogeyman of global warming.

2:14 Speaker 1 I am told, and I don’t know the exact numbers, is like twelve thousand homes burned down, maybe more, and very few permits have been given out to rebuild homes. And the threat from the governor’s office was that they may be building low income homes in that area. And nobody knows what the heck is going on. But the

2:37 president had said lee Zelden, who’s the EPA administrator as a second as a secondary job, to find out what the heck is going on going on and to report back to him.

2:51 Speaker 2 They had it in Wall Street Journal. It’s something like only five percent of the burned down lots in the Palace. It’s a year after the fire have been formally approved for rebuilding. There has not yet been a single house in the palisade that has been rebuilt, and something like seventy percent of the lots have zero movement on them,

3:11 which means the homeowners aren’t attempting to sell them and they’re also not the at least haven’t yet gotten through the permitting process. I can tell you myself because my mom is one of those rare late seventy something Palisades homeowners.

3:27 I just got a text message from her literally two hours ago that she finally received the final permit to allow her to rebuild. And this is after her being in the process for a solid twelve months. And I think that her experience.

3:41 Speaker 1 I wonder if that came from Lee Selvin being assigned over there, he came from the normal course of business for California.

3:52 Speaker 2 I don’t know. I mean, I have to say for the documentary which again people can just watch it on the YouTube channel on Rob Monts. They can just google me Rob Mons specific policies fire go to Rob.

4:04 Speaker 1 Rob Rob Mons mo ntz.

4:08 Speaker 2 Robmonts dot com. If you just go to Robmonts dot com, it’ll take you to the documentary. What it attends to do is show the first half of it is kind of cutting through a lot of the neat partisan talking points you’ve heard in the immediate aftermath of the fire as to why this happened and identifying the specific human

4:29 errors that let something so catastrophic happen. And I will tell you and tell your audience that I think about ninety eight percent of what people were told in terms of what actually mattered doesn’t matter at all, and what we try to do, and this is based upon interviews with over fifty Palisades residents, is identify the specific policy

4:48 failures of the California government that allows something so catastrophic to happen. But that’s only the first half, John. The second half is about a gigantic scandal of the fire that no of any political variance has covered, which is the scandal of the second day of the fire. This is after the fire had been burning for twenty four hours.

5:11 Los Angeles had been flooded with fire crews from all over the state and other states. The winds that had been a huge issue on the first day had died down substantially. And you have multiple higher ranking members of the California government on the beach next to the Palisades promising an international television audience to do everything in their

5:30 power to save this city. This is the second day of the fire, John.

5:34 Speaker 1 And how many gays did your piles over?

5:38 Speaker 2 Maybe six? And on that second day, despite all of that, the streets of the Palisades are empty. There are virtually no firefighters there, and something like a thousand structures that had survived the first twenty four hours of the fire completely intact, and we have ample first hand testimony to this still act on the second day of the fire

6:01 are gone by that evening. And that’s the story in a phenomenon that is not wildly understood by basically anybody outside the Palisades. And so what the documentary does is dig into that untold scandal and try to reveal who it was that decided to make the call to abandon the Palisades to burn.

6:22 Speaker 1 Well, Bob Monts, thank you for updating us and updating all on the Yorkers. And again I will give you a name out Bob Monts, m O n TZU. And where where do Where’s this on YouTube?

6:36 Speaker 2 Just on my YouTube channel Rob r Ob Mons or just google me that it’s a host. And on my YouTube channel go to Rob Monts r obmntz dot com. It’ll take you directly to the documentary.

6:48 Speaker 1 Thank you so much for coming on and we’ll catch up with you again real soon when give us a text when you’re ready to update.

6:55 Speaker 2 Thank you so much great Thanks John,