Brian Fennessy
speaker
69 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Brian Fennessy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yep.
No, I did. And, you know, you asked some really good questions, you know, in terms of the, you know, power lines and whatnot. I know that the utilities up and down the state are working towards undergrounding them. But you ask a good question. I have no idea why you've got above ground, you know, power lines down along PCH there. But, you know, a good question for Edison.
I'm assuming it's a Southern California Edison thing. I mean, I'm not in that business, so I don't know. I don't know what the fire start was. I think it's still under investigation, so I don't know if it's utility or
If I'd have known this question was coming, I would have got that for you. But no, there is a percentage, obviously, of each. But, you know, certainly it wasn't lightning, right? We know it wasn't lightning. So could it be human or something else? And utilities there, but it's not as great as you'd think it was. But, you know, on the water side, because I get that a lot too, right?
We get a lot of fires, obviously, here in Orange County. And I was the fire chief for the city of San Diego before I was here. And What happens in these fires, and I've been doing this for 47 years since 1978, started with the Forest Service in the LA area and been to a lot of these Santa Ana wind-driven fires over many decades.
And what a lot of people don't realize is that, you know, the pressure, you know, for our hydrants, for your waters at home is all through, you know, a pump system. And you won't, you won't They're not really obvious where these pump stations are. In fact, I was up in Altadena this morning, and there was one on fire, and the person who was with me was like, what is that?
I was like, well, that's a pump station. It looks like an outbuilding of some sort. But once those pump stations burn up and go down, there's no more water pressure. And in these big fires, it's not uncommon. I know 20 years ago during the big firestorms of 2003 and 2007, there was a lot of attention on the lack of water pressure for not just firefighters, but the communities.
And, you know, there's obviously some Homeland Security concerns about making that information public. Well, we had to petition and really work to get that. the information on where those were, because we need to protect those.
I mean, those are as valuable potentially as, as a home would be because once those pump stations are out, man, you're not getting any more water than what you showed up with. And the 500 gallons showing up with, you know, usually is not going to be enough when you've got a structure fire, you know, like we're seeing up there, but I'll end with this again, after seeing all these, what we, uh,
Certainly what I saw this morning, I spent about five, six hours in Altadena from, you know, before daylight through about noon. I'll use the word historic. I've seen a lot of wind-driven fires and I can't remember one that had the wind velocity that was experienced over Southern California. There was one in 1980 when Ontario Airport recorded a hundred mile an hour gust or whatever.
Well, that was happening throughout the region. And having grown up in Altadena, that's why I was up there, it's not uncommon to have very strong Santa Ana winds. This was extraordinary. And I don't think they've placed a structure loss count yet. But if somebody told me today that there was 2,000, 3,000 homes lost in Altadena, That would not surprise me. It might be even more than that.
The devastation is absolutely dumbfounding.
No, I don't know what their plan is because I have not attended any of their planning meetings or anything like that. We here in Orange County have lots of resources, both in Pacific Palisades and in Altadena. We've shared or we've sent our aircraft out. We've got our hand crews up there, our bulldozers. We've got a lot of equipment on both fires for the mutual aid system.
You know, this time of year, you know, if you're relying on federal contracted helicopters, they're all off contract right now. You've got agency aircraft. And when I say that, I'm talking about CAL FIRE, L.A. County, Orange County, L.A. City. But there's limits to that.
The air tanker fleet also, at least on the federal side, is not as robust, nearly as robust as it is during, quote unquote, the traditional fire season. I will tell you that they flew a lot yesterday during the day. The plan was to fly last night. We operate a night program. We'll work with L.A. County extensively. But the wind velocity was so high that
that, A, there were safety concerns, and quite frankly, when the wind is blowing that strong, the minute you release the retardant or the water, it blows to the Pacific Ocean. It does not make the target. But I would expect there to be a very robust air response today. But again, I can't comment on it because I don't know what they have out there.
Well, I do know that, you know, that the Eaton Fire is the one in Altadena. And then there's the fire out of Silmar. Like you said, I think that's the one we're talking about. They're both kind of converging. No, no.
I did not know that. I drove up, you're familiar with the area, up into Eaton Canyon from the 210 freeway today. So you may be absolutely right. I don't know. But you're right. I mean, it's largely less a wildland or wildfire and more now an urban complication.
Oh, my gosh. It's, you know, last night, like I say, I have family still up in Altadena and friends. And I was getting calls last night saying, hey, am I in danger here, this fire? I told them, man, you're out of your mind. That fire will never reach you. We'll never reach you. I mean, you were so far away from the hillside.
Three in the morning, I'm getting calls from them going, hey, the fire is across the street. And I couldn't get my- Oh, my God. But I've never seen fire travel into a community as deep as it has. On this fire. And yeah, you looked at least when the sun came up this morning or became daylight, you'd look to the mountains, right? The foothills there. There wasn't a lot of smoke.
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