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The lessons — and questions — that come with recovering from a fire

The lessons — and questions — that come with recovering from a fire

Update: 2025-01-30

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Fires in Southern California this month destroyed at least 16,000 structures. More than 9,000 of them were lost in and around Altadena — and that included the home of “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio. David and his wife, Mary, provide a dispatch from the site and share what they’re learning as they look to rebuild. But first: what Big Tech CEOs are saying about competing with the Chinese AI platform DeepSeek.

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Transcript

00:00:00

A strong humps game needs a strong wing game.

00:00:04

Add Popeye's wings to your game day spread, and the crew won't just be cheering, they'll be salivating.

00:00:10

With eight bold, crispy Louisiana flavors to satisfy everyone's taste buds, our wing game is strong enough to always get you the W.

00:00:18

Order bone in or bone less for your next watch party.

00:00:21

Someone just wrapped up the title of the most valuable host.

00:00:29

An inside personal look at trying to recover from a fire.

00:00:36

From Marketplace, I'm Sir Brebeneshor, in for David Brunkaczio.

00:00:39

First an update on AI.

00:00:41

After their stocks took a weapon, big tech companies have responded to worries around their competitiveness.

00:00:47

This is after Chinese AI startup DeepSeek made major AI advances for a fraction of what U.S.

00:00:53

companies have invested.

00:00:54

CEOs of meta and Microsoft address the concerns as their company's reported results, Marketplace's Nova Saffo has more.

00:01:00

The message from Chief Executives of Microsoft and meta, yes, DeepSeek did come up with some efficiency innovations, but that's not necessarily a surprise, says Microsoft,

00:01:10

such in Adela.

00:01:11

We ourselves have been seeing significant efficiency gains in both training and inference for years now.

00:01:18

Training and inference are two types of AI computations.

00:01:21

Experts are undecided on all of DeepSeek's claims, but Wall Street is still wondering, if AI is getting cheaper, do we really need to spend so much money on new computer farms?

00:01:32

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg says, yes, the big players have to.

00:01:35

We're just serving billions of people, which is different from, okay, you start to pre-trained a model and that model is sort of agnostic to how many people are using it.

00:01:44

In short, DeepSeek and meta are apples and oranges.

00:01:47

Wall Street analysts, though, remain skeptical.

00:01:49

I'm Nova Saffo from Marketplace.

00:01:52

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00:02:34

The Southern California fires this month destroyed at least 16,000 structures.

00:02:39

More than 9,000 of them were lost in and around the town of Altadena, about an hour northeast of downtown Los Angeles.

00:02:47

They're mostly homes, and one of them was my colleague David Broncoccio's.

00:02:52

He and Mary Broncoccio had owned the place for just two months and a day before it was gone.

00:02:58

He got what they are learning through all of this might be useful to others.

00:03:01

[MUSIC]

00:03:05

Until this moment, we'd only seen photos.

00:03:08

[MUSIC]

00:03:11

That's hard to look at.

00:03:13

The footprint of what was an 1,100 square foot two bedroom cottage is now a pond of fluffy ash, marshmallow-sized lumps of black char, and a chimney.

00:03:23

What's that?

00:03:24

The post box from the mail inside it burned up.

00:03:29

It's all just asses who knows what it was.

00:03:34

The D to the house, house on the left, house on the right, also flattened.

00:03:41

Now we get others have it worse.

00:03:43

We have some insurance, hopefully our kids are all self-sufficient adults living elsewhere.

00:03:49

And since we only moved in before Thanksgiving, many irreplaceable things were being boxed for transit, but not here yet.

00:03:56

But among the things that were here was a copper flask of water I got from the mouth of the sacred Ganges River, while reporting from the Himalayas years ago.

00:04:04

We placed it right here, so there was a mantle here over the fireplace.

00:04:09

That's all burned up.

00:04:10

What I'm looking for is not going to be here.

00:04:13

If we can get the money together, among the many questions keeping me awake is where are we going to find a builder, 16,000 places burned here this month.

00:04:21

When I know that replacing them will create enormous new demand up against limited supply for contractors.

00:04:28

Then I learned the reality of that business.

00:04:31

Most people are remodellers.

00:04:32

What lead Delawari is a contractor and developer who does know how to build from the ground up and has been sharing what he knows.

00:04:40

Surprisingly, most contractors don't know the new construction side of it or the understanding of how to build with scale.

00:04:47

Scale, meaning someone with the skills to spin the plates on several builds at the same time because I should rest assured, any contractor interested in my modest job will be multitasking.

00:04:58

If they're helping one or two or three people in your neighborhood, making sure that they have the know how to build that large of a property with that many people.

00:05:08

Delawari had to flee his Altadena home with his wife and kids when he saw the hillside go red.

00:05:14

He will rebuild, but even a person of this skill, mortgage broker turned contractor and developer doesn't know what it'll cost.

00:05:23

I just found out my slab is broken, so I have to pull that out.

00:05:27

That price per square footage is going to easily change.

00:05:31

To get a long view from a wildfire survivor, I turned to Jeff Chemnick who runs a nursery in private garden in Santa Barbara.

00:05:38

You know the Allo plant?

00:05:39

His place is called Allos in Wonderland.

00:05:42

His house was one of 220 lost in a fire 16 years ago and he rebuilt something more fire hearty in what's seen his record time.

00:05:50

Two years, almost to the day.

00:05:53

That stopped me.

00:05:54

Two years is fast.

00:05:56

Jeff is a botanist who'd been a contractor which helped him network for a builder.

00:05:59

Again, the goal is good contractor.

00:06:02

Sadly, several of our friends sort of fell for the smoke and mirrors of contractors from out of town that promised new building techniques,

00:06:12

cheaper prices.

00:06:13

And price is certainly a consideration, but it should not be your primary driver.

00:06:19

Did they end up with a house in the end, a deficient house or did they really get scammed and didn't end up with a house?

00:06:24

Well one of them, the contractor that he engaged is in prison.

00:06:28

Meanwhile, back at the property, we need power in so many ways.

00:06:32

I look around and now all I see is all the hard work it's going to take to bring it back.

00:06:40

And I'm wondering if I still have it in me to do it, if I'm still young enough to do it.

00:06:47

What do you blame, the infernal wind, climate change?

00:06:51

Some neighbors are suing the electric company that kept its transmission lines energized near the apparent origin of the fire.

00:06:58

Oh, and that copper vessel with the sacred water to bless the house at Thanksgiving.

00:07:03

I spot it, covering carbon, empty but recognizable.

00:07:07

I don't see the top, but I see the rest of it here.

00:07:12

We'll have the second half of that report tomorrow.

00:07:15

In New York, I'm Sibri Benishor with the Marketplace Learning Report from APM American Public Media.

00:07:21

[BLANK_AUDIO]

00:07:31

The lessons — and questions — that come with recovering from a fire

The lessons — and questions — that come with recovering from a fire

Marketplace / David Brancaccio and Leanna Byrne

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