people driving away from home as smoke and flames engulf nearly everything. listen to evacuees tell what they managed to escape with. everything else can be replaced, but my babies can t be replaced. they just can t. it s my mom s mom s and and these were real important to her, my sister s wedding dress in the back. i have oklahoma s governor on the phone right now. mary fallon who just finished touring some of the hardest-hit areas. what s the toughest challenge that you re incurring right now? well, the toughest challenge, rob, right now is that it s still very, very hot outside. your state was up to 115 in some areas of the state. we, of course, are in the middle of a big drought in our state. we need rain and cool temperatures desperately, but we have all of the resources out working very, very hard. we re coordinating fire command centers, but i don t have a total estimate on the number of acres left, but from what i can best guess we re probably about 60,000 acr
eve bash in the world on this american morning. captions by vitac www.vitac.com good morning, everyone. so glad you could join us. it is friday, december 30th. i m deb feyerick along with alina cho on this american morning. thanks for joining us, everybody. up first this morning, mitt romney trying to steal the deal in iowa. former massachusetts governor is the front-runner now, a few points ahead of ron paul. with four days to go before the caucuses, romney is tweaking his schedule, planning to spend a lot more time in iowa over the next 96 hours telling voters this election is about saving the soul of america and he is the man for the job. cnn political editor paul steinhauser live in des moines, iowa this morning. good morning to you. so romney is enlisting high-profile help on the trail today. isn t he? sure is. thinking here and across the country, iowa, chris christie. a lot of people wanted christie himself to run for the white house. in october he finall
could it still fall apart? we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room . it s been a day of dramatic changes in washington s debt crisis. within the past few hours capitol hill s angry partisanship gave way to serious negotiations, and then to predictions of an agreement within the very near future, one top republican, the senator minority leader mitch mcconnell declared and i m quoting, he s confident and optimistic. moments ago harry reid seemed to throw some cold water on the new found optimism. rets go to capitol hill. our congressal correspondent kate bolduan is following this. what do we know? reporter: it s changing minute by minute. we did see what could be a significant step in the negotiations just a short time ago when the top republican in the senate, he said, who is a key negotiator in whatever the end game s-he said that those stalled debt talks that were happening that have been sta