Middle Class Worse Off after Recession
BANFIELD: We're keeping an eye on two different weather extremes that are unfolding now. Explosive - there's really no other way to explain this other than explosive wildfires out west. And the rain, where it needs to be, isn't. It's over there on the Southeast Coast. The big concern is the fast-moving wildfire. It's called the High Park fire. It's raging in Northern Colorado, just 15 miles west of Fort Collins. So far, bad news to report here. One person has already been reportedly killed. It has burned 43,000 acres. Think about that for a minute, 43,000 acres. It's destroyed more than 100 buildings, all of this in a few days. Five hundred firefighters are now on the ground trying to get this monster under control. Chad Myers monitoring all of this. You would have to work 48 hours straight to really get the story of this fire, but 48 hours, Chad, that's not a lot of time to get to the size it is now.</s>CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Right. Forty-eight hours ago to 24 hours ago, the fire doubled in size. It went from 18,000 all the way up to 36,000 acres. That was one night, a 24-hour period, 18,000 acres. Last night, the 24-hour period starting from now over to about this point in time, it was only 7,000 acres worth of growth. So it's slowed in growth, but that's only because the wind died off a bit. It is still growing. It is relatively not contained. They're saying some containment, which means they have probably put out some of the fires around some of the buildings. That's it. The fires in the forest, not contained at all. Making fire breaks right now. But look at those pictures. They are stunning. Me and Colorado go way back because I lived in Nebraska for so long. There are beetles in these mountains in Colorado and Utah and New Mexico that are literally killing the forests and these dead trees are fuel to the fire. It hasn't rained for a long time there and, when you get winds to blow like we had over the weekend at 40 or 50 miles per hour, there simply was nothing the firefighters could do. It's called a Type One fire, which means Larimer County - and I talked to Larimer County, Colorado, yesterday, last night around 8:00 - they said that they asked for federal assistance. It's almost like a flood area asking for FEMA. When ask you for federal assistance, you get federal firefighters, you get federal planes, you get some money. You also get men and women on the ground that really know what they're doing, fighting these fires. They are specialized fire jumpers and that's what you get. Forty-three-thousand acres, as you said, divide that by 640, that's about 70 square miles. The wind shifted yesterday. That was some good news, but take a look at this. This is what the fire looks like. This is the fire line from Fort Collins right here, Denver way down below here. Look at how ragged it is. Think about how many miles it must be to try to fight all of that fire, all the way up and down all these relatively rugged mountains here. So you have fires in the valleys, you have fires going downhill, you have fires going uphill and then you have wind blowing the fires back on the firefighters. What a dangerous situation. Not as bad today as it was yesterday, not as bad yesterday as it was over the weekend, so we're getting better, but I don't see any rain in the forecast. In fact, this lightning that caused this fire could actually maybe have a partner later on in the week as more dry lightning occurs with more thunderstorms possible. What that means is that there's so much lightning coming down that it can't rain enough to put those fires out and so it's called dry lightning. It could cause more fires.</s>BANFIELD: Yet, Chad, all of that rain is deluging the Southeast.</s>MYERS: That's right.</s>BANFIELD: They're really suffering.</s>MYERS: That's a secondary story, isn't it? We talked about this yesterday. Get rid of this. There we go. All the way down to New Orleans, it was ...</s>BANFIELD: What a mess.</s>MYERS: ... across parts of Florida over the weekend, they had 20 inches of rain. Now, it hasn't rained there in 48 hours, so that flooding is essentially gone. Damage is still there, but the flooding, the waters are gone. It's the water, it's the rain, it's the heavy wind. Three hundred wind reports of damage yesterday from Arkansas through Missouri and Louisiana and now that damage is heading down into Louisiana, Baton Rouge, all the way down to about Sulfur, maybe even towards Beaumont, Texas. We'll have to see.</s>BANFIELD: All right. Chad, keep an eye on things. Obviously, that fire story seems to change by the hour. If there's a change in that, make sure you bring it to us, if you would. Thank you, Chad Myers. OK, so, if you feel like you're a bit poorer than you used to be, you are, more than likely. This is just one of those unfortunate stories. Federal Reserve saying the average American's net worth has fallen sharply since the 1990s. Ready for this? Alison Kosik reporting from New York. We are way behind where we should be. So if we feel that it's true, tell me what the actual numbers are, Alison.</s>ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. This is what is interesting. We feel it, right? But these are the numbers that are so stunning that the typical American family, Ashleigh, lost almost 40 percent of its wealth between 2007 and 2010. This was during the recession, so that means a family's median net worth, meaning what the family owns minus the debt, in 2007, was somewhere around $126,000. Guess what? By 2010, it fell to $77,000, back to a level we have not seen since the 1990s. So guess what? The recession managed to wipe out almost decades of savings and investments for families. And this is because we've watched home values tumble, massive layoffs took away our income and this affected everybody from the young to the old, whether you were educated or weren't educated. But here's a little bit of good news. It is getting a little better. Americans net worth has recovered a bit since 2010 because people are finding work again. Housing prices, housing values are bouncing back just a little bit. But any way you look at it, Ashleigh, a typical American family is poorer than before the recession. Ashleigh?</s>BANFIELD: So, Alison, most of this having to do with houses, which makes me wonder, those people in the southeast and Nevada, California, where they got hit hardest, some people are doing well in housing, but how bad is the lag for those who suffered worst?</s>KOSIK: And income factors into this a great deal, not just housing. This fed survey shows the decline was biggest among the highly educated families in the south and the west regions of the country. What causes income to go down? Unemployment does. The jobless rate was 5 percent at end of 2007. It was 9.4 percent at the end of 2010. Today, it's at 8.2 percent. The fed also saying incomes fell for families who run farms or small businesses or who are self employed. This is a result of the economic downturn we are still recovering from -- Ashleigh.</s>BANFIELD: One of these days, you and I will be on the air together laughing and enjoying the good times, won't we?</s>KOSIK: One day.</s>BANFIELD: I'm tired of this.