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Dangerous L.A. Fires Raging, Winds Increasing Overnight; Mandatory Evacuations Expand as Los Angeles Fire Grows. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired January 08, 2025 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

ARIEL COHEN, METEOROLOGIST IN CHARGE, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LOS ANGELES: Afterward, by afternoon, we're expecting the winds to begin to lessen some but bone dry conditions continuing very significant fire weather concerns with rapid spread of wildfires and everyone needs to be at a high state of readiness as we head over the next several hours and beyond as we have the potential for significant fire growth.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: There's a problem here, though isn't there? In the response, you were warning that this -- these winds were expected. Also you can't predict fires but, you know, everyone knows there are fires in that area combined with the advice you were giving but no one responded to it and for many people it is too late to save their homes.

COHEN: You know, fires affect so many people and it's heartbreaking to see all of the images that have been coming. You know, when we are dealing with wildfires here in Southern California or anywhere else, we talk about those steps of preparedness, ready, set, go when we're making sure that when the red flag warnings are being issued. And that notifications of powerful windstorms that all of the resources are being pulled together. I'm actually here right now at the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management Emergency Operations Center where all of our emergency management partners, fire agencies, they're working together to make sure that all of the resources that are available to keep people safe and respond as effectively as possible are implemented based on the forecasts that we're issuing ahead of time. We all work together as a community to keep people as safe as possible.

FOSTER: Ariel Cohen really appreciate that, thank you so much.

I mean there are going to be questions asked in good time isn't there ?

CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

FOSTER: You know, warnings went out, people weren't evacuated.

MACFARLANE: Yes.

FOSTER: But the fires are so much worse than anyone expected. Our coverage of those fires continues in a moment. We'll be back.

[04:35:00]

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FOSTER: Breaking news on wildfires burning in Southern California, right now, growing by the minute as well. Governor Gavin Newsom noting the flames are unprecedented for this time of year.

MACFARLANE: Yes. And joining us now is storm chaser Michael Steinberg who actually witnessed all three wildfires this evening. Michael thank you for joining us. Talk to us about your experience here, what you saw, what you witnessed.

MICHAEL STEINBERG, STORM CHASER: Yes, so the first fire that I was on was the Palisades fire in Pacific Palisades. And right away from the plume, I could tell that this was a very bad fire that was occurring in a densely populated area. The brush was very dry, very unusual at this time of year, as many have noted.

And the fire behavior that I saw was typical of what you'd see in summer, especially in September, October, November. Homes were catching easily because of how much brush was on either side of the homes. And then it just became basically an urban firestorm. Each home just started dominoing up in the areas that I was at.

FOSTER: How does this fire compare in the in the speed that it's spreading compared with the other fires you've seen?

STEINBERG: This is definitely the fastest. I've been covering fires now in California for the past 3 years. So, of course, not as long as many other veteran storm chasers and stringers around the area.

But when you have winds gusting 80, 80 miles per hour in the canyons, combined with very dry fuels, this is unfortunately the kind of wildfire that you that you get.

MACFARLANE: And given that you're saying, you know, yourself, residents are used to these kind of conditions that you perhaps expect to see these kind of wildfires, what sort of warnings, Michael, will put out there ahead of this really taking hold? And what was the urgency among residents that, you know, it could get -- it could come to this?

STEINBERG: Oh, yes, the National Weather Service has done an amazing job getting that information out and forecasting this for basically a week out. I thought they did an amazing job. But unfortunately, I think a lot of residents, you know, they've just kind of become numb to so many red flag warnings that they've had over the years.

And I think the thinking of it might not happen to me. So maybe it's not -- I don't really have to prepare. It's definitely something -- a thought process that I've seen a lot.

FOSTER: But you could also criticize the authorities, couldn't you? Because they could have issued evacuation orders sooner to avoid the gridlock that you ended up with. And they are now learning from that, it seems, because we're being told that Malibu residents are being urged to leave before they issue orders there.

STEINBERG: You know, unfortunately, I think this fire, you know, as many fires have recently happened in California, they just move too fast.

[04:40:00]

Emergency authorities are just so overwhelmed that really it devolves into chaos. And it's really, unfortunately, not -- I wouldn't call it on the authorities' fault, but really it's a matter of why are we building a neighborhood that's right into the wildland urban interface, which is where the wildland vegetation meets human development.

And especially with only one way in, one way out, that's unfortunately kind of one of the biggest causes for these issues with traffic.

MACFARLANE: And Michael, I know you've been documenting what you've been seeing in recent hours on social media. I'm actually just looking at a couple of your pictures now and I'm seeing one image here of patients being evacuated, I guess, from a medical facility or a hospital or something like that. Talk to us about those evacuation attempts that you witnessed.

STEINBERG: Yes, it was very frantic. Unfortunately, that fire, which was the Eaton fire over by Altadena, it just moved so fast into that area and they were rushing patients as fast as they could to safety. It was very chaotic, as I said.

The wind was howling. It kept increasing as the evening went on, which was just as forecast as what the National Weather Service was saying.

MACFARLANE: And I know also that there have been major power outages as well. I think some 63,000 residents without power. What impact is that having that you can see.

STEINBERG: Internet service. I definitely have noticed that, you know, signal is definitely slower, especially in the areas that are being impacted by fire. And for, you know, someone like me, I need to be able to get information out as fast as I can, whether that's as you talked about with my social media or back to the team at Watch Duty, as I'm a reporter for the Watch Duty app.

Information and getting that out is vital in situations that are as fluid as this.

MACFARLANE: It is vital, and we're glad to see you are safe. Having experienced all three fires across Los Angeles County in the last few hours. Michael Steinberg, we really appreciate you being with us. Thank you.

STEINBERG: Thank you. MACFARLANE: And as Michael just mentioned, workers race to evacuate elderly residents from a senior center in Pasadena, California, as the flames from the Eaton fire burned just a block away. The blaze has grown to 1,000 acres just six hours after it started burning, and one worker said they had to move about 95 people.

FOSTER: It really does look like a movie, doesn't it? God, I feel for those poor people. Dozens of residents were in wheelchairs, as you can see, also hospital beds, very thin gowns as well. They had to just get out of the building. Some didn't even have their shoes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's tough. It's tough. They can't get up. They're stuck on the wheelchairs. We've got to lift them up, put them in the vans, and then take the wheelchairs at the same time. So we've got to get everybody out of here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everyone got out safely, as far as you know?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This thing must have been moving towards you guys really quickly out here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, oh, yes. It's crazy out here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACFARLANE: Well, let's bring in Neeta Sreekanth, a resident of Los Angeles County. She was in the Pacific Palisades on Tuesday as the fire was starting to grow. Thank you for joining us.

I understand you were actually hiking in the Palisades with your dog when you saw a fire in the distance. At what point did you realize this was something very serious?

NEETA SREEKANTH, LOS ANGELES COUNTY RESIDENT: Yes, well, unfortunate situation. When we started the hike, it was one of those beautiful, clear days and there was no fire up in the sky. For one second, I popped my headphones in, started listening to a podcast and then my dog came and jumped on me and I quickly turned around and I just saw the plume of smoke up in ash, up in the air, excuse me.

And I think I was one of the first few people to actually see and witness what was happening in the air.

FOSTER: What did you do in response to that?

SREEKANTH: Well, unfortunately, I was up in the hills, so I didn't have much service. So what I was able to do was just capture footage as much as possible. Then when I got back down to cell service, I was able to upload it online.

While I was actually in the mountain, there were firefighters that were going up and down trying to protect the area. But there were also some helicopters up in the air, and they were actually on the PA yelling down to evacuate from the mountain the fire was coming. And from my vantage point, which you can see from the footage, you can see the actual fire spreading really quick.

So it became a really fast-moving situation, and the evacuation happened really fast. But it was pretty clear that this was not going to be an ordinary fire that we have out here in LA.

MACFARLANE: Were you -- did you yourself evacuate from the area? I mean, were you particularly affected? We know that many people have had to just dump and run and leave their homes.

SREEKANTH: No, so I'm actually in West LA.

[04:45:00]

The Palisades area has had the most of the evacuation, and Santa Monica is starting to have that. And as we reported just a minute ago, Malibu residents are preparing to now evacuate.

So I'm at that borderline right now where the Palisades and Santa Monica, where we haven't been told that there's a mandatory evacuation. But part of the reason that we're all up and wired still at this time of the hour is because we're expecting that to happen at any moment. And also because you can hear the firefighters, and you can hear the police cars just driving throughout the entire streets of the city.

FOSTER: Are you not tempted to get out before you get the sort of gridlock that they got in the other areas? They couldn't get out by the time the evacuation orders landed.

SREEKANTH: Look, there's certainly that as an option. But I think what we have to do right now is kind of trust the officials and follow their lead. There's probably more important and more closer people who are actually the fire that need to get out first.

So I think we kind of need to have some sort of order of operation here and be civil about how we're all evacuated.

MACFARLANE: I mean, we've been talking on the show to officials, you know, noting that wildfires in California we know are not unusual, but this is an unusual event. I mean, does this feel particularly bad to you, given what you've witnessed in the past? Is it changing for you, your feelings about wanting to remain in this area?

SREEKANTH: This is certainly different. The one before this that comes to mind is the 2018 fires, where at that one, while the fire was much less than this one, the smoke was actually coming back onto the residents and there was soot and the fire burning smell all throughout the entire city. This time around, the air is actually pushing the fire out into the ocean, so none of that damage is not coming back onto us residents.

But to answer your question, yes, I think there's a lot of frustration right now because this is the type of stuff that could be preventable. We're hearing reports right now from firefighters that you go out and talk to that there's actually not water coming out of the hydrants in some locations because the infrastructure is not set up correctly. The brush has been a consistent problem for over a decade here.

Well, you know, we typically have a week or a few days of rain that comes heavy in December and January. We have not had it this year. Last year, we had about 10 days of straight rain, which kind of covered and we had the beautiful spring flowers that come from the heavy rains.

But these type of repeated mistakes happen over and over and over again here in this city. At some point, we as residents need to speak up and start saying enough is enough and there needs to be change and actually fix what is currently happening in this city. The brush is preventable and we could easily be maintaining our heights, our mountains in a way that prevents this type of fire.

FOSTER: OK, Neeta Sreekanth, really appreciate hearing from you today and hopefully the fires don't come too close.

MACFARLANE: It's an important message she has as well. I think, you know, residents perhaps need to take more action into their own hands.

Now, just ahead, why Facebook parent company Meta is abandoning fact checkers just as Donald Trump is about to return to the White House.

FOSTER: And our breaking coverage of those explosive wildfires in Southern California continues.

[04:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACFARLANE: Welcome back. Meta is adjusting its content review policies on Facebook and Instagram by removing its fact checkers. Instead, they will be replaced with user-generated community notes similar to those on X.

FOSTER: Under Elon Musk. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Zuckerberg acknowledges more harmful content will appear on Meta platform.

MACFARLANE: However, the company says its systems will focus on high- severity violations like terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs and scams.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK ZUCKERBERG, META CEO: After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the U.S.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACFARLANE: I think we'll need to discuss this in a bit more detail tomorrow.

Now, former President Jimmy Carter is lying in state at the U.S. Capitol, where members of the public can pay their respects through Thursday. The 39th president died in his home state of Georgia last week at the age of 100.

FOSTER: A commemoration of his life took place on Tuesday. Members of his family and Congress paid their respects. And Vice President Kamala Harris said Carter lived every day of his long life serving the American people. And his works would, quote, echo for generations to come.

MACFARLANE: Carter's funeral service will be held Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral, where President Joe Biden will deliver a eulogy.

FOSTER: We're going to get back to our breaking news. Evacuation orders expanding across Southern California, as the region battles three separate wildfires being fueled by high winds. Two of those fires sparked in the last few hours and have already burned thousands of acres of land.

MACFARLANE: And it's still the middle of the night in California, where officials tell CNN there is no hope of containing the fires tonight. Instead, emergency workers are focusing on saving lives. More than 30,000 people have evacuated from the Palisades fire alone, with the Eaton and Hurst fires quickly growing more dangerous.

FOSTER: Thank you for joining us here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Max Foster.

MACFARLANE: And I'm Christina Macfarlane. More on the breaking news after the break.

[04:55:00]

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