Death toll rises from raging LA wildfires | The Excerpt
On Friday’s episode (first released on January 10, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: At least 10 people have been killed in Los Angeles area wildfires, while more than 10,000 structures have been destroyed. Paste BN Money Reporter Bailey Schulz talks about the insurance impact from this week's wildfires. Paste BN Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page recaps late President Jimmy Carter's funeral, and discusses his lasting legacy.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Friday, January 10th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, the latest from Los Angeles, as firefighters work to contain several major blazes, plus, we remember Jimmy Carter as he's laid to rest.
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Firefighters this morning continue to battle multiple wildfires in Southern California that have already destroyed more than 10,000 homes, businesses, vehicles and other structures. The county of Los Angeles Department of Medical Examiner said it has received notification of 10 fire related deaths.
In total, five fires are active in Los Angeles County, scorching more than 45 square miles across the region, according to Cal Fire. The Palisades Fire in the coastal Pacific Palisades community and the Eaton fire located east in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains remain the largest blazes with minimal containment. During a press conference yesterday, LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley told reporters that wind gusts of up to 60 miles per hour were working against their efforts. She also called the Palisades Fire one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of Los Angeles. Some residents are just beginning to process the destruction. Pacific Palisades resident, Oliver Allnatt, spoke to reporters from his neighborhood.
Oliver Allnatt:
I had just come from my family home where my mother lives, that was burned to a crisp, so that was the initial shock value, and then I came up to my home and same thing, it's completely dust.
Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, at a mobile home community in the Palisades, resident Curtis, who did not give his last name, says he lost everything.
Curtis:
I'm sure all the people up there have lost everything. This is pretty devastating. I don't think LA has seen anything like this before.
Taylor Wilson:
Officials said they were working to establish curfews for areas affected by mandatory evacuation orders. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said 20 people have been arrested for looting. The fires are also impacting sports. NBA and NHL games in the area have been postponed, and Monday's NFL playoff game between the Minnesota Vikings and Los Angeles Rams has been moved to Arizona. You can follow along with fire updates throughout the day on usatoday.com.
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California had a home insurance crisis before the LA fires, and it's only going to get worse. I spoke with Paste BN money reporter, Bailey Schulz for more. Bailey, thank you so much for hopping on here.
Bailey Schulz:
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Before we talk about this, just devastating week for Southern California Bailey, how were insurers already pulling back coverage in California after other wildfires in recent years?
Bailey Schulz:
Like you said, after some pretty severe wildfires in 2017, 2018, we saw a number of insurers just dropping policies or declining to write new ones in California. A couple of examples. We saw all states stop buying new California homeowners insurance policies back in 2022, and then State Farm stopped accepting new applications in '23 and has been dropping some existing policyholders. For example, last summer we saw over 1600 policies for homeowners in Pacific Palisades. One of those areas affected by the fires we're seeing this week were dropped by State Farm.
Taylor Wilson:
Okay, so just fast-forward to this week, Bailey, how will the fires we've seen now affect California's insurance market going forward?
Bailey Schulz:
Yeah, I think the concern is that the wildfires we're seeing this week could drive up these insurance premiums that have already been going up, and potentially prompt a new wave of private insurers who are dropping policies or decline to write new ones, kind of pulling back their involvement in the states of California. Yeah, we are having experts warn us that California homeowners need to be prepared for insurance to be hard to come by and more expensive.
Taylor Wilson:
Bailey, you brought up California's FAIR Plan in this piece. What is this plan, for folks maybe outside California who are not familiar, and what does all this mean for the FAIR Plan going forward?
Bailey Schulz:
This is basically the insurer of last resort in California. If you have a mortgage, you need to have insurance, you can't just opt out of it. If you're in a state like California though, and you are struggling to find a company that is willing to insure you, or struggling to find affordable rates, you can turn to the California FAIR Plan, which is sort of that insurer of last resort. You get some basic coverage, limited coverage, and it's also coming at a high cost, but your home will be insured. With what we're seeing this week with the wildfires, there are concerns that this FAIR Plan could potentially run out of funding, that would force to potentially drop money from private insurers operating in the state to recoup its losses, and then that could potentially raise rates among insurers across the state. Lots of thoughts going around there on just how much damage these fires will lead to and what that means for this FAIR Plan.
Taylor Wilson:
Okay. Millions of people still live in this area, of course, Bailey, will live in this area after this week. Just in terms of solutions for these folks, going forward, the California Department of Insurance issued new regulations last month to convince insurers to take on new customers in high risk areas. Is that the main solution going forward, more similar regulations?
Bailey Schulz:
Yeah, like you said, we saw these new regulations coming out, and this is the state trying to make adjustments to convince these insurance companies to stay, to offer their business to homeowners in California. The thought there is that these changes will sort of help this, well, a lot of people are calling this insurance crisis, but what I heard from people I spoke to for this article is that there's concerns that even those new policies may not be enough, where despite these changes, despite these new rules, they are trying to make a better environment for these insurance companies. We may see just damage from these wildfires be too much and possibly frighten some of these insurance companies into doing less business with the state.
Taylor Wilson:
Just a great breakdown for us as always. Bailey Schulz covers money for Paste BN. Thanks for doing this, Bailey, and coming on and discussing.
Bailey Schulz:
Yeah, thank you for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
President Jimmy Carter's state funeral in Washington yesterday was a salute to his political legacy, worldwide humanitarian work and commitment to faith. The service also marked a rare joint appearance of the current and former Commanders-in-Chief. For his part, President Joe Biden remembered Carter's character.
President Joe Biden:
I was the first senator outside of Georgia. I was maybe the first senator to endorse his candidacy for president. It was an endorsement based on what I believe is Jimmy Carter's enduring attribute. Character. Character. Because of that character, I believe is destiny. Destiny in our lives, and quite frankly, destiny in the life of the nation.
Taylor Wilson:
For more on the service and Carter's lasting legacy, I spoke with Paste BN, Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page. Thank you so much for coming on today, Susan.
Susan Page:
It's great to be with you on this historic day.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. Would you just set the scene for us? I mean, what was it like at the funeral service for the late president Jimmy Carter?
Susan Page:
Well, it's at the Washington National Cathedral, which is a grand space, and filled with worshipers, people mourning for President Carter, the Marine band there, the president's own, and of course all those former presidents, five current and former presidents together in a row, that is a remarkable site.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, I want to hear a little bit more about that, Susan, really, what was the scene like as all these former presidents gathered together?
Susan Page:
It was a little like high school. You had George W. Bush come in and give a kind of a belly pop to Barack Obama. You had Bill and Hillary Clinton come in and join the row from the side, which meant they did not have to shake hands with Donald Trump. You had Donald Trump, when he came in to be seated, shaking hands with Mike Pence, his former vice president for the first time since the January 6th insurrection. Sitting beside Mike Pence was his wife Karen, who refused to look up and shake Trump's hand. There was a lot of drama going on in that row of presidents.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. I know, Susan, you also wrote that Carter was kind of the odd man out when it came to former presidents in this country as we watched so many of them gather together to honor him at this service. Could you talk through that piece a little bit, what do you mean by that?
Susan Page:
Carter was quite the annoyance to his successors because there is this kind of sense among most former presidents that they're going to keep their mouths shut most of the time. They know how hard the job is, they've done it themselves, but Carter didn't approach it that way, he felt very free to criticize his successors. He criticized Bill Clinton for sending his daughter to private school in Washington when Carter had sent his daughter, Amy, to public school. He criticized George W. Bush as maybe the worst president ever. He would visit with foreign leaders and conduct a kind of independent foreign policy, sometimes at times and in places that the presidents didn't want him to go. There is a long sense of him being just a little bit separate, a little bit the odd man out among former presidents.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Susan, I know it wasn't just presidents honoring Carter this week and this month, what sorts of things have we been hearing from other kind of just ordinary Americans, for instance, like this man who wrote Carter as a boy?
Susan Page:
It's so interesting. One of our reporters caught up with this guy. When he was nine years old, Carter was elected president, and he sent him a letter from Idaho congratulating him, and Carter sent him a postcard back. It meant a lot to this nine-year-old whose name was J.T Friel. We caught up with him standing out in the cold here in Washington to see Carter's motorcade passed because he just wanted to have a chance to say goodbye after all these years.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Susan, I want to give you the final word on the show when it comes to Jimmy Carter. I mean, how will you remember him and his legacy?
Susan Page:
He's a man who, when he left office, seemed like he had failed. He lost a second term by a mile to Ronald Reagan. But with the passage of time, history has its way of making its own judgment about presidents. Some of the things he did, including the Middle East peace accord between Egypt and Israel. His work on energy conservation, his devotion to human rights and civil rights, they look pretty good with the test of time.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Susan Page is Paste BN's Washington Bureau chief, remembering the 39th President of the United States. Thank you, Susan.
Susan Page:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt, we're produced by Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.