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00:00Well, as we've been hearing, the French Premier has agreed to renegotiate President Emmanuel
00:05Macron's highly unpopular pension reform, but who is now set to meet with social partners
00:11that's trade unions and employment federations, which includes France's largest MEDEF to do
00:17just that.
00:18Macron's plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 unleashed months of mass protests
00:24from January to June of 2023 that damaged his leadership.
00:30Well, let's get you the latest on the fires in Los Angeles now.
00:36Tens of thousands of people ordered to flee their homes as wildfires tore through the
00:41city have been told that they are not allowed to come back for at least a week.
00:46That's due to fears over electrocution, excuse me, landslides and exposure to toxic materials.
00:53Firefighters have burned for a 10th day.
00:56They're now going into the 11th day.
00:58Firefighters expressed some relief as they break in extreme winds that have been fanning
01:02the flames is now forecast as of Thursday.
01:06The two largest fires have killed at least 25 people and burned over 40,000 acres of
01:12land and destroyed thousands of homes.
01:15Well, let's get more on this and speak to Yves Figueroa, who joins me in the studio.
01:21Good to have you.
01:22Thank you for joining us.
01:23You're a specialist from CNRS.
01:26Now of course, this has been going on for over a week now and it's left people displaced.
01:32It's left homes damaged.
01:34Talk to us about how difficult the recovery will be after this.
01:38Right.
01:40Well, we have two different areas that are affected, natural areas, obviously, and then
01:45urban areas.
01:46And the scenarios are completely different, whether you talk about the natural areas or
01:49the urban areas.
01:51Fire is a completely natural element of the ecosystem in those regions, so normally having
01:55a fire is not necessarily something which is damaging.
01:59It's actually useful to the environment.
02:01But those fires are so intense, so violent, so brutal, that for the environment, recovering
02:07is actually going to be quite problematic.
02:10They will need to plant new trees.
02:12They will need to eradicate invasive species, for example.
02:16Mudslides in the coming days are going to be an issue, probably.
02:19The next rains will be extremely, potentially dangerous.
02:22So that's everything dealing with the environment.
02:26As far as the urban part of the fires is concerned, rebuilding is going to be a major issue on
02:32– you know, for several reasons.
02:34The first one is obviously how are they going to rebuild.
02:37If they build the same way in the same places, the same consequences will happen again.
02:43That's – there's no discussion.
02:44It's a matter of when, not a matter of if.
02:47If you build houses in timber, in wood, in forested areas, they will burn.
02:55That's one thing.
02:56The other thing is the insurance question.
02:57Are those places insurable?
03:00Will the insurance companies – State Farm has already left California.
03:04How are people going to get insurance, and if they're not insured, how are they going
03:08to get mortgages from the banks?
03:10Those are all the issues that are going to be discussed.
03:12They're probably – those are early days, but we're moving towards a potential insurance
03:17crisis that may actually reach outside of California, outside of the United States,
03:24in Europe.
03:25The reassurance market is a global market.
03:28Yeah, there's going to be a tonne of bureaucracy now after these fires, once they stop burning.
03:34Right.
03:35Let's talk about the rebuilding that's going to happen.
03:40Governor Gavin Newsom has already spoke about building an LA 2.0.
03:44He's talked about this Marshall Plan that they're going to start to organise.
03:49What do you imagine are going to be the key points in this new plan?
03:53I'm not sure what the key points are going to be.
03:55What they perhaps should be would be to rethink the connection with the wildland areas outside
04:02of Los Angeles.
04:03The fires happened in an area which is known as the wildland-urban interface, meaning essentially
04:10where the city meets the forest.
04:12This is a really tricky area.
04:14This is a really pleasant area.
04:15That's why a lot of people want to live there, and that's understandable.
04:19But in terms of risk, in terms of fire management, it raises a lot of challenges that have always
04:23existed but they've become worse and a lot worse.
04:26The question is whether it's actually sustainable.
04:30Before rebuilding, and the governor has already taken measures to waive environmental regulations
04:36to speed up the process, but before they rebuild, there should be a point where you stop a little
04:44bit and think about whether it's advisable to build in those places.
04:48I'm not sure it's going to happen, obviously.
04:51But the whole question is to evaluate the fire risk in that interface.
04:58It was high.
05:00The question is whether it is now just sustainable.
05:05That's going to be the key question going into this.
05:07Let's talk about those that are going to be allowed to return to their homes.
05:11Obviously we've heard that some residents won't be allowed to return for at least a
05:15week now.
05:16But even if they do return to their homes, to these places that have been badly affected,
05:21they are still going to have challenges.
05:23The water lines, gas lines are going to probably stay off for a couple of months now.
05:28Can you lay out for us some of the challenges that are facing the displaced?
05:32Some of the challenges will be to access their homes.
05:36You might have seen on some of the pictures coming from Los Angeles, sometimes in some
05:40neighbourhoods, and particularly in Altadena, you have houses that are still standing in
05:44a sea of destroyed houses.
05:47Living in such an environment is not even safe in terms of the materials that burn.
05:52You have plastics, you have all kinds of things that are not particularly healthy to breathe.
05:58That's one of the challenges.
06:01Another, and particularly for Pacific Palisades, another of the challenges, as I said earlier,
06:05is the mudslides.
06:08The first rains that are going to come and drench those soils that have been severely
06:12damaged by the fires, those rains are going to be extremely, I was going to say catastrophic,
06:21hopefully not, but there's a risk.
06:24One of the challenges will be to build some kind of safety perimeter protecting the houses
06:31that are still standing and whether people are going to go back.
06:34Lastly, obviously, the fire danger is still there.
06:39Fires happened in those places for a reason.
06:42Those reasons haven't changed.
06:45It's great to have you on the programme.
06:46Thank you so much, Yves, for giving us your insight.
06:48Really appreciate you joining us.