in the city of redding. as far as my family and i, we are safe. property can be replaced. i know it displaces us a little bit, but with the loss of the two firefighters and our citizens, it pales in comparison. so chief, what were the moments like before losing your home? were you at the house? did you have to evacuate? what were the circumstances? yeah, so the fire made an incredible run from the national park area on wednesday, almost touching our city. so thursday we were getting ready for evacuations. the winds kicked up like we had spoken about. and these gail force winds created these fire tornadoes. so i was actually sitting in my subdivision monitoring it. i had gotten my family out. i watched it go completely north through the lake redding subdivision, which my father s home also was burned, up to my neighborhood and then take out
been burning in sweden. they don t typically have fires like this. in ontario, there are 29 large fires and 19 are out of control. it s the erratic winds and a lot of this is topography. some of this is the drought. notice where the drought is, southern plains all the way through the desert southwest, as you would typically find. you re starting to see where the ti fires are starting to flame up. we ll concentrate on the three big ones in california. the carr fire doubled in size friday night into saturday morning. a lot of this is because when it massively grows like this, it produces its own wind, its own weather. the winds are just erratic. when you have these slopes, say a 30-degree slope, the fire may travel uphill about 24 miles an hour. but the more severe that degree, say a 40-degree slope, it s almost up to 50 miles per hour. so there are several valleys. all these ranges are producing this wildfire, if you will. the smoke is another issue. starting to see large areas from cen
most of central california where the air pollution and air quality is so bad. you re starting to see some go into medical treatment to find out what s going on with the eyes burning and the throats. let s break these down. carr fire, over 89,000 acres scorched. only 5% contained. 3500 firefighters. they ve got a squadron of about 17 water dropping helicopters. so they have been able to get a little bit of a buffer on that. the cranston fire, 13,000 acres. that s the one that prompted a rare closure of yosemite national park. of course, ferguson is up to 30% containment. there s a lot going on. the problem is we have nothing in our favor. triple-digit temperatures, the winds are gusty and out of control and erratic. we re in a moderate drought. no rain in the forecast. and think about this. even the fires in oregon, fredricka, seattle s typical high temperature is 78 degrees. they re going to be in the low 90s in the next couple days. wish i had better news. our hearts are going out t
see. you can only imagine what it is like for the people dealing with it. our meteorologist derek van dam here to tell us about the fire and, of course, the conditions around it. unfortunately weather is coming together to create this almost recipe for disaster for these fires to continue to spread. we have got temperatures in the triple digits. we have got gusty winds, especially on those ridge tops. we have a drought that is intensifying. and there is no chances of rain today or anytime in the future. so we have got a difficult situation going forward to say the least. here is the latest, the car fire, we keep focusing on this one, because it is over 83,000 acres that have been burned, 5% containment, newest fire stats to cnn from ferguson and cranston fire, they re gaining some ground, that s good news. our hats we tip our hats to the firefighters, the volunteers and the professionals there, because, wow, they re working so hard. here is what it looks like from a plane. this is
the west coast. really, it s up to the regional crews, regional management crews to determine how many firefighters they want to throw at any particular fire. this is really the worst one in the state as a matter of fact, this fire already ranks among the top 20 destructive fires in california history. so this is already a historic wildfire with more than 500 structures burned. once again, who knows how long this is going to go on for. all right. dan simon, thank you so much. so at least three police officers have lost their homes in that fire near redding. one of them is redding s police chief, roger moore, who is joining me right now on the phone. so chief moore, how are you and your family holding up knowing that you have lost your home? thank you. you know, we re doing good. we re doing better than many. we have over 517 homes that were lost. many people are displaced here