Five years ago, the Woolsey Fire tore through the dry coastline west of Los Angeles, burning nearly 2,000 structures and killing three people. A group of surfers known as the Point Dume Bombers rallied together to fight the fire and take care of neighbors afterward. Since then, they have created a community brigade pilot program to educate neighbors, harden local houses, and help people evacuate during fires. The new podcast Sandcastles focuses on the work of the Point Dume Bombers and the new brigade. Adriana Cargill, producer of the podcast, joins us to explain.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Five years ago, the Woolsey Fire tore through the dry coastline west of Los Angeles, burning nearly 2,000 structures and killing three people. A group of surfers known as the Point Dume Bombers rallied together to fight the fire and take care of neighbors afterwards. Since then, they’ve created a community brigade pilot program that could be a model throughout the fire-prone West. They want to educate neighbors, harden local houses, and help people evacuate during fires. The new podcast Sandcastles, focuses on the work of the Point Dume Bombers and their new brigade. Adriana Cargill is the producer of the podcast and she joins us now. Welcome.
Adriana Cargill: Thanks so much for having me.
Miller: So the group at the heart of your new podcast series, they’re known as The Point Dume Bombers. Who are they?
Cargill: Yeah. So I think a lot of people have this idea of Malibu as celebrities that live in beach houses and that’s actually just a tiny part of Malibu. Most of it is rugged, steep canyons. The Santa Monica Mountain range actually makes up most of Malibu and there’s a lot of families that moved there back in the homesteading days and have ranches and a lot of those people are still there today. So I chose to focus almost exclusively on blue collar, everyday folks. So, this group, what kind of brings them together is, they’re all childhood friends, they’re all surfers, but they’re kind of everyday people. They’re veterans, carpenters, lifeguards, and teachers. And that name comes from an old surf click that’s from the same area, from the seventies and eighties.
Miller: What did they do during the Woolsey fire in 2018?
Cargill: Yeah. So, I mean, that’s what got me really interested in this story because I think a lot of wildfire coverage tends to be really doom and gloom and really depressing. Like things are getting worse, this problem’s getting worse. And what really struck me about them is their story is one of hope and inspiration and it kind of just caught my attention and I want to say when the Woolsey Fire happened, if you guys remember back in 2018, there were actually three major wildfires that started that same day. There’s the Woolsey Fire, the Hill Fire in Ventura and the Camp Fire in Paradise. And so we’ve got three major fires and there’s actually a mass shooting in Ventura the day before. So emergency first responders were stretched incredibly thin.
What the Point Dume Bombers did is they stepped in to fill the resource gap and their response was pretty next level. They put out spot fires, they saved homes, they got supplies through road blocks. They set up a relief center for people who had lost everything. And the scale of what they did was really impressive. I mean, they helped hundreds of people, and they did it in a pretty organized way. They made it up as they went.
Miller: Right, making it up as they went, but now five years have gone by. How did that really impromptu, community response turn into something bigger and more long term and more organized?
Cargill: Yeah, I think there is a clip that we can play from the podcast and really, it’s what happened during the fire that informs the model that they’ve been developing. So I wanna talk about one thing that was really important. So one of the Point Dume Bombers that I follow, his name is Keegan and he lost his family home during the Woolsey Fire, but right next to his home, they have a recording studio. His dad’s a musician, that’s sort of their main way of getting income. And Keegan and his friends came back to Point Dume, the house was completely leveled, but the studio was completely untouched and they’re about 50 feet apart and they thought it was just this miracle, because they actually call it The Woodshed, and it’s made of cedar shingles and it didn’t burn. So we can play a clip from that:
Keegan [recording]: You see, every time there’s a fire, you see on Channel 7 or something, we’re standing at the Gibbs studio and it’s a miracle. It continues to perpetuate this idea that there’s nothing we can do that’s gonna prevent our home from burning down. So there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s up to God or the firefighters, and it’s not true, it’s just not true. Cargill: So what he didn’t know about before the fire but really was staring him in the face by just looking at the fate of these two buildings is that the studio was actually what’s called ‘hardened’, which means that, and this was totally by chance that it was ember proof because it was air tight as a studio. It was designed in a way where embers couldn’t get in. And he learns, according to Doctor Jack Cohen, who’s one of the preeminent researchers on wildfire behavior and home ignition, he says that 85% to 90% of homes are actually lost from ember fires, not from the fire front. And that was a really big wakeup call for Keegan.
Miller: And that gets to the fire hardening, which is sort of the first pillar of this brigade’s plan. It’s to make communities more fire resilient, less likely to burn. There’s also a post-fire aspect of the brigade’s plans, which is providing logistics and support. But it’s the part in the middle where there has been the most tension. Can you explain the tension?
Cargill: Yeah. So in the middle part which they call field operations, it’s essentially a stay and defend. And stay and defend programs are very controversial and they have gone really bad in the past. People have died. If you look at the Black Saturday fires in Australia, Australia used to have a stay and defend program in place, 173 people died. But I think it’s important to mention that it’s a little different from what they’re proposing in Malibu. Organizers say this model is not a stay and defend at all costs. It’s more of an evaluate the situation, with others who spent a lot of time preparing for this moment, and then maybe stay. And organizers say the emphasis here is really on group think and never acting alone. And the organizers have been really clear with me that they will - at no point are brigade members gonna be actually fighting the fire or fighting the fire front or fighting structure fires. That’s not what they do.
Miller: So, I mean, how much buy-in is there from professional firefighters about this plan?
Cargill: For the last two and a half years, they have been in discussion with the LA County fire department. And for your listeners in Oregon, it’s really important. LA County is the second largest fire department in the country. They’ve got over a billion dollar budget and they’re one of the most well respected wildland firefighting agencies probably on the planet, so for them to be seriously considering this is, is a pretty big deal. And they’ve made a lot of changes in conversation with the LA County Fire Department, Sheriff’s Department, local city council members, this really has been a community wide effort, and they’re getting that, conversations are looking promising.
Miller: It’s been five years now since the Woolsey Fire. What’s driving the people that you talked to?
Cargill: I think the best way to tackle that question is we can play another clip and who you’re gonna hear talking, his name is Sam McGee and he stayed to fight the Woolsey Fire, to defend his home and a neighbor’s. You’ll hear him talking about Keegan, who’s the voice we heard in the other clip, and as a reminder, Keegan’s home was completely destroyed by the Woolsey Fire.
Cargill [recording]: Seems like Keegan put a lot of work into this.
Sam McGee [recording]: To say the least, to say the least.
Cargill [recording]: You think that he was motivated by losing his house?
McGee [recording]: Completely. And I feel, I feel just awful for him, and like, I wish I would have been able to do something. I think this is his way of basically making sure that that will never happen again. Not only to him but to anybody else around here.
Cargill [recording]: What happened to Keegan has long lasting consequences.
McGee [recording]: The fire has been emotionally and physically the most trying and exhausting experience that I know my family and probably my whole community has gone through. I mean, my family is still a mess, right? And I know a lot of people in our community are going through this exact same thing. It’s this big question mark. Like, are we gonna be able to stay, can we stay here?
Miller: Adriana, we just have about a minute left. But I’m curious if working on this series has changed your relationship with your own home or your own sense of community.
Cargill: Yeah, I mean, I live in Los Angeles. I’m originally from the Midwest, so I did not grow up with wildfires and sometimes it’s smoke for days here. During the Woolsey Fire, I could see it like a volcano over the mountain. And I just think the problem’s not going away, climate change, drought, mismanaged lands are making these fires more frequent, more intense and more unpredictable. And part of the reason I live in LA is that I want access to the Santa Monica mountains and beautiful natural spaces. So I think reporting this story over the last four years, it gives me hope that there are guys and gals out there trying to figure out a better way for us to live with fire.
Miller: Adriana Cargill, thanks very much.
Cargill: Thank you.
Miller: Adriana Cargill is the producer of the new podcast series, Sandcastles.
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