a wildfire is forcing evacuations as we speak in southern in a southern california neighborhood, and the whipping winds are only going to get worse. good afternoon. i'm

garvin thomas. good afternoon, i'm garvin thomas. and welcome to nbc bay area news at 4:30. we are also tracking other stories this tuesday, including a notorious bay area kidnaper facing new charges. matthew mueller was convicted of kidnaping denise huskins in vallejo, a case investigators originally said she made up. well, the new evidence linking mueller to a case in san ramon. also a change in leadership. antioch city leaders announced new acting a new acting police chief. what we know about the new head cop. as the department looks to move on from its racist text messaging scandal. and new video showing a train engineer. check this out. pushing aside tents from a homeless encampment in the bay area. our ian cull is looking into the problem and the safety concerns. but let's begin with the breaking news in los angeles. fears of those dangerous santa ana winds. well, they're coming true. 30,000 people have been ordered to leave their homes after this wind whipped fire ignited this morning. this is in the coastal community of pacific palisades,

west of downtown la. it's a neighborhood you perhaps have heard of because it is home to many wealthy and famous people. now, let's take you out there. live right now from the front line. some homes have already been consumed by the flames, but it's unknown how many homes have been damaged at this point. the fire ignited around 1030 this morning and has already exploded to more than 1200 acres. the streets with their gridlocked. and there are even reports of people abandoning their cars to get out. governor newsom urging people not to take any chances. a number of structures that are destroyed, not a few. many structures already destroyed. and the fact that people were still not evacuated, still did not heed the warning, is a reminder of how serious this moment is a and how important it is. you listen to these evacuation orders. we've all been to memorials. i've never been to a memorial for a building, but for family members

and loved ones. meteorologist rob mayeda joins us. rob, sometimes you hate to be right. and you were right yesterday. we stood right here and you told me about those santa ana winds and how dry it's been and the risk for fire danger and the red flag warnings. and we're seeing that play out right now. unfortunately, all the conditions were there. we talked about an area that hasn't really seen any rain since october. then on top of it, one of the strongest santa ana wind patterns in many years. and you get what happens here around the palisades fire. this is around the time the fire started. you see the mountain wave action with the winds moving down towards the ocean. that allows the embers, once they get airborne, to move rather rapidly away from the fire, which leads to a rapid sprd. and when fire crews watch fires like this, the ones where the column plume is right on the ground like that, heading out over the ocean lets you know how strong and gusty those winds are at the same time, look at the chinooks there from cal fire still accessing those water drums at the top of the ridge to make the drops on the fire. now, as those helicopter crews took a look at the fire here, both from the

visible view and the infrared view, you can see where the hotspots were right along the ridge lines here. but unfortunately, as this fire moves down to what is known, the wildland urban interface, getting into those communities, now you're seeing additional hotspots. homes as they start to ignite are another source of large embers, which unfortunately in the high wind environment allows a fire like this to spread rapidly, which is what we're seeing right now. those winds throughout the day have been 20 to 50mph, humidity at 19% on land. again, that really hasn't seen any rain going back to the beginning of october yet. and you're showing that picture of the winds and obviously under different conditions with the fire starts, it gets up to the ridge without a heavy wind, it might stall. right. but what these winds are doing are pushing it down the hill. right to where? right to where the people live. and we saw it in malibu, right. just not too long ago. it burned. usually these types of fires in a santa ana wind environment, they can start in the west end of the san fernando valley, ventura county, and they typically don't stop until they reach the ocean. take us through

the next 24 hours with regards to winds in the area. well, here is the main concern possible that the peak wind event for this particular santa ana is still yet to come. notice the time stamp there as we move forward out towards malibu, which is west of where that fire is burning right now. winds overnight before about sunrise might get up into the 50 to 70 mile per hour range, so peak winds in that area are likely to come early wednesday morning. and then as we head to midday wednesday, you still got those strong wind speeds. it won't be till tomorrow night, but for those wind speeds start to come down. so that entire region from santa barbara to east to san diego under the red flag warning, high wind warnings still ongoing through the day tomorrow. it's all happened so quickly. yep. all right, rob, thank you very much. let's take another live look at the palisades fire again. it's already burned more than 1200 acres, being fueled by those dangerous santa ana winds that rob was telling us about. we're going to keep following this story, of course, throughout the evening. now, let's talk about the shocking new developments linked to a 2015 vallejo crime that made international headlines. matew mueller was

convicted of kidnaping and raping denise huskins. quinn. now, the details of the case were so astonishing. the vallejo police department originally deemed the crime a hoax. while the case was chronicled in the netflix series american nightmare. after watching it, the police chief in seaside, california says he wrote to mueller, who's serving time in federal prison for the vallejo crimes. that's when the chief says mueller gave him new information that led investigators to link him to home invasions in palo alto, mountain view and in contra costa county. now to find out, two weeks after our kidnaping, he attacked again. and that was two days in captivity of him telling me he was remorseful. today, the el dorado county district attorney also announced mueller provided information about another kidnaping and sexual assault. when mueller was just 16 years old, the da says that 1993 case is still under investigation. a better antioch is on the horizon. that's the

pledge of the city's new leadership tonight, as federal oversight of the city's police department begins, the city manager announced a new acting police chief this morning. captain joe vigil will take the reins of the department when chief brian addington retires on friday. the city will now have a completely new leadership team, new chief, city manager and mayor as it works to revamp and reform the embattled police department. the department has agreed to be monited by the u.s. department of justice for up to five years. in the wake of a racist text message scandal. we want our community to know that we are taking measurable steps in the right direction to address past abuses, bring the necessary leadership training, accountability, and transparency needed to heal our community. i'm looking forward to working with the department of justice and making the police department better in every aspect possible. it comes amid a violent start to the new year. the city's first homicide happened yesterday morning, when a 26 year old man was gunned down and he left as he left his home. police call it

a targeted attack. then yesterday afternoon, a man was robbed and shot in gentry town park. he is said to be in critical condition tonight. a stabbing at the hayward bart station shut down service for hours as police investigated. today this happened around 1030 in the morning inside the station. the victim taken to a hospital but is expected to survive. two people were detained, but police later determined they weren't actually involved, so they were released. the station reopened after 1 p.m. bart says investigators are now going through surveillance video and more evidence to find suspects. so after close to a decade, the san francisco police department has been successful in reducing its use of force that the state will no longer be overseeing the department. the department is now officially leaving state oversight after meeting its goals for reform. back in 2016, sfpd asked for a federal review after several controversial police shootings. the u.s. department of jusce gave them 272 recommendations, most of which have been implemented, with the rest being phased in. today, attorney

general rob bonta s office says sfpd has seen a significant decline in use of force against all racial groups. the report acknowledges disparities do still exist, but the use of force against black people saw the largest decline. a growing problem along the bay area railways pololice say homeless encampments are now showing up dangerously close to railroad tracks. they tell us growing encampments are threatening everyone from the unsheltered to railroad employees. nbc bay area's ian cull now joins us with a closer look at the issue. and, ian, this all starts with a piece of video we saw came into the newsroom today and we said, what is going on? yeah, i've never quite seen video like this in the bay area. at least i've seen it in other countries. but a san jose based train enthusiast says that he shot this video of the problem in vallejo last month, and you can see a train slowing down and stopping as an employee has to push homeless tents out of the way so the train can get through. some of the debris ended up caught under the train

as well as the conductor continues sounding the horn. luckily it was slow in that area. eric cortinas lives in san jose and snaps pictures of trains like this one when he can. he took some pictures in the south bay to help explain what train workers are facing. he says more homeless abatements are needed to prevent collisions. the government does play a role in this and they need to start stepping in because this isn't an issue that just impacts the unhoused individuals. this also impacts the union pacific and other railroad crews out there. so, ian, i know this is a simple question with a complex answer. who's responsible for clearing those for clearing those tracks? exactly. well, much of that property and much of the bay area track, railroad track is owned by union pacific. you know, police will sometimes assist them in clearing camps, depending on what jurisdiction they're in. the company tells us, though, that, quote, homelessness is a challenging issue. end quote, that everyone from businesses to the

government are struggling to get their arms around. homeless advocates argue that those camps should not be cleared until the state or cities can ensure alternate housing for the encampment residents. and i wonder when o citizens and our our government leaders and our agencies are going to wake up and realize that it's not working and we need to do something different. and that shshould include being humane ad treating our unhoused as the citizens that they are. union pacific also tells us, quote, despite efforts to keep our tracks clear and safe. illegal dumping and camping is happening on union pacific property, creating public safety risks, and you'll hear more from them. and all of those gentlemen that you saw in our story coming up in our full story at 6:00. it all seems to come down to a coordinated approach in all these cases where it can't just be one group because, you know, the problem will just move around and you can't shift the responsibility. exactly. they're saying that actually, the homeless advocate says that along the railroad tracks, that

there has not been an abatement in that area, specifically one of those for about a year. so if they get, you know, pushed from somewhere else, they're going to end up there. great. looking forward to hearing more about this. thank you so much, ian. lomita making changes. the company that owns facebook and instagram, backtracking on a promise to fact check post. scott budman tells us why mark zuckerberg is making these moves. also, it's probably his last visit to california, as commander in chief will tell you what president biden was doing in southern california. but before we head to break, we want to know what trending story would you like to see later in this newscast? i have a survey up right now on my instagram. you still have time to vote for one of these stories. girl scout no longer selling beloved flavors. puma takes on tiger woods, and a baker founds out that a long lost son. well, he's a regular customer. wll tell yoe'u

in southern california. the wind driven fires in southern

california. thankfully, no fires here, but definitely some wind. right, rob? yeah, we're seeing wind. not to the magnitude that southern california has, but ongoing. still is the wind advisory through 10:00 tomorrow morning. we'll show you when the peak wind gusts will arrive tonight for the hills of the north bay. coming up, hour by hour. as we take you to the microclimate forecast later tonight, another round of these breezy conditions increasing. right now, you see, it's the entire bay area except for the santa clara valley in that wind advisory through 10 a.m. tomorrow. but you probably noticed outside most locations closer to the inner bay. not in all of the wind, in fact, as you head up to mount saint helena, that's where we're seeing sustained winds of 43mph and still gusting up to 60. and i think it will be these same areas if you're around the diablo range out towards alamo, walnut creek into danville. you'll notice those gusty conditions again tonight as we see one more ramp up of those wind speeds around 11:00 tonight. then notice how the areas of red and purple start to fade away as we move forward into the afternoon. wind direction will be the same, just

not as intense as that pressure gradient backs off the throttle to the winds. starts to come down as we head through wednesday afternoon. but the dry conditions, they're going to be ongoing for a while. as you see coming up in that extended forecast, watch out for some chilly conditions in the wind sheltered valleys. next couple of mornings could be waking up to upper 30s and low 40s, but we see the temperatures jump pretty good as we head into the afternoon. less wind tomorrow mid to upper 60s possible in san jose, and we'reikely to stay dry for a while as high pressure remains locked in. next opportunity for windy conditions may arrive late in the weekend, heading towards monday of next week. coming up at 5:00. chief meteorologist jeff ranieri will have a look at how this pattern may impact temperatures and when the next rain chances return again. that's coming up at 5:00. back to you. thanks, rob. the electric ford mustang is now outselling its gas counterpart. new data from ford shows its electric mustang mach-e are up about 27% compared to this time last year. that says, sales of the traditional gas mustang went down by about 10%. the company

says some of its success comes from its free home charger installation, with every electric car sold. president biden's last official trip to california got a little bit sidetracked because of high winds and fire danger. biden landed in los angeles last night. he was planning to meet with governor newsom to celebrate protecting protecting tribal lands. the president just designated two national monuments, one near joshua tree and another in the medicinine le highlands that's close to lake shasta. the monuments mean 840,000 acres of tribal land will now be officially protected. biden and newsom are supposed to meet in riverside county to give a speech, but it was postponed to the due to the palisades fire and high winds. biden is set to deliver the speech next week at the white house. okay, let's talk about meta. the company which runs facebook. well, they are dropping all efforts to police lies online. instead, mark zuckerberg is stealing a page from elon musk to make it happen. let's bring in our business and tech reporter scott budman. scott, if i recall, these two were promising to fight each other recently, and

now they're just dancing to the same tune. that's a great way of putting it. they went from cage match to let's get together and make a whole lot of money. and that is why trump and zuckerberg seem to be on the same page now. yes. okay, so tell us about what the what facebook announced they are doing today. so facebook says they are going to end their third party. in other words, independent outside content moderation as in letting outside content moderators decide if something is too racist or sexist or something like that in some way violent or disturbing. and they said, you know, they're not going to do that. they're essentially bowing to pressure, largely from conservatives who say too many of these decisions have come down against the right and are essentially policing and censoring right wing posts. so now mark zuckerberg saying he's going to do this community policing, which is kind of what elon musk and x have done, where they let users step in and say, no, the 43rd president was not abraham lincoln. and we believe that because we use twitter and we know better. so it's not

exactly as rigorous or accurate as the outside sources. but nonetheless we get to police each other. obviously, elon musk has closely aligned himself with president elect trump, and mark zuckerberg has made a few moves. and facebook recently donating to the inauguration some other moves that signal he's willing to get closer to the next president. is this probably a move in that direction? i think it is. and it's one of many that we've seen not only from mark zuckerberg who says, hey, let's understand that conservatives are using these online sources, not to mention the fact that they're in the white house and control a lot of the purse strings. and we want to do a lot of business with them. but it's also kind of a silicon valley trend. we're seeing many venture capitalists jump into the trump campaign, not just fund it. and we're going to see more of those appointees. i think as the weeks and months go on. we're also seeing and you mentioned the inauguration, jeff bezos contributes to the inauguration. the ceo of amazon, tim cook, the ceo of apple, contributing $1 million to the inauguration. now, mark zuckerberg stepping on board as well. so we're seeing a

bit of a move to the right. not entirely surprising. after all, we jusas a country elected a republican president. and so there is this, hey, we want to do business with you kind of thing happening. you mentioned there are conservatives in particular cheering this. obviously this country is really split 5050. so i imagine there are some people booing this when they boo it. what are they saying. what's what's the problem. the problem they're saying and i would agree with this is without third party outside moderation, misinformation gets through more. and that's most dangerous if you're talking about instagram and facebook, which meta owns to young people, young people who can be swayed by this because they don't yet know exactly what to believe. and we're already seeing that when it comes to who's buying into qanon theories or who's being radicalized in a way, maybe by neo-nazis or something. and it's often young people who are still trying to find their way, and who get so much news and information and culture, understandably, on instagram and facebook these days. and without that moderation, the concern is that they will see and perhaps

fall prey to all this misinformation. and as you said, it's probably legitimate. for those of us who have used twitter over the years pre elon musk and post saw a change in the content that was provided on that platform, and i assume we're going to similarly see some changes in facebook. we very well may, although to be fair to both sides, these are already social media places where tens of millions of people a day can be seen. you can see so many posts. if you don't curate your posts, you will see everything. but if you take a little bit of time to curate, censor, whatever you call it to make it your own, you can get rid of a lot of that noise. scott, i got to do a better job of that. scott, thank you very much. speaking of social media, big day looms for tiktok. on friday, the supreme court will hear arguments on a law that will block tiktok. this month, tiktok owner bytedance is based in china. lawmakers say the chinese government can access american data through the app, so they pass a law ordering bytedance to sell the app or

have it banned in the u.s. the company argues the ban violates the first amendment. the deadline is the 19th of this month. incoming president trump is asking the court to delay the ban to see if he can make a deal once he takes office. the future is now, and it's in los angeles. the consumer electronics show kicked off today with the latest in tech. it's the world's largest trade show for consumer technology. we're talking robots, ai, new smart tvs and tablets, smart home upgrades, plus innovations in solar energy and home security. digital lifestyle expert mario armstrong gave us a front row seat to some of the best new gadgets on the market. so ecobee is leading the way with the total savings and security bundle. it has occupancy sensing so it knows whether or not to turn on the a, c or heat in the room. energy saving insights 24/7 professional monitoring. you'll stay secure and you can cut on those energy costs. another big announcement toyota opening a small city near mount fuji to test new technology. expect more announcements all week as the convention runs through friday.

janelle wang joins us now with what's coming up on the 5:00 news. hey, janelle. hi, garvin. we are just days away from a new president, and that's bringing fear among some immigrant children and their families. school districts working to ensure those students feel safe. meantime, the state attorney general releases tips and resources to undocumented families and school administrators. that includes guidance on what schools should do if ice agents show up at the front door. and the city of vallejo could soon be home to a new eight story casino. an indigenous tribe is just waiting for approval from the federal government. in the meantime, the proposal is pitting several tribes against one another. we're going to take a closer look at this battle over a 160 acre plot of land in the north bay. it's all coming up at five. i'll be watching. thanks, janelle. still to come, the top trending story

on my instagram survey. girl scout cookie season kicked off today with some bittersweet

news. the organization revealed that its s'mores and toast flavors will be discontinued at the end of the year. s'mores cookies have been around since 2017, while toast yay made its debut in 2021. cookie lovers can still stock up on s'mores and toast boxes through the end of the year before they disappear. i'll post links to the other stories you voted for on my instagram. the famous taco bell cantina in pacifica is now closed, but don't worry, it's only temporary. a company executive announced the news last night on facebook. he says the taco bell will be closed for two weeks for a remodel, and the exact date for the reopening is unknown. the business insider ranks this location as the coolest taco bell in the world, and it's hard to beat that location. it's right there on pacifica state beach. thank you so much for joining us at 430. janelle is working on the 5:00 news. we are back inwo minutes. t

southern california. a dangerous, fast moving wildfire is destroying homes, cars, everything in its path. fanned by powerful santa ana winds, the latest on the efforts to evacuate residents and how gusty winds are impacting the bay area. also, new charges for the man already in prison for raping and kidnaping a bay area woman. the new details we're learning about matthew mueller, who became the focus of a netflix series and a final trip to washington, dc for jimmy carter. the tributes already underway as the nation prepares to say goodbye to the former president. good tuesday everyone. the news at five starts right now. thanks so much for joining me i'm janelle wang. shocking new developments linked to the bay area kidnaping and rape case that sparked the netflix series

american nightmare. investigators say matthew mueller, the man convicted for a crime in vallejo in 2015, has now been linked to other home invasions and sex assaults. nbc bay area's marianne favro is in seaside in monterey county, where authorities revealed those home invasions aren't the only new crimes mueller may be linked to. today, investigators revealed that they believe that matthew mueller also committed a kidnaping and sexual assault back in 1993, when he was just 16 years old. it's a case that made headlines worldwide. matthew mueller, convicted of kidnaping and sexually assaulting denise huskins, quinton, in a case whose details were so astonishing that the vallejo police department originally deemed the crime a hoax. the 2015 case became the subject of the netflix series american nightmare, and after watching it and talking with the victim, seaside police chief nick borges wrote to mueller, who is