More than a dozen wildfires are burning out of control in Southern California, threatening thousands of homes and forcing evacuations in San Diego County. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency in the region.
MADELEINE BRAND, host: From the studios of NPR West, this is DAY TO DAY. I'm Madeleine Brand.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: I'm Alex Chadwick.</s>ALEX CHADWICK, host: Coming up, we're going to venture to a speck of land way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where we will search for sharks.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: First to our backyard, Southern California. At least a dozen wildfires are burning from San Diego County all the way up to Malibu and into the rugged hills north of Los Angeles. The flames destroyed several landmark buildings in Malibu and they are closing in on homes, forcing evacuations, and taxing the resources of firefighters.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Bill Metcalf, a fire coordinator in Northern San Diego County, gave this assessment of what firefighters are facing today.</s>Mr. BILL METCALF (Firefighter): The situation has gotten dramatically worse overnight and we are faced with the situation this morning which is worst than many of us could have imagined just a few short hours ago.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Grim words from Bill Metcalf.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared that Southern California is officially in a state of emergency.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: NPR's Carrie Kahn has been out all night covering those fires. She joins us now.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Welcome back to DAY TO DAY, Carrie.</s>CARRIE KAHN: Thank you.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Well, as we just heard, some dire news from Bill Metcalf there - the biggest concerns being in San Diego County. What's happening there?</s>CARRIE KAHN: It is a grim situation. There was a fire that has been burning overnight in the town of Ramona. And now there is another fire which is about 20 miles to the north of it. They think that the two are going to merge. They are evacuating thousands of homes - the entire town of Ramona, which is about 10,000 homes. And so they are evacuating a 20 by 20 miles square area of people in San Diego County.</s>CARRIE KAHN: San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders is really urging San Diegans to listen to the news and to get out when told.</s>Mayor JERRY SANDERS (San Diego, California): This fire is moving very quickly, faster than sometimes we can even get all those calls made. And watch your TV, listen to the radio, and be prepared. Have your car packed right now if you hadn't already been told to evacuate.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Now, Carrie, this part of the country - San Diego County - they're used to these kinds of fires, right?</s>CARRIE KAHN: There was a terrible wildfire. I feel like we're back here talking about this not too long ago. It was four years ago. The Cedar Fire was just devastating in San Diego County. A dozen people died near Ramona and it just consumed almost 300,000 acres of the county, destroyed hundreds of homes, and it is very fresh in people's memories, those fires, and hopefully they will heed the warnings when they hear them.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: And on TV and elsewhere a lot of the focus seems to be in Malibu, of course where a lot of celebrities have their homes. You were there, what was that like?</s>CARRIE KAHN: It is a smaller fire there, but it is such a compact area. And you've been to Malibu. The canyons come right down to the ocean and there is so much housing there - multi-million dollar homes, but there's also a lot of activity there.</s>CARRIE KAHN: I had a little dispute with the newscasters at NPR yesterday when I was filing my spots. I said these are hurricane-force winds, and so they were saying they can't be hurricane-force winds. I said they are almost 80 miles per hour. That is technically a hurricane. And I was up at Pepperdine University, which was in the early morning hours. The flames were right at the edge of the campus. Over 800 students were corralled into the cafeteria and into their basketball arena there and watching the flames around the campus. And the wind gusts there were blowing me over, and I'm...</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Blowing you over! You're a reporter. You're used to this. You don't normally get blown over.</s>CARRIE KAHN: Well, it was just - it was an amazing sight. The fixed wing aircraft there. They had those big super scooper helicopters that come down and drop their hoses. There's two little ponds there at Pepperdine and they suck those dry. They couldn't go in to the ocean where they usually take the water out because there was just so much wind. And it was so erratic, you'd be on certain parts of Malibu at one point in the day and then the fire would just hopscotch up to the hills or down back to the beach where they burned a home right on the beach. It was an amazing sight.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: Although I noticed in some of the pictures in the newspapers, surfers took advantage of, you know, the wind and the waves and...</s>CARRIE KAHN: I think they took more advantage of the people being evacuated and there was less people and less people to fight with out in the ocean. It was - there were some surfers out there, yes.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: This is a normal time of the year for the Santa Ana winds; is that what's happening here?</s>CARRIE KAHN: It is, but there's also just - we've had this horrible drought. If you remember just in 2004, 2005, we had a lot of rain, so the chaparral grew real fast, and then we just had this terrible drought. It is so dry out there. But you hear seasoned firefighters say they'd never seen wind this strong and this hot. And when the winds come down into those canyons, it just sucks the humidity out of there, and in a dry chaparral you've got a lot of feel for a tremendous fire. And so we're going to watch those winds, which are expected through today and maybe even tomorrow. So it's a difficult situation in Southern California.</s>MADELEINE BRAND, host: NPR's Carrie Kahn, thank you.</s>CARRIE KAHN: You're welcome.