California Wildfires; Pakistan Train Fire; ISIS Names New Leader
ALLEN: Take a look at this fire truck in Southern California driving straight into a wall of flames. This is the Maria Fire that broke out just a few hours ago. It's already burned through 16 square kilometers and it spreading rapidly. Hundreds of firefighters and other crew are on the scene trying to find the best spot to try to beat back the flames. There are now at least 14 active fires burning across the state, stoked by strong winds. Some who abandon their homes are coming back to find they have lost everything. Still, there could be some good news on the horizon. Nick Watt explains.</s>NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sixty miles an hour gusts, homes burning in the predawn dark, the hillside fire broke out in the early hours.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Everything is getting engulfed in flames.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Sunrise.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This right here would have been the bedroom.</s>WATT (voice-over): And the Valdivia family returned to nothing -- well, nothing. He is speaking with my colleague, Omar Jimenez (ph).</s>MATTHEW VALDIVIA, LOST HOME TO WILDFIRE: I had my kids' baby pictures and a laptop and destroyed, destroyed. My heart broke, man. I mean, we had good memories in this house.</s>WATT (voice-over): All week, we have seen dangerously strong winds flipping tractor-trailers on the freeway, fanning flames, spreading embers across the state.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): The embers are blowing into neighborhoods out here.</s>WATT (voice-over): East of L.A., residents evacuated from a senior center through the smoke. In west L.A., the Getty Center and many multi-million dollar homes were threatened, some of them badly burned. North of the city, hurricane-force winds whipping flames, forcing 30,000 to evacuate, a close call for the Reagan Library, resting place for the former president and first lady. And in Northern California, hundreds of structures destroyed, nearly 80,000 acres burned. This is California's new normal. (</s>On camera): Nearly half of this state's population has been under a red flag, high wind warning for at least part of this week. Most of those warnings will be lifted on Friday as the winds subside, still some in place around Los Angeles, so the fire danger is deemed to be increased but no longer extreme. Nick Watt, CNN, San Bernardino.</s>ALLEN: Derek Van Dam is here with us now. Derek, I got to tell you, it is just one after another and now there is yet another one, Maria.</s>DEREK VAN DAM, CNN WEATHER ANCHOR: Yeah, the Maria Fire that started in Ventura County is not looking good. It has expanded rapidly. In fact, last hour, we were reporting 300 hectares burned from this. And then just now, we've got an update of over 1,600 hectares being burned, 7,500 residents have been evacuated from their homes from 1,800 separate structures. I'm going to take you there because you've got to see this video. It is quite incredible, the time lapse of the Maria Fire actually burning out of control this evening. Keep in mind it is late Thursday night on the West Coast of the United States. This is in Southern California, and you can just see how dramatic and how quickly this fire is being fuelled by the strong Santa Ana winds. So let's, get to the specifics and talk about where this fire is located, just to give you a geographical reference. Here is Los Angeles County. Here is Ventura County. This is the area where Maria Fire is located. It has got zero percent containment, so the firefighters are having trouble getting in advance and ahead of this particular fire. There is the latest hectare being burnt. We have had over 7,000 people evacuated already. We have three helicopters, three air personnel aircraft, and over 250 firefighters from the air to the ground fighting this fire as it continues to rapidly expand. So, why are these fires expanding so quickly in Southern California? Well, it is all because of the dangerous recipe of strong winds, low relative humidity values, and extremely dry vegetation. You can see in the background of this picture. These are trees and in the foreground are the embers being blown by the Santa Ana winds. Some of these embers have been known to travel one to two kilometers in advance of the original fire that the firefighters are trying to battle. So, it's quite incredible to think what this can actually do in terms of spreading and moving forward. We got live visuals coming out of, I believe, the Maria Fire. This is in Ventura County and hopefully we will be able to bring those to you because what we are witnessing on the ground is some of the brave men and women that are trying to battle these places because it has been extremely critical for the southern portion of the state over the past 24 to 36 hours. Fourteen large active wildfires are taking place across the state. If you look at accumulative 2019 stats for the wildfires, we are talking about over 80,000 hectares that have been burnt already, an incredible amount of acreage, thanks to the strong winds and the dry vegetation. The silver lining here, the winds are going to relax as we head into Friday afternoon and evening, maybe giving the firefighters the upper edge. But look at the dry relative humidity values still in place. We are talking about single digit relative humidity values. That means the air is bone dry. Would you like to see that green starting to edge into coastal areas? That means the winds will switch from offshore to more onshore as we head into the second half of the weekend. That is why we only have elevated fire risks instead of extremely critical.</s>VAN DAM: And just to end on this note, even though there is still the fire threat in place, there is no rainfall in this forecast and extended outlook, so the potential here for the fire season to extend is certainly in the cards.</s>ALLEN: Yeah. Our reporter called the new normal but we are not at the normal yet, likely.</s>VAN DAM: Budding normal.</s>ALLEN: Budding normal. All right, Derek, thank you.</s>VAN DAM: OK.</s>ALLEN: Fire ripped through part of a train in Pakistan, killing at least 73 people. A gas canister exploded in a railway car as the train was traveling. Despite gas cylinders being banned, some passengers were making breakfast on a gas-powered stove. Officials say the death toll could rise. Just days after the U.K. killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an operation in Syria, ISIS says it has a new leader. Not much is known about him except his name is Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. The U.S. raid ended a years-long hunt to find one of the world's most wanted terrorist. But ISIS warns the U.S. not to celebrate, claiming it has militants on the doorstep of Europe and in the center of Africa with more cells expanding. CNN has gained exclusive access to a prison in Syria where ISIS fighters don't know Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead or really anything that is happening in the outside world. One man, a dual American citizen, explained how he yearns to return to the U.S. to face justice. Our Nick Paton Walsh has this exclusive report.</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This wasn't the ending, they promised, even if it begins to feel eternal. ISIS foreign fighters, as long as these bars in Syria hold, no longer a threat to the outside world and no longer aware of what's happening outside in it.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't get much information about what is happening.</s>PATON WALSH (voice-over): This man says his name is Lirim Sulejmani and is a dual American citizen. He has no idea that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed just 72 hours earlier when our cameraman visits. The guards explicitly forbid visitors from breaking the news, so we can only ask what if.</s>LIRIM SULEJMANI, PRISONER: If he is killed, he's killed. For a lot of people, he's already been killed, he's already dead. We don't hear from him. I don't know. For me, personally, I feel like I was betrayed, you know, so there is no Islamic state anymore. It does not exist.</s>PATON WALSH (voice-over): He is a common story in the sea of orange. He was just an engineer who is worried about his wife and three children in camps nearby. Their fate is still uncertain. He says facing U.S. justice would be preferable to another day here.</s>SULEJMANI: I feel very unsafe. I want to go back to states. One thing for sure, I don't want to be here.</s>PATON WALSH (voice-over): Nobody here has faced a trial or been found guilty. And now, many yearn for the due process ISIS denied others in their barbaric rush for blood, leading to the nations ISIS pledged to destroy.</s>SULEJMANI: My message to American people, to Donald Trump, I mean, there are American citizens, they should not be abandoned, they should be brought to states, face the law. And if they committed any crime, they can be punished, not be left in some place like a slow death concentration camp.</s>PATON WALSH (voice-over): Emaciated, weathering, leaderless ISIS here has not suddenly stopped being a threat. Imagine the rage incubating in these cells. So great, the guards fear what may happen if they learn the news of their leader's death. Anger their home countries do not, for the most part, want to import back, but that lives on after Baghdadi's death in these cells. Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Irbil, Northern Iraq.</s>ALLEN: Vladimir Putin is now the strong man in the Middle East. Just ahead, how President Trump's foreign policy is contributing to the rise of Russian influence around the world. Also --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): The face of America's white power movement is screaming young white men, but there are a very small number of women who join.</s>ALLEN (voice-over): How women are pulled into America's white supremacist movement, and why one woman decided to leave.