Pod Save America - Breaking: Gavin Newsom On the LA Fires

Episode Date: January 11, 2025

Governor Gavin Newsom sits down with Jon Favreau to talk about California’s response to the devastating Los Angeles fires, his invitation to Donald Trump, and his demand for clear answers about the water shortages that hindered fire fighting efforts. They also discuss what recovery and rebuilding efforts look like, how these fires could affect the future of home insurance in California, and the state’s ongoing affordability crisis.

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Slash crooked for 20% off your purchase. Thank you lumen for sponsoring this episode Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. We are driving back from the Emergency Response Command Center in Malibu, where I just sat down with Governor Gavin Newsom to talk about the LA fires. The governor's team reached out to us earlier this afternoon on Friday and said that the governor wanted to answer some questions and that he would have a couple of announcements. He invited Donald Trump to come to California to witness the devastation and called him out in the invitation for spreading disinformation from the sidelines. So we talked about that. The governor also announced an

investigation into the water shortage that hampered the efforts to put out the fires in the palisades on Tuesday night. And so we talked about that. We also talked about the recovery effort. We talked about the rebuilding effort that's to come. And we talked about people's frustrations and hopes who are dealing with the devastation from these fires. Here's my interview with Gavin Newsom. Governor Newsom, welcome back to Pod Save America. Good to be with you under difficult circumstances. Very. We are recording this Friday afternoon at the command center in Malibu.

Just before we started recording, you invited Donald Trump to come here to Los Angeles, see the devastation. You said the hundreds of thousands of Americans displaced from their homes and fearful for the future deserve to see us all working together in their best interests, not politicizing a human tragedy and spreading disinformation from the sidelines. So this is after Trump blamed you for the fires.

He says it's the fault of water mismanagement. Your initial response to that was, I have a lot of thoughts and I know what I wanna say. I won't. It seems like you're trying to walk a very fine line here extending an open hand to Trump as you signed your letter Yeah, but also calling him out for spreading disinformation. Is that because you have concerns that he might withhold Disaster of course, it's pretty straightforward about that. He's tried to do it in the past. He's not just done it here in California. He's done it in states all across the country.

I mean, he did it in Puerto Rico. He did it even in Utah. He did it in Connecticut and other states. Georgia, he got upset and withheld the emergency dollars. In 2018, even before I was governor of California, tried to withhold money down in Orange County until apparently a staff member, and this has been well reported,

staff member said there were a lot of Trump supporters, and he decided to change his mind. And so the rhetoric is very very familiar, and it's increasingly acute, and obviously we all have reason to be concerned about it. What's the disinformation you were referring to in the letter and what is the correct information? Well, I mean, look, what the president-elect was saying about State Water Project and the Delta smelt somehow being culpable of, you know, somehow leading to some of the challenges that we faced down here was, it's words, it's a salad, it's a form and substance of fog, it's made up, it's delusional, and it's a consistent mantra from Trump going back years and years and years, and it's reinforced over and over and

over within the right wing, and so it's become gospel, and it's so profoundly ignorant, and yet he absolutely believes it. It's not an ignorance on his part. It's sort of an indelible misinformation that he sort of manifested a falsehood, and he decided to bring it into this crisis in a profoundly demeaning and damaging way. I say demeaning to the facts, demeaning to the people that were suffering and struggling, to the kids literally who were watching their schools burn down. I was just talking to a staff member, a good friend whose house was burned down and his four-year-old as is there driving away, say,

daddy, do you remember, did you get my bunny? And you know, I got four kids. Yeah. No empathy, no compassion, no capacity to even to understand. Just a guy wants to be understood. And yeah, that's hard because a lot of people were misled. it's I think led to a lot of finger pointing and consternation at a time when we're quite literally and I say literally because second before I was here, I just got the latest briefing, we're bringing cadaver dogs out there in some parts of the fire where people are still potentially missing and we've already lost 11 lives. Yeah People are just are devastated in Los Angeles. They're scared. They are angry Some of that is directed at local officials state officials you of course We talked about how some of that anger is based on you know inaccurate information from Donald Trump and others But from your perspective Is there anything the state of California could have done to be better prepared for a fire like this? And is there anything the state could have done better or faster in responding?

Well, you always have to have some humility and grace as it relates to that question. And I'm very self-critical in that respect. And so we in every incident do an after action report. And we will take a sober and reflective look at that but let's just look at the facts. Just in the last few years I've been governor we've close to doubled the investments in CAL FIRE, the state firefighting force, close to double the number of personnel. We've increased the size of our aerial fleet by 16 new helicopters.

We were finally able to get from the Pentagon seven C-130s. We got the first one up there. You saw it up there in the CAL FIRE flag on this fire. We had pre-positioned Saturday our state office of emergency service. We all got together before this event, days before the event, and we agreed to pre-position in six counties here in Southern California. Hundreds and hundreds of assets. Let me be specific about that. On Sunday, we had 110 engines, hundreds of personnel, specialty crews, dozers, water tenders, helicopters. We pre-positioned them strategically in multiple counties. And because we had pre-positioned them, they were first on the scene.

Many of these people supplementing the resources of this local fire department, dealing with overwhelming winds in this overwhelming fire that I happen to be present at within its first few hours and saw firsthand the hurricane winds and the embers going as far as two miles. That was overwhelming for the thousands of people that were down there fighting them, concurrent, not just here in the Palisades with the fire out there at Eaton and some other fires. Five current active fires as we're dealing with today, 12,000 personnel

currently working, 175 engines that have come from five different states. We have people from around the world offering resources, notably from Canada and Mexico, and we're putting everything we have at it. You just sent a letter telling LA and LA County officials that you're directing the state to investigate the causes of lost water supply and water pressure during the fires.

I believe there was also a large reservoir in Pacific Palisades, the San Ynez Reservoir that was closed for repairs during the fire. Local officials have said the demand for water was just too great to maintain the pressure in the hydrants, especially since aerial water support wasn't available immediately due to the high winds. Do you not believe that explanation? No, it may be the absolute explanation, but there's so much mistrust and finger pointing. Let's just get the facts and let's get them out quickly. Let's stop the finger pointing.

Let's just assess the truth. I'm not interested in who's to blame. I want to know what happened. It's a perfectly plausible analysis on the basis of personal experience with some of the biggest fires in US history, the Tubbs fire, what happened at the Camp fire, what happened in Maui, that you get systems that are completely tapped out and overwhelmed. They weren't designed for these level of fires. And so that explanation is the one that sort of almost, I won't say universally, but I

bet if you talk to nine out of 10 of the folks that are out here at the command, they would subscribe to that point of view. Others are saying, no, it was the pump that went down. It's the pipes. It was the electricity. So let's just get the facts. It's DWP that ran this system, and we want to make sure this never happens again. Do we need more redundancy?

Do we need a hard net? I remember as mayor of San Francisco, we did a bond to significantly upgrade our infrastructure because we're concerned about a catastrophic earthquake and how that could overwhelm our pumping and fire suppression system. So we want to determine all those facts, not on the basis again, of finger pointing and signing blame,

but accountability, and we want transparency. One of my best friends just lost his house in the Palisades, he just moved in a couple months ago. Was able to get his two kids and his dogs and that was it, lost everything else. He texted me the investigation announcement and said, what's going on here? Is he just trying to pass the blame?

And just to your point about the finger pointing and the blame, so many people are so angry. And, you know, how do you see that in a moment like this when you're trying to figure out, A, there's a, you know, governor of the largest state in the country and what happens in LA isn't always going to come across your desk, but also the ultimate, you know, you're ultimately responsible as the governor of the state. Of course. I want to know the answers. So I'm the governor of California, I want to know the answer.

I've got that question, I can't tell you about how many people, what happened. My own team's saying what happened. And I want to get the answers. And I'll be candid with you, I wasn't getting straight answers. I watched the press conference, I met with some of those leaders We had my team start talking to local leaders saying what's going on our state you weren't getting straight answers from I was getting different answers and And so for me that's not a stroke when you start getting different answers

Then I'm not getting the actual story and and they're assessing it and I get that as well You have a little bit of grace back to the point. We're in this emergency environment and everything else I just want to determine the facts, but no one has any patience anymore. In this weaponized, back to the grievance of Trump, everyone else, people, there's immediacy. And lies travel the proverbial world, and it's hard to get the facts out there unless you have the backing of those facts and you can communicate them soberly. And so that's what we're trying to achieve as relates to this. But I have 10 other things we're doing concurrently as well. I mean, across the board on recovery,

disaster assistance, getting the major disaster declaration. It may be the first one in US history over a text with the White House within literally 36 hours to get 100% reimbursement for folks out here. We've been working concurrently in all of these areas. We're doing executive orders as I speak as it relates to recovery and land use, dealing with speculation and fraud and trying to address issues on the Coastal Commission here and address the issue of planning permits and how we address all of the myriad of needs

for small businesses, all of this in real time. Again, as the state, even though this is not a state responsibility, are to support the city and the county that are overwhelmed at this moment. Do you, as you were talking about sort of misinformation on how fast it travels, one thing I was saying on the show yesterday is I feel like in this age, politicians, elected officials need to almost over communicate, communicate as much as possible. You've done that throughout your tenure. Do you think that Mayor Bass should have canceled her trip to Ghana

when she knew that they were gonna be an extreme weather event? I literally can't judge it. I don't know when she left. I can't assess that. It's not, and I mean this like, at peril, my response appears to be political, because I literally do not know when she left. I know when she came back.

I know that when I was on the scene a few hours after the original 10 acres was announced, that her team was on the phone and we were coordinating and we were hand in glove in that respect. And I was grateful for that and I felt confident in the command response and the team that was assembled at the site. That said, I was not confident on the basis of the hurricane winds that we were experiencing that we were going to be successful in saving a lot of those homes for one reason that the firefighters were coming down saying, our focus right now is creating safety corridors.

Our focus right now is saving lives and making sure people get out. Then we focus on property and then we'll get to perimeter. Because of the acuity, the extreme unprecedented hurricane force winds and how they were swirling in every conceivable direction. This is not a big deal at all, but we went up to one of the canyons on the fire, sitting there feeling we're a good quarter of a mile away.

I'm not making this up, video to bear it out. All of a sudden we see an ember, hits the tree, tree goes on fire, 100 seconds. God is my witness, may have been 90 seconds. The house is in flames. I have embers of flames. They're taking it off my hair and we're running back into the car. Winds are swirling around, garbage cans were in the air, and we were getting the hell out of there. That's how quick, and we were with experts. We were the leaders with the force who said, we're good. We just want to take you close, keep you safe. And all of a sudden they were like, they all said, never experience anything in January, in January.

And I want to remind people that drought, you know, everybody, how dare you bring up drought? Well, it's real, but plenty of water down here. I mean, all the reservoirs more than full, though this one reservoir, this local reservoir, that's part of the inquiry, that was something that wasn't communicated originally. That was one of the reasons to answer the question of your friend and others as well about getting straight answers that triggered me saying enough,

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who cares a lot about modernizing government, bringing technology to government, and this is an LA County thing, but they have been sending out emergency alerts, evacuation alerts that are wrong, and most people in LA now have downloaded this watch duty app, which is sort of up to the minute evacuation orders and people are relying more on this and they've been doing great work. I don't know who's behind it, but it's a nonprofit. But I was struck by people relying on Watch Duty app and then we're all sitting there in our house

and the emergency evacuation goes off and people are close to the perimeter and freaking out. And I'm like, how is that happening in 2024? Yeah, I mean, these are precisely the kinds of things. There are thousands and thousands of things that happen. Some big, some small, some you read about, some you never know about, some you experience, something someone else experiences, all part of an AAAP, which is the after action report that we put out.

In fact, I encourage people, I was just looking at the Woolsey after action report and there were a lot of good lessons learned from that. Of course, we had fires in November down here, fires in December, went so far, the Franklin Scar, that actually we were able to hold the line. That's around the Franklin Star right there, that was because it was burned just recently in December. So all those things are analyzed.

But let me just say this on the technology. We have people all around the world coming to California because we're leaders in technology, on artificial intelligence. We did a procurement sprint called RFI 2, where we're leaders in technology on artificial intelligence. We did a procurement sprint called RFI 2 where we're literally doing sandbox. We changed the whole procurement strategy on how we adopt technology and we pay for performance. We have a program called Tecna Silver which does predictive mapping, virus systems.

We have a DOD contract work for years and years finally got into the Biden administration for satellite technology, drone technology, and surveillance. All of these alert cameras, thousand plus AI alert cameras that are calling before 911, someone calls 911 to get to early suppression. As I say, double traditional workforce as relates to boots on the ground. We have 2,000 more firefighters that are in the budget for the next few years. We put out a forest management plan with 99 specific actions to address vegetation management, forest management. $4 billion to back that up. $2.5 billion that's been spent, $1.5 billion that's in this year conference a few months ago on this, 100 percent of those 99 actions are either adopted or are being adopted. We waved CEQA and environmental rules as it relates to getting defensible spaces. We've tried to move heaven and earth as it relates to forest fire, forest management,

vegetation management, et cetera, to support locals and to address the anxiety people have. We had the National Guard doing hand crew work here on day one. The rattle, we call them the rattle snake teams. I got 855 National Guard as we speak, working not just the lines on the fire, but also offline doing traffic management and supporting and supplementing a lot of the police force. But again, technology is a big part of this.

We're not just running the old fire strategies. We're leaders in adaptation and adoption. And a lot of that at scale, at the state level, not fully implemented to your point at the local level, but that's starting to change. And we're seeing a lot of the private sector, not just the public sector, begin to advance some partnerships that maintain

a state-of-the-art mindset. I want to ask about the rebuilding effort. The legislature just began a special session on Thursday to prepare the state for legal battles with the incoming Trump administration. Have you thought about calling a special session focused on recovery and rebuilding? Yeah, I was just talking to both legislative leaders today. We were text exchanging because we were at Lousy Self Service up there. And we're going to get together on whether we need to do that.

I'm already working on the executive orders. We're looking to codify some of the executive orders through legislative action. Do we need a special session to do that or we can do it in regular session? I'm open to either. Happy to do whatever moves the needle forward. We already have tracks on insurance and the state's fair plan. Reinsurance, I got a track on utilities, what this means the utility sector more broadly. Obviously, we're investigating responsibility, culpability. Is it arson? Is it a public power agency? Is it private power agency? All those things are being determined in real time.

We're working on a recovery posture as it relates to if an atmospheric river comes here in the next few weeks, floods and mitigations as it relates to hazardous waste, traffic management. All teams are running these parallel tracks in real time as again we're trying to suppress these five fires. Palisades alone has something like six billion of insurance exposure under fair California's insurance program, not nearly enough to rebuild those homes. Should the state step in and help finance the rebuilding of these homes or do the homeowners have to do it themselves?

Well there's been there was an estimate of 5.9 billion which I think you're referring to these are back of the envelope estimates Wall Street Journal did some 57 billion I mean that people haven't even been in I just got an area that no one trust me had been in so I don't know how the hell you've assessed all the damage it's some aerial assessments and there's damage happening in real time. But they're catastrophic. The number of buildings still estimated. I mean, it's well north of 10,000, 12,000, 15,000. I mean, it changes by the hour. Structures. And what's the structures? Is it a full home or is it an ADU? What is exactly? So all that's going to be stress

tests. Here's the concern. You've had a market, insurance market all across the country, not even unique to California, that has been stretched and impacted by climate change. Let's just be candid. The inability in some states like California to do climate modeling as it relates to rate structures as well. We made reforms in the last year to include climate modeling. We made some reforms, ironically, that just last week led to, and this is not my words, led to, they announced because of the reforms, led to an insurer,

to a new insurer going into Paradise, California to reinsure people there that have already recovered and moved back in. So we're finally making progress on that and obviously this is going to set us back. That said, Fair Plan has a reinsurance plan. It reimburses anywhere from 30 to 90 percent depending on the size of the claim. There's a socialization as it relates to the Fair Plan. It's not a state plan. It's not a public plan. It's run through this insurance, this pool of which the current insurers market participate. And so there may be a bleed into the pockets of those and we'll see the impacts more broadly

the rates across the state. You have a lot of higher end homes that were insured not by your traditional California insurers, but by international insurers that's also being assessed. All of that is happening in real time. Like I said, we have a whole team just on the insurance market looking at utilities. Remember, in paradise, it led to the bankruptcy of PG&E, the largest investor-owned utility in the United States of America,

where we created a new fund under SB 1054, a wildlife fund, which we're also stress testing right now, all of these things again in real time. What's the future look like on insurance though? I mean, thousands of people had their insurance policies canceled even in the weeks before the fire. I know the insurance commissioner came out and said moratorium for a year on any place that's been impacted by the fire. So, you know, legislation I just signed and I'm glad he exercised it. And he also called for a voluntary extension of that for an additional six months.

We want to get into the commercial sector as well. So that was timely that we at least were able to do that. So anyone that did lose their home, they cannot cancel your insurance, legally cannot cancel your insurance for a minimum of a year. Again, we'd love to see that extended and we may need to look at legislation. Again, trying to find the balance between market pressures, realities and costs, meaning the

burden on the monthly plans. So the people were pulling back, seen across the country, rates here, I mean, it's ironic California has, and trust me, I'm on the receiving, I lost one of our homes, which is in the WUE. We're on the fair plan, because we lost private insurance. We pay more than the mortgage on the property just for insurance, and it's significantly underinsured. WUE is wildland urban interface. You got it. Got it.

So I intimately understand the challenges of this. That said, the market was beginning to stabilize again. Farmers made an announcement. They were moving back in. So all of this, we need to unpack and figure out what it's gonna do to the market, but adjustments will need to be made. And again, we'll move quickly since we're back in session,

be it a special session or regular session and drive this. Down the road though, how do you make sure that insurance companies will even insure people in places in California that are vulnerable to fight, that will be more vulnerable as climate change worsens. And the executive board I did a year ago where we talked about the prospect of allowing forward thinking climate modeling for the first time to allow for rates to be established. And also, work in the insurance commissioner led this effort.

It requires if you're entering the market and you're going to increase rates a certain percent that you have to ensure within these wooey areas. So there's an actual prescriptive requirement that requires in return for any rate increases a comparable commitment to actually ensure and not just run out of the market. So again, this is the balance you've seen it all throughout the United States obviously in the south the impacts of these hurricanes place like Florida The rates are off the charts. California's ironically a little below the national average. No one feels that way I certainly don't as a as a rate payer But this obviously is going to impact all that look it's it's going to impact, we have tax collection issues, property tax issues.

We're putting our budget together. Clearly, the IRS under major disaster declaration is going to extend taxes. We'll have to conform with that appropriately in the state of California. So you're going to budgeting a little differently with economic. This is a ten-poly economy in the state among the ten-poly, in a state that's a ten-poly US economy, the fifth-largest economy, $3.86 trillion a year economy, where by the way, economy's starting to boom again. Our revenues, we just announced today, of $16.5 billion from what we projected just six months ago.

That was announced today in terms of the top line. And so this comes at an inopportune time, and obviously with the transition and power in Washington, D.C. So a lot of challenges. Do you think people in Los Angeles need to think twice about living in the hills and canyons and people in places that are vulnerable to fires and other climatic... Well, it's the new reality. I mean, we say it all the time. The hots are getting hotter, dries are getting drier.

Wets are getting a lot wetter these atmospheric rivers, you know, just these these just rain bombs That we're all experiencing We've changed everything. I mean I put out a new water management plant in the state of California We fund it with billions and billions unprecedented investments in infrastructure in that space got to change conveyance Got to change the way you capture water, not just above ground, but below ground. We got to change some of our environmental rules, which we've been proactive about,

and that's constant challenge, and that's again what Donald Trump was speaking to specifically. We may have more in common than he thinks. We may have a lot less in common in other ways than he thinks on that. More in common in that there are some regulations and environmental rules that... Yeah, I mean, we...

The simplicity to which he marks this, it's a deeper dive, though I think you did a pretty damn... You did a master class on this. I think it was yesterday. Oh, yeah, and we learned all about the smell. Yeah, no. So I just, I would refer to the previous podcast, which, you know, so it went off to a trot on all grounds here. But that's what Trump's doing. And these are golden oldies going back decades and decades in California, but it's not a binary. I want more flexibility.

I'm ready to work with anyone in terms of modernization, back to the point, not just on infrastructure as it relates to the point, not just on infrastructure as it relates to capturing water, but recognizing we have to change the way we design and build our communities. Ingress, egress, redundancy systems, perfect example, what that letter represents to understand what's going on. By the way, that letter wasn't just for this,

it was for every other community. And what's going on? What other similarly situated communities are there? I mean if there's no there's we no one denies this there is no fire season if someone says that it's become laughable I just said I reminded everyone just had the Franklin fire in December with a mountain fire In November just down here in Southern California hasn't been any meaningful rain since last May And here we are in January with the prospects the next 10 days. I mean dry, it's 72 degrees out here. And so that's reality. You deal with reality. And so you're going to rebuild. You got to rebuild,

as the president said today, better in the context of materials. And we need to reward better construction with lower rates for insurance? We've got to design our communities with public safety in mind And that's what we learned in paradise Which had a PO box to your question of should we move into the wooey that goes back to the gold rush? Who came first and so you tell communities that have been around since the beginning of this state being around, you've got to vacate because now you're too proximate in a world of climate change to the beauty and the majesty of the state. So it's tough, but obviously land use has to

radically be re-thinked. We have an affordability crisis as it is. How do you make sure that people can rebuild their homes as fast as possible without dealing with the usual red tape bureaucracy? How do you make sure this doesn't lead to California becoming an even more expensive state to live in? Well, we've been hammering, hammering the last six years on reforming housing and reforming our regulatory system. I created a housing accountability unit because I wasn't satisfied. 540 actions, tens of thousands of units we've unlocked. We're suing cities because they're not zoning. They're not building housing fast enough, not even market rate housing, let alone workforce housing and low income housing. And so we're going to continue to drive accountability.

In fact, we strengthen our accountability rules and regulations last year. We're reforming our environmental rules. As I said, 42 CEQA reforms, but specific to your question around this rebuild, the executive orders. We run executive orders. I want to work with the legislature to codify those executive orders. Time value to construction. Get the permits. State deal with all of those, create a specific timeline, making it up,

we're working on the exact date so don't hold me to it, 120 days, get the permit. And do it in a way that we've done it with the experience at hand in other communities that have been severely ravaged by wildfires. I remind you Tubs 5600 units impact. And we rebuilt, we're rebuilding that community 18,000 in paradise. So we know how to do this. We've done it in the past, we learn, we iterate. But the scale of this is going to require us to be better and do better. And I'm not waiting back to doing everything at once. We

are going to be making announcements quite literally in the next few days to specifically answer that question through the executive authority that's vested in me and then get to work with the legislature in this legislative session. Last question, do you have a message for people who have lost everything in these fires and who are scared and angry and frustrated and concerned that, you know, the

state's going to forget them or leave them behind or they're not going to be able to rebuild. That's not in our DNA. It's just not in our DNA. Look, maybe it's nature nurture, five generations. I grew up in San Francisco. The flag of San Francisco is the Phoenix. Phoenix rising. I mean the San Francisco pre-1906 versus San Francisco today, we built back stronger, better, more vibrant, more dominant in every category, every way, shape, or form, our spirit, sense of pride, purpose, mission. And that's exactly what's going to happen down here. I mean, I told you, Camp Fire, there was no way that was ever going to be repopulated. The fact that kids are back in school,

we never turned our back on those folks. We'll never turn our back on the folks down here, not just here on the coast, but those folks and that very diverse community near Pasadena and Altadena and those communities that have been impacted by the Eden fire. We will be back. We have their back. I was with the FEMA director today. I want that disasterassistance.gov at disasterassistance.gov. Anyone that's been impacted, go to that. We've got this major disaster declaration. I said to the FEMA,

no one's going to turn, you're not turning your back in the short run. We want you back. I don't care what the administration is. They still have, by the way, a FEMA office from 1994 related to impacts here in disasters in 1994 and we're actually expanding that office in Pasadena for being the new female office today. They never left. We're not going to turn our back. We're not leaving. Governor Newsom, thank you.

Thanks for joining Pod Save America. Thanks for having me. It's a busy day. Thank you. Sorry about everything happening, man. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free or get access to our subscriber discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our friends of the pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed.

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