KEEGAN GIBBS: Three days before it was like, this is bad. And then two days before it's like, this is really bad. And the day before is like, this is as bad as we've ever seen.  

ADRIANA CARGILL: It's January 5 2025. Los Angeles County. This is Keegan Gibbs, he’s not a firefighter or city official but he's been listening in to National Weather Service conference calls being held almost everyday for a week now. There’s an upcoming wind event — something local fire departments are worried could mean wildfires. The catastrophic kind.

KEEGAN GIBBS: the weather service called out The 210 corridor very specifically. 

ADRIANA: The 210 corridor is where Altadena is.

KEEGAN GIBBS: saying there's gonna be mountain wave activity.

ADRIANA: Mountain wave activity. It is what it sounds like: basically a supercharged windstorm. And in this case one with Santa Ana’s — hot desert wind — hitting very dry vegetation. Usually it’s rained by now. Usually. But the weather here is anything but usual these days. 

ADRIANA: Keegan’s friend and mentor Assistant Chief Drew Smith of the Los Angeles County Fire Department was also on the call:

KEEGAN GIBBS: I reserve and respect Chief Smith's time and bandwidth. So I don't like, I'm not like, yo, what's up? What's cracking bro? I don't like hit him up all the time. Like, because he's a really busy guy, you know? 

ADRIANA: Keegan’s the leader of the community brigade pilot program. It's an official program of the LA County Fire Department. and it’s a new experiment — working with everyday community members concerned about wildfire in a way that’s never been done before. But more on that later. Keegan was concerned enough about the wind event that he texted Chief Smith.

KEEGAN GIBBS: At 1:13 p. m. I said, wow, some serious wind. He said, dude, get the boys ready. I said, oh, we are ready.

ADRIANA: Chief Smith was also getting ready. He’s one of the nation's top experts on wildfire behavior. These conditions are the stuff of nightmares — the kind that keep southern Californians awake at night, listening for the wind. Turns out, he was right to be concerned.

[NEWS CLIP: Uh oh, not something we want to see here in Southern California. A fire has now broke out.​]

ADRIANA: The Palisades Fire. It was one of 6 fires that all started within 48 hours. 

[NEWS CLIP: The Sunset Fire]

[NEWS CLIP: The Lidia Fire]

[NEWS CLIP:  The Hurst Fire]

[NEWS CLIP:  The Kenneth Fire]

[NEWS CLIP: The Woodley Fire]

[NEWS CLIP: the Eaton Fire]

ADRIANA: These LA Fires, as they’ve become known, were highly unusual. They transformed from a wildfire to what's known as a community conflagration, or urban fire.

[NEWS CLIP:  Widespread devastation.]

[NEWS CLIP:  This is Los Angeles right here. It looks like a war zone.]

[NEWS CLIP:  on some streets. Nothing is left.]

ADRIANA: Instead of the fire spreading tree to tree, it went house to house. The Palisades and Eaton fires in particular were a whole different kind of beast. 

[NEWS CLIP:  More than a dozen others are still missing tonight.]

[NEWS CLIP: 25 people have died, more than 12,000 structures have been destroyed.]

CHIEF ANTHONY MARRONE: This incident is going to go down as the most destructive fire incident in the history of Los Angeles County. 

ADRIANA: Keegan grew up here, and for years he’s watched as his neighbors and his family lose their homes. He’s seen many fires. So many, that his personal mantra has become:

KEEGAN GIBBS: We live in a fireplace. And if you expect to not get burned, eventually, you're wrong, you live in a fireplace, learn how to live in the fireplace.

ADRIANA: For Keegan, the community brigade model is the how: how we live better with wildfire. Its radical vision could be game changing for millions of people who live in high risk fire zones — that is, if it works. Keegan didn’t know it when he was texting Chief Smith, but this fire would be the brigade's first big test.

ADRIANA: From PRX and Wave Maker Media this is the Palisades Fire podcast. A 2-part Special and I'm your host Adriana Cargill. We’re returning to Keegan and the Community Brigade two years after the original Sandcastles podcast series was published. Here they face a fire unlike any in LA county history — its power and unpredictability went far beyond most people’s worst fears. This is episode 1: Get the Boys Ready. If you haven’t heard the original season, I’m gonna catch you up real fast. And for that, we need to time travel — back to 2018. The Woolsey Fire. LA County’s last most destructive fire. That’s when I met Keegan Gibbs and Tyler Hauptman. They’ve been friends since elementary school and they’re both surfers who grew in a time when loyalty to community was everything in Malibu. During Woolsey, emergency first responders were stretched incredibly thin by multiple fires burning across the state. Because of this, their area, Point Dume, received little support. So Keegan, Tyler and their friends — a motley group of surfers known as the Point Dume Bombers — stepped up. Rogue style. In hoodies and bandanas. They used what they had to put out spot fires and save homes. Here’s a news clip about them from that time period:

[NEWS CLIP:  and with Malibu roads cut off, people there are bringing in supplies by boat. Including water blankets, diapers, gasoline, and even some ice cold beer.]

ADRIANA: They set up a relief center, coordinated life saving supplies by boat and surfed in generators on longboards. For most people those crazy days have long faded into memory. But not for Keegan and Tyler. Keegan lost his family home. And Tyler? His brother, uncle and parents all lost their homes — that's three separate homes to the same wildfire. Their losses bonded them together. Here’s Keegan:

KEEGAN GIBBS: We had that shared mission and shared passion for it that sustained long after the event. Our North Star was: how do we prevent this from happening again? 

ADRIANA: Here’s Tyler:

TYLER HAUPTMAN: We'd call each other, late at night with ideas, and we spend a lot of time, more time with him than just about anybody else. 

KEEGAN GIBBS: I couldn't have done it without him, honestly, Cause we kept the fire lit together. Horrible analogy but…

ADRIANA: Keegan’s relentless focus and leadership after Woolsey caught the eye of Brent Woodworth. He’s in his 70s and runs the Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Foundation. It’s a non-profit focused on disaster mitigation and prevention. Brent spent decades managing global crises for IBM — tsunamis, earthquakes, 9/11, you name it. Along with input from many many other Malibu community members, Brent, Keegan and Tyler created the community brigade pilot program. The basic idea: during these massive wildfires, there will never be enough first responders. So could they train everyday citizens to fill the resource gap? I’ve been following this program’s development for 6 years now with a single question in mind: could this new vision of civic engagement be the thing that finally moves the needle?

ADRIANA: A note here, if it’s not obvious, I'm only going to focus on the areas affected by the Palisades Fire because that’s where the people I’ve been reporting on for years live and work. Ok here we go!

ADRIANA: It's January 22, 2025. I arrive just in time to see the sun rise at Zuma Beach in Malibu. It’s about 2 weeks since the Palisades Fire started. Zuma is a gigantic area, nearly 2 miles long, with beige sand and powder blue lifeguard stands. It's big enough that I get lost trying to find the briefing, which has been held here every morning at 7 am pretty much since this fire started. 

BERNIE RAPP: Good morning, Bernie Rapp, Palisades Communications Unit Leader.

ADRIANA: At its peak, 5,200 emergency first responders came in and out of the Incident Command Post at Zuma Beach. It basically became the headquarters for everyone trying to put this fire out.

CHRISTIAN LITZ: Good morning, everybody. Christian Litz, Operations.

ADRIANA: I’ve lived in LA for almost a decade and this isn’t the first fire I’ve reported on. I’ve watched this same story play out for years. When there’s drought and dry vegetation, add some Santa Anas and you get wildfires. And then people die, homes are lost. And almost immediately after, the finger pointing begins. This time around it was about water in the hydrants, offline reservoirs, Mayor Karen Bass’s absence. Last time, during the Woolsey Fire, it was why weren’t there enough firefighters and anger over the mandatory evacuations.

CHRISTIAN LITZ: So, I'd like you guys to take it, make it a personal mission to get rid of every single one of those 196 heat signatures, appreciate that.

ADRIANA: 196 areas are still burning. They see them at night with infrared cameras mounted on aircraft. But I’m not here to learn about infrared cameras. I’m here to see what happened with the community brigade program. 

CHRISTIAN LITZ:  People are still out of their rigs, still getting hard to work, appreciate that, so all around the fire, take care of that heat for us.

ADRIANA: Keegan, Brent and Tyler have spent the last 6 years trying to get this program approved, pushing this boulder up a hill. That's a long time, and I think most people would’ve given up. But they didn't because they knew it would happen again. That there would be another really bad wildfire. And the Palisades Fire, combined with Eaton, was absolutely that. Together they’re the most deadly and most destructive fires in LA County history. Winds moving at hurricane force. Aircraft grounded. 31 people died, more than 16,000 buildings and homes lost. 37,000 acres burned. And for your reference, that’s more than twice the size of Manhattan leveled in a matter of hours. And it isn’t over yet:

CHRISTIAN LITZ: Well, we’ve got to be aware there could be a possibility of a new start. Just don't jump right away. Make sure that we do it right … just be ready with your radios.

ADRIANA: I spot Keegan talking with a group of firefighters.

ADRIANA: Morning Keegan 

KEEGAN GIBBS: Morning, how are you?

ADRIANA: Keegan's tall, muscular with worker boots and navy blue pants. He's got a navy blue hat too with the community brigade's logo on it. 7 figures silhouetted shoulder to shoulder, representing the 7 founding Malibu neighborhoods of the program. There's a mountain on fire and a red sun in the background. It's inspired by a photo taken in Keegan's backyard. With the remains of his childhood home still smoldering, his friends put their arms around each other and snapped a photo. It was one of the darkest and brightest moments of his life.

ADRIANA: What are you guys working on? What's on the agenda today?

KEEGAN GIBBS: I don't know. We're going to go eat some cereal. Uh, sort of like a morning ritual right now. And then, probably keep working on, like, repopulation effort stuff.

ADRIANA: Can I come with? 

KEEGAN GIBBS: Of course. Should we go grub?

AARON MARDEROSIAN: Yeah, let's go do it.

ADRIANA: I head over to the big white tent with hundreds of first responders. In the breakfast line there’s Mexican army volunteers, incarcerated firefighters in neon orange, Canadian first responders and firefighters from Oregon, Utah, and all over California. In the line, I see Brent Woodworth chatting with some other brigade members, puzzling over a critical decision for the day:

CHRIS FROST: Corn Flakes, Apple Jacks, Special K, Frosted Flakes … 

BRENT WOODWORTH: Is this a difficult decision?

ADRIANA: That was Brent. He's tall with short wispy white hair. He’s lived in Malibu for 30 years — this is definitely not his first fire. His house in Malibu survived the Palisades fire but his neighborhood is still off limits for residents. So he's been living with his wife in a hotel in the valley for the past two weeks. 

CHRIS FROST: Well, my adult in me says Special K, but the kid in me says Frosted Flakes. Yes, of course!

ADRIANA: Brent’s non-profit is the organization that houses the brigade program. It was officially approved as a pilot of the LA County Fire Department in fall of 2023. Then they found their first 50 or so volunteers, men and women. A hodgepodge of carpenters, life guards, a real estate agent, an engineer, a judge — just about anybody who's passionate about this stuff and has ties to the community. They trained with the US Forest Service, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority or MRCA, and the LA County Fire Department among others. They got certified with the State's Disaster Service Worker program. That all wrapped up at the end of October 2024. And here they are, in the breakfast line:

CHRISTIAN LITZ: She sees the apple jack. She's going in for apple jacks. No?

ADRIANA: Um, no, I, I'm actually gonna skip it right now. I want to say hi to him. 

DREW SMITH: Who's him? 

ADRIANA: Do you remember me? 

DREW SMITH: What did I do?

ADRIANA: Chief Drew Smith? I interviewed you and came to your fire station 70.

DREW SMITH: Oh, that's right. You did.

ADRIANA: Two years ago for Woolsey Fire.

DREW SMITH: That's right. You did. Wow. And where are you working now?

ADRIANA: I am working on another podcast on wildfire recovery. 

DREW SMITH: Oh, nice. 

ADRIANA: I just can't stop with the wildfires. 

DREW SMITH: That's good. Well, it's here. It's a thing, isn't it?

ADRIANA: It just seems to keep happening.

DREW SMITH: It does seem to keep happening.

ADRIANA: This is the same chief Keegan was texting with right before the fire. His area covers the Santa Monica Mountains so he’s had a front row seat to all the wildfires there in the last 30 or so years.

ADRIANA: I remember the last time that I talked to you. Um, I asked what were you worried about in the future? And you said Palisades, Eastern Malibu, and Topanga.

DREW SMITH: I did say that, yes.

ADRIANA:  And that was 2022.

DREW SMITH: That was 2022, I remember.

ADRIANA: When I left Station 70 in Malibu on that day nearly 3 years ago. I felt a chill driving home through Topanga and the Palisades. The station is on the Pacific Coast Highway or PCH. There’s tons of homes along the PCH. Was it possible they could all burn? Unlikely, I thought. But it's always been a shadow in my mind ever since. And on January 6th 2025 my phone buzzed: LA city emergency alert. Red flag conditions predicted. Winds could reach 80-100 miles per hour in certain areas. My heart dropped. I thought immediately about Keegan and the brigade. 

ADRIANA: That same night, Keegan went to sleep feeling that he was ready for what might come.

KEEGAN GIBBS: I had definitely some anxiety around what it would look like if we ran into another Woolsey. And I'm specifically talking about our brigade, are we ready to deal with a major disaster like that?

ADRIANA: He didn't sleep well. Neither did his co-founder. Here’s Tyler:

TYLER HAUPTMAN: I kind of was sleeping with one eye open the whole time. My wife always makes me sleep on the couch when these events happen because my phone's left on for all the alerts that happen in the middle of the night. 



ADRIANA: The next morning, on January 7th, Tyler was out with Brent doing a home ignition assessment. That’s basically when a brigade member walks a homeowner through how to best keep their house from burning down during a wildfire. The practices they teach are called home hardening. More on that in the next episode. Tyler's a mechanical engineer but after the Woolsey fire destroyed so many of his family members' houses, he decided to get certified as a wildfire mitigation specialist. He wants to make sure what happened to his family never happens to anyone else. He does this work for free, as a volunteer. Just as Brent and Tyler were leaving, Tyler got notifications that a fire had started. In the Palisades. Tyler lives in the Palisades with his wife and toddler. 

TYLER HAUPTMAN: I was like holy shit this is bad. This is really bad. I, the first thing I did was I called my wife.

ADRIANA: Tyler told her to get their kid from nursery school.

TYLER HAUPTMAN:  And she's like, Tyler, come on. I'm like, this is going to be a really bad one. She's like, seriously? Come on. Like, I'm at the dentist. I know, babe. This is bad.

ADRIANA: She did listen and went and got their kid, then they met back at home. They live in a one-story, 1,500 square foot ranch style house that his wife designed. Tyler and his dad helped build it.  She got important documents, packed things into the car and then they just watched the fire in the hills for a bit. After that, his wife left with their son.

TYLER HAUPTMAN: I envisioned this happening for like 10 years. It was like going on in my mind. What would I do and how would I do it? So I was prepared for this type of situation and so I had it all set up ready to go.  

ADRIANA: On the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains, around 10:30 am, Keegan was at the carwash:

KEEGAN GIBBS: When all of a sudden the winds really started cranking, and that was when I got the first notification for the fire, turned on my radio, started listening to what was going on

[RADIO CLIP:  The Palisades incident. We do have a wind driven brush fire. Approximately 30 acres at this point. We do have some structures threatened.]

[RADIO CLIP: I've got all of 60 nines on Palisades Drive for structured defense. Do we have anybody, can we see where the foot of the fire is?]

[RADIO CLIP:  Doing structured defense. Looks like the fire's gonna hit the back of these houses in about five, 10 minutes.]

KEEGAN GIBBS: I initially thought that we wouldn't actually even engage with it because it was in L.A. City's territory and we work with L.A. County.

ADRIANA: The brigade program operates in Malibu, outside of LA City, so the Palisades is out of their range. But this was quickly becoming an all hands on deck situation.

[RADIO CLIP:  So this thing is gonna make a good run.  LA 70 V one. How do you copy Engine 70? You have long range spotting, half mile to three quarters of a mile out. Yeah copy that. Yeah, command. Just to let you know we got significant spotting, like your ground resources, uh, reported the thing has hit the ridge. It's a hundred percent in alignment with the wind. This has a potential for 200 plus acres in the next 20 minutes. We have a potential for structures being threatened in the next 20 minutes.]

ADRIANA: Very quickly this fire was spinning out of control. The brigade has a structure that's very hierarchical, it mimics the fire department’s. During an incident Keegan is the brigades' task force leader. That means he's the key man between officials and brigade members — all assignments go through him. There are 7 neighborhoods who each have a crew lead, or group leader, who interfaces with Keegan. He immediately texted all the crew leads: 

KEEGAN GIBBS: Hey, let's just stand by, but be ready. I'm going to go drive to the command post for the fire and try and see what's going on.

[RADIO CLIP: Let's get your incident command post moved down to PCH suggestions so we have clear, uh, view and uh, good com. We're set up at Gladstone's parking lot.]

ADRIANA: This is Chief Smith on the radio, the firefighter Keegan was texting in the days before the fire. It took Keegan around an hour to get to Gladstones Restaurant, which is perched on top of a cliff between the ocean and the PCH. 

[RADIO CLIP:  Amount of area involved acres? Yeah, copy that. I just want to confirm. You said 200 acres at this time? Yes, that would be my best guess right now.]

KEEGAN GIBBS: I finally got to the command post. I saw Chief Smith and I could see it on Drew's face as soon as I saw him.

ADRIANA: It's about 11:30 am now, and the normally cool as a cucumber fire chief was looking tense. Gusts were up to 30 miles per hour.

[RADIO CLIP: Advise if you need more resources.  Roger. Let's make sure we knock it down here. The winds are picking up a little bit, so we don't want this, uh, moving anywhere else.]

KEEGAN GIBBS: And the wind was absolutely ripping. Really, really, really strong.

ADRIANA: LA county Sheriff Captain Jennifer Seeto and Chief Smith talked and then turned to Keegan:

KEEGAN GIBBS: And said, all right, Keegan, we need you, you guys, how many guys do you have? I said, I think we've got about 20 right now that are on the way. I said, can you break up into two groups and could you start working on evacuation for Sunset Mesa, which is above the Getty Villa and Big Rock. And when they said Big Rock, I was like, I said, Big Rock? And Jen looked at me and said, Big Rock. And I was like, huh, like, that's pretty far over.

ADRIANA: Keegan was unsettled by how far Sunset Mesa and Big Rock neighborhoods are from each other. About 2.5 miles on PCH. And in between them is Topanga where around 10,000 people live. All these areas are steep canyons with limited escape routes. Could the fire move that fast? He contacted the crew leads and sent their guys out. During an incident there are 3 main things brigades do, first and most important is life safety. Evacuations are the number 1 priority — getting as many people out as quickly as possible.

[RADIO CLIP:  command wants to issue an evac warning for that area, for all those Palisades area. IC copies, evac warning for the whole area.]

ADRIANA: The first official evacuation order for the Palisades Fire went out at 12:07 pm. In these types of wildfires the need for more boots on the ground is absolutely there — but for everyday citizens to help they need permission to stay when mandatory evacuations go in place. LA County Chief Anthony Marrone had to make that call. Was the risk worth it? He’s Chief Smith’s boss along with 3,000 other firefighters and he commands more than a billion dollar budget. Basically he’s one of the top dogs of fire here in Southern California. Here’s Chief Marrone:

CHIEF ANTHONY MARRONE: That was the hard piece, to approve that,  because that is us allowing them to be in harm's way.

ADRIANA: That was the biggest hang up. That took years to work through. Could volunteers do this work safely? Could they stay behind firelines and not lose their lives? He decided to give the brigade a chance.  Keegan stayed at the command post coordinating brigade movements for the next two hours or so. Then he headed to Sunset Mesa, near the Getty Villa around 2:30 pm:

[RADIO CLIP: Getty Villa is being impacted, at the end on the north side of that.  Okay. Copy of that. Yeah, we can start engaging our crews there. Our mission right now is life safety. Evac is our concern. We've got, uh, air resources inbound for assistance, but life safety is our main priority. Evacuation needs to be in place. Palisades air attack for LA. Repeat air relief attack over the fire at what time?]

KEEGAN GIBBS: There, it was still kind of blue skies, but we were right off the flank of the fire then. And within 20 minutes of me being there, all of a sudden I look, I turn behind me and see a house dead in the middle of the community. In blue skies it's on fire, that was when it's like, oh it's on

ADRIANA: The wind shifted, and the sky turned black. Thick smoke was everywhere and a hurricane of embers sprinted down the mountain sides towards them. Since most people had evacuated or were refusing to leave, they switched to their number 2 priority: doing structure triage.

 

KEEGAN GIBBS: Walking around the perimeter of the structure itself, pulling away any combustibles, opening up fences and gates to make sure there was access for firefighters to get into.

ADRIANA: House triage is any quick actions they can take to reduce the chance of it catching fire. Like shutting windows, wetting hedges, moving propane tanks away from buildings. It’s estimated 90 percent of homes burn from embers, not from fire front, the big scary flames at the perimeter of the advancing fire. Embers are a threat in the hours before and up to 3 days after the front comes through. So making homes less likely to catch on fire from embers is key. Evacuations and triage happen before fire reaches an area. But when it does, there’s still a lot more the brigade can do. But only if LA County is there physically directing them.

KEEGAN GIBBS: We had interfaced with one of the battalion chiefs and he just basically said, pick a house.

DANA WOLF-PHILLIPS: The fireman told everybody to pick a house and save it.

ADRIANA: That's Dana Wolf-Phillips, a brigade member whose garage, dubbed the wolf den, became the de-facto meeting spot during the Palisades fire for their group. Her unofficial title:

DANA WOLF-PHILLIPS: Brigade Mom. Like when I joined, when Keegan took me on, when I interviewed, I basically told him, I have a lot of organizational skills and I'm very resourceful. And I think you need somebody with different skills who doesn't necessarily want to fight fires.

ADRIANA: Dana uses those organizational skills to document and keep track of everything brigade members do during a fire. She wasn’t with Keegan at Sunset Mesa but her records show they “tied in” with LA county firefighters there. “Tying in” refers to anytime they’re carrying out tasks for the fire department, but certain things like structure defense they only do if firefighters are supervising them. With the brigade's help, they have more manpower and more equipment. So they rolled out hoses and did their best to save homes.

KEEGAN GIBBS: But within an hour, it was just, it felt like an impossible task, it felt like whack a mole at best.

ADRIANA: It's a big area, with lots of houses, in the urban-wildland-interface also known as the WUI. They targeted the perimeter homes in the neighborhood, usually if you can stop them from burning it can act as a protecting wall to the houses inside the community. Usually. But the Palisades Fire was no usual fire.

KEEGAN GIBBS: The ember cast was so significant from the fuel loads that houses interior of the community were, were igniting very fast.

ADRIANA: That's firese for there was a lot to burn and lots of embers catch homes on fire. In this clip you see Keegan and then a brigade member running to set up a hose.

[RADIO CLIP: …ready for water. Copy that, water coming. Water coming.]

ADRIANA: The brigadier's in someone's backyard and he's getting into what looks like a crouched defensive position — with the hose between the house and a wall of flames. And the wind was out of control.



KEEGAN GIBBS: I saw helmets flying and I remember seeing trash cans just lifted in the air, just flying down the street.

ADRIANA: This clip is from around that time, you can see a recycling bin being blown down the street and aluminum cans flying everywhere, that's that metal noise you hear. Smoke that’s a sickly yellowish gray is billowing overhead – It's coming over the houses like smoke bursting out of a rocket as it takes off. 

KEEGAN GIBBS: I remember one time I opened my truck door and it just ripped it out of my hand and the thing bent back and my whole truck like leaned over and I was like, Oh no, I thought that I thought literally was going to bend and break the hinge off my door because it violently swung open so hard right on my hands.

[CLIP: that was an impressive gust.]

ADRIANA: Dana's mom and stepfather live in the Palisades and she was concerned about their house so she went to check on it. It wasn’t exactly easy to get there.

[RADIO CLIP:  We have fire impacting Sunset Boulevard, multiple people in cars.  LAPD is here. It's just full gridlock people abandoning cars. 101 0 0 abandoned vehicles Sunset, completely impassable.]

ADRIANA: As others fled, Dana drove in.

[NEWS CLIP:  it's windy. This is dynamic and dangerous. We see at least three or four homes in flames and just watching this situation. It's spreading so fast because some of these wind gusts are 50, 60 miles an hour.]

ADRIANA: This news segment that was shot right in front of Dana’s house at 2:44 pm. The reporter then motions to Dana in the background.

[NEWS CLIP: There you see a homeowner, she has been so worried about this spreading across the street to her house. Uh, but I just heard her on the phone. She's just frantic.]

ADRIANA:  She was calling brigade members asking for help. Dana had already done structure triage at another home but when it came to her moms, all her know-how flew out of her head as she started to panic. 

DANA WOLF-PHILLIPS: I was there completely alone until Tyler came.

ADRIANA: Brigade members live in fire prone areas, which means their homes might be threatened. So in situations like these, they can choose to report for brigade duties or not. Both Tyler and Dana were concerned about their homes so I want to be clear that at this moment, they’re on their own. They’re not working in coordination with the brigade. When Tyler pulled up:

TYLER HAUPTMAN: Many homes are just lighting up like crazy. Lots of heat, lots of smoke. It was a real crazy situation to be in. 

DANA WOLF-PHILLIPS: When he came, and I don't think he even understands, like, how much that impacted my life for someone to come. That is an incredibly selfless act. His house was threatened. He knew it.

ADRIANA: Tyler hooked his hoses into the fire hydrant across the street and said to Dana:

DANA WOLF-PHILLIPS: He looked at me and said, Dana, we got this.

ADRIANA: Keegan arrived shortly after. They did a quick triage, then they all went in different directions. Tyler was worried about his place, so he headed home. Keegan went back to the incident command post on PCH to continue dispatching and coordinating the brigaders. And then around 5 pm Keegan went back into the Palisades to help out one of the brigade teams that was tied in with LA County firefighters. 

[CLIP: So what you’re looking at is the upper part of Palisades High School.]

ADRIANA: Here’s a clip from 5:39 pm taken by one of the brigade members — about the time Keegan was there.

[CLIP: This is a fucking nightmare. Literally this has got to be the worst fire in LA history, holy fuck.]

ADRIANA: In the video the hillsides are a dark brown spotted with glowing crimson patches, their centers the color of hot coals. The smoke was so thick that everything is blurry.

KEEGAN GIBBS: And that was when one of our trucks broke down and got stuck. And then that sidelined me and us for a while, because now all of a sudden I'm worrying about not only one of our trucks in a really bad area, but also a couple of my crew members.

ADRIANA:  They got it unstuck, but the broken truck needed to be escorted back to Point Dume to make sure the driver, Aaron Marderosian would be safe. This was sometime around 6pm. Here’s clips from Aron on that drive:

[CLIP: AARON MARDEROSIAN: Woah woah woah.]

ADRIANA: You see the right side of the road, the mountain side, completely on fire like a waterfall of orange. And the left side, the one with houses, also on fire.

KEEGAN GIBBS: For me personally, that was where the turning point of the fire was, that drive from the Palisades to Big Rock felt like an eternity. It felt like everything was going in slow motion all of a sudden. Cause I'm listening to the radio.

[RADIO CLIP:   The Getty Villa Museum is advising a structures catching.]

[RADIO CLIP:  We'll get you resources as we can right now. We have nothing.]

[RADIO CLIP:   Hey, if we can, we got vehicle fires starting on Palisades.]

[RADIO CLIP:    PCH still has multiple vehicles blocked. Unable to move out.]

[RADIO CLIP:    We're working as best we can, but keep your folks mobile and, uh, make sure that the civilians are outta the way.]

KEEGAN GIBBS: And I'm driving down PCH, a place I'm very familiar with. And I’m driving past the Reel Inn, which at this point was already just gone. Wiley's gone. Structures on the beach, burning.  

[RADIO CLIP:  we are having multiple structures impacted along PCH in the areas on both shoulders of the fire.]

[RADIO CLIP:  We've got reports of, uh, civilians trapped on Coco and Aloha within the mobile home park.]

KEEGAN GIBBS: And I'm listening to the radio traffic, hearing reports of burn victims.

[RADIO CLIP: I just pulled the guy outta the fire. I'm on the way going North. Copy.]

[RADIO CLIP: Hey, we have a civilian with a fractured femur. We're gonna self extract with one of our, uh, vehicles of fire station 88 in Malibu.]

KEEGAN GIBBS:  I think at that point there was a 25-year-old female firefighter that had a head injury that was knocked unconscious for 30-45 minutes. 

[RADIO CLIP: Resource with priority. Go ahead Unit calling in firefighter injury.] 

KEEGAN GIBBS: All this stuff I'm listening to while I'm driving and the drive was so intense. Smoke, wind, structures, the visibility was so poor from all the debris in the air. It sounded like somebody, there was a troll, basically, that had a radio that was fucking with the radio traffic. 

ADRIANA: Adding to the chaos the radio channel was hacked, and unidentified people started saying really bizarre things.

KEEGAN GIBBS: somebody got on the radio and was like:

[RADIO CLIP:  the high school well involved along with number of homes between this can — tax dollars always pay for it ya little bitch — Yeah, we had a good wind shift. We got several structures being threatened.]

KEEGAN GIBBS: Yeah, it was messed up.

ADRIANA: Trolls on the radio. Both sides of the road on fire. Everything felt like it was descending into total mayhem. And then, just after 6:20pm, another fire, on the complete other side of the city, on Altadena Drive had started. 

[NEWS CLIP: we are covering breaking news right now of the Palisades Fire. Another fire breaking out right now. This one is being called the Eaton Fire.]

[NEWS CLIP:  So many resources are moved over to Pacific Palisades, and that's a desperate situation with so many homes going up in flames. What if this one continues to increase rapidly and as we saw, they cannot get air support overhead. Yeah, so that is a major catastrophe waiting to happen.]

ADRIANA:  The Eaton Fire. LA County was called to respond. Now there were two wildfires, at the same time, on opposite ends of the city. As the Eaton fire began to gorge itself on the homes of eastsiders, back on the PCH, things weren’t getting any better for Keegan. He continued to crawl along the highway. 

KEEGAN GIBBS:  And I remember just like in slow motion, looking to my left and going, oh wow, that's Lloyd Ahern's house. That's totally on fire. Then looking down and seeing Lloyd Ahern on the side of the road with like eight firefighters around him, all like saucer eyed and he's just got blood pouring down his face and he's laying on the side of the road and I'm just like, I like went to go stop.

ADRIANA: Here’s Aron talking to Keegan on that drive. If you listen closely, you can hear Keegan stuttering on the radio.

[CLIP: KEEGAN GIBBS: Um, uh.]

[CLIP: AARON MARDEROSIAN: Go ahead and stop.]

ADRIANA: In the video, Keegan is in a white pick up truck driving just in front of Aaron. Not a single street light is on. The sky is bright orange, even though it's clearly night out. 

KEEGAN GIBBS: Well they got it handled, I had to just keep going. So I was, at that point, still escorting the truck to make sure it made it to Point Dume.

[CLIP: AARON MARDEROSIAN: Roughly where are you gonna be? Cause I’m guessing you’re not gonna escort all the way to Point Dume now if you don't have to, where do you think you’re gonna be at?]

ADRIANA: When the truck was safely past the fire zone, he called everyone available to meet up at the entrance to Big Rock canyon on the PCH, that's about 4 miles to the east of the iconic Malibu pier and surfrider beach. It's where they were originally were doing evacuations a couple hours earlier.

KEEGAN GIBBS: And I pull over at Big Rock and Big Rock was already being impacted. And I already had like a knot in my stomach because I always wanted to be able to do more for Big Rock.

ADRIANA: By do more he means, make sure everyone is evacuated and triage all the homes if possible. Given the speed this fire moved at, that was definitely impossible.

KEEGAN GIBBS: We have several crew members that have places there and. And I was just looking at the most erratic fire behavior I've ever seen. And all of our guys are just looking at me like, what do we do? And then I see a buddy of mine who's a filmmaker, and he pulls up and he's white faced. Not even saucer-eyed, just white faced. I'm like, what up? He's like, well, I just saw my first dead body. And I was just like. I was like just frozen, because I don't know where to go from here.

ADRIANA: More evacuations were urgently needed. Homes burned all around them. The newly minted first class of community brigaders stepped up to the plate.

KEEGAN GIBBS: it felt like we were T ballers that were all of a sudden in the World Series. The entrance to Big Rock is being impacted by fire. I can't send a truck up there because it would be way too dangerous. And then all of a sudden on the radio, I hear Tyler my best friend going like, I need help over at my place. My place is now being impacted by fire. We're losing houses on my street.

ADRIANA: This is the moment Keegan had feared the night before, was the brigade ready for this? In reality this fire may have been out of everyone’s league.  Never before had a wildfire like this hit such densely populated areas in Los Angeles. 

ADRIANA: They decided to drive into the Palisades to help Tyler. 

ADRIANA: The brigade has lots of strict rules about what they do and don't do, to keep them safe. One of them is that they don't fight the fire front, except if the fire department is there physically telling them what to do. During an incident, brigades do evacuations, structure triage and here’s the last thing: it’s called “fire front following” which means they come in after the front to put out hotspots and do mop up. Since most homes burn from embers, not from the fire front, this is a big deal. More trained people doing this means less homes lost. According to a CALFIRE Progression Map the front hit Tyler’s street by 5 pm. Tyler, not working in coordination with the brigade, had chosen to stay and defend it after leaving Dana’s. Video clips from 6:02 pm.

ADRIANA: In them it’s dark, the smoke is so thick you couldn't see more than a car length in front of you. Embers are everywhere. Tyler hooked his hose into a hydrant and started to put out spot fires in his neighbors yards. He's got on a helmet, googles, and head to toe personal protective gear, or PPE. And a radio tuned to the brigade's channel. His pump is full of water and his home is triaged and hardened. Odds are looking as good as they can for its survival. He's done the work. Remember he's the brigade’s mitigation specialist — he knows this stuff inside and out.

[CLIP: TYLER HAUPTMAN: What the fuck? That was a mountain wind right there, that was 100 miles per hour, easily.]

TYLER HAUPTMAN: The wind is just dominating. The wind is just, just completely overpowering and like blowing you over and like my helmet flew off.

[CLIP: TYLER HAUPTMAN: that was fucked up!]

TYLER HAUPTMAN: Once it bounced, my goggles just went into orbit. It just flew into space. It was so wild.

ADRIANA: Brigade members showed up sometime between 5 and 7 pm, including Dana.  Her moms house and Tyler's are about a half mile apart. They assessed the situation as a group.

DANA WOLF-PHILLIPS: We had a trigger point. Which was two houses down, and we were very safe about it, and we had a very clear escape route that had been mapped and driven, and we knew how we were going to get out.

ADRIANA:  Keegan was at Tyler’s at some point, but the timeline gets fuzzy here. Video from 7:22 pm shows one Van Nuys fire engine and a Torrance EMS type 1 truck, which has capacity for up to 500 gallons of water, on his block. Clips from then:

ADRIANA: These professionals started doing structure defense of other houses farther down the block from Tyler’s. In total their group was 8 brigaders strong. To Keegan, things seemed like they might be ok, that Tyler’s house might make it. Tyler had been on his street for a few hours now and hadn’t needed to use water on his own home — a good sign. Keegan couldn't stop thinking about the advancing fire.

KEEGAN GIBBS: This thing's ripping. And it's not going to stop at Big Rock. This thing's going to keep going west. And so I was like, we need to get some more people to get back, to go do more evacuations. Cause I don't think people in Las Flores, Rambla, I don't think people even know about this thing yet. It's nighttime now.

ADRIANA:  Las Flores Canyon was the next area to the west of Big Rock in the fire’s advancing path. Rambla Pacifico is a main street there. Feeling like Tyler’s situation was as under control as possible, Keegan took a couple brigade members to do evacuations up Las Flores Canyon. Dana stayed with Tyler along with 2 other brigade members.

KEEGAN GIBBS: We go up Rambla one, the first time. Make it to the top, do a bunch of door knocks, and a lot of people. It was frightening how many people weren't aware, or had no plan to leave, or were planning on staying, that were very ill prepared in a very, very, very dangerous area.

ADRIANA: They had trained for this. The brigade would spend much of the rest of the night getting people out.

KEEGAN GIBBS: We saw a guy just standing in the middle of the road. What are you, what are you doing, sir? He's like, just watching the fire. Are you getting out of here? What's your plan? He's like, no, I'm going to stay. And his house was in a really bad area, with a ton of big pine trees all over his house. And I said, really think it's, that's a really bad idea, we really suggest you leave. And, he's like, should I get my wife and my kid out of here? I'm like, absolutely, they need to leave immediately.

ADRIANA: He tells them he lost a home in Woolsey and they should video every room and everything in it to prepare to lose it.

KEEGAN GIBBS: And then he's like, well, my two neighbors are staying too in the same steep driveway. So, okay, we'll go talk to them. So we go to one of the neighbor's houses. There were three or four cars in the driveway at this house. We'll walk up to the door, start banging on the door. All the lights are out, banging on the door, “fire department, fire department,” shining our flashlight in there. Nobody answers the door like, okay, well, I guess maybe they left wherever. And we're, we're walking back to the car. And all of a sudden we hear the door open, we turn around and there's this guy and he's like, had to have been in his late eighties or something, basically wearing his pajamas, no shoes, and he'd clearly just woken up. “Hey, sir, you know, are you getting out of here?” He said, “oh, why, should I?” I don't think we even said anything. We just paused and just stared at him, turned around, and looked at the whole ridge that's on fire that's heading towards us.

KEEGAN GIBBS: We said, “absolutely. You need to get out of here.” He said, “is it dangerous?” Absolutely. “Okay. Well, nobody told me, you know, I didn't, I didn't know to leave. I didn't get any notifications.” The power's out, you know, it's like, he probably doesn't have backups. His cell phone probably doesn't even work. He's probably not even signed up for stuff. He's in his eighties, you know, and that's a huge part of the problem right now with evacuation notifications.

ADRIANA:  I asked if his house survived.

KEEGAN GIBBS: Yeah, and miraculously that house survived. But that first house, the guy with his wife and his kid, uh, was lost. 

ADRIANA:  All the brigade members who did evacuations had stories like this. People unaware, people refusing to leave, people completely unprepared. By their count, they evacuated hundreds of residents. They don't have an exact number but that's not surprising, given that the fire department doesn't keep metrics on this either. Chief Smith says they know how many houses are in a community but not exactly who’s home. They have a much better idea of the people who choose to stay and defend, but shouldn’t. Often firefighters have to stop saving a home to go rescue someone who stayed until the last minute. Life safety is their first priority, not structures, so if they get a call, they have to go rescue someone trapped in their car or some situation like that. And often it puts their guys in very dangerous situations – ones firefighters shouldn’t be in either. Very quickly one man's poor decision can lead to the death of another trying to save him. 

ADRIANA: So how do you quantify how many lives the brigade saved? Deaths that almost happened but didn't? There are so many variables at play here. Still, I can't help but notice that the Palisades death toll was 12, and Eaton's was 19, even though the area of the Palisades Fire was almost twice as large with houses in steeper canyons harder to evacuate from. Most of those who died in both fires were elderly or disabled, people who typically aren’t able to leave quickly. 

ADRIANA: Boots on the ground, door to door style is the only real way to make sure everyone gets out — but is that even possible? I asked LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone what he thought:

CHIEF ANTHONY MARRONE: I don't think that the fire department is ever going to be able to respond in adequate force or with adequate speed because you're not afforded a lot of time before the fire just gets so big that containment is impossible.

ADRIANA:  It’s really important that people get this myth out of their heads: that there will ever be enough first responders. Because there won't be. For example, Chief Marrone made a crucial decision on the morning of January 7th. One that likely saved many lives. He decided to hold over the previous shift, all 900 firefighters stayed on duty. Adding to the same number coming on duty. According to him, that's never happened before. That before a fire starts there’s double the number of firefighters, 1,800 ready to go. But it still wasn't enough to get people out and stop these fires. 



ADRIANA: While Keegan and the brigade evacuated people in Las Flores, back in the Palisades, Tyler still hadn’t used any water on his own home. His mitigation techniques also known as “home hardening” were working just like they were supposed to. Clips from 9:45 pm: in them you see a river of embers being blown out of house on fire. The wind is picking them up and hurling them down the street.

ADRIANA: The other first responders had left. On the radio the general fire situation continued to go south:

[RADIO CLIP: our folks are starting to report that they're running outta water in the hydrants. Copy that it's being worked on.]

ADRIANA: The closest reservoir tank ran out of water at 4:45 pm.The next closest went dry at 8:30 pm. Tyler didn’t know that, but he knew the low water pressure was not a good sign. 

TYLER HAUPTMAN: At this point, the hydrants were running really weak. And so we had to just take whatever we could get from the hydrant and put it into the water tank inside of my truck. 

ADRIANA: The noise you hear is the pumps mounted on the back of his truck with reserve water. It's around this time that a man gets on the radio. In that moment, Tyler and the brigaders don’t know who this guy was, he identified as Red Zone Two Landon.

[RADIO CLIP: Red Zone Two Landon. I'm on Radcliffe.]

ADRIANA:  Tyler's home is on Radcliffe street.

[RADIO CLIP:  Uh, got structure fires that are spreading to unburned structures.  I think there's plenty of work in here for a strike team if you've got a strike team. Yeah, copy that. We'll try to get you resources as soon as we can off of uh, Radcliffe.]

ADRIANA: He calls in again later: 

[RADIO CLIP:  it'd be Red Zone two, Landon on Radcliffe. I copied on one of the TAG nets, uh, some equipment coming out to Radcliffe. Can you give me a, a tack for them? And also their identifier. And we got two private, well, one private engine and the other one is one of the Malibu brigade engines.]

ADRIANA: Tyler’s personal truck and a brigade truck. As a reminder, Tyler still hasn't hosed down his house, not once. But it did have one Achilles heel: something that was in the back of Tyler’s mind the whole time.

ADRIANA: Sometime before midnight a neighbor's deck 5 doors down caught on fire, it was just outside of their reach. They couldn’t get water on it. It was upwind from his place, which was not good. Upwind equals embers blowing straight at him. Still, Tyler spent a long time keeping a big pine tree and wooden fence in his neighbors yard from catching fire. Here’s a clip at 11:40 pm.

ADRIANA: The city's water system was struggling to keep up with the demand and the water was now trickling from the hydrant into his pump . Still he and the other 3 brigade members were making it work. They discussed getting a pool pump and trying to suck the water pooling in the streets from hours of firefighting, but they never got to it.   

ADRIANA: In total, Red Zone radios in 4 times, this is his last time:

[RADIO CLIP: Go ahead. Yeah, I'm located on Radcliffe. Uh, I've been asking for, uh, resources, uh, right now. Just an update. We got at least eight structures on fire now. We've had several, uh, transformers explode. We got some down power lines, but there's, uh, the houses are so close together that they're just moving, jumping from house to house.]

ADRIANA: The domino effect had begun. The Achilles heel Tyler was worried about. 

[RADIO CLIP:  So don't know what you got, but if you got somebody, it'd be nice to get some as assistance over here. All we have is a brigade unit from Malibu and, uh, type six that’s a private resource.]

[RADIO CLIP: Yeah, red zone two copy that. We copy you’re on Radcliffe. Uh, all resources are assigned at this time. Uh, just be advised, our priority is evacuation, life safety, and then structure protection and copy that.]

[RADIO CLIP: Uh, if needed, we can go into that mode as well.]

[RADIO CLIP: We are in that mode. So let's uh, go with that.]

ADRIANA: The situation on his block was rapidly deteriorating. The wind was blowing so hard it looked like trees were head banging in the darkness, lit by the tangerine glow of houses on fire. A few hours earlier, they thought they were good, they thought they’d made it through the worst, but now the situation was spiraling. 

ADRIANA: Embers formed little tornados collapsing and reforming on the wind. Still, Tyler’s house held on. It was now 2 am, 17 hours into the Palisades fire. His house had withstood hurricane force winds carrying hundreds of thousands of embers for hours — without needing a single drop of water. Then his next door neighbor's house caught on fire. With water still in his hose, still spraying the neighbors home, a brigade member who’d been with him for hours came up to Tyler and put his hand on the hose. He motioned for him to stop. 

TYLER HAUPTMAN: Someone came up to me and was like, all right, the trigger points were reached. We gotta get out of here. It was just game over.

ADRIANA: Here’s Dana Wolf-Phillips again.

DANA WOLF-PHILLIPS: Because there was nothing they could do. They didn't have water on the truck and there was no water out of the hydrant. What, what can you do?

ADRIANA: They were out matched. The radiant heat the house next door was about to kick off was out of their league. A single hose, with limited water, was no match for an entire block of homes on fire. In a neighborhood and a city that was now consumed in flames.

TYLER HAUPTMAN: We drove all down to, uh, Temescal together and watched it. And I just told everyone, like, I don't know how long this is going to take, but I want to watch it.

ADRIANA: I can't imagine the strength and presence of mind it must have taken to walk away, knowing that it's already gone, while it's still standing.

TYLER HAUPTMAN: I just had to watch it happen. And I knew that I just needed to move on from it, but I needed to watch it happen first. And it's a type of closure.

DANA WOLF-PHILLIPS: Tyler stayed and watched it go up. I was about to vomit and could not stay. It was probably one of my worst moments.

ADRIANA: Dana wanted to give him space but later regrets leaving him alone. It was late, she and everyone else were exhausted. They all left Tyler alone to watch. Tyler’s wife and child had already evacuated earlier so they were safe. Tyler sat in his truck on the side of the road on Temescal Canyon. His house is at the top of the canyon so he could see it from a safe distance. At 2:51 am on January 8th, he filmed it looking up from the road. You can see both the neighbors' homes engulfed in huge flames on either side. There’s black in between them. Tyler’s house was still holding on. And then, flames erupt from it.

TYLER HAUPTMAN: I could hear glass shattering. And I like figured it was, my wife designed this one really special window in her bedroom that was like outline of the house and that cracked and, fell out, I could hear it and it was just like, that's when it kind of hit me that it was, I just couldn't believe it happened, it happened again.

ADRIANA: Again. Tyler's parents, his uncle and his brother lost their homes in the Woolsey Fire. That was 7 years ago. 

TYLER HAUPTMAN: I had that presence of mind. It's like, just let go.

ADRIANA: Tyler's not sure how long he watched it for. But eventually he put his keys in the ignition, put his truck in drive and drove to the brigade meet up spot. The news had already spread before Tyler arrived.

KEEGAN GIBBS: I tried calling him. I couldn't get a hold of him, but people told me that he was safe because they said, hey, he drove down to Temescal and he just wanted to have some alone time to kind of watch his place burn. And it just fucking broke my heart.

ADRIANA: When he got there, his fellow brigade members gave him hugs and embraced their friend.

KEEGAN GIBBS: He was really tired, but you know, you could tell he'd been through a lot of emotions and physical strain, and it's like, it's all right. Everybody's losing on this one. That's what I remember him saying to me.

ADRIANA: What did he mean by that?

KEEGAN GIBBS: Just, everybody was getting their butts kicked. I mean, it's like, there was nothing we, you could really do. It was, the conditions were so extreme that even with resources, even with water, it was almost impossible to save structures.

ADRIANA: About 75 percent of the buildings in the Palisades were lost. Imagine that. 3/4ths of your neighborhood, evaporated. Just like that. Gone right before your very eyes. Tyler's eyes were bloodshot from all the smoke and embers; remember, his goggles flew away. His face was covered in black ash.

TYLER HAUPTMAN: Keegan pulled me aside. He's like, dude, I can't believe it. No one expected that and, um, it's going to sound weird, but this is what, Matt Rapf told me after I lost my house,

ADRIANA: Matt Rapf was a long time Malibu resident who'd been through many fires over the decades. He recently passed away but was an absolute local legend that people in the community often looked up to.

KEEGAN GIBBS: I turned to him and I said, during Woolsey, Matt Rapf came to me and hugged me in the street. And said, sorry, Keegan, I'm sorry you lost your place. He's like, I'm going to tell you something. That's not going to make any sense right now. I said, what's that? And he said, all my friends that have lost houses in Malibu over the years to fire, almost all of them have said it was the best thing that ever happened to them.

KEEGAN GIBBS: For me, losing my parents’ house was the best thing that ever happened to me.

ADRIANA:  During the Woolsey Fire in 2018, Keegan and his friends found his dad’s music studio in the backyard untouched by fire, while the house was reduced to ashes. They took this sliver of hope and ran with it. In the fire’s aftermath, he and his friends saved homes and helped people for weeks. It gave Keegan a sense of purpose that still drives him today. That experience transformed him and his life. He says he's still trying to wrap his mind around all the gifts that loss has brought him. Friendships. Community. A life mission to empower everyday people with the knowledge to save their own homes from burning in wildfires. 

TYLER HAUPTMAN: Everybody I know who lost their home, it's the best thing that's ever happened to them. And I was just like, dude, really? I don't know, man. Like, it’s hard for me to fucking agree with that one, but I trust you and have faith in what Keegan and Matt Rapf have to say for sure.

KEEGAN GIBBS: You know, gave him a couple of big hugs and, we're like, you cool? He's like, yeah, I'm good. We're like, we're getting back to work or what?

ADRIANA: It's impossible to know exactly what time it was then, likely around 4 am. Still dark, everything still on fire. Most of the brigaders had gone home to bed. But Keegan, Tyler and a few others set off up the mountainside into Las Flores to do more evacuations. With every passing hour the fire marched towards them. 

TYLER HAUPTMAN: I knew moving on to something else was actually going to be something that will help me in the long run, kind of process it and still trying to help is the best therapy. Learned that one from Woolsey.

ADRIANA: As the sun began to rise behind the black wall of smoke their truck cautiously made its way up the cliffside. What they found in Las Flores Canyon, and why it matters for the future of Los Angeles, that on the next episode of The Palisades Fire.

ADRIANA: From PRX and Wave Maker Media this is the Palisades Fire podcast. This is a 2 part Sandcastles special and you just heard Episode 1: Get the Boys Ready.  This episode was reported, produced and hosted by me–Adriana Cargill. Editing by Sasa Woodruff. Story editing by Adam Whitney Nichols. Mixing and mastering by Kathleen Yore. Music composition by Marcelo de Oliveira and music arrangement by Emma Munger. Music supervision by me, Adriana Cargill. Theme song by Medium Zach. Fact Checking by Audrey Regan. Graphic design by Talia Rochmann.

ADRIANA: As you heard in the credits, this show is produced by a really small team and if you enjoyed this series the biggest thing you can do is go to apple podcasts and rate it five stars. Just hit the 5 star button on the show's main page at the top. And if you have the time, leave a review. I know, every podcast asks for this but it's especially important for independent podcasts like this one. We really appreciate it. Tell your friends about us. Thanks for listening and supporting independent storytelling.