I'm Flora Lichtenen, and you're listening to Science Friday.

A year ago this week, two fires broke out in Los Angeles that became one of the most

destructive urban wildfires in recent history. Today, we'll hear about a community brigade

that is taking firefighting into their own hands through a technique called home hardening.

Here to tell us more is journalist Adriana Cargill, host of the new podcast, The Palisades Fire from PRX and Wavemaker Media.

She embedded with this group to understand what the future of firefighting could look like.

And we have Dr. Jack Cohen, former research physical scientist with the USDA Forest Service,

who helped pioneer the science of home hardening.

I want to welcome you both to Science Friday.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you very much.

Adriana, your new series focuses on this L.A.-based group called the Community Brigade.

Introduce us to them.

Who are they?

Why did they form?

Yeah.

So the Santa Monica Mountains and the Malibu area where they're from is an area that has had wildfires for thousands of years. The Native Americans

that live there, the early European settlers, they all learn to live with fire. And there's this

tradition in those mountains of people staying and defending when they're major wildfires.

Now, this particular group, which I follow

over six years in my previous podcast called Sandcastles podcast, they really galvanized

during the 2018 Woolsey Fire. There was a group of them led by Keegan Gibbs, who, when that fire broke out, it was actually the same day as the campfire and another fire in Ventura.

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