# Let Me Stand Next to My Fire: Zaron Burns Down a Hillside

An episode of [Ridiculous Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1608230191), 8 Sep 2026, 1 h 00 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/0b4bcc39-7ba2-453f-aaac-ae510011dd80/9a368709-5f50-4ea7-b95e-b4be014cf078/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3a4c50f5-ff69-4807-aa26-ae510011dd8e

Before he was charming the Rude Dudes with tales of silly capers, heists, and cons, Zaron was a house painter. But not just any old house painter. He worked on high end projects with meticulous care. Except for that one time he became an accidental arsonist. Oops. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:03] Speaker 2: Elizabeth Dutt.
[0:04] Speaker 3: Zarin B.
[0:06] Speaker 2: Got a question for you, girl.
[0:06] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I bet you do.
[0:08] Speaker 2: Where'd you get that shirt?
[0:10] Speaker 3: I don't know.
[0:11] Speaker 2: Some website. What's that say? French 75? French 75. Yeah,
[0:15] Speaker 2: I like that. Got another question for you while we're
[0:19] Speaker 2: on a roll.
[0:19] Speaker 3: Yeah, what's up?
[0:20] Speaker 2: Do you know what's ridiculous?
[0:21] Speaker 3: I do. I do know what's ridiculous, and it is ridiculous.
[0:25] Speaker 2: How so?
[0:26] Speaker 3: Okay, I've told you before about those Oreos that, Have
[0:30] Speaker 3: the fried chicken filling. Your nostrils are flaring. Yes, they are.
[0:35] Speaker 3: You're so mad at me right now.
[0:36] Speaker 2: Do you have anything for me to eat? Please tell
[0:38] Speaker 2: me no.
[0:40] Speaker 3: That was Oreo China, right? And KFC China. They got
[0:44] Speaker 3: together on it. So we can't get it over our way.
[0:47] Speaker 3: But then those sickos were like, you know, that's not enough,
[0:51] Speaker 3: the cookies. We want to explode it in the other direction.
[0:54] Speaker 2: Oh, God. What'd they do now?
[0:56] Speaker 3: They're like, you know, Oreo got all the glory on that.
[0:59] Speaker 3: What about KFC, man?
[1:01] Speaker 2: Where's our end?
[1:02] Speaker 3: So they have revealed the Oreo chicken burger.
[1:06] Speaker 2: Oh, God.
[1:07] Speaker 3: And I'm going to show you a picture right now.
[1:10] Speaker 3: You don't have to. Terry will put this on Instagram. Oh, Lord. Yeah,
[1:15] Speaker 3: so what it is is you got like a fried
[1:17] Speaker 3: chicken thigh, breaded fried chicken thigh, which is a good
[1:20] Speaker 3: foundation for a fried chicken sandwich.
[1:23] Speaker 2: Sure, I like the dark one.
[1:24] Speaker 3: It's got lettuce. Uh-huh. Okay. But then they top it
[1:28] Speaker 3: with what they're calling brown mashed potatoes dusted in cookie crumbles.
[1:33] Speaker 4: What?
[1:35] Speaker 3: And then it's placed between two Oreo cookie flavored buns
[1:39] Speaker 3: that are like the same color as an Oreo cookie.
[1:42] Speaker 2: Oh.
[1:43] Speaker 3: And it's just disgusting. Well, okay. So I'm like, all right, people.
[1:46] Speaker 3: And there's no, I can't quote anyone. No one wants
[1:49] Speaker 3: to be associated with this. They're staying out of it.
[1:52] Speaker 3: But it's all over. A ton of rude dudes sent
[1:54] Speaker 3: this in. So what I did, I was like, what
[1:57] Speaker 3: do these actually look like? So I found a guy
[2:00] Speaker 3: on Instagram who did an unboxing. And the worst is
[2:05] Speaker 3: when he lifts the top bun.
[2:06] Speaker 2: Oh, God.
[2:08] Speaker 3: The mashed potatoes, not only are they sort of a
[2:11] Speaker 3: light tan color, gray, they pull apart.
[2:17] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[2:18] Speaker 3: It's very mucus-like.
[2:20] Speaker 2: It's very baby diaper-y.
[2:21] Speaker 3: Yeah, it is so bad.
[2:23] Speaker 5: Oh, no.
[2:24] Speaker 3: But you see that there really are chunks of crushed
[2:26] Speaker 3: up Oreo cookies in the mashed potatoes. And it just,
[2:30] Speaker 3: it looks horrifying to me. So if you want to look,
[2:33] Speaker 3: it's instant noodle dude, all one word on Instagram. He's
[2:37] Speaker 3: got this for our pleasure.
[2:39] Speaker 2: Anyway, it's like the food producers of today don't like food. No,
[2:45] Speaker 2: they don't. They're like, it was this turn this into
[2:47] Speaker 2: like a game.
[2:48] Speaker 3: They don't, they don't like food. And it's, Very.
[2:52] Speaker 2: Rarely do these mashups ever sound like, you know what,
[2:54] Speaker 2: someone who wants to eat this invented it. You know, like, okay,
[2:58] Speaker 2: the hot Doritos or, you know, like that guy, it's
[3:01] Speaker 2: like he made that because like he and people he
[3:03] Speaker 2: knew would want to eat it.
[3:04] Speaker 3: Exactly.
[3:05] Speaker 2: Brilliant mashup. Let's put chili powder on nachos or on chips.
[3:09] Speaker 3: We got a message not too long ago from a
[3:12] Speaker 3: rude dude who had, they found a mashup and it
[3:16] Speaker 3: actually sounded really good and so i didn't qualify it as.
[3:20] Speaker 2: A mashup because i wouldn't be horrified.
[3:22] Speaker 3: Because i wasn't horrified i was like that actually sounds
[3:25] Speaker 3: kind kind of good and uh i got it for
[3:29] Speaker 3: yourself well i got a screenshot from terry and it
[3:33] Speaker 3: looks like i've lost the screenshot um anyway it was
[3:38] Speaker 3: some sort of like it's a canadian dish which like
[3:41] Speaker 3: right there they know what they're doing oh here it
[3:43] Speaker 3: is beaver tails.
[3:44] Speaker 2: What You wanted to eat beaver tails?
[3:47] Speaker 3: Well, the message, this is from Mariana.
[3:50] Speaker 2: Is that like a euphemistic name?
[3:51] Speaker 3: Mariana Tadeo on Instagram wrote, okay, me again, but this
[3:56] Speaker 3: isn't actually a good mashup slash collab. It might be
[4:00] Speaker 3: too Canadian for our darling Californians, but they're hinting at
[4:04] Speaker 3: a beaver tail and And then she puts in parentheses,
[4:08] Speaker 3: slabs of fried dough tossed in cinnamon sugar.
[4:11] Speaker 2: Okay, not a real beaver tail.
[4:13] Speaker 3: Right. Or now a bunch of other toppings, but that's
[4:15] Speaker 3: the classic. And the McCain deep and delicious cake. I
[4:20] Speaker 3: have no idea if you get those in the U.S.,
[4:22] Speaker 3: but it's a cake with like a meringue-y frosting that's
[4:25] Speaker 3: kept in the freezer and is best eaten still partially
[4:28] Speaker 3: frozen directly out of the packaging. And the quote serves
[4:33] Speaker 3: for is really just a single serving. She's an icon.
[4:37] Speaker 3: I hope whatever it ends up being is good. Highly
[4:40] Speaker 3: recommend the team gets its hands on a McCain cake somehow.
[4:43] Speaker 2: And some beaver tails.
[4:44] Speaker 3: Count me in on both. Beaver tails look amazing.
[4:47] Speaker 2: Sounds good.
[4:48] Speaker 3: I like fried dough.
[4:49] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[4:49] Speaker 3: I like cinnamon sugar.
[4:50] Speaker 5: Same.
[4:51] Speaker 3: I like cake with meringue frosting.
[4:53] Speaker 2: Definitely a big fan.
[4:53] Speaker 3: I like frozen things.
[4:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, you do.
[4:56] Speaker 3: So, I mean, I want to eat each of them individually,
[4:58] Speaker 3: and then I want to do the combo mashup.
[5:00] Speaker 2: Mix up on the plate, yeah.
[5:01] Speaker 3: But it's, you know, the good people in Canada, they
[5:04] Speaker 3: get nice things. We don't.
[5:06] Speaker 2: Well, they're nice people.
[5:07] Speaker 3: They're nice people. They're good people. They're good, straightforward, honest people,
[5:11] Speaker 3: and I love them.
[5:12] Speaker 2: Now, real beaver tails seem like they'd be both fibrous
[5:16] Speaker 2: and chewy.
[5:17] Speaker 3: And furry. You really thought for a second I was
[5:20] Speaker 3: talking about eating the tail of a beaver.
[5:23] Speaker 2: More than a second, Elizabeth.
[5:25] Speaker 3: I mean, there's no telling what kind of garbage I'll present. I,
[5:28] Speaker 3: you know, I get all giddy about these. I'm taking
[5:32] Speaker 3: up way too much time, but I get all giddy
[5:34] Speaker 3: about these mashups. And then we get to ones like
[5:38] Speaker 3: the Oreo chicken burger. And I'm just like, what? I
[5:41] Speaker 3: can't do this anymore. I retire. So maybe I'll take
[5:45] Speaker 3: a break for the next couple of weeks. I just.
[5:47] Speaker 2: Just to reset.
[5:48] Speaker 3: It really kind of broke my spirit. I don't need
[5:50] Speaker 3: that right now in my life.
[5:52] Speaker 2: It hates food and you love food. So it's just wrong.
[5:55] Speaker 3: Well, and it's like, oh God, those mashed potatoes.
[5:58] Speaker 2: The joy that you get from like sharing something that
[6:01] Speaker 2: you like. Like making something. Yeah.
[6:03] Speaker 3: Trying something or making something for someone or like. Finding
[6:08] Speaker 3: a new taco truck.
[6:09] Speaker 2: Pulling things from your garden and bringing them in for
[6:11] Speaker 2: everybody here in HQ.
[6:12] Speaker 5: Yes.
[6:12] Speaker 3: Good tomatoes.
[6:14] Speaker 2: You always spread joy. And then all of a sudden
[6:15] Speaker 2: these people come along, they're like, what if we treated
[6:18] Speaker 2: food like chemicals from New Jersey? We just pour a
[6:20] Speaker 2: little of this and a little of that and splish splash.
[6:23] Speaker 3: They're doing it for the gram, really.
[6:25] Speaker 2: Well, I got a question for you, Elizabeth. You know
[6:28] Speaker 2: what else is ridiculous? Yes. No, you don't. I do.
[6:31] Speaker 2: And I'm going to tell you. Now, arson, right?
[6:34] Speaker 1: Yes.
[6:36] Speaker 2: That's ridiculous. It's terrible. And there's nothing ridiculous about intentionally
[6:39] Speaker 2: burning things down.
[6:40] Speaker 3: It's bad.
[6:41] Speaker 2: But if you're an accidental arsonist like me. Wait, what? Well,
[6:47] Speaker 2: that can get ridiculous. Oh, boy. This is Ridiculous Crime,
[7:11] Speaker 2: a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons.
[7:17] Speaker 2: It's always 99% murder-free and 100% ridiculous. Murder-free. Oh, Rizabeth.
[7:26] Speaker 3: Hey, what's up?
[7:27] Speaker 2: Have I got a wild one for you today. For
[7:29] Speaker 2: the first time ever, ever, ever on this show, I
[7:32] Speaker 2: want to tell you a ridiculous crime story that I did.
[7:36] Speaker 3: Wait, what?
[7:38] Speaker 5: Yes. What?
[7:39] Speaker 2: Now, you may be wondering, Zarin, you have so many
[7:42] Speaker 2: ridiculous crimes you either perpetrated or participated in. How could
[7:47] Speaker 2: you possibly decide which one to share? And to that,
[7:50] Speaker 2: I'd say, why so judgy, Dutton? But I would also
[7:53] Speaker 2: say that's fair. And the way I decided to tell
[7:56] Speaker 2: you this one was I listened to the rude dudes.
[7:59] Speaker 3: Oh, you did?
[8:00] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[8:00] Speaker 2: This is a story I've alluded to.
[8:01] Speaker 3: That's a first. Unlike me. Lay down my life for
[8:05] Speaker 3: these folks.
[8:06] Speaker 2: That's true. Now, this is a story I've alluded to
[8:08] Speaker 2: a few times. It's a story that folks have sent
[8:10] Speaker 2: us messages and emails asking for more details. They're like,
[8:13] Speaker 2: is this true? And most recently, a rude dude with
[8:16] Speaker 2: the Blue Sky username Kim Slauson reached out and said,
[8:20] Speaker 2: we need an episode about your erstwhile three-county arson spree.
[8:26] Speaker 2: I was like, well, arson spree is drawing it out
[8:27] Speaker 2: a little bit dramatic, but... And also, I've recently vaguely
[8:31] Speaker 2: mentioned this story. I made a mistake and I said
[8:33] Speaker 2: that I met with the fire marshals from Napa, Sonoma,
[8:37] Speaker 2: and Yolo County. That was a mistake. I was speaking
[8:39] Speaker 2: too quickly. I misspoke. I meant to say Solano, Napa,
[8:43] Speaker 2: Solano County. And Yolo County. You can hear how my
[8:46] Speaker 2: brain would skip Solano, Sonoma.
[8:48] Speaker 3: Sure.
[8:49] Speaker 2: Anyway.
[8:49] Speaker 3: In the heat of the moment.
[8:50] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[8:50] Speaker 2: I wanted to correct the record on that too. So
[8:53] Speaker 2: that's basically the full story of how and why I
[8:56] Speaker 2: decided it's time that I share one of my own
[8:58] Speaker 2: ridiculous crimes.
[8:59] Speaker 3: Oh my God.
[9:00] Speaker 2: Okay. Where to begin? As Duke Ellington said, let's begin
[9:03] Speaker 2: at the beginning.
[9:04] Speaker 5: Right.
[9:04] Speaker 2: Elizabeth, I've told you about how I used to be
[9:06] Speaker 2: a house painter. Yes. I know that. And I loved it.
[9:10] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[9:10] Speaker 2: I got my start painting houses in the summer back
[9:12] Speaker 2: when I was in high school. And since I grew
[9:15] Speaker 2: up in a college town, each summer the dorms and
[9:18] Speaker 2: the many, many apartments and rental properties that the students
[9:21] Speaker 2: moved into needed to be painted. So there was plenty
[9:24] Speaker 2: of work in the summer repainting all these places.
[9:26] Speaker 3: A little refresher.
[9:27] Speaker 2: Exactly. And it's exhausting work, but it's also fun work. Now,
[9:32] Speaker 2: for most folks, house painting isn't considered like a glamorous occupation. Like,
[9:36] Speaker 2: I want my kids to become house painters. But I'm
[9:38] Speaker 2: telling you, it's a good thing to do when you're young. Yes,
[9:42] Speaker 2: it can get hot in summer, and it can get messy,
[9:44] Speaker 2: and it's even toxic with all the chemicals, right? But still,
[9:48] Speaker 2: I loved it. And sure, you often come home covered
[9:52] Speaker 2: in paint, and it gets in your hair, and all
[9:54] Speaker 2: over your arms, and your face, and often your clothes
[9:56] Speaker 2: are soaked in sweat. So yes, there are some downsides.
[9:59] Speaker 2: But regardless, of how taxing it was to be a
[10:01] Speaker 2: house painter, I love that my job was essentially, as
[10:04] Speaker 2: one of my friends put it, beautifying the world each day.
[10:07] Speaker 3: That is true.
[10:08] Speaker 5: Right?
[10:09] Speaker 2: We make the world prettier.
[10:10] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[10:10] Speaker 2: And making people happy with their new home environment. Another positive.
[10:13] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[10:14] Speaker 2: So I kept painting houses each summer when I was
[10:16] Speaker 2: back home from college. And over the years, I worked
[10:19] Speaker 2: for all kinds of different crews, some good, some bad,
[10:22] Speaker 2: all of them filled with characters. And I learned a
[10:24] Speaker 2: lot about life and people and how they live. Since
[10:27] Speaker 2: I was in thousands of homes over the years, and
[10:30] Speaker 2: from the guys I worked with, I learned a lot
[10:32] Speaker 2: about men and being a man. And all in all, basically,
[10:35] Speaker 2: I always recommend house painting as a trade. That's my
[10:38] Speaker 2: sales point. But before I tell you this story, I
[10:40] Speaker 2: need to set the stage. Elizabeth, quick question. You ever
[10:44] Speaker 2: heard of student works painters or college pro painters?
[10:46] Speaker 3: I don't believe so, no.
[10:48] Speaker 2: It's a company that offers franchises to college kids with
[10:51] Speaker 2: dreams of starting his or her own business. Now, this
[10:55] Speaker 2: ambitious person will say they start a franchise with them
[10:58] Speaker 2: and they're responsible for drumming up business and going cold
[11:01] Speaker 2: calling and dropping off flyers in the doors of people's homes.
[11:04] Speaker 2: And they're also responsible for hiring in exchange for They
[11:08] Speaker 2: get to use the company's paint contracting license, their bond,
[11:12] Speaker 2: their insurance.
[11:13] Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
[11:13] Speaker 2: Because those are the real costs to starting a paint business, right?
[11:16] Speaker 2: And by removing that burden, the entrepreneurial type can start
[11:20] Speaker 2: their own paint business under the StudentWorks or CollegePro banner.
[11:24] Speaker 2: Got it?
[11:25] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[11:25] Speaker 2: Okay. Now, as one person on Reddit put it, and
[11:28] Speaker 2: I quote, many people are convinced that it is a scam.
[11:31] Speaker 2: And while the business model is definitely exploitative, especially for students,
[11:35] Speaker 2: it isn't a pyramid scheme or an MLM.
[11:38] Speaker 3: So it's got that going.
[11:40] Speaker 2: Right. It's always good when your business is not a
[11:42] Speaker 2: pyramid scheme or an MLM. It is exploitative. So I
[11:46] Speaker 2: worked for a franchise for two different summers and for
[11:49] Speaker 2: two different bosses. And let me tell you, I would
[11:51] Speaker 2: not hire student works painters unless you really, really need
[11:55] Speaker 2: a deal and you really don't care what it looks like.
[11:57] Speaker 3: Okay that's a lot of landlords they don't care they'll
[11:59] Speaker 3: paint over whatever.
[12:00] Speaker 2: Basically yeah paint the dirt we used to call it
[12:02] Speaker 2: a blow and go just come in so it basically
[12:05] Speaker 2: greatly depends on the person who runs the franchise though
[12:07] Speaker 2: they are mostly most often not qualified to do a
[12:10] Speaker 2: really good job they often don't know painting well enough
[12:13] Speaker 2: to know what all they should and should not do
[12:15] Speaker 2: in what order and so forth now one of my
[12:17] Speaker 2: bosses he was on it totally sharp great businessman the
[12:20] Speaker 2: other one He was focused on getting that check, right?
[12:23] Speaker 2: He would do whatever it took or whatever lies he
[12:26] Speaker 2: had to tell and cut whatever corners he had to
[12:28] Speaker 2: cut to get that check and make his little meager profit.
[12:31] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[12:31] Speaker 2: Because student works or college pros, they take a big
[12:33] Speaker 2: cut of your earnings.
[12:34] Speaker 3: Okay.
[12:35] Speaker 2: Anyway, there was this one time I was painting in
[12:37] Speaker 2: Sacramento in the Carmichael area, you know, over near American River.
[12:40] Speaker 3: Yeah, I know where that is.
[12:42] Speaker 2: I figured you do. And a neighborhood that was mostly
[12:44] Speaker 2: retirees and families where the kids either grown up or
[12:47] Speaker 2: about to go off to college. So- You know, in
[12:50] Speaker 2: other words, real easy marks for a quick-talking charismatic businessman
[12:54] Speaker 2: with a scammy paint company that offers a cheap price.
[12:57] Speaker 2: So there we were painting this house. It's a big house,
[12:59] Speaker 2: which meant there was plenty of opportunities to make a profit.
[13:02] Speaker 2: My boss really wanted this job, so he low-balled the
[13:05] Speaker 2: estimate to make sure he would beat out any other competitors.
[13:08] Speaker 2: And boom, we got the job. But his low estimate
[13:11] Speaker 2: also meant there wasn't much room for inefficient work or mistakes.
[13:15] Speaker 2: You get the idea.
[13:15] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[13:16] Speaker 2: Anyway, one day while I was up on the roof
[13:18] Speaker 2: painting the trim of the second story section of the house,
[13:21] Speaker 2: I was using a paint tray and a roller and
[13:23] Speaker 2: a brush, right? And I was painting the trim this
[13:26] Speaker 2: bright red color. So think like brick red, but even brighter.
[13:29] Speaker 3: Okay.
[13:30] Speaker 2: And for whatever reason, I kicked over this full paint
[13:33] Speaker 2: tray of that bright red paint.
[13:35] Speaker 3: Oh, no.
[13:36] Speaker 2: And it spilled all down the roof.
[13:39] Speaker 3: Oh, no.
[13:39] Speaker 2: It was bad. Yeah. And this roof was over the garage.
[13:42] Speaker 2: So it faced the street, which meant all the neighbors
[13:44] Speaker 2: and anyone walking on the opposite side of the street
[13:47] Speaker 2: would see this huge red paint spill on the roof shingles.
[13:50] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[13:51] Speaker 2: The roof shingles, they were those like... Brown ones with
[13:54] Speaker 2: the gravel mixed in.
[13:55] Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[13:56] Speaker 2: They're tar backed and everything. You know the type, right?
[13:58] Speaker 3: So this just looks like blood on it.
[14:00] Speaker 2: Exactly. And so now we have this huge section of
[14:04] Speaker 2: shingles that are bright red, blood stained. It looked bad,
[14:07] Speaker 2: like real bad. And at the time, my boss was
[14:09] Speaker 2: at the paint shop. He was picking up more paint.
[14:11] Speaker 2: And when he comes back from the store, he could
[14:12] Speaker 2: see this paint spill from like half a block away. Oh, no.
[14:15] Speaker 2: When he pulls up, his face is like, what the fuck?
[14:19] Speaker 2: So when he got out, he wanted to yell, but
[14:21] Speaker 2: he didn't want to get the neighbor's attention. So he
[14:24] Speaker 2: was fighting his own instincts. The words wanted to explode
[14:28] Speaker 2: out of him and he was just holding them down
[14:29] Speaker 2: with everything he could. Meanwhile, there I am still up
[14:32] Speaker 2: on the roof and I'm sort of like weakly waving
[14:34] Speaker 2: back at him like, hi, boss. Sorry, it was an accident. Yeah. Now,
[14:39] Speaker 2: a responsible paint company, a real business, they would have
[14:42] Speaker 2: had to properly deal with such a big paint spill.
[14:45] Speaker 2: They'd probably contact a roofing company and have these shingles replaced.
[14:49] Speaker 2: But this was Student Works, and this guy couldn't afford that.
[14:52] Speaker 2: And he couldn't ask Student Works to cover it. Or
[14:54] Speaker 2: maybe he just didn't want to out of fear they'd
[14:56] Speaker 2: yank his franchise from him. I don't know. So what
[14:58] Speaker 2: does my boss do? Remember, he's just some college kid
[15:01] Speaker 2: with a paint company that he doesn't own.
[15:02] Speaker 3: Oh, so he's a college kid, too.
[15:04] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
[15:05] Speaker 3: Oh, I have no idea.
[15:06] Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you. He calls me down off the roof.
[15:08] Speaker 2: He yells at me for a little while under his
[15:10] Speaker 2: breath through grated teeth. Then he realized this isn't fixing anything.
[15:13] Speaker 2: So meanwhile, the red paint is up on the roof
[15:15] Speaker 2: and it's starting to dry because it's the summer. It's hot.
[15:18] Speaker 2: And he knew it was an accident. I was one
[15:20] Speaker 2: of his better painters, possibly his best painter, one who
[15:23] Speaker 2: rarely made mistakes like this. But there's this giant red
[15:26] Speaker 2: paint stain on the roof that's pretty unforgivable. Eventually, he
[15:29] Speaker 2: gets over his initial anger and he starts focusing on
[15:31] Speaker 2: the question at hand. What do we do now?
[15:34] Speaker 5: Right.
[15:34] Speaker 2: He wants this giant red paint spill gone before the
[15:37] Speaker 2: homeowner or their neighbors come home from work. And he's
[15:41] Speaker 2: still hoping to maybe score some more work from the
[15:43] Speaker 2: other neighbors.
[15:43] Speaker 3: Sure.
[15:44] Speaker 2: And if the homeowners saw it, they'd be pissed and
[15:46] Speaker 2: they'd probably want the roof shingles replaced. Okay. So, Elizabeth,
[15:49] Speaker 2: what do you think was his plan to fix this problem?
[15:52] Speaker 3: I have no idea how one would go about this.
[15:54] Speaker 2: I'll give you some options.
[15:55] Speaker 5: One.
[15:55] Speaker 2: Did he throw a garden hose up there and rinse
[15:58] Speaker 2: off that huge red paint spill?
[16:00] Speaker 3: Maybe, but I don't know if that would work.
[16:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, no, because the red paint would spread everywhere and
[16:05] Speaker 2: then it would color the whole roof as the paint
[16:07] Speaker 2: ran down to the ground and then the paint would
[16:09] Speaker 2: likely stain the driveway too. Two, did he get a
[16:13] Speaker 2: bunch of rags and dab up the paint and then
[16:16] Speaker 2: use paint thinner and petroleum distillates to clean up this
[16:18] Speaker 2: enormous red paint spill?
[16:19] Speaker 3: That's what I was thinking, but is it safe to
[16:21] Speaker 3: put paint thinner on a roof in a hot day?
[16:23] Speaker 2: Yeah, no, because once again, there'd be clear evidence of
[16:26] Speaker 2: the paint spill because the thinner or the petroleum distillates
[16:29] Speaker 2: would leave a huge discolored spot on the roof shingles, right?
[16:32] Speaker 2: It basically bleached them. And thus, the roof shingles would
[16:36] Speaker 2: still need to be replaced. So you want to know
[16:38] Speaker 2: what he decides to do?
[16:39] Speaker 3: I'd love to know.
[16:40] Speaker 2: His answer was? Dirt.
[16:42] Speaker 3: Dirt.
[16:43] Speaker 2: Generously apply mud and soil and hope to disguise the
[16:46] Speaker 2: enormous paint spill.
[16:48] Speaker 3: What?
[16:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like putting high heels on a flamingo
[16:51] Speaker 2: in order to distract from their long legs.
[16:54] Speaker 3: I thought that he'd maybe like go get a matching
[16:56] Speaker 3: paint color and try and paint the roof.
[16:58] Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, no, no. Dirt was
[17:00] Speaker 2: his best idea. Luckily, there was a bunch of dirt
[17:02] Speaker 2: and mud all along the side of the garage. And
[17:04] Speaker 2: like I said, the roof shingles were brown, so maybe
[17:07] Speaker 2: it could work. So he had me and a couple
[17:09] Speaker 2: of the other painters gather up two-gallon bucket loads of
[17:12] Speaker 2: the dark earth and take them up on the roof
[17:14] Speaker 2: and then kind of sprinkle the dirt onto the giant
[17:17] Speaker 2: red paint spill.
[17:18] Speaker 3: Oh, my God.
[17:18] Speaker 2: Now, we had to be careful not to step in
[17:20] Speaker 2: the paint, not to disturb it. And then we also
[17:22] Speaker 2: had to sprinkle the mud and the dirt before the
[17:24] Speaker 2: sun caused the red paint to skin over and cure, right?
[17:27] Speaker 3: Sure, yeah.
[17:27] Speaker 5: Okay.
[17:28] Speaker 2: But it's super hot, as you know, in Sacramento in July.
[17:30] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[17:31] Speaker 2: So we had to work fast. So we're up there.
[17:32] Speaker 2: We're sprinkling. sprinkle on the dirt and the mud onto
[17:34] Speaker 2: the paint but in some places we also had to
[17:36] Speaker 2: like scrape some of the skinned over sections because it's
[17:38] Speaker 2: starting to like you know get an edge to it
[17:40] Speaker 2: right right so then we had to dust that with
[17:43] Speaker 2: the dirt so we're making a mess and then an
[17:45] Speaker 2: hour or so doing this there's now an enormous brown
[17:48] Speaker 2: red stain covering a third of the roof you can
[17:51] Speaker 2: totally still see that something had happened to the roof
[17:54] Speaker 2: so now how does my boss react Great question, Elizabeth.
[17:58] Speaker 2: Don't guess, I'll tell you. He had us get more
[18:00] Speaker 2: dirt from the front of the house. Because you see,
[18:03] Speaker 2: this dirt had sand and gravel mixed in it. So
[18:06] Speaker 2: we loaded up the two gallon buckets. We took that
[18:08] Speaker 2: up on the roof and we sprinkled that over the
[18:10] Speaker 2: huge dirt brown spot on the roof. But the idea
[18:13] Speaker 2: was that the stain would now be this mix of
[18:15] Speaker 2: kind of a warm brown dirt and loamy, dark mud,
[18:19] Speaker 2: the sand, the gravel. It's basically like a roof shingle, right?
[18:23] Speaker 2: We're basically rebuilding it from first principles. This is his
[18:27] Speaker 2: hope anyway. After two hours, now the huge red stain
[18:30] Speaker 2: on the roof is like a multicolored brown gravel layer
[18:33] Speaker 2: And indeed, it did look a lot like the original
[18:36] Speaker 2: roof shingles, but only if you were standing from across
[18:38] Speaker 2: the street under low light squinting your eyes, right? So
[18:42] Speaker 2: as we work, my boss is directing us where to
[18:44] Speaker 2: sprinkle a little more sand and gravel to kind of
[18:46] Speaker 2: even out the distribution to kind of make the light
[18:48] Speaker 2: refract differently. You get the idea. Basically, it's our cover-up
[18:52] Speaker 2: job that better matches the original roof shingles. Finally, with
[18:55] Speaker 2: about maybe a half an hour to spare before the
[18:58] Speaker 2: homeowner and their neighbors start arriving home, we finish our
[19:01] Speaker 2: cover-up job of this huge red paint spill. I climbed
[19:04] Speaker 2: down from the ladder from the roof, joined my boss,
[19:06] Speaker 2: who's now standing across the street. I could see what
[19:09] Speaker 2: he could see. And you know what? You could barely
[19:11] Speaker 2: see the formerly just enormous red paint spill. Now it
[19:16] Speaker 2: was this mottled brown that almost mostly blended in with
[19:19] Speaker 2: the roof shingles.
[19:20] Speaker 3: Mostly.
[19:21] Speaker 2: But if you knew it was there, you'd definitely see
[19:24] Speaker 2: the outline of this enormous paint spill. But if you're
[19:26] Speaker 2: driving by or walking past, you likely wouldn't spot it.
[19:30] Speaker 2: And that was his criteria for success. My boss was
[19:33] Speaker 2: satisfied that he would get the check long before the
[19:36] Speaker 2: homeowner discovered the enormous paint spill we'd covered with dirt, sand, gravel,
[19:41] Speaker 2: and mud.
[19:41] Speaker 3: Oh, my God.
[19:42] Speaker 2: Yeah. And that, Elizabeth, is why you shouldn't hire the
[19:45] Speaker 2: cheapest estimate you get for a paint job.
[19:47] Speaker 3: What happens, like, the first time there's, like, real rain?
[19:49] Speaker 1: It rains, yeah.
[19:50] Speaker 2: Of course. You get a red stain on your roof
[19:52] Speaker 2: because it washes the dirt away. It was an ultimate
[19:55] Speaker 2: quick fix. Yeah. It also serves as a comparison for
[19:58] Speaker 2: the story I'm about to tell you when you can't
[20:00] Speaker 2: just throw some dirt on the problem and hope it
[20:03] Speaker 2: goes away. Because the story I want to tell you
[20:05] Speaker 2: next is about the time I started a wildfire so
[20:08] Speaker 2: big that firefighters from three different counties came out to
[20:11] Speaker 2: fight it.
[20:12] Speaker 3: Oh, my God.
[20:13] Speaker 2: Yeah. But for now, let's take a little break. When
[20:15] Speaker 2: we're back, we'll go to Rattlesnake Ridge. And we're back, Elizabeth.
[20:39] Speaker 3: Hey.
[20:40] Speaker 2: So are you ready to dive into the story of
[20:42] Speaker 2: my accidental arson?
[20:43] Speaker 3: More than you understand. Good, good.
[20:46] Speaker 2: So let's get into it. In that story I just
[20:48] Speaker 2: told you about my huge red paint spill, I left
[20:51] Speaker 2: out a key detail. One of the other guys on
[20:53] Speaker 2: that paint crew is one of my best friends in life.
[20:55] Speaker 3: Okay.
[20:56] Speaker 2: And he was there for my accidental arson, too.
[20:59] Speaker 5: Oh.
[20:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, he saw them both. So the two of us,
[21:01] Speaker 2: we grew up together in Davis. And naturally, being us,
[21:04] Speaker 2: we got into all kinds of trouble together.
[21:05] Speaker 5: Uh-huh.
[21:06] Speaker 2: We cut school together. We'd go get high and drive
[21:09] Speaker 2: down one-way streets the wrong way, not realizing it because
[21:12] Speaker 2: we were high. We regularly had to ditch cops together
[21:15] Speaker 2: because of the choices we'd make. Sometimes that meant cutting
[21:17] Speaker 2: off our headlights and driving across fields in the dark
[21:19] Speaker 2: of night. But we always got away, Elizabeth. We were
[21:23] Speaker 2: basically a low-key menace to society.
[21:25] Speaker 3: Sounds like it.
[21:26] Speaker 2: Anyway, we painted together in those summers during college. We
[21:29] Speaker 2: worked for more legitimate paint companies after student works and
[21:32] Speaker 2: college pros. We learned the business. We both enjoyed the work.
[21:36] Speaker 2: And so after college, we decided to start a paint
[21:39] Speaker 2: business together. And you see, we were both independent-minded guys.
[21:43] Speaker 2: We wanted to be in charge of our own fates.
[21:44] Speaker 2: And I wanted time to write and to make short
[21:47] Speaker 2: films and to travel. He wanted winters off so he
[21:50] Speaker 2: could ski and he could travel. So it was a
[21:52] Speaker 2: perfect fit. We basically worked until Thanksgiving and then came
[21:55] Speaker 2: back to work a little after Valentine's Day. Take months off.
[21:59] Speaker 3: It was beautiful.
[22:00] Speaker 2: Now, I'd always planned to move to Los Angeles to
[22:02] Speaker 2: join the film industry one day and didn't want to
[22:04] Speaker 2: have to split the company with him when I left
[22:06] Speaker 2: and sell out my part. So we named the company
[22:08] Speaker 2: after him. He went and got his paint contractor's license.
[22:12] Speaker 2: He got a bond and insurance for us. So it's
[22:14] Speaker 2: essentially his business on paper. Legally, he had full responsibility.
[22:18] Speaker 2: But we ran it as partners. So for the first
[22:21] Speaker 2: couple of years, it's just the two of us. We
[22:23] Speaker 2: did well, like really well. And after our years as
[22:26] Speaker 2: apprentices and then journeyman painters, we really knew how to
[22:29] Speaker 2: paint at a very high level. And like today, you
[22:32] Speaker 2: can still drive around Davis and see jobs we did
[22:34] Speaker 2: 20 years ago. And they still look amazing.
[22:36] Speaker 3: Really?
[22:37] Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
[22:37] Speaker 2: Like bulletproof paint jobs. I'm telling you. So anyway, when
[22:40] Speaker 2: we went into business, we didn't advertise like at all. Instead,
[22:43] Speaker 2: customers referred us to others. And we did such good
[22:46] Speaker 2: work that we got this reputation for doing high-end custom jobs.
[22:49] Speaker 2: And soon enough, we were doing hundreds of thousands of
[22:51] Speaker 2: dollars of work a year. Then the next year, we
[22:54] Speaker 2: did a million dollars of work. I mean, things were
[22:57] Speaker 2: going gangbusters.
[22:58] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[22:58] Speaker 2: And that, Elizabeth, is how we got the job at
[23:00] Speaker 2: Rattlesnake Ridge.
[23:01] Speaker 3: Rattlesnake Ridge.
[23:02] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[23:03] Speaker 2: So it was this enormous... Multi-million dollar dream house. It
[23:07] Speaker 2: was being built on the top of the coastal range
[23:09] Speaker 2: that separates the Central Valley from the coastal counties.
[23:12] Speaker 3: Okay, yeah.
[23:13] Speaker 5: Right?
[23:13] Speaker 2: So they bulldozed the peak off of this low mountain,
[23:16] Speaker 2: just flattened it. And up there, they planned to build
[23:18] Speaker 2: this dream house. And so the homeowner was this mega
[23:21] Speaker 2: rich developer. He built neighborhoods of homes like all over
[23:25] Speaker 2: the area. And now he was building himself a literal
[23:28] Speaker 2: castle atop this mountain so that he could look down
[23:30] Speaker 2: over the valley where he'd made his vast fortune. You
[23:33] Speaker 2: get the idea, right? So his dream house was intended
[23:36] Speaker 2: to be like this European villa, just supersized a little bit.
[23:39] Speaker 2: It was ridiculous. Like, for instance, this dude had stonemasons
[23:43] Speaker 2: flown over from Europe to help build a stone observation tower.
[23:47] Speaker 3: A stone observation tower?
[23:48] Speaker 5: Whoa.
[23:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, the kind of stone tower that might house Galileo's telescope.
[23:52] Speaker 2: That's what it looked like.
[23:52] Speaker 3: And he had people float?
[23:54] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[23:54] Speaker 3: Wow.
[23:55] Speaker 2: Only he planned to sit in his observation tower and
[23:57] Speaker 2: shoot the wild turkeys that called the coastal range home. No.
[24:00] Speaker 2: This guy built a tower just so he could hunt
[24:02] Speaker 2: from his own home.
[24:03] Speaker 3: Turkey shooting tower.
[24:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was it. Wow. We called this place Rattlesnake Ridge,
[24:08] Speaker 2: and that was for good reason, because while we were there... Workers,
[24:12] Speaker 2: including us, collected 56 rattlesnakes from the property.
[24:15] Speaker 3: 56? Yes.
[24:17] Speaker 2: They were everywhere.
[24:18] Speaker 3: Well, that's their land.
[24:20] Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. We were disturbing them.
[24:21] Speaker 3: Like, I'm sorry, brother. Yeah, exactly.
[24:23] Speaker 2: Elizabeth, you know how afraid and terrified I am of snakes.
[24:26] Speaker 3: I do know that. I know that.
[24:27] Speaker 2: You know how I'm so afraid that I freeze up
[24:29] Speaker 2: when I see one.
[24:30] Speaker 3: Yes.
[24:30] Speaker 2: Not a good look. It's a terrible survival response, frankly.
[24:34] Speaker 2: But my fear of snakes, it's irrational. There's nothing I
[24:36] Speaker 2: can do about it, right? So I can't help my
[24:38] Speaker 2: reaction is see a snake, freeze up, do my best
[24:41] Speaker 2: impression of a statue. Like, maybe it won't bother me.
[24:43] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[24:43] Speaker 2: Sometimes I'm able to perform like one last competent physical
[24:46] Speaker 2: task just before my muscles all freeze up. And like, anyway,
[24:50] Speaker 2: so some mornings I would step out of like, say,
[24:53] Speaker 2: double French doors of this dream house. And I'd see
[24:55] Speaker 2: a rattlesnake curled up against the house just beneath me.
[24:58] Speaker 2: And there I was above it in mid stride. And
[25:01] Speaker 2: somehow I'd have to use like my back leg to
[25:03] Speaker 2: spring up and leap away from the house and not
[25:05] Speaker 2: have the rattlesnake strike. And then when I land, I'd
[25:08] Speaker 2: freeze up and just hope that the rattlesnake didn't want
[25:10] Speaker 2: to follow me. It was a nightmare for me. I'm
[25:13] Speaker 2: leaving out a bunch of other stories because I have
[25:16] Speaker 2: tons of rattlesnake stories from that place. Anyway, no matter
[25:19] Speaker 2: how much I hate rattlesnakes and they terrify me, that
[25:22] Speaker 2: is not why I burned down this multi-million dollar dream
[25:25] Speaker 2: home and set fire to the surrounding golden hills. So
[25:29] Speaker 2: why did I burn down Rattlesnake Ridge?
[25:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, why did you burn down Rattlesnake Ridge?
[25:32] Speaker 2: Great question, Elizabeth. Like I said, this dream house was
[25:35] Speaker 2: built on this bulldozed plot of land at the top
[25:38] Speaker 2: of the coastal range, right? And up there, there was
[25:40] Speaker 2: all kinds of subcontractors working there. I mean, you had
[25:44] Speaker 2: carpenters and framers and drywall guys and electricians, the solar guys,
[25:48] Speaker 2: a team of plumbers, the pool guys, the floor tile guys,
[25:51] Speaker 2: the roofers, and of course the stonemasons who built the
[25:54] Speaker 2: observation tower. So just teams and teams of subcontractors, which
[25:58] Speaker 2: means we all had to schedule our work in conjunction
[26:00] Speaker 2: with the other subcontractors. That was a whole other nightmare.
[26:04] Speaker 2: But like I said, it's this multimillion dollar dream house.
[26:06] Speaker 2: And for instance, like, okay, in one shower, The tile guys,
[26:10] Speaker 2: they built this replica of the Sacramento River with bathroom
[26:13] Speaker 2: tiles that ran from the shower out into the enormous bathroom.
[26:17] Speaker 2: It was really cool looking. And the water would go
[26:19] Speaker 2: down to where the drain was. So, look, the water
[26:20] Speaker 2: is incredible.
[26:21] Speaker 3: Oh, that sounds amazing.
[26:22] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[26:22] Speaker 2: So, this house is, so you can picture it. Imagine
[26:25] Speaker 2: like a giant square, like a European villa. And in
[26:28] Speaker 2: the center was this enormous pool. And like the pool
[26:30] Speaker 2: had salt water instead of chlorinated water.
[26:32] Speaker 3: Oh, you're kidding.
[26:33] Speaker 2: Yeah, that kind of like. How many square feet? I
[26:36] Speaker 2: have no idea. I mean, I could just guess.
[26:37] Speaker 3: It just sounds massive.
[26:38] Speaker 2: But it was. They also had like a hot tub
[26:40] Speaker 2: where you could go and soak your weary body as
[26:42] Speaker 2: you gazed out over the valley below you. Yeah. So
[26:46] Speaker 2: just basically picture a total dream house, right? And so,
[26:48] Speaker 2: oh my God, I forgot the appliances for this place.
[26:52] Speaker 2: They cost as much as like more than used cars.
[26:55] Speaker 2: Like you had Sub-Zero everything or just total top of
[26:58] Speaker 2: the line. Like what's Sub-Zero's finest thing? They had all
[27:01] Speaker 2: of them.
[27:01] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[27:02] Speaker 2: And the doors, oh my God, the doors in this
[27:04] Speaker 2: dream house, they were all sourced from the California missions.
[27:07] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[27:08] Speaker 2: What? They were hundreds of years old. They were all
[27:11] Speaker 2: 12 foot tall, authentic California mission doors.
[27:14] Speaker 3: They stole them from the missions.
[27:16] Speaker 2: Well, they bought them. But each door cost thousands of dollars.
[27:20] Speaker 2: And there were 18 of them.
[27:22] Speaker 3: So what are the missions going to do? They don't
[27:23] Speaker 3: have doors?
[27:24] Speaker 2: I guess they modernize, baby.
[27:25] Speaker 3: I did not spend fourth grade learning all about the
[27:29] Speaker 3: California missions.
[27:30] Speaker 2: Some of these doors are older than when the English
[27:32] Speaker 2: arrived in America.
[27:33] Speaker 3: To have them denuded by this guy.
[27:35] Speaker 2: And just put in this one dream house where no
[27:36] Speaker 2: one can see them.
[27:37] Speaker 5: Unbelievable.
[27:38] Speaker 2: They were huge, huge, 12 foot tall. Big, wide doors, thick,
[27:41] Speaker 2: I mean, old wood, right? So the beams that supported
[27:45] Speaker 2: the ceiling, they were all old growth timber that had
[27:47] Speaker 2: been recovered from the bottom of the Great Lakes, you know,
[27:50] Speaker 2: where they used to like float the logs down to
[27:52] Speaker 2: the mills and then some of the logs would sink
[27:54] Speaker 2: and then there's this old growth wood that's like really hard, beautiful.
[27:58] Speaker 2: So that's what all of the beams were that. So
[28:00] Speaker 2: they cost another small fortune, right? And these beams, we
[28:03] Speaker 2: had to stain them all by hand, right? But first
[28:05] Speaker 2: we had to use These wood conditioners and wood treatments
[28:09] Speaker 2: in which we also applied by hand, that took weeks
[28:12] Speaker 2: just to do that because there were so many beams
[28:14] Speaker 2: in this enormous dream house. And it was those beams, Elizabeth,
[28:18] Speaker 2: that would be the problem that caused the fire. What
[28:21] Speaker 2: do you know about oil-based wood stain and specifically stain-soaked rags?
[28:27] Speaker 3: Oh, stain-soaked rags. Oh, that's bad business.
[28:30] Speaker 2: Yeah, real fire threat. It says so right on the label.
[28:32] Speaker 2: Right there. Well, let's say you want to start a fire.
[28:34] Speaker 2: I can confidently tell you stain-soaked rags will get the
[28:38] Speaker 2: job done.
[28:39] Speaker 3: Oh, no.
[28:40] Speaker 2: That's why they have all those warnings on the label.
[28:42] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[28:42] Speaker 2: You can leave stain-soaked rags on the ground and they
[28:44] Speaker 2: will spontaneously combust.
[28:46] Speaker 3: Did you not read the label?
[28:47] Speaker 2: Oh, of course we did. We just didn't believe them
[28:48] Speaker 2: because we read a lot of labels. We're like, this
[28:50] Speaker 2: never happens. I mean, of course, they have to put
[28:52] Speaker 2: it on there because it may have happened once. It
[28:54] Speaker 2: happens all the time.
[28:55] Speaker 5: Oh, no.
[28:55] Speaker 2: The vapors will catch fire all on their own, but
[28:58] Speaker 2: just like some sunlight hitting them at the right angle.
[29:01] Speaker 2: So what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to
[29:02] Speaker 2: have like a firebox. It's this metal box with a
[29:05] Speaker 2: lid that fits all tight and snug. So that way
[29:07] Speaker 2: if you load it up with stain-soaked rags, say they
[29:10] Speaker 2: spontaneously combust, the fire won't spread outside of the firebox.
[29:14] Speaker 3: Oh, okay. That's interesting. I've never heard of that.
[29:16] Speaker 2: Fun fact, we did not have a firebox. We asked
[29:19] Speaker 2: for one. We told the homeowner who was the mega
[29:21] Speaker 2: rich developer and he was also the main contractor for
[29:24] Speaker 2: his dream house because he was a contractor, a general contractor.
[29:27] Speaker 2: So he was in charge of all the subcontractors. That's us.
[29:30] Speaker 2: And we were like, bro, we need a firebox. And
[29:32] Speaker 2: he was like, no, no, that's just a stupid old regulation.
[29:35] Speaker 2: Just don't leave any stain rags unattended. You'll be fine.
[29:38] Speaker 2: So that's what we did. We didn't leave the stain
[29:40] Speaker 2: rags unattended. We always kept an eye on them.
[29:43] Speaker 3: They just sit there staring at them.
[29:44] Speaker 2: Exactly. So our standard operating procedure was after a rag
[29:47] Speaker 2: was good and soaked through with stain, we'd take it.
[29:51] Speaker 2: throw it in a plastic bag, and then dunk that
[29:53] Speaker 2: plastic bag, and once it was full of stain-soaked rags,
[29:56] Speaker 2: in a five-gallon bucket that had been filled with water.
[29:58] Speaker 3: Okay.
[29:59] Speaker 2: Boom, no fire danger. I mean, how could something catch
[30:01] Speaker 2: fire if it's in water?
[30:03] Speaker 3: Underwater.
[30:03] Speaker 5: Right?
[30:04] Speaker 2: So now we were staining these beams, like, for weeks,
[30:07] Speaker 2: for weeks.
[30:08] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[30:09] Speaker 2: And before we finished, my friend and partner, he planned
[30:11] Speaker 2: to take a trip down to Costa Rica with a
[30:13] Speaker 2: girl he was seeing, right? And so there I stay
[30:15] Speaker 2: on the job. And again, I'm there on the site
[30:18] Speaker 2: and I'm in charge while he's gone. And we had
[30:20] Speaker 2: another friend who worked for us. So it would just
[30:23] Speaker 2: be me and him pretty much finishing up all the
[30:25] Speaker 2: staining because we're doing it piecemeal because we had to
[30:27] Speaker 2: wait for other contractor, wait for the drywall guy. So
[30:29] Speaker 2: all we can do is these beams. So we're staining
[30:31] Speaker 2: the hell out of them, right? But no sweat, no problem.
[30:33] Speaker 2: It was a straightforward job. Lots of ladder work. We
[30:36] Speaker 2: knew what we were doing. We didn't anticipate any trouble.
[30:39] Speaker 2: It was going fine for weeks. Of course, that kind
[30:42] Speaker 2: of arrogance is a recipe for disaster.
[30:44] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[30:45] Speaker 2: But you know what? Rather than me tell you about it, Elizabeth,
[30:47] Speaker 2: close your eyes.
[30:49] Speaker 3: Oh, my eyes are closed.
[30:50] Speaker 2: I want you to picture it. It's late afternoon on
[30:59] Speaker 2: a sunny, summery day, high in the hills facing the
[31:02] Speaker 2: Central Valley of California. Birds call to one another in
[31:05] Speaker 2: the trees. Grass is blown hither and thither by a soft,
[31:09] Speaker 2: warm breeze. At the moment, the sun is headed for
[31:12] Speaker 2: the western horizons. but it has another couple hours before
[31:16] Speaker 2: the sun turns in for the night. That's good news
[31:19] Speaker 2: for you because you are a rattlesnake. You could use
[31:22] Speaker 2: a little more sun to warm up before night falls.
[31:25] Speaker 2: You are currently coiled up in the tall blonde grass
[31:27] Speaker 2: that surrounds the construction site that one day will be
[31:30] Speaker 2: a multi-million dollar dream house. You watch the workers from
[31:33] Speaker 2: different crews as they pack up for the day and
[31:36] Speaker 2: prepare to leave. They load trucks and trailers with their
[31:39] Speaker 2: bags of tools and equipment. Somewhere, a boombox plays a
[31:43] Speaker 2: bouncy oom-pah-pah ranchero tune. Two men dressed in paint whites,
[31:48] Speaker 2: speckled with a rainbow of colorful paint drops and dabs
[31:51] Speaker 2: of color left by white cans, walk back and forth,
[31:54] Speaker 2: loading up their tools in the freestanding garage that's roughly
[31:57] Speaker 2: the size of a three-bedroom house. The garage doors have
[32:01] Speaker 2: yet to be installed, so the split structure with a
[32:03] Speaker 2: wet side and a dry side looks like two enormous
[32:07] Speaker 2: caverns surrounded by adobe walls. You watch the house painters
[32:11] Speaker 2: take bags of stain-soaked rags, which have been collected in
[32:14] Speaker 2: clear plastic bags, and dunked into five-gallon buckets filled with water.
[32:18] Speaker 2: Satisfied they're done for the day, the two painters eventually
[32:21] Speaker 2: climb into their work vehicles and drive off. They are
[32:24] Speaker 2: trailed by a cloud of dusk as the vehicles descend
[32:27] Speaker 2: the gravel road headed back down to the black-topped country
[32:31] Speaker 2: roads far below. The rest of the construction workers also
[32:35] Speaker 2: finish packing up and they leave too. And soon enough,
[32:37] Speaker 2: it's quiet and still, just the way you like it.
[32:41] Speaker 2: Quiet enough you can hear a field mouse moving through
[32:44] Speaker 2: the grass. You remain where you are, coiled up, enjoying
[32:47] Speaker 2: the setting sun, and then you spot something strange. The
[32:51] Speaker 2: sunlight warms the face of the garage with no doors.
[32:55] Speaker 2: The light catches on the metal of the extension ladders
[32:57] Speaker 2: stored inside. You see the sunlight also hit the plastic
[33:01] Speaker 2: bags that contain the stained rags dunked in the five-gallon
[33:04] Speaker 2: buckets of water. And where the sunlight hits the plastic bags,
[33:08] Speaker 2: you see the sunlight is focused, like through a magnifying glass.
[33:12] Speaker 2: Suddenly you see a puff of smoke. It seems that
[33:14] Speaker 2: the sun has ignited one of the oily rags. The
[33:18] Speaker 2: bag of rags catches fire. Then you see one of
[33:21] Speaker 2: the rags lift up, and the fiery bit of the
[33:23] Speaker 2: rag floats on the breeze until it lands on a
[33:26] Speaker 2: folded-up drop cloth. where it smolders. And then you see
[33:29] Speaker 2: more smoke, this time from the drop cloths. A ring
[33:33] Speaker 2: of fire begins to burn. The ring widens in the cloth.
[33:36] Speaker 2: Soon the drop cloth is on fire. You slither away,
[33:40] Speaker 2: well aware things are about to get too hot to
[33:42] Speaker 2: be comfortable for you. What you don't see is that
[33:44] Speaker 2: the fire doesn't burn quickly. It continues to smolder into
[33:48] Speaker 2: the dusky hours, and it continues to burn well into
[33:52] Speaker 2: the night. Soon, a can of paint thinner there, close
[33:55] Speaker 2: to the drop cloths, pops open from the heat. It
[33:58] Speaker 2: sprays propellant all over the 12-foot-tall California mission doors. They
[34:04] Speaker 2: catch fire. And soon, nearly everything inside the adobe walls
[34:08] Speaker 2: of the garage is on fire. The fire burns through
[34:11] Speaker 2: the dark of the night. At around four in the morning,
[34:14] Speaker 2: the roof of the garage caves in. This creates a
[34:18] Speaker 2: cloud of sparks, which then rain down tiny, fiery debris
[34:23] Speaker 2: onto the dry summer grass. And in an instant, the
[34:26] Speaker 2: grass catches and a wildfire erupts. The fire spreads fast now.
[34:31] Speaker 2: It burns in every direction. You're long gone by now,
[34:35] Speaker 2: coiled up somewhere for a long night's sleep. But there
[34:38] Speaker 2: is someone awake. A neighbor with insomnia is up and
[34:41] Speaker 2: happens to see the flames spreading fast across the dry
[34:44] Speaker 2: grass that blankets the ridge and burning towards their home.
[34:48] Speaker 2: They immediately panic. They know that a fire like this
[34:51] Speaker 2: can quickly burn out of control and set fire to
[34:54] Speaker 2: the trees and the earth for miles in every direction.
[34:57] Speaker 2: The neighbor grabs the phone and dials 911. If it
[35:01] Speaker 2: weren't for that insomniac neighbor, you'd likely need to find
[35:04] Speaker 2: a new place to live because the mountain range would
[35:07] Speaker 2: be a charred hellscape of blackened trees and burned out houses.
[35:12] Speaker 2: So there you go, Elizabeth.
[35:13] Speaker 3: Oh, no.
[35:14] Speaker 2: Just like you saw it, that's how the fire started,
[35:17] Speaker 2: how it burned, and how it began to spread.
[35:20] Speaker 5: Oh, no.
[35:20] Speaker 2: And you being a native-born Californian, you know better than
[35:24] Speaker 2: Georgia boy me. that a wildfire spreads quickly in that
[35:27] Speaker 2: dry summer grass.
[35:29] Speaker 3: It does. It does. You get a little breeze and
[35:31] Speaker 3: those embers.
[35:32] Speaker 2: Yeah. And then they just keep propagating. And thus, the
[35:35] Speaker 2: fire department will be super quick to respond because it's
[35:39] Speaker 2: a major threat.
[35:39] Speaker 3: Well, because when they burn so hot, too, they wind
[35:42] Speaker 3: up burning underground a little bit. Totally.
[35:44] Speaker 2: Totally. The coals and yeah.
[35:45] Speaker 3: Yeah, the crews have to spend a lot of time
[35:48] Speaker 3: out there even once they think they have it under control.
[35:50] Speaker 2: Exactly. And a good fire will start to create its
[35:52] Speaker 2: own weather.
[35:52] Speaker 3: It's crazy.
[35:53] Speaker 2: Now, since this multi-million dollar dream house was constructed on
[35:57] Speaker 2: top of the coastal range, it's located right where three
[36:00] Speaker 2: counties meet. Yolo, Solano, and Napa County. And that's why
[36:04] Speaker 2: fire departments from all three counties responded super quickly to
[36:08] Speaker 2: my accidental wildfire because the flames threatened all three counties.
[36:13] Speaker 3: Oh, no. Yes.
[36:14] Speaker 2: But for now, let's take another little break. And after
[36:17] Speaker 2: these messages, I'll tell you what happened once the fire
[36:19] Speaker 2: departments responded to my fire and how this fire made
[36:22] Speaker 2: me a better person.
[36:24] Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting.
[36:45] Speaker 2: Elizabeth. Zarin.
[36:47] Speaker 3: We're back.
[36:48] Speaker 2: You ready to hear how my wildfire story ends?
[36:51] Speaker 5: Yes.
[36:52] Speaker 2: Also what happened to me, my friend, our paint company,
[36:55] Speaker 2: and of course, the multi-million dollar dream house.
[36:57] Speaker 3: Oh, and those mission doors. Oh, my heart is breaking.
[37:01] Speaker 2: Let me just tell you, when you wake up to
[37:03] Speaker 2: a phone call from your best friend and business partner,
[37:05] Speaker 2: he tells you that fire marshals from three different counties
[37:08] Speaker 2: are waiting for you and they have some questions for you.
[37:11] Speaker 2: I can just tell you from experience, that is not
[37:13] Speaker 2: going to be a good day.
[37:14] Speaker 3: So this is the next morning you think you're going
[37:16] Speaker 3: to work.
[37:17] Speaker 2: Oh, I'm just waiting. It's like 6 a.m. when I
[37:18] Speaker 2: get a phone call. And it's my friend going.
[37:21] Speaker 3: You're getting ready to go up there. But he's like, actually, dude.
[37:24] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[37:24] Speaker 2: You need to get up there right now. Like I
[37:25] Speaker 2: would be normally up there like at eight in the morning.
[37:27] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[37:28] Speaker 2: So. Oh, yeah. So when fire marshals have questions and
[37:31] Speaker 2: you're the one who has the answers, your day is
[37:33] Speaker 2: going to suck. So when I got that call from
[37:36] Speaker 2: my friend at six in the morning, I tried to
[37:38] Speaker 2: wake up as fast as I could. I'm like knocking
[37:39] Speaker 2: sleep from my head. And I'm like, fire marshals, like plural.
[37:42] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[37:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll head out to Rattlesnake Ridge right now. And
[37:46] Speaker 2: before I could finish, my friend said, yeah, I guess
[37:48] Speaker 2: it's pretty bad. Don't know the details, but hurry up
[37:51] Speaker 2: because they're waiting for you.
[37:52] Speaker 3: Oh, I'd be sick.
[37:54] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[37:54] Speaker 3: Oh, God.
[37:55] Speaker 2: Now, I should add, my friend had gotten home late
[37:58] Speaker 2: that night from his trip from Costa Rica.
[38:00] Speaker 3: Oh, really?
[38:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's in no mood to drive out there himself.
[38:03] Speaker 2: He's just come back from vacation. His travel companion, she's
[38:05] Speaker 2: still with him. He can't explain to her right now.
[38:08] Speaker 2: So I knew it was my responsibility since the fire
[38:11] Speaker 2: started under my watch.
[38:12] Speaker 3: True, but I'm glad he wasn't still in Costa Rica.
[38:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, the powerlessness of being like, please go handle this.
[38:16] Speaker 2: He probably would have liked that better, actually.
[38:18] Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe.
[38:19] Speaker 2: I remember as I was driving the 12 miles out
[38:22] Speaker 2: to Rattlesnake Ridge, and I was still like a few
[38:24] Speaker 2: miles away, I could see the mountaintop already, right? I
[38:27] Speaker 2: could see Rattlesnake Ridge, and it looked bad, like real bad.
[38:31] Speaker 5: Oh, no.
[38:31] Speaker 2: Elizabeth, the whole mountainside was black.
[38:33] Speaker 5: Oh.
[38:34] Speaker 2: I could make out what looked like red ants climbing
[38:36] Speaker 2: up this blackened hill. Obviously, they were not red ants,
[38:39] Speaker 2: but they looked like them to me. And I kept driving,
[38:41] Speaker 2: and as I got closer, I could see that they
[38:42] Speaker 2: were actually fire engines driving up the side of the mountain.
[38:45] Speaker 5: Oh, no.
[38:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, lots of fire engines there on that blackened mountainside.
[38:49] Speaker 5: Sure.
[38:49] Speaker 2: And I keep driving towards them, knowing that they're waiting
[38:51] Speaker 2: for me, right?
[38:52] Speaker 5: Oh, good.
[38:53] Speaker 2: I'm getting ever closer. My stomach's getting tighter. My skin's
[38:56] Speaker 2: getting colder. It was like driving to your own execution.
[38:59] Speaker 2: Because I knew my life that I had known before
[39:01] Speaker 2: this moment was over. Whatever was about to happen was
[39:04] Speaker 2: going to be like a line drawn in the sand.
[39:06] Speaker 3: Sure, sure.
[39:07] Speaker 2: So I drive up this access road and the gravel's
[39:10] Speaker 2: crunching beneath my car tires. That's pretty much how my
[39:13] Speaker 2: head feels. After a few minutes, I finally reach the
[39:16] Speaker 2: top of the active fire scene. And when I park,
[39:19] Speaker 2: I see fire engines cresting the hilltop. And they have
[39:21] Speaker 2: these enormous tires and these big throaty engines, right, that
[39:25] Speaker 2: allow them to drive up to, say, the side of
[39:27] Speaker 2: a mountain. The fire trucks kept coming up one after another.
[39:30] Speaker 5: Vroom! Vroom!
[39:34] Speaker 2: I just kept remembering. That sound will always be with me.
[39:36] Speaker 3: Sure. Are those those Cal Fire responder trucks?
[39:41] Speaker 2: It was everything. They had thrown everything at it. Cal Fire,
[39:44] Speaker 2: they also had just their normal fire engines, like red
[39:47] Speaker 2: fire engines that children get excited about.
[39:48] Speaker 3: Because Cal Fire does not play.
[39:50] Speaker 5: No, no.
[39:51] Speaker 2: They had the yellow ones.
[39:52] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[39:52] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[39:53] Speaker 2: So the ground, as you probably can guess, was still smoldering.
[39:56] Speaker 2: Some parts of the wild grasses were still burning and
[39:58] Speaker 2: they were still hosing them down. Smoke was all over
[40:01] Speaker 2: the air. And I look and I see that the
[40:03] Speaker 2: multimillion dollar dream house is still standing. It had not
[40:07] Speaker 2: burned down to the ground. But the freestanding garage was gone. Well,
[40:12] Speaker 2: that's not exactly true. It was now a pile of
[40:14] Speaker 2: smoking debris spread across the dirt of this bulldozed mountaintop.
[40:18] Speaker 2: The garage, as I said, had been a structure about
[40:21] Speaker 2: the size of a three-bedroom home. The garage.
[40:24] Speaker 3: Huge. Oh, my God.
[40:25] Speaker 2: And like I said, it was split in two. There
[40:26] Speaker 2: was the dry half and the wet half. The wet
[40:28] Speaker 2: half of the garage was built so that this developer,
[40:31] Speaker 2: who was a prolific hunter— He could drive into the garage,
[40:34] Speaker 2: drop his fresh kill on the garage floor, field dress it,
[40:37] Speaker 2: and then like hose out the garage.
[40:39] Speaker 3: Disgusting.
[40:40] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[40:40] Speaker 2: And the other half was like for his much younger
[40:42] Speaker 2: trophy wife to park her like Mercedes and all their
[40:44] Speaker 2: other luxury cars. And this structure that, you know, as
[40:47] Speaker 2: it had been the size of a three-bedroom home was
[40:49] Speaker 2: now collapsed into a pile of still smoking rubble.
[40:51] Speaker 3: Oh, God.
[40:52] Speaker 2: So I got to be honest with you, Elizabeth. I
[40:54] Speaker 2: expected the fire marshals to be pretty rude to me.
[40:56] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[40:57] Speaker 2: I would be patronizing, insulting.
[40:59] Speaker 3: Yeah, ripping India down.
[41:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I'd been insulted by firefighters before. I was like,
[41:03] Speaker 2: I expect this, you know? So, I mean, also, let's
[41:06] Speaker 2: be real. They've been up all night putting out my wildfire.
[41:09] Speaker 3: Yeah, putting their lives on the line.
[41:11] Speaker 2: Totally. But turns out the three fire marshals were exceedingly
[41:14] Speaker 2: kind and very polite to me.
[41:16] Speaker 1: Really?
[41:16] Speaker 2: Yeah. Three fire marshals. So you can picture them. They
[41:19] Speaker 2: all have, like, you know, like, the helmets on, the
[41:21] Speaker 2: jackets on. They all have, like, mustaches. The fire marshal
[41:24] Speaker 2: from Yolo County, he had the best mustache of the
[41:26] Speaker 2: three of them.
[41:26] Speaker 3: Did he now?
[41:27] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, a real magnet PA number.
[41:28] Speaker 3: I got to say, this is why firefighters are amazing.
[41:31] Speaker 3: They're the true heroes.
[41:33] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
[41:33] Speaker 3: Got to respect them.
[41:34] Speaker 2: Always, I will wave their flag as high as I
[41:36] Speaker 2: can get it.
[41:37] Speaker 5: Yep, yep.
[41:38] Speaker 2: And so, like, there I am marveling at his mustache.
[41:40] Speaker 2: And these are the kind of things that you focus
[41:42] Speaker 2: on when you're trying not to look at the horrible
[41:43] Speaker 2: mess that you've made of a mountaintop. Anyway, the three
[41:47] Speaker 2: fire marshals, they tell me the good news first. After
[41:50] Speaker 2: working all night, the fire was now 85% contained and extinguished.
[41:55] Speaker 2: The fire marshal from Solano County, he told me that
[41:57] Speaker 2: the fire had basically destroyed about 41 acres, which is
[42:00] Speaker 2: the whole face of the mountain and most of the
[42:02] Speaker 2: one next to it.
[42:03] Speaker 3: 41 acres.
[42:05] Speaker 2: So one of the fire marshals tells me how the
[42:07] Speaker 2: first thing he did when he got up there to
[42:08] Speaker 2: the fire was to run over to this enormous propane tank.
[42:12] Speaker 2: put his hand on the side of it. The tank
[42:14] Speaker 2: was warm, like getting hot. It was really, it was
[42:17] Speaker 2: getting close to exploding, which had been really bad because
[42:19] Speaker 2: it was attached to the gas lines of the multimillion
[42:22] Speaker 2: dollar dream house. So if it, if the propane tank
[42:24] Speaker 2: blew up, the house would have blown up too. Oh God. Right.
[42:27] Speaker 2: He's luckily the firefighters, like we arrived in time. They had,
[42:30] Speaker 2: they kept this enormous propane tank from exploding. They like
[42:32] Speaker 2: hit it with water to cool it down. which kept
[42:35] Speaker 2: the fire manageable because it didn't explode. And then also
[42:37] Speaker 2: they didn't have to evacuate so they could keep fighting
[42:39] Speaker 2: the fire. This was pretty much the only bit of
[42:42] Speaker 2: good luck I had.
[42:43] Speaker 3: Wow.
[42:44] Speaker 2: I didn't think that, you know, the fire marshal told
[42:46] Speaker 2: me that. Like, this is the only good luck you had, right?
[42:48] Speaker 2: They said this could all have been much, much worse.
[42:51] Speaker 2: So after that, I thanked them for working through the night.
[42:53] Speaker 2: And I said, you know, and they told me, well,
[42:55] Speaker 2: it's our jobs, what we do. And I was like,
[42:57] Speaker 2: you guys are so macho, right? Then they asked me
[42:59] Speaker 2: to join them for a tour of the smoldering remains
[43:02] Speaker 2: of the detached garage.
[43:03] Speaker 3: Oh, no.
[43:04] Speaker 2: And then that's where they believe the fire had started.
[43:06] Speaker 2: So we were over there. We're stepping on top of
[43:08] Speaker 2: all the smoking rubble and the collapsed wall and the
[43:11] Speaker 2: garage's roof. which are now just on the ground. And
[43:14] Speaker 2: they asked me where we kept all of our volatile chemicals.
[43:17] Speaker 2: Because as you know, painters use all kinds of highly
[43:20] Speaker 2: flammable chemicals. And we did indeed have gallons and gallons
[43:24] Speaker 2: of chemicals of how big the job was, all of which,
[43:27] Speaker 2: you know, highly flammable. But that's not all. There was
[43:29] Speaker 2: also all of our equipment. We had our multiple paint sprayers, ladders,
[43:33] Speaker 2: drop claws, right? And those drop claws, oh, yeah. Great
[43:37] Speaker 2: materials if you want to start a house fire. Also,
[43:40] Speaker 2: there in the dry side of the garage, the homeowners
[43:42] Speaker 2: had kept all of their super expensive appliances, all that
[43:45] Speaker 2: Sub-Zero stuff I told you about.
[43:47] Speaker 3: Oh, no.
[43:47] Speaker 2: So multiple washing machines and dryers and dishwashers, all of it,
[43:51] Speaker 2: the refrigerator, the stoves, multiple stoves and ovens. That's where
[43:56] Speaker 2: they had stacked also and stored the 18 authentic California
[44:00] Speaker 2: Mission doors. Oh, God. So I showed the fire marshals
[44:03] Speaker 2: where the 18 authentic California Mission doors used to stand.
[44:06] Speaker 2: And I say used to stand because there was nothing left.
[44:10] Speaker 2: Just the metal door handles and the hinges. Oh, no.
[44:13] Speaker 2: That was all that was left. It's sitting there amongst
[44:16] Speaker 2: the ash and debris in like perfect little arrangements. Just
[44:19] Speaker 2: like a couple hinges and a door handle, a couple
[44:22] Speaker 2: hinges and a door handle. All 18 doors are gone.
[44:24] Speaker 5: Oof.
[44:25] Speaker 2: Now, all the super expensive appliances, they had been melted
[44:28] Speaker 2: into these abstract sculptures of metal, right?
[44:31] Speaker 3: Oh, no.
[44:31] Speaker 2: Our paint sprayers had all turned, and the ladders, they
[44:34] Speaker 2: were all melted into abstract artwork. It was actually really
[44:37] Speaker 2: impressive how hot this fire must have been.
[44:40] Speaker 5: Right.
[44:40] Speaker 2: The adobe walls, apparently, of this garage had acted like
[44:43] Speaker 2: an oven.
[44:44] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense.
[44:45] Speaker 2: And then I showed the three fire marshals where we
[44:47] Speaker 2: kept all the volatile chemicals, and in particular, the oil-based wood-stained,
[44:52] Speaker 2: soaked rags. I showed them where we kept the multiple
[44:55] Speaker 2: illegally stored five-gallon buckets filled with the plastic bags of
[44:58] Speaker 2: rags and water. And they were like, really? This is
[45:01] Speaker 2: where I'm like, yep, this is right here. They're like, well,
[45:02] Speaker 2: where's the firebox?
[45:04] Speaker 3: This is crickets.
[45:05] Speaker 2: Together we worked out what had happened, right, and how
[45:07] Speaker 2: the fire started. Between the adobe walls of the garage,
[45:10] Speaker 2: all the volatile chemicals, the stain-soaked rags, the drop cloths,
[45:13] Speaker 2: of course the 18 authentic California Mission doors, the fire
[45:16] Speaker 2: marshals told me, it might be impossible to make a
[45:19] Speaker 2: more perfect and expensive starter kit for a structure fire.
[45:24] Speaker 5: Right? No.
[45:25] Speaker 2: I told the fire marshals that we knew we needed
[45:27] Speaker 2: a firebox, but we didn't have one. I told them
[45:30] Speaker 2: we asked for one, but we were told by the homeowner,
[45:32] Speaker 2: who was also the general contractor for the job, not
[45:34] Speaker 2: to worry about it. He said he'd get one sometime.
[45:36] Speaker 2: He never did. Now, after we reverse engineered our nearly
[45:40] Speaker 2: perfect structure fire, the fire marshal from Yolo County, the
[45:43] Speaker 2: one with the best mustache.
[45:44] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[45:45] Speaker 2: He told me in his 23 years of doing this job,
[45:49] Speaker 2: I was the first person he'd ever met who told
[45:52] Speaker 2: him the complete truth, no matter how stupid it made
[45:54] Speaker 2: me look.
[45:55] Speaker 3: Wow.
[45:56] Speaker 2: Yeah. I took that, you know, as a compliment.
[45:58] Speaker 3: You're a man of integrity.
[45:59] Speaker 2: He said, everyone lies to us. And then we always
[46:01] Speaker 2: find out. I appreciate your honesty. And it was a
[46:04] Speaker 2: backhanded compliment, but I took it.
[46:06] Speaker 3: Not really. I mean, to think about it, it's, yeah,
[46:09] Speaker 3: there are people who are cowardly and they want to, they,
[46:12] Speaker 3: In that moment, that split second moment where you get
[46:15] Speaker 3: to decide, am I going to lie or tell the truth?
[46:17] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[46:17] Speaker 3: The fear makes people lie and the cowardice.
[46:21] Speaker 2: Totally dismiss facts or kind of rearrange them.
[46:23] Speaker 3: Yeah, because they think they're going to get one over.
[46:25] Speaker 3: But these are people that this is their job to
[46:27] Speaker 3: figure this out.
[46:28] Speaker 2: That's what I told them. They're going to figure it out.
[46:29] Speaker 2: I told them, I'm like, I guess that you guys
[46:31] Speaker 2: are really good at your jobs. You're all the fire marshals.
[46:33] Speaker 2: You're going to figure it out. So why lie to
[46:35] Speaker 2: you and waste time?
[46:36] Speaker 3: Exactly. And make things worse.
[46:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And then also I told the Yolo County
[46:40] Speaker 2: fire marshal, look, if I'm going to ruin my best
[46:42] Speaker 2: friend's life with a fire, I might as well do
[46:44] Speaker 2: it the way he wants me to do it, which
[46:45] Speaker 2: is he said I should tell you guys the whole truth. Plus,
[46:48] Speaker 2: he knows I'm a terrible liar, so that may have
[46:49] Speaker 2: been part of his calculus. So at this point, the
[46:52] Speaker 2: fire marshals tell me I'm free to go. We figured
[46:54] Speaker 2: out where the fire started, what all the propellants were,
[46:57] Speaker 2: all the chemicals. So they have like a complete report.
[46:59] Speaker 2: They're like, okay, you had NAPFA, you had MEK, you make,
[47:02] Speaker 2: they're going down the list, right?
[47:03] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[47:03] Speaker 2: And they had no more questions.
[47:04] Speaker 5: All right.
[47:05] Speaker 2: So they figured out how the fire started. Now it's
[47:07] Speaker 2: time for me to leave, to go back to Davis
[47:09] Speaker 2: and tell my friend what I'd said and what the
[47:12] Speaker 2: fire marshals had said and look at how we could
[47:14] Speaker 2: move forward. Elizabeth, I was really bummed that the fire
[47:18] Speaker 2: marshals told me I could leave. I didn't want to
[47:20] Speaker 2: go because once I left this crime scene, I'd have
[47:22] Speaker 2: to go face my friend's anger and the horror would
[47:25] Speaker 2: then be real. Like right now I'm like solving problems,
[47:27] Speaker 2: talking to these guys I've never talked to. It's kind
[47:30] Speaker 2: of fun in an abstract way. But then I probably
[47:32] Speaker 2: started here. What do you guys think? You know, like that. Anyway,
[47:35] Speaker 2: so I didn't want to go back to my life.
[47:36] Speaker 2: I wanted to run away. I go start a new life.
[47:39] Speaker 2: Like maybe borrow someone else's identity, try their life on
[47:42] Speaker 2: for size.
[47:43] Speaker 3: Marley.
[47:44] Speaker 2: Totally. See what works, right? Maybe try out, do some
[47:46] Speaker 2: accent works, little wig play. But I did go back
[47:50] Speaker 2: and I had those 12 miles of driving to think
[47:52] Speaker 2: about what I'd done and what this would mean for
[47:55] Speaker 2: my friend, for our business, for both of our futures.
[47:59] Speaker 2: And I didn't know if the fire marshals would charge
[48:01] Speaker 2: us with a crime or not because no one had
[48:03] Speaker 2: mentioned that. And I didn't think to ask. And then
[48:06] Speaker 2: also I realized someone's going to have to pay for
[48:09] Speaker 2: this fire. I did not have that kind of money.
[48:11] Speaker 2: They could pay for a garage the size of a
[48:13] Speaker 2: three bedroom home. I couldn't afford a three bedroom home.
[48:15] Speaker 2: Couldn't afford a one bedroom home. And I knew my
[48:17] Speaker 2: friend didn't have that kind of money either. Luckily for us,
[48:20] Speaker 2: we had our business insurance, which should take care of
[48:22] Speaker 2: the fire damage. And then I call my friend and
[48:24] Speaker 2: I tell him, What the fire marshals has said. And
[48:27] Speaker 2: like when I told him what I said, I told
[48:28] Speaker 2: him what the fire looked like. Elizabeth, you want to
[48:31] Speaker 2: hear the most surprising part of this story?
[48:33] Speaker 3: Yes.
[48:33] Speaker 2: My friend didn't yell at me.
[48:35] Speaker 3: Really?
[48:35] Speaker 2: He was known for having a short fuse. Like we
[48:39] Speaker 2: both did. We often yelled at each other, like on
[48:41] Speaker 2: job sites. Sometimes we'd be like up on the roof
[48:43] Speaker 2: of a house yelling at each other until one of
[48:45] Speaker 2: the guys in the crew was like on the ground.
[48:48] Speaker 2: is like the neighbors are watching, stop yelling at each other.
[48:51] Speaker 2: So it was like very expected we were gonna yell
[48:53] Speaker 2: at each other about this. So it was a major
[48:55] Speaker 2: surprise to me when he didn't yell at me. And Elizabeth,
[48:58] Speaker 2: he didn't even have like a nasty tone in his voice.
[49:01] Speaker 2: Like he said, he was very matter of fact. He asked,
[49:04] Speaker 2: what exactly told the fire marshals? I said, I told
[49:06] Speaker 2: them the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.
[49:08] Speaker 2: And because I thought, this could be deemed a crime scene.
[49:11] Speaker 2: And he told me, yeah, it's glad I told him
[49:13] Speaker 2: the truth because everything I told them would be admissible
[49:15] Speaker 2: in court.
[49:16] Speaker 5: Right.
[49:16] Speaker 2: And we didn't need to make things worse. And the
[49:18] Speaker 2: thing is, we could be charged with negligent arson.
[49:20] Speaker 3: Sure. Right.
[49:21] Speaker 2: We both knew we were good and like proper. We
[49:25] Speaker 2: just didn't know how. Then I asked about our business insurance.
[49:29] Speaker 2: You know, see, just before he left on vacation, I'd
[49:31] Speaker 2: asked if he'd paid to renew our insurance and our
[49:34] Speaker 2: bond payments and both of which were due at the
[49:36] Speaker 2: same time because when you start a business, you have
[49:38] Speaker 2: to get both. So they always came up annually at
[49:39] Speaker 2: the same time. He told me he had. And the
[49:42] Speaker 2: bill for our insurance renewal was like $ 150.
[49:43] Speaker 5: Oh, wow.
[49:43] Speaker 2: He told me he paid it off. That, turns out,
[49:48] Speaker 2: was a lie. He just told me that so I'd
[49:50] Speaker 2: stop nagging him about it.
[49:51] Speaker 5: Oh, no.
[49:52] Speaker 2: Instead, he went on vacation, and while he was gone,
[49:54] Speaker 2: I burned down a mountainside.
[49:56] Speaker 3: Oh, no.
[49:57] Speaker 2: So when we discussed our next moves and when he
[49:59] Speaker 2: didn't mention the insurance and he avoided it when I
[50:01] Speaker 2: asked him about it, I knew he hadn't paid it. Yeah.
[50:04] Speaker 2: Which means we were definitely screwed because how could we
[50:08] Speaker 2: ever pay for this fire?
[50:09] Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
[50:10] Speaker 2: It would be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
[50:13] Speaker 3: North of that.
[50:13] Speaker 2: Yeah. Not to mention the possibility of the charges of
[50:16] Speaker 2: negligent arson, the criminal charges. So we made plans to
[50:19] Speaker 2: get a lawyer and wait for the court case. Later on,
[50:21] Speaker 2: the homeowner's insurance company called. And they told us that
[50:24] Speaker 2: their best estimates would be about $ 180, 000 just to rebuild
[50:28] Speaker 2: the detached garage. That did not include paying for the
[50:31] Speaker 2: 18 authentic California Mission doors, all of the super expensive
[50:35] Speaker 2: Sub-Zero appliances and whatnot. And when I heard that $ 180, 000
[50:38] Speaker 2: total just for the structural building, I assumed our friendship
[50:42] Speaker 2: was done. It was over. There was no way he's
[50:44] Speaker 2: going to forgive me for this. And as other folks
[50:47] Speaker 2: in our small hometown heard about this fire, they all
[50:50] Speaker 2: blamed me. I mean, I was the obvious choice, but
[50:53] Speaker 2: my friend. He never did.
[50:54] Speaker 3: You're kidding.
[50:55] Speaker 2: He never once got mad. Even as everyone we knew
[50:59] Speaker 2: suggested that they would kill me if they were him.
[51:02] Speaker 2: He sat there and he listened, he joked, and he
[51:04] Speaker 2: never got mad. He often didn't even tell me what
[51:06] Speaker 2: people said, which was some bad stuff they were saying.
[51:09] Speaker 2: And then our case goes to court. And get this,
[51:11] Speaker 2: the fire marshals from the three counties, they get called
[51:14] Speaker 2: in to testify as experts, and they repeated what I
[51:17] Speaker 2: told them. And then our lawyer said that the fire
[51:20] Speaker 2: marshal's testimony was, Was key. Turns out, since I was
[51:23] Speaker 2: so honest with them and so respectful of them, the
[51:26] Speaker 2: fire marshals testified in our favor.
[51:29] Speaker 3: Oh.
[51:29] Speaker 2: They said it wasn't all our fault. And this saved
[51:32] Speaker 2: us from the charges of negligent arson.
[51:34] Speaker 3: You're kidding.
[51:35] Speaker 5: Yes.
[51:35] Speaker 2: And after that, the homeowner's insurance company, they turned around
[51:38] Speaker 2: and sued their client, the homeowner.
[51:41] Speaker 3: Really?
[51:41] Speaker 2: Yeah, the mega rich developer, because he was the general
[51:43] Speaker 2: contractor for the job. And so he was responsible for
[51:47] Speaker 2: things like having a firebox.
[51:49] Speaker 3: Yeah, it all lays at his feet.
[51:51] Speaker 2: Totally get extra messy. And eventually the fire marshals testified
[51:54] Speaker 2: in that lawsuit case as well. And they said that
[51:56] Speaker 2: the mega rich homeowner didn't ensure that there was a
[51:59] Speaker 2: firebox on the job, which was his responsibility as a
[52:02] Speaker 2: general contractor. So that saved us. The fire marshals saved
[52:07] Speaker 2: us twice. The homeowner's insurance then and our lawyer, they
[52:10] Speaker 2: cut a deal. We had to pay 50 grand for
[52:13] Speaker 2: our part of the fire. That was it. I mean,
[52:16] Speaker 2: I say that was it. Like 50 grand, that was it.
[52:18] Speaker 2: And get this, Elizabeth. My friend did not ask me
[52:22] Speaker 2: or insist that I pay for it or even split
[52:24] Speaker 2: it with him. And I offered to split it. But
[52:26] Speaker 2: he told me like, no. He's like, Z, no. And
[52:29] Speaker 2: he paid the full 50 grand himself. You're kidding. And
[52:32] Speaker 2: when I tried to apologize to him, he would stop me.
[52:34] Speaker 2: He said it wasn't my fault. It was his fault.
[52:37] Speaker 2: If he'd renewed the insurance like I had asked, it
[52:39] Speaker 2: wouldn't have been a problem at all. It was one
[52:41] Speaker 2: of the most impressive things a friend has ever done
[52:44] Speaker 2: for me.
[52:45] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[52:45] Speaker 2: Because then I was able to like, you know, unfortunately
[52:47] Speaker 2: move to LA really, really quickly without being $ 25, 000 in debt.
[52:52] Speaker 2: Somehow this dude forgives me. And to this day, we're
[52:55] Speaker 2: still best friends. I went to his wedding. We live
[52:57] Speaker 2: close to each other. We talk all the time. We're
[53:00] Speaker 2: still best friends. And so honestly, I don't know if
[53:02] Speaker 2: I could have done the same thing. Like if I were,
[53:04] Speaker 2: if the roles were reversed, like I'm just being real.
[53:07] Speaker 2: So he's a better man than me.
[53:09] Speaker 5: Right.
[53:10] Speaker 2: And trust me, no one we knew could believe that
[53:13] Speaker 2: he forgave me. Yeah. This is a guy who was
[53:16] Speaker 2: known for knocking fools out with one punch. He was
[53:19] Speaker 2: known for having a short temper. Everyone was like, wait,
[53:22] Speaker 2: he forgave you. I don't even, like how, like their
[53:25] Speaker 2: brains are coming out of their ears, right?
[53:26] Speaker 3: Right, right.
[53:27] Speaker 2: I mean, I cost him 50 grand. He never punched me,
[53:30] Speaker 2: never once raised his voice at me. Instead, he was like,
[53:33] Speaker 2: So graceful and so compassionate when it mattered most. I
[53:37] Speaker 2: love this guy to this day, not because of this,
[53:39] Speaker 2: but because of what a good man he is. And
[53:41] Speaker 2: now for context, when I was nine years old, I
[53:44] Speaker 2: also burned down my family's kitchen. I have a long
[53:47] Speaker 2: history of fire, Elizabeth. I've been involved in multiple car fires.
[53:52] Speaker 2: House fires. Oh, I could tell you the multiple. I
[53:55] Speaker 2: could do a whole episode on car fires. I've been
[53:57] Speaker 2: to multiple house fires. I had firefighters congratulate me for
[54:01] Speaker 2: putting out a fire. I'm like, you guys don't know
[54:02] Speaker 2: how many fires I've been in. They showed up. They're like,
[54:05] Speaker 2: there I am with a garden hose putting a fire
[54:07] Speaker 2: out in a house. They're like, how did you do this?
[54:09] Speaker 2: And I was like, I've been in so many fires.
[54:12] Speaker 2: I'm not scared of smoke or fire anymore. I just
[54:13] Speaker 2: went charging in. Anyway, my point is that when I
[54:16] Speaker 2: burned down my family's kitchen when I was nine years old,
[54:19] Speaker 2: I was a kid, right? I had left a burner
[54:21] Speaker 2: on when I was making popcorn, and then we left
[54:23] Speaker 2: the house to go to the video store to rent movies, right?
[54:27] Speaker 2: And you'd think that my mother would take the blame
[54:29] Speaker 2: for not checking the burner herself. Sure. Instead, she blamed me, right?
[54:33] Speaker 2: She's like, you're old enough to know better. So my friend,
[54:35] Speaker 2: he was even more loving and forgiving than my own mother.
[54:38] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[54:39] Speaker 2: So there you go, Elizabeth. That's the story of how
[54:42] Speaker 2: I started a structure fire that burned down a mountainside
[54:45] Speaker 2: and 18 authentic California mission doors and how my friend
[54:49] Speaker 2: taught me to be a real and true partner and
[54:51] Speaker 2: friend when it really, really matters. So what's a ridiculous
[54:54] Speaker 2: takeaway here?
[54:55] Speaker 3: Oh, this incredible accidental arsonist. I think for me, the
[55:00] Speaker 3: takeaway is that you two, you are such living embodiments
[55:07] Speaker 3: of integrity, to be truthful. And, you know, you can't
[55:12] Speaker 3: go back and do excuses and cast blame. You move forward.
[55:16] Speaker 3: But I think that, you know, when it really counts,
[55:20] Speaker 3: he's not the hothead punch you out in one swing.
[55:25] Speaker 3: Like he is, you know, an honorable man. And so
[55:29] Speaker 3: are you, you know, that you had all these opportunities
[55:33] Speaker 3: to weasel out And you didn't do it. And so
[55:36] Speaker 3: that's honorable. And I think that all of us need
[55:39] Speaker 3: to kind of remember when we're in those sticky situations,
[55:43] Speaker 3: to be honorable is generally going to get you out.
[55:46] Speaker 2: Yes, totally.
[55:47] Speaker 3: You know, it's to be weaselly and cowardly is an
[55:50] Speaker 3: easy first reaction, but it's, and it's difficult to take
[55:54] Speaker 3: account for things and it's difficult to forgive.
[55:57] Speaker 2: Oh my God.
[55:58] Speaker 3: That's really hard.
[55:58] Speaker 2: He taught me mad lessons in forgiveness.
[56:00] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[56:01] Speaker 2: He made me a better person. I swear to God.
[56:02] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[56:03] Speaker 3: And I think that like, this is, this is not
[56:06] Speaker 3: a cautionary tale. I mean, it is about oily rags
[56:09] Speaker 3: as much as I think that this is a good
[56:11] Speaker 3: model of just how to be a good friend, how
[56:13] Speaker 3: to be a good man, how to be a good person.
[56:16] Speaker 5: So, yeah.
[56:17] Speaker 3: Thank you for sharing your story.
[56:20] Speaker 2: What's your takeaway from all this? My ridiculous takeaway? Definitely
[56:24] Speaker 2: get a firebox. No, but I would say this. You know,
[56:26] Speaker 2: there's this expression like. character like a person's true character
[56:31] Speaker 2: is revealed when nobody is watching yes i think it's
[56:34] Speaker 2: actually that's true but it's also equally true that a
[56:37] Speaker 2: person's true character is revealed when everybody is.
[56:40] Speaker 3: Watching that yes because.
[56:42] Speaker 2: Everyone in our hometown wanted him to get pissed and
[56:44] Speaker 2: be like man that guy and he just took it
[56:46] Speaker 2: all constantly day after day for months.
[56:48] Speaker 3: If not years and he would have had more support.
[56:50] Speaker 2: Oh 100 everybody wanted him to be like you know
[56:53] Speaker 2: f him and he was like no no it's cool
[56:55] Speaker 2: it's cool So there you go. So are you in
[56:58] Speaker 2: the mood for a talkback to wash this one down?
[57:00] Speaker 3: I would love a talkback.
[57:01] Speaker 4: I wish he was the one leaving a talkback.
[57:17] Speaker 5: Elizabeth, thanks so much for that Dutton gross out about
[57:21] Speaker 5: the 80s and the Wieners. Brought me back to probably
[57:26] Speaker 5: about 1984, maybe 83, when I was outside playing and
[57:32] Speaker 5: we were having a picnic and it was hot. I
[57:35] Speaker 5: was at a friend's house. My mom and dad were there.
[57:37] Speaker 5: I was probably four or five, all sweaty and a bird.
[57:42] Speaker 5: pooped all over me and that's ridiculous oh my god girl.
[57:46] Speaker 3: I hear it's lucky is it i had a bird
[57:50] Speaker 3: poop on me probably around the same age i was
[57:52] Speaker 3: standing outside waiting for a ride to school and then it.
[57:55] Speaker 2: Just burnt oh dude on the playground we always got
[57:57] Speaker 2: the birds are always it seemed like pooping on the.
[57:59] Speaker 3: Kids on the playground is that like an 80s thing does.
[58:02] Speaker 2: It still happen i don't know if kids get pooped
[58:03] Speaker 2: on anymore i don't know if they do pe like
[58:05] Speaker 2: we were outside every day twice a day for p
[58:08] Speaker 2: that is true As an elementary school kid?
[58:09] Speaker 3: Well, that was a good little gross out.
[58:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a solid gross out.
[58:13] Speaker 3: Getting crapped on.
[58:14] Speaker 2: It lived up to the Dutton gross outs.
[58:17] Speaker 3: Oh, heavens.
[58:18] Speaker 2: Well, as always, you can find us online at Ridiculous
[58:20] Speaker 2: Crime on Instagram. That's where you have images and such
[58:24] Speaker 2: of all the stories we tell. And over on Blue Sky,
[58:26] Speaker 2: if you want to reach out or just see some links.
[58:29] Speaker 2: And we have our website, RidiculousCrime.com. Go check it out.
[58:32] Speaker 2: It's a banger. Oh, big news, Elizabeth. Our website was
[58:35] Speaker 2: recently nominated for People Magazine's Sexiest Website of the Year.
[58:39] Speaker 3: Fingers crossed. Hunky, hunky.
[58:43] Speaker 2: So, obviously, we love your talk back. So, please, go
[58:45] Speaker 2: to the iHeart app, download it, leave a talk back.
[58:48] Speaker 2: Maybe get to hear your voice here. We'd love to
[58:49] Speaker 2: hear it here. And email us if you like at
[58:51] Speaker 2: Ridiculous Crime at gmail.com. And please start your email. Dear Terry,
[58:57] Speaker 2: thank you for listening and we will catch you next crime.
[59:02] Speaker 2: Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarin Burnett.
[59:08] Speaker 2: Produced and edited by the man who keeps one hand
[59:10] Speaker 2: on the knobs and the other on a fire extinguisher, Mr.
[59:13] Speaker 2: Dave Kustin. Our Ridiculous Assistant is the head of the
[59:16] Speaker 2: all-volunteer Ridiculous Crime fire crew, Terry Maldonado-Fong. Research is by
[59:21] Speaker 2: the General contractor in charge of facts and figures, Marissa Brown.
[59:26] Speaker 2: Our theme song is by a Billy Joel cover band,
[59:28] Speaker 2: We Did Start the Fire, What Are You Gonna Do
[59:31] Speaker 2: About It, a.k.a. Thomas Lee and Travis Duggan. The host
[59:34] Speaker 2: wardrobe provided by Botany 500. Producer Dave's wardrobe provided by Mr.
[59:38] Speaker 2: Guy at Beverly Hills. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkle
[59:41] Speaker 2: Shot and Mr. Andre. Executive producers are Ben, hey, do
[59:45] Speaker 2: you smell smoke? Bolin and Noel, sorry, I was microwaving
[59:50] Speaker 2: fish in the break room.
[59:57] Speaker 5: Ridiculous Crime.
[1:00:00] Speaker 3: Say it one more time.
[1:00:01] Speaker 5: Ridiculous Crime.
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