California Firefighters Battle Blaze in Ventura County; High Energy Costs May Impact Holiday Sales
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: From the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta, I'm Kyra Phillips. Here is what we are following for you right now, wildfires burning out of control, threatening homes. We're tracking them and the 1,000 firefighters working it. Terrorists on tape -- new claims about who orchestrated the hotel bombings in Jordan. And papal picture -- the life of Pope John Paul II gets a Hollywood treatment and a holy blessing -- all that and more straight ahead. House to house with time to spare -- firefighters in Southern California are telling people living atop a Ventura County hillside that, now, it's time to get out. And a raging wildfire advances towards their homes. High winds are refueling those flames -- or fueling those flames, rather, making the job especially difficult for the 1,000 firefighters who are on the scene. We're monitoring the live pictures now, as our meteorologist, Chad Myers, is keeping an eye on conditions in Ventura County, standing by at CNN Weather Center -- Chad.</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Kyra, winds are actually picking up now, 35-mile-per-hour gusts in Camarillo. And we will take you here. Here's Long Beach. Here's Los Angeles, Glendale, up through Grapevine. Here's Oxnard up here. And we will get you a little bit closer to this fire. The fire area is still up here. But here are the winds now. Those are sustained winds. There you go, Camarillo -- Camarillo, if you will -- 29 miles per hour sustained, even down to the Point Mugu at 18 miles per hour. The fire up here, just to the north of Ventura. We know where it is, because, in fact, we can even see it on the radar. We can see that some of the areas now east of the canyon road here, and as far south now, almost as Hall Canyon (ph) Road, seeing some of those flames very close to the town, and some of the -- obviously, the cities there of Ventura and the homes very close, everywhere that you actually see the radar. I took it off, so you can see the road -- the road there, and also even Ventura Freeway. And the areas here that you're seeing, why are we seeing it on radar? Actually, we're seeing it there because it doesn't even know -- the radar doesn't know that it's not raindrops in the air. It just thinks that it is. But when it goes out and it hits the smoke, it's bouncing back. And that's what we're seeing here, seeing the smoke just coming off here. That's not all that far from Ventura High School. And then you get up into the Canyon Road. And we're even seeing some of the smoke up here to the north of Hall Canyon (ph) Road and such -- so, kind of interesting day out there. Folks are now being evacuated in some spots. And, so, Kyra, we have been looking at these -- these pictures all day, Kyra. And some of them are getting very close to some of these very big homes.</s>PHILLIPS: Well, as you can imagine -- our Ted Rowlands actually right there, Chad. Stay with us, Chad. Ted, are you joining us once again by cell phone? Are you still right -- he is live now. Ted, you got a live -- oh, great.</s>TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, good.</s>PHILLIPS: You got a live signal. We could barely hear you via your cell phone because of the winds picking up. Tell us where you are and what you're observing at this point.</s>ROWLANDS: Well, I'm in the same spot in Ventura, California. The winds have died down, for the most part, in the last half- hour, 45 minutes, or so. But, boy, about an hour ago, they really did kick up. And they forced evacuations of this neighborhood. And you can see these homes, how close they are to where this ridgeline, if you can see behind there. It's a little difficult to see. But the fire came all the way up these ridgelines, into the backyards of a couple of these homes. All of these people had to be evacuated. Most of them were on standby. This fire started about 3:30 this morning. So, most of them had a number of hours to gather their personal items. We talked to one woman who had her dogs ready to go and her pictures and what she thought she should take in this limited time that she had. And then the fire officials came up to her said, go. And she is gone hoping that her home can be saved. Fire -- fire trucks are in position at each one of these homes in this neighborhood to protect against flames coming up. And they have been successful thus far. No homes have been lost. There are some people. You see across the street a guy sitting on his roof here. He's got his garden hose out. He's one street away. So, he's not been evacuated. But he's been out here all day, basically watering down his house just in case by some chance the fire could leap over the street, if it indeed comes here. But, right now, firefighters are active. They're getting a lot of air support. The air drops are coming as needed. And the air drops are very precisioned. If they see a house that is in trouble, they come after it, and they will dump water to protect the house. And that's really their mission right now, is to try to protect these homes and make sure that nobody gets hurt and none of these homes are lost.</s>PHILLIPS: Now, Ted, the guy that is right...</s>ROWLANDS: Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: The guy that's behind you there watering down his roof, how close is he, are you, is that house to where the flames are right now? Can you actually see the flames from where you are?</s>ROWLANDS: Well, if you tilt -- I don't know if you could see the smoke coming up over these houses here. The flames are just sort of on the other side of the ridge now. But, about an hour ago, the flames came shooting through this valley. And we were literally feet away. I mean, if we were just right over by this fire truck, the flames were coming right up into that area. So, this guy, at that point...</s>PHILLIPS: Yes. I actually remember seeing that fire truck. I remember seeing the shot, and the flames were right by that fire truck.</s>ROWLANDS: Yes. So, this guy, right now, he looks as though he's maybe a little bit -- playing it a little too safe, watering his roof. But, about an hour ago, it looked like he was doing a good job, because he indeed was very close. And this is the problem. This -- this fire keeps coming up in certain spots and then going down again, because the wind has been very erratic this morning around this region. And the fire is very spread out. So, they're doing a good job, firefighters are, finding the potential threats of these homes, hitting them, and then moving on. And, right now, the area where we're in, the fire -- the wind is down. Now that I say it, it's kicking up a bit. And these homes seem to be out of danger, at least for now, but these folks are still evacuating.</s>PHILLIPS: So, where you are, is that the only patch of homes that could be affected, Ted? Or is this blaze -- because Chad was saying something -- I don't know if we can get Chad back up -- about there was a certain area where the homes were and, so far, it looked OK. Chad, you know what I'm...</s>MYERS: I do.</s>PHILLIPS: Remember what you were saying?</s>MYERS: Yes.</s>PHILLIPS: Yes. Is that where Ted is? Is that the only batch of homes that -- that are in that area?</s>MYERS: No, not really.</s>MYERS: Now that the storm, the fire itself, is now to the east of the Ojai Freeway, we have now moved it over here. The winds are blowing offshore. This is actually the smoke being picked up by radar. There's the Ojai Freeway. And now it's blowing in this direction, but the fire has actually built back a little bit. And now also there's another little area there of smoke and fire to the north of the city itself. And the winds are blowing it towards the southwest. So, it's still not in the clear, by any stretch of the imagination. And now sparks are flying farther off toward the southwest. There are many hot spots with this fire, Kyra. I have been looking at probably, I would say, maybe 15 or 20 different separate areas where now these sparks have engaged, obviously, this very, very tinder-dry area. The relative humidity is down to 10 percent here today, the winds almost 30 miles per hour. Remember how wet of a season they had in their wet season?</s>PHILLIPS: Yes.</s>MYERS: A lot of things got a good chance to grow and that when they are growing now, they're drying out. And there's a lot of fuel there on the ground.</s>PHILLIPS: Well, Ted, do you know -- have firefighters or officials been able to tell you -- do they know how this fire got started yet? I know, when we talked last hour, we still didn't know.</s>ROWLANDS: No, they have not released a cause of the fire. Obviously, they have most likely started that investigation and will begin it in earnest once they get this thing out. Most of the resources, as you can imagine, at this point, is making sure they protect these structures. So, we have not heard what caused this fire. It was odd that it started at 3:30 in the morning. Fires typically don't start overnight, if there's not a lightning strike. But we have nothing, no -- no evidence as to what may have started the fire.</s>PHILLIPS: Now, Ted, we -- we look at these pictures. We look at how big this blaze looks to us. And I'm not sure what the acreage is. And then we hear there are 1,000 firefighters working this wildfire. Is that enough?</s>ROWLANDS: Oh, I think, clearly, they have it under control, in terms of their resources. And, if they need more, they will bring them in, for sure. They -- they do this for a living, and they do it well. And they have already gotten aid from not only this -- Ventura here, but this entire region. And because it started at 3:30 this morning, they were on it right away. And I think the intensity of it from the very beginning gave them cause for concern, and they have -- they have a lot of folks out here. In fact, when you talk about fire engines, they have got fire engines from the CDF at each one of these houses that are in trouble. And this -- this house right here, where this fire engine is behind me, at one point, I was standing up there. And the flames came all the way up, right next to the house. And the firefighters had hoses and they were just beating back those flames. And then a plane came in, and they -- and it put out that little portion of the fire to save this home. And they're doing that at all of these homes. So, I think they're well-staffed, at least in this region, in this little area, this pocket, where we are -- where we're standing.</s>PHILLIPS: Ted Rowlands, right there in Ventura County -- thanks so much, Ted. And, also, Chad Myers, monitoring the conditions for us. Guys, thanks so much.</s>ROWLANDS: Sure.</s>PHILLIPS: We will definitely stay on top of that story. Now, you remember, we have talked so much in the past couple weeks about those three explosions in Amman, Jordan, and a number of people there protesting outside those hotels where the explosions took place, demanding for the head of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man they believe is responsible for those attacks. Well, now there's an audiotape said to be from this man. Is it an apology, of sorts? We are going to take that question -- talk about that question, rather -- when CNN LIVE FROM continues.