Transcripts For KNTV Press Here 20171015

The pocket and nuns fire are 25 contained. Power outages are another big issue of the wildfires. They are making progress on g getting the lights back on. More than 300,000 customers lost power. Only 23,000 people are without power. 18,000 in is a sonoma county. Right now dispatchers are badly needed. Police tweeted that 93 shifts of dispatchers have been filled by 24 outside agencies. Its part of the mutual aid resources. Some of the dispatchers have come from as far as menlow park, redwood city. The fight to contain and extinguish the flames is not over. Want to show you new numbers. Since monday, aircraft across the state have dropped over 2 million gallons of retardant to try to help aid firefighters on the ground. Many of the tankers have been flying into wine country. As you see on this graph, wednesday and thursday have the heaviest workload. That may be because of two days of the most favorable weather conditions from the air. Governor jerry brown toured some of the worst hit areas of santa rosa by air and on the ground yesterday. He spoke with a few of the people who lost everything in the fires. Others toured the area with him and all three spoke at a Community Meeting at santa rosa high school. They addressed concerns about what happens next for fire victims. I can say that this is truly one of the greatest if not the greatest tragedy that california has ever faced. The devastation is unbelievable. Its a horror that no one could have imagined. Were here to do what we can. For people returning home after the flames, they are dealing with another threat now. That is thieves. Our cameras happened to be there as Police Arrested an alleged looter in the levelled coffee park neighborhood of santa rosa. Officers laid out several pieces of evidence. Want to take you live to Napa County Sheriffs Office where the News Conference where this morning is well under way. To a new normal. Were going to report on that good news. We do not anticipate any more evacuations at this time. I want to you will hear from the chief that what you are seeing in our ridges, that smoke, the fire crew activities, the air operation activities, its all normal. Its anticipated. When you see people up in the air, when you see crews on the ground, theyre here for you, napa. Theyre taking care of you. As we see our way out of this. Were going to ask for your patience. Were going to ask for you to help us communicate with your neighbors, with each other. Were going to continue to monitor the weather. Youre going to continue to see cal fire presence, fire crew presence for a while. Theyre not going to depart today. Theyre not going to depart tomorrow. We have a long road ahead of us. The day that we had hoped would come, one week later, we are here. With our atlas fire activity minimal. Our tubbs fire activity on the north side under vigilant watch by cal fire and with cal fire hitting that nuns fire very, very hard. We are grateful to everyone in napa county for your patience, for adhering and heeding our warnings. We are grateful to all our first responders. Our fire crews, law enforcement, the California National guard and the help is starting to roll in. At this time, i would invite the chief to talk about the updates on the fires. Good morning. As stated earlier, the call went out for help. People poured in from all over. Our incident personnel continues to grow allowing us to make progress on our fires. I want to thank everyone that assisted. If you are watching from your county, your city, your state, you gave help, thank you. Because it came at the right time. Its allowing us to make a great difference. Theres so many folks in law enforcement, fire, ems that poured in. The national guard. All the resources that we had access to to give us the technology to help put this fire out. Thank you to everyone, its much appreciated. Our fire on the atlas fire is looking really good. Minimal smoke productivity yesterday. Thats resulting in continuing our containment thats up to 56 , 51,000 acres on this fire. Little to no growth is occurring right now. We have basically lined all the way around the fire. Were continuing to mop up and we will get further containment as things go on. Over on the east side of the fire, probably one area we will continue to work on more, dig this out into here, which is over in branch two. Then we have a little bit more work up in the top, over here, to tie in. After that, we will continue to mop up, get good depth and secure that fire stays in the box its currently in. We are very confident it will remain there. I do want to remind everyone as we continue to assess and evaluate the repopulation plans that go on thats occurring for all parts of our fires. As people get in there and we let people back in, you need to know that there will continue to be smoke and fire coming from deep inside this fire. We secure the perimeter. We dont have enough personnel in a lot of instances its not safe go in to put out the stuff. As you get back to your homes, and you start recovering, and you see smoke thats around there, if you have something thats close to your home thats a threat to your home, call 911. Be advised, the stuff thats up on the hillside in the middle of the burn no threat to go outside, will burn until the rains come when you have this significant of a fire. If you have any doubt, dont hesitate to call 911 when you are there. Clean up around your praroperty where you can. It will be common to see smoke on all of our fires probably until the season ending rains come. With that, we will go to the nuns fire. The nuns fire is a top priority. Atlas is looking good. Were putting all of our recesses that are excess over to the nuns fire where were working this area of dry creek, mount veder road, as the fire continues to come down off the highway 29 corridor. This is all on the west side of highway 29. Really Good Progress is going along here. Fire is holding really well along the dry creek road area backing into the road. A little area we need to continue to work on. Thats not coming down quite as fast. Were getting enough resources, we may go in there and start to cut the area out and go direction on that fire and meet it where it is. Then were continuing to put a lot of dozer lines in along the bottom. We have primary Holding Lines in this area on dry creek road. We have a secondary line, which is farther out in case something gets across and were not able to pick it up. We even have additional lines to include the areas around our veterans home. Those areas are looking really good, really secure. Were getting a lot of help. I was out there yesterday. We were dumping so much water on that mountain to keep things in check, to keep things under control as it got to our control line. Same thing going on up toward rutherfo rutherford. Were putting dozer lines in. Were pumping it with engines. You are going to see progress in the next couple days going on on the west side of the valley as well. At this point, i do not see a threat to any of the communities off the highway 29 corridor. Our last one is the tubbs fire, which is being managed by Cal Fire Incident Management Team one out of the sonoma side. Theres still areas up there that continue to burn. However, with regard to the cal stoe ga area, evacuated, were making great progress there. We have good line going in there, continuing to mop up. Watching it very closely. I do not anticipate with our Current Conditions that it will make it into the town of calistoga. Like many other areas, we are continuing to evaluate what the future holds for repopulation when its safe to do so. All areas in napa county that have been impacted by the fire, its our priority to get people out and to get them back in. That will be evaluated. We will try to get that done as soon as possible. Were making really Good Progress up there. Dont expect that to be much of a problem. We went out of red flag warning for the low humidity and high winds this morning at 8 00. It expired. Thats great news. We have been in red flag warnings for four out of six days. Were relieved on the line to hear that that weather has taken a turn for the better. We have extremely dry conditions out there. Very low humidity. There is a chance we could have small fires come out of the fire that we will continue to aggressively attack and keep it contained. Were not out of the woods yet. We are making a tremendous progress out there. I want to thank everyone for their help and coming in. If you came to the fire or you have someone, a loved one, friend, family, thank you to allow them to come and assist us. Last thing i want to say is part of the fire, if you fly a drone and were trying to fly our aircraft, we cant fly together. We will put our aircraft down. That could hamper the fire. Keep those drones on the ground. We dont want to see them. Thank you. Good morning. My name is chris childs. Im the commander of the napa chp area. I will tell you, im very encouraged by what i heard this morning among the coop reration and reports. Today is a better day. That being said, road closures that were in effect yesterday are in effect today. Please do not approach our closure lines. Our closures hoping to get through. We have many people up there working. They are working to remove trees, downed power poles, rock slides, boulders that have come down from the mountains. Its quite a process to get our roadways clear and safe again for people to travel on. As a result, there will be no escorts today going up into those affected areas because we have to keep those roadways completely wide open for the crews that are working up there. We have discussed repopulation briefly. When cal fire and other agency heads deem that repopulation is going to happen, the roadways do open, i want to advise the public that those roadway closures will be lifted for residents only for a period of time to law peopallow people to and see their property and get reestablished before we let the general public back in. I say this often, but i mean it, we as an agency as a Highway Patrol family, continues to be grateful for the support and the outpouring of love and appreciation to our officers on the line. Theyre doing an outstanding job working around the clock line everyone else in this fire. We appreciate the efforts of napa county and the residents and what you display to us. Thank you. Its october in napa valley. That means its harvest time. We understand that there is the need to access agricultural areas. For those growers who have questions about gaining agricultural access, please call 7072534501. Thats 7072534501. Our staff will be able to direct you in the right way. And we thank our agricultural commissioner for heading up that coordination. Napa, you are so generous. You are so kind. I was overwhelmed i was overtaken by seeing rooms of pillows and sections of libraries full with bottled water. And the food that is coming in to all of us here at the eoc, at incident comment, to our road closure posts. And i ask you to please pace yourself. We need you. We need you for the long haul. This is not going to be easy for us. I want you to coordinate your generosity. Thats what im asking you to do. Im not asking you to hold off. Lets make sure we keep all our boots on the ground, our crews working for you, lets make sure we keep them safe through Proper Health practices. If you are interested, public or restaurant, im going to give you a phone number that you can call for coordination of food. We need all food to come in through this channel to ensure Health Regulations are followed and to ensure that we are providing healthy meals and that were not inundating our crews with food and that we can minimize waste. That number is 7072268150. That is the salvation army, the salvation army, we thank them for coordinating our food efforts at our shelters, at incident command and eoc. Were again pace yourself. We need that generosity. Absolutely. But lets remember that we have a long road ahead of us. It all doesnt have to be right now. Next week were still going to need food. In kind donations are no longer being accepted at shelters. At this time as you heard, were looking towards repopulation. Were going to shift those resources into those communities that do need those resources. Im asking at this time, no more in kind donations. I am overtaken by the generosity and its heartwarming. Im so happy to live in this community where you answer the call that wasnt even made to you. I really, really appreciate that. At this time, again, no in kind donations. You want to help. I get that. 25 gift cards of Major Companies like visa, master card, american express, those continue to be accepted at our shelter sites. Make sure you hand them over to shelter manager, someone from the center for volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership will ensure that that gets to our evacuees. Gift cards of 25 increments will continue to be accepted. Monetary donations. We want to make sure that we are providing locally for our residents. We ask that monetary donations come through the Napa Valley Community foundation. We thank the Napa Valley Community foundation for answering the call from the counties, from interested parties that want an avenue to be able to donate locally. Those individual assistance will be handed out and handled by the Napa Valley Community foundation. That is www. Napavalleycf. Org. We continue to share through our media. We continue to share through social media, facebook and twitter. We use nixl. Dont let us on checking that if you havent signed up. Text your zip code to 888777. We continue to have Information Centers establish our Napa Main Library located at 580 koon street. Our branchs are serving as Information Centers. We will continue to have radio spots through the people that are standing here with me on kbyn. Thats 99. 3. Throughout the day. Our Public Information line remains 2534501. At this time, i would like to invite up congressman thompson to speak about individual fema assistance. Thank you. As we have reported before, fema has approved individual assistance for folks who have sustained damages in this disaster. I would urge people to go online to www. Disasterrelief. Gov. Thats the best way to get signed up. There will be presence at the local Assistance Center in the out days. But right now, please go online and register. Thank you. Today, sunday, we will have people appearing on 1440 am, kvon. And the fm station is 99. 3. Those are our two local stations that we will be providing updates through. We will have two Community Meetings today. The first one will be in spanish at 1 00 p. M. At st. Johns cath ri catholic street. We will stream via facebook live. It will be available through social media platforms. We ask if you dont need to come on down, lets avoid those roadways. Tune in facebook live, it will be on the countys website. It will be entirely in spanish. We also have a meeting scheduled at 3 30 p. M. At the Napa Valley Unified School district auditorium. That is located at 2425 jefferson street in napa. Spanish and American Sign Language translation will be available at this location. Also, that will be streamed via facebook, napa valley tv channel 28 will be streaming both meetings as well. So is there no need to come on down. This is our last planned press conference. The reason for that is that we are now switching over to our recovery mode. Its a day i have looked forward to for a week. A week ago, this started as a nightmare. The day we have dreamed of has arrived. And together, with your mayors, with your supervisors we are here for you. Its a long road for recovery. And i look forward to the day that this can be a distant memory in which we recall that we were resilient and that we got through this together. Be well, napa, and be safe. Theyre wrapping up the conference. This is at the Napa County Sheriffs Office where we gained some new information, pretty positive. We knew the atlas fire was 56 conta contained. Little to no growth. They can now devote their crews to other fires. Their priority today they said will be the nuns fire, the tubbs, because that atlas fire has grown in containment and has not grown in size. Some good news to report. They have had such an outpouring of support from people bringing things to some of the shelters, theyre saying, stop bringing things to the shelters right now. They just need to coordinate more. That goes for food and restaurants that have been working together as well. Theyre asking everyone to coordinate through the salvation army, giving the number, 7072268150. Thats good. Its that giving spirit. Yeah. They have too much of a good thing. 2 they dont want people to withshe said we need you for the long haul and coordinate your generosity. They still have a ways to go. There was a bit of good news. They announced they are switching to recovery mode. This will be their last press conference update. That is some good news. Very different scene in sonoma county. For napa county, they are switching to recovery mode saying a week ago this all started as a nightmare and this is the day that they have dreamed of. It has arrived. We have a long haul ahead. Because there wont be more ne s s conferences, nbc bay area, we have crews throughout. We will continue to gather information for you as well as any developments. We have a Community Forum going on as well. Two more Community Meetings in napa coming up. For spanish speakers, 1 00 today at st. John catholic church. Then at 3 30, theres a meeting at the Napa Valley Unified School district auditorium on jefferson street. That will be in english. But they will have a spanish translation and sign language for the hearing impaired. Right now, firefighters battle the fires, homeowners are looking for help. Nbc bay areas sharon katsuta is live in santa rosa. This is a great resource. How many people do you think are waiting for help right now . Reporter i would say a couple hundred. About 200 are probably standing in line right now. Some of them came very early, as early as 6 30 because they said they came yesterday when it first opened and the line stretched four blocks. They said they wanted to come back today and here they are. You can see them lined up against the wall. Many of them as they are being told to wear their mask because of the poor air quality. They are waiting. They want to get their passports, find out how to get more information on insurance. Right now, with me is nancy, who was kind enough to join us here live. Tell us about what happened to your home. Take us back to that night. I remember somebody was banging on the door at 12 30, banging on our door. We dont have a land line. We do have our cell phones. They were being charged on the other side of the house. I opened it and it was my neighbor. He screamed, nancy, get out. Just you gotta get out. Theres a fire. So i panicked. Were in an area thats a lot of brush, a lot of brush. So i started screaming to my husband. We grabbed our dogs. We jumped in the car. I was able to bring my purse, my husband got the car keys. That was it. We drove down the road. You are here right now you are telling me, fortunately alive you are saying. You have some things. Able to grab your glasses. You told me you are grateful for that. Be grateful for the little things. I am grateful for everything we have. Im grateful that we have each other. And were alive. Im just grateful to be alive. Right now, you are trying to get your life back in order. What are you here to do today . Today were going to try to get our registration on our cars, our vin numbers, our passports. My husband, he is going to have a problem getting his birth certificate. He was born in greece. We dont know if were going to be able to get that back. All our paperwork is gone. You were telling me, you contacted your insurance. Talk to us about that. We did. That was a little bit difficult. I asked if they could send us some money, wire us some money so we could just have something. What happened is, they told me they needed a picture of our house to see what was left of it. There was nothing left of it. I told them, theres nothing left of it. But we had to thank goodness our neighbors, they were able to get us a picture of our house. So i forwarded that to insurance. So far, they said theyre sending us some money. But i havent seen anything yet. Thank you, nancy, for joining us. You see her glancing over to the left because her husband is telling her the line is moving. We need to get in there. Thank you for telling us, sharing your story. Basically right now, what im being told is everyone in this line, whoever comes here, you should at least have your Social Security number, your address of the damage home or apartment, description of the damage. Theyre saying, bring any information you have of insurance coverage. That is the most difficult part. A lot of that went up in the flames when their homes were destroyed. As we all know. They are saying offer your telephone number, Mailing Address and Bank Accountant routing numbers before you get here, gather the minimum of that information so they can help you the most when you get here. In about an hour, we are hearing the insurance commissioner, dave jones, will be here to meet with people who lost their homes who need so much help here. He has he is trying to make sure that the Insurance Companies will work with all of these fire victims to expa died the process and get help from out of state with the insurance processing so that all of these victims get the most help and very quickly, as soon as possible. Again, he is going to be here in about an hour and be touring all of these burn areas in santa rosa. All right. Thank you very much, sharon. You see the need. People literally having to completely start over. Hundreds of people already lined up. This is the first day that this is open to everyone. People who need birth certificates, drivers licenses. Starting over. Starting over. Money. Just money. Money. Thats the local Assistance Center. Its 427 mendicino avenue. Where e hope everyone can ta advantage of that. We want thank you you. We will air sunday night football night in america tonight and xfinity sports at 8 30, followed by a special edition of nbc bay area news at 9 00. Join me tomorrow morning. We will be on 4 30 to 7 00 a. M. Right now, we will join damion. Have a good morning. Damian trujillo hello and welcome to comunidad del valle. Im damian trujillo, and today, we honor la familia, the family of the year, on your comunidad del valle. Male announcer nbc bay area presents comunidad del valle with damian trujillo. Damian well, one familia, one family, is being honored this year once again by the Hispanic Foundation of silicon valley. Its a big event for the Hispanic Foundation involved. Joining me is now former san jose mayor ron gonzales and the president ceo of the Hispanic Foundation of silicon valley. Welcome back to the show, mayor. Ron gonzales thank you, damian, its always a pleasure to be interviewed by you. Damian thank you very much. You know, well talk about the family in a bit cause we have a whole show to talk about them and their great work in the community, but lets just talk about the foundation, and the vision, and the mission, and the history, becausewell, tell us where you are now, because you brought it up from a good place