living in japan but others may fear retaliation against their families by the regime if they applied for asylum. probably a good fear. some japanese citizens have suggested they are worried that some of these fishermen are really spies. could that be the case? it s certainly possible. they have a well-documented history of kidnapping japanese citizens but it s unlikely they are infiltrators. if north korea really wants to plant spies in japan, they would use better boats to insert them, not these boats where the chances of survival are slim. brian, thanks very much. brian todd reporting. breaking news coming up. the wildfire disaster in southern california is spreading tonight. more than 100,000 acres have burned and now a new fire has just broken out. we re going live to the fire lines.
fatalities, but there have been numerous ambulance could to scenes, people are trapped by fire. it s burn, almost right down towards the water and towards the oaks. so here s the map. this is the critical and extreme fire conditions. here s santa barbara, the area of concern is right in here near ventura. gusts 30 to 40 and the problem that they re going to seet the winds are up high. they stay pretty high. there is 40 and 50 to the purple and the pink. this is all the way into thursday morning the fire crew there, it s an extremely difficult situation. when they do water drops, it s not that accurate anyways, but they feel helpless on the ground. they re trying to save, make these fire lines. they know they have structures burning. they can t even touch, it s so hot and the embers and the windows, this looks like a horrendous situation and i can almost guarantee, this will be one of the biggest breaking news
because the forecast is calling for the wind to pick up. you know that the wind is not good for the firefight. it fans the flames. it creates the blowtorch effect that laid waste to this neighborhood, coffee park in santa rosa on sunday. what they ll keep doing is cutting these fire lines so that the fire cannot jump from one set of vegetation to the next. and they need to do that before the wind picks up. it s supposed to get windier as the day goes on into tonight and into tomorrow. so once again they ve issued those red flag warnings. that s the worst possible fire conditions. they re racing ahead of that. so there have been more evacuations including yesterday in the town of calistoga, the entire town evacuated. and in the meantime in areas like this in coffee park, they re recovering bodies. it s grim work. there are 17 people dead in sonoma county. that s the majority of the dead from this week of fires. and 400 people still unaccounted
he s calling this the worst series of fires in the napa valley history. new we are talking about as you mentioned the death toll now rising to 15 people. we have seen it rise from 10 to 11, to 13, now 15. we are talking about more than 2,000 homes and structures spread out among eight counties that have been devastated or destroyed. and we are talking about people now under mandatory evacuation. we are talking about shelters that are full. we are talking about schools that are closed down. we are talking about a situation where firefighters dealing with cell towers that are down that are trying to communicate and fight back this fire. it is so bad right now that fire crews are saying they are not focused on containment. not focused on trying to pare down the flames. they are focusing on rescues, focused on making sure people are safe pushing back the fire lines so they can do the work they need to do eventually to
amount of money. molly: that was a beautifully done story. the historic photos were incredible and i think the most fascinating part was not just the ingenuity that was shown there and rebuilding the community, the engineering feats involved, but i can t help but think, this is more than 100 years ago. it had such a tremendous impact on generations of families. jon: we are so fortunate and so blessed today to have the satellite imagery, we know these days when hurricanes are coming and we can prepare for them. back then, they had absolutely no warning. molly: it was a beautiful story. the part about the orphans is heartbreaking and it really speaks to how important it is to be able to see what s coming next. jon: absolutely. we re going to be doing more on that in future stories here on happening now. molly: we are in the mist of the season, so hopefully will have a peaceful hurricane season. regions out west, fast-moving wildfires, we are live on those fire lines as crews