California Fighting Nine Major Wildfires
ALLEN: A fresh evacuation order is in effect for parts of northern California in response to a wildfire there. That's in addition to the thousands who have already fled the so-called Kincade fire. It's raging in the wine region north of San Francisco. Firefighters are also battling a major wildfire near Los Angeles. It's dubbed the Tick fire. Our Nick Watt has the latest in the efforts to knock down those flames.</s>NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Red flags warnings were in place. We knew it was coming, just not where. The ignition point for this one, Tick Canyon Road. And the so-called Tick fire exploded to 200 acres in just 20 minutes or so. Homes were lost here in Canyon Country just north of Los Angeles.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know if anybody is up there. I don't know.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Helping out, putting out the fire, I don't know. I can see the whole structure is on fire.</s>WATT (voice-over): Dry brush, high temperatures and those whipping Santa Ana winds gusting at over 50 miles per hour, pushing the fire forward, those flames jumping a major freeway overnight; 10,000 structures endangered, 40,000 people under mandatory evacuation orders.</s>ROBERT LEWIS, SANTA CLARITA VALLEY SHERIFF: We asked that people pay attention to the evacuations. It is mandatory.</s>WATT (voice-over): Many not knowing what they might return to.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What they usually suggest, they recommend that you do is, like horses and livestock, you just open gates and let them out. And I never got to get up there. Two fire trucks were going up the road.</s>KATHRYN BARGER, LOS ANGELES COUNTY SUPERVISOR: It's hard to sit and watch your community burn. But at the same time, we need to listen to our first responders and allow them to do their jobs.</s>WATT (voice-over): This, just one of nine wildfires right now burning across the Golden State. Up north in Sonoma County, 49 structures destroyed by the Kincade fire, nearly 22,000 acres and still burning. Still no cause but the local utility, PG&E, has now reported an outage of a high voltage transmission line just seven minutes before this fire broke out and near the point of origin.</s>BILL JOHNSON, CEO, PG&E: We still at this point do not know exactly what happened.</s>WATT (voice-over): Hundreds of thousands of Californians have had their power shut off in high-risk areas in the hope of presenting breakouts. Right now across California, thousands of firefighters still fighting flames, still waiting for the next conflagration.</s>ALLEN: The utility company mentioned in Nick's report is now warning of potentially historic winds over the weekend that could make the situation worse, if that's indeed possible.</s>ALLEN: Joining me now is Brian Garcia, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service Brian, we know you're very busy right there in California and we appreciate you coming on. Thanks.</s>BRIAN GARCIA, NWC METEOROLOGIST: You're welcome.</s>ALLEN: What have you seen with the forecast over the years there in relation to warming?</s>ALLEN: And how is this affecting life and business there in northern California? Because this has now become a common occurrence.</s>GARCIA: Right, yes. It's interesting having watched this over just a handful of years. Over the past five years we've seen an uptick in the number of fires and those impacting people, whether it's directly by the fire or by the smoke drifting over heavily populated areas. So for example, last year, the Bay Area was inundated with smoke from the Camp fire. But going back to the Lake County fires, like Rocky and the Jerusalem fire and going into like the Mendocino Complex, the Carr fire, we've had all these fires in California and those seem to be increasing in numbers. There's a whole host of thoughts on why that is. But from what I'm seeing, it's pretty easy to draw correlation to, as we continue to warm the atmosphere and we see these upticks in temperature across the area, year over year, we're seeing what we call more evapotranspiration. We're seeing the evaporation coming out of the fine fields, the grasses, the shrubs, the trees and so forth. Then we had the 4.5 year drought, dried out a lot of trees in a lot of those larger fields. And then we had about three years of pretty heavy rain across the area around here. That doesn't add back in the moisture into those large fields. That takes a long time for that to occur. So those large fuels, the big trees, we've had a lot of tree mortality. Then you throw on the beetles that have infested a lot of these trees. We have a lot of dead growth of trees and so it creates a tinder box for fire.</s>ALLEN: And with all that you just said, let's get back to the people that live there that are going through this. Do you think people are thinking now of the climate and warming and that this is a new normal for them?</s>GARCIA: Talking to people, it seems like we have a short-term memory in a lot of sense. People who are directly impacted by these fires tend to remember it. But even in 2017, when San Francisco broke its all-time high of 103, we had 106 that year in September. That's a fleeting memory now. So we really need to do a better job in instilling this history into people. But it definitely impacts business lives and we see a lot of businesses mitigating for climate change, whether it's sea level rise or the threat of potential fires and potential energy shutdowns now.</s>ALLEN: So are you now, when you give your reports, are you referencing climate when you do that?</s>GARCIA: You know, it's really interesting. Meteorology looks out pretty much from today going out seven, 10, 14 days. Climate looks seasonally and beyond. At this point now, when I go out and talk to our partner agencies and I give them seasonal briefings, like, for example, what to expect for the coming winter, I'm starting to work in climate talk into it because they need to be climate literate for their planning, for a winter or a fire season, a dry season. So climate literacy is becoming much more of an important part of meteorology. Because at the end of the day, as the climate changes, it's the meteorologists that do the day-to-day forecasting that will be behind the desk, forecasting this change in environment. I don't necessarily like to call it the new normal, because that implies we've hit an equilibrium of some kind and we haven't. We're going to continue to warm and continue to see the impacts of this changing climate.</s>ALLEN: We appreciate your insights in this. Brian Garcia, we can't thank you enough. We appreciate it.</s>GARCIA: My pleasure. Thank you.</s>ALLEN: We're keeping close tabs on the Rugby World Cup in Yokohama. New Zealand is finally on the scoreboard as they try to mount a second half comeback. But moments ago, England scored again, putting them up 19-7. The pace of the game starting to pick up again. This would be quite the win for England if they were to overcome the very famous New Zealand All Blacks. We'll keep you posted. 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