rushed over here to pack my belongings, and i got the evacuation orders right on nbc bay area news tonight, we're watching a destructive and fast moving, powerful wildfire burning through pacific palisades. we're tracking where the danger is right now and what we can expect in the coming hours. plus, a full 24 hours of

inauguration events for san francisco's new mayor, daniel lurie. just getting started in the city. we are going to take you there live. and then chatgpt used by the las vegas bomber to help plan out his attack at the trump hotel. will it change the way ai companies think about crime? and then later, first, we're going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes. that's mark zuckerberg making changes at facebook and instagram. is he trying to make good with president elect donald trump, or is something else going on? good evening. this is nbc bay area news tonight i'm jessica aguirre. we're going to start down in los angeles tonight. terrifying scene. mountains glowing bright red and orange. look at that. flames. santa ana winds picking up and fanning that massive fire near the coast. and the worst is yet to come. this is the palisades fire burning in the affluent pacific

palisades neighborhood in the santa monica mountains. cal fire just gave an update 30 minutes ago, saying the fire has exploded to almost 3000 acres. upward of 30,000 people have been forced to leave, more than 10,000 homes are threatened and many have already been destroyed. two men stayed behind to try to help save their neighbor's houses. listen to this. embers jump ahead as the wind blows, so they jump ahead of the fire and they catch things on fire. it's just there's fire all the way around us. you turn around one second. you're looking at the fire. look back while you're fighting fire. look back again. it's actually moved hundreds of feet in seconds. it goes that quick now. the traffic was so bad heading out of the fire zone that dozens of people had to abandon their cars and just flee on foot. in fact, one man says an officer started just telling people, get out of your car and go if you want to live. at one point, fire officials you can see there had to bulldoze all those abandoned cars to clear the roadway for

the fire trucks. the governor is urging people to listen to those warnings. you should have an evacuation plan ready. as the powerful winds are expected to gain strength overnight. november, december. now, january, there's no fire season. it's fire year. it's y year rou. and it's incredibly important that we heed the warnings, the calls. we've all been to memorials. i've never been to a memorial for a building, but for family members and loved ones. that is a pivotal point right there. we're bringing in our chief meteorologist, jeff ranieri. jeff, the pacific palisades sits right on the coast of pch between santa monica and malibu. really nice area, but as you and i both know, hard to get in and out. couple that with the wind and the low humidity. this is a dangerous combo. very critical here tonight. and as we thought as that sun sets we have started to see the wind ramping up again. basically you get some colder air well aloft as the sun sets. that colder air is denser and then it just starts to slide

down the mountains, just amplifying the wind that's already in place. so you can see los angeles area here. there's the palisades and the way these winds are blowing out of the north and the east. it's pushing most of the smoke out towards the ocean. but again, all of this is filled with neighborhoods that are getting ravaged right now. wind gusts. currently, this is right now 52mph. a current temperature of 62. relative humidity, very, very dry. they're at 18%. so firefighters right now if a home catches on fire, it's just going to be so hard with these kind of winds to actually put the fire out at the house. they're just on the defensive. they're trying to set up perimeters to keep this fire from spreading to other neighborhoods. but with all the embers flying around and 52 mile per hour winds, it is going to be more than a nerve wracking night tonight. evacuation warnings continue in place here, and as we head through this evening, 10 p.m, you can see widespread winds anywhere from 30 to about 60mph

on average. in southern california. we likely are not goining to see a considerable dp in these winds until we head all the way into tomorrow night. there. you can see it by 11 p.m. midnight, that is tomorrow. we would start to see these winds going down below 30mph. so the wind warning right now stays in effect here in southern california until 6 p.m. tomorrow, with winds that still could get up to 100mph in the mountains. sustained winds 20 to 50. no big rain chances the next two weeks and maximum wind gusts. look at this that we've clocked tododay downhere. 86mph. so this just continues. i don't think there's going to be anyone in southern california getting a good night's sleep tonight. everyone's just going to be staying up and watching out to see you know, what happens. two quick questions for you. is there a chance that wind could shift from going out to the water to actually downwind that would hit some other neighborhoods? that's my first

question for you. and then are these the same ones? are these ones connected to the wind that we have here? yeah, it is all connected here that we're seeing some wind in the bay area from the same weather system. now, when it comes to a wind shift out there at the palisades with that current fire, this fire is creating so much heat right now with some of that explosive growth over the past couple of hours, that the wind is going to be really hard to predict, at least down in that fire, you get these very strong updrafts that creates the downdraft. it can send these embers in all different directions. so it's going to be extremely tense here, certainly to say the least here as we roll through tonight, you can see wind in the bay area. highest would be mount saint helena 45, mount diablo 50. a lot of our lower elevations, thankfully, anywhere from five to about 25mph. our wind advisory expires tomorrow. i really think once we hit tomorrow morning all the way through the day, we're not looking at extreme winds here through the bay area, and tonight our max winds would be

up around 45mph. that is a relief. okay. thank you very much. all right. let's give you another look at los angeles again. the palisades fire burning upwards of 30,000 rhyne 3000 acres. and the winds aren't even at their peak, as you just heard jeff say, that multiple homes have been destroyed. fire! no containment again. no containment. bay area fire crews have already been sent to the scene. we'll keep updating you on the situation throughout this newscast. and of course, throughout the evening. and again at 11:00. another big headline tonight. a change at the top for the city by the bay, san francisco about to have a new mayor. daniel lowry will be officially sworn in tomorrow, but the inauguration events are already underway. kicked off about a half an hour ago at congregation emanu-el near the presidio. they're holding an interfaith unity service in honor of the mayor elect. you can see it there. we're told leaders of all faiths are in attendance, and our gia vang is there to gia interfaith. lots of people there. you can see people

singing. how's it going so far? what's the tone? okay, we're having a little problem there with gia signal. let me tell you a little bit more about who's in there. there's about 900 people inside the synagogue tonight. a long standing tradition for the new mayor held by the san francisco interfaith council. that's how they do it. there is a prayer for the mayor elect, daniel lowry, as he begins his new task leading the city. and then the council says it's asked lowry where he'd like to hold his actual hold. this? he asked, he said congregation emanuel, is it. it's a special place. according to the senior senior rabbi there. mayor elect lowry was raised here. he was one of the kids running around the hallways here because his father was one of the rabbis who served here long ago. all right. again, this is just tonight's inaugural pre-inaugural events, but the actual inauguration of mayor

lowry when he becomes officially the mayor will happen tomorrow, and there will be a big party in chinatown to kick that off tomorrow evening. well, of course, have more on that later on. all right. stunning new developments linked to a bay area kidnaping and rape case that sparked international headlines. you remember this one? it inspired a popular netflix series, matthew mueller, the man convicted in that crime in vallejo, is now being tied to more home invasions. we've been telling you this over the last couple of days. new details were revealed today by authorities in monterey county. matthew mueller was convicted of raping and kidnaping denise huskins quinn in vallejo back in 2015. vallejo pd infamously called the case a hoax before mueller was eventually arrested for that crime, though got fresh interest last year. after that, netflix aired its documentary series american nightmare. the police chief in seaside actually watched that show, and then he decided on his own to write to

mueller in prison. and surprisingly, mueller wrote back. the chief says he gave him critical information, tying him to at least four other crimes, including a rape and a kidnaping. in 1993, when mueller says he was just 16. mueller was 16 years old when he attacked his first victims, and he was 38 years old by the time he got to us. that's two decades of this mindset that he was living in. by the time our case came about, they found storage units full of equipment to help him facilitate terrorizing people. that's denise huskins, the vallejo victim. and right there is her husband, who at the time was her boyfriend, who was initially also accused of being part of a scheme. now, this week, mueller was also charged with a previously unreported 2015 kidnaping and a ransom in san ramon. he's also being linked to home invasions in mountain view

and palo alto. in san francisco, 2024 was the safest year in decades. that is according to new crime stats released by the mayor and the police department today. those numbers show that last year, the city had the lowest crime rate the city has had since. are you ready 2001 two of the most noticeable drops homicides and car burglaries. there were 35 homicides in the city last year. that was more than a third fewer killings compared to 2023. car burglaries are down by more than half. this all comes as the california department of justice is announcing that the sfpd has made major strides in its reform efforts as well, according to california attorney general rob bonta, the sfpd has successfully implemented nearly all of the 272 reforms the department agreed to back in 2017. these two things don't have to be mutually exclusive, and one doesn't detract from the other. you can have reform and improve

your police department and your practices and protocols, and still address the issues that need to be addressed. new numbers come on the eve of the inauguration that we told you that's going to happen for the new mayor, daniel lurie. chief scott says he'd like to stay on with the department under that new mayor's administration. up next, questions about ai, artificial intelligence and crime. that new year's day bomber in las vegas used chatgpt to help plan out his attack. and is mark zuckerberg trying to get in good with president elect trump? the changes he's making on facebook and instagram that's sparking that question.

cybertruck explosion outside the valet area at the trump hotel in las vegas. what you're looking at is surveillance video of that highly decorated soldier who planned the explosion, stopping to pour grade racing grade fuel on the cybertruck. inside the cybertruck. also, 60 pounds of fireworks. now also new tonight, a connection of sorts to the bay area and artificial intelligence. police now say that matthew lyles berger, the man behind that explosion, used chatgpt to help plan the attack. the explosion happened on new year's day. you see it right there. lyles berger shot himself before the bomb went off. no one else died, but seven people were

injured. today, police in las vegas released these screengrabs of prompts that he gave chatgpt. the prompts included questions about how much explosives he needed, as well as where to get fireworks and what kind of firearm and ammo to use in order to trigger that explosion. we knew that i was going to change the game at some point or another, and really all of our lives, and certainly i think this is the first instance that i'm aware of on u.s. soil, where chatgpt is utilized to help an individual build a particular device. joining me now is business and tech reporter scott budman. not exactly a great, you know, positive for chatgpt that it's used in this way, obviously, but it does reinforce the whole complexity around artificial intelligence and the fact that it can be used for good or for bad. right? exactly. for good and for bad. jessica, as you said, there is an inevitability to this. remember when the internet took off and we were finding so many new things via search engine, people would look up good and they would look up bad, and they

might look up how to build a bomb or something like that. and it became kind of a thing that ultimately officers used. when they would arrest someone for a crime. they would say, let's look at the search results. and now perhaps ai is next to be looked at. okay, so we saw that before, where people were a little astonished that people were planning things and looking up, oh, how do i get rid of a body? how do i dismember somebody? and, you know, police were finding that they had a search. did anything come of that? yeah. search companies like google, for example, could set their algorithms to either lower those to sort of bury those or just get rid of them, almost like in your social media. you can take certain words and say, those are upsetting to me. i want to get rid of those, and it will block something that uses those words. and that works to a point. even the social media companies themselves, or the search companies admit this is not perfect, but it is a way to sort of bury results. if you're looking like you say, how to bury a body or something like that. nonetheless, this stuff still happens. and with ai, which is kind of considered search on steroids, it really

looks up everything and every possibility. so you wonder if even those algorithms, you know, the tricks that the search companies use to try to bury search results will ever work for ai. or if this is yet an even better and more effective way to look up, as you say good things and bad things. okay, let's switch subjects here today a lot out on the headlines about meta ceo zuckerberg announcing that he is ending the company's paid fact checking program. people or companies that are used to kind of check to see if things are being said that are accurate. it's been used on facebook, instagram, whatsapp, and the whole goal is to fight misinformation. right? but zuckerberg says it makes too many mistakes. the fact chehecks and creating too much censorship, which is something that we've heard a lot from conservatives. and so now they're going to replace it by what's called community notes. it's similar to what's being done on x. the system relies on actual users to add extra context and fact checking to those posts. after trump first

got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. we tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the us. so the timing is a little sus to some people because, you know, elon musk is palling around with mr. trump. trump has been very critical of facebook. he even came out and said, oh yeah, he probably changed it because i said, so is it sus? yeah. i mean, look, jessica, mark zuckerberg has, among many others, admitted facebook has problems with bullying. facebook has problems with misinformation. what did he do this morning? in the statement, he blamed legacy media. that's us. he blamed the fact checkers, the independent people trying to keep kids safe. he blamed everybody. but meta i.e. facebook and instagram. so this is an admission in itself. hey, we don't know how to handle this

stuff. president trump doesn't want us to. conservatives don't want us to. we're going to give in to them. yeah, but how much of this is kissing the ring? a lot. i mean, absolutely. i mean, also bringing on dana white, the ufc, who's a very big trump supporter. dana, he's also doing spoke at trump rallies before, including the one in madison square garden just prior to election day itself. and that is not an accident. i mean, zuckerberg can say, oh, dana white, ufc, i'm a yeah, i fight too as well. yeah, but but this is also another supporter of donald trump. we have seen tech ceos and i want to take pains to say some of it makes sense if trump is in office. so the republicans are in office. if conservatives are in office, you still want to play ball. yeah. you got to read the room. exactly. read the room. and that's why tim cook donated $1 million to the fund for inauguration. jeff bezos stepped forward and donated. and mark zuckerberg is doing this. it makes sense in a business sense. but as far as what he's doing for conservatives right now, he's telling them, okay, we heard your complaints and we're

going to act on them and we're not going to ban what you say nearly as much as we used to. and it will be interesting to see what gets through and why. certain consumer groups are very worried, especially when it comes to instagram about what are teenagers and children will see. okay. thank you very much, scott. we're going to take another look at that palisades fire in a moment.

palisades. that fire burning in los angeles. 3 3000 acres so fa, no containment and a very dangerous situation. nbc's chase cain is there along sunset boulevard for us. jessica, we are in pacific palisades. this is the pacific coast highway, and this is the famous sunset boulevard here behind me. these cars are people who are continuing to evacuate their homes, because more than 30,000 people are under mandatory evacuation orders. just up at the top of the ridgeline, there's condo and apartment buildings along the hillside here overlooking the pacific ocean. but you can see that orange glow on top of the ridge. we've been hearing pops. you can maybe even see some flames there. there are homes burning. at least a couple dozen. it's really hard to get a handle on exactly how bad the impact is so far. because these winds are so strong. it's not just one contained fire. it's lots of smaller fires. as the strong winds pick up an ember, blow it, and then whatever the ember lands on is going to catch on fire. as we can hear something crackling up there on the top of the hill, even to get to this

spot where i was, i was making another loud boom there, likely a transformer exploding on top of the hill. i even had to get out of my car with my producer and walk down sunset boulevard on foot, because there was gridlock of a couple dozen cars that had been abandoned as they were trying to drive through there. fire comes down the side of the mountain, and then police and fire at some point are just saying, hey, you got to get out of your car. you got to get to safety. so people are leaving their cars abandoned on sunset boulevard. again as we wrap up he. but man, the fire is just kicking back up on this ridgeline. it's almost impossible for firefighters to control it with winds this strong. we've had 6070 mile an hour gusts and overnight they're forecasting it could be 80 to 100 mile an hour winds. that is hurricane force winds. everyone here in california knows what that can mean. a lot of concern here in southern california as the conditions appear to just be getting worse overnight. that's the latest here in pacific palisades. jessica, back to you. all right. thank you very much, chase. terrifying for sure. and you be safe. jeff. let's bring you right in here. you heard

chase say that we are entering that timeline now where it's going to get worse. and really, 80 miles an hour winds expected. yeah, even up to 100mph. and they're going to stay with some of these gusts here all the way through tomorrow evening. now back here across the bay area, the system that's producing the wind, this area of low pressure is going to start to pull off towards the south tomorrow. so i do see some improving conditions back here across the bay. let's go and get you a look at that microclimate forecast. and we will show you what we can expect here. generally are lower elevations have been 15 to 30 and some of our mountains 4 40 o 50 will stay in that range at 11 p.m. then by tomorrow morning the wind does calm down and that would continue into tomorrow evening. we'll start it off with temperatures here in the 40s and 50s, and then through the day tomorrow we'll be into the 60s here, from the north bay to the east bay, right on down to the south bay. on the 7-day forecast. you'll see it stays dry here through the next seven days with our temperatures in the 60s. but again, down in

southern california, those very gusty winds expected all the way through about 6 p.m. tomorrow. they will get into some relief by 11 p.m. tomorrow evening. that wind should start to exit. okay. all right. let's hope that you know right now no one there have been no reports of injuries. let's hope it stays that way. all right. here's what's coming up in prime time at 8:00, nbc's reality game show deal or no deal. island is back for a second season, followed by irrational at ten, and then be back here at 11:00 for us. we're going to have the latest on that palisades fire. a lot of developments throughout this evening. make sure you stay with us. that's it for tonight, though. at 7:00. take a break. come back. see you then.

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