received reports of people feeling the quakes as far away as east pleasant hill. or east of pleasant hill, rather. now we want to get back to the forecast. we want to check in now with abc seven meteorologist lisa argen. lisa, you have more on the quakes and also today's storm as well. >> that's right julie, and definitely some energy being released out there with those several earthquakes just east of hayward. and we're looking at they've been pretty shallow anywhere from 6 to 7km you can see. and with that, we get that damage right at the surface. so there could be some aftershocks and there have been quite a few. but we are looking at the

hayward fault here, where you can see that the earthquake happened at. so remember just good advice to drop, cover and hold when you feel something like that. we have big weather going on as well. the head uh- big area of low pressure with gusty winds, thunderstorms and all of california encompassed. and right now we've got some moderate rain up in the north bay. live doppler seven here showing you the darker shade of green now. the heavier rain, the extremely heavy rainain thae got early got early this morning in mid-morning has pushed to the south, but we are still in this with the gusty winds and the possibility of thunderstorms, there is flooding around. you can see the rain there from the peninsula over to walnut creek. 680. more scattered about and 280 down towards woodside. the santa cruz mountains have picked up over six inches of rain. and look at some local storm reports here. you can see highlighted here with lafayette looking at some flooding, roadway flooding. and this continues into the south bay. san martin looking at

a tree limb down southbound lane there. and as we get in closer, 530 the flood advisory for alameda county. and you can see still through the 4:00 hour here all across the bay. so be advised you're going to find some standing water out there and some downpours six inches over that in the santa cruz mountains, almost three in danville, two sfo, 1.85 in napa. and our level three system continues with the flooding, the downpours, possible thunderstorm and damaging surf. we had a 62 mile an hour wind gust at sfo right now. wind gusts of 40 miles an hour. oakland 47 sfo. they're going to stay elevated all night into early tomorrow. upper elevations in the east bay have been over 55 miles an hour. and as we go through the next several hours, 8:00, 30 to 35 miles an hour, and then finally into early tomorrow, we'll get a much calmer day out there the next couple of hours. notice that the rain continues. we'll see it move across to the east bay and south bay. looks like a lull. 6:00 but guess what? there

is more out there and it comes in ten, 11:00 tonight. so the heaviest rain is over with, but there's pockets of downpours and that's going to add up to a quarter of an inch in fremont, a 10th of an inch in richmond with a third of an inch in santa rosa. it's been snowing and the air mass is cold enough to keep it snowing from 2 to 3ft of snow. that will be additional in the sierra nevada. highs tomorrow for your friday with a little bit of sunshine. we're talking upper 50s for you in san jose. slightly cooler. the southwest winds have switched over to a northerly component, and we're looking at the dry weather continuing into saturday for the parade. the chinese new year parade. cool conditions, though from the mid 50s to about 50 degrees in the accuweather seven day forecast. we're breezy to windy with the rain again today and tonight, but then we dry out for valentine's day and the weekend. just a slight chance on sunday. and then notice not only are we dry, but we're warming up through next week. julian. >> okay. thank you so much,

lisa. with substantial rainfall overnight and throughout today, the san lorenzo river rose quickly, prompting some evacuation warnings from santa cruz county. we've just learned that all of those evacuation orders and warnings have been lifted. abc seven news reporter dustin dorsey back in the mountains once again today. and dustin, what's it looking like out there right now? >> well, thankfully, julian, that those those orders and warnings have been lifted. and right now we're getting some reprieve from the rain. things have calmed down. it's a big deal because the san lorenzo, it's rushing right now. yesterday we were out here just a few inches deep. today it rose several feet since then and things move quickly. that's obvious. so these residents are staying ready no matter what may happen, as rain will continue here into tomorrow. and this was the scene earlier today as we were going through river road and the communities here in felton in the area. neighbors in felton grove got one warning earlier this morning from the county that they were in an evacuation zone. river road

completely flooded in 20-23 and one resident we spoke with was ready to avoid getting caught in the flood waters. this time just across the covered bridge. not as simple there. covered bridge equestrian owner tamara bull was keeping an eye on water levels, as well as the horses that will that were stabled there throughout the storm. evacuation plans are ready if needed, but she's hoping it doesn't get to that point. when you move them to a different circumstances, you're taking them into new things. they're going to call out, they get nervous. some don't handle the situations very well, so it's the last thing we really want to do. >> we and again, good news those evacuation warnings and orders have been lifted. but in the case of an evacuation, if anything does change overnight or into tomorrow, just down the road in scotts valley, the community center is open for a temporary evacuation center as needed. we are live in felton. dustin dorsey, abc seven news.

>> okay, good to see the rain is finally stopping there, at least for a bit. we appreciate it. thank you so much dustin. now to the north bay. they got a serious soaking there overnight. this is rain and wind you're looking at in santa rosa. there are still people dealing with flooding and mudslides from our last round of storms, santa rosa fire department officials tell abc seven news that they are really concerned about wind and trees coming down. they are keeping close tabs on possible landslides from last week. some evacuations are in place and some homes redtagged. we've already seen street flooding in green valley and forestville. we've had waves of power outages overnight and throughout the day. we're taking a live look now at the latest service outages across the bay area on p-g-and-e's real time outage map. currently, there are no widespread outages to report, but you can see some scattered smaller outages across the bay area, many of them there in the south bay and also over to the east bay. most of them contained to those green and yellow icons,

which means they're not too bad right now. so good news there. well, the storm has triggered a winter storm warning in the tahoe area. throughout friday night, we're taking a look at the driving conditions from these caltrans cameras. we'll get to those in just a moment. there we go. we see some snow covered roads there, some clear uh. and we know that snow is really coming down in some of the higher elevations. people are being advised not to drive to the area until saturday. roads could be icy or snowy and it might be impassable for some. so joining us live now is one of our friends of abc seven news, kevin coop cooper, with the california mountain resort company. coop, good to see you, man. >> good to see you as well. take a look. isn't this beautiful right now you guys are talking reprieve. we're talking. bring it on. >> we see you were in the thick of the winter wonderland, which is obviously your happy place. tell us about some of the weather conditions happening now in tahoe. we see the flakes falling pretty quickly there. >> yeah, it's starting to snow. good. now is it really set in? we had rainfall this morning

coming in a little bit heavy right around 430 5:00 this morning. but just about two hours ago it really started to set in. temperatures dropped. we're looking at about 28 degrees and we're just above lake level right here. i looked at some of the resorts anywhere above 7800ft. we've already seen 6 to 8in of snow accumulation at 7800. and now if you go up above that, you're probably seeing already nine inches to up to a foot right now. winds blowing anywhere 30 to 40 miles an hour. but we saw ridgetop gusts today, just around 86 to 96 miles an hour over kirkwood and down towards bear valley. ebbetts pass, 7680 miles an hour. so it's great news for the snow pack and for skiers and riders as we go into the president's day weekend. >> yeah, getting some good fresh powder out there right now. you did mention coop, the wind gusts. and we know that can sometimes close those lifts at ski resorts. what are you hearing about that? are they still running people up or are the winds not playing that big of a factor? >> no. that's a great question. and i'll tell you what a lot of

the resorts right now are on wind. hold on the upper mountain. so anything that's up on that upper ridge is probably close now. some resorts have some nice little zones that are kind of tucked away. but here's the challenge julian is the wind blows down the line. we're pretty okay. but once it starts to go across, you know, horizontally across the line, that's when the lift operators and the ski patrol, the mountain teams have to make the decision whether to shut down or not. with the snow forecast we have over the next 12 hours, i'd assume that they're going to play it safe so they can play all season and close the resorts down that way. tomorrow morning, they get a fresh start out there. avalanche mitigation get the resorts opened up ready to go for the weekend ahead. >> a big weekend ahead, we should point out, because we know that ski week is coming up with it being presidents day on monday. what are your recommendations for people heading to tahoe this weekend? it looks like they're going to have a lot of fresh powder out there for them. >> bring some extra layers with you, but i'll tell you what, you mentioned the roadways a little bit earlier. your guys, tonight

is not the night. tomorrow morning is not the morning. give it a little bit of a break. look, caltrans and chp do their jobs. if you're coming up, emergency road kit, flares, phone, water, food, blankets, chains, chains, tensioners. if you're in an ev car, full charge before you come up. if you're down in auburn, did it charge there before you come over, donner? if you get it done. placerville. before you come over 50. jackson. if you come over 88, you got to make sure you have that full charge in there. slow your roll. too many people this season driving way too fast. snow tires do not mean that you can go 55 miles an hour. it doesn't work that way. even old salts like myself drive 2530 miles an hour. we slow it down because we know how slick those roads can be. so give yourself a little bit of a break and then come on up for the weekend. because i'll tell you what, with all this new snow, it's going to be the best it has been all season long. >> a smart old salt. we like to call you because you know your stuff, man. really great advice as always. like you said, this

weekend is going to be a great one. don't be a hero and try and go out there tonight. just not a good idea at all. kevin cooper, we appreciate your time. thanks for joining us. >> take care guys. we'll see you on the mountain. >> all right. go enjoy that fresh powder. there we go. we'll track the weather anytime using the same live doppler seven radar our weather team uses. it's available for you right now inside of the abc seven bay area app. you can download it and get the same forecast and updates on the conditions where you live. well, as of today, robert f kennedy jr. rfk is our nation's new secretary of health. and big changes to our nation's health care system are likely exactly what he has in mind and what we can expect.

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now to the latest out of washington, where the trump administration fired thousands of federal workers today. probationary employees were terminated at the department of education and the small business administration. the firings mark the first layoffs from the trump administration. as president donald trump and elon musk and his department of government efficiency aimed to dramatically shrink the federal workforce. the move comes the same day as a federal judge allowed the administration's resignation program to continue. so far, we know 77,000 employees have accepted the offer that would pay them out through september of this year. robert f kennedy jr is now in charge of the nation's health department. the senate confirmed rfk's nomination for health and human services secretary this morning. the vote was close 52 to 48. republican senator mitch mcconnell, who survived polio as a child, voted against kennedy after raising concerns about his position on vaccines. rfk jr has been an outspoken critic of

vaccines, but during his nomination hearing, he backtracked and said he supports vaccines, but refused to say that they do not cause autism, something we know that has since been debunked. so what does kennedy junior's new power mean for the future of our health care system in america? he is expected to make a lot of waves, and we want to get some answers now from susan poland, executive director of the american public health association. thanks so much for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> in broad strokes, can you paint the picture of what we expect public health to look like with rfk jr leading the department of health and human services? >> i think he has a very big learning curve. this is one of our biggest concerns when he was nominated and as he went through the nomination process. there's going to be a focus on chronic disease, which we wholeheartedly support. our concern comes to some of the other issues when we're talking about vaccines, when we're talking about understanding all of the implications of the of the multi-billion dollar agency that

he's overseeing, which takes care of health, the health care of more than half of the country. there are so many questions, and we really hope that he follows the science driven approach to address those questions. >> in regards to that learning curve, i think there was even some mixing up of medicare and medicaid during the confirmation hearings. rfk jr has consistently said in those heated hearings that he would follow the science when it comes to vaccines, as he continues to cite that debunked study. how could kennedy's repeated vaccine skepticism lead to really an erosion in the us vaccination rate that could ultimately tamp down herd immunity in our country? >> so even if he does nothing other than continue to use his bully pulpit, that is a big concern. people care about what the director of the hhs secretary says. and so we're going to start there. but there are a variety of smaller steps that he could take, or steps that are more under the wire. the idea of an advisory committee, which is the advisory committee of to the hhs about

what the vaccine schedule should be, depends on who he puts on that committee, what they decide, the mandates for schools or the undermining of school mandates and, and less funds to those cities and states that that might have school mandates for vaccines. these are really serious issues. and even the rereview of existing of existing science. as you said, he refuses to admit that the studies for autism, the connection between autism and cancer, or i'm sorry, autism and vaccines have been very clearly debunked. hundreds of thousands of people have taken these vaccines, and the numbers are overwhelmingly clear. and so unless we start to see truly following the science, his opportunity to undermine herd immunity, which means that communities won't have the safety in numbers of vaccines is very, very real. >> before rfk jr was sworn in, we did see the disruption of some critical public health information from the centers for disease control and prevention

and the world health organization. who? do you see this changing under rfk jr, and how important is this coordination with our global health partners? >> unfortunately, i am concerned that we're not going to be connecting with w.h.o. as we should be. we know that infectious diseases don't know country borders, they don't know city borders. and the opportunity for communities to understand where the diseases are and where they're coming from is going to be important. i don't understand why we are not able to really focus on making w.h.o. better, and the only answer is to take us out of w.h.o. we really have to focus on assuring that the information is available. communities need that. states need that. organizations need that, that are offering the best understanding of the current state of science and the current state of disease. we don't have these connections internally, much less globally, than we are right to have another epidemic or pandemic. we're seeing signs

of problems already, and we're not. if we don't have the data, that's going to be very, very problematic. >> and on that topic, i want to talk about bird flu, because we've already seen the effects of this disruption in communication with some delayed information regarding the bird flu. we got some newly released info today from the cdc showing several veterinarians who work with cattle across the country had antibodies for bird flu, meaning they were recently infected. how concerned are you about the release of public health data as we try and contain the spread of bird flu, to make sure it doesn't jump to humans? >> the idea is that we need to know the data, and we need to know it as quickly as possible. a delay of even a couple of days could mean that an outbreak is slow to be detected, and that opportunity for transmission is so much more. so much more vast. if you have an outbreak of bird flu, you need to follow the people. you need to follow the flocks and the dairy herd. and if we're not doing that as soon as it's discovered because the data are not being shared, then

we are in a we're in a situation where before we know it, we can see more than the few cases that we've already seen being be being happening all over the country. we can see it's going to take very close watch to see if there's a transmission from human to human. right now, we're not there. that's not a problem. but if we are not on top of the data, if we don't have access to it, if cdc does not have access to it, then that is a very real possibility. federal, state. local. they all work together on these issues, and if federal is not in it, it leaves the states and local communities up to do this work themselves. and they don't have the resources and they don't have the personnel to do these things. >> really quickly because we're running out of time here, unfortunately. but all of this is happening while elon musk and president trump continue to thin out the workforce, as we just mentioned. what do you think might happen if we see mass layoffs at the cdc or nih, for example, as we are approaching things like bird flu? >> i think people don't. >> understand the work that cdc

does or the work that nih does. it's there to protect us, and it is. and the people who are doing this work are committed scientists and public health professionals. they care about what happens to people. if we start to see these kinds of layoffs, we're going to see problems with with the data. we're going to see fewer opportunities to do prevention work on the ground. we're going to see increased injury or discover or not be able to discover cures and treatments that nih is currently doing. it is such an important piece of the federal government. that's what they're here for, is to protect the health and safety of the public. and if we're not doing that, if we're seeing fewer and fewer people able to do it, then we're not going to be able to move forward and protect the public as we need to. >> well, susan, we so appreciate the work that you do over at the american public health association, again, a nonprofit advocacy advocacy group for public health professionals. we appreciate you joining us and sharing your perspective. thanks for being here. >> tha

we're taking a live look right now at doppler seven, radar tracking the storm that's been pounding the bay area. all this rain, all of it on your screen is expected to move out overnight. so what can we expect? until then, we'll get the latest from meteorologist lisa argen in just a few minutes. san francisco got a bit of the national spotlight today when mayor daniel lurie was interviewed on gma3. what you need to know talking about his goal of 1500 new shelter beds in his first six months in office. >> it's an ambitious goal, but we have to be ambitious about this. i walked the streets of our city every single day, and i see the crisis and people deserve help. we're no longer going to allow people to sleep on our streets, and so we have a lot of work to do. but here's also our reputation. we are the greatest city in the world when we are at our best. >> mayor lurie also acknowledged the public perception of the

city when it comes to safety. he said crime stats are dropping quickly and small businesses had their best january in seven years. of course, you can watch gma3 what you need to know every day at noon after midday live. are you ready for some basketball? some fun events are going to be happening all across the bay, and they're starting now with the all star weekend. the official tip off for the nba all star festivities happened this morning in san francisco. there you see the mayor kicking things off with a ribbon cutting, all star themed pop up storefronts will be open along powell street in union square. they include a foot locker all star experience, which opened this morning. you can see the line was long to get inside. the all star game takes the court this sunday at chase center. and so much happening this weekend. abc seven is your home for the chinese new year parade in san francisco. can't make it in person? we got you covered. watch it live right here. coverage starts at 6:00 wherever you watch abc

soggy day across the bay area. as we take this live look outside looking at the golden gate bridge there. let's get an update on the timing of the storm that is moving through the bay area. we check back in now with lisa. >> okay, we are not done yet, julie. we still have a flood advisory for much of the bay area. and as we look at live doppler seven right now, you can see the rain coming down in the north bay around hercules and richmond, a little bit heavier down along the peninsula from san bruno. it's pretty much everywhere. pleasanton looking at a pretty good downpour, and then into sunnyvale and the heaviest rain in the santa cruz mountains. so the winds are going to be gusty. they're going to be elevated all night long and we'll see the scattered showers. looks like a break by about 630. but look what happens later in the evening from 830 through 11:00. we're looking at another line of some showers. and within those showers, just a

slight chance of a thunderstorm. but overall, we're looking at the rain to wind down throughout the overnight hours. still an additional 10th to 2/10 for most areas. and we will be looking at those winds right now. still anywhere from 30 to 44 miles an hour. so it's going to be slow going out there. make sure you're careful and avoid any of those flooded roadways. do not go through a flooded street. >> really good and important advice. we appreciate it. thank you so much lisa. well, that will do it for this edition of abc seven news at three world news tonight with david muir is up next. i'll see you back here for abc seven news at four. take care. tonight, breaking news as we come on the air. sources telling abc news mass firings are now under way at multiple federal agencies. also at this hour, this third major winter storm this week already hitting tonight, from the west, all the way to the northeast again. massive pileups already in blinding snow.