Daily Signal Podcast: How California’s Incompetence After Wildfires Woke a Sleeping Giant

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Ricochet

News, Politics

4.4 • 651 Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s been one year since California’s Pacific Palisades fires, and “not enough has happened” to rebuild communities. “Mayors and towns are struggling” to get Sacramento to help rebuild these communities as was promised. Elaine Culotti, known as the “Lipstick Farmer,” discusses the aftermath of the Pacific Palisades fires in her first podcast episode for The […]

Transcript

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0:00.0	As it sits, the Pacific Palisades has lost about 7,000 structures, of which about 180-ish permits have been issued.
0:07.5	There'll probably be a mad push out to get some more so that those numbers look better, but at the end of the day, it's not going to work.
0:13.7	Malibu, unfortunately, is so far behind.
0:16.5	It looks like PCH is not going to be rebuilt any time in the future.
0:20.2	What does this mean? Well, sadly,
0:21.6	to me, it means that it's going to take a minute for my town and our community to come back as a
0:27.4	community. And this should not be the case. Hi, my name is Elaine Collotti, also known as the
0:32.9	lipstick farmer. I am presenting my first podcast for The Daily Signal. The subject of the podcast today
0:41.4	is the Pacific Palisades celebration of the one-year anniversary of the fires. Now, I'm not
0:48.5	calling them a celebration, but some people are. We are about to be descended upon here in the Pacific Palisades and in California
0:56.7	on January 7th by media from all across America. I've had multiple phone calls from different media
1:04.6	outlets asking if I had a place where they could post up and where they could spread the news
1:08.6	about what's happened and what has not happened in the Pacific Palisades. I'm here to tell you, not enough has happened. I'd like to just
1:17.4	kind of give everyone a rundown so you know what to expect, and then I'd like to give you my take
1:22.2	on what I think this means for California going forward. So as it sits, the Pacific Palisades has lost about 7,000
1:29.5	structures, of which about 180-ish permits have been issued. There'll probably be a mad push out to get
1:36.3	some more so that those numbers look better, but at the end of the day, it's not going to work.
1:41.2	We also have Altadena, which has a little bit more permits, but it's also a bigger
1:46.7	area. And in addition to that, the houses are smaller and they are easier to permit than the more
1:51.9	complex houses on the hillsides by the ocean. Malibu, unfortunately, is so far behind. And this is a
1:59.4	product of being on the water and not having any sewage
2:03.3	that has been there historically. Instead, it's been septic. And septic tanks, they rot. And then
	...

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