thank you for that. now to the wildfires ravaging sections of california. firefighters continue to battle 12 active fires across the state. two fires alone have already spread over more than 100,000 acres. the butte fire just southeast of sacramento is now 35% contained. more than 4,600 firefighters are still battling it. meanwhile, the devastating valley fire, which has taken down entire towns in its path there is only 15% contained. all told, more than 700 homes have been lost in these fires, with thousands more threatened. now, residents forced to flee wait to see if their homes have been spared. i don t know if my home is going to be standing, yet. fires are surrounding it right now. i really want to go back up. i just don t know when we can go see everything. msnbc s jinah kim joins me live from middletown, california. and jinah, as we look at the town that was hit by the valley fire, and you heard the containment numbers, very, very
his house was spared. the fire got in the middletown area. my wife told me she was leaving. i figured mine would be gone. i m in shock. i m a fireman. i talked to my wife. she said what are we going to do. she said there is no reason to not keep working. look at that. fire crews may get help from the weather today. cnn s stephanie elam with a better look. reporter: good morning, christine and alison. we get a better look of the valley fire. you can see just how hot and scary this fire was as it raged through the community. as we were driving around, we saw the telephone polls burning. the wires in the trees or across the roads. we saw one house just starting
rainfall. the valley fire gets in on rainfall. it doesn t look like much. .25 at best. the monsoonal moisture is problematic as well. the landscape here also very mountainous and a lot of mesas. when you put down 2 to 4 inches of rainfall across this region, this flows down stream and creates problems for the homes in the neighborhoods down into a lowland escape landscape. a day after the professor was murdered in his office. police say the victim, american history professor ethan schmidt was shot in his office. the suspect, shannon lamb shot himself. he said he did not want to go to prison. lamb is also a suspect in the
let s check in. northern california under siege by a vicious wildfire. today has been so violent. 50,000 acres burned now. this is less than a day. the governor has declared a state of emergency as the so-called valley fire chews up that area about 100 miles north of san francisco. we re looking at these live pictures right now. i think we got a map too to show because this isn t the only fire that s burning in california. just to give you and idea of what the season is right now and in fact it s not the largest. lake county in the north. janice dean our meteorologist for fox news joined us a little while ago say they are seeing rain in a couple of days in that area. that will go away. then the presence of a giants el nino that will come in and sweep across the southern part of california from central to the south that will give them some longer range. north has a lot of fires burning and we re hopeful the next day
martha: a state of emergency explode in california. this is new video as one person tries to escape the fast-moving flames in their cars. hundreds of homes have been destroyed. people forced to run for safer ground. we went outside and our neighbors were in a panic. we went across and helped them. if there were important things out of their home. claudia cowan is live in middletown. one of the community ravaged by the valley fire. it looks ravaged where you are. reporter: several small community the flames overtook