emergency crews are now still in the search and rescue efforts to try to get people trapped in some of these buildings out. obviously the images of an elm tri school being hit by massive tornado are chilling. and we hope that the original reports of no serious injuries are accurate. to hear them being pulled out from underneath cars on top of the building, suggests that we could be in for a long, few hours. i want to bring back janice dean. janice, to describe to someone one of these tornadoes in its massive ability to cause damage, unless you have been through one of these things or know someone that has, it s almost tough to put words to it. it really is the folks in oklahoma city know it well. we refer to the october 3rd, 19 9 storm, that was an f-5 tornado. before we had the enhanced fujita scale, which they
use it. looks usable. so here is something that is pretty, i don t know if interesting is the right word. apparently you can cross the border from mexico into the united states, carrying drugs and not even knowing it. sound scary. do tell. a woman in san diego lives in -year-old woman. san diego, want to work, sitting in her car. all of sudden rae looking men come into her car, didn t realize she was in there. nder the carriage. gets out. scares the guy away. they take off. she gets under there. sees this. calls police. people dismantle it from the undercarriage. realize that what may be happening, unsuspecting motorists in mexico are parking cars at home or work. these, drug lords, essentially, are, putting underneath cars. expecting that the cars will cross the border undetected.
both of you. thank you, kyra. we start in texas. exhausted fire crews are battling an enemy is astonishing and relentless wildfires burning somewhere in the state for nearly ten months without any break. today is the 296th consecutive day of work for those firefighters. just in the last week, 120,000 acres have burned. more than 700 homes have burned since sunday and then near austin, a blaze has killed two more people raising the overall death toll to four. jim spelman is in bsatrop near the largest fire in the state. are crews making any progress at this hour? good morning. shift change here. the day crews are ready to head on into the fire. they took advantage yesterday of low winds and cooler temperatures to get in there and get 30% containment on that fire. i thought that was really an incredible amount of progress that they made yesterday, considering how intense this fire was, that it took out 500 homes in about 48 hours of burning time that they were able to mak
building industrial gases. natural gas, some type of gas built up inside this building. when the individuals came in to start their workday that gas found a source of eug notion and you can see we ve had a catastrophic collapse literally blowing out into the street and literally sending at least two of the three underneath cars that were just wedged between the axles. the firefighters were able to quickly get a knock down on the fire which was accomplished by the firefighters here in fire station 23, 66. over 120 firefighters on scene here. now we are inside. i am watching a bought full labrador coming up the street with its k-9 apbd hrer and it will do a search inside. these are the same dogs we used in the world trade center, katrina we have a lot of work ahead of us this morning.
i want to take you back now to the breaking news coming to us out of los angeles. look at these pictures, a building explosion occurred there this morning due to a natural gas explosion. these coming in to us from our affiliate, knbc. we understand this is a welding operation. two people, so far that we know of, were hurled from that building, thrown out and wedged underneath cars in the parking lot out there. we know that they have been taken off to the hospital. there are now search crew dogs that are going in there to search for potentially other victims, as we understand it, the splintered wreckage there makes it too difficult for the fire and rescue teams that were on the scene to extinguish the flames there. too dangerous for them to go inside. they are using trained search dogs to look for potential other victims there. again, this happened about 9:15 eastern, 6:15 pacific time. what we understand a natural gas explosion ripped the front of that building off causing it to collap