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Firefighters Still Battling Four Wildfires Across Los Angeles County; Biden Pledges Federal Support For California Wildfires; Residents Face Devastating Reality Upon Returning Home; Impact Of Climate Crisis Felt Firsthand In California Wildfires. Aired 3-4p ET

Aired January 11, 2025 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:01:23]

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: Hello, again, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Fredricka Whitfield alongside my colleague Erin Burnett in Pacific Palisades, California.

We'll get to you, Erin, momentarily.

We continue to watch this breaking news. Firefighters racing to put out wildfires tearing across parts of Los Angeles County. More strong winds are expected in the coming hours, which could stoke the flames even further, creating hellish conditions for fire crews on the ground and people trying to evacuate. Fire officials are sending additional resources to the eastern flank of the Palisades Fire, where it's now threatening the Brentwood and Bel Air communities.

More than 100,000 people are under evacuation orders across L.A. County. The fire is now being blamed for killing at least 11 people. Police say another 13 are reported missing. Progress had been made on two of the largest fires, the Palisades now 11 percent contained, while the Eaton Fire is 15 percent contained. But there's a new threat rising. California officials raising alarms about price gouging and other scams impacting vulnerable fire victims.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROB BONTA, CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL: We are talking about people who have lost loved ones, whose homes have perished in the fires, who have lost treasured belongings, whose lives have been turned upside down, who are struggling and suffering. They're looking for housing. They're looking for essential goods to keep their lives moving.

The last thing they need is for someone to victimize them again, exploit them and take advantage of them and harm them through price gouging. They need the opposite. They need some people who are giving them care and support and looking after them and valuing them and helping them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: Let's go now to CNN's Erin Burnett, live in Pacific Palisades.

What are you seeing there?

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, Fred, it is that they're in that desperate fight to try to tamp it down or to cordon off, contain this Palisades Fire as much as they possibly can. As you said, only about 10 percent contained. They're trying to do that ahead of the anticipated pickup in winds. And we've seen a little bit of those winds right now. We had a lot of ash coming down. You get a breeze. You get a lot of ash coming down in the air. Toxic soup of air that is across all of Los Angeles. And under this blanket and these fire areas, of course, very noxious.

They are -- have surged about 3700 firefighters, Fred, to the flank of the Palisades Fire. They're desperately trying to set up some sort of a wall of defense. We use warzone like words. Those are fair, to try to prevent it from spreading to other neighborhoods, including Brentwood, places that, yes, this is a fire zone. Yes, they have fires every year. But no, no one ever contemplated truly being in a situation like Los Angeles is in right now.

And one thing to say is that it does feel so much. It is an area facing complete trauma. People are stunned. And when you go to hotels and having walked through lobbies of a few hotels, you see people who are now truly refugees from their communities. Some of them, you'll see a grandparent, you'll see children, you'll see grandchildren in some places. Other places, just families. People are in shock. You'll see people crying. It is an area facing incredible trauma.

And I will say one thing just to give people some of the atmosphere of what you experience. One thing that you can tell when people are refugees from evacuation or from their houses literally burning down like those around us is their pets.

[15:05:09]

You will walk into a hotel lobby and you will just see so many dogs, because people fled leaving everything behind but they will bring their pets. It's just some things like that that really stand out and strike the moment.

Stephanie Elam is near where I am in the Brentwood neighborhood.

We drove through there, Stephanie, where you are to come up here and you can just see that right behind you, just enveloping, and it feels like it is so very close. It is. I know they're trying to set up that defense where you are. What are you seeing?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Erin, what you're seeing here, and we just saw a couple of drops here. And what is happening here is that they're using this Mandeville canyon, which stretches sort of north to south. They're using it as a way to bring this as a breaking line. So right here you see this helicopter and I believe this is from the Orange County Fire Authority, which is the county just south of Los Angeles County. There you go. Dropping thousands of gallons of water right there on a hot spot on the other side of that ridge.

And the precision that these pilots have, these teams have, is amazing. We were just watching from Cal Fire, one of their C-130s, which drops 4,000 gallons of fire retardant. And that's what that pink stuff is, right? That's that phosphate that they drop to go ahead and try to break that line. What the difference is that you're seeing now as the helicopter comes over me right now, is that they have aircraft up in the skies.

If you remember the first couple of days of the fire, it was just too windy. They couldn't get those aircraft up. And now there are several aircraft up here and you'll see a spotter fly through. You'll see the C-130 come behind it and drop that fire retardant precisely where they want it to go even as the winds change. And as you were saying, the winds are starting to pick up now. We feel a little bit more of that push coming at us from the side here and that you can also see it by how the smoke is going up.

And there you see in the distance that's the C-130, I believe, that's coming around looking to make another drop. But you see the flames there in front of it by those power lines and these homes that are in front. This is that defensive line that they are working to break here. And we can see several places where there are flames actively growing and billowing here, and trying to keep this from going further into the valley on the other side of this ridge because while we have a slight growth in the containment, these are very precarious containment numbers right now, simply because these winds are going to pick back up and we could see things spread.

So this is why you can see more people are being very cautious about where this fire is going to go -- Erin.

BURNETT: All right. Stephanie, thank you very much. And I know, you know, some have said, well, they could see it over the ridge. And you see it's close, it makes you nervous, but you only have a few minutes before it actually hits your home.

All of this has blanketed Los Angeles in smoke, and it looks, downtown Los Angeles when you're flying over, is just -- it's almost red. You can barely see the buildings until you see you're almost upon them. It has raised serious air quality concerns, serious health concerns for the region. Second largest city in the United States.

I'm joined by Dr. Anish Mahajan and he is the chief deputy director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Doctor, I very much appreciate your time. You know, the heavy smoke is everywhere. You see the ash everywhere in the darkness. You can actually even see it illuminated more. That's just what we can see. It smells noxious. I mean, really horrific. What kind of health issues are people already experiencing?

DR. ANISH MAHAJAN, CHIEF DEPUTY DIRECTOR, LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH: You know, thanks so much. Good to be with you, Erin. First, I want to extend our deep thanks to our first responders for their heroic efforts and extend our thoughts and prayers to all those who have had profound losses in these fires.

You know, we are very worried about the air quality here. You know, as you say, folks are experiencing the small particles that are in smoke and wildfire smoke. Small particles get into your nasal passages. They cause those itchy eyes and sore throats, but it can also cause worse symptoms and more serious problems, especially for people who are higher at risk. And those include children, the elderly, people who are pregnant and others who have respiratory or heart conditions or immunocompromised states.

These folks may have even worse symptoms like shortness of breath, wheezing, cough, and those are a very big concern.

BURNETT: What are the longer term health concerns from something this big and this catastrophic? And also, I know that, you know, someone -- a doctor was describing it to me. When you drive, the wind brings a giant cloud of ash and it lands on you or your car.

[15:10:02]

That ash isn't wood, that ash is someone's roof, that ash is someone's car. That ash is -- that ash is toxic it really in a very tangible way. What are the long term risks here?

MAHAJAN: Well, there are several long term risks to people's health across the board. And so what we are really encouraging folks to do at this time is take the steps to avoid those risks. And those include things like trying to stay indoors as much as possible. If you must be outdoors, then you must really try to wear an N-95 or a P-100 mask. These masks filter out those particles that get lodged into the body.

But there are other ways in which the ash and these toxic chemicals that you're describing can get into the body, and that's through water. And so there are a number of water advisories from water districts to Angelenos right now. These include things like boil notices, because when there's a fire and a depressurized system for the water and their sewage, there's risks of bacteria causing problems. And so there are boil notices.

But there's an even greater problem of these toxins that you're describing with the burnt out areas of the houses and all of the chemicals that we live with that are now burned to ash, they also can find their way into the water. So we have several water districts here in L.A. indicating that residents do not use the water. And that means you should not only not drink it, but you should also not use it for things like bathing, brushing your teeth or other activities.

And instead you should be using an alternative source. And so these are steps that we are asking folks to take here in Los Angeles to avoid the health risks of this wildfire smoke and ash.

BURNETT: All right. Well, Dr. Anish Mahajan, I really appreciate your time and thank you very much.

MAHAJAN: Thank you.

BURNETT: It is a tangible reality for everyone here. You know, people just driving. And it is quite disconcerting if you're on something like Rodeo Drive and, you know, the world knows that for what they know it for, right? All of that. And then you see all of the cars driving through, those fancy cars you would expect, and then just ash coming down everywhere. Just images that are hard for everyone to understand that this is what it has come to.

And the fuel for these devastating fires is wind and it is going to ramp up. That's the reality of it. It's the weather. And those winds are anticipated to intensify and dramatically so over these next hours, as firefighters are racing to contain some of those open flames and to contain this, to try to set up a line of defense from some more of Los Angeles' most densely populated neighborhoods.

We'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:16:59]

WHITFIELD: All right. We continue to report on the Southern California wildfires. Firefighters are working quickly trying to contain these very fast moving flames that have already scorched thousands of acres with powerful winds set to return to the Los Angeles County area later on today. Cal Fire officials say there is a very significant concern now that the fires will continue to grow.

Meteorologist Chad Myers is with us now.

You see the air assets with these, you know, fire retardants and water. But I mean, it's so vast and there are so many fires. And now with the winds, terrible.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And when we use those air assets and the winds are blowing 30 or 40, it's hard to get that Phos-Chek on the ground in a straight line. It just turns into a mist. So we don't get the real effort that this Phos-Chek should be able to do.

Let's just go ahead and take a look at these pictures. There's a couple of things to talk about here. One, the smoke still is vertical. It is still rising in the air. We will know when the winds pick up today and they will when all of this lays over and it blows completely out toward the ocean in a big flat line. That means that there's not enough time for the smoke to rise. And all of a sudden it's just blowing completely out to sea.

We are expecting winds today to be about 40 miles per hour later on this afternoon. This to me looks like about 10 miles per hour. You see the smoke as it's still going up. That is good news. That's also good news because when the water tankers drop the water, it doesn't turn into a mist. It actually hits the ground as a decent piece of water. But look how close now we are to buildings again. We're back into these canyons.

The fire going up and down these canyon roads, along the roads. Firefighters really can't get back in there. So these are the air assets that we truly need here. And I get a question all the time about why is this stuff red? Why is this stuff that they drop out of the sky red? No, not the water, but the Phos-Chek we're talking about that that plane just dropped. It's because they put red dye in the Phos-Chek so that you can actually see where it has been, and you don't lay down another layer of Phos-Chek on top that's already been there.

We want to get a long, long line of this stuff. So it has no use except to be the decider of where the next line of Phos-Chek is dropped, and there's a lead plane in front of that plane that says, here, follow me, and that plane is following the plane right along that Phos-Chek line that was already set down and continuing it along a line to stop that from getting across the line. It's like making a big barrier. That's what they're trying to do.

It does stop the fire because of the salts that are in it. It isn't like table salt, but there are salts that are in it. We are still going to see the response here back up to about critical today. Now this is letter two of three when it comes to how bad the wind can be. The day that these fires started, it was extremely critical. That's level three of three. So we're not getting to there.

[15:20:00]

But I'll tell you what, we don't need 40-mile-per-hour winds. Forty- mile-per-hour wind is a Santa Ana event. We just had an extreme one, Fred. I mean, we -- 85, 100 miles per hour. That's Santa Ana times two for most people.

WHITFIELD: Yes.

MYERS: So 40 is still a Santa Ana event. And that's going to hopefully not ground the assets because when that happens then they have to fly back --

WHITFIELD: And it's a combination, right? Because you've got the winds and then you've got the wind gusts.

MYERS: Sure.

WHITFIELD: And all of that is fueling it. Yes.

MYERS: I hate riding in a helicopter. I've done it about three times. I hate riding in one when it's calm. I can't imagine riding when it's 40.

WHITFIELD: No, I can't either.

MYERS: And you got all those water below --

WHITFIELD: Right. And then they're trying to target areas. All right. Thank you so much, Chad Myers. We'll check back with you. Appreciate it.

All right. At the White House, President Biden and members of his administration are pledging federal resources to help the people of California affected by these fires.

CNN's Julia Benbrook is joining us now from the White House. Julia, what more can you tell us about Biden's plan and if there are

any concerns that any of his plan would be reversed with the incoming administration?

JULIA BENBROOK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Biden administration says that it has remained in constant communication with California Governor Gavin Newsom, as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. In fact, there was a briefing yesterday, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, both in attendance, and they received an update on the efforts to suppress the fires across L.A., as well as how federal resources are being used on the ground to assist.

Following that briefing, Biden said that his team would continue working 24 over seven with state and local officials. But that promise comes as he has just over a week left in office. He did say that his team has been briefing the incoming administration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They know every single thing we're doing about what the response. My hope is that they will have at least acknowledged we have some significant experience in this. We've done really well on it, and I'm praying that they continue to focus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BENBROOK: The president has directed the federal government to cover 100 percent of the state's cost for this initial disaster response, over those first 180 days. And FEMA has approved the additional resources and activated their critical needs assistance program, which gives an initial one-time payment of $770 to survivors so that they can quickly purchase critical items like water, formula, gas, and prescriptions.

The administration is also providing resources like air tankers and firefighting helicopters to assist with the response. Now more than 600 California National Guardsmen are already assisting and more service members, hundreds of more service members are waiting to be called in if needed.

Biden was originally scheduled to be on a trip to Italy right now. He did cancel that trip so that he could monitor the federal response to these devastating fires. During that trip, he was expected to meet with several leaders, including Pope Francis. We did just learn that he spoke with the Pope on the phone today, and he awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction, the first time that he has awarded that specific award in his presidency.

During the call, he did express his deep regret for not being able to meet in person as planned -- Fred.

WHITFIELD: Julia Benbrook, thank you so much.

All right. For more information about how you can help the Los Angeles area wildfire victims, go to CNN.com/impact or text Wildfires to 707070 to donate.

All right. Residents are beginning to witness the scope of the devastation from these intense wildfires. Many returning to their homes only to find them reduced to rubble.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN O'CONNOR, MALIBU RESIDENT: Two doors down, the house is gone. One door up, the house is gone. The house above me is gone. The houses across the street were burning all day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:28:03]

BURNETT: All right. Powerful winds are set to return to Los Angeles County tonight. And officials are warning of a very significant concern that the wildfires that are raging across the area will grow.

We've been hearing that Cal Fire battalion chief David Acuna said to Fred that current wind conditions are favorable for firefighters to use aircraft and perform crucial drops of water and fire retardant to shore up containment lines. That's what they're trying to do. That red is the fire retardant. They're dropping them from C-130s and also DC- 10s, which are flying with up to 5,000 gallons. Those DC-10s, a fire retardant.

And the conditions, of course, for rapid spread are returning today. Offshore winds are set to hit along the coast. And our correspondent Leigh Waldman joins me now.

And Leigh, you know, watching some of this, the winds just impede their ability to fight the fire, not just because of the fact that they can switch direction so quickly, but those super scoopers that they were calling them along the water, they can't scoop up the water with the winds and the turbulence to fight the fires during those winds. And we are expected to see those. I know we can feel a little bit of it now, but to really pick up.

LEIGH WALDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we're expecting those winds to come back tonight and into tomorrow, but especially next week, Tuesday, Wednesday, those winds are really going to pick up. That's why it's so important that they get those containment numbers up today when the winds aren't as significant right now. That's why the aircrafts that they're flying are so vital to the efforts to try and get these fires under control.

We spoke to people who call this area home. And last night with those new evacuation orders came down as the fire was raging and we could see it on the hilltop that's behind us here, we were talking to people in the hotel we're staying at, and they said, thank God we left when we did.

It's horrendous what we've seen in this neighborhood. While some homes are standing, most are gone. We spoke to a man named Rick, and I think he gave us some video of his home that we can show you now. He said he went back here. This is where he raised his daughter, and he has lived here for 30 years now.

[15:30:02]

And he wanted to go back to get some closure on his home and see it for himself. And there was nothing left.

This is the video. You can see it here. It's horrendous. You can see his home is completely gone. Only the chimney remains there, Erin. And there's nothing left to take back to his daughter. Listen to what he had to say. She had one request from him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICK BOTA, LOST HOME IN PACIFIC PALISADES FIRE: I just drove by my house just to get some closure. And yes, it's rubble. There's nothing there. My daughter, who was born there and she's 23 now, she said, Dad, get something, just pick up something. And there's literally nothing. The whole day we've just been like, my daughter and I have just been thinking about what we lost, the memories in the house.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALDMAN: Yes, I think it's those memories, those things that you can't replace, that's what people are being hit with so hard here. And another story that broke our hearts when we were at the hotel talking to evacuees last night, a couple told us that three months ago they lost their home insurance due to wildfires and the threat there. I know there's protections that are being offered now, but for the families who lost their insurance months before this fire happened, they're faced with a whole new set of issues.

BURNETT: Yes. And, you know, looking at this destruction as you're talking about, Leight, just the speed with which the fire went through, that people would get just a few minutes, and I don't know if sometimes if people watching can hear when those alerts go off but evacuation alerts, I mean, that people had so little time. They had so little time.

And in those moments, really, it was almost at their own discretion. When do you think the fire looks so close, oh, my gosh, go. And what they were able to grab, you know, I was struck and I know you talk about how they weren't able to get anything. And then he was trying to go back for his daughter. Some people saying, you know, you don't actually have a moment to think. It seems like people, the first thing they go for is their passports, which is an interesting -- they'll go for their passports.

But then what do you grab next? And it seems to be so random what a person in such a moment of anxiety and stress can even think of to grab in those moments. But also we also see fires and continuing smoldering in a lot of these neighborhoods.

As you have been traveling through, what has struck you the most over these past really few hours this morning even that you've seen?

WALDMAN: I think just seeing the smoke in the distance and knowing what these firefighters are having to combat.

BURNETT: Yes.

WALDMAN: Seeing the images of these helicopters and planes dropping water, they're so accurate with their water and retardant drops and what they're trying to accomplish today. But knowing the battle they have next week with these winds kicking back up again, it's a huge uphill battle. That's what's taking our breath away and just taking in what people have left to come home to when they have nearly nothing.

BURNETT: Nothing. And what the word home is even going to mean for them.

Leight, thank you very much. Leigh Waldman of course out here reporting.

And the satellite images capture the scale of the destruction from above and really showing entire neighborhoods that have been reduced to rubble. When we look at it from the air, it's just street after street after street.

Here is CNN's Tom Foreman with a special report with our Wolf Blitzer.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a view of part of the neighborhood there beforehand. Clean, tidy streets, a lot of people proud of how much they know each other and get along, baseball diamonds over here. Give you a sense of scale. And look at it after the fire went through. Very few structures untouched in here.

This is the Elliott Arts Middle School, drawing a magnet school over in -- a little bit north of Pasadena there. This area over here, they were hit in the middle of the night. And look what the result was, tremendous, tremendous damage over there.

The Will Rogers home here, this was one of the most famous, right, there he is, one of the most famous humorists in this country back in the 1920s, 1930s, social commentator. He bought this ranch and he had some stables near here. Big attraction out there. This very building now looks like this. They managed to get some of the artwork out and they got the horses out of the stable, but that's it.

And of course there are many, many just local attractions, restaurants and hotels that people liked. This is a Starbucks that was down on Western Sunset, right near Swarthmore in Pacific Palisades. That's what it looked like. This is what it looked like as it lit up the night.

It's important to remember that these really are the communities of L.A. If you go out there as a tourist, you're going to be down on Hollywood Boulevard, Capitol Records, Universal Studios, out to the beach maybe. But this is where the people live who make all of that work. And people like this.

Look at this family here. This is the Navarro family. They were living in the house of their dreams. A house they all loved and had a great time. And they got out alive. But this is what was left. They lost photos. They lost mementos. They lost so much.

And as we saw in so many places, Wolf, only the sort of ironic fact that the chimney stays standing. That story repeated thousands of times over.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[15:35:03]

BURNETT: You know, as Wolf and Tom are talking about the chimney, that is exactly it. It is what strikes you because chimneys are made to withstand fire. And that's exactly what they do. And so you look across this landscape and it's literally just chimney after chimney after chimney after chimney. The only thing left standing. It is just somehow so deeply ironic in this moment that we are in.

We are going to take a very brief break and be back with our ongoing breaking news coverage of these California fires here from Pacific Palisades and with our team coverage across Southern California this hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The severity of the wildfires scorching Southern California has many wondering how this could happen.

CNN's Laura Paddison shows us how the world's climate crisis is making an impact.

[15:40:01]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAURA PADDISON, CNN SENIOR CLIMATE WRITER (voice-over): Deadly, destructive, out of control blazes are sweeping across the Los Angeles area. And you might be wondering why is this happening now in the middle of winter.

January is typically one of L.A.'s wettest months so major fires are rare. But the climate crisis is changing. Fire behavior by driving hotter temperatures and more extreme swings from wet to dry conditions.

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D), CALIFORNIA: November. December. Now January. There's no fire season. It's fire year. It's year round.

PADDISON (voice-over): It's unclear what sparked the blazes, but they're being fueled by Santa Ana winds, strong, warm seasonal winds which flow from the desert through the mountains toward the California coastline. These winds are not unusual for this time of year, but have been exceptionally powerful and have arrived as L.A. grapples with drought.

It's been the driest start to L.A.'s wet season for more than 80 years. Parching a landscape which has a lot of vegetation after an exceptionally wet winter last year. This has created perfect fire fuel.

Crucially, every wildfire has its own unique set of circumstances. But as we've seen in recent years, climate change is loading the dice in favor of more intense and more rapidly spreading blazes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: All right. And even in the winter months, the risks are rising. That's the warning from my next guest. Adam Coates is an associate professor of Wildland Fire Ecology and Management at Virginia Tech.

So great to see you. So what's your best, you know, explanation as to why these fires are happening in January when this is supposed to be the rainy season?

ADAM COATES, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, WILDLAND FIRE ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT, VIRGINIA TECH: Sure. Yes. Thank you for having me and my condolences and total, total heartfelt understanding for everybody that's dealing with this in that area.

It's a challenging situation, and I think the piece you just featured said it really well that last year was an El Nino year. A lot of opportunity for vegetation to grow and then for this year to be dry for nearly eight months. It really presents an opportunity that anything can create some type of ignition. And once that ignition is also fueled by intense winds and actually dry conditions that are a part of that wind, low relative humidity and dry winds, you get these fires that move really quickly.

When there's complex terrain involved also, like if you think about how much slope could impact this with a 10 percent increase in slope fire the rate of spread doubles. So with watching them move so quickly and then to have embers and firebrands to be pushed, you know, hundreds of yards at a time, it makes it really challenging when we have highly trained and really good systems in place to put out fires. It makes it really challenging for those individuals to be able to do what they can do with their technology.

WHITFIELD: Yes, we're seeing that, indeed. I mean, they are -- these firefighting teams are highly trained. They have incredible equipment that can anticipate, but by their own admission, this is just something very different.

My colleague Anderson Cooper asked California Governor Gavin Newsom this week about the timing of these fires. This is what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: It's supposed to be wet this time of year. NEWSOM: It's supposed to be wet. I mean, so this is, you know, this is

anomalous. Even -- you know, I remember Paradise happened in November. I mean, so there's no fire season in California.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: I mean, that really is what you're saying. There is no fire season anymore. So much has changed. And as you have all that vegetation that grew after the wet winter, you know, last year and the year prior, this is so dry now. I mean, they are, you know, they're just tinder, right? All of that vegetation is just tinder and it's just going up. The real problem here is, and what we still don't know, is really what sparked any number of these fires. And the fires got under way. And these embers are just flying in the wind.

COATES: That's right. That's right. And fire is interesting in that it doesn't discriminate what should be used as fuel and what shouldn't be used as fuel. So when you have this interaction of the wildland urban interface and you're burning and building materials and things like, we train our students to think about the flammability of vegetation and how we can manage vegetation to be less flammable. And even in some cases, in the southeast, we manage systems that really are only promoted when we use controlled fire and prescribed fire.

So it has immense benefits ecologically. And yet you come into an urban complex and we don't really think about how those materials should be on fire because we're hopefully preventing them from catching on fire. And so the dynamics that are created when those materials you have wildland vegetation that is intersecting with urban fuel, it creates these very unique and abrasive fire dynamics and fire behavior that we are still trying to understand the fire behavior that we want to do the best we can to be able to manage it when it does occur.

But it's just really complicated by these, you know, changes in the hydro, what we call hydro climate whiplash of like having really intense wet years followed by really intense dry years. And you have this wind that is just promoting fire behavior that's really extreme.

[15:45:01]

WHITFIELD: Virginia Tech professor Adam Coates, thank you so much. I mean, it's really clear the priority right now getting these fires out, helping people, et cetera. But simultaneously now a new thought process of, you know, what kind of modifications just naturally have to occur as a result of what we're seeing transpire. Thank you so much.

COATES: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: All right. As crews work to contain the active wildfires threatening tens of thousands of homes in Los Angeles County, we are learning that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives will take the lead in determining what exactly caused the Pacific Palisades fire. We'll go there live next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right, welcome back. Live pictures right now. I mean, the air assets in the form of planes and helicopters are in the air trying to smother these raging fires that remain to be four wildfires that are underway there in Southern California that are not contained but you see just how vast it is.

[15:50:07]

But for how long will these assets be in the air? Because the winds are expected to pick up a little bit later on today.

Erin Burnett back with us now in Pacific Palisades.

You had an opportunity to be in one of the air assets earlier. Give us an idea of what you saw.

BURNETT: I mean, Fred, it was really incredible. You know, when you're here on the ground, the devastation is overwhelming. But when you go up in the air, you see how it is affecting the entire city, America's second largest city. And you can see these fires so we went up in the air just to see the fires, to see the fire fighting, to see what is truly transforming this city.

Let's show you what we saw.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOSH ZAIDA, PHOTOJOURNALIST: So right now we're south of the Palisades and the fire. Looking up, you can see this is PCH right here.

BURNETT: Pacific Coast Highway, running right along the Pacific Ocean. Yes.

ZAIDA: Yes. And then leading up into Malibu.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'll take a picture and once again I guess (INAUDIBLE).

ZAIDA: Even here it's almost impossible to see with all the smoke.

BURNETT: Yes. Flying into this, it is like you're flying into a complete wall of fog. It almost doesn't even look like that. It just looks like an actual wall. Like a white wall.

ZAIDA: Yes.

BURNETT: That we're flying into.

ZAIDA: There's a fire bomber just dropped retardant right there.

BURNETT: All right, so that red that we're looking at is fire retardant. There we go.

ZAIDA: Yes.

BURNETT: We're zooming in on it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just got there. Those pictures live right now.

BURNETT: That plane is dropping that there. So that is an active area then in the Palisades Fire.

ZAIDA: Yes, that's their way of setting a defense wall from the fire progressing any further. And when they are referring to containment this is what they're talking about is where have they set up their defense, and 100 percent containment pretty much means that they've set up their defense in a circle around the fire and the circle is complete.

BURNETT: And that is really important to understand that containment doesn't mean it's not burning. It means that they've been able to establish a perimeter.

ZAIDA: Correct.

BURNETT: Essentially that they can defend. I mean, it's using words like, again, warzone words, right? But that's exactly what it is. You're setting up a line that you're going to make your frontline.

ZAIDA: Yes. You're containing the threat. You're not eliminating the threat.

BURNETT: So this is the plane that just dropped the fire retardant that we saw, and now it's going out. As it was doing that one thing that you could see being in a helicopter and all of the altitudes are -- is that right, is that how I say it?

ZAIDA: Yes. Altitude.

BURNETT: OK. So when you see that plane flying that dropped the fire retardant, as that was happening, there was a commercial flight that you could see nearby it. And all of this is happening in, you know, an incredibly busy airspace. There it is dropping more fire retardant right now. All of this is around the perimeter of the Palisades Fire, where they're trying to establish that defensive line.

ZAIDA: My in-laws actually lost their house in the Palisades Fire. And you know, it's something that's very hard to comprehend because, you know, you started the week just business as normal. And then, you know, by Tuesday night, they're wondering if their house is even still standing. And then Wednesday, you know, I was able to get up in the air and confirm that it was gone. So that's their house right there in the center of the screen.

BURNETT: That's their house. So this is your in-laws' house right here?

ZAIDA: Yes. Yes. And, you know, a lot of memories with our three kids there. And so it's just one of those things that you just got to, you know, pick yourself up and rebuild. But you're not alone. You have a whole community that's suffering. And try and, you know, bond together one day at a time. So there's the entrance into the Getty. BURNETT: All right. That is the Getty Museum, one of the Getty family

and one of the prominent art museums in the country. Certainly in L.A. And they had, right in the middle of the fire area, but had established a perimeter and were able to save. But look right there, right there next to it, complete devastation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's the wind.

BURNETT: Total devastation. And then can we swing back over to the Getty? There you go. Swing right back over to the Getty and you see right there. They were able to save that. But this is the Palisades Fire in the distance. Saw another giant fire retardant plane flying through that. And then as we pan across, you can see the smoke over all of L.A. here. And coming in here, you're going to see it finally, the iconic Hollywood, which you can barely see now because of the smoke.

[15:55:04]

Behind that is the Eaton Fire. So what we're looking at there, just over the hills and just that volume of smoke that is the Eaton Fire. This image is absolutely incredible. This looks like the aftermath of some sort of a bomb.

ZAIDA: Yes.

BURNETT: And that's just the sun shining back through the Palisades.

ZAIDA: Yes.

BURNETT: It does, though. It looks as if some -- a bomb had been dropped there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURNETT: Fred, even from the air, we could see the intersection of two of the busiest freeways in the United States, the 10 and the 405, a place where they cross so just usually just a sea of parking lot. Just the cars were flying. No traffic whatsoever. People here describing it just as almost like COVID meets 9/11. Just the shock and trauma and anything but people going about their normal life. That's not happening for anyone here.

WHITFIELD: No, not at all. And for a very long time.

Erin Burnett, thank you so much. I'm glad to be reporting with you in these last few hours.

We've got so much more. Straight ahead Jessica Dean is up next. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. Much more straight ahead.

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