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Life & Times Transcript

10/26/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Firefighters are making progress, but with thousands still out of their homes, patience is wearing thin.

Jay Reed>> We don't know when we're going to be able to get back home. We're hoping that it's going to be before the weekend. It's just a wait and see, day by day.

Val Zavala>> And then, how do you find an arsonist when the evidence is in ashes?

Herb Brown>> "The FBI will bring to bear all its national resources to make sure that we track, apprehend and put this person or persons behind bars where they belong."

Val Zavala>> It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

With additional support for Life and Times by The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

Val Zavala>> It's the end of a long, bruising week for southern California firefighters, many of whom are still working to contain the remaining blazes, and the victims of the fires are taking the first in a long series of steps to rebuild their lives and their homes. We'll have a report in a moment from KCET's Jeffrey Kaye, but first the latest.

Nine fires are still burning and only partly contained across southern California. The Santiago fire in Orange County is still very dangerous and threatening seven hundred fifty homes. Officials expect it to continue moving east into Riverside County. Over twenty-two thousand homes and structures are still in danger and the number of structures completely destroyed has risen to two thousand ninety-six.

Officials are offering a reward of two hundred eighty-five thousand dollars for any information leading to a conviction in the Santiago arson and, so far, five people have been arrested in connection with various fires throughout southern California. KCET's Jeffrey Kaye, who has been following the fires all week, reports from San Diego County.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Firefighters wearily moved into a second weekend of work, but with renewed hope. Cooler weather helped ground and air assaults against the massive fires which are mostly away from residential areas. With the discovery of four charred bodies on this hillside near the Mexican border, the death toll related to the California fires neared twenty by this afternoon and officials expect to find more victims.

Nearly half a million acres have been scorched by the fires. That's twice the size of New York City. At least eighteen hundred homes have been destroyed, eighty percent of them in San Diego County. Five fires continue to burn in the San Diego area, one near Camp Pendleton Marine Base, two other fires farther east, and two more to the south.

>> "I guess we got to go back up."

Jeffrey Kaye>> More than ten thousand firefighters are still on the front lines. The main firefighting efforts have moved from the suburbs to the back country where crews are still struggling to contain the blazes.

[Film Clip]

Jeffrey Kaye>> Using muscles and chainsaws, fire crews from around the west are trying to prevent remote fires from getting to structures in the more sparsely populated neighborhoods. Perhaps counter-intuitively, these firefighters set fires.

Bobby Willis heads a twenty-two member hotshot crew from northern California. There are dozens of these federally funded teams which specialize in fighting wildfires here from around the country to combat these blazes. Why do you want to consume this? What's the point?

Chief Bobby Willis>> To create a fire break because the black line is the best fire break. Because once it's already burned, it's not going to come up through here again.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Willis and his crew work the edge of the Harris fire southeast of San Diego not far from the Mexican border. That fire has consumed nearly eighty-five thousand acres and destroyed ninety-seven homes. By this morning, the fire was only twenty percent contained. These so-called mop-up operations are as carefully coordinated as the more sensational assaults on the dramatic wildfires.

[Film Clip]

Jeffrey Kaye>> Twice a day, firefighter commanders assemble their teams for briefing. This morning just after daylight, crew leaders assigned to the Harris fire began their meeting with a sober reminder about the dangers, a remembrance for the five firefighters killed one year ago today combating wildfires not far from here in nearby Riverside County.

>> "Stay engaged. Remember what's important to you and please take a moment today to get in touch with your families."

Jeffrey Kaye>> As commanders went through the day's assignments, the chief concern was the highly combustible brush dried by the drought and the humidity.

>> "So even though you're not seeing high-intensity fire behavior, just be aware that at any second, you know, if you get the right conditions, things can change very rapidly."

Jeffrey Kaye>> From sensitive archaeological sites to communications frequencies, weather forecasts and public relations, the team leaders covered a catalog of concerns that they'll communicate to their crews.

In most places now, there is little drama to the fire suppression efforts. In the Lake Hodges community, seventeen structures have been destroyed. To the untrained eye, it appears that the firefight here is over, but we caught a ride with a crew from San Francisco who explained that, even if the flames have been extinguished, the danger has not.

Ron Johansen>> Before you know it, with erratic winds and low humidity and high temperatures, you have a new fire started all over again.

Jeffrey Kaye>> As evacuation orders are lifted, shelters continue to empty. The largest, Qualcomm Stadium, which held more than ten thousand evacuees earlier in the week, closed at noon today. Players for the San Diego Chargers football team, forced by the fires from their own homes as well as from their practice fields, will now be able to play there on Sunday afternoon.

Jay Reed>> We don't know when we're going to be able to get back home. We're hoping that it's going to be before the weekend. It's just a wait and see, day by day.

Jeffrey Kaye>> As thousands more residents returned to see what was left of their homes, more details emerged about how some fires were sparked.

Chief Chip Prather>> "There was evidence found at the scene that resulted in my investigators concluding quickly that this was an intentionally set fire."

Jeffrey Kaye>> Investigators suspect many blazes were set by downed power lines, but at least three of the fires, including the twenty-six thousand acre one that ravaged Orange County, are considered suspicious.

Herb Brown>> "The FBI will bring to bear all its national resources with ATF, the Orange County Fire Authority, as well as the Orange County Sheriff's Department, to make sure that we track, apprehend and put this person or persons behind bars where they belong."

Jeffrey Kaye>> Five people in San Bernardino, Los Angeles and San Diego Counties have been arrested on suspicion of arson, but none have been linked to any of the major fires. That's little consolation for those who lost everything.

Tom Wishart>> If it was natural, then that would be different. But the fact that somebody did this on purpose, it hurts.

Jeffrey Kaye>> There were also complaints from some local officials, including two southern California members of Congress, that some water-dropping helicopters and cargo planes were delayed in participating in the firefighting efforts because of government rules and bureaucracy. But state officials, including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, have insisted that any delay was due to the strong Santa Ana winds.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> The biggest villain in these wildfires has been the Santa Ana winds, but in one case, the winds have had an accomplice. Arsonists are suspected of starting the Santiago fire in Orange County that burned more than twenty thousand acres.

So what are the chances of finding an arsonist? Well, officials will tell you it's pretty slim. Philip Bruce takes a look back at two arson fires that continue to frustrate officials.

Philip Bruce>> It's an unsolved mystery, a crime that's enraged and perplexed authorities for more than half a decade, a massive arson fire with a trail that's now stone cold.

Pilot>> "We're just south of Laguna Canyon Road and we see some homes up on the ridge."

Philip Bruce>> And if you ask the people who survived the blaze as it raced across Laguna Hills, the biggest tragedy wasn't the huge loss of property and possessions. It's the fact that the arsonist got away with it.

Scott Brown>> Yeah, that hurts. You talk to any firefighter that was on the line, you talk to any of the families that lost their homes, I'm sure they'll give you the same response.

Philip Bruce>> It was an October not unlike this one. Laguna Canyon was filled with dry brush, a giant tinderbox just waiting for a spark. Investigators believe the arsonist pulled off the canyon road and walked a short distance up a dusty cattle trail.

Here, just out of view of a highway, on a day when the Santa Ana winds were blowing hard like a blast furnace, the firebug dropped a match. Scott Brown, one of the first Orange County firefighters to respond, says it looked like an atom bomb had gone off.

Scott Brown>> There was a plume that went hundreds of feet in the air and it was obvious to us that we had a very significant fire.

Kit Drollinger>> "Yeah, one person did this whole thing."

Philip Bruce>> On the morning of the fire, Ed and Kit Drollinger never dreamed it would reach their neighborhood, Mystic Hills, a part of Laguna Beach that was all but obliterated. Their home was one of more than four hundred that went up in smoke.

Kit Drollinger>> "That was our house."

Philip Bruce>> Now all these years later, the Drollingers are still asking the same questions they asked back then. Who did this and why? As is often the case with arsons, all the clues were incinerated. But authorities still looked, eventually pursuing hundreds of false leads, including the confession of one man who later proved that he was in a Mexican jail when the blaze broke out. Later, some claimed the arson was the work of a pro, somebody who knew all about fires.

Scott Brown>> You know, I wouldn't begin to speculate on the person's number one M.O. Obviously, he or she picked the day that was conducive for that type of a fire to ensue.

Philip Bruce>> The trail here may be cold, but every so often, there's a spark that heats things up again. The latest came this past summer when somebody went around Laguna Beach passing out flyers advertising a two hundred page manifesto that had been posted on the internet. That document, the flyer said, would reveal not only who set the fire, but would explain why authorities have never been able to catch him.

Pete Kirby>> Well, we got something pushed in the mailbox that said, "Did you know" and there's a whole bunch of things that they say went on, but we didn't respond to it. It looked a little bit cranky to us. We didn't know whether that was true or not.

Philip Bruce>> The note in Pete Kirby's mailbox turned out to be just another bogus lead and, a decade later, the fire still remains an unsolved mystery.

The same is true for the costly Malibu fires from that same year. There are some theories on who did it, but not enough evidence to indict or convict. One of southern California's top arson investigators says that's par for the course when you're dealing with wildfires. They're the toughest kind of arson to solve.

Captain Bob Reinhardt>> Most of the time, it ends up either being a lighter or a match. It's quite simple to do, you know. Pull off a freeway or a road, get out, reach out, start the brush and drive off. You're ten miles or fifteen miles down the road before anything happens and anybody gets on-scene.

Philip Bruce>> When you found these people, in your experience, how have you found them?

Captain Bob Reinhardt>> Normally, it's through a witness, somebody seeing him, somebody getting a partial license plate, usually that way. It's very, very difficult to follow back through unless we get very lucky and get a device that does not operate the way it's supposed to.

He drops it off expecting it to go off in ten or fifteen minutes, giving him enough time to get down the road and, lo and behold, it does not ignite. Then we have a good fingerprint and we have something to work on at that point, and that happens.

Philip Bruce>> And now a new mystery. Who started the deadly inferno that raced across the mountains of San Bernardino County? This was ground zero, Waterman Canyon, the place where witnesses saw a white male tossing something out his van window into the dry brush.

Captain Bob Reinhardt>> It tends to be a while male, usually in his twenties or thirties, that is probably the average that it ends up being. Women are very unlikely to use fire. It just doesn't happen very often at all. Especially with the young juveniles, male juveniles all the time. Female juveniles, very, vary rare.

Philip Bruce>> Even with a description to go on, finding the person who set this fire is still like looking for a needle in a burned up haystack, but Captain Reinhardt says that many arsonists fit a profile. Thrill-seekers who enjoy the rush of causing a disaster or, unfortunately, firefighters who turn bad. For now, the person who set this blaze remains a mystery man.

Captain Bob Reinhardt>> What we hope for is that somebody close to that person is going to recognize that, yes, this is my friend, relative, neighbor, whatever he may be, and have enough of a conscience to understand that what he did was terribly wrong, that there are hundreds of people that are without a home now and a lot of wildshed vegetation that's gone because of this foolhardy act. Hopefully, they'll get that conscience going and turn him in.

Philip Bruce>> While the Kirbys survived, they admit that the fire left some permanent scars.

Pete Kirby>> Well, honestly, my wife and I had -- you know, you kind of tend to get at each other a little bit when you're struggling with a loss like that (laughter). You need to decide what to do. You change your whole lifestyle. You got to try to put things back together again, but it's never the same, you know. We have a new home, but it's not the home we had. We have new neighbors, but it's not the neighbors we had. So it's very disruptive on you.

Philip Bruce>> But among the many people who lost everything, a few have managed to find a bright side to that dark day. The Drollingers say they are grateful they escaped unharmed and they say that the home they have now is a lot better than the one they had before, the result of tough new building codes that require, among other things, fireproof roofing materials.

Ed Drollinger>> You ask me about my reaction to the fire and all, I came to the conclusion that life was too grim to be taken seriously (laughter). None of these things bother me that much.

Philip Bruce>> If there's a bright side to this grim story, it may be the things that cities and counties are doing to stop fire starters before they can strike. Remember the Laguna Beach fire? One year after flames swallowed these neighborhoods, the city started using goats to clear brush from the local canyons and hillsides.

It now costs the city of Laguna Beach two hundred thousand dollars a year to keep the goats, but considering the cost of a big fire, it's a bargain. And considering how quickly the trail can turn cold, it's a lot easier to prevent a major fire than it is to catch the person who sets one.

Val Zavala>> That report from Philip Bruce and, even now, the arsonists have not been found.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> You may have read stories about how fire victims risk losing their insurance coverage if they put in a claim. Well, that kind of information infuriates the insurance industry. To find out more about insurance in the wake of wildfires, I talked with Candysse Miller of the Insurance Information Network. The network is a nonprofit organization made up of insurance companies. Its mission is to be the communication link between the industry and policyholders.

I asked Candysse Miller about the reports that, if you use it, you lose it. Now a lot of people have been hearing and there was an article in the Los Angeles Times yesterday that, if they put in a claim, they are going to get their premiums raised or they might even have a hard time getting insurance later because all these claims information is shared in this central database with all other insurance companies.

Candysse Miller>> You know, it is so unfortunate out there that there have been a handful of people sort of fueling claims of fear frankly and people who have maybe just lost their homes. I want to tell you this. From very recent experience, from the 2003 wildfires which at this point are still larger in terms of insurance claims than the current wildfires, the prices did not necessarily automatically go up for everybody.

We didn't see policies cancelled. In fact, there really wasn't even a bump in that. I've seen the non-renewal data myself and the fires did not effect it. Just because an uncontrolled wildfire fueled by hurricane force gusts swept through your neighborhood, that doesn't mean you're going to lose your insurance policy. Your insurance is here to get you back on your feet.

Hopefully, you've kept that policy current. You know, we've talked about that before. It is vitally important that you do an insurance check-up every year and, if you've done that, you're going to be in very good shape.

Val Zavala>> But what is it about these massive databases now. I guess the one for the insurance companies is called C.L.U.E. where all insurance companies report all the claims that all their policyholders have made and they all share it with each other. So they all know, "Oh, you put a claim there" or "This person is a high-claim person."

Candysse Miller>> You have to stop and think. What is insurance in terms of the business? What does it do? Well, insurance is a business that is all about somehow trying to figure out what is the cost of risk. Because it's only logical that, if you're a higher risk person, you're going to pay more for insurance. If you're a lower risk person, you're going to pay less for insurance.

That's easier to understand with car insurance. If you've got tickets, if you've got accidents, you're going to pay more for auto insurance. If you're a good driver, you're going to pay less, bottom line. Well, it's the same thing with home insurance except it doesn't involve the CHP.

The loss history on your home can be very relevant. For example, if there are problems with the roof, is that roof going to fly off in the next giant windstorm? And we have got thousands of wind claims this week, by the way, as well. So that loss history can be relevant in the future. Now that's no guarantee that it's going to change your rates at all. The insurer wants to know what the track record is of this home.

Val Zavala>> You said something very interesting. You said, you know, they want to assess risk and yet, when I get home insurance, they don't even come out and look at the home. How do they assess risk? They just want to know does it have this fireplace, when was it built, the sprinklers, blah, blah, blah. They don't come out to see if I've cleared brush. They don't come out to see what materials it's made of.

Candysse Miller>> For all you know, they haven't done that. Actually, there are a number of ways that an insurance company can look at your neighborhood.

Val Zavala>> Oh, really?

Candysse Miller>> There can be inspectors who actually physically drive the neighborhood and indeed sometimes they'll make appointments and look at a home. There's also satellite imaging and some companies are partaking of that because, as we know, it's very accurate now. You can get real-time data on what is the brush buildup in a neighborhood.

Particularly, if you're in a neighborhood that's sort of taken matters into its own hands and has a fire-safe council and has brush clearance, that is really to your benefit because you can say, "Look, this is the condition right now and we have a fire-safe neighborhood."

Val Zavala>> There are going to be, what, eighteen hundred homes burned and many, many more damaged. There's going to be thousands of claims out there. How can people get through the process as quickly as possible so that they can, you know, start rebuilding?

Candysse Miller>> It's very, very important and so hard to say this when someone has just lost their home. They're going through trauma. They're grieving for their homes right now. Yet one of the best things you can tell them first of all is, A, if you haven't contacted your insurance company yet, do it immediately.

First and foremost, they're going to have money for you to get into a hotel. Even if your home is not lost, there is a very good possibility that what is called additional living expense is available to you to get you off that cot in the evacuation center and into a hotel room and we want to make sure we get that money to you. So please contact your agent or the 800 claim number immediately and try and get the ball rolling on that.

Now after that, if you've lost your home, if you have a major claim, there is a process you're going to go through. It's not going to be done in a day and it's going to involve some documentation. It's going to involve some work and it's very hard to get your head around right now probably.

But the first thing you want to do is get organized. It will pay for you in the long run. Get prepared to start making a list of what you owned and hopefully you've got a home inventory already.

Val Zavala>> But that might be a little bit late because that's something you should have done before the fire. If you didn't do it, it's a little bit too late now, but hopefully you've done it.

Candysse Miller>> We hope they did it, we hope they did it because it's going to make the claim process so much easier. Not only is that the thing that you take to your insurance company and say, "This is what I had, this is what was in the house, pay me", but on top of that, that's your shopping list. It's amazing.

Val Zavala>> Even a digital camera? Some people videotape, some people just take snapshots.

Candysse Miller>> I've done both. I've videotaped my home. I took snapshots of my home as I was getting ready to evacuate in 2003. I was running through my house taking pictures.

Val Zavala>> Oh, you went through it?

Candysse Miller>> I've been through this. I live in Rancho Cucamonga and we had the Grand Prix fire go through that area. As I was talking to good folks like yourself in my front yard, I was also packing to evacuate. I got a lesson in this myself because I had a home inventory that wasn't nearly complete. Here I am thinking, "Oh, my gosh, I see flames, better take pictures." You know what? That's the wrong time to take pictures. Do it when the flames are not knocking at your back door.

Val Zavala>> Any other advice for them as they start this process?

Candysse Miller>> Well, you keyed in on a very important word here. This is a process and we know it is emotionally wrenching, no doubt about it. Hang in there. My best advice to start out with, work with your insurance company. Now we know from countless disasters that the industry has responded to before and, trust me, we have handled so many brush fires in California, the industry really knows what it's doing here. This is meat and potatoes.

Val Zavala>> Plenty of experience.

Candysse Miller>> Yeah, unfortunately, plenty of experience. And we know that, if you work with your company and most people do, claims get settled pretty quickly. After 2003, we saw that seventy-six percent of claims were settled by February.

Val Zavala>> And the fires, again, were in October.

Candysse Miller>> Same time of year as this. So really they settled very quickly. But we know from disaster histories that there are going to be a handful of people who are dissatisfied, that just feel it's not going well, and they will file complaints. There will be an even smaller number who ultimately may file lawsuits.

This happens. We understand it and, you know, this is part of the process. But we also know that, if you take the time to first try and work with your adjuster or adjusters -- there may be more than one in the process -- that's going to help speed things up because the more you have people to interview [technical difficulties].

Val Zavala>> Candysse Miller, thank you for some really good advice at a difficult time.

Candysse Miller>> Thank you.

Val Zavala>> For more information, go to the Insurance Information Network of California. Their website is iinc.org. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

Sponsored in part by:


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