The Wildfires in the Los Angeles region have dominated news coverage in recent weeks, and justifiably so. According to KFI-AM 640 morning host Bill Handel, this is the equivalent of 9/11 in the City of Angels.
Handel would know about the largest stories to hit Los Angeles. 2025 marks the 40th year the host has been in mornings at the iHeartMedia Los Angeles news/talk station.
When asked where it ranked in the top stories he’s covered in his illustrious career, Handel had a quick answer.
“It is certainly probably in the top five, I would guess. Or certainly within the top 10,” he shared. “And for those people that are caught up in the fire, of course it’s the biggest story of their lives, but it’s pretty extraordinary in terms of the devastation. We’re used to wildfires that can actually eat up hundreds of thousands of acres. This didn’t, but where it burned was in the middle of highly dense areas with a lot of houses. 10,000 homes went up over the course of the two fires.
“This was a big big deal. It was a national story, actually was in the international story, but it had a special significance because this was a local story, much like 9/11 was one of the biggest stories in the world but for New Yorkers they had particular significance and that’s the same here. I think I have to make that analogy.”
Bill Handel noted that both his ex-wife and his daughter were forced to evacuate, while he was not in much danger at his Orange County home. While his concern for his family was obvious, he said his job was to block out the noise and focus on disseminating the most important information.
“I’ve been doing this a long time and you have to focus. I mean even to the point where 9/11, there was so much information coming in. We had producers that were throwing me stories from every place,” said Handel. “In any break, I was screaming to get background on Saudi Arabia and Osama Bin Laden, because they knew very early on that he had done it, in the New York attacks.
“I remember there was an army airplane that crashed into the Empire State Building in 1948. I said ‘I want everything about that.’ So, you stay focused because that’s what I do. I’m paid to stay focused and have to. Focus is what I do. What do you do to do your job? Well, it’s what you do you have to do.”
The story will continue to develop with greater twists and turns. Bill Handel said KFI-AM 640 will stay on top of the story since it will be so important to such wide swaths of the station’s audience. And he shared insight on what he thinks might be next.
“The next step are these fires that are happening again. There’s several steps now. We’re gonna get involved with rebuilding. We’re gonna be talking probably about contractors that are coming in from out-of-state, the fraud that’s gonna go on, the scams that we’re gonna hear about, the insurance problems .tTey were going to occur and one of the big ones is a lot of in Southern California — and this shocked me — were part of the California Fair Plan which is the insurance policy of last resort, when insurance company cannot ensure or will not insure a property.
“People go to this fair plan, that only covers fire insurance. That’s it. Doesn’t cover anything else. You have to pay a lot of money for it. People who have private insurance, Allstate, that had Farmers. I was surprised there was enough money or there is enough money to cover the claims for the private insurance. Because they buy re-insurance, they insure themselves who insure themselves. The California Fair Plan is effectively broke. There is no money in there. The claims are gonna be in the billions. It has $300 million in the plan. So that’s gonna be a huge story, how the state is gonna have to bail out all of these homeowners.”
Times like these — when KFI-AM 640 is at its best, covering the biggest events that matter to its Southern California audience — are why Bill Handel was recently named the top host in the Barrett News Media Top 20 Major Market Morning Show category. He shared that he’s appreciative of the recognition from the news/talk radio industry, more so than other awards.
“It means a lot because look at who voted. These are peers,” said Handel. “These are people in the business and there is nothing as significant. I think as satisfying it’s being told by peers that you are good, anybody behind the mic — anybody in television or radio — you get so many bullshit awards. It is incredible the level of the crap that you receive for just being behind a microphone. This is pretty significant and this is a real honor. It’s something that I wear with a lot of pride. That’s I think the difference.”
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
