A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
This week, Nithya Raman, the progressive Los Angeles city council member, edged out reality TV star Spencer Pratt in the LA mayoral race, challenging incumbent Karen Bass. A constant topic of accountability in this race remains, and that is, who is responsible for the aftermath of the Palisades fires of 2025, and how will the city rebuild ahead of the 2028 Olympics set to take place in Los Angeles? CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti was on the ground during the worst of the fires.
JONATHAN VIGLIOTTI: I have responded to countless fires. And I have never responded to a fire when I entered town and already there was chaos.
MARTÍNEZ: In a new book titled "Torched," Vigliotti details the early hours of the fire when residents found themselves evacuating their homes without a plan.
VIGLIOTTI: I remember looking around, taking stock, not seeing a single firefighter, a single first responder there on the scene.
MARTÍNEZ: We recently spoke about his book and the political fallout following those catastrophic first days.
VIGLIOTTI: In the aftermath, our elected officials, from Mayor Karen Bass to Governor Gavin Newsom, have struggled with delivering a clear message as to what went wrong.
MARTÍNEZ: Jonathan, the book focuses on Los Angeles, but you've also reported on the fires in Maui and the effects of climate change around the U.S. Are politics and policy just too slow to adapt to what people need now when it comes to climate change?
VIGLIOTTI: Politics and policy are certainly too slow to adapt. And I also think politics and the optics of messing something up are also impacting our ability, our leaders' ability to confront accountability, to recognize where there were mistakes made and to clearly articulate and outline how we can operate together in the future to prevent history from repeating itself. And what is very clear from the fire experts I speak with, even though we have a climate change issue, there are things that we could do through policy and through simple building materials that can help us weather the future storm.
The - you know, in the aftermath, there has been this rush to rebuild. There's been this rapid push for permits to go through. Typically, after a disaster, it takes about 12 to 18 months to get permits approved. Here in Los Angeles, we're talking three months. We need to change policies so that when we rebuild, we're not rebuilding the same old way; we're building with resiliency.
MARTÍNEZ: Jonathan and I spoke before California's primary results came in, ending Spencer Pratt's mayoral run in Los Angeles. I asked Jonathan how much the politics of fire had to do with having two Republicans - Pratt and Steve Hilton - making bids in Democratic strongholds on the local and gubernatorial level.
VIGLIOTTI: I could best speak to Spencer Pratt. Spencer Pratt would not exist - he would not be a name on a ballot for people to check off had the fires not happened, but more importantly, had accountability taken place shortly thereafter. He lost his home. His parents lost their homes. I remember back then, he was one of those voices that crossed my path on social media that was asking really tough questions. He never got answers to those questions, and in the frustration of the lack of answers to those questions, and he chose to run for mayor.
MARTÍNEZ: For the longest time, wildfires, especially in California, have been seen as more of a rural issue than an urban issue because in watching what happened in Palisades, I almost feel like the Palisades Fire became that monster that finally breached the walls of the fortress. Now, all of a sudden, homes in these urban areas are burning down. When it comes to that idea, do you think Palisades has changed the game in a way that I don't know if we can ever go back?
VIGLIOTTI: What you're describing is habitat change - how where and how we build impacts the environment around us. And more and more in California, where affordable housing, available housing is slim to none, we are seeing a spike in communities breaking ground in areas where wildfire comes and feeds every single season. It's what's known as the wildland-urban interface - the WUI. In the past 20 years, there's been a surge - about 160% - in building in these areas. Ninety-five percent of fires are human-caused. That's according to CAL FIRE. Most of them are unintentional. Some of them are arson.
We're being outpaced currently by extreme weather fueled by climate change. We have fewer firehouses today than we had in the 1960s, and the population has nearly doubled since then. There needs to be a holistic approach to how and where we build and to how we provide safety.
MARTÍNEZ: And here's the other thing, too, is that it would be very difficult to rebuild after a fire like Palisades if there wasn't any attention being put on the area. But in 2028, the Olympics - the world is going to be in Los Angeles. How is that event impacting the way Los Angeles rebuilds? Because now it's - there's a ticking clock on this.
VIGLIOTTI: Yeah. There is a ticking clock. The rebuild is tethered directly to the Olympic torch. The day after the Palisades Fire sparked, on January 8, Mayor Bass arrived back in Los Angeles and toured Pacific Palisades with Governor Newsom. The fire was still burning. Homes were still being lost. Businesses were still being destroyed. Lives were still being claimed, and yet they were there on the ground. Why were they there? According to my sourcing, to specifically address 2028 and the Olympics. Both of them knew that losing the Palisades would be damaging to their career, but to lose the Olympics would be game over.
And at the time, that was something that was being discussed. Close advisers to the president were pushing him to move the Olympics elsewhere. The late Charlie Kirk was among those people that was very vocal about the need to possibly take the Olympics to another state. The governor and the mayor were very well aware of this. And what we're really seeing right now is rebuilding really according to the blueprints that we've been using all this time and blueprints that quickly catched fire when the flames arrived.
MARTÍNEZ: Jonathan Vigliotti is a correspondent with CBS News. His new book is "Torched: How A City Was Left To Burn, And The Olympic Rush To Rebuild L.A." Jonathan, thanks a lot.
VIGLIOTTI: A, thank you so much for having me.
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