Jacob Margolis  00:00

Back in the spring of 2022, I took a flight from LA up to Northern California. When I landed at the tiny airport, I hopped into my rental car, drove over to a newly built suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, and parked in front of a farmhouse style home. [ambi- JM: ...a nice yard.] A rain garden out front, and embedded in the front step, a metal plate with a phoenix rising from ashes.

Jacob Margolis  00:23

Hi! [Nancy: Hi!] [Melissa Geissinger: This is Jacob.] Shoes on or off? [MG: Um, whatever.]

Jacob Margolis  00:27

I'm at home with [ambi greetings- JM: Hi!...] Melissa Geissinger, who takes me inside. Books, toys, and art projects all over, Barnaby the puppy running around, and her mom Nancy, sitting with her son Apollo, who's jumping on the couch.

Jacob Margolis  00:39

Hi, Apollo. It's really nice to meet you. I'm Jacob. What are you guys playin'? [Apollo: Um, Minecraft Dungeons?] Oh, yeah? What's your favorite thing to build in Minecraft Dungeons? [Apollo: Uh... I really like building houses.] That's awesome. [Apollo: Yeah.]

Jacob Margolis  00:57

It's not immediately obvious that this entire place was a pile of ash just five years ago. Whether you remember it or not, you've actually been here before with Melissa when she was pregnant with Apollo back in the first episode on that violent windy night in 2017, when the Tubbs Fire tore through the place we're standing now- Coffey Park. [music in]

Melissa Geissinger  01:20

The moment I stepped out the front door, there was this wall of thick, hot air that just hit, and it immediately dried out my mouth all the way down into my throat. And I couldn't breathe. I grabbed a bowl of fruit. [laughs] [wind blowing] It's- that was weird. Yeah, I was like, I might be hungry later. Li- I'm just like thinking of the baby. I called my mom, and I was sobbing, and I just remember telling her like, my house is gonna be gone. And I just remember seeing the, the skyline of Santa Rosa completely on fire. And it was so surreal. It was terrifying. [music out]

Melissa Geissinger  02:20

Do you want to um- Hey, Apollo. Do you want to help me show Jacob around the house? [Apollo: Um, yeah!] What's your favorite part of the house? [Apollo: My bedroom.] Your bedroom? [Apollo: Yeah!] Yeah... [duck under]

Jacob Margolis  02:29

Just the fact that we're now standing here watching the Apollo Show, as Melissa calls it, is a big deal.

Jacob Margolis  02:37

Ah! This is a perfect room. This looks exactly like my kid's room. What's your favorite part of your room?

Apollo  02:44

The toys.

Jacob Margolis  02:45

The toys. You have good toys. [to Melissa] What's your favorite part of the house? [Apollo talking in background]

Melissa Geissinger  02:52

Whatever room I'm in at that time. [JM: (laughing) Yeah.]

Jacob Margolis  02:55

It's been a long and difficult five years for Melissa. Shortly after the fire, she gave birth to Apollo, and he was rushed into surgery- a brand new baby who had to have his heart repaired right away. And then in the midst of the recovery, they had to evacuate from another fire at another house they were staying at. Then Melissa and her husband split up. And it was finally after three years of dealing with insurance and builders, she got the keys to her new home in May of 2020.

Melissa Geissinger  03:24

[wind chimes] There wasn't a lot that survived and the things that did that were recognizable and that already had, you know, some, you know, special significance...

Jacob Margolis  03:36

Melissa's holding on closely to things that remind her of the past that survived the fire. A stack of letters from an old friend from the UK, a signed poster from Kenny Loggins, a stuffed animal from her childhood.

Melissa Geissinger  03:49

And a stupid castle that I had, just like a little castle thing that I had just from when I was a kid and I was trying to sell it in a garage sale, but nobody wanted, so it just sat in my garage, but it survived perfectly intact. And so now it's like, one of the most precious things that I own. [duck under]

Jacob Margolis  04:07

And outside, [MG talking in background] she has this planter.

Melissa Geissinger  04:09

Do you see that? You see that planter right there? It is part of what was my grandfather's Weber. Bright red, it was bright red.

Jacob Margolis  04:20

It is now not bright red. It is black and brown and white and...

Melissa Geissinger  04:25

Yeah, and totally like melted in and, and folding in upon itself. And it's being used as a planter bed.

Jacob Margolis  04:33

It's clear Melissa is putting a lot of work into making this place feel good again. All around the neighborhood, you can see things feel pretty normal. There's play stuff for kids to run around with, and open garages full of tools for weekend projects, RVs parked in driveways. But there are little reminders of what happened, like the signs still up at the front of the community with hashtag Coffey strong. And for Melissa, there are still triggers that get her heart rate up. Like when the wind starts blowing on a dry night... [music in]

Melissa Geissinger  05:15

Anytime I see a trash can in the, [laughs] in the middle of the road when it's windy, it's like, "Mm."

Jacob Margolis  05:21

So inevitably one of the things that's gonna come up, and it comes up anytime I talk about earthquakes, anytime I talk about just anything, you know, here in California, um, do you think that the same thing that happened that night could happen again?

Melissa Geissinger  05:37

If you would have asked me the question right after the fire- If we were worried it would happen again, I would have said no. Because Tubbs was the first in a trend, and at the time, it was not a trend. It was this one-of-a-kind, perfect storm freak event that we couldn't imagine being repeated. Fast forward almost five years, and what are we looking at? We're looking at a pattern. Do I believe now that it could happen again here? Yeah.

Jacob Margolis  06:24

When you live in an area that you know could burn again, do you stay? Or do you go? What goes into that decision? And if you do stay, is there a way that you can build a home to make sure that it'll never burn down again? This is The Big Burn. I'm Jacob Margolis. [music out]

Jacob Margolis  06:54

Hey! [David Shew: Hello.] Nice to see you. [duck under]

Jacob Margolis  06:56

I wanted to know if Melissa really had anything to worry about. So I met up with a guy named David Shew, who's got this big bushy white mustache and a ton of energy, at the big park in the middle of the neighborhood.

Jacob Margolis  07:08

I'm curi- if we can walk, you know, maybe to one of these homes or just checkup whatever, and you could say, well, this is good. This is still a concern. Something like that? Um...

David Shew  07:17

Yeah, I have a- I have a thought about going over here- [JM: Okay.] a block or two. [JM: Yeah, sure.] And if you, if you want to just walk for a bit.

Jacob Margolis  07:24

Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, you couldn't pick a nicer day to go for a walk though.

David Shew  07:28

No, this is beautiful.

Jacob Margolis  07:30

David worked with Cal Fire for 32 years and then as the chief for planning and risk analysis for the State Fire Marshall's Office, where he oversaw statewide fire prevention programs. Now he's a consultant, doing things like telling insurance agencies how to best prep a home so that it doesn't burn down. And as we start walking through the neighborhood, David points to the first house that we come across.

David Shew  07:51

So here at this uh, house here on the corner that we're looking at, it's a new two-story residential home uh, with some uh, nice landscaping around it. But should a future fire come in this direction, the fencing attached to the house, the landscaping, the, the bark mulch especially, uh, makes this home extremely vulnerable to ember ignitions. [duck under] [music in]

Jacob Margolis  08:22

As we keep walking, he keeps finding problems, things that could put homes at risk in another wildfire.

David Shew  08:30

There is uh, wood bark mulch covering the front lawn area. Tell me why bark mulch is a problem. Bark mulch is very fine kindling. It's very dry uh, here in California... Has new wood fencing that is attached directly to the house itself... Wood fences can act like a candlewick, where a wood fence can ignite on fire and then carry that fire directly to the house... You see the rafter tails coming out. Those features in a design of a home allow embers to have more areas that they can catch on to and ignite the structure. [music out]

Jacob Margolis  09:07

Bushes and trees pressed up right against homes that can catch on fire and burn windows and siding, exposed eaves that could trap embers, and so many wood fences.

Jacob Margolis  09:16

Would you be surprised if in the future Coffey Park burned down again, given what we're seeing here?

David Shew  09:22

Well, uh, I, I, I guess I have to say no, it wouldn't surprise me. [duck under]

Jacob Margolis  09:27

We walk block after block and see homes that David says don't have basic fire resistance. Sometimes we see one that does, but then the one next door has all the problems. If one house catches on fire, then the one next to it probably will too. There's no consistency across Coffey Park. Even with the more modern building materials, it's vulnerable.

Jacob Margolis  09:49

I'm gonna guess, want to know, like h- how could this place be allowed to be rebuilt in a way that still leaves it vulnerable to fire after what happened, after it was essentially nuked off the landscape?

David Shew  10:04

Expediency. I think um, there was a great desire to try to help people get back to their lives as quickly as possible. And the easiest way to do that is to simply recreate what you know. And it's the path of least resistance.

Jacob Margolis  10:30

There are different sets of building standards for communities, depending on the perceived fire risk. If you're in a very high-risk area, you're required to do things like maintain vegetation by as much as 100 feet from your home. But Coffey Park, where we are now, was not rebuilt in accordance with all those strict rules. It didn't have to be because according to fire risk maps from both the state and Santa Rosa, it's not in a very high fire hazard severity zone even though in the Tubbs Fire, 1300 structures burned down in Coffey Park. The city could have required Coffey Park to be built to stricter building codes. It did not.

David Shew  11:09

The standard word on the street is that they feel that it was, more or less, a one-time freak wind event that'll never happen again. And they feel like they went through the trauma of the fire when it occurred here. Uh, but it's over now, and they don't ever have to worry about it again. And from the direction that we see fire behavior growing, I think I couldn't disagree with that perspective more. [laughs] [duck under]

Jacob Margolis  11:43

Two years after Tubbs, Coffey Park had to be evacuated again when the Kincade Fire burned nearby. David says requiring simple things like not allowing flammable wood fences to be right up against homes and building defensible space into landscaping could go a long way.

David Shew  12:00

We've hit the tipping point. Now we have to really get serious and make these changes. And the sad answer to that question is that we're apparently not there yet. At what point do we reach some sort of acceptance of 10,000 homes being lost per year? Um, I'm, I'm not sure- That's very difficult to think that that could become normal.

Jacob Margolis  12:28

Yeah. Um, what do you still need to fix on your home that you embarrassingly haven't changed yet when it comes to wildfire up in- you live up in Napa?

David Shew  12:36

[laughs] My wood fences? Uh- [laughs harder]

Jacob Margolis  12:39

You're killing me! You're walked- We just walked around this whole neighborhood and you're telling me about your wood fences.

David Shew  12:44

Ah, yes. I have wood fences. Um, no, I'm not immune from this at all, but I don't have any bark mulch landscaping, I can guarantee you that.

Jacob Margolis  12:51

Whether it's fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes, it's easy to look at people who live in high-risk areas and say, Why are you putting yourself in that situation? Fix your roof, get a new fence, or just leave. But then you talk to people, and the choice to live in a place like Coffey Park looks a lot more complicated.

Jacob Margolis  13:14

Why come back here after everything was just absolutely leveled by extreme fire, and decide to rebuild?

Melissa Geissinger  13:26

We were just like, okay, what are our options? And when we consulted with our insurance person, you know, he said, you can rebuild on, on the same s- site, and they pay like a certain amount for that. Or you can buy another house, and they pay so much for that. And it's not as much. And so, [dog barking] we would be taking a significant loss if we would decide not to rebuild. We're talking, you know, the biggest investment in your life, right?

Jacob Margolis  14:04

So often, why we stay has to do with money. Melissa says that they got more money for rebuilding than they would have gotten if they just relocated. And she's lucky in many ways because lots of Californians can't get insurance that'll help them and moving somewhere else in California is tough, because housing is an unaffordable nightmare. But of course, it's not just about money. There are the intangibles too.

Melissa Geissinger  14:32

If I post on Facebook that I am having a bad day, my neighbors across the street will respond and say hey, why don't you come over for a glass of wine? And, and I'll say yes. [laughs] Just imagine a group of people who have been through this collective experience. There's just an, there's an unspoken understanding of, of the trauma, of the effort it took to come back.

Jacob Margolis  15:07

Do you ever consider leaving? Do you ever consider selling the house? Do you say, Okay, we got like five more years here or something like that, and then I'm kind of done?

Melissa Geissinger  15:14

The thought has definitely cr- crossed my mind. And, and I know I've seen neighbors talk about it too. Like if it happens again, I'm gone, I'm done, I'm leaving and, [laughs] leaving California and never looking back. And I've thought about it. You know, when, when the smoke is thick, and ash is raining down from another fire, and it's a drought and, and everything? Yeah, I mean, I, I look around sometimes and, and I think to myself, like, what's it gonna take? You know? How, how much more am I gonna tolerate before I start to think about where else would be better? But the world seems to be changing so quickly that, you know, in a, in a few years, the place you end up going could also, [pause] Oyy. You know? It's jus- [music in] [laughs] What are you gonna do?

Jacob Margolis  16:24

Melissa sounds like a lot of the people I've talked to about this. Burned out, trying to make the changes necessary to put themselves in a safer position, saving up money to do so, but also just accepting that the worst can happen. And if it does, you just have to make it through. What if though, you had the option to build a home with the explicit purpose of surviving a disaster in one of the riskiest places in Los Angeles because you think you could build it in such a way that it could be all but fireproof? Coming up, we've got the story of one Hollywood stunt man's mission to build what he thinks is a disaster proof home, and we see what we can learn from it. [music out] [break]

Jacob Margolis  17:12

One day, I was riding up Topanga Canyon on my bike, heading home from the ocean, suffering up the steep hill, when I noticed something unusual. A chunk of hillside was missing and in its place was half of a giant concrete dome. Wasn't sure what to think of it but every time I rode by, more dirt was moved, the dome was worked on, until one day it disappeared, and all that I could see from the road was the hillside again. Well, I found out recently that it's actually a house built into the side of the mountain by a stunt man who loves to tell a story. Eddie Conna.

Eddie Conna  17:51

I've been dropped off of buildings. I've been lit on fire. I've crashed cars. And then there was a couple- one of the ones I did that was kind of interesting was I went down to Texas and doubled a kid and had to be covered head to toe in live bees.

Rescue 911 Clip  18:04

[audio clip] [buzzing bee sounds] I yell to Richard, I'm being attacked by bees. Fire Chief Julio Flores took charge [honking] of the scene. They just couldn't do it. We didn't have the proper gear for what we encountered. [duck under]

Eddie Conna  18:14

What happened was we had a bee wrangler who brought some queen pheromone, and he puts these drops on my clothes, and basically the bees can smell that, and they immediately encompass me to the point where I had probably half a mil-, quarter, quarter to a half a million live bees completely on my body.

Rescue 911 Clip  18:33

[audio clip] I couldn't even see his eyes. [duck under]

Eddie Conna  18:35

And it first for about the first two minutes, I had to just sit there because your body, like you want to just scrape them all off because everything's tingling. I think I got stung about 40 or 50 times. [audio clip continues: Ahhh! Get 'em off! Ahh!]

Jacob Margolis  18:49

You didn't, after that you weren't like, y- you weren't like maybe this isn't for me?

Eddie Conna  18:53

Mmmm, no, it was one of those things. The funny thing is shortly after that, I ended up becoming a beekeeper.

Jacob Margolis  18:59

Eddie Conna's worked on Buffy, Natural Born Killers, Mr. And Mrs. Smith, Fast and Furious 4. The guy's got like 140 credits to his name.

Eddie Conna  19:08

I had a friend of mine who I grew up with who, who told me once, he said, he said what I find interesting about you is you do some of the craziest shit, but you do it in the safest way possible. And that was kind of always my mindset. Most of the stuff that we do as a stunt performer, at least the, the good stunt performers and the good stunt coordinators focus on taking something that is considered risky, and then doing everything they can to eliminate as much of that risk as possible.

Jacob Margolis  19:38

Building dome homes for Eddie is all about eliminating risk. He says he first came across the idea of a concrete shell structure back in the early 2000s when he was looking to build his first dome in another high fire risk part of LA, called Chatsworth. At the time Eddie was mostly thinking about how to save on energy. And as it turns out, thick concrete shells buried underground regulate temperature pretty well.

Eddie Conna  20:01

I saw where utility bills were going. It started with the energy efficiency. Then as I did more research, it was, oh geez, I'm building something that is also resistant to fires. It's resistant to earthquakes. It's resistant to mudslides. Um, the structural engineers were telling me that this house should be standing 2000 years from now.

Jacob Margolis  20:21

So you're like, why not build- [laughs] why in LA not build a bunker that could be-

Eddie Conna  20:26

Well, I hate the term bunker. It's not an accurate description. [JM: Okay.] It's not an accurate- [JM: Dome, sorry.] It's not an accurate description. [JM: Dome?] It's, it's a dome shaped underground house. And, and I love it. You know, it's not a bunker. It doesn't look like a bunker.

Jacob Margolis  20:39

It kinda looks like a bunker. Anyway, around 2000, Eddie begins building his first not bunker house in Chatsworth. And building a concrete dome is a bit different than building a normal house. After excavating a hillside, builders put up this big steel frame, fill it with foam and essentially blast it with layer upon layer of concrete. Then they pull out the foam and they have a shell that's more than four inches thick. They cover that shell back up with all the dirt. It took him about three years to finish the project in Chatsworth and by the end, Eddie had this big two-story home that has this normal front to it, but the rest of it is buried in the hillside. And it wasn't long before a wildfire burned through the area.

Eddie Conna  21:24

There was a massive wildfire that started on the north end of the 118, jumped the freeway, came down all the way through and burned all the way down to the ocean. And my neighborhood was actually completely threatened by this. I mean, there was a piece of me that was like, I kept telling myself, you know, you're, you're going to be okay, because three sides of the house are buried, and the top is buried. The amount of exposure you have to a fire is, is minimal. When I got up there and after the fire and realized that I was pretty much, I was unscathed, uh, it was, it was a good feeling. I mean, I realized that, that all of the trouble and fighting and you know, money spent and everything else was well worth it, that I had a, a, a you know, a property where I, I didn't have to worry about a, a fire issue.

Jacob Margolis  22:12

Eddie is so inspired by the resilience of this house that he eventually decides he wants to build another, his second dome home in a part of LA that's even more vulnerable to wildfire. Eddie wanted to move to Topanga Canyon, one of the areas that could easily one day burn violently, because wind driven fires in our steep canyons can be nearly impossible to stop. But Eddie's only gonna live there if he can do his crazy shit in the safest way possible, by building his fancy concrete dome.

Eddie Conna  22:41

Would I build a conventional house in Topanga Canyon? Absolutely not. I wouldn't build a conventional house pretty much anywhere in the US anymore. For roughly the same amount of money, you can build a house that will save you tens of thousands of dollars a year in utility costs and insurance costs, and you won't have, and you'll have a peace of mind of not having to worry about your house getting obliterated by the next natural disaster that shows up.

Jacob Margolis  23:06

All told, Eddie says he's spent $1.1 million building his second home. Almost double what he budgeted. So how'd it come out? Well, I took a trip to see for myself.

Jacob Margolis  23:20

[outdoor ambi] It's really cool. Great ocean breeze coming up this canyon too, from the ocean. I mean, I wouldn't mind living here.

Jacob Margolis  23:27

I'm in Topanga Canyon standing in the driveway of the dome home. And from the road, it looks like you're driving by a small hill like any other [ambi talking: Hi.] in the canyon. But you walk around and suddenly, you've got this face of a modern looking white home, sitting flush with the mountainside covered in giant windows. And it's really tough to find the front door.

Jacob Margolis  23:47

Am I at the right- [laughs] the right place. There's no front door because the other side is on the, is buried in the mountain. It's tucked into the hillside. The walls are all either painted concrete or stucco. There are no eaves to catch on fire. There are no vents for embers to fly into. Even the garage door, it looks like one solid wall. You could tell this place that is tucked into the hillside was clearly meant to withstand, you know, the ravages of nature and the threat of wildfire, and that is extremely cool. I mean, I guess if I had to pick a place in the middle of a place that burns, this would probably be it. You're also gonna have a great view of the fire [laughs] from on top of this hill as it burns.

Jacob Margolis  24:40

I think back to what David Shew told me as we walked around Coffey Park. Eddie's home literally doesn't have a fence or eaves to burn, no vents I could find, and around it, there's a ton of defensible space, mostly gravel and concrete, with only a couple succulents far from the foundation. If a fire did come, there's nothing close enough to the structure that might sustain a flame. And even as embers pelted the giant wall of concrete and glass, I don't see a way that they could get inside, which I did want to see as well. So I called up the guy Eddie sold the home to, Amir Mugdugov, who offered to show me around. And as soon as we walked inside the fact that this is a giant concrete dome tucked into a hillside [ambi Amir speaking] becomes immediately clear.

Jacob Margolis  25:24

So the windows are only facing out towards [Amir: Correct.] kind of this one direction, obviously, cuz there is a, a mountainside behind us that it's baked into.

Amir Mugdugov  25:32

Yes, and did you notice that um, the, um, you don't need AC, like outside it's pretty hot? [JM: Yeah.] And because it's in the hill basically, uh, you don't need AC, so it's perfect. So here is the, where you put all that stuff. Mmm-

Jacob Margolis  25:49

There's a closet, [AM: Closet.] but it, but it's like the wall is like curved and you can even see the uh, you can see like some sort of metal beam that's curved into like the top of the dome almost? [AM: Yeah...] [duck under]

Jacob Margolis  25:59

Truthfully, it is like a bunker crossed with a modern home with high end amenities and a spectacular down canyon view.

Amir Mugdugov  26:08

As I say, Jacob, I'm still, I can't believe that I got this house. I'm serious. Like, I really like I'm really in love with it.

Jacob Margolis  26:15

If you're curious what the home looks like, I've got pictures up on my Instagram @JacobMargolis. What Eddie did by building this home was try and approach the problem of risk from the outset, to try and do something different than what everyone else has been doing. And what he found was that doing something different has a cost. [music in] While his first dome home in Chatsworth took three years to build, the home in Topanga took 13 years. The whole time, he struggled with permitting and construction issues in part, he thinks, because his approach to building a home was so different than what anyone was used to. And after spending over a million dollars, he decided to sell it to recoup his costs.

Eddie Conna  26:58

By the end of the process, I wasn't sleeping. I was talking to my therapist at least a couple times a day. I was depressed. Um, it adversely affected my marriage. I was in the hospital twice with chest pains thinking I was having a heart attack, and it was stress related from dealing with this. [music out]

Jacob Margolis  27:21

These sorts of alternative approaches to housing are popping up here and there in California. For instance, in the shadow of the Camp Fire up in Paradise, some people built homes made of steel, hoping for more fire resilience. For Eddie's home, we tried to find some other examples we could compare it to, and it was a bit hard. There have been plenty of underground homes built throughout history. And in 2015, a concrete dome home in Washington state survived a wildfire while the rest of the neighborhood burned. But when it comes to Eddie's house, we won't know how it'll perform in a fire until one shows up. At the very least, it seems to meet a lot of David Shew's, recommendations: defensible space, no clear places for embers to get in. And surely, it helps that most of the house is buried beneath tons of dirt.

Eddie Conna  28:07

I think the, the message to people is this: you've gotta, you gotta look at what we've done so far and accept that it doesn't work. And you gotta look at the reality of, of the situation we're living in. [music in] This is gonna happen every year, every two or three years. We're gonna be threatened with fire on a regular basis. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when.

Jacob Margolis  28:29

It's important for us to think of alternatives when it comes to homes here in California. But building concrete domes for everyone is obviously not a feasible large-scale solution. There are bigger things to figure out. Like what do we do for all the people with houses in areas that maybe didn't show up on any fire risk map, but now might burn down? What do we do for the people who don't have money to move or retrofit? In all the reporting I've done on this, I haven't seen any good large-scale solutions. Look, learning about all the big expensive systemic challenges we're facing can make you feel small and helpless. But there are things you can do to empower yourself to take prep into your own hands. And that's what our next episode is all about. We brought in a firefighter of 30 years and talked to him about how to know when you need to evacuate, and what you should do if you're stuck inside a house when it catches on fire, and what to pack in your go bag.

Jacob Margolis  29:32

I would love it if you can kind of give me a quick assessment of, of my, my stuff that I got here.

Derek Bart  29:35

I'd give you a B plus. I would focus more on things that will sustain you.

Jacob Margolis  29:42

That's next time on The Big Burn. [music out]

Jacob Margolis  29:47

[music in] The Big Burn is created, written, reported, and hosted by me, Jacob Margolis. Shana Naomi Krochmal is our Vice President of Podcasts. Antonia Cereijido and Leo G are the executive producers for LAist Studios. Our producer is Minju Park, with additional production by Anjuli Sastry Krbecheck and Monica Bushman. Bruno Lopez-Vega is our intern. Natalie Chudnovsky is the senior producer. Editing by Meg Cramer. Fact checking by Caitlin Antonios. Professor Theresa Gregor is our Native cultural content reader. Sound design and mixing by E. Scott Kelly. Original music by Andy Clausen. Our website LAist.com is designed by Andy Cheatwood and the digital and marketing teams at LAist Studios. The marketing team of LAist Studios created our branding. Artwork for this show by Dan Carino. Thanks to the team at LAist Studios, including Taylor Coffman, Sabir Brara, Kristen Hayford, Kristen Muller, Andy Orozco, Michael Cosentino, and Leo G. Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live, the Strelow Family and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. The Big Burn is a production of LAist Studios. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. [music out]