you can t get through. the regular customer service line 8:00 to noon, forget it. reporter: michael hurley has been waiting since june. no faith in the system, none at all. reporter: the e.d.d. blocked benefits saying they needed to prove they are who they say they are, like thousands of others they mailed in paper documents verifying their identity and then heard nothing back. i think i m now in another reporter: kim was told to wait eight weeks. i was upset. because how would it be eight weeks to find my identity? i sent why eight weeks? reporter: the e.d.d. required thousands of workers to verify their identities as it tries to weed out rampant fraud. but the governor s task force found scammers still got paid while honest workers were blocked from benefits. during a two-week reset, the e.d.d. will install new technology that automatically verifies an k57pplicaapplicant identity and speed up new claims even as it doesn t address the old ones. good aftern
bay area skies scribed as eerie and a apocalyptic. some saying they were even scared. the orange atmosphere has quickly turned into a dark night here in the east bay. what people are doing to both remember and cope with the unearthly sky. smoke choking our skies today. i ll let you know how much longer the air quality will suffer coming up. purifiers and filters. air quality experts with tips on how you can take safety a step further. abc 7 news starts right now. building a better bay area for a safe and secure future, this is abc 7 news. if i can imagine what the end of the world was going to look like, it would look like this. honestly, unlike anything i ve ever experienced and i ve lived in northern california for 36 years. it s so dark. it s scary to me. i ve never seen anything like this before. this is strange. it s weird. it s. a dlie like no other in the bay area. our entire region bathed in an eerie glow of orange and red. a look at why it happens
lifetime snaps of san francisco s skyline cloaked in a cloud of orange. it s really sad that it s the condition the way it is, but it makes for some really dramatic pictures for sure. reporter: both automobile photographers trevor joelen and daniel turned their back to the road and pointed up. even with the fog, it s usually just gray and neutral colors, but today it s a lot more orange and red. reporter: in walnut creek, cars were covered in arab and in oakland the zoo closed because of poor air quality. the solar panels on a abc 7 photographer s home in pinole generated a fraction of electricity when the sun s rays actually reach the earth. out here in the bay exercising, fishing, doing whatever they can to find some slice of normalcy. i was pretty disoriented, honestly. i missed an appointment. i almost never do that. reporter: jason johnson says the weather reminds him of growing up in the midwest. a storm would blow in around the time of a tornado or someth
there to the community of fr winou to vacaville, in the area along the roader, there s a lot of heavy mop-up. a lot of structure damage and we re trying to get that area secured. cal fire says the size and complexity in this fire is not one they have seen in the past they have seen many times in the past i should say. one of the fires that make up the lnu complex fire in the north bay is the wall bridge fire. cornell bernard is live with the latest on this. cornell? reporter: hi, dan. [ inaudible ] overnight, the fire made its way down the mountain into historic armstrong woods. that s about three miles north of where we are. fire crews are on scene. they are standing by to protect ng a t way kp rowreens inside s going. reporter: the fire has made its way to the floor of the russian river valley in guerneville, creeping into the center of this historic park of old growth redwoods. but firefighters are watching the progress. if it continues to go that way, i think
piggy bank to fund the president s unemployment plan. he said it would cost the state roughly $700 million per week. here s melanie woodrow with more. reporter: for unemployed california residents, an additional $600 per week of unemployment benefits expired at the end of july. president trump signed an executive order that would give $400 a week in enhanced federal unemployment benefits through the end of december. now the governor says california won t be able to contribute the state s required 25%. stlz is no money sitting in the piggy bank of the previous c.a.r.e.s. act to be reprioritized or reconstituted for this purpose. simply does not exist. reporter: he said ste as lge as califorurn gove to fron those eporte goverr d whealifornians who need that money will get it. meantime, 3/4 of renters have fallen behind on their rent, with the majority being in the latin x community. dr. mark elly provided an update on the failure. 295,000 backlogged records were processed