The Devastation of Wildfire: Kevin Kunze's 360 Film on Paradise, CA

In this episode of Art Heals All Wounds, I’m joined by virtual reality filmmaker Kevin Kunze to discuss his short documentary film, "Silence in Paradise." This episode delves into the tragic events of the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, which was one of the deadliest wildfires in US history. Kevin shares insights into the making of the film, the haunting experience of filming the aftermath with 360-degree virtual reality technology, and the broader implications of climate change and infrastructure issues that contribute to such disasters.

Key Points:

1.     Introduction

o   Reflecting on my childhood fascination with television shows that shaped my identity.

o   My love for Los Angeles and California, where much of the culture I followed originated.

2.     Paradise and the Camp Fire

o   My introduction to the town of Paradise, CA due to the Camp Fire.

o   Kevin Kunze opens up about his motivations and experiences in creating "Silence in Paradise," visiting the town the day after the fire and again a year later.

3.     Documenting the Tragedy

o   Kevin explains the innovative use of VR technology to create an immersive viewing experience, aiming to evoke empathy and awareness.

o   The documentary captures the haunting aftermath and the resilience of the Paradise community in rebuilding efforts.

4.     Challenges During Production

o   Kevin discusses the 911 call recordings and highlights his empathy over the confusion during the evacuation.

o   Insights into the enormous impact on human lives, structures, and the environment are provided.

5.     PG&E and Infrastructure Issues

o   Discussion about PG&E's role and liability in the Camp Fire, including bankruptcy filings and settlements.

o   Kevin advocates for underground power lines as a preventive measure against future fires.

6.     Climate Change and Future Prevention

o   Addressing the need for public awareness and political accountability in mitigating climate change-induced disasters.

o   Kevin emphasizes the importance of virtual reality in bringing these events to life for audiences.

7.     Call to Action

o   Kevin urges listeners to remain informed and proactive about fire safety and climate change issues.

o   Kevin and I discuss the significance of art and storytelling in fostering social change.

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Transcript

Pam Uzzell [00:00:12]:
Do you believe art can change the world? So do I. On this show, we meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam Uzzell. I'm wondering, how many of you listening watched a lot of television when you were a kid? I did. A lot. So much so that my mom had to put a limit on how many hours I could watch each day, which was really a challenge to decide which shows I felt like I just couldn't miss. Such as my favorite shows like The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, and the absolute best of all, Charlie's Angels.

Pam Uzzell [00:01:12]:
I'm talking about the original series with the original cast of Farrah Fawcett, Jacqueline Smith, and the amazing Kate Jackson who played Sabrina. All these shows informed the play of my friends and me, meaning that we would pretend to be these characters when we play together. I only ever wanted to be Sabrina from Charlie's Angels. She gave all the little girl nerds like me hope that, yes, we could be smart and beautiful and really good at kicking ass and solving crimes. The ultimate sexy nerd. But all of these powerful heroines from these seventies shows coming out of LA really shaped who I thought I might be. My dad worked for a company located in California with offices both in LA and the Bay Area. We started taking trips there, and I remember the first time we went to LA, it wasn't just that LA was a different world from where I grew up.

Pam Uzzell [00:02:13]:
It felt more like it was the world. For a while, we went there every year. And 1 year, when I was in 7th grade, my parents let me stop in a record store, and I bought all of the Beach Boys cassettes I could find. And that's all we listened to on that trip. And if the Beach Boys could have had their wish that all the girls would be California girls, that would have been all right with me. Through my high school years, a lot of the culture that I followed came out of LA. Music, like The Go Go's, Oingo Boingo, Missing Persons, The Bangles, Berlin. When we visited there, these bands formed the soundtrack in my head, and for better or worse influenced my fashion choices.

Pam Uzzell [00:03:04]:
Later in my life, I worked in LA as part of sound editing teams on feature films. I traveled down to Los Angeles for special screenings of films I'd worked on up in the Bay Area. I have friends and family living throughout Southern California. This is all a way of saying that I love LA. My heart goes out to everyone directly affected by the fires, and to the entire city and surrounding areas. This episode I'm sharing today was recorded before the fires down south. It's about the town of Paradise, California. Paradise is, in many ways, the exact opposite of Los Angeles, but still represents a quintessential Californian way of life, living in a town near or within a forest.

Pam Uzzell [00:04:00]:
I had never heard of Paradise until the campfire of 2018 brought it to everyone's attention. Camera phone footage of residents fleeing down narrow roads through burning forests was shocking and terrifying. In the end, 85 people didn't make it to safety. Once the town of Paradise opened up for people to come back in after the fire, a Bay Area filmmaker, Kevin Kunze, drove there with his team, taking a drone and a 360 camera. They wanted to document what a fire with the intensity of the Camp Fire did to this town. Today, I'm talking to Kevin about his 360 film, Silence in Paradise, and his experience filming it. You wanna know how you can really help me keep this show going? Follow me on your favorite listening app. So easy, right? And if you really wanna give the show a boost, leave me a 5 star rating or review.

Pam Uzzell [00:05:25]:
Hi, Kevin. Thank you for being on Art Heals All Wounds. Can you start by telling us who you are and what you do?

Kevin Kunze [00:05:33]:
Sure. My name is Kevin Kunze. I'm an award winning virtual reality filmmaker. I make a lot of YouTube videos in 360 that are interactive. You can move your phone, move your mouse around, and see all around my world when I do vlogs. Today, we're gonna talk a little bit about this short documentary I did about the Paradise or the Camp Fire, which is considered the deadliest US wildfire of modern day or it was at the time. It's been surpassed by Hawaii now, I believe. And, yeah, thank you very much for having me on your podcast.

Pam Uzzell [00:06:09]:
Well, we met because I took your 360 video class, which was a very fun experience. And I saw that you had made this film. And when I decided to do a season on climate and environment, this film came back into my mind. And for people who maybe are not keeping track of the California fires, can you talk a little bit more about the Camp Fire and what happened in Paradise? I know you just mentioned it was the deadliest fire up until the fire in Maui, but when was it? When did that happen?

Kevin Kunze [00:06:48]:
It happened in 2018, November 8th, to be specific, and it caused 85 fatalities. It displaced more than 50,000 people and destroyed more than 18,000 structures, causing an estimated $16,500,000,000 in damage.

Pam Uzzell [00:07:08]:
Yeah. For me, I mean, all of the wildfires have been terrible. But it seems like things really started ramping up in 2017, which I think was when all the fires in Sonoma and Napa happened. But there's something about Paradise that has really stuck in my mind because there was a lot written about it. And I'm wondering for you, if you can tell me the story of when you decided to go up there and shoot this film and why.

Kevin Kunze [00:07:40]:
Yeah. I remember the morning this fire when it happened, actually. I was golfing, which I don't do very often, but I was golfing that day. And I remember being up very early and smelling the smoke from hours and hours away and seeing the sky start to change colors. And I kinda knew something was not good happening. I was getting the reports on Twitter and checking my phone every hole couple holes. I knew something was not right about this one. And we're used to wildfires in the Bay Area, you know, but this certainly if you were following the news and everything going on with it that day, this was an anomaly.

Kevin Kunze [00:08:20]:
And, basically, the time I was teaching that film class at Academy of Art, I'll give them a little shout out here, it was virtual reality filmmaking, and there was graduate and undergraduate. And I had taken friendship to one of the students, Berti Benbanaste, who is an amazing drone pilot, and also Greg Harriman. Give him a shout out as well. And we all decided to drive up to, Paradise the day after the fire when they opened up the town after it had it had been secured. And, we went up there with the VR cameras. Our goal was to shoot something in 360 and document it, and I was driving the whole time. And you could see as soon as you got into the town, you know, how horrible it was. We immediately were on Main Street, so we started there, and we started with drone shots.

Kevin Kunze [00:09:09]:
You can actually see that this was the day the town was opened back up because there's a guy at the 1 minute 50 second mark. If you look directly down in the VR headset, he's actually shoveling up his, business and using a shovel to kinda, like, sift around and see what was there, what was left behind maybe. And, we basically, from there, just started to document a lot of different areas that we saw, and we didn't really wanna we didn't it's not that we didn't want to, but we didn't bother to disturb people by interviewing them that soon after what had happened. So our main thing was just to document, you know, what we can, and then our goal ended up being coming back a year later and documenting the rebuilding a little bit with some footage and doing interviews with people who had survived that day and, learning about the victims and just the rebuilding process and all of that. And, I remember vividly when we got up there, like, one of the only places that was still open that didn't get burned down was, like, a Starbucks. So we went in the Starbucks to, like, use the bathroom or something, get some food. I can't remember exactly, but it was very disquieting. It was very silent up there.

Kevin Kunze [00:10:28]:
There were not a lot of people who had come back. The opening, you know, after everyone had just gotten out was like, I don't wanna come back really. That was kind of what I felt. It definitely had major impacts on these people's lives forever. And, our goal is really to try and memorialize, you know, what what had happened there because we realized at the time just how devastating it was, and it's something that I hope that people can learn from. That was kind of the main thing is to, like, see what happened and and don't let this happen again. But, you know, sadly, I don't think we've really learned a lot from that.

Pam Uzzell [00:11:08]:
What I remember are some of these incredibly terrifying videos of people trying to drive out of town. And one thing I remember about Paradise, which you probably could speak more to than I could, is that California has a lot of really beautiful remote locations, which maybe prior to some of these fires, it might be a dream to be in those locations. Although the story of Paradise has really changed my thinking around that in that trying to get out of Paradise there was there are not a lot of roads in and out. And even had everybody evacuated, I can't remember there's some only like some fraction, like a quarter or something like that would have been able to get out within a 2 hour timespan. So did people talk about that? Is that something you knew before you went up there? Is it something you noticed when you're driving into the town?

Kevin Kunze [00:12:10]:
I mean, certainly, I can say in a lot of, you know, towns, it's not an anomaly that there are only one road in and one road out, essentially, and this is something that's not just in that one area of California. You know? It's a lot of these beautiful scenic spots in California, whether it be somewhere like Grass Valley or Tahoe. You know? It's something that is sadly in the design because, you know, there are only so many roads. But, basically, I think that it was just a catastrophe that day what happened. And I think, you know, it was a lack of communication and a lack of, resources, And and it just it's horrible what happened.

Pam Uzzell [00:12:58]:
At the beginning, you have a lot of news footage, like, audio and video montage of the different reports on it. But then you go into an audio montage of the 911 calls. And I'm curious about a couple of things. Was it challenging to get access to those calls? And then also, it seems like there was confusion about whether or not there was a fire happening in the town.

Kevin Kunze [00:13:29]:
Yeah. I mean, I definitely wanna say that I feel empathy for, you know, the dispatchers having to deal with this type of, you know, crazy situation. I think they were definitely trying the best that they could with the limited information they had available at the time. But we definitely show with that montage, yeah, that there was just chaos and that people didn't know what was going on or when to leave and didn't really have a sense of that. But if you're ever in this type of situation, I said, just go. Worst case scenario, you can come back, and you you've maybe made a fool of yourself a little bit. You know, a little bit of gas money you gotta pay. But another thing that I've kinda taken away from this whole experience, I will never leave my car without, like, half a tank of gas.

Kevin Kunze [00:14:12]:
Mhmm. I just need to have that much of my car because some people were stuck in in their vehicles for so long, and they didn't have a lot of gas. And then their cars were stuck there after it ran out of gas. So

Pam Uzzell [00:14:24]:
Yeah. Well, I do want to echo what you said. This is not at all to point a finger at the dispatchers. It seemed like, in fact, they were trying to give the information that they had, and that there were communication breakdowns and just not. You know, it's a very remote area, sort of above a canyon, I believe. And so it was really challenging to even get the information as to where people knew there was smoke, people knew there was a fire, but it wasn't clear where that fire was.

Kevin Kunze [00:15:00]:
And we have one of the city council members in the film who speaks to this. He lived on one part of town, and they just said it was kind of a normal thing. You know? Like, we're kinda used to it in California if there's smoke nearby. You know? But I always am very cued to it, too. I have a good strong sense of smell. And, I remember the day we went up there just how horrible it smelled too from all of, like, the burned metals and all burned buildings, you know, chemicals. And, we're walking around and stuff and and getting the shots. And at the end of the day, we we all had to throw out our shoes because they were completely, like, destroyed by anything that we walked through.

Kevin Kunze [00:15:36]:
Something I didn't even kinda think about Just walking and turn the camera around and look down. It's like, oh, no. I'm gonna track this all in my car too. But, you know, again, that's the least of the worries that, you know, of these people up there. It's it's kind of, like, completely secondary. You're not thinking about that. You're thinking about, oh my god. This used to be someone's house right here.

Kevin Kunze [00:15:57]:
This is, like, someone's pool in their backyard. It's, the analogy I thought of, you know, being a filmmaker is, like, if you had 1,000,000 of dollars to make a movie set, you wouldn't even come close because this is the whole town. You could just drive around and see, like, everywhere. It was burned to the ground, and there used to be buildings there. And it was just it was devastating. And we got some footage, and we also used footage from other colleagues who did documentation. Steve Cooper. I have to shout out Steve Cooper, amazing VR cinematographer.

Kevin Kunze [00:16:32]:
So we combined our forces and used all the footage. I told Steve my plan about going back a year later. We went back. We interviewed people, and we intercut that with some of the footage from that day or days after. You know, Steve was there for a while as well. My team, Berti and I, really just went up, once each day, a year apart.

Pam Uzzell [00:16:54]:
Yeah. Well, there is really the devastating footage along with the interview about I mean, there was really no hope of rescue at that point, but just searching for bodies in all of the destruction and devastation from all those structures, which I can't even imagine how challenging that was for the people who live there and who had to do that search and rescue.

Kevin Kunze [00:17:21]:
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, we certainly speak to it in the film, and you can see just the efforts that people put in. And it's a really powerful image when you see them all in search and rescue, people holding their hands and saying a prayer before walking out because they know they're gonna come across bodies. Kinda no questions. Just how many. Mhmm. And they hope that somebody will be alive, maybe.

Kevin Kunze [00:17:43]:
But in a lot of these situations with fire, that's sadly not the case. But it's powerful imagery that you just don't see in a lot of documentary pieces. Using 360 cameras. They're not big cameras. They're not massive things that feel like they get in the way of anything that's happening. So that's why I think they're really good for documenting scenes of journalism. And I think that this piece definitely does a good job of showing what it was like being there. And I've seen all the different documentaries, feature length and otherwise, about the subject matter.

Kevin Kunze [00:18:16]:
And there are none that really equate to this type of footage where you are completely immersed and can look completely around and see everything. So I think that those films are good at showing recreation, which is something we didn't do in this film. Everything you see is an authentic shot of what is happening. So really trying to stick with kind of the rules of journalism in this and not do any type of recreation footage. Not that I'm against that in documentaries. It certainly is helpful. But in this case, we were gonna recreate the fire. It seemed weird if we were to do with animation or visual effects.

Kevin Kunze [00:18:50]:
Like, I didn't wanna go down that route.

Pam Uzzell [00:18:52]:
Right.

Kevin Kunze [00:18:53]:
It is possible, but it didn't not on our budget maybe.

Pam Uzzell [00:18:57]:
Right. And it seems more that the strength of your film is to just put you in that environment. I have not seen it on a headset. I've only watched it on YouTube, and I would love to see it on a headset. I can't even imagine.

Kevin Kunze [00:19:13]:
Yeah. This is one of the top VR films I would say that I've made that I highly recommend people watch in a headset because you have a different emotional connection when you see the people there in front of you. It's one thing when you see it on a phone or a, you know, computer or TV. But when you see the whole thing around you and you're like, oh, you really it I think it's one of the best pieces to speak to this medium and why this medium is so powerful for conveying emotion and empathy. And my hope was to show this to politicians in the headset and do, like, a whole tour around the senate or whatever, but it didn't seem like it was gonna go that way. They don't really wanna hear about the problems. They want to do press about good things.

Pam Uzzell [00:20:00]:
Right.

Kevin Kunze [00:20:01]:
This doesn't really look too great. You know, even if they're trying to solve the problem.

Pam Uzzell [00:20:06]:
I would almost say it's time to revisit though. Make another push.

Kevin Kunze [00:20:10]:
Yep. Certainly.

Pam Uzzell [00:20:11]:
That was gonna be one of my questions too. Is that what what were you hoping that people would take away from this experience of almost this feeling of being there?

Kevin Kunze [00:20:23]:
Basically, I I just wanted people to be aware of what had happened in a way that they didn't see on their TV. Because on your TV, you're only seeing this little square box, this rectangle. And when you look at this on YouTube or in a VR headset, you can look all around you, and all of a sudden you see the whole town was burned down. It wasn't just this one building. It was everywhere around you that you could see in eyesight from a drone. And that's why we wanted to use the drone to capture these sort of crazy scenes that just felt like surreal in many ways. And, you know, you just see, like, silver like, liquid silver pools all over the place from the melted metals, and it needs to get to a certain degree of heat in order for that sort of thing to happen. And it just was mind boggling, really, what had happened there.

Kevin Kunze [00:21:15]:
We're all kind of, like, in shock, and, I will never forget this day.

Pam Uzzell [00:21:22]:
Well, you talk in the film or you one of your subjects speaks in the film to the role of PG and E, our utilities provider, Pacific Gas and Electric. And can you talk a little bit about what was determined about their role in this Campfire that burned down Paradise?

Kevin Kunze [00:21:46]:
Yeah. I mean, they they basically were found guilty of it. You know, it's estimated $16,500,000,000 of damage. I think PG and E filed bankruptcy in January 2019, so roughly a year after November 2018, January 2019, citing, expected wildfire liabilities of $30,000,000,000. That's why they filed bankruptcy. And, in December, they were made a settlement offer of 13,500,000,000 for the wildfire victims. And, I don't know exactly what went down, how it all, you know, got paid out, but it is incredible that even after that, like, 2 years after, we have another wildfire, the Dixie wildfire, which is, you know, not as deadly, but certainly quite big and also in Butte County. And they were also found liable for this too, I believe.

Kevin Kunze [00:22:44]:
From what I've read, that's that's what I saw. But I don't really know too much about that fire. But I know in the case of the Camp Fire that they were found liable. And, certainly, you know, I I hope that they would have learned from this sort of horrific fatal accident that they can do better. I think if there's one takeaway that I have that if I was PG and E, what I would do differently in the future that seems to make sense is you bury power lines so they're not touching trees and creating fires. You bury them underground. And it's something that they even are doing in, you know, countries like Thailand that don't have, like, huge government funds and, you know, or we we pay a lot of money in California for our utilities, and we we hope that they're future proofing the technology. And that would be my biggest hope is that they've learned something from this.

Kevin Kunze [00:23:43]:
But what I saw at least when I went up to Paradise to refilm a year later is they were building the wiring again from poles, utility poles. And I said, well, they didn't seem to have learned from that. And that was, like, 2019. And so then the Dixie Fire, I believe, that took place in, 2021. Again, I don't know too much about that one, but you can find it online. It was pretty big pretty big fire.

Pam Uzzell [00:24:11]:
That's actually kind of mind boggling that you saw them rebuilding the exact same infrastructure that caused this fire.

Kevin Kunze [00:24:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. We didn't really wanna comment too much on that in the film. You know? I tried to say my piece on PG and E through the interviews that we did. We did have a narrator, great guy we hired to do that. I've never really hired a narrator before, but gotta shout out John Gianni. Great guy. Did a got a nice PBS voice.

Kevin Kunze [00:24:42]:
That's kinda what I was going for. PBS. Yeah. I kinda wish they it had gone out there to more people, but maybe, yeah, we'll have second life. You never know how things catch on. And the technology is certainly way more advanced than anything that people still have today. I feel when you look at these VR interactive films, it's really like stepping into the future even if it's something that was from 2018.

Pam Uzzell [00:25:06]:
Well, the story is not old. The story is very much ever present. And my concern is that the first big fires, there was so much coverage, especially here in California. And I feel like this is just a feeling and I don't know if you feel this way. I feel like it's gotten less, like maybe a day or 2. It's on, you know, the news and then I feel like maybe I'll find an update weeks afterwards, then I think, oh my god. That fire is still burning. Like, why haven't I seen more about this fire?

Kevin Kunze [00:25:46]:
Yeah. Totally. I mean, even right now, we have this one in Reno, south of Reno. 14,000 people evacuated ahead of the wildfire burning. And then also in Los Angeles, a similar one. And AP News, instead of doing 2 separate articles, they just said, hey. Let's lump them together. 1,000 evacuate as wildfires radio said, Los Angeles and Reno, Nevada.

Kevin Kunze [00:26:09]:
As though they're somehow close to each other in any way, shape, or because it's on the West Coast, they that was 9 hours away or, like, some oh, yeah. These wildfires might be connected. Don't even think about it. You know? That's my takeaway from it. You can't kinda lump those things together. But

Pam Uzzell [00:26:25]:
I know. It it's a little bit strange. I feel okay. I'm gonna make a confession here. You know how when there's a hurricane or something, although that's this is decreasing too, but it used to be, oh, pray for such and such a place. Pray for such and such a place. And, you know, thoughts and prayers are with whatever area not to pick on Houston, but are with Houston or, and I feel like I've never seen that, about these fires here. And there's sort of not really an understanding of this devastation that happens to, in some cases, millions of acres from these fires.

Kevin Kunze [00:27:09]:
People have kind of become desensitized to it in a way, like other political things that come up, like, daily now that you shouldn't, I feel. But with Butte, when that happened, because it was the deadliest, there was a lot going on. Butte's strong, you know, a lot of social media stuff happening. And I think that, you know, the community did build back strong, but, unfortunately, due to the rising insurance costs, even the people who didn't have their house burned down and are still living there have had tons of other issues getting fire insurance and all sorts of stuff after that occurred. And I spoke to them, and then, again, it's kinda like a subplot of the film, but it's something that I took away that I remember. I was like, wow. This is really horrible that even if you you didn't, you know, have your house burned down or you personally, you know, didn't know anyone who passed away and, like, you go back to your house, but now your community's gone. You know? Half your neighbors are gone, and your housing costs are so much more than they were before now.

Kevin Kunze [00:28:14]:
And people just start to sell their property and wanna move, I think. You know? And then that's the other kind of, like, you lose people the first time, and then you're gonna lose people again after it.

Pam Uzzell [00:28:25]:
Which I think this is the quintessential California story about the sort of climate catastrophe and also the housing crisis. And when you see the intersection of this and one thing I do remember reading about Paradise is that it was a beautiful place to live, and it was much less expensive than almost any other place you can think, certainly any urban area in the state. And so you could move up there and literally walk around in paradise for a fraction of the cost. And a lot of low income people did make that choice, which you can understand why. And I think I read that initially, there's only, like, about a quarter of the population, and now it's about half of what the population was before the fire. I remember details of people camping out in the Walmart or in parking lots in Chico, because there was really no place for them to go. You know? And if you are low income and you get burned out like this, what are your options?

Kevin Kunze [00:29:36]:
Yeah. Sadly, you know, there aren't a lot. And, we hope that our government would come in and offer resources and help provide a little bit for these people, but the reality is it takes a lot of time to get even if you're that it was found PG and E did it and, you know, they're liable. Like, they're just gonna drag it out. And who knows when you're gonna get your payment maybe years later, decade maybe. Who knows? And so, ultimately, yeah, you're kinda devastated because you've lost everything. And, you know, a lot of people have a lot of their investments tied up completely in where they live and how they live, and, you know, there are a lot of RV parks and things of that nature in Paradise. So, certainly, it's a it's a horrible thing what happened.

Kevin Kunze [00:30:24]:
And, you just hope that the government would offer more resources, especially when this is a public utility that ended up causing it. You know? But, ultimately, I think the facts are that a majority of the wildfires that are started tend to be man made. So I think we need to start thinking more about how we can hold people liable for if they cause wildfires and things of that nature and what we can do to make people think about safety as kinda the top precaution. So I'm still amazed when I see cars driving around that have chains at the bottom, and I'm like, you go over one bump and that chain is just gonna spark, and that's what caused a lot of them. So

Pam Uzzell [00:31:02]:
And I wonder too, is that I was thinking about that today because I knew I was gonna talk to you. Do people not realize the various things that can start a fire? Because I don't think that there are this many malicious or careless people who, for example your example, like, that they would ride around with chains saying, oh, I don't care if a wildfire starts. Is there something we could be doing? You know, we used to have PSAs about all kinds of things. And I'm wondering, you know, where are these PSAs letting people know exactly which of their behaviors might start a wildfire?

Kevin Kunze [00:31:42]:
Yeah. I I mean, I think it's a lot of societal norms they're built in. Like, the guy with the chainsaws, you know, truck would be like, well, that's what everybody else's, you know, standard setup is. We all get these chains, and that's how we connect things. But, ultimately, we need to rethink that. And just like we need to rethink maybe having the power lines, above next to the trees, and we start to put those underground. I think that that would be a lot cheaper than if a town burns down, and then you're liable for, you know, $16,000,000,000. And it seems like, yeah.

Kevin Kunze [00:32:14]:
Let's just build it under underground. It might take a while. It might cost a little bit, but pennies on the dollar. And so you'd hope that financially, people would realize, you know, that it's cheaper to be safe than pay in the long run. But, ultimately, I think I I hold our politicians accountable. You know? And that comes down to public pressure too. More people were aware of these sort of issues and what could be done. But I think it goes back to the societal norm.

Kevin Kunze [00:32:44]:
Everyone just walks out their door and is like, oh, yeah. Look at the tree touch in the power line. And the the trim is a little bit, I guess. You know? And that's, you know, all people think about. And then it's not even really, in some cases, on the government if it's, oh, that utility pole is on your private property. So, actually, Pam, you have to pay someone to come and trim the tree. And because it's touching utility pole, it needs to be from one of these companies that charge a lot more money than maybe their competitors.

Pam Uzzell [00:33:11]:
Right. Right.

Kevin Kunze [00:33:12]:
You know, it's it's, you know, upsetting, but I think we could be doing better, with our government and thinking more about the future and preventing and thinking about safety.

Pam Uzzell [00:33:24]:
Yeah. Well, one thing you say at the end is that you do bring up the idea of fossil fuels and global warming, because that's another factor in this California has always had fires. California has always had droughts. California has always had floods. But what's making these more recent fires so devastating is that the heat is so incredibly high. The beauty of fires in the olden days is that our beautiful ancient redwoods didn't really burn, you know, a fire might go through and it would burn the grass. But these beautiful older trees did not and that's not true anymore, because the heat is just so much higher. And so at the end, you do wrap it up by pointing the finger directly at climate change and fossil fuels.

Kevin Kunze [00:34:20]:
Definitely. I mean, I think we all need to think about what we can do as a society to stop global heat death. I think that's how I like to call climate change because for all semantics, we talk about climate change and people say, oh, that kinda sounds nice. I want the climate to change a little bit. You know? It's a little cold. Let's make it a little warmer. But when you talk about global heat death, people are like, what do you mean global heat death? I'm like, the fact that our temperature keeps going up every couple years gets hotter and hotter, which causes death of species, maybe humans, maybe not, but ultimately global. This is something that happens all around the world.

Kevin Kunze [00:35:00]:
It's not just in California, and we all need to become aware of it. And if there's something that we can all do as a society to change this and shift it and not create as much heat in the world, I think that would probably be a good thing. Because we all know that polar ice caps, once those start to melt, then you have even more shifting climates that are not natural and can cause other factors. Tsunamis, things of that nature. When you have warm waters, they're more likely to occur. And then that could affect everyone as we've seen with this billionaire who recently passed away in Italy.

Pam Uzzell [00:35:38]:
Right. Right.

Kevin Kunze [00:35:39]:
Tsunami, freak tsunami there. And so, ultimately, I think it's something that affects everyone, even the people out on their yachts, the people who are in desperate poor economic situations in Butte County. And I think that we can all do a lot better. And the first thing is about informing people about these issues. I think a good way is with virtual reality films or 360 films. You can have a deep impact on people that they tend to remember a lot longer than standard video, and they almost feel like muscle memory, like they were physically in that location. And that's what I wanted to do for people because Paradise is very far away. It's like, I think, a 5 hour drive or so for me, but, ultimately, it's very far out there.

Kevin Kunze [00:36:25]:
And I wanna show people what this is like because it's not something that I think a lot of people are gonna go and and go there to do things, sadly. There isn't a mall there. There isn't a movie theater. There isn't a lot of stuff outside of, like, you know, the high school and the Starbucks.

Pam Uzzell [00:36:42]:
Well, I'm really glad you made it. I do think maybe do round 2 of trying to get it to politicians to see it. I would support that. Is there anything else you wanna add about this experience? How did it change you?

Kevin Kunze [00:36:56]:
I had to buy a new pair of shoes. That was definitely one thing, I didn't realize. I was like, maybe I can leave these outside my door and wash them. No way. All the chemicals. You know? And so, but yeah. No. I I constantly think about the power lines now.

Kevin Kunze [00:37:14]:
When I'm going on walks around Berkeley, I'm like, look around. Like, you wanna trim these power lines, man. Yeah. Trim these trees. I think, ultimately, you know, it was horrible seeing all the devastation, but it's something that I certainly would go and do it again in a heartbeat because it had such an impact on me. I think, you know, I think politicians should be doing this. You know, when something like this happens, it should be in their job description. They are required to go there and see what what occurred and make an assessment of it.

Kevin Kunze [00:37:47]:
And, sadly, I don't think we saw that when this happened or when many wildfires happened, unless they're trying to do, like, a publicity shoot and make it look all nice and happy. Look. I brought some water. You know? But, ultimately, they need to do a real assessment of how can we prevent this in the future, these type of natural disasters that just seem completely unnatural in many ways based on the cause of them. If it is something that was man caused, we need to find a solution, and it shouldn't just be in the court system and take years. It should be something politicians say. We saw what happened there in Paradise, and here's some solutions we have moving forward. That didn't happen, sadly.

Pam Uzzell [00:38:29]:
Well, Kevin, thank you so much.

Kevin Kunze [00:38:31]:
Thank you very much for having me, and, appreciate your time and support for this project. And maybe, yeah, I'll send it out there, 2nd wave of politicians. We'll see.

Pam Uzzell [00:38:42]:
Yeah. Well, I appreciate you making it, and thanks for coming on to talk about it.

Kevin Kunze [00:38:47]:
Thank you very much. Have an amazing day, and, definitely make sure to subscribe to this podcast. Like it. Write a review. All that good stuff.

Pam Uzzell [00:38:59]:
Thank you for that marketing plug. I appreciate that.

Kevin Kunze [00:39:03]:
Talk to you later.

Pam Uzzell [00:39:07]:
You're listening to Art Heals All Wounds. Thank you to Kevin Kunze for being on the show to talk about making his film, Silence in Paradise. I'll put links up in the show notes to the film on YouTube. I'm grateful to Kevin and other artists who are bringing us stories about the effects of climate change. These stories aren't the easy ones. There are a lot of divisive things being said about the fires in LA right now. While it's true that we here in California are going to need to make some hard choices, so is everyone else living in other parts of the world and the country who are hit with frequent disasters. We need to work collectively if we're going to find ways to live with the excessive heat that's affecting our planet.

Pam Uzzell [00:40:17]:
I really want to thank James Mather for the donation to the show. I appreciate your generosity so, so much. If you feel able to and want to support this show, you can also do that at my website through the link, buy me a coffee. This show is completely independent, so anything you give really helps a lot. Thanks for listening. The music you've heard in this podcast is by Ketsa and Lobo Loco. This podcast was edited by Iva Hristova.