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Palisades, Eaton Fires Among 5 Most Destructive In CA History; Fires Ravage L.A. County: 10 Killed, 10,000 Structures Destroyed; Fire Crews Brace For More Gusty Winds Today; Trump Sentenced With No Penalty In Hush Money Case; Trump To Be First President To Enter Office As A Felon. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired January 10, 2025 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:36]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: A sixth fire breaking out in Los Angeles as the rest remain mostly uncontained. It's a worst-case scenario as fire crews are already stretched to the brink.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus, after a weeks-long trial that threatened to upend his election odds, Donald Trump avoids any penalties during a historic criminal sentencing that will make him the first sentenced felon to become president.

And will the Supreme Court intervene and save TikTok? The justices hearing arguments over a ban that would block the social media site in a matter of days.

We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

Firefighters are racing to gain the upper hand on six wildfires. Six now raging across the Southern California, L.A. area. The brand-new Archer fire erupting just a short time ago. So far, these fires have engulfed an area about the size of Miami, wiping out entire neighborhoods and killing at least 10 people. Among the victims, Erliene Kelley, seen here in the middle.

Kelly's family says she chose not to evacuate her home in Altadena as the Eaton fire closed in, and that one of the last things she told a family member was, quote, "It's in God's hands."

KEILAR: The Eaton fire is now one of the most destructive in California's history, along with the Palisades fire, which is burning to the west along the coast. Both are less than 10 percent contained. And for those who survived, they're facing a new reality today. Some have no home to return to. Their personal belongings are now ashes, and lifetimes of memories have been lost to the flames.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KIMIKO WARNER-TURNER, WILDFIRE EVACUEE: Just imagine if you go to the front door and behind it, there is nothing. And you walk in and you have your car keys, but there's no place to put it. And then there's no place to lay your head. And you don't have a blanket, a towel. You know, there's - the life that you had is just gone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Stephanie Elam is live for us in Altadena. Steph, give us a sense of what you're seeing there.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Every time I talk to you, Brianna and Boris, I want to show you the impact of the devastation in a new way, because there's just so much. And look behind me here. You see this house, the corner of it seems like it's been impacted. Some - these tall bushes here, definitely charred. But then just look over here at the house next door, gone. And the house next door, gone. All of this just decimated on this part of the street.

Across the street, it's the same thing. It's just almost - it doesn't make sense how some houses make it and others don't. You look down here, this house on the other side, gone. The other house past it, still there.

And what is something that we're really going to have to deal with here as Californians is the change in how weather is. The climate change impact is huge here. These communities that are up against the wildland interface are facing a new reality, because it does get really dry here.

We've had two wet winters that brought up a lot of scrub brush that grew quickly. But then it's been a very long time, months since we've had any discernible rain here. So, all of that dried up. By now, January is typically our second wettest month during the wet season and we barely had any rain at all this month.

So, therefore, all of this was parched dry. You combine it with those winds, which is not a climate change issue, but you take those winds with it, and it is just the perfect storm for an awful situation. So, there are definitely things that are going to have to be addressed: How far do people build out into these communities that are up against a wildland area? How do people harden their homes to make them safer? What needs to be done in these communities?

And in the case of Palisades, for example, even their infrastructure, the sewer lines, the pipelines, all of that have been decimated too. So, they're going to have to deal with that. Some of that here as well.

So, a lot of this climate change issue is being forced upon people to deal with now because we're seeing it play out here in a way that is astronomical. We have not seen anything like this in a densely populated part of the county.

[15:05:05]

This is a new world for people who are looking at the fact that they do not have a home to come back to and now deciding whether or not they want to rebuild or whether or not they're going to go. But for a lot of these people, this is where their money is. This was their nest egg.

And you look at these situations, you look at how these houses look and it's a dire situation right now.

SANCHEZ: And as you're speaking about the scale of the devastation, Stephanie, we're looking at aerial footage of Altadena, and you see the destructions block after block after block of what used to be homes turned into rubble.

I do wonder, as you look at the homes behind you, that somehow were spared. Do you have any indication of how that happened? Why it is that in that neighborhood, every other house seemed to have burned down, but some were spared?

ELAM: No, and with these specific houses, I don't know what could have happened. And I see there may be some damage on the back of that house. I can see the side of these houses. And I don't know, maybe the firefighters got here in time for that. There's definitely something to be said about hardening your house, which means getting rid of the scrub brush around your place, changing the air filters for your vent to make sure that those embers can't get into your house. These are all things that can help save your house. Whether or not these people did that, I don't know.

But there are things that can be done to make it a more survivable situation for people. But what still is an issue, though, is that even if your house is still standing, the rest of your neighborhood is gone. All of your infrastructure is gone. So, it's still not a livable situation, even if your house is there. If you think about how communities operate, it's still a very lonely proposition right now.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Stephanie Elam, thank you so much for that update from Altadena.

We want to get an update on firefighting efforts and the challenges that crews are up against. We're joined by CAL FIRE Battalion Chief David Acuna.

Chief, thank you so much for being with us.

After so many days of battling these flames, I imagine that exhaustion becomes a factor after so much grueling work. How are your crews holding up right now? Do you have an adequate system of replacement firefighters?

DAVID ACUNA, BATTALION CHIEF, CAL FIRE: Well, thank you for having me on, Boris. Well, we actually do. We have a lot of resources that have arrived, more than 7,500 firefighters. But in addition, we have 2,500 firefighters that we've requested from outside of the state. You know, this mutual aid agreement we have within California extends around us. So, when needed, we can reach out to Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and ask for help from them.

SANCHEZ: What is the biggest challenge that your crews are facing right now? As there's this window of opportunity, the winds have somewhat died down, but this is crunch time, right? Because we know that next week there's a chance of a resurgence of those winds.

ACUNA: Well, it is a mixed bag, right? Because, although the winds are dying down from the direction that they were prevalent before, they are now reversing direction. And now the areas that were calm are now going to be the head of the fire. And so, our crews are having to be diligent about working on the entire perimeter in order to make sure that when the winds reverse, they don't have another head of the fire going in a different direction.

SANCHEZ: And, Chief, do you have any outlook on how much longer it might take to advance containment on these fires? I know the Palisades fire at last check was less than 10 percent contained. Do you have any estimate for us on how long this whole process might take?

ACUNA: It is still at 8 percent containment, as you mentioned. And I don't have an estimate. And the reason is with containment, we have to be able to say that we are certain that the fire will not escape beyond the containment lines.

When we have this massive amount of devastation and the reality of what burned those houses, which means for - primarily petroleum products, then that allowed a lot of devastation to occur. It's still there right on the line. And if the wind shifts again or continues to shift, then that's going to be a hazard, which is why we're being very cautious with the amount of containment.

SANCHEZ: Chief, I know someone was arrested for suspected arson near the Kenneth fire. Do you have any indication to this point as to the cause of some of these other fires that you're fighting - what may have sparked these flames to go up so quickly?

ACUNA: Well, we do know that 95 percent of all fires are caused by humans. And we also know that there was no lightning in the area. However, I can't say that they were intentional. Sometimes it's an accidental activation. It could be a passing car.

[15:09:59]

There are so many things that, in these very dry, very windy conditions, anything can cause a small fire, which very quickly grows to a large fire.

SANCHEZ: And as we're looking at these images, it looks like the fire lines are approaching more homes, and you see firefighters there working to try to pause those flames or at least slow them down as they get closer to - what appear to be homes. I'm curious what your message is to folks in L.A. County who have not had to evacuate yet, but with the risk being what it is and with these winds shifting, as you noted, there is still potential danger.

ACUNA: There absolutely is. In fact, the red flag warning that affected the area from Santa Barbara to San Diego will be coming back early in the week. So, people need to be vigilant and they need to be prepared. Now, if they navigate to readyforwildfire.org, we have a lot of resources on where to - how to locate where your local shelters would be for the people, for small pets, for large pets and livestock, as well as how to create an evacuation go bag and what steps they can take to be better prepared with evacuation plans.

SANCHEZ: Yes, it's so important to have those resources readily available in a situation like this.

Battalion Chief David Acuna, thank you so much for the time.

ACUNA: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: So, as you just heard there, firefighters are bracing for more gusty winds as they race to contain these major wildfires.

KEILAR: Meteorologist Chad Myers is joining us live now from the CNN Weather Center as we were looking there some pretty amazing video of aerial firefighting going on there in the - I think that might be the Palisades area, but I'm not for sure. It could be the Eaton. It is the Palisades area there, Chad?

CHAD MYERS, CNN WEATHER CORRESPONDENT: It's - yes, it's higher than that. It's farther north than that. It's kind of up toward the mountains. Not really to Calabasas, but yes.

And what you see here is this is the plane with the Phos-Chek in it, but it is following a lead plane. There's a plane that's a much smaller plane, and it's following that. And it will tell - the lead plane will tell this Phos-Chek retardant plane when to release the Phos-Chek.

Phos-Chek is red because there's red dye, because they want to know where it has already been dropped and not drop another load on top of what is already there. And they can make a long line of that red Phos- Chek. It's really just fertilizer, water, and red dye. And it completely smothers the ability for the flames to continue.

I don't know who came up with that formula, but it certainly works and it is a lifesaver. This plane will eventually, if we hang with it long enough, will eventually take it because it is doing circles, waiting to get to the right position. What nice things happening right now, although the wind is still about 10, is that when that is released, it will drop where they want it. When the winds are 30 and 40, sometimes that gets so spread out, not concentrated enough to make that fire line.

Here's Palisades too. Here's Frontera. I think you know where you are. Up there, that would be the rec center and the baseball fields. Look at these three homes right here that are still here. This is what Stephanie was talking about, how just the randomness. Here's Malibu. We showed this a couple of times. But how close these homes were, no chance. No chance to have a fire line around them, that area that you don't want any trees. You're four feet, three feet from the next house.

And here are our numbers here for containment. The bigger number, Lidia, up here, 75 percent, because it's a small fire. You don't have miles, and miles, and miles around it to get contained. But the bigger fires, Eaton and Palisades, because there are those miles around now, the circle of the fire, probably 10 miles. How do you get all that contained? And you know - this means that you know the fire's not going any farther than that.

Winds are good right now. Winds are good tonight. They're not great. I mean, you don't want 10. You don't want 12. But even by tonight, you get down to six. And then coming up on Sunday, it all gets red again. And we're going to get winds of 30, 40 miles per hour. This will happen again Tuesday and Wednesday. And not a drop of rain between now and then. So, what you see is what you get. The antecedent conditions are still going to be very dry. The problem is dry and still having millions of sparks in trees, in bark, in mulch that could fly again when that wind blows.

KEILAR: All right, Chad, it's really unbelievable pictures that we have been looking at ...

MYERS: Yes.

KEILAR: ... here with you and so alarming to hear about the winds and the concerns ahead here. Chad, we'll keep an eye on this. We know that you certainly will. We see how close those flames are to those homes.

Ahead this hour on CNN NEWS CENTRAL is wildfires are ravaging Los Angeles. There's a winter storm that's wreaking havoc in the south. There's new video showing the moment Delta passengers were forced to evacuate on emergency slides after their snowy takeoff was aborted. We're learning some new details about what happened here.

[15:15:03]

SANCHEZ: But first, a historic moment in court as President-elect Donald Trump is sentenced in his criminal hush-money case, meaning that just days from now, he will become the first U.S. president to take office as a sentenced felon. These important stories and many more all coming your way on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[15:19:43]

KEILAR: The breaking news that we're following out of New York, President-elect Donald Trump sentenced for his crimes in his hush money case while avoiding any real punishment. He appeared virtually in court today and, as expected, Judge Juan Merchan handed Trump an unconditional discharge. That allowed him to avoid jail time and any other penalties.

[15:20:02]

SANCHEZ: But Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts still stands. And 10 days from now, he will be the first American president to take office as a sentenced felon. Here's the moment the judge sentenced the President-elect.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDGE JUAN MERCHAN, ACTING JUSTICE, NEW YORK SUPREME COURT: This court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of a judgment of conviction without encroaching upon the highest office in the land is an unconditional discharge, which the New York State Legislature has determined is a lawful and permissible sentence for the crime of falsifying business records in the first degree.

Therefore, at this time, I impose that sentence to cover all 34 counts. Sir, I wish you Godspeed as you assume your second term in office.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: With us now to talk more about today's courtroom developments, we have Elliot Williams, a CNN Legal Analyst and former federal prosecutor, and Jeff Zeleny, CNN's Chief National Affairs Correspondent.

Sorry, I stole your script.

SANCHEZ: No, it's totally fine.

KEILAR: I totally stole it.

SANCHEZ: Obviously, this was essentially a formality, right? Like we - Judge Merchan telegraphed that no one was going to be sentenced to jail time, that there wasn't going to be really any surprises. I do wonder, though, Jeff, politically, what does this mean for Trump? He gets another shot to stand in court and argue that all of this was just a witch hunt.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORREPONDENT: Look, in 10 days, he will be sworn into office. He'll take the oath of office regardless of this, but this will forever be one of the boldface descriptors of the 47th President: the convicted felon.

So, yes, it does matter to him. I think you could sort of hear that in the defiance in his voice. But beyond that, it doesn't. I mean, he won the election in November. This was all, well, sort of adjudicated and aired before the public. And you could argue, actually, that he has this to thank for winning the Republican nomination, essentially clearing the field. We're thinking back to for - initially when this case happened, this is when he started consolidating the base back around him. There were deep questions about his viability right before this case was filed in Manhattan.

This made him, allowed him to be a victim when he was running the retribution, et cetera. So, he is a convicted felon. That will be forever in his epitaph, I guess. But, going forward, it doesn't matter because the American people said they were more concerned about other things than this.

KEILAR: And as we look at this sort of from a big - from this, I think, wider view and how the legal and the political interact. I wonder how you see it, Elliot, because he got in trouble legally. He capitalized on it politically. It paid off, and it is now helping him legally.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: And legally, politically and constitutionally because of the fact that he is the - or will be the President of the United States. That specifically factored into the decision the judge gave him. There weren't - the judge's hands were tied at this point because of, number one, the Supreme Court's immunity ruling several months ago.

But, two - number - the fact that he's going to be President of the United States, there are not a lot of options for putting a president in jail. And that's not a statement about whether Trump should have been charged with a crime or what's right or what's wrong. The simple fact is the American Constitution says there ought to be one - there is one president, a role that cannot be filled by anybody else, not even the vice president. And that impedes the ability to put that person in jail and maybe even give that person probation. So, the judge really had no choice here.

SANCHEZ: When Jeff was describing "sentenced felon" being on Trump's epitaph, you kind of shook your head.

WILLIAMS: I - well, there's going - there's a legal and a political point there.

SANCHEZ: Sure.

WILLIAMS: I guess the political point there is, you know, is that a bad thing for Donald Trump? It seemed to - like Jeff was saying, that seemed to animate many voters ...

SANCHEZ: Yes.

WILLIAMS: ... and many of Trump's supporters.

Now, he still has an opportunity to appeal this decision. I would think he would. And, number one, that could provide the - yes, that could provide the vindication of taking the "felon" title away from him. But also, number two, clearing up these ambiguous questions about immunity and so on that have to make their way through the courts. And I think Trump will appeal that.

KEILAR: David Schoen, his former lawyer, thinks it will be ultimately thrown out. Do you?

WILLIAMS: I don't know. There are so many different pitfalls and holes in this because, number one, you have the question of: Is a former president immune for a matter like this? How does immunity apply to a state case? How does the application of the New York financial crime statute actually apply here?

So, there's any number of ways that Trump can attack it. So, just playing the numbers, yes, possibly. But I just don't know, Brianna. It's so complicated.

SANCHEZ: I think one of the things to draw from what we heard from Trump could be read as a preview of how he sees DOJ and the government as he heads into another four years.

[15:25:08] This time fully capable of assigning folks to positions. I mean, the judge that he appeared with is going to be the assistant attorney general. That will carry out his vision of a more involved executive ...

ZELENY: The attorney that he ...

SANCHEZ: Yes.

KEILAR: That's right.

ZELENY: ... appeared with.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

ZELENY: Look, he said it was an injustice of justice. "I was treated very unfairly." His demeanor was certainly more calm than it was when he was actually sitting in the courtroom during trial. But no question, this entire episode has, sort of infused how he views the DOJ, even though this case has nothing to do with the Department of Justice. It's a New York case.

But I think the President-elect was able to very successfully, politically speaking, consolidate all of these cases against him to make it look like there was indeed this effort to get him, as he would call it, a witch hunt. But I think, without question, this has added to his skepticism of the DOJ.

Look, history will report this as it happened chronologically, but we'll always wonder, what if this case was not filed? Would the January 6th case, the Jack Smith's case, the federal cases, would they have come sooner? Would that have changed the outcome of the election? Who knows?

The reality is it didn't. He's the president. He'll be sworn in, in 10 days. So, what happened today really will be left to history. It doesn't matter.

KEILAR: We can't know how his experience with this case and the other cases are going to inform him going forward. But I think it's safe to say, having watched Donald Trump for so many years, it's going to inform him somehow.

ZELENY: It agitates him, no doubt about it. It adds to the fact that he believes the justice system at all levels, from New York to Georgia to the federal system, is out to get him. And that aids into his sort of, you know, a persona as a victim. There is no doubt it adds fuel to his skepticism of the authority in the government.

SANCHEZ: And ...

KEILAR: And now he'll be president ...

SANCHEZ: Yes.

KEILAR: ... with some tools at his discretion. SANCHEZ: Yes. And quickly, Elliot, before we go, because Jeff mentioned the work of Jack Smith. Do you think we're going to see his report on Trump's actions, both in the classified documents case, the January 6th case? Is that reporting going to come to light?

WILLIAMS: Definitely the January 6th case, perhaps not the classified documents case. The January 6th case, the law - just back up really quickly, the law says that any special counsel puts together a report and submits it to the attorney general. The attorney general can make it public.

It - in virtually all circumstances, these reports get made public. It looks like the January 6th one is going to come out. The classified documents ones, it's a little more complicated because it deals with people who have pending cases right now. We may not see that. Congress will. We may not.

KEILAR: Very interesting. Elliot, Jeff, thank you so much to both of you. We really appreciate it.

And next, the Supreme Court signals it's going to uphold a ban on TikTok, Meaning, the app could soon go dark in the U.S. Can you imagine? I can hardly imagine the effect of this on people, but we're going to talk to a top content creator about the potential impact.

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