Name: What we know about the wildfires in California
Uploaded: 2025-01-13T06:56:51.000Z
Duration: 10 min 14 s
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Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining us here on CBS News 24-7.

I'm Lyndsey Rizer, and we are tracking extremely dangerous and now deadly conditions in Southern

California where multiple wildfires continue to burn out of control.

Four major fires are raging with little or no containment in the Los Angeles area.

And the fires have been named the Palisades Fire, which is west of LA, the Eaton Fire northeast of the city, and the Hearst and Woodland Fires in the northern outskirts.

I want to show you a time lapse now of the Palisades Fire.

So this has destroyed dozens of homes and businesses.

It's also forced tens of thousands to evacuate.

And state fire officials say at least two people have died in the Eaton Fire, the exact cause of death is unknown at this time.

They also say a high number of the people injured by the fires were those who did not evacuate.

More than 1,000 structures are destroyed.

Please prioritize your safety as well as the well-being of those around you.

As we come together to continue to get through this widespread disaster, Los Angeles County firefighters will remain on the front line until we reach full containment.

So I want to give you some context of where this is happening in the LA area.

Here's a map showing the fire's location in relation to cities and some of the area's biggest attractions.

So the famous Hollywood sign, as well as the Getty Museum, are located between the Woodley and Palisades fires.

In fact, the museum posted on Instagram, quote, some trees and vegetation on site have burned, but no structures are on fire.

The Santa Monica Pier is just south of where the Palisades Fire is burning.

And many of you may have been in the area for Disneyland.

That's located a bit further away in the city of Anaheim.

Let's go ahead and bring in Ryan Hill for more on this.

He is the general manager of Portavia Restaurants, which has four locations in Southern California, including Pacific Palisades.

And he joins us now from the restaurant in Beverly Hills.

Ryan, first and foremost, thank you for being here on such a solemn day for you and your family.

How are you and your loved ones holding up through all this?

Unfortunately, a lot of our friends and neighbors in Palisades are not doing so well.

And obviously, our thoughts and prayers are going out to all those families, to our first responders out there, fire station number 69 that we're very close with.

A lot of great people are having a really rough morning this morning.

Yeah, we understand you've had to evacuate your restaurant in Pacific Palisades, the one that I mentioned.

Do you have any idea the condition of that current building right now or how your employees are doing?

As far as I know, all of our employees are fine.

We evacuated yesterday in time, and everybody was able to get out of the neighborhood.

We don't have a confirmed condition of our building, but we are told that it's still there.

Unfortunately, I think most of the Palisades is not.

So I don't have anything confirmed, but it's not a good situation.

It must be so unnerving to not know exactly what you're going to be going back to.

I can only imagine what you're feeling right now.

Have any of your other locations been impacted yet?

Today, we decided to close our Calabasas location as well, out of discaution for our employees and their families and people that might be coming out, it was in best interest to close there as well.

Our location in Beverly Hills is open still, but I think everybody in Los Angeles is going to be impacted today, unfortunately.

I want to ask you, this is obviously an area, Southern California, prone to wildfires, but

It feels just so catastrophic, and that isn't to downplay the damage that we've seen in wildfires past, but what sort of preparations do you have in place in case of an emergency like this?

And can you put this in context of other moments in time where there have been wildfire warnings?

I think the main difference this time is that it's just, the winds are so incredibly strong and there seems like there's nothing that the brave firefighters can do because it's just so big, so fast.

Yesterday morning, I got to work about 9.30 and everything was fine, but by 10.30, we could see smoke.

By 11.30, it was increasingly obvious that there was a big, big problem.

And by 1 o'clock, we'd left the area and just watching the acreage burning from 700 acres to now 1,000 acres to 5,000 acres.

And unfortunately, the winds are still strong, and I don't know what you can do to prepare for something like this, unfortunately.

When you ended up leaving, was that because you saw the writing on the wall and you took those actions and steps on your own accord, or did you get some kind of alert from emergency services saying, get out?

We definitely got an alert from emergency services.

We were trying to keep our doors open as long as we could to be a safe place and service our community.

We went through this a few years ago, maybe about five years ago, six years ago, where the neighborhoods were evacuated and we were able to stay open and be of service to our neighbors.

But this time, it just, it seemed different and we all were getting alerts and we wanted to make sure that our employees that were there at work were able to get out and we were able to do so safely.

Ryan, I am so sorry that we are talking to you under these circumstances.

The images are devastating, even more so for you.

You are the one living it with your friends and families and colleagues.

Please take care and please keep us posted.

CBS News correspondent Elyse Preston is in Malibu, California, which is in Los Angeles

You were literally holding onto a pole because the winds were so strong.

I still see them whipping your hair around.

We moved from that location that we were at about an hour ago because we were trying to show you a different vantage point and it just got to the point that we were not able to stay there.

So these winds have not only caused such a huge threat to loss of life and loss of buildings, like that gentleman kind of expressed earlier, but they've also knocked out cell towers.

So there's been very limited service out this way.

But we're along the Pacific Coast Highway.

And just down this stretch, you're going to see this devastation on both sides.

Businesses, homes just burned to the ground.

You mentioned more than a thousand structures.

It sounds unbelievable when you hear that number.

But when you drive down that street and you see just a glimpse of what this community is going through, it is truly catastrophic and it is heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking to hear from the gentleman that you were just speaking to.

These winds have carried these flames in ways that people have not seen.

We've spoken to so many residents who have lived here in this neighborhood for decades.

We've spoken to so many residents who've lived in California their entire lives.

And they said that they've never seen anything like it.

And that is what is causing so much trouble right now for now these four fires here in

We were walking back to the truck and where we were on one side, there was a building with a few embers and within a second, a wind gust picked up and those embers just kind of exploded into these huge, massive flames.

And it's like, OK, we got to get across the street.

It is just so dangerous what firefighters are working with.

And just so everyone is aware as well, we know that the president is on his way to a fire station in the Santa Monica area where he is expected to get briefed by emergency officials and we will bring you that live.