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
We need to be doing what we can because we've got a very unhealthy situation with our national forests and our open spaces.
No, I wouldn't say you're a nut. I mean, most people don't. I certainly don't. You know, if you want to and it makes you feel better to do that, that's great. You know, there's risk, though, involved with staying behind after people have been evacuated.
Quite frankly, citizens probably save, you know, others may argue with me about this, but they protect and save more property than perhaps even firefighters do. But there are some residences that... you know, quite frankly, if, if you don't leave, you might die. And so, you know, when we evacuate people, we really, it would like them to evacuate.
I think what I hear most Dr. Drew is, is, you know, from people, you know, that have evacuated or had close calls is, you know, I knew there was a fire. I was prepared. I had all my stuff together. Um, It looked like it was maybe a half hour, an hour. Next thing I knew it was there. And then the chaos began, right? Then the panic and everything happens and everything goes out the door.
There is value in defensible space. There is value, obviously, in hardening your homes and those sorts of things. But largely what you're protecting against are, you know, the 90 whatever percentile of the fires that we have every year. The fires that we just experienced are a very small percentage, a very small wedge of the overall fires that we have.
However, that very small wedge is also the ones that are killing the most people, firefighters, and damaging or destroying the most structures. So I would argue that if you had a pump in your pool and you had a fire like we've experienced this last couple days with the winds that we've experienced, I think you'd be better off leaving that pump behind and getting the heck out of there.
Yeah, I think you're right. I don't want to marginalize the preparedness piece because we preach it and we do genuinely mean it. where we get more caught up, of course, is in the evacuation piece. And what I've experienced over many years, especially after these types of fires, and we'll probably hear it again, is that the fire department wasn't there. Where was the fire department?
How come, you know, blah, blah, blah, they weren't there. And quite frankly, and you know this, is we can't be everywhere all the time. And And in terms of available resources, you know, there were largely until last night, two, well, one major fire in Pacific Palisades, and then eventually the Eden fire, and then another one.
But resources were getting there quickly, just very difficult to manage. I think, you know, and even talking with some of the people I did this morning, they are prepared with their papers and those sorts of things. But where do you, you know, where do you keep your pictures? I mean, Most people don't always think about taking your laptop or your computer out of there.
And so many times we'll instruct our firefighters, you know, once the homes are evacuated, you know, if they're catching on fire and we're going in there, find their computers, find these things. Because nowadays people aren't keeping those things on albums. Their life is on these electronics. And you're right. I agree with you.
I think in Southern California people are so used to disasters that they're thinking about it. Yeah. but I think it's just the overall, it's not going to happen to me. And I don't know if it's just human nature or what you'd probably be better. You'd know better than I would, but I don't think people truly believe it's ever going to happen to them.
I mean, I just, I talked to my brother who thankfully his home was one of maybe very few in Altadena that survived. At least it was when I left. And one of my friends who, you know, I drove him to where his house was literally burning on the ground. And, You know, it was just this daze of, man, I didn't think it would happen to me. And quite frankly, I didn't think it would either. You know?
I'll share something with you a little bit controversial and some discussion that's taking place among some fire chiefs is... You know, we've got the Ready, Set, Go program, and that's assuming that you've got your stuff ready, and now we tell you to evacuate and you go. What if go is, man, you just smelled smoke, you open the door, and you've got 45 seconds, you've got 30 seconds to go.
Where do I go? And I've had people ask, do I jump in my pool? Do I head down the street? And what I share with people is we ought to be providing some basic level of fire behavior training to our communities so they have some awareness of how fire is going to behave. Yes, park your vehicle so it's facing out on a hot, dry forecast, but know where that golf course is.
Know where that high school gym, the park, the big Walmart, whatever, because what you need to do is maybe go two or three blocks and Run your car into that open space and let the fire go around you, as opposed to getting stuck in traffic and having the fire come over the top of you. Just like in a hotel, many of us look at what floor am I on? Where's the staircase?
On the airplane, where's the exit? You should have a plan of, if they tell me now, what is my plan?
Yeah, no, it is. In listening to the meteorologists and, you know, in the fire service, you ultimately become almost a weather person, right? I mean, that's our whole thing. And right now, the weather is behaving as it's been forecasted. And so we're going to have a couple more days of really dry, very low humidities. We're going to have some breezes.
But the big blow, you know, for the most part, I believe is over. I don't want to scare anybody, but we're forecasting another Santa Ana to begin next Tuesday. And right now they're saying moderate. But a week ago, this was forecasted to be moderate. And all of a sudden it became strong. So you don't always know, but we're in that pattern of every six, seven days having a Santa Ana.
This used to be September, October, November. Now it seems like it's December, January, February that the months of these kind of patterns.
An instinct. This is my thing. It could be. I mean, if you're going to jump into that pool, you pretty much resigned yourself. You're going to die, right? Because your other alternatives are done. And so when people say, well, you don't know until that fire is on you.
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