GEOFF BENNETT: It has been one year since the Palisades and Eaton fires tore through Los Angeles, destroying thousands of homes and killing more than 30 people.

In his new book, journalist Jacob Soboroff offers a deeply reported account of the catastrophe told through the voices of firefighters, political leaders, residents and others, with a reflection on the lessons learned.

The book is called "Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age."

And Jacob Soboroff of MS NOW joins us now.

It's good to see you.

JACOB SOBOROFF, Author, "Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age": It's good to see you, Geoff.

Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: You described the 2025 L.A.

fires as the fire of the future.

What made these fires qualitatively different from previous ones?

JACOB SOBOROFF: You know, what is so wild about this is that I was certain, having watched my childhood home carbonized in front of my own eyes, that what I was looking at was my past.

But when I sat down to sort of explore what it was that I had experienced in real time, which I couldn't process being out there covering this live on national television, I realized it was exactly that, the fire of the future.

And that is in talking to experts, firefighters, senior emergency management officials.

One of them here in Washington, D.C., said to me, what you experienced was the fire of the future because of four phenomenon.

Changes in the way we live, our infrastructure is falling apart, the global climate emergency, obviously, and the politics of misinformation and disinformation all played a part in making the great L.A.

fires not only the costliest wildfire event in American history, but something I think that will stick with Angelenos and people that read this book will soon experience in a neighborhood near them, I am sure, elsewhere in the United States and around the world.

GEOFF BENNETT: Let's talk more about that because fires are so often a climate story, but, this one, this became a political story in large part because of the misinformation.

How did that change the trajectory of the response?

JACOB SOBOROFF: It's so true.

And I think when people read "Firestorm," it reads like at times a sci-fi thriller, but it is as true of a true story as it possibly can be.

It is a minute-by-minute account of the lived experience of so many people.

And that lived experience includes being confused by misinformation and disinformation that was coming out of not only local leaders and the inability for the local infrastructure to have emergency alert systems that worked to get people information and appropriate amount of time to evacuate.

But the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump -- and I don't think this is a secret or a surprise to anybody -- was sending out messages on his platform, TRUTH Social, about the causes of the fire that were based in no reality whatsoever.

You remember that he said there's a mystical tap that we can turn on and flow water down from the Pacific Northwest to stop the fire.

He blamed "Gavin Newscum" and the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass.

This book doesn't absolve any official from what could have made these fires different, but it does, I think, point a finger at particularly Donald Trump and Elon Musk for, from the sidelines, making -- pouring rhetorical fuel on the very literal flames of the fire.

GEOFF BENNETT: There is this moment you capture in the book that really, I think, underscores the tension between the rhetoric and the reality.

You received a text from Stephen Miller's wife, Katie, in the midst of your reporting.

JACOB SOBOROFF: I did.

GEOFF BENNETT: Tell us about that.

JACOB SOBOROFF: Katie Miller and I were and have had a journalist-source relationship for the better part of the last -- I don't know, since the first Trump administration at least.

And she was the one when I covered family separation that let me into those detention centers to see the separated children for myself.

And when I wrote my first book, "Separated," it included some comments that she had made to me on the record about her feelings about the policy.

She didn't like that I included it and she cut off communication with me.

We hadn't talked since.

And as I stood there getting ready to deliver a special report to Lester Holt on NBC News, my phone rang, I looked down, and I picked it up.

It was Katie Miller.

And I told her I had to call her back, but before I could, she texted me and asked me to go check on, unbeknownst to me, Stephen Miller's parents' house.

They lived in the Palisades.

And just like I went and looked at my brother's house that he was living in, just like I went and looked at the house of the guy I drove in high school carpool, I went by the Millers' house.

And it too had burned down.

And the reason I include this story is because, number one, I was equally sad for them as I was for anybody else.

But, number two, within minutes of going to do that for her, I noticed that her boss, Donald Trump, and her future boss, Elon Musk at DOGE, were spreading this misinformation and disinformation that was hurting people, including her own in-laws.

And the irony of it to me, I think, is important to underscore and for people to really realize that this is the moment that we're living it.

GEOFF BENNETT: Based on your reporting, what were the systemic breakdowns that really put people in the community at the greatest risk?

JACOB SOBOROFF: So, there were two distinct fires that combined to burn 16,000 structures, kill 31 people, maybe as many as 400 if you look at excess mortality and some of the medical literature in the most populous county in America.

It was three times the size of Manhattan.

In the Palisades, this was a holdover fire from a previous fire that had been started allegedly by an arsonist on New Year's Day.

In Altadena, this was faulty electrical equipment, dormant electrical equipment that sat there unused and was electrified during the windstorm.

That there is no proximate cause is what I learned about wildfires like this in diving deep for this book, but those two fires were started distinctly and separately.

The common thread is that we knew that they were going to happen.

There was a particularly dangerous situation alert that went out from the National Weather Service.

I went and spent time with them.

You will meet in the book Dr.

Ariel Gomberg and Dave -- excuse me -- Dr.

Ariel Cohen and Dave Gomberg from the Oxnard office in Los Angeles.

These guys are heroes, the men and women that work in that office.

They knew exactly what was going to happen and what would happen if there was any form of ignition.

And in both of these places, hours apart, that exact thing happened and the consequences that they predicted, catastrophe, unfolded.

GEOFF BENNETT: Fast-forward to the current moment.

How are authorities and health agencies responding to concerns among firefighters, members of the community about their exposure to toxic smoke?

JACOB SOBOROFF: Yes, you will read in the book about a firefighter named Nick Schuler from Cal Fire, the state firefighting agency there.

And he told me: In all my years as a firefighter, this is the one fire that I thought in real time that I might get cancer fighting.

And there's research that shows elevated levels of lead and mercury in the blood of the firefighters already in the aftermath of the fire.

And there have been criticisms, including some great investigative reporting, which I cited in the book, by Tony Briscoe of The Los Angeles Times and others, about the cleanup effort.

And while it was fast, and President Trump and Gavin Newsom both liked to tout the speed with which these neighborhoods were cleaned up, there has been testing that shows that there are still elevated levels of toxic materials there, which are giving people pause about moving back, not just now, but if they will ever go back.

GEOFF BENNETT: How did you manage the emotional toll of covering the destruction of the neighborhood where you grew up, losing your own family home?

JACOB SOBOROFF: I don't know.

Actually, the truth is, I don't think I did at the time.

And that's why this book for me was equal parts investigative reporting and a cathartic journey to really rediscover myself and my neighborhood and my community.

And it is as much a love letter to L.A.

and dedicated to my fellow Angelenos as it is a work of political journalism or climate journalism or interviews with other human beings.

I think the book is as much about people as it is about politics or our environment.

And I think -- you have covered disasters like this as well.

So often, hope emerges in these stories.

I wasn't able to see it or feel it until I spent the better part of 2025 writing "Firestorm."

GEOFF BENNETT: The book is "Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age."

Jacob Soboroff, always great to speak with you, friend.

JACOB SOBOROFF: Thanks, Geoff.

Appreciate it.