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Five Major Fires Burning Across Los Angeles County as Thousands Flee; President Carter Returns to Georgia for Private Funeral. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired January 09, 2025 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

KEILAR: Winds had been giving Southern California firefighters a bit of a break in their battle against raging wildfires there in Los Angeles County. They have been, as we understand it, picking up just a little bit.

Kyung Lah is on the ground in Altadena near the Eaton Fire. I don't know if that's affecting things where you are, which is a little bit inland and west. Kyung, tell us what you're seeing there.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I can definitely feel that the winds are slightly picking up and I can tell some of that because some of the smoke is blowing, sort of clearing out this area and giving us a better look at what some of these neighborhoods are looking like. We've been basically moving just a couple blocks at a time. This is a different area.

But I want you to take a look at what this street looks like. What you're looking at there is a gas line and the gas company is here to try to put out some of these spot fires and then to fully shut off the gas. And as Leonel pans through this community, each one of these is a home.

You can see cars. I think that's a that's a water heater, possibly. This looks like this may have been a kitchen and, you know, a lot of chimneys. And you can see the front of homes so you can imagine what each of these families and homeowners had. But you really have to imagine it because there's just nothing left to give you a sort of a physical structure of what these homes look like.

This is Altadena. I'm starting to see some residents come back. I'm on Harriet Street. This is a very typical community here in Altadena.

And just you can see sort of signs of life as some of these homeowners start to walk these streets and try to figure out what's left. And what they're learning is there's just not a lot left, at least on this street and on some of the surrounding areas. When this fire came through with very little warning, you can see it just mowed through this community.

So what today has been about that we've seen over and over again are these residents coming back and trying to figure out what to do to comprehend what's happened because it happened so quickly and then to look at next steps.

Firefighters are still working an out of control fire here. There is zero percent containment. It's more than 10,000 acres. There is no power to this region. The surrounding regions, a lot of the schools have been shut down. Air quality is a major concern. So all of these problems, as the major firefight is still going on -- Brianna.

KEILAR: It's just unreal, the scene around you, Kyung. And, you know, you live roughly in the area.

[15:35:02]

You know, a lot of families there. You're talking to them. What are they saying and what are they dealing with is they've had to try to find alternate housing, figure out what they're doing with their kids who aren't in school.

LAH: Well, kids, kids are not a school in this area the rest of the week. We haven't heard anything beyond into what's going to happen next week. What I can tell you about the families, though, remember how quickly this happened.

We started out Monday thinking, OK, it's going to be a fire event. Potentially it might be a wind event. But I just want you to take a look at this, because this community, you can see how flat it is.

This is a foothill community. This isn't in the mountains. When you think of California wildfires, at least the way I think of California wildfires, the places that are most at risk are the ones that are surrounded by tons of brush, surrounded by tons of trees and in mountainous regions.

That's not what this is. This is a place where a lot of people bought their homes 25, 30 years ago thinking, OK, this is a great, safe, affordable place where I can raise my kids, send them to good schools. And, you know, this is going to be a great life. They didn't buy this thinking that there was going to be massive fires here. And that is something that has changed.

So the big conversation between a lot of these families, the immediate one is, OK, we've got to get back. We've got to figure out where we're going to stay. Is there an Airbnb I can rent where we try to figure out how to deal with insurance for all of this? But then the next thing is, OK, this is what we live in now.

So across this entire area, a lot of families I know are having this discussion of how safe are we to live in a place where we thought this isn't a huge fire risk. Everywhere is now a large fire risk in Los Angeles County. This has certainly put a period on that. It is very clear to a lot of people what we are living in now.

KEILAR: Yes, the insurance is just going to get more expensive. You can bank on that. And so they're going to have to grapple with that. Is that something they want to deal with as well as the risk? Kyung, thank you so much for showing us that neighborhood. It really is. It's unfathomable. And we appreciate the look. So the man from Plains returning home, Jimmy Carter's remains are back in Georgia, where his life began and where he will be laid to rest. You are looking at live pictures from Fort Moore, Georgia. We'll be right back with more.

[15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Just moments ago, the remains of President Jimmy Carter arrived in Georgia from his state funeral in Washington. These are live images in Fort Moore, Georgia. There will be a private service in Plains, his hometown. And then he will be buried at the family home alongside his wife of 77 years, Rosalyn.

KEILAR: Joining us now is CNN contributor and the man who served as President Carter's chief, White House Domestic Policy Advisor, Stuart Eizenstat. He spoke earlier today at the state funeral. Here's part of what he said about one of Carter's lasting achievements, tackling the high inflation of the 1970s and also the appointment of Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMB. STUART EIZENSTAT, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Over the objection of all of his advisors, he chose Paul Volcker to lead the Federal Reserve, knowing in advance that Volcker's tough monetary policy would raise interest rates and unemployment because Paul told him that and would do so in a presidential election year. You take care of the economy, Paul. I'll take care of the politics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And Ambassador, thank you so much for joining us.

EIZENSTAT: Thank you.

KEILAR: You really paint a picture of someone who put governing above politics and put country above his own personal stake.

EIZENSTAT: Yes, he did. It's very interesting. When he ran for office, and I was his policy director both when he ran for governor and president, he was a great retail politician, indefatigable.

I mean, for example, before the Iowa caucuses, which everybody else disregarded, he literally spent 100 days in Iowa. But when he came to the White House, he decided to park politics outside the Oval Office. That was a strength and it was a weakness.

It was a strength because it allowed him to tackle issues like the Panama Canal, like the Middle East, like energy that other presidents had shied away from.

It was a weakness, however, because a president has to be both a commander-in-chief and a politician-in-chief. Now, I think on that balance, it was better that he had taken these issues on because we wouldn't have the Middle East peace process otherwise with Egypt and Israel.

We wouldn't have the kind of energy security we have today with the Panama Canal. We wouldn't have a new era in Latin American relations. But he paid a terrible political price for it.

For example, nine Democratic senators who voted for the Panama Canal Treaty lost in the next election.

SANCHEZ: I just want to let our viewers know these are live images, again, of Fort Moore, Georgia, where we were watching the flag-draped casket of the 39th president be removed from the plane on its way to Plains, Georgia.

[15:45:00]

Ambassador, I've heard you and others describe this air of humility that Jimmy Carter carried himself with, even not wanting Hail to the Chief to be played at times when he walked into a room. I wonder, given what we saw today, this state funeral and all of the reminders of not just his power as president, but of American power, what he might have thought of what we saw today.

EIZENSTAT: Well, you know, you could say, isn't this contradictory to the humility? We used to almost joke the first month, he said, I don't want to play Hail to the Chief. And I said, Mr. President, we spent two years getting here. It's no fun to get here if you can't play Hail to the Chief. He finally realized that people didn't want to see him as just another common man, which is how he, you know, ran with carrying his own suitcase and so forth. They want the president to be somewhat elevated.

He planned this funeral. This wasn't imposed on him. So I think now at the end of his life, he wanted to be seen as a president of the United States, not just as common man Jimmy Carter, that he was in that line of exclusive clubs, that he was the 39th person elected to this office. And he wanted to go out with the flourishes that he sometimes did not have during the White House.

KEILAR: He was never one to keep his opinion quiet or not be constructively critical at times when he thought it was important. And some of I thought what you said and what we heard maybe challenged some channeled some of that spirit from him. I wonder what you would think, what you think he would think of the state of affairs right now in the country.

EIZENSTAT: Well, first of all, if I have a purpose in this speech, it was to redeem his presidency from the notion that he was only a great ex-president and implicitly, therefore, an unsuccessful president. And what I went through was a whole range of things, deregulation of all our institutions and so forth. I think that today he would be really concerned.

And I know he was from talking to him before he passed away, because a lot of the legislation we passed, a lot of energy, deregulation of all the transportation modes, independent counsel, all of those things, inspectors general. We've got a lot of Republican support. And he had breakfasts regularly, not just with the Democratic leadership, the Republican leadership.

He would really be very concerned with the tremendous polarization that we have in the country today. You can't govern this country if you view the other side not just as your honored opponent, but as the enemy. He never did.

He had very good relations with the Republican leadership from both sides. Howard Baker, who was a great senator from Tennessee, Republican senator, majority leader, was absolutely essential in getting the Panama Canal passed. Just think of getting two-thirds of the Senate to pass a treaty today. It wouldn't happen.

And so what I was also trying to say is he is an exemplar of an era which we need to get back to, of more bipartisanship where we don't, again, feel that the opponent is our enemy. And we realize that to make the system work, our system requires compromise. It's not a parliamentary system where you have an absolute majority in the parliament.

There has to be cooperation between the president and the congressional branch and between the parties in the congressional branches. That's absolutely essential. And he would be very, very disturbed with the hyperpolarization that we have today.

KEILAR: Yes, I think that is perhaps not surprising, but your message came through loud and clear on that. Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, thank you so much for being with us.

EIZENSTAT: Thank you.

KEILAR: We really appreciate it, and we'll be right back.

[15:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: The National Weather Service says 50 to 60 mile an hour wind gusts are returning to parts of L.A. County as fire crews there race to contain the flames.

KEILAR: Let's check in now with CNN meteorologist Chad Myers. Chad, this is not great news. Take a look for us at these conditions and what this is going to mean.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Those gusts are mainly in the mountain areas above 3,000, 4,000 feet, not really where the fires are at this point in time. But something else that's happening today that's not good is that you'll notice these arrows as we work our way through the forecast. They kind of change direction.

I was talking to a police chief, fire chief last hour saying, you know what, hey, when they switch directions, all of a sudden our firefighters can be out of position because the winds are blowing in the wrong direction. So, yes, it'll be gusty today.

Tomorrow is a completely different story. Every wind here begins to go down. But also every arrow changes direction as the fire moves off toward the east in places that we don't want it to move off to the east, for sure, especially when you're talking Palisades and the next town over is Santa Monica.

So the humidity is going to go up. The winds are going to go down. Things will get better tomorrow. It's just going to be a little bit of a different fight for now 30 square miles. I mean, I know we talk about acres and all that all the time, but it's the square miles that really people can get their hands around, their head around.

Winds blowing out of the desert. That's a Santa Ana wind. It has a name. It's not rare. It happens all the time.

What was rare this time is that haven't had an inch of rain in any one day in Los Angeles since March. Big drought there.

[15:55:00]

All of a sudden, everything that grew last winter when it was nice and wet, everything has dried, dried, and dried and passed away. All of those plants are dead, and all of a sudden they're going to blow, and they're going to burn rather quickly. And that burning makes fog, makes smog, makes smoke. Not only will plants burn, but parts of houses are burning.

Inside those houses, LPs, you know, made of petroleum. A lot of other things burning in this toxic air that they have in Southern California right now.

KEILAR: Yes, lots of gross stuff. It's like a toxic soup there. Chad, thank you for that. We know you're keeping your eye on all of the things in Los Angeles.

Ahead, how people there are coming together to help each other out during this crisis.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: As thousands of people flee their homes in Southern California, one veterinarian in Los Angeles is lending out a helping hand in a big way.

[16:00:00]

Dr. Annie Harvilicz went from taking in a pet bunny and cat from her brother's daughter to now housing dozens of pets, including chickens, goats, sheep, turkeys, and a lot more.

KEILAR: She opened up her two animal hospitals to help as many pet owners as possible and even tracked down someone with a trailer to help rescue a woman's donkeys. She says she's received hundreds of messages and calls from volunteers offering to pitch in however they can. Got to help out the animals.

SANCHEZ: Yes, especially under such devastating conditions there. So lovely to see somebody helping out where they can. Thanks so much for joining us this afternoon. "THE LEAD" with Jake

Tapper starts right now.

END