Note: This transcript was automatically transcribed by Riverside.
Marcus (00:01) All right. Well, welcome everybody. We're going to deviate from the norm from our typical podcast setup. This is more of a public service announcement for primarily for Southern California people. For those who don't know, which would be crazy, but 10 days ago, today's January 17th, 10 days ago, there was a wildfire that spread and it's devastated a number of people locally, either directly or indirectly.
And as the fog starts to lift, I wanted to bring Ricky Patel on who has an extensive background. I'll get into it in a second. To help us start to figure out what the next steps are, what we don't know, how to navigate this. I know there's a tremendous amount of overwhelm for a number of people. So this is intended to be short to the point, nothing but substance. I'll give a quick intro.
on Ricky and then we'll just start to dive in. So, before I give Ricky a chance to say hello, some background on him, his background is extensive. The resume, is w could, could fill a podcast by itself, but, among many things he's served on, Barack Obama's national finance committee as an ambassador for the Clinton global initiative. He's been featured on 60 minutes, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ABC, NBC, a number of other places, but most importantly,
He, there are two points I wanted to bring up. One was he led the largest class action lawsuit in US history against British petroleum following the 2010 BP oil spill. And number two, also represented the Puerto Rican government and its private citizens following Hurricane Maria in 2017, protecting more than a billion dollars worth of property and helped to create law to protect Puerto Rico's people against the insurance industry. So a lot of relevant information here, Ricky.
Welcome, thank you for being on.
Ricky Patel (01:49) Marcus, thank you so much for having me. I wish that it was under better circumstances. This is absolutely devastating for the people, but thank you for having me on here.
Marcus (01:55) I know. I know.
Well, I'm looking forward to having this conversation. Obviously it's not under the great auspices, but to set the table for the listeners and viewers, I intend to sort of walk us through a macro level understanding what we don't know, talk about those who were impacted, what they should be doing as next steps, then talk about maybe the challenges that they may encounter and what the legal timeline and processes might look like into the future. So.
Ricky Patel (02:03) Thank
Marcus (02:29) For the benefit of the audience, I'm going to try and incorporate everybody who's been impacted, bifurcating that into sort of two categories, those who've been directly impacted and those who've been indirectly impacted. The directly impacted, I would categorize as those who've lost their homes and everything in it, unfortunately, and those who have kept their homes but are not granted access and may not be granted access for the foreseeable future, certainly as hazardous materials start to get...