You know, this book is a book about, it reads like a sci-fi thriller, but it's a real lived experience that we all had in L.A. as Angelinos, and I think that we'll, that everyone will experience at some point soon. It's a book about people as much as it is about politics and as is about the climate. And I just think of all the people that I met. I needed this book so badly for myself because it was such a traumatizing thing that I think I'd probably

still have some form of, if not diagnosable PTSD. Like, this was a collective trauma that we all

experienced together.

Hello, and welcome to Why Is This Happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes. You know, it was only a year ago that Los Angeles was devastated by some of the worst wildfires in recent recorded history.

It feels like another era.

It feels like I can't believe it was only a year ago, but there was a lot about it that

has stuck with me. Partly, it was the first, it was kind of the first introduction to the Trump

second term, even though he wasn't yet president because he was the incoming president.

Everybody was in a kind of state of shock and depression and stupor. I mean, people that aren't big Donald Trump fans.

And he was just unfathomably gross and reckless about it.

And all of the traits that we've come to expect in him and seen under a crisis, making up lies, blaming people, berating people, not doing anything helpful, looking to sort of distance

himself from blame. It's also a climate event in a time when we have a administration that

is dead set on accelerating and worsening the climate crisis, cutting money to mitigate the climate

crisis, trying to basically subsidize coal so that we burn more of it.

And also it was just a profoundly intense wrenching human tragedy. I learned a lot about a bunch of

different communities in Los Angeles I'd never learned about. I learned about the geography

and the sort of weather conditions and about the heroism of the people that tried to fight it.

And it was a sort of incredible moment and came and went.

And like so many things that we cover in the news, the news cycle moves so fast that you move on to the next thing.

And you're left with a bunch of unresolved questions and storylines and things that you want to know.

And so I was so excited to get my hands a few weeks ago on the new

New York Times bestselling book, Firestorm, the great Los Angeles fire and America's New Age disaster

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