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Biden Receives Wildfire Briefing At Santa Monica Fire Station; Apocalyptic Scenes In CA As Four Fires Tear Through L.A. Area; National Guard Deployed To Help Battle L.A.-Area Wildfires. Aired 2- 2:30p ET

Aired January 08, 2025 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[14:00:20]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We're following breaking news. This hour, President Biden is set to get an update from officials as four life threatening wildfires tear through Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States. Right now, flames are spreading fast. Brutal wind gusts are fueling these fires as high as 100 miles an hour in some areas. And so far there is zero containment of any of these fires.

This is a video now from a passenger on a flight arriving at LAX who says it felt like flying into the apocalypse. We know at least two people have died, a number of others are injured. Countless homes and buildings are now rubble and tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: You see that fire pushing right up against the lights of homes there. And the fire moved so fast that many people abandoned their vehicles and that gave fire officials no choice but to bulldoze them out of the way in order to clear roads. Live now to CNN, Stephanie Elam, who is at the scene of the biggest fire. It's called the Palisades fire there in Pacific Palisades. Stephanie, tell us what you're seeing.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The winds are still blowing us around. Brianna and Boris. It is still very intense out here at this hour. And when you look, you can actually see how fast the smoke is blowing off of this canyon area up here behind Sunset Boulevard, which dead ends into the Pacific Coast Highway. And the smoke is like hurtling past us with ash and little bits of debris coming off of there.

But if you look at this building behind the 76th gas station, there was a taller structure there and we watched it burn away overnight just to show you how quickly things are escalating and being demolished out here. And that's just parts of what we can see. We've seen parts of fires burning along the side of the PCH going north and south.

A little structure next to this Gladstone Seafood Restaurant. It's a pretty famous restaurant here. Along the highway here, there was a fire there. It looked like maybe in a rubbish bin, but the firefighters responded and shut it down. They're going back and forth through this area just to make sure that they're putting out hot spots.

But let's be clear, this is not a fire that's anywhere near containment. This is a fire that has a lot of fuel and then along with these winds makes it very, very dangerous because those fire -- just a little bit of fire could get caught up in the wind and then it takes off and it can start a fire someplace else.

We feel pretty safe where we are here because just on that side of me is the Pacific Ocean. So if need be we could go that way. But you can see here that fire truck right there that just went by us from Montecito, which is up by Santa Barbara. What they're doing here in this area is flooding the area with firefighters from other regions because the area here is taxed.

They have asked all of the Los Angeles county firefighters if they're off to report to duty, to come back to work because it's an all hands on deck situation. Because it is, as you said, four fires that are really breaking down the system here.

And on top of it yesterday I was on my way out about two-and-a half hours away -- actually, I did make it all the way out there to where President Biden was going to go. He couldn't make it out there because of these winds driving back. You could see this from very, very far away. That's how massive this is.

KEILAR: Yeah, it's huge. And we've seen just sort of those early pictures of the night shots from those folks flying into LAX. Stephanie, thank you so much for the report from Pacific Palisades. You are right there in this biggest fire. The Palisades Fire 104 though that is currently burning across LA County officials say crews and emergency services are being stretched to the limit with some firefighters working 48 hour shifts.

With us now on the phone is Battalion Chief for CAL FIRE Brent Pascua. Brent, as of this morning, all of these fires were 0% contained. This has to do a lot with the wind. Tell us what it will take to start getting a handle on these fires.

BRENT PASCUA, BATTALION CHIEF FOR CAL: You're absolutely right. It's the wind that's making it so difficult to get any containment on these fires. When it's blowing embers miles ahead of itself or just in any direction, it's hard to anchor in somewhere and actually get some containment. So until the wind slows down, gives us that opportunity to actually build fire line. We're not going to see any containment. We're just trying to get lives and people out of the way.

KEILAR: Yeah, that's obviously the first priority. Of note, fire hydrants in the Palisades went dry around 3 a.m. local time.

[14:05:03]

Tell us about how this happened because of the lack of water in the holding tanks and if that's been resolved. PASCUA: You know, I don't have any information on there. I got to that area around 6 a.m. this morning and I did see a lot of water flowing. As far as around the 3 a.m. time, I was not in that area at that time. Sorry.

KEILAR: Okay, totally understand. Is that something that happens? I mean, have you had experience with something like that happening before?

PASCUA: We have had things like that happen before for sure. It's very taxing when you have all these fires at the same time on one water system. So it is possible. I just can't speak to it on this fire. I don't know for certain what happened.

KEILAR: Okay. And Brent, can you talk to us a little bit more about the winds, where they're at now, what it would take to get some of that air power up in order to tackle some of the outer areas?

PASCUA: Yeah, so we were hoping the winds would calm down a little bit this afternoon, but when we say calm down, it's all relative. Last night the winds were 80 to 90 miles per hour sustained. They have calmed down, but it's still 40 to 50 mile an hour gusts.

So our airplanes are going to be useless as far as the retardant not hitting the ground. It's really unsafe for the pilots to be flying in the canyons when the winds are that high. So we're hopeful they'll die down. But you know, we have to just be optimistic at this point.

KEILAR: And how are the firefighters doing? We were just reporting some are working 48 hour shifts.

PASCUA: Yeah, I know. Including myself. Some of us have been here for over 24 hours fighting this fire now. And no one wants to go anywhere until the job's done or until we have too many engines here. So we're here, I know the rest of the crews are tired like myself, but we're not going anywhere. We're going to try and stand our ground and protect everything we can.

KEILAR: And what can you tell us about injuries to folks and also to firefighters? Because we had a LA Fire department saying overnight that a firefighter had sustained a serious head injury.

PASCUA: I did hear we had a total of eight firefighter injuries on this fire. Seven were minor. One was that head injury. I hear that person is doing well now. As far as the public goes, I don't have any information on those injuries.

KEILAR: What do you want people to know, Brent?

PASCUA: This is a great example of these fires move so quickly. It's not -- it doesn't give you time to think of what to pack. It doesn't give you time to think of how you're going to get out. Make sure you have those two things planned before an event like this happens so you and your family can get out safely.

KEILAR: Yeah. So essential, Brent, good luck. We know that you are very short on --

PASCUA: Thank you.

KEILAR: -- sleep and that you're very committed to trying to get a handle on this. Brent Pascua with CAL FIRE, thank you.

PASCUA: You're welcome.

KEILAR: And you heard Brent there, it's these fierce tornado like winds, I mean 80 to 90 miles per hour last night that's fueling the fire. So dangerous planes carrying flame retardant just haven't even been able to get up in the air.

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WOMAN #1: The winds just totally thundered (ph) past that fire and it exploded in size. (Inaudible).

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SANCHEZ: You can hear just how strong the gusts are in that video. And officials actually say they expect conditions to worsen. Let's get the latest from CNN Meteorologist Allison Chinchar who's in the weather center. Alison, what can you tell us?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: All right, so there is some good news and that is that we do expect these winds to start coming back down in the next 24 hours. But as that gentleman pointed out, it's all relative. You look at some of these numbers, 80, 90, 100 mile per hour winds, even if you cut those in half, you're still talking 40, 50 mile per hour, which is still plenty to be able to continue to spread the fires that are already on the ground.

Now, when we talk about those fires, we are talking about four specific ones. The Eaton fire, the Hearst fire, Woodley and Palisades. Now, for those who are not familiar with this area, we've put some kind of maybe some things that you would recognize, say like the Hollywood sign, Dodger Stadium, the Rose Bowl stadium things that kind of gives you some perspective on where these fires are located.

Now, the Palisades fire, specifically, this one has really grown in size. So has the Eaton in the last 24 hours. This red color here shows you the spread of where that fire has really been kind of focused on the last 24 hours. We've really started to see more of it begin to spread even up along the coast just in the last 12 hours. And keep in mind this is still a little bit old. This map is likely to continue to update.

But the key thing here is look at all of these structures, homes, businesses and all of those roads that are there.

[14:10:00]

That is what these fires are going after and that's what's making it so difficult, especially for some of these people. They don't know which way to go. Where's a safe place to exit? When we look at the wind forecast notice, even as we go through the

afternoon, you still have some of these places that are looking at 30, 40, even 50 mile per hour wind gusts. We don't start to see those really begin to come down until we get to late afternoon and especially into the evening.

Then by tomorrow morning finally starting to get some of those numbers back down below about 15 miles per hour. This will allow the firefighters to really begin to make some big improvements in those containment numbers and hopefully get those planes back up in the air to help with the fires as well.

You have the red flag warnings and it's not just for LA Proper. Notice all of these areas you see in pink are under those red flag warnings --

SANCHEZ: Please stand by. We actually want to go to this briefing that President Biden is receiving from CAL FIRE. Let's listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAN #1: Thank you, appreciate that.

WOMAN #2: Same, my friend. Thank you. Thank you.

MAN #2: Good seeing you, sir.

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SANCHEZ: And as we await the briefing that President Biden is set to receive from local officials, there you see California Governor Gavin Newsom alongside him President Biden there in Southern California for a separate matter, a personal matter, but obviously coincidentally arriving as these four wildfires are just ravaging that area. Let's go ahead and listen in.

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MAN #3: (Inaudible). Thank you for being here on behalf of the fire service. Last week, we began receiving reports from the National Weather Service about a significant wind event that was going to hit Southern California. This is not something that's a surprise to us in Southern California and it was something that we were well prepared for.

Based on those predictive conditions of wind gusts up to 100 miles an hour east pushing offshore, we began increasing our staffing. Local, state and federal agencies. Hundreds of firefighters began moving on Sunday afternoon from Northern California into Southern California.

My local partners began upstaffing their own fire stations, helicopters, fire engines, hand crews to be prepared for an incident like this that occurred. Those resources were pre-positioned in counties throughout Southern California for an event just like this. And on Tuesday morning, the Palisades fire began. I'd now like to introduce you to Chief Crowley who can touch on the Palisades fire. Chief.

CHIEF KRISTIN CROWLEY, LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPT.: Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. President. I'm here just to provide you a brief on three significant fires that have occurred within the city of Los Angeles. With that, I'm going to be focusing on The Palisades fire. That fire broke out yesterday morning around 10:30. We did pre deploy a number of resources.

We knew this was there was a potential for a significant threat to our constituents due to the weather event. High, high, high winds. I've never seen the winds in my 25-year career. So we leaned forward as much as possible and pre-deployed.

With that, we had a significant amount of fire that occurred. We had an aggressive fire attack. The fire has grown from originally 10 acres to 10,802 acres as we speak. It's an active, active fire fight with our firefighters and they're doing their very best to protect our people within this area. Interesting enough because of the winds and the low humidity, we had a second fire also break out and that was the Hearst fire, which is just north of that area.

Again, this was close to 11,000 acres. This is close to 500 acres that also broke out. The information that I want to share with you is also the significance of multiple fires in the area within the city, but also the county. That's the second fire that actually came out and we're actively engaged in that firefight.

The third fire then broke out this morning at 4:00 in the morning in which we have an active firefight there as well. We're working with our local jurisdictions, our state, regional as well as federal. So we're doing everything we can to protect life first and property next. We'll go ahead and then pass this off to Police Chief McDonnell. Thank you.

CHIEF JIM MCDONNELL, LOS ANGELES POLICE: Thank you, Chief. Mr. President, it's an honor to be able to be here and be part of this and represent the men and women of LAPD and policing to support our partners in the fire service. What we saw here in the 24 hours is unprecedented. I've never seen anything like this. Fires driven by the type of winds that we saw up to 100 miles an hour.

Our role out there is strictly support to be there for evacuations, to get people out of the affected area, to be able to provide for traffic control and then crime suppression as the fire is fought. And some may come in and try and take the opportunity to go into these homes and steal from them.

So we're going to be on top of that. I just want to say the relationship we enjoy here, in my case under the leadership of Mayor Bass, but all of our elected officials is unlike, I think, anywhere else in the country.

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We are blessed to have the relationship between police and fire that we do here. Unfortunately, we do this kind of thing frequently, never to this level. But I can't say enough about how important that is. And as we go into the next five years, with the Super Bowl and the World Cup and the Olympics coming up, it's critical that we maintain those partnerships. So thank you for this opportunity, sir.

CROWLEY: (Inaudible) next up.

MCDONNELL: Oh, sorry. Let me introduce my partner from the County Fire Department, Chief Tony Maloney.

TONY MALONEY: Yeah. So thank you, Mr. President. I'm going to be giving you an update on our Eaton Fire which is east --

JOE BIDEN, 46TH U.S. PRESIDENT: Where's the county start?

MALONEY: The county starts all the way up in Lancaster and goes all the way down to the Long Beach border. We go from the county line in Ventura all the way up to Pomona. 4,300 acres. So we have a fire east of the Palisades fire that began last night. It's called the Eaton fire. It's currently 10,600 acres, 0% containment. We have over 750 firefighters on the line.

Unfortunately, two people have lost their lives. Residents have lost their lives at the Eaton fire. It's impacting tens of thousands of homes not only in the city of Pasadena, but also the county area of Altadena. And we're doing our very best. We just had our out of state resources arrive from Arizona at the Eaton fire to assist us.

Last night, as the Region 1 coordinator, I contacted the Governor's Office of Emergency Services. We requested two hundred and fifty additional engines into LA County with a thousand personnel.

We also are using our inner -- our compacts with other states like Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Firefighters from those regions are on their way down to Los Angeles County right now to assist us. So thank you for your interest. Thank you for your attention.

BIDEN: The Governor asked for the (inaudible). Folks, the fact is that I've directed DOD, the Department of Defense, to rapidly provide additional firefighting personnel and capabilities. And also, California National Guard is adding two modular air firefighting systems and two more are being ready for the National Guard, Nevada National Guard.

Four more are coming on board of command and 10 (inaudible) are coming on (inaudible). We're prepared to do anything and everything, as long as it takes to contain these fires and help reconstruct. Make sure we're back to normal. It's going to be a hell of a long way. It's going to take time. We're in it. The Federal government is here to stay as long as you need us, everything you need. Is there anything you've asked or haven't gotten yet?

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM, (D) CALIFORNIA: Quite the contrary. Look, Mr. President, just -- first of all that made a disaster declaration improve next level of appreciation on behalf of all residents here in Southern California. As the Chief said, we have pre-positioned assets this weekend in anticipation of these weather events.

The complexity of multiple fires, the likelihood of these (inaudible) events this week that will continue in the course in the next many days. Impacts of over 1,000 structures already that have destroyed. Hundred plus thousand people that have been evacuated. Lives lost, traditions, lifestyles, places torn asunder.

This means the world to us. And just publicly because I think it's important the President happy to be in the region in town it's impossible for me to express the level of appreciation and cooperation we received from the White House in this administration.

So on behalf of all of us, Mr. President, thank you for being here but not just being here today. Thank you for being here since the minute of this incident when there was a 10 acre fire less than 24 or so hours ago. Deep gratitude.

BIDEN: It's astounding what's happening. There's only one piece of good news. My son lives out here and his wife. They got a notification yesterday. Their home was probably burned around. Today it appears that it may be still standing. I'm not sure. But the good news is I'm a great grandfather as of today. Eldest granddaughter, 10 pound 4 ounce baby girl -- baby boy. So she's going to remember this tape for a lot of wrong reasons anyway.

[14:20:01]

MAN #4: Mr. Pres., thank you for (inaudible).

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: We've been listening to this briefing that President Biden has been receiving from CAL FIRE and other local officials in Southern California. There President Biden describing the situation as astounding as four different wildfires just tear through Southern California.

President Biden promising additional resources to help folks there, including 2,000 National Guard members, something that California Governor Gavin Newsom said he was appreciative of. As we look at video just into CNN of one scene of devastation in the area.

KEILAR: Yeah, still just ripping through the area because of all of the wind that is happening there. And the other big headline that he made, which is he's in California because his granddaughter Naomi Biden was scheduled today for a C section and he made it clear it has happened. He is now a great grandfather.

And the audio there was not that great. So we're going back to listen to it. It sounded like he said he has a great granddaughter, but we just want to make sure that he wasn't talking about his granddaughter Naomi. So we're going to go back and take a look at that. But obviously some good news as he's there for what is very bad news for California. SANCHEZ: Yeah, no doubt about that. We want to get the latest now from one of the areas that officials were brief President Biden on, and that is Altadena, California, the Eaton fire burning through that community. CNN's Julia Vargas Jones joins us now live. And Julia, it looks like there are live flames behind you. Take us there. What are you seeing?

JULIA VARGAS JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's been the case really all morning, Boris. We are seeing these live flames because they're moving fast between one side and another, just jumping over streets, going to the next house. These winds 100 miles an hour. That's just up this hill.

The Angeles National Forest is just up here. You know, Altadena, Pasadena there are towns at the foothills of these mountains and we're pretty far from them at this point, about almost 20 blocks from that. But it's still, you can feel the winds. And when they pick up, this is what happens.

We just heard -- we're hearing tires popping. We hear a gas tank explosion. And people coming at the very edge of the street. I'll show you a little bit. These are residents who are trying to figure out what to do. They've called for fire help. You know, they're waiting. One of them has told me they're waiting to see if they can get their dog out of their house. It's about another 50ft down the street. But it's too dangerous to get down there at this point.

And we're seeing what's happening to these structures one by one, just going up in flames. 10,000 acres, 10,600 acres. That is an explosion in size. That tells you how intense this fire is, how intense these winds are. It's extremely dangerous. And people are trying still to figure out what is it that they can get from their houses. But authorities are saying at this point, just turn around. It's too dangerous.

Even if you're trying to douse it in water and try to save it from fire, at this point, it's not worth it. Here you go. This is sheriff saying turn around. That's the kind of scenes that we've been witnessing over and over again, Boris, the desperation.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, you can imagine what folks are going through there. Julia Vargas Jones, thank you so much for the update. Please stay safe. Stay with CNN. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back as we track this breaking story.

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[14:28:30]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COURTNEY KAY KIRSH, EVACUATED FROM PACIFIC PALISADES: We just had such a special community with our -- my daughter wanted to dance right by our house at Fancy Feet. And my son played every sport imaginable at the rec center. And I grew up in the Palisades and it's just always been a very special little enclave in Los Angeles. It's really hard to replicate. And it's little paradise in the middle of the city. And it's just shocking to know that it's gone.

"DOUG", PASADENA RESIDENT: Well, I mean, it's really sad that there's just no -- there's no response at the moment because the fire departments are all out. There's a thousand homes burning right now. So right now it's, you know, neighbors just trying to save their own house. Up to them try to save your neighbor's house. And we've gotten really lucky with the rains the last couple years. But this year we knew with zero rain that one big windstorm and we were toast. And last night it happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Those were Southern California residents impacted by the Eaton and Palisades fires that are now burning out of control there in the LA area. The fires in Los Angeles County are 0% contained that is because of the winds and just how severe they are still at this point. And authorities are urging residents to heed mandatory evacuation orders to be prepared to leave at any moment, warning that it really could be the difference between life and death.

37,000 people are currently under evacuation orders because of the Palisades fire. And LA fire officials say emergency services are stretched to their limits. A climate expert tells CNN the Palisades fire could become the costliest in American history.