• 2 months ago

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00:00Three major wildfires in Southern California's mountains east of Los
00:04Angeles have torched dozens of homes and forced thousands of people to
00:07evacuate there. At least a dozen people, mainly firefighters, treated for injuries
00:12that were mostly heat-related. The wildfires continuing to endanger tens of
00:16thousands of homes as they sprung up during a triple-digit heatwave over the
00:21weekend. Well let's hear from our correspondent Waseem Kornay in Los
00:25Angeles. This is a situation that is rarely seen here in Southern California.
00:32Three major fires burning close to Los Angeles. That has led the governor of
00:37this state, Gavin Newsom, to declare a state of emergency in four counties to
00:41facilitate the deployment of emergency personnel in the response to these fires.
00:466,000 emergency personnel are currently deployed. That includes 500 fire engines
00:51and dozens of aircraft. Let's start with the good news. The so-called line fire,
00:56which is burning east of Los Angeles, is now 18% contained and whenever we see
01:00numbers between over 10 or 15%, that means that firefighters are gaining the
01:05upper hand and will be able to extinguish the fire unless we see a
01:08major deterioration in weather conditions. And that is the other bit of
01:12good news is that these three fires really erupted at the tail end of a
01:17severe week-long heatwave here in Southern California. Temperatures are now
01:20currently dropping dramatically and they're forecast to stay below average
01:24over the next couple of weeks and that should really of course help
01:27firefighters in their efforts. But unfortunately there is a lot of bad news.
01:31We've already seen 445 square kilometers of vegetation go up in flames. We've
01:37already seen dozens of people, dozens of homes lost, dozen people injured and
01:42there are still at this hour tens of thousands of people that are currently
01:46under an evacuation order. Unfortunately the winds that have really led these
01:51three fires to explode over these past few days will continue gusting at least
01:56over the next 24 hours.

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