hi everyone and thanks for joining us here on CBS News 247 I'm Lindsay Riser 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 they are being fueled by high winds they are having this gigantic wind storm and the fires have been named the Palisades fire which is west of LA the eaten fire Northeast of the city and the Hurst and Woodland fires in the northern outskirts I want to
show you a time lapse now of the Palisades fir 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 eaten fire the exact cause of deaths unknown at this time they also say a high number of the people injured by the fires were those who did not evacuate now more than a thousand structures are destroyed that number is expected to go up please prioritize your safety as well as the well-being of those around you as we
come together uh 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 attraction so the famous Hollywood sign as well as the Getty museum are located between the Woodley and Palisades fires in fact the museum post on Instagram quote some trees and vegetation on site of burned but no structures are
on fire they remain closed the Santa Monica Pier is just south of where the Palisades fire is burning and many of you may have been 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 port via restaurants which has four locations in Southern California including Pacific Palisades and he joins us now from the restaurant uh 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 uh thank you I appreciate you having me on um my family is fine we're all we're all doing well unfortunately um a lot of our friends and neighbors is in Palisades are not doing so well and um 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 um a lot of great people are having a really rough M morning this morning so yeah we understand
you've had to evacuate your restaurant in Pacific Palisades the one that I mentioned do you have any idea um the condition of that current building right now or how your employees are doing um as far as I know all of our employees are fine uh we evacuated yesterday in time and everybody was able to get out of the neighborhood um but today you know nothing is confirmed um we don't have confirmed condition of our building but we are told that it's still there unfortunately think most of the Palisades is not so um I don't have
anything confirmed but it's not a good situation today 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 location's been impacted yet um yes today we decided to close our Calabasas location as well um out of just caution for our employees and their families and you know people that might be coming out uh is in best interest to close there as well our location in Beverly Hills is open still um but I think everybody in Los
Angeles is going to be impacted today unfortunately I want to ask you um this is obviously an area Southern California prone to wildfires but I mean this is this feels different it feels unlike what we've seen 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 um I think the main difference this time is
that it just the winds are so incredibly strong and there seemed like there's nothing that you know the the brave firefighters can do because it's just so big so fast um 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 you know increasingly obvious that there was a big big problem and by 1:00 we left the area and you know just watching the the acreage burning from 700 acres to now th000 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 um you saw the writing on the wall and you took took those actions and steps on your own accord or did you get some kind of alert from Emergency Services saying get out um we definitely got an alert from emergency services that was kind of the last draw we were trying to keep our doors open as long as we could to be a safe place and service our community uh we went through this a
few years ago maybe about 5 years ago six years ago where the neighborhoods were evacuated and we were able to stay open be of service to our neighbors but um 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 uh were able to get out and we were able to do so safely Ryan um I am so sorry that we are talking to 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 um please take care and please keep us posted thank you very much thank you CBS News correspondent Alise Preston is in Malibu California which is in Los Angeles County Alise I saw you last hour you were literally holding on to a poll because the winds were so strong I still see them whipping your hair around what are the conditions right now yeah yeah it is still pretty windy uh Lindsay 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 the these winds have uh not only caused such a huge threat to loss of life and and loss of of buildings like uh that gentleman uh kind of expressed earlier but it they've also knocked out uh cell towers so there's been very limited service out this way uh but we're along the Pacific Coast Highway and just uh down this stretch you're going to see uh this Devastation on both sides uh businesses homes just burned to
the ground 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 uh to hear from the gentleman that you were just speaking to these winds have carried these Flames uh in ways that people have not seen uh we've spoken to so many residents who have lived here in this neighborhood uh 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 us so much trouble right now for now these four fires here in Southern California we were walking back to the truck and uh 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 uh these huge mass of flames and it's like okay 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 so at least if I have to interrupt you please forgive me for that this is a live look at that room that we are monitoring but at leise you had mentioned my conversation with Ryan I'm wondering what stories you're hearing from people who are evacuating and from people who either are learning uh what happened
to their properties or are still in that agonizing weight there's so many uh stories Lindsay right down on this street this is the Pacific Coast Highway if you go down further to where we were about an hour ago there's there are dozens of cars that are just kind of parked there people uh were forced to flee or they couldn't make it somewhere so uh they're just kind of parked on the side of the road road we saw people crying in their cars we saw people praying in their cars people are just so concerned and even
if their homes are safe uh for now they're concerned about their neighbors we spoke to a man who said that uh you know his his uh home was safe he was not being asked to evacuate in the moment but he's lived through wildfires this is his community where he's lived for 15 years so he was staying put opening up his home to people if they needed shelter and are so many stories there are countless stories of people either uh giving back trying to help people or people who are just kind of uh in this limbo
waiting to see what is going to happen with their home people have lost uh everything and again it's for fires that are now raging in Southern California the winds are not expected to die down we're you're not seeing that crazy wind uh like you did an hour ago not because they've died down just because we've moved positions but these winds are moving quickly and they're moving these flames right along with them and so who knows where we could be uh hours from now okay Elise Preston thank you so much uh we hope you and your
crew continue to stay safe thank you for reading that to us
