Three Fires Destroy Thousands of Structures, Force Evacuations
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, this may seem like a familiar headline, too. Three out of control wildfires raging in California this morning. The campfire burning in Butte County up north that has forced nearly 40,000 residents to evacuate. Some captured their narrow and harrowing escape on social media as they fled.</s>POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Then in the south, right down the road from the thousand oaks shooting, you have this going on right now. You're looking at images of the Woolsey fire. The blaze has already scorched some 10,000 acres, forced thousands of people to evacuate. First, let's go to our correspondent Nick Valencia who joins us in Paradise, California. We see some of the flames right behind you. Any sense of containment right now?</s>NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So far, Poppy, zero percent containment at last check. This fire just exploded over the course of last 24 hours. And just a day ago, here in Paradise, California, this entire town was just engulfed in flames. And many of the scenes around town is what you see behind me here. This used to be a retail store, a pawnshop just right next to a used car dealership. And it just spread just so fast. And part of that reason was because it was fueled by strong winds. There's also dry air, low humidity. You couple that, if you know anything about what the weather has been like in California over the course of the last couple months, it's just been extremely dry. Usually by the end of October is when the rain comes to California. That signals the end of fire season. But here we are talking about not just one but multiple fires throughout the state of California. The good news in all of this though is that the wind has slowed down. We talked to Cal fire earlier this morning. They feel as though that they're going to be able to contain this at the edges and try to work their way back from there. We did check in as well with law enforcement to see if there's any fatalities so far. No reports of anyone dying as a result of this fire. Several people have been injured, and they had to evacuate a hospital as well. But just look behind me, guys. It's just so eerie. There's so much smoke in the air. It feels like we're in a different world now, just looking all around us. And that fire behind me still smoldering. Jim?</s>SCIUTTO: That's someone's home. Imagine it happening to your own. Nick Valencia, thanks very much. We have CNN Scott McLean. He is in Oak Park where the Woolsey fire has forced thousands to abandon their homes. We were noting, Scott, that this is very close to the location of the shooting in Thousand Oaks as well. You just feel tragedy circling that area in these last few hours and days.</s>SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, someone described it to me, Jim, as a one-two punch for this area. First, you have the shooting and now you have many of those people who are affected by that shooting now having to worry about their homes. And this fire moved quickly. Keep in mind, this only started yesterday afternoon, and it's already at last count 8,000 acres. In fact, overnight, in a 90-minute period, it doubled. That means that it was expanding at the size of a football field every two seconds, perhaps why is because in California, much of it has gotten less than 5 percent of its normal rainfall over the past month. And it's not necessarily the flames that some of these neighborhoods have to worry about. It's the embers that are in the air. And this house seems to be a victim of that. Because well, this is burned out. It started late last night, we're told by the neighbors, and then this house is completely untouched next door. Now, we spoke to this gentleman not long ago. And he said that the fire department was here last night trying to put water on his house. Obviously trying to put this out as well. He was also out with his own hose trying to hose down his property to try to keep it safe. When I spoke to him, you know, his house is OK, but he seemed like he was near tears. He said he was just exhausted, overwhelmed, grateful, all of the emotions all wrapped up into one. And Poppy, I got to tell you, these wind gusts, you can still feel them. They are every once in a while they're really whip up. They're not expected to die down until tomorrow morning.</s>HARLOW: Right.</s>MCLEAN: Not great news.</s>HARLOW: That makes it even tougher, right, for the firefighters because it's pushing the flames even further. Scott, thank you very much for being there and the reporting. Jim.</s>SCIUTTO: Still to come in our broadcast, a look at a disturbing Facebook post from the California gunman, made just before he went on his rampage that left 12 people, many of them young people, dead.