Firefighters Working Around the Clock on Wildfire in Los Angeles; Town of Big Lake, Missouri, Submerged Under Water; Tainted Food: The Chinese Connection
ROBERTS (voice over): Out of control. A raging wildfire roars through Hollywood Hills. Hundreds on the run, landmarks destroyed. Plus, disastrous flooding and another possible tornado in the Plains. Staggering drought in the Southeast. A nation United by extreme weather on this AMERICAN MORNING.</s>ROBERTS: And good morning to you. It is Wednesday, May the 9th. I'm John Roberts.</s>CHETRY: And I'm Kiran Chetry. Thanks so much for joining us. You know, weather a huge story today, and just the differences from across the country. We showed you the last shot. That was a lake, and that was just a dried bit of mud with some grass growing out of it.</s>ROBERTS: And another part of the country where it's just usually a dry bit of mud with some grass growing out of it, it's now a lake. There happens to be a town in the middle of it, as well.</s>CHETRY: And also on our radar this morning, gas prices now averaging $3 a gallon. And we could see a jump to $4 a gallon. What is behind the big spike in prices? As always, it seems to be conveniently timed to when we head into the summer months.</s>ROBERTS: Isn't it always funny the way that that happens? Also, another element of the human food chain given tainted feed. This time it's fish. Is it a threat to humans? And the bigger question: Is China starting to pay any more attention to all of the products that it ships overseas, a lot of which end up here in the United States?</s>CHETRY: That's the big question today, and we'll try to answer it for you. Also coming up in just a moment, extreme weather stretching from coast to coast. And right now we're focusing on Los Angeles, where a massive wildfire is forcing evacuations. There's also fierce flooding in the Midwest, and an incredible drought creating fuel for these wildfires in Florida. And we're everywhere this morning. Thelma Gutierrez in L.A. Sean Callebs in the Missouri flood zone. And John Zarrella in south Florida. Also, our Rob Marciano is back from tornado-ravaged Kansas. He's here tracking all of this for us this morning. But we begin with Thelma Gutierrez, and some of the progress that firefighters, some of them working 24 hours straight, have made in trying to get this fire knocked down. Hi, Thelma.</s>THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Kiran. You're right, they have been working around the clock. They say they are exhausted, but there is still a lot of work to do. Now, these tinder-dry conditions have made this area ripe for the kind of wildfire that we are seeing out here. So far, 600 acres have burned in this Griffith Park area, which is a total 4,000 acres so far. Three hundred homes have been evacuated. And firefighters say that this is really a very extreme situation. These are extreme conditions. This area burned yesterday. Again today, it's on fire. Right now, there are firefighters who are here, they've been monitoring the situation. And really, what they're concerned about, they want to make sure that those flames don't get up into those tall pine trees that are up there on the hillside, because if they do, that fire could then jump over to the trees on this side of the road, and that could be very disastrous, because on the other side of that is the 5 freeway. So, that's what they're keeping an eye on right now. The good news, though, at this point, none of the landmarks here at Griffith Park, the zoo, the observatory, or the amphitheater, are in jeopardy at this time, and neither are the homes. Right now, they're just trying to keep an eye on the weather. It's supposed to be 97 degrees today, and wind are expected to kick up to about 20 miles an hour, so that is the concern at this point -- Kiran.</s>CHETRY: Thelma Gutierrez, we'll be checking in with you throughout the morning on the progress. Thanks.</s>ROBERTS: Meanwhile, on the other side of the nation, more than 200 fires are burning right now in Florida, and about 300 homes were evacuated on the Georgia border from two major wildfires. High winds and record dry conditions are making this a tough fight. This is how dry it is. Take a look. Lake Okeechobee shrinking by the day. CNN's John Zarrella is there, and he's got a live update for us later on this hour. Now, the opposite problem is plaguing Missouri this morning. Take a look at these pictures. The entire town of Big Lake under water, washing out hundreds of homes. AMERICAN MORNING'S Sean Callebs is there. And Sean, as bad as it was in St. Joseph, where you were yesterday, it looks like you've really found the heart of all the problems today.</s>SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. I think that in talking -- I talked with Rob Marciano in the last hour, and we know, of course, the National Weather Service, others have been monitoring the river stage of the Missouri River, which is really the cause of what you're seeing here. Big Lake spilling into what normally is a dry field, and that river crested above 25 feet, and that really is about the same level as '93 here in this area, that really led to all the disastrous flooding back then. Want to give you an idea of where we are. There are some 300 homes here in this Big Lake community. About 150 of them are people who live year round. The rest are summer vacations. And look, if you can see, in the middle of all this debris. You can see a white line. Well, that is, of course, the white stripe, the middle of Highway 159. It carves its way down through Big Lake. If you look further down this way, you can see a street sign barely peeking up above the floodwater here. A home down there just one of scores simply inundated by the high water. We have a couple cameras set up, and I want to show you just an amazing sunrise here, but, sadly, I'm sure it's going to be lost on so many people here in this area who really focused on what's going on, on the ground. We were all over the area yesterday driving around, talking to people -- Leavenworth, Kansas, as well as across the river in Atchison, Missouri. People doing what they can to try to avoid this. What led to all this water getting here if the Missouri is two miles away? Well, there were breaches in the levee, John. At least five of them that led to this. And we know there were some boat rescues out here yesterday. We saw a couple of boats as the sun began to peek up. People clearly out looking to see if anybody else is out there -- John.</s>ROBERTS: You know, it's amazing, Sean. Just as far as you can see behind you, nothing but water. Is it all about as deep as it is where you're standing, or does it get deeper in some parts of town?</s>CALLEBS: It gets deeper in some parts of town. We're standing on the road. If I walk over here just a bit, you can get to the shoulder. Got to be somewhat careful doing this. And then you can see it drops off somewhat significantly. As you get closer to these telephone polls, it gets deeper and deeper and deeper. As it gets more daylight, we'll walk down that way a little bit and follow the road and see just how deep it gets there. But it is -- it is deeper than this.</s>ROBERTS: All right. Be careful. Sean Callebs for us. Thanks very much.</s>CHETRY: And as we've seen from our reporters, a busy morning already for Rob Marciano, tracking the weather, including a big storm system, a subtropical system, I guess, off the southeast coast.</s>ROBERTS: Vice President Dick Cheney in Iraq right now. He landed for an unannounced visit in Baghdad this morning. The vice president is getting briefed by U.S. officials, and also meeting with leaders of Iraq's government. He will be urging them not to take a two-month vacation this summer. Rather, what they should do is work on hailing Iraq's political divisions. The orders are in. More than 35,000 additional soldiers could be sent to Iraq this fall. That means that the troop buildup could last through the end of the year. Conditions on the ground in Iraq will determine whether the additional 35,000 are sent. And, of course, Congress might have something to say about that, as well. Democrats in Washington are planning their next move in the war- spending showdown. That includes only temporary funding to see how the war is progressing. It would pay for the war through July, and then another vote would be taken to see if the rest of the money should be released. Republicans in Congress are denouncing the idea, calling it unconscionable. The White House says it's just plain bad management.</s>CHETRY: Well, on Capitol Hill today, a House hearing on the tainted food crisis. The FDA has now expanded its investigation into food products and feed that was imported from China and laced with the chemical melamine to artificially boost the protein levels. Chinese authorities, meanwhile, have detained the manager of one company suspected of selling contaminated food products to the U.S. John Vause spoke to him in a CNN exclusive.</s>JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This man, Tian Feng, is one of the main suspects in the contamination scandal that led to the recall of more than 60 million cans and packets of pet food across the United States. He has yet to be charged, but is being held in a detention center in the northern city of Binzhou. He insists he has been wrongly accused. "I've done nothing wrong," he told me. Tian has been held here since April 25th, the same day police closed down his company, which allegedly sold chemically-treated wheat flour and passed it off as more nutritious and more valuable protein. Among the customers, Diamond Foods and other pet food makers, who were forced to recall their products after the reported deaths of thousands of dogs and cats. The Food and Drug Administration says that tainted flour also made its way into feed for some 20 million live chickens, hundreds of thousands of farm fish, and thousands of pigs. But the FDA says there's no threat to humans. Authorities allege this chemical, melamine, made in factories like this was mixed into the flour to make it seem to have more protein than it really does. "I don't know about melamine. I don't even know what this melamine is," he told me. "I've never heard of anyone using it." The Chinese government banned the use of melamine as a food additive only last month. Before that, it was not illegal here. This man, whose company makes corn gluten, says he never used the chemical, and he's angry because he can't compete with producers who do use it. "The fake stuff is much cheaper," he says. "So many times a customer looks at out product and then they see a cheaper, fake product and they'll go with that." China has now stepped up its export controls, specifically looking for melamine. What remains unclear, will there be a thorough investigation into what some experts have said was a widespread practice, or is the government here just looking for a few scapegoats? John Vause, CNN, Shandong Province, China.</s>CHETRY: And under Chinese law, police can hold Tian for 30 days while this investigation continues. After that, he must be tried or released. A little bit later this hour, Dr. Sanjay Gupta will be joining us for a closer look at melamine and its effect on the body.</s>ROBERTS: All of this very worrying. I mean, it's one thing to wonder what goes into the steel that we're importing from the country, but the food...</s>CHETRY: And it's a multibillion-dollar business. It's a huge part of their economy. And so as we heard in the last hour, the onus -- I mean, there really is no incentive to try to police this harder because this is where they make all their money.</s>ROBERTS: Right. Incredible. Pope Benedict XVI is now on his way to Latin America. It's his first journey there. He left Italy earlier today, destination Brazil. The pope will hold a huge open-air mass on Friday in Sao Paulo. He'll also canonize Brazil's first saint who qualified for sainthood by prescribing paper prescriptions that apparently resulted in miracles. Just write a prayer down on a piece of paper and people would take it like they would take a pill. Brazil has the largest Roman Catholic population in the world, but there are concerns that the church is losing its hold because of issues like contraception, abortion and same-sex relationships. We'll be checking in all morning long on the huge wildfire that is forcing evacuations in the city of Los Angeles itself. We're going to take you live to the fire lines, coming up next. And an ominous prediction about our country's growing gasoline crisis. Is $4 a gallon closer than you think? You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning is on CNN.