Send us a text With Us, an immersive art exhibit in the Arts District of downtown Los Angeles, has opened, and it is a compelling experience for anyone who visits. Extreme Weather Survivors and the Department of Angels collaborated to produce the installation, which brings together video, still photography, original art pieces, and the compelling survivors’ soundscape you’ll hear in this episode. Our anniversary show was recorded directly from the exhibit. We collected short interviews with t...
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Send us a text With Us, an immersive art exhibit in the Arts District of downtown Los Angeles, has opened, and it is a compelling experience for anyone who visits. Extreme Weather Survivors and the Department of Angels collaborated to produce the installation, which brings together video, still photography, original art pieces, and the compelling survivors’ soundscape you’ll hear in this episode. Our anniversary show was recorded directly from the exhibit. We collected short interviews with t...
Send us a text With Us, an immersive art exhibit in the Arts District of downtown Los Angeles, has opened, and it is a compelling experience for anyone who visits. Extreme Weather Survivors and the Department of Angels collaborated to produce the installation, which brings together video, still photography, original art pieces, and the compelling survivors’ soundscape you’ll hear in this episode. Our anniversary show was recorded directly from the exhibit. We collected short interviews with t...
Send us a text Sierra Kos tells us about the exhibit, With Us, an immersive LA fire experience, in this special bonus episode of Rebuild:LA. The event is on Sunday, January 4, from 12-4 PM and is free to attend. You can get your tickets here: With Us Tickets Kos and her collaborators wanted to bring the first-hand accounts of surviving the Palisades and Eaton Fires to the people of Los Angeles. The exhibit uses sight and sound and offers visitors a chance to hear from survivors in their own v...
Send us a text In this, the second part of our special two-part holiday edition of Rebuild:LA, host Cameron Barrett sits down with an Eaton Fire survivor and the president of an organization that lent him a hand. Both guests happen to be Los Angeles Fire Department Captains. In part I released last week, Captain Jerry Puga told the story of turning his back on his burning home, knowing he couldn't save it. And his friend, Captain Chris Stine, the President of the Los Angeles Firemen's Relief ...
Send us a text The first of our special two-part holiday edition of Rebuild:LA has host Cameron Barrett sitting down with an Eaton Fire survivor and the president of an organization that lent him a hand. What makes the conversation unique is that both guests are Los Angeles Fire Department Captains. Captain Jerry Puga lost his home in the Eaton Fire, evacuating with his family just minutes before the fire took out his whole neighborhood. And his friend, Captain Chris Stine, is the President o...
Send us a text This week on Rebuild:LA, host Cameron Barrett talks with Erica Peng, a lecturer at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, who teaches leaders about how our fight-flight-freeze neurobiology shapes and undermines behavior and performance. Peng has partnered with the National Fire Protection Association to teach a unique approach to crisis leadership, explaining how our neurobiology can actually get in the way of us doing the right thing when we’re faced with a disaster like a wildf...
Send us a text Imagine a massive, scary-looking rocket launcher…that shoots water balloons. That’s one way to describe the new technology called FireDome and developed by a group of Israeli entrepreneurs. In host Cameron Barrett’s conversation this week with FireDome’s co-founder and CEO, Gadi Benjamini, we learn about a cutting-edge technology, inspired by a weapon of war, but created to save lives - not take them. Resources: FireDomeFireDome in Action VIDEOContact Gadi Benjamini
Send us a text We know that the Palisades and Eaton Fires left devastation in their wake, devastation that wasn’t just burned structures and displaced lives, but dangerous contaminants that remained in our soil and groundwater. How far-reaching was the contamination, and how concerned do residents need to be? Thanks to the University of Southern California’s CLEAN Project, there is now a way for anyone living in Los Angeles County to get answers to those questions. And the help is free! This ...
Send us a text Dr. Nicole Maccalla spent the first two days of the Eaton Fire on the ground, fighting to save her home. She thought that if she could just keep her house from burning, she would be okay, and when the fire was finally out, she could return to the place she and her children had called home for the last 11 years. But what she found was a house that might have been still standing, but could not be lived in. Everything inside was covered with ash, and she soon found out, other thin...
Send us a text In the second of our two-part episode with Eaton Fire survivors Andrew King and Angela Giacchetti, host Cameron Barrett asks the two about their work on the Department of Angels' quarterly survey of fire survivors, Community Voices: LA Fire Recovery Report. The research is uncovering some difficult truths about the recovery and rebuilding efforts in Pacific Palisades and Altadena. 70% of those surveyed say they can’t return home. Nearly that many report struggling with their me...
Send us a text Andrew King and Angela Giacchetti didn’t know each other on January 7, 2025. They lived only a few blocks apart - in Altadena. When the Santa Ana winds got so strong that power started failing, King loaded his two kids and his wife into their minivan and took off to a nearby hotel in Pasadena. Better safe than sorry, he figured. Giacchetti and her husband were new parents. Their son was only nine months old, and their main concern was him. But they figured they could wait until...
Send us a text Malibu is no stranger to wildfires. The city had just recovered from the 2018 Woolsey Fire, which destroyed hundreds of homes on both sides of Pacific Coast Highway, when the firestorms of January 2025 struck. The Palisades Fire destroyed 700 homes in Malibu and drove clouds of soot and ash from the smoldering Pacific Palisades over the city and onto its world-renowned beaches. 700 homes were lost, and the city’s main artery, Pacific Coast Highway, was blocked by fleeing reside...
Send us a text The American Fire Service is in the midst of a rapid transition period that many have described as a crisis. From a massive brain drain happening in departments that are losing many seasoned firefighters to retirement, as well as a fundamentally different generation of firefighters coming up through a traditional system not known for easily changing, the fire service is facing challenges it’s never had to navigate before. At the same time, wildfires are increasing in complexity...
Send us a text Oscar Hood is trying to stop a Palisades Fire from happening in Orange County. As the County Coordinator for Wildfire Prevention and the Government and External Affairs Analyst for the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, he’s managing over 40,000 acres of open space in one of California’s smallest, yet most populous counties. How is he and his team working to keep wildfire at bay in the OC? He joins Cameron Barrett this week to talk about everything from roadside native plantings to pres...
Send us a text It’s like a Zamboni for firefighting. We’re talking about BurnBot’s RX2, and if you haven’t seen video of it in action, make sure to click on the resource link below. The company brought together two widely different California realities - Silicon Valley technological innovation, and the ever-increasing risk from wildfires. This week on Rebuild:LA, host Cameron Barrett talks to their Director of Partnerships and Growth, Ford Ainslie, about how BurnBot’s RX2 and other robotic te...
Send us a text In 2017 Jennifer Gray Thompson found herself living in her car with her dogs after evacuating from the Tubbs Fire in Sonoma County. The experience made her feel alone, lost, and unable to navigate back to the life she had enjoyed before she came face to face with a deadly mega fire. Her solution? The creation of After the Fire, a non-profit that has become a leading resource for communities all over the country who are facing the same trials she did back in 2017. After Fire was...
Send us a text The Palisades and Eaton Fires destroyed a lot of history. Will Rogers’s ranch home, Pasadena Waldorf School, Robert Bridges House, The Bunny Museum, Andrew McNally House, Theater Palisades, and The Zane Gray Estate are just a few of the thousands of structures lost in the fires. They all were touchstones in the communities where they were located. What does their loss mean to the Pacific Palisades and Altadena? What could we have done to protect them? And what do we need to do ...
Send us a text When you’ve been in the California fire service for 48 years, like Chief Kim Zagaris, you’re likely to take a long view of how we’re doing when it comes to wildfire response. Chief Z as many know him, was State Fire and Rescue Chief for the State of California, Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) until just a few years ago,, when he retired and become the Wildfire Policy and Technology Advisor for the Western Fire Chiefs Association. Zagaris has fought hundreds of...
Send us a text There have always been people who have stayed behind to try to protect their homes during a wildfire. It happened in the Palisades and in Altadena this January. As always, there were varying results. Some claimed to have saved their homes and even those of their neighbors. Others may have lost their lives trying. It’s never been a thing any emergency services department, or any professional firefighter would recommend. But just recently, LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone sai...
Send us a text This week social scientist Aimery Thomas of the Future Organization joins Cameron Barrett to talk about ARISE - Altadena Resident Impact Survey and Evaluation. It’s a report he and his partner compiled after they surveyed 1,200+ Altadena residents in the wake of the Eaton Fire. The results are as fascination as they are disturbing, uncovering a web of neglect in fire prevention, emergency response, and resource allocation before, during, and after the disaster. Resources: The F...
Send us a text Our conversation this week is with Palisades Fire survivor Kari Weaver, who lost her home in the alphabet streets. It’s been 8 months since that windy, dry Tuesday morning, January 7, when the Palisades Fire started in the highlands. And it was only a few hours later that the Eaton Fire came roaring out of Eaton Canyon and wiped out much of Altadena. A lot has happened in those eight months. And many of us who aren’t in the middle of insurance claims, construction bids, and tem...
Send us a text With Us, an immersive art exhibit in the Arts District of downtown Los Angeles, has opened, and it is a compelling experience for anyone who visits. Extreme Weather Survivors and the Department of Angels collaborated to produce the installation, which brings together video, still photography, original art pieces, and the compelling survivors’ soundscape you’ll hear in this episode. Our anniversary show was recorded directly from the exhibit. We collected short interviews with t...
