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The John Batchelor Show

PREVIEW - WILDFIRES: LA Colleague Jeff Bliss, reporting on the catastrophe, recalls when he was inside a house surrounded by wildfires rolling toward him. More details tonight.

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Books, Arts, News, Society & Culture

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2025

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

PREVIEW - WILDFIRES: LA Colleague Jeff Bliss, reporting on the catastrophe, recalls when he was inside a house surrounded by wildfires rolling toward him. More details tonight.
1897 LA

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is John Batchel. Speaking with my good colleague Jeff Bliss, Pacific Watch, about the fires in Los Angeles.

0:08.8

Overwhelmingly tragic. At the same time, Jeff had told me that once upon a time when he was a younger man,

0:15.4

he was inside a house with flames closing in on him. He and a colleague had gone in to rescue some people who had already

0:21.6

found an escape. And I asked Jeff to remember for us what it was like to be inside the house

0:28.9

and the house creaking and shaking. Jeff is very explicit here of what it feels like, what it

0:36.8

felt like to him and how he has flashbacks

0:38.9

when he sees on television, the flames that we're watching in California.

0:43.7

Here's Jeff Bliss on, surrounded by fire, coming at you as fast as it can drive like a car.

0:51.6

More of this tonight, this is.

0:58.5

It's really something to be inside of a car. More of this tonight, it says. It's really something to be inside of a structure like that and to have a fire actually rolling towards you, where you see it coming at you very rapidly.

1:04.8

So we were asked by somebody to go into a house by a child saying that his parents were trapped

1:10.3

in there. We ran in there.

1:12.4

Had parents, we didn't know, but they'd already managed to find a way out. But we were running

1:16.5

around inside this big ranch house looking for them, shouting for them. The fire alarms, smoke

1:22.2

alarms are blaring. The house is getting hotter by the minute. You can hear the wood in the house creaking as the house kind of, you know, grows or expands with the heat.

1:32.8

And, you know, it's the thick smoke inside.

1:35.0

It's just really, it's a whole experience.

1:37.9

I mean, it was like every sense you were feeling it.

1:40.9

But then to look out the back windows and see the fire literally rolling down on

1:45.5

us. And it was moving in this gigantic line of fire at us. And the windows were shaking so

1:51.6

violently from a combination of the air pressure and the temperature. And luckily we were able to

1:56.2

be kind of a hasty retreat out of there. But it's something that you never forget. And certainly

...

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