It's Where I Am with Zandra Polard

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU n b Studio's original program. You are listening to special programming brought to you by it's where I am.com the content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. You

Zandra Polard 0:44
Good morning Las Vegas. It's Sondra bollard. It's where I am right here on 91.5 jazz and more. So it's where I am. Is a show that focuses on mental health and wellness, and today, we're going to talk about tragedy and healing. So a few weeks ago, I had a guest on the show talking about the fires in Altadena, and I know there's been a lot of promotion on television. You see commercials. Help out to Dina. We want to dive into what actually happened and victims of the fire. So I have a guest here today on Mike, and I have a silent guest on the side, but, we're going to talk about what happened. And so I want to welcome my guest. Hi,

Anonymous 1:46
good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to be here. I want to talk about the althena fires. She had mentioned tragedy. It's the word I would use, would be devastating, yeah. And I come from a position of what the country really, really wants and supposed to represent, which is multi racial harmony, not like singing together that type of thing, Kumbaya, but living together in a very peaceful, loving way. And that's what Altadena was, and hopefully could can remain. You know, we're Altadena residents. We use the parks our kids went to the schools. We know that people in the you know, ran the small businesses, and we just know people up and down the community, and we know the history of the community. And have to say, it was very disappointing when President Trump went to the Pacific Palisades, and I have much love for that area. Have eight friends who lost their homes, eight physicians lost their homes, one in her 80s, and I've spoken to one of them, he's not going to rebuild. You know, it's just too much. The older you are, the less likely you're going to rebuild. You're probably going to move somewhere. But I have much love for the Palisades, but to not visit Altadena when that helicopter would have been less than 15 minutes to get there. Was a big mistake in oversight. Well,

Zandra Polard 3:05
I think he mentioned that his wife wanted to go to Beverly Hills that day.

Anonymous 3:10
Yeah, that sounds like a good excuse. The thing is, is it Altadena represents what the United States is supposed to be about people living together, including gang members. Out the Dean has gangs. Yeah, we have basically no issues. I mean, that wasn't always true in the 80s, but the right people made the right decisions, not just the people, the park and nonprofits, but the county sheriffs, took kids who had problems and put them in Outward Bound, instead of, you know, penalizing them with sentences and juvenile, you know, detention, that kind of thing. And it got straightened out. So

Zandra Polard 3:48
what about the fires? Like some people say that it's intent, it was intentional. What are your thoughts? Well, you know,

Anonymous 3:54
I always come from a position of race and class, and I think people make a mistake, in my opinion, to analyze things one or the other. You need both. And you have people who Altadena has 161 homes of historical review. It has numerous wealthy people who don't want who are there for seclusion, don't want to participate, don't be bothered. We were just listening today. Send me forget. Get me nuts. A song by Patrice Russian, they go, oh yeah, yeah, she's Altadena resident. Oh, okay, there are homes there. There are millionaires there. There's a few billionaires there. Okay, so I mean, Altadena, Altadena people lost homes. There were homes that were lost. The properties and the homes are so big, their back houses would be considered huge, two story homes. So this cut across class, so I don't see that as intentional, but there was negligence. I mean, you can go online and see the Edison tower on fire, and the problem with that is it has a sensor that goes off. I mean, I know a lot of people out there. Including people who are engineers, field engineers. And, you know, I talked to the right people. The JPL is there. The JPL is on the other side, closer to on the west side, closer to La can, la canada, between altina, la canada. But, um, the sensor goes off once you got to shut off the tower. The sensor went off 73 times. Oh, wow. Okay. 14 people from East paltadena. Okay, west side is the more black area, and I should, I would be remiss not to mention it leads the country with 82% black ownership of homes Altadena. Okay, so when you see in the paper, or when you read 18% black, that is not true because it says other, which means black, okay, and they're talking about all of Altadena. There's a West and East Altadena. Yeah, okay, so the people on the East side, they called 14 times. So 73 times essentially goes off. 70 plus 14, you got 87 notifications, and they first denied it. You can see the tower falling on fire. They denied it. They said they fight it vigorously in court. Then Benjamin Crump came, and he has a megaphone. You know, he's the, he's the African American lawyer who, you know, litigates for the, you know, kids who were killed by, you know, police officers. Okay, that's Benjamin Crump. Everyone's seen him in her oh yes, you'd recognize when he came and said, You he can prove it. He didn't say what I said, But he knew he's referring to that. So they turned around and said, Well, you know, maybe we'll look into it. Then they went from there to saying, oh, guy at homeless guy in the tent probably started nearby. And then the LA Times published that the electrical wires weren't, weren't bad, you know, condition have been warned to, you know, correct them for a long time. We're talking about years, did nothing, and so now they're basically in a roundabout way and say they probably are guilty.

Zandra Polard 6:53
Do you think it has anything to do with the Olympics coming to Los Angeles that was mentioned? No, I

Anonymous 7:00
think that there's a lot of conspiracy therapies, and most conspiracies have roots in something that is true that happened years prior. So you see the 84 Olympics in LA which I was living then I was, you know, student. I was a student, and they created the homeless situation the valley by rounding up the homeless, putting them in vans and sending them out to the San Fernando Valley. They detoured streets so they wouldn't see urban blight. They put up artwork on certain streets entice you to go that way. There's numerous there were other things that were done to have the world not see the real poverty and problems in Los Angeles, starting with homelessness. And so the concept there was something underhanded was done as a prelude to the Olympics to have this, you know, Italic city, like perfect city. And so that's why people would say something like this

Zandra Polard 7:55
now, but part of the one of the races, or something, is supposed to be held

Anonymous 8:01
in Altadena, you know, it doesn't help with it burnt down, right? I'm willing to listen to conspiracy theories, but I don't see them. I mean, the main issue was, the main issue for Altadena was the winds were 100 miles. Are the highest in the Southland, Southern California. And so they know they cannot fly up there with helicopters at night, the firemen, you know, or firefighters, and so they had to wait till the fire came down. The problem is, where the county? There's the county in the city. It's two different things. And Palisades. Pacific Palisades is the city. So the fire fighters left because they couldn't do anything at night to go fight the fire in the Palisades. But when they hit the ground in Altadena, they weren't there because they were in the Palisades. And

Zandra Polard 8:43
what about the water? There was like a shortage of water or something. Okay, so the water

Anonymous 8:47
comes from the mountains. Basically, gravity moves the water. Some of the newer places developments have their own huge water reservoirs, tanks, you know. But why people doing the wrong thing and turning their sprinklers and water on, it drained that and left for weaker pressure for water to come down. That our water situation is different than Palisades, okay? It's totally different issue. So in other words, you'd have water and then you'd have no pressure. Okay, you know, I want to talk so I don't see conspiracy thing. What I see that was wrong. Are basically these two things. What I just mentioned, there were no firefighters there in the morning. They were at the Palisades. They should have came back, but it's kind of hard to leave a fire you're fighting, say bye and leave once you're there. So that really hurt. Al tadina, basically, that's what, you know, led to all this devastation to extend the way it did. You know. You know, you know. The other problem with Altadena is basically a complete denial of the devastation in the early days. Okay, and, you know, and the insurance companies that drop people for at least three years could be prior to the fire. So. People land with California FAIR Plan, which takes the punches and blows, and everybody can say it's horrible. They either deny or ignore, but people don't realize they're just a risk pool. They're not an insurance company for the major corporations above them that are hidden. You know, I'm talking about the nationwide. It's the state farms, the farmers, the all states, they have the money. Oh, they have the money. These corporations all have the money to do what's right, but they don't want to. As far as Edison goes, they belong to a risk pool of 5 billion. They can't. They can call on 5 billion for any lawsuit right from the top. They're prepared for this. They just don't want, they just want to limit, as insurance companies do, they want to limit their losses. So, you know, those are the real issues. You know, Altadena, it's really a shame, because it's, it's where we want to go in the United States, people of all races and creeds and ethnicities, religions, cultures, living together and not having a problem that. And it seems hard to believe that can be accomplished, but that was Altadena because it attracted a certain type of person, you see, and most of the Black History given, it's just people rewriting what they read, and it's totally inaccurate that black people showed up in the 60s. Redlining existed, and they were allowed to buy homes there. And that's a very limited view of how Altadena was so black, or considered black for many years. But it's, it's, it's completely diverse now, basically the mountains where the fire came from, that was called Big Negro Canyon. Okay, if you Google Big Negro Canyon now, it'll give you some place in Utah. Amazing how it's all been erased from the history books. You see, the reason it was called Big Negro Canyon is because an African American named Robert Owens became a millionaire. This is in the 1800s okay? I mean, you can imagine what that would be today. That would be more than a billionaire, all right? And he got wealthy by logging lumber, and he sold wood lumber all the way to Long Beach. And people never ask a simple question when you go to Old Town, which doesn't seem like, oh, yeah, or Pasadena, for that matter, why is the biggest African American church west of the Mississippi in Old Town is seats 600 people? And the answer is that area was black Huntington Hospital. All of those areas were logged and and, you know, African Americans built those areas. That's the truth of that, of that history. And he protected Robert Owens the mountains. He hired his own security team. So they called him big N, you know the N word, which in Spanish, they called him el Prieto. He controlled all that area that land up there. And so black people moved in from around the country had a presence. And some of the people that moved in there who were white, included John Brown's sons. Now I'm Owen, and I forget, I think Jake or Jacob, but they're interesting people in US history, the last battle before the Civil War in the United States was fought by John Brown. He had a militia of 10,000 people, and some people think he would have won. His goal was to Harpers Ferry Virginia, to attack the armory where all the weapons were held by the US government, and so they would be better armed. Some people thought that was the point of change. That wasn't that was strategic, what he was doing. And some people think they would have won that battle, which lasted, I think, three days, but they were tipped two weeks ahead of time. They knew he was coming. So he was a Quaker and a white man who wanted to free the slaves. That was the purpose of his militia. He thought slavery was wrong. And when his time came and they hung him, they asked for any last words. And his speech is worth reading. Okay, you can go to a royal a, r, r o, y o. Seco, S, E, C, O, A Reiko Seiko, or royal Seiko films on Twitter and see the documentary that came out this year. It's amazing, and you'll see how many black people were there in the 1800s Okay, 2000 showed up at his son's funeral. His son's funeral. Owen Brown, when he died, he was loved by African Americans, the NAACP, and they were in extreme poverty, him and his brother. You can see the photos in the Lincoln Avenue water company, anyone living in Los Angeles, little known thing in Altadena, the water company. People get their water. One of the reasons black people easily moved up there was other people who want to move. There was no water up there. Okay, thus the Lincoln Avenue water company, you know, later and his son, all of his children were killed. You know, they were all in hiding. His son was in Ohio for 20 years, and then he heard about Altadena had a black presence significant. He could live there in peace and safety and be looked at. Journey came. But when he had hard times, they raised a collection for him his brother, and they gave him the money. And they took the money and gave it to the Chinese okay, because there was a Chinese massacre in Pasadena, and he gave it to other poor people in South Carolina. That's what they did with a money raised for them. So they were amazing people. The history is not known very well, but this documentary shows more. There's bits and pieces everywhere. There's a little mythology too. But the tragedy is, you have all these people who own their homes. Someone didn't have insurance because they were dropped, couldn't afford the newer jacked up rates. So do you

Zandra Polard 15:37
think Altadena will remain diverse with a large African American presence,

Anonymous 15:43
yes and no, it will be much more diverse than the rest of the country, and people will live together in army. Will it go back to being the way was no, because there's too many elderly people who are selling their lots for four or 500,000 moving to their family wherever they are. East Coast, there's too many young people who backed into the house and thought they were living forever and had their wealth in the home and will sell the lot move. It's the people in the middle who were rebuilt, and I'm talking about what a Wells Fargo banker told me when I met with them, and it's just too much to rebuild. Or if you have partial damage, it's hard to see the damage. The insurance companies Stonewall you. So, you know, you basically it's a full time job, or you have to hire somebody who is competent won't take advantage of you, and it's very hard to do. I mean, a lot of the contractors are people who are doing work. They have so much business that, you know, for example, your condenser, the big box in the back for air conditioner burnt down, or your roof was damaged, you call some out, they're not gonna show up. We're gonna show up two hours late. You'll go through three or four people, and you throw your hands in the air. So even if you have the insurance money, it's hard, it's really hard to get things done, because there's so much work available. You see, yeah, I mean, so these guys will shift around and, you know, it's just really complicated. What's going on. There's so many good people. I mean, people are at their best, including that FEMA center, it's amazing, but everything is disjointed, and a lot of the help will not come until your insurance company shows what they'll pay for, and they show their hands, and if they're stowing while you you can time out with FEMA. I mean, you know, yet, I think it's six months. So I think that's what it is might be here. So, I mean, this is really complicated, and a lot of people, they're not built for this right to just work and then deal with that exactly. You have to live. You have to survive. Who knows where people are living? People are living, you know, people are going through a lot right now. Now, some insurance companies do what they're supposed to do. They put you up. You get a nice apartment in that area. Apartments, two bedrooms, go for 4000 Okay, so you know it's like a mortgage. So some companies, you know, are doing the right thing, but some of them aren't. California, FAIR Plan, State Farm. You can just Google State Farm. They're being so stingy. And read one of the front page LA Times articles about State Farm, and you can put in California FAIR Plan and sift through and see, but there's not a lot of help from the top top. You know, the federal government should be giving billions in relief like they do, or else for hurricanes, but they want to stick it to California because, you know, it's not Republican, although we have our Republican areas, including Altadena, the county supervisor is Republican, and before her, Mike Antonovich, he was there for decades. He was Republican, but they want to try attach strings to the money to California make it difficult, whereas the longest wait anyone's ever had is 31 days. And before that, six days. I'm talking about you Louisiana's, you know your Mississippi's your your North counts when you know Florida is when they have problems. So it's really a shame what's going on in the United States right now. The politics you know, interferes with what needs to be done. And if you look at California, amount of taxes, pace, it's more than wrong. It's totally unequal. Yeah, so that's the situation in the fire I personally don't like. It's just a personal thing. When I see Altadena strong, Altadena not for sale, because what it implies is all you have to do is be strong. But it's more complicated that people have to live you give somebody 30 years old, he's got a family 500,000 he's gonna move to Texas. She's gonna move to North Carolina, Las Vegas. Start over. Let's sit here and go through all this. By the way, if people want to know if they're in this situation, people are using AI Gemini, Gemini, 2.5 AI. They're downloading it on their computers, and when they're when their insurance company says, Nope, we don't pay for that. They go to ally and ask, what do you do when this is burned? What do you do this smoke damage? They get a detailed answer. They send that to their insurance company, and then they get money. Oh, okay, so you have to have time, but you know, it's piecemeal, so if you need 10,000 you. They'll kick you down 2000 you got to give something else to kick you down three times. You know, they're going to make it hard. Yeah, the love for the insurance companies is on the commercials. It's not rooted in reality, okay, yeah, all right. So that's, that's my perspective. Like,

Zandra Polard 20:15
as far as, like, you know, I'm listening to you. And then I think, of course, this show is based on mental health, the stages you go through with all of this, you know, in the beginning, you know, I remember it was detrimental, very emotional, unbelievable. And then, you know, you got to secure a place to stay, right, right? You hit it on the nose. But it's like, you know, other family members is like, you know, they'll say, oh, you know, they have more of a spiritual kind of way of dealing with things, you know. But I mean, you just, you go through different stages emotionally, okay? So, because all of a sudden, you know, you think you're fine, and the smallest thing will make you break down and cry.

Anonymous 21:06
Oh, that's so true. So, so you know people who have a spiritual perspective that most definitely helps them, that presents itself when they're talking to people who are being interviewed, but that's right, that's right. They're human. I mean, I know this firsthand. So evacuation is tough because you don't know where you're going to land. Most people don't want to intrude into other people. You know. You want to stay somewhere for a couple of days, weeks, not months. You didn't know it was going to be months or years when you you know, and you don't want to make a space mess of yourself. But then there's the high cost. What if you don't have anywhere to go. You're like in a shelter. There's numerous levels this. You have kids. What if your job, your musician, everything was there, it's gone. And you're a world class musician now. You have no equipment. There's just there's there's you mean, there's just so many moving parts to this. And the thing people, people really talk about is how you see your future when you know your self worth, when you have a home that's paid for, like a lot of people in Altadena did, and it's gone, and now you're starting from scratch. Here's a worry you never did. If your insurance company says they're rebuilt, and you're supposed to get 900,000 and you got to go two things else just to get to 700,000 like you need a lawyer, okay? And then it's going to take 1.3 to build it. With these tariffs, Trump has put where the real or imagines at this point, people jacked up everything 10, 20% at least, right? When you see it's going to cost 1.3 to build it. So now you're going to have a mortgage. What if you're retired? What if you already used all your resources to pay for everything else and what your kids need, or what you need or help people in your family. And now you're gonna have a mortgage. Interest rates are 7% so you're gonna get 800,000 it's gonna cause 1.3 to rebuild. See, this is what no one's talking about. So now you have a mortgage of 700,000 at 7% are you kidding me? All right, so what's that? 4000 plus a month. I mean, with the property insurance, so at least so, so you're gonna just come up with 4000 a month, so there's a lot of so

Zandra Polard 23:05
wait. So if the house is burnt down, you still have to pay property

Anonymous 23:09
insurance. No one when it's rebuilt, all the hidden costs. So if

Zandra Polard 23:13
they hit the house is burned down, you still have to pay the mortgage.

Anonymous 23:17
When your house gets rebuilt, that house is going to be reassessed for a higher value than the house you had, because we have prop 13, and they can only jack it up. But when you start from scratch now, they say they want to make exceptions and change it, but they haven't. But what else about Altadena strong? I personally it's not for me, which I respect it, especially when it says Not For Sale, is you don't know what people are going through. It implies you just have to be tough, right? What if you have in your family two people who are who died in the fire simply because West Altadena was not evacuated, but nine hours after east of Altadena and people didn't know they're sleeping, they die people with disabilities, people can't hear, people can't walk well. So you tell them, just be strong. They just lost their home. They lost people in their family. Saying, I'm strong. That's nice, but you're not the first person to tell them be strong or spiritually strong, or this is not enough to help your mental health. You need the resources. And if you go to the FEMA center, all these places, this is a beautiful nonprofit. It's green wood or green something green light. I think that wants to help people stay in their homes. Well, they got funding enough so far to cover one home. I mean, there's 9000 homes and structures that burnt down, right? So what I would have wanted to see is a recognition This is the biggest fire in US history. This is the most multi racial, harmonious community in the United States that we know of, with a fascinating history that's safe. Our shoes are burglaries break, but you leave your car unlocked. Someone steal something, that kind of thing. Okay? And of course, it's up higher now I would like to see more organization and assistance in coming down. On these insurance companies, and money coughed up quick. It's helped just about everyone get back at home. You have someone sitting at FEMA the table, you got to list everyone held their home, and they coordinate things for you. Where can monies come from to get you back in your home? But that's not how things work. It's rugged individualism United States, and not everyone's cut out for that, especially in the way I'm talking about the multifaceted issues and approach that is needed. Not everyone's cut out for that. You know, most people are not. Now you have people who are they're resourceful. Someone else works or, you know, they're living they're not paying rent with their family, and they go at it. They'll find out where to get clothes, where you get this, where you get that, but, but being resourceful like that. It's like time takes time. It's like the people who are better with tech and better on cell phones and computer, and you watch them, they can fix any problem. Not everyone's cut out for that. No one has the time for that. What about people work three jobs? I mean, come on. So this is really, really tragic, like you said.

Zandra Polard 25:57
So you've given a lot of information, but what is a major nugget you want to tell the people before we go?

Anonymous 26:05
What I what I want to tell the people make you cry is that learn about, think about or learn about what I'm talking about. Why? First of all, there's always a limited history. Oh, black people move there because of redlining. No, okay, I want people to examine why did alt Why is Altadena? Why was out there where people all live together? Amazing, white people, Asian people, Latinos, African Americans. I mean, everyone, okay, same sex, everything, transgender, we you've never heard of that. I know of a hate crime in Altadena. You've never heard anyone complaining about anyone suing or their neighbor. You've never read that. The truth is, if people are left alone, to their own devices, and don't have this propaganda stress and this ignorant stuff you see on social media, lies in their brain, rewiring their thoughts, if people are left to their own devices, they will live in harmony. That Park is the most amazing thing I've ever witnessed. Ice take pictures of Senator friends. What Park is that? Loma Alta Park. Okay, in there. They had activities. People needed to have things to do. So dolls play basketball. Kids play basketball. Adults rent the gym. Kids get the gym the park. People come out of town play baseball. They have concerts, free concerts. They have free food with the concerts. They paint faces. They have artists come in. They have dancers coming. They have leagues. They teach you how to play music. They teach you how to read music. They have swimming they have swimming classes. That Park was amazing, but you and had a great staff of young people. You never saw them yelling at the kids. I never saw kids cursing or in fights. The kids were happy. The people were happy. You see, they come in with all the stress it Exodus so people can live together, and people want to pretend that United States is too big with too many different religions cultures. Is that, oh, you talking about another country? That's not true. People who live together, if they're gainfully employed, have answers to all the social stressors. For example, not just a place to live, a good job, a good school. Altadena school supposedly, were not good, but you could find a good school in Altadena, and they were constantly getting better. Okay, six kids went to UCLA down the street at Muir high. I miss unheard from from school in a community like that.

Zandra Polard 28:21
Well, so much information. I want to thank you for educating us on the history of Altadena. You gave us so much. So if anyone missed any portion of this broadcast, you can find it on Amazon, Google, Apple, any of your major podcast platforms. It's where I am with Zandra. Thank you. We're going to be here next week. We're going to continue the conversation. Tune in next week. I'm here every Saturday at 7:30am this is Zandra. It's where I am. Thank you for tuning in. Bye. Bye, you.