this year. tammy leitner has more. what do visitors need to know? reporter: the entire stretch of the parade route, two and a half miles, will be closed. there will be heavy security. 3,000 new york police officers. many are specially trained to deal with terrorist situations. 3.5 million people will show up tomorrow. this is the big reveal. to see balloons like this one. this is a new one. charlie brown. there are about 50 balloons out there. they could take an hour to inflate. there are 150 volunteers here. they actually trained four times a year on how to inflate the balloons. they will be driving the cars that the balloons are attached to tomorrow. they are not expecting high winds, right? remember when they were trying to hold on and they were afraid they would get away? yes, yes. well, they will actually be there making sure the winds don t get much.
of stuff. it doesn t get easier. losing your home, especially on christmas, my god, you can only think about what those people are going through right now. cnn producer joel labi, thank you. let s go back to derek van dam, give us context on what s happening in that part of the world. the temperatures and winds don t help. joel said it, we re right smack dab in the middle fl fire season in south australia. there was some relief that moved through. there have been reports of roughly between 10 and 20 millimeters of rainfall, thanks to this cold front you see on our satellite loop that moved through the melbourne region and just to the south and west. that s where the current ongoing wildfire is taking place. just because cold front moved through, doesn t mean
county. those who are just joined us, this is interstate 15 which is the main artery that goes from southern california into nevada on in to las vegas. and right now i-15 is shut down in both directions because of a brush fire that caught cars on fire. we are talking several vehicles. at last check at least a dozen vehicles were on fire as well as two tractor trailers. one of them was a car carrier. you can see directly behind those tractor trailers is a fedex truck and they are hoping the winds don t shift to catch that on fire. if you went forward a little bit, there is another set of cars on fire, including or not including but there is a tank truck that appears to have several types of gas tanks or propane tanks. firefighters are now trying to wet down the cars next to those that are burning to keep them from lighting fires what happened here is the brush fire broke out about two hours ago and in just those two hours it has gone from a few hundred acres to 500 acres and now
traffic. collin, as you look at what you are seeing right now going south around the northbound side of interstate 15, is there do you have any guess that they are trying to pull these cars out of there? do you see tow trucks? do you see ambulances? what are you seeing from your vantage point? what i initially saw is shutting down the freeway. i don t see any support vehicles headed southbound. what i did see was actually a shift in resources as the rangers and cal fire actually headed northbound to try to attack the fire that was rapidly headed north. i m assuming that they are trying to get ahead of the fire to head toward the residential area. this is a rural area with ranch style houses. and it hasn t burned in quite some time. and so there is a lot of vegetation that can be used, that can be burned here. yeah, and stand by if you would, collin, but you can he see on the left-hand side it s burning very fast. we re now told that five homes confirmed have now burned down.
didn t know i was going to be trying to save my own home. reporter: the big challenge with this blaze is that it is burning in terrain that is very steep and inaccessible. that s why the helicopters are so key. of course, weather can always be a problem but right now, winds don t seem to be an issue. dan simon on the scene for us, thank you. speaking of weather, our meteorologist and severe weather expert chad myers is here in the situation room with us today. chad, this weather situation looks like it s going to get worse before it gets better? they have 36 hours to put this out, and then they get 35 mile per hour winds and it s going to get ugly. if they don t get every spark out, it gets very ugly and dan touched on this for a second, how dry it s been in california. san francisco should have 20 inches of rain by now. they have four. 15.12 inches below normal. it is just nasty out there. the wind is going to blow tomorrow night. we re talking about 6:00 p.m. tomorrow night