This is Let's be clear. Who's Shannon Dorny. Hello, let's be clear listeners. I'm Rachel Darvish. I'm one of the thousands of people affected by the Pacific Palisades fires that continue to burn. I'm honored to have been invited to host this episode of Shannon Doherty's podcast. I've been a lifelong fan of hers. She was such a strong voice for women in all communities. She was never afraid to speak up. I'm not afraid to speak up either, especially when it comes to the shortfalls of the government. I'm a lawyer. I'm not a celebrity. I'm a lawyer and a mom and a resident of this town that has been ravaged by an apocalyptic fire. If you've been following the news, you may have seen a viral exchange between me and the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom. If you've been following the news, you may have seen a viral exchange that I had with the governor of California, an unplanned viral exchange with the governor of California, and when he visited my town of Pacific Palisades. This was not planned. I was in the middle of a live interview when I saw the governor and decided to ask him how he was going to help me. I've lived in Pacific Palisades since since I can remember. I was born in the USALE Hospital and my parents had come here from me Ron fifty years ago. So our first our first experiences were at the USALA campuses, and then we immediately moved to Pacific Palisades where we had a home in the Alphabet streets. That home is gone, so my childhood home is gone. I was able to see that firsthand. You never know what that is going to feel like until it really happens. And I haven't lived in that home since I was six years old, but wow, what a feeling that was to see the beginning of my life in Pacific Palisades. I was erased. Part of the reason I wanted to raise my daughter in the Palisades was because of the experiences I had at that home seven one to nine Island Street. I mean, the memories were probably the best, going up and down the street Fourth of July with our with our neighbors, something that you only find in a small town like Pacific Palisades. We don't have that in other towns in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the status of my home at this at this moment, so unfortunately, the first home I lived in burned down in the alphabet streets. Over the years, we moved a few times. I'm not sure the status of a couple of the other ones, but the house I'm living in at the moment is standing, which is a total miracle considering our neighbor and the person across the way was also burned down. I've had a couple of chances to to now experience the community right now and devastation. I don't think you have seen it. I don't think you will see it because it can be categorized probably as the worst fire I think in the history of the country, but it's not even going to do it justice because of some of the the aspects of it being on such a grand scale. We have now experienced a lot of natural disasters in California, and I think the unease I'm feeling, not just having been in this experience, is I don't know what's next, considering I don't trust how my government is handling my situation. So the fear I have is I'm sort of living in a no man's land right now. Like everyone else, if we could go back to the moment I had to I spotted the gun. You can only imagine the feeling of standing in front of your daughter's preschool that you had just dropped her off at. I had just dropped Chloe off at Methodist Preschool. I'm wearing the T shirt for the school. Dropped her off at nine am, went home and tried to sort of do what I do every morning after I drop her off. And this was the first day back to school after three weeks of holiday for the kids, so they were so excited to be back in school, and I was kind of happy to get back to a schedule again. And I mean within just a few moments, I got a notification of a fire, and as soon as I put my pen down, put the laptop down, and walked out to the front of the house, devastation was at my doorstep. And there are no feelings, no words that can describe what it feels like to one hundred percent, one hundred percent be certain that your house isn't going to be standing. That was what I felt when I walked out the front door, and I said, let's roll. We can't we can't risk it going down that hill after grabbing some artwork that my mom had done and some basics for my daughter. We had to sit in about four hours of traffic to get down the hill down to Sunset Boulevard. In the meantime, all you can think about is the fire is right behind you, and there's not a single fire truck going up the hill, and there's not any space for a fire truck to go up the hill. Having lived there my whole life, I knew that this was going to be a major disaster because there are no other ways really to get in. We saw that Palisades Drive was another disaster where people were abandoned their cars. Fortunately on the Ambonita our way down, that didn't That didn't happen. We had such great people, neighbors, local employees who were there for the day, day workers, they were directing traffic. I mean, you better believe our community came together so beautifully to get us down that hill again without a single without a single government official appearing. We didn't see a police officer, we did not see a fire truck. I all I know is I kept hearing from people up and down this line of cars there's no water, they're saying there's no water. They're saying there's no water. And the last thing I remember was we turned We tried to turn on our hoses before we left so that we can leave them for the fire department when they got there. And I'm not even sure there was water in our hoses for them to use at that point. That's why when I was in front of Methodist Preschool and I spotted the governor, no, I had no control over my desire to approach him. I had to know. And this is the guy we've elected to take care of us sky we elected to understand us through the good and the bad. We give him a lot of good. Our state is very wealthy. Our state is the fifth best economy in the world. Our state rules, our city rules. It did, But those are questions we need to dress down the line. Every time I watched the clip with the governor, I get more and more uncomfortable. It's a reminder of who to trust and who not to trust. I think I didn't necessarily vote for the governor. I didn't not vote for him. Whether he is my elected official by my vote doesn't matter. He's there. I got to take them for what he is and at that moment, and every time I keep watching this video, I am reminded that my governor lied to me, and he lied to me to my face in front of cameras. So you know, down the line, if he wants to say he didn't lie, I think we have the evidence to the points to the contrary. After the viral moment, I did exchange information with the Governor's office, and I've read some reports that the governor's office has assisted me in some ways, and I can guarantee you that I've gotten zero assistance from the governor's office. I have requested that the governor include me in any communications or interactions with the President. That's never happened. I don't believe him. So I was asking for somebody who has some credibility to be present when he's having these conversations with the White House. I'm a mom. I want to know. I've got There's so many of us out there that are wondering what the heck we're going to do with our kids. We are they going to go to school? Are they going to go to school? Every single school in our in our town burned down, And when the governor is looking at me, telling me he has four kids, and that somehow that is that is the reason I'm supposed to believe him that he feels for me with while he's wearing aviator sunglasses and I can't even see his eyes. I wonder if he would be different if his house had burned down. I wonder if it really takes, you know, personal personal loss to be able to commiserate with someone or at least be able to show your your concern, because I didn't get any of that from him, And now here we are, what week a week later, almost, and the clip may be viral, but there's nothing. There's nothing that's come out of it for me as far as what kind of answers I'm able to get. The most recent communicat I had with the Governor's office included me requesting that I be present when the President elect visits, because I believe the governor had extended an invitation to him. And my response was the response that I got was that they don't even know if he's coming. So I have a couple of responses, but all I've gotten really are copy and paste you know, would you like to go to this shelter? Sort of offers from them every time I watch the video clip, it reminds me of, you know, the difference between being a man and a woman in this society. I I don't know if the governor would have lied to a man to his face. Would he have Is that something he might have done? I don't know. I felt very vulnerable at that moment. Here I am standing in front of my children's preschool and this man is looking at a mother and lying to her. Still sits with me. I also did request the governor contact me personally. That's never happened to date. There are a lot of misconceptions about Pacific Palisades, but I'd like to share something really dear to me. When I was about ten years old, there was something in the Pacific Palisades that we'd do every October Halloween ish, and it's called Moonlight Madness. And they would shut down the streets that were around the village in the Palisades, which is currently the Cruso built Village, and all the stores would be open and we would be the streets would close, stores would open late till ten PM, and we'd walk around and there was this beautiful shirt that one of the stores sold that I bought as a ten year old and it said, if you're rich, you live in Beverly Hills. If you're famous, you live in Malibu. But if you're lucky, you live in Pacific Palisades. And we had been so lucky for so long. We will continue to be lucky. There is a misconception that everybody in Pacific Palisades is rich. You don't know the struggles that I'm listening to that I'm personally going through in order to know what our next move is a lot of people in Pacific Palisades were dropped by their insurance company just prior to this incident. We have a letter that is informing us that we will be dropped as of March. So where does that put us at the moment? Ensured? But as of March, obviously we will join the ranks of the others that have to go towards the California Fair Plan for additional coverage. What's the goal for me and my neighbors. We need to come back and we need to come back strong. We have a future in this city. We built it and we can build it again. We just need the government to do the right thing. I think one of the things I've whittled down at this point is is that I'm not interested in necessarily name calling as much as I want to. But what we know is that there are two people that are sort of irrelevant to the solution. And when you have a governor who is making deals with electric companies that cause fires in order to help them out of bankruptcy so that they don't pay they're victims. It scares me. It scares me to think what we're going to be getting, what we're entitled to to be able to recover from this, because this is going to break a lot of people. So don't get it in your head that we're sitting here able to get through this with any sort of ease. That's not the case. I'm not a Democrat or a Republican, and I hope that in any disaster situation, people can consider themselves human beings before they can consider themselves member of any party. Democrats are helping Republicans, Republicans are helping Democrats. That's the reality of this situations. It's the beauty of it, and I hope that this is a lesson for the future. Karen Bass promised us that she would not be taking international trips that was a promise that she made, an election promise, startening to know that she violated that with a trip to Africa in the midst of her burning down. So it was West Africa versus West Los Angeles. And I don't know what part of how quickly she made it back was supposed to make me feel better when this was a storm brewing that she knew about well before she left. We have questions here about LEDWP. We have questions here about Karen Bass personally, personally, whether she has liability or not. Obviously we know about immunity that she would be that she would be protected from. But these decisions that were made were the were the reasons why this fire was not controlled in the way that it could have been. When you have fire hydrants that are empty, when you have aqueducts that are empty, and when these have been empty for long enough where somebody should have known better, what can you do other than sit and write it out. I guess and and hope that and hope that these poor firefighters can fight fire without water. That's what we did. We watched television all night, hoping and praying that somehow the miracle of no water would would solve this fire. We deserve better. Guys, deserve so much better than to know that you're your mayor left town knowing that the major aqueduct was empty, knowing that the water pressure in these hydrants would be affected, and not and knowing this for a long time, knowing that her budgetary cuts would have affected the manpower that we need to fight these kind of fires. We've called these the Polisades Fire and the Eaten Fire, and we've labeled them by the communities that they've been that they've start it in. I submit to you that we need to give the governor and the mayor the legacies that they deserve. Why don't we name them after them? These major catastrophic events deserve the legacy of the Newsome name and the basqu name, so that Californians and Los Angeleans don't make the same mistakes again. We need to turn the state around. And it doesn't mean voting for a different party. It doesn't mean voting for a different anything. It means voting for a different person. And we need better options. I think a lot of people think their civics duties and when they graduate from high school or after sixth grade or whenever it is they teach au civis. I don't even remember, to be honest, but I think we need to realize that you've got to pay attention, and if you don't, and if you fall asleep, these are the kinds of things that seem to happen to us. So me, you, all of us, let's not make the same mistakes twice, because we can do better and we can hopefully get rid of irrelevant people that are not helping us move forward. One of the things I will never forget is when I read that Shannon Doherty had said when she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I remember her saying that she would wake up some days and say why me? And then some days she would wake up and say why not me? Wow? Can you say that? It takes a lot. It takes a lot for someone to be able to say something like that, And it's an honor to be able to speak to you on a platform where somebody would be able to self sacrifice like that, Why not me? I became a mother a little bit later in life than maybe I was supposed to, But when I did, it woke up something and meet it. I'd never even k you existed, and now my biggest concern is where does my daughter go from here? We all know children are the future, and if we mess up this generation, I don't think we're going to have an earth anymore with their I don't know how much planet there's going to be left to burn by mismanagement and incompetence. So my concern is that my daughter stay in school. I'm concerned that she interacts with her friends. I'm concerned that she's not worried about why a house or why a house may burn down, or why the aqueducts aren't full, or why the fire hydrants weren't able to get enough water to help her friends home not burned down. I have to tell her why we can't play at Brennan's house. I have to tell her why we can't go to Amalia's house. I have to tell her why we can't go to Charlotte's house. And I don't want to have to tell that to any three year old, that we can't go to your friend's house because it burned down, and we can't go to our house because it almost burned down. We can't go to our house because it's dangerous and toxic to Gobert. We'll make it work. Adults will make it work. We'll find a place to sleep, We'll do all that. But I got to find a life again for my child who is now displaced. And my child can now say that she is a victim of the homeless policies, the holistic homeless policies of the Mayor of Los Angeles. I want to thank iHeartRadio for inviting me here. I want to thank the legacy that Shannon Doherty has left. I want everyone to sometimes in their lives, ask that question that she did. Sometimes you ask why me, and then sometimes you ask why not me? And that will ground you. If you want to help those who have lost everything, there are many ways to do that. You can go to Dreamcenter dot org, the California Fire Foundation, and the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, just to name a few. Please stay safe and thank you.

This is Let's be clear. Who's Shannon Dorny. Hello, let's be clear listeners. I'm Rachel Darvish. I'm one of the thousands of people affected by the Pacific Palisades fires that continue to burn. I'm honored to have been invited to host this episode of Shannon Doherty's podcast. I've been a lifelong fan of hers. She was such a strong voice for women in all communities. She was never afraid to speak up. I'm not afraid to speak up either, especially when it comes to the shortfalls of the government. I'm a lawyer. I'm not a celebrity. I'm a lawyer and a mom and a resident of this town that has been ravaged by an apocalyptic fire. If you've been following the news, you may have seen a viral exchange between me and the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom. If you've been following the news, you may have seen a viral exchange that I had with the governor of California, an unplanned viral exchange with the governor of California, and when he visited my town of Pacific Palisades. This was not planned. I was in the middle of a live interview when I saw the governor and decided to ask him how he was going to help me. I've lived in Pacific Palisades since since I can remember. I was born in the USALE Hospital and my parents had come here from me Ron fifty years ago. So our first our first experiences were at the USALA campuses, and then we immediately moved to Pacific Palisades where we had a home in the Alphabet streets. That home is gone, so my childhood home is gone. I was able to see that firsthand. You never know what that is going to feel like until it really happens. And I haven't lived in that home since I was six years old, but wow, what a feeling that was to see the beginning of my life in Pacific Palisades. I was erased. Part of the reason I wanted to raise my daughter in the Palisades was because of the experiences I had at that home seven one to nine Island Street. I mean, the memories were probably the best, going up and down the street Fourth of July with our with our neighbors, something that you only find in a small town like Pacific Palisades. We don't have that in other towns in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the status of my home at this at this moment, so unfortunately, the first home I lived in burned down in the alphabet streets. Over the years, we moved a few times. I'm not sure the status of a couple of the other ones, but the house I'm living in at the moment is standing, which is a total miracle considering our neighbor and the person across the way was also burned down. I've had a couple of chances to to now experience the community right now and devastation. I don't think you have seen it. I don't think you will see it because it can be categorized probably as the worst fire I think in the history of the country, but it's not even going to do it justice because of some of the the aspects of it being on such a grand scale. We have now experienced a lot of natural disasters in California, and I think the unease I'm feeling, not just having been in this experience, is I don't know what's next, considering I don't trust how my government is handling my situation. So the fear I have is I'm sort of living in a no man's land right now. Like everyone else, if we could go back to the moment I had to I spotted the gun. You can only imagine the feeling of standing in front of your daughter's preschool that you had just dropped her off at. I had just dropped Chloe off at Methodist Preschool. I'm wearing the T shirt for the school. Dropped her off at nine am, went home and tried to sort of do what I do every morning after I drop her off. And this was the first day back to school after three weeks of holiday for the kids, so they were so excited to be back in school, and I was kind of happy to get back to a schedule again. And I mean within just a few moments, I got a notification of a fire, and as soon as I put my pen down, put the laptop down, and walked out to the front of the house, devastation was at my doorstep. And there are no feelings, no words that can describe what it feels like to one hundred percent, one hundred percent be certain that your house isn't going to be standing. That was what I felt when I walked out the front door, and I said, let's roll. We can't we can't risk it going down that hill after grabbing some artwork that my mom had done and some basics for my daughter. We had to sit in about four hours of traffic to get down the hill down to Sunset Boulevard. In the meantime, all you can think about is the fire is right behind you, and there's not a single fire truck going up the hill, and there's not any space for a fire truck to go up the hill. Having lived there my whole life, I knew that this was going to be a major disaster because there are no other ways really to get in. We saw that Palisades Drive was another disaster where people were abandoned their cars. Fortunately on the Ambonita our way down, that didn't That didn't happen. We had such great people, neighbors, local employees who were there for the day, day workers, they were directing traffic. I mean, you better believe our community came together so beautifully to get us down that hill again without a single without a single government official appearing. We didn't see a police officer, we did not see a fire truck. I all I know is I kept hearing from people up and down this line of cars there's no water, they're saying there's no water. They're saying there's no water. And the last thing I remember was we turned We tried to turn on our hoses before we left so that we can leave them for the fire department when they got there. And I'm not even sure there was water in our hoses for them to use at that point. That's why when I was in front of Methodist Preschool and I spotted the governor, no, I had no control over my desire to approach him. I had to know. And this is the guy we've elected to take care of us sky we elected to understand us through the good and the bad. We give him a lot of good. Our state is very wealthy. Our state is the fifth best economy in the world. Our state rules, our city rules. It did, But those are questions we need to dress down the line. Every time I watched the clip with the governor, I get more and more uncomfortable. It's a reminder of who to trust and who not to trust. I think I didn't necessarily vote for the governor. I didn't not vote for him. Whether he is my elected official by my vote doesn't matter. He's there. I got to take them for what he is and at that moment, and every time I keep watching this video, I am reminded that my governor lied to me, and he lied to me to my face in front of cameras. So you know, down the line, if he wants to say he didn't lie, I think we have the evidence to the points to the contrary. After the viral moment, I did exchange information with the Governor's office, and I've read some reports that the governor's office has assisted me in some ways, and I can guarantee you that I've gotten zero assistance from the governor's office. I have requested that the governor include me in any communications or interactions with the President. That's never happened. I don't believe him. So I was asking for somebody who has some credibility to be present when he's having these conversations with the White House. I'm a mom. I want to know. I've got There's so many of us out there that are wondering what the heck we're going to do with our kids. We are they going to go to school? Are they going to go to school? Every single school in our in our town burned down, And when the governor is looking at me, telling me he has four kids, and that somehow that is that is the reason I'm supposed to believe him that he feels for me with while he's wearing aviator sunglasses and I can't even see his eyes. I wonder if he would be different if his house had burned down. I wonder if it really takes, you know, personal personal loss to be able to commiserate with someone or at least be able to show your your concern, because I didn't get any of that from him, And now here we are, what week a week later, almost, and the clip may be viral, but there's nothing. There's nothing that's come out of it for me as far as what kind of answers I'm able to get. The most recent communicat I had with the Governor's office included me requesting that I be present when the President elect visits, because I believe the governor had extended an invitation to him. And my response was the response that I got was that they don't even know if he's coming. So I have a couple of responses, but all I've gotten really are copy and paste you know, would you like to go to this shelter? Sort of offers from them every time I watch the video clip, it reminds me of, you know, the difference between being a man and a woman in this society. I I don't know if the governor would have lied to a man to his face. Would he have Is that something he might have done? I don't know. I felt very vulnerable at that moment. Here I am standing in front of my children's preschool and this man is looking at a mother and lying to her. Still sits with me. I also did request the governor contact me personally. That's never happened to date. There are a lot of misconceptions about Pacific Palisades, but I'd like to share something really dear to me. When I was about ten years old, there was something in the Pacific Palisades that we'd do every October Halloween ish, and it's called Moonlight Madness. And they would shut down the streets that were around the village in the Palisades, which is currently the Cruso built Village, and all the stores would be open and we would be the streets would close, stores would open late till ten PM, and we'd walk around and there was this beautiful shirt that one of the stores sold that I bought as a ten year old and it said, if you're rich, you live in Beverly Hills. If you're famous, you live in Malibu. But if you're lucky, you live in Pacific Palisades. And we had been so lucky for so long. We will continue to be lucky. There is a misconception that everybody in Pacific Palisades is rich. You don't know the struggles that I'm listening to that I'm personally going through in order to know what our next move is a lot of people in Pacific Palisades were dropped by their insurance company just prior to this incident. We have a letter that is informing us that we will be dropped as of March. So where does that put us at the moment? Ensured? But as of March, obviously we will join the ranks of the others that have to go towards the California Fair Plan for additional coverage. What's the goal for me and my neighbors. We need to come back and we need to come back strong. We have a future in this city. We built it and we can build it again. We just need the government to do the right thing. I think one of the things I've whittled down at this point is is that I'm not interested in necessarily name calling as much as I want to. But what we know is that there are two people that are sort of irrelevant to the solution. And when you have a governor who is making deals with electric companies that cause fires in order to help them out of bankruptcy so that they don't pay they're victims. It scares me. It scares me to think what we're going to be getting, what we're entitled to to be able to recover from this, because this is going to break a lot of people. So don't get it in your head that we're sitting here able to get through this with any sort of ease. That's not the case. I'm not a Democrat or a Republican, and I hope that in any disaster situation, people can consider themselves human beings before they can consider themselves member of any party. Democrats are helping Republicans, Republicans are helping Democrats. That's the reality of this situations. It's the beauty of it, and I hope that this is a lesson for the future. Karen Bass promised us that she would not be taking international trips that was a promise that she made, an election promise, startening to know that she violated that with a trip to Africa in the midst of her burning down. So it was West Africa versus West Los Angeles. And I don't know what part of how quickly she made it back was supposed to make me feel better when this was a storm brewing that she knew about well before she left. We have questions here about LEDWP. We have questions here about Karen Bass personally, personally, whether she has liability or not. Obviously we know about immunity that she would be that she would be protected from. But these decisions that were made were the were the reasons why this fire was not controlled in the way that it could have been. When you have fire hydrants that are empty, when you have aqueducts that are empty, and when these have been empty for long enough where somebody should have known better, what can you do other than sit and write it out. I guess and and hope that and hope that these poor firefighters can fight fire without water. That's what we did. We watched television all night, hoping and praying that somehow the miracle of no water would would solve this fire. We deserve better. Guys, deserve so much better than to know that you're your mayor left town knowing that the major aqueduct was empty, knowing that the water pressure in these hydrants would be affected, and not and knowing this for a long time, knowing that her budgetary cuts would have affected the manpower that we need to fight these kind of fires. We've called these the Polisades Fire and the Eaten Fire, and we've labeled them by the communities that they've been that they've start it in. I submit to you that we need to give the governor and the mayor the legacies that they deserve. Why don't we name them after them? These major catastrophic events deserve the legacy of the Newsome name and the basqu name, so that Californians and Los Angeleans don't make the same mistakes again. We need to turn the state around. And it doesn't mean voting for a different party. It doesn't mean voting for a different anything. It means voting for a different person. And we need better options. I think a lot of people think their civics duties and when they graduate from high school or after sixth grade or whenever it is they teach au civis. I don't even remember, to be honest, but I think we need to realize that you've got to pay attention, and if you don't, and if you fall asleep, these are the kinds of things that seem to happen to us. So me, you, all of us, let's not make the same mistakes twice, because we can do better and we can hopefully get rid of irrelevant people that are not helping us move forward. One of the things I will never forget is when I read that Shannon Doherty had said when she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I remember her saying that she would wake up some days and say why me? And then some days she would wake up and say why not me? Wow? Can you say that? It takes a lot. It takes a lot for someone to be able to say something like that, And it's an honor to be able to speak to you on a platform where somebody would be able to self sacrifice like that, Why not me? I became a mother a little bit later in life than maybe I was supposed to, But when I did, it woke up something and meet it. I'd never even k you existed, and now my biggest concern is where does my daughter go from here? We all know children are the future, and if we mess up this generation, I don't think we're going to have an earth anymore with their I don't know how much planet there's going to be left to burn by mismanagement and incompetence. So my concern is that my daughter stay in school. I'm concerned that she interacts with her friends. I'm concerned that she's not worried about why a house or why a house may burn down, or why the aqueducts aren't full, or why the fire hydrants weren't able to get enough water to help her friends home not burned down. I have to tell her why we can't play at Brennan's house. I have to tell her why we can't go to Amalia's house. I have to tell her why we can't go to Charlotte's house. And I don't want to have to tell that to any three year old, that we can't go to your friend's house because it burned down, and we can't go to our house because it almost burned down. We can't go to our house because it's dangerous and toxic to Gobert. We'll make it work. Adults will make it work. We'll find a place to sleep, We'll do all that. But I got to find a life again for my child who is now displaced. And my child can now say that she is a victim of the homeless policies, the holistic homeless policies of the Mayor of Los Angeles. I want to thank iHeartRadio for inviting me here. I want to thank the legacy that Shannon Doherty has left. I want everyone to sometimes in their lives, ask that question that she did. Sometimes you ask why me, and then sometimes you ask why not me? And that will ground you. If you want to help those who have lost everything, there are many ways to do that. You can go to Dreamcenter dot org, the California Fire Foundation, and the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, just to name a few. Please stay safe and thank you.