Joe Rogan Delivered Grim Prediction Months Before Devastating L.A. Wildfires
The widespread devastation of the Southern California wildfires is being attributed to abnormally dry conditions, with the last few months of 2024 being the sixth-driest on record in Los Angeles, combined with a powerful Santa Ana windstorm that swept through the area on Tuesday. But it also didn't take a clairvoyant to see this coming, as Joe Rogan, of all people, pointed out back in July, a full five months before the latest fires broke out.
Speaking with comedian Sam Morril on the July 19, 2024 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the 57-year-old was explaining why he decided to move to Austin back in 2020. While he said there were overall too many people and too much traffic and congestion in Los Angeles, that at the end of the day he didn't "trust" living there.
"I was always waiting for the next earthquake or the next fire, I was evacuated three times from my house from fires," Rogan explained. "Last one, two houses in front of my house burned to the ground, right in front of my house."
"Yeah, the wildfires were crazy. F--king scary, when you see them coming?" he recalled, bringing up one incident in which he got home from a gig late at night and saw a wall of fire coming over the hill near his house. In that instance, Rogan said that he and his wife decided to evacuate before the orders were given. Ultimately, their house was spared, but about 40 houses in his neighborhood burned down.
"I mean L.A. is dry—all it takes is a good wind and it's fires," he noted.
"I talked to a fireman once, and this is one of the reasons that freaked me out," Rogan continued, pointing out that he was actually wearing a Los Angeles Fire Department shirt. "So I was talking to this guy, and he goes, 'One day, it’s just going to be the right wind, and fire’s gonna start in the right place, and it’s going to burn through L.A. all the way to the ocean, and there’s not a f--king thing we can do about it.'"
"Because these fires are so big, dude, you're talking about like, thousands of acres that are burning simultaneously with like 40 mile per hour winds," he said. "And the wind's just blowing embers through the air and those embers are landing on roofs and those houses are going up and they're landing on bushes and those bushes are going up and everything's dry? And once it happens it happens in a way where it's so spread out that there's nothing they can do."
Indeed, the ongoing rash of wildfires that started with the Palisades Fire on Tuesday were fueled by hurricane-force winds. So far, more than 2,000 homes, businesses, and other structures have been damaged or demolished, with at least five people dead.
Rogan is hardly the only person who has pointed out the city's susceptibility to fires, but his words have recirculated on social media as the city has faced devastating disaster.
You can watch his remarks below, which begin just after the 1:38:13 mark.