Grass Fires Rage In Oklahoma, Texas; Wet Weather In California; Schwarzenegger Under Fire From All Sides In California; Trent Lott Mulling Not Running For Re-election In Mississippi
TOM FOREMAN, CNN ANCHOR: To our viewers, you're in THE SITUATION ROOM, where new pictures and information from around the world are arriving all the time. Happening right now, fire and rain out West, grasses blazing in Texas and Oklahoma, and another drenching forecast along the coast. Live updates are ahead on threatening winter weather. Also this hour, Arnold Schwarzenegger gives the president competition. If you think Mr. Bush had a rough year, stop and think about the California governor's troubles in 2005. And Jimmy Carter takes on the current occupant of the White House. The former president talks candidly with Wolf about the Iraq war and whether the Bush administration misled the nation. I'm Tom Foreman. And you are in THE SITUATION ROOM. Wolf is off this week. We want to show you these pictures just coming in right now to CNN. This is suburban Dallas, Texas, in East Arlington. And you can see neighborhoods on fire there -- unbelievable pictures -- rushing up around houses, around roads, into people's backyards. Big winds blowing out there. These are blowing through dry grasses in Texas and in central Oklahoma, fanned by these gusting winds, threatening homes there and firefighters are on the job. We have a live camera in the fire zone. On the West Coast, further away, residents are bracing once again as the weather pushes in there -- rain, high winds and even snow. We have live pictures from the Oregon coast; Seattle, Washington; and Marin County, California. We'll have all of that. Our meteorologist Chad Myers is standing by in the CNN Weather Center with more on all of that. And CNN's Rusty Dornin is in Marin County tracking the storm. But first, those Oklahoma grass fires. Major Brian Stanaland of the Oklahoma City Fire Department is with us on the phone. Major, tell us what's going on right now, please.</s>MAJ. BRIAN STANALAND, OKLAHOMA CITY FIRE DEPT.: Well, we've had around 10 different grass fires in the Oklahoma City metro area. We're literally swamped with grass fires right now. We're assisting the city of Mustang, which is in southwest Oklahoma City, with a large grass fire that spreads a couple of miles, and unfortunately did devour several homes in neighborhoods there. We've had one report of an injury there. And then we've had about seven to eight other grass fires in Oklahoma City, as well. We've had two reports of injuries, one a child with some burns on his hands, and then one of our firefighters did suffer from some heat exhaustion. We're starting to get a handle on these fires right now, but I'm telling you, it is extremely dry out here in Oklahoma City. We've got high winds, about 40 miles an hour, out here. Extremely dry, all the vegetation is dormant. And unfortunately, when that fire started, it just took off.</s>FOREMAN: Major, do you have any idea what caused these fires?</s>STANALAND: Really the only one that we know right now was kids playing with fireworks. Other than that, the other fires are under investigation at this point. It's really hard to say at this early hour.</s>FOREMAN: And Major, my understanding would be that a lot of these homeowners were really caught off guard because this moved so quickly.</s>STANALAND: It did move very quickly. We had to evacuate the neighborhoods to make sure that they were safe, to get everybody out of those neighborhoods. We were successful at that and, again, unfortunately we have one injury. But, again, it moved just so rapidly. Things are so brutally dry out here that it's amazing. It was also amazing to see the video of what's going on in Texas. It looked almost identical what they're going through down there.</s>FOREMAN: Major Stanaland, thank you so much for your time. We're going to move to those pictures in Texas, again, right now, and take a look at what's happening down there. East Arlington -- this is out in Tarrant County, outside of Dallas -- look at what's happening here. Fires exactly like they're talking about in Oklahoma, the wind moving so quickly. And let me tell you, out West, this time of year, it can be unbelievably dry. Look at this. Whipping up in this backyard, getting under these fences, coming right under that fence -- look at that -- the wind blowing so hard it's crawling right underneath on that dry grass, very dry out West. This is surrounding a pool in a backyard there, working up to the backside of the house. This is a highly, highly dangerous situation for those homes, let me tell you, because it doesn't take that much to get the home itself caught on fire. Let's bring in our meteorologist and severe weather expert, Chad Myers. He's watching these fires and most importantly, Chad, these winds in Oklahoma and in Texas.</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And they're going to pick up as the afternoon goes on, Tom. I have winds now 20, 30 miles per hour here. And the amazing part about Doppler radar, it is so fine, the beam is so small, it can actually pick up the smoke. There's a fire very close to Seminole in Oklahoma. The one that was in Oklahoma City was out here near Mustang, not that far from the airport near Will Rogers. Most of that area there, that has almost dried up when it comes to the rain or the signature on the radar because of the smoke. But another very large fire down near Pauls Valley, that down across -- just blowing across the I-35 right now. And as soon as I get a chance, I'll run over and put the Dallas radar in there. We'll be able to see where the Arlington fire is right to the pinpoint neighborhood of where that fire is burning at this point. The grass you see here -- people in the Northeast are saying how does grass catch on fire? It's green. No, these are late season grasses. They turn brown, they go dormant. And, in fact, some people actually burn them on purpose in a controlled situation, not when winds are blowing at 30 to 35 miles per hour. And the grass catches on fire, all the shrubs catch on fire. You can see it right there. And when you get so many hot spots, it overwhelms the firefighting units. They just don't have enough people to come up with that many fires. At one time in Oklahoma in that Mustang fire, Tom, I was counting 12 buildings -- 12 homes -- on fire all at the same time. You can't keep up with that. They were totally engulfed.</s>FOREMAN: Chad, you've raised a very good point here. One of the things people may also not realize about a lot of the western plants, if you haven't lived out there, many of these bushes that are gathered in areas like this actually are western bushes that contain oils which make them highly -- not -- explosive is not quite the word ...</s>MYERS: Almost.</s>FOREMAN: ... but they light up very quickly, especially this time of year.</s>MYERS: Yes, those cedar trees -- boy, they really go up very quickly and they're really fuel to the fire itself, so we're going to keep watching the situation -- a dangerous situation for anyone downwind of the fire. If you're upwind, it's not so bad. But I'll tell you what. I have been through many of these fires when I lived in Oklahoma City and it's dangerous for the homeowners. You just -- you almost -- you want to stay there and protect your home, but when it gets too close, you need to evacuate to protect yourself.</s>FOREMAN: And this really is a fire season out west in some ways. It's not the normal summer fire season but winter because of the dryness.</s>MYERS: Right, because it gets so dry in the winter. And I've been all the way -- the biggest fire that I ever experienced was actually in the middle of February on the way down from Oklahoma City to Austin. Closed the interstate for hours on end because you couldn't literally see across the road. You couldn't see down the road at all. And as we did get through, as the smoke went away, we found about 12 cars completely involved in that fire itself. Everybody was OK, but that's what you have to be careful about. Obviously, cars catch on fire very easily compared to homes that have good, steel, strong roofs or whatever it might be. But the asbestos roof or the asphalt roof and also the cedar shakes on some these more expensive homes down there -- boy, they can go up so quickly. You don't even -- you can't even catch it.</s>FOREMAN: Stand by, Chad. We're going to get back to you in just a moment. I want to go back to these pictures in Texas and look at this a little bit more. Look at the speed at which this fire is moving. You don't often get to see this on videotape. You can actually watch it skipping through this neighborhood that quickly. Look at the wind up above. You see how fast those clouds are moving? That's a measure of what they're dealing with on the ground, and you can tell just by looking at this that these neighborhoods have been caught quite off guard. Firefighters are trying to move quickly, just as they are in Oklahoma where it's a big problem right now. They're trying to get it under control there. And as we were told a little while ago by the mayor there, the authorities, very difficult to get under control. Moving more toward populated areas -- these appear to be some sort of apartment buildings, this sort of thing. This part of East Arlington would be one of the areas where you have a lot of suburban growth around Dallas, a lot of people living in fairly dense populations. But look at this -- all of that brush in there, all of those trees, this time of year with a fire like that, every firefighter will tell you that is all fuel just waiting to go because it can be very, very dry out west at this time of year. And that's a big issue out there. We're going to keep on this fire and tell you more about it as we can check on it. But right now, we want to go further out west to check on a winter storm watch which is helping to drive all this wind in some ways, on the West Coast. CNN's Rusty Dornin is with us from Marin County, California. Rusty, I guess the issue there is not going to be so much the dryness but the wetness.</s>RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We've been waterlogged, Tom, for about the past week. We've had these series of storms coming and going with a day or two break in between. Right now it's a little calm. It's wet, but the winds have not picked up. But we are expecting storms to come through -- three to five storms in the next few days, bringing lots of gusty winds. Show you the Golden Gate Bridge and the water. We're also expecting some very high waves, big swells supposed to come in tonight and Wednesday morning. They're expecting waves anywhere from 21 to 25 feet. Of course, the local surfers love that, but it does pose a danger for people this time of year who are coming out just to look at the ocean. People have been swept away along Ocean Beach and Baker Beach, which is what we're showing you right now. Up in the Sierra, yesterday, there was a lot of snow. Today, they're going to be getting a lot more. The snow levels are going to be dropping to about 5,000 feet. But it's a very wet snow because this series of storms are very warm. Down here, it's about 50, 60 degrees. Up in the Sierra, it makes the snow very wet. And it causes the river, Sacramento and American Rivers, apparently, have surged 10 to 20 feet. Now, the Army Corps of Engineers right now is saying it's OK, we don't have to worry about flood yet. But certainly, that can pose a problem. Also in this local area, with the bay, you have to deal with the tidal situation and the high tides. You get a lot of springs running out of these hills from the heavy rains, combined with high tides, we have a lot of flooding, a lot of traffic problems. In my own hometown often, it's hard to get out of town because the flooding from the bay matches the flooding from the gullies. And they close off a lot of the streets and there's only one way out of town. And you've got 30,000 people trying to get out of town one way.</s>FOREMAN: And oddly enough, Rusty, there's that relationship when you have a big fire in the summertime and it burns away the vegetation, more mudslides, more runoff, more erosion when the big rains come.</s>DORNIN: Sure. And you're going -- we can expect that. Of course, in these areas, even in the bay area, we have a lot of areas mudslide. You never know where they're going to crop up. But of course they do crop up, as you said, in areas where there have been fires recently. And the hillsides are denuded of vegetation.</s>FOREMAN: All right, thank you very much, Rusty. We'll be checking back in with you a little bit later, too. I want to go back down to East Arlington right now, outside of Dallas. Look at these pictures. We have another structure, this is moving in among some swing sets and this sort of thing. Look at the ferocity of this fire, how quickly it's moving. You can see the wind inside there. There's something you have to know about fires like this that are easy to overlook. And you can see it very well illustrated here. When a big fire starts moving quickly in a wind pattern like this, it also starts creating its own localized weather in very small amounts, in some ways. And if it spreads out bigger, you'll get a bigger weather pattern created by the fire itself. It's very localized, but it helps make those flames whip around a great deal. Chad is going to come back in now, our meteorologist. Chad, let me ask you something about this. What is the relationship between what Rusty is seeing out on the coast and what we're seeing in Oklahoma and Texas right now?</s>MYERS: In fact, what Rusty saw two days ago is what's making the weather in Oklahoma now. The storm that came through put down 30 inches of snow, Tom, at Kirkwood. Mammoth Mountain, that's like 160- inch snow base already, not even the new year yet. But the storm went up and over the Rockies and now it's redeveloping in the Plains. And the wind from the jet stream is translating down to the ground and making all of this wind in Arlington, in Oklahoma City, Mustang, Edmond, Pauls Valley, all those other areas that we showed you, where there were fires going at this point. And the winds will not calm down until after sunset. And sunset is the key place for the fires and the wind because right now, the air is going up and down because of the sun. The sun warms the ground, making air bubbles going up and down. Those bubbles go up into the winds aloft. They are higher than -- it could be 80, 90 miles per hour up there. That wind gives it a little -- that air particle -- parcel, just maybe it's the size of a basketball. It gives it a little push; that push then translates down to the ground. And the winds get gusty during the day. Well at night, the air stops going up and down. So the winds don't get pushed by those heavier winds aloft. You decouple the atmosphere. The winds settle down at the surface. But yet, the jet stream keeps going at 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 feet. So sunset will be key to getting a handle on these fires. We won't get any relief from the wind until then.</s>FOREMAN: And take a look at this, in Tarrant County, Texas, right now, it's 3:13 p.m. there. So we still have two, three hours of warm day left, or as warm as you're going to get this time of year, to drive all of this before you get into nightfall. And we're not going to have -- one of the things that helps with fire is a little bit of dew, a little bit of dampness overnight. They're not going to have any of that in these neighborhoods as this evening goes on, because it's too dry out West this time of year. But look again at these pictures. This is moving into clearly one of the subdivisions out there, where houses are all pretty much on top of each other. That's the way subdivisions are built out West. Many times homes are built fairly close together in western neighborhoods, because of dryness. The simple truth is, supporting a lawn in the West takes a lot of water. So many subdivisions are built fairly close together so that people don't have to support a lot of lawn with a lot of water. Chad has a few more thoughts what's happening out here.</s>MYERS: The temperature right now in Dallas, 81 degrees. The relative humidity is eight percent. So there's not a chance of any dew like you were talking about there. The air is so dry down there, it is ripping out of the mountains. We call that a dry line or a dry air slot that comes out of the mountains, it rolls down, warms up. And obviously 81, well above where you should be in Dallas, Texas, this day.</s>FOREMAN: This is almost like a summer temperature, not the 100 degrees that they can get, but this is a cool summer day.</s>MYERS: It is a cool summer day except in the summer, your relative humidity is 65 or 70 percent right now, not the 8 percent because the wind comes from a different direction. When the wind or the air comes from the Gulf of Mexico, Dallas, and well, Houston, very muggy places. But when the air comes out of the mountains, it's almost like living in New Mexico, or Taos, anywhere out -- Amarillo, one of the dryer spots in the entire country. And that's the wind -- that's the air they have now. They have mountain dry air, not the Gulf moist air like the firefighters would like.</s>FOREMAN: Well, Chad, we're obviously going to be getting back to you with a little bit more on this. I want to turn now to our Internet reporter, Jacki Schechner, who has some more information on what's happening out there. Jacki?</s>JACKI SCHECHNER, CNN INTERNET REPORTER: Well, Tom, we like to give you an idea of where you can go for yourself online to get some information about the wildfire conditions in your area. And NOAA is a good example, where they have these intricate maps online that tell you where the red flag warnings are. You can see the red sections on the map there, and those are where the conditions are unfortunately ideal for the spreads of these kinds of wildfires. We're going to keep checking in on this and some other sites we know about as the program progresses, and give you an idea of where you can go on your computer and take a look at your particular area. Tom.</s>FOREMAN: So this is what we're watching right now. Thank you, Jacki. This is outside of Dallas, Texas, in East Arlington. Look at these fires, whipping through here. This is really a rather explosive situation here and in Oklahoma. It has just come up, these grass fires driven by fierce winds, 40 mile-an-hour, whipping through the neighborhoods. Clearly there have been some homes that are being affected, some -- obviously fences and yard structures. The homes themselves, we have no idea yet how many are involved. We will find that out for you and we'll be staying on this story and keeping you up to date with all these pictures, as we go on. A terrible situation out West right now, and big, big storms coming in to keep driving them. Coming up, right here. As 2005, draws to a close, is it good to be Arnold Schwarzenegger out in California? We'll look back at the governor's action-packed year, for better and more often, for worse. Also ahead, one Republican's impending reelection decision and how it could trigger big problems for his party in the Senate. And later, what should high school students be taught about the Clinton impeachment saga, the full story or a censored version? We can't wait to hear what James Carville has to say about that. You are in THE SITUATION ROOM.