we don't have a home. >> it reminds me of like the value of what is not tangible. this is cbs news bay area with elizabeth cook. >> i'm anne makovec. we begin with breaking news. a new wildfire is now burning in los angeles county and people are again being told to evacuate. it's the last thing we need down there, video here of the so-called kenneth fire. it's burning now near bell canyon north of highway 101 in the woodland hills area. taking a live look right now at that fire, you can see all that smoke. this is burning to the south right now, pretty close to some homes there. we've already seen fire helicopters making drops on that fire hoping to get a handle on it. it's already burned about 50 acres. we'll stay on top of that new fire and in the meantime we're getting a clearer picture of the scope of

devastation across los angeles county. entire neighborhoods leveled from the chopper here just row after row of homes burned to the ground. this is in the city of pacific palisades. a reporter touring the devastation from the air says it's unlike anything he's ever seen. >> reporter: this is like the first chance that we're actually kind of getting a look at that real devastation when they keep saying over 1,000 homes burned in the palisades. i never pictured anything like this. this is just blocks after blocks. >> you heard him mention fire officials estimate now at least 1,000 homes and other buildings destroyed so far. we know now that number has grown significantly. officials stress those are just early conservative numbers. further inland the other big fire, the eaton fire burning south of the angeles national forest also continuing to rage out of control. it is now moving toward the peak of mount wilson burning dangerously close to a transmission tower you see

there. that fire is 0% contained. the good news is firefighters say they've been able to significantly slow its growth, but the damage has certainly been done and the threat is far from over. look at this drone footage from the devastation from the eaton fire. this was taken today in altadena. fire officials say the fire has destroyed or damaged between 4,000 to 5,000 structures. the eaton fire has killed at least five people throughout pasadena, altadena and the forest area. reporter jasmine veal caught up with the family who told her they lost a dad and grandfather in that fire. >> reporter: it was text messages or you couldn't get through to him? >> the text messages stopped probably about 11:00 p.m. at about 11:00 p.m. the text messages stopped and the last phone call when i talked to him was about 9:30 and he was walking around with his lantern in the house. chase and i were talking to him on facetime and he was in there with his

lantern gathering his stuff and putting stuff up. had he just took his medicine and that was it. >> reporter: your son left a few hours after that at 11:00 p.m. he's okay. >> chase is okay. >> reporter: traumatized, i'm sure. >> very much so. very much so. >> reporter: i'm so sorry. i just thank you for even talking and being this is strong. i know it's difficult and the last thing you want to do is talk to reporters, but i'm glad we could share his story. >> thank you. >> reporter: the more i learn about rodney and the life that he led, so i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> reporter: and i'm so sorry. >> i appreciate you checking in and i appreciate you guys showing concern and wanting to talk about my dad. >> reporter: yeah. i'm sorry. just all these stories that i've heard over the last few days from the palisades to this eaton fire, folks who have lost everything, but again to lose a life, that's the hardest. you see homes that have burned down, but to lose a life. best of luck to you. prayers for your family. >> i really appreciate it.

check on me, okay? >> reporter: i will for sure. i'm going to let her go. she's been talking to detectives here with the sheriff's department. deputies have told her homicide detectives will be making their way back here to her father's house, then the coroner. again, we saw that van just up the street from here checking out yet another home where we're hearing that another person, i think a man had passed away, but we're trying to confirm that. >> while the official death toll stands now at five, we did see first responders transporting what appears to be another body out of the fire debris in malibu. authorities say this is a fluid situation. >> i want to tell you something. the number continuously fluctuates and it's because we're still in a very chaotic scenario. >> right now firefighters trying to gain control of several different fires in l.a. county. more than 45 square

miles in total have burned so far. that is roughly the size of san francisco. more than 180,000 people across los angeles county remain under evacuation orders this afternoon. many families have no idea if their homes are still standing. amanda starrantino caught up with a couple in altadena that just learned they lost everything in that fire. >> reporter: are you trying to get over to your house right now? >> i just wanted to see if anything's left. we had everything like the sentimental things like my mom passed away. i had only a few things of hers left, my wedding dress, our wedding album. we left everything, our albums. we have just whatever we're wearing. we're wearing the same thing the last two days. i'm trying to figure out how to tell my 3-year-old that we don't have a home. we don't have a school. we don't even know where to go, what to do next. we're staying at a friend's house, you know, but that's

all short term. >> a reporter from cbs sacramento, ashley sharp, joining us now from los angeles. thanks for being with us. we know the weather is a big factor for firefighters to be able to get a handle on this. what other conditions are you seeing now? >> reporter: anne, over the past few days the winds have calmed which has been a massive help to this firefight. they were able to continue the attack by air which, of course, was not possible for a time considering how strong those santa ana winds were gusting, 75 miles per hour plus. i want to give you a scene setter where we are. i'm in altadena just outside pasadena and up and down the road behind me off lake avenue people have been hiking back in, neighbors, to check out their home to see if it's still standing. we've talked to so many of them. we've been meeting those

people all afternoon and it's devastating. one of the good pieces of news, we caught a woman walking back out. she had come to check out her home and was wanting to find her cat, right? she found her damaged home. the cat was there alive. so he got to hike back out in a cat carrier and those are some of the moments that you realize what's important, right? >> absolutely. >> reporter: we're in altadena. i'm in a chevron gas station. let me show you the damage over here, anne. this is the gas station, what it was at least, and there's a smog check station right here with cars still in the bay, all that's left of them a shell. this is just 1 picture of what we are seeing block after block in altadena and the greater los angeles community. >> i know you are a northern california reporter. you've covered some of our big wildfires around here. how does this one compare? >> reporter: you know, what's been so different about covering a fire of this magnitude in a city of los angeles has been the actual

city. when we're talking about our recent fires we've seen this summer in butte county in the chico area, the communities are so small, the routes in and out are limited. in this area, thankfully, it's been a bit easier for people to evacuate. there hasn't been as much of a bottle neck situation. of course, you've seen it in certain scenarios on roads, but that has been the biggest conference in my opinion is seeing this in a big city where people have more quickly been able to get out, but you also have to think there are a lot more homes in a place like altadena than a place like paradise or chico. >> absolutely. ashley sharp live for us in altadena, we appreciate it. let's bring in first alert meteorologist darren peck now because again, talking about the weather, that is a huge factor. it seems like they've gotten some relief from the winds. >> yeah, they have. doesn't mean that the fires have completely lied down, but the winds at least are not as violent. >> right. and making it less likely to spread so far out of

control. >> but they're still there and they're still strong enough that on a normal day these would be problematic winds. what happened to start this off was extreme. so at least we're not doing this. let me show you how this will play out. even if we're getting a bit of a break now, we can see what's coming on the big picture wind-wise. keep your eye on the gulf. that's the original area of low pressure that started this for us several days ago. that thing is already in the gulf. what we care about is what's coming next from upstream. i want to get us to monday when we see the next uptick. we're looking ahead to monday. there's your timestamp. this is offshore winds. it's very shuttle. let me just walk that line right there. that little line, those are your offshore winds that take you right into the antelope valley and that goes into southern california. when we looked at this for monday, that was colored red

and orange. it was much stronger. so this isn't that bad, but it's still there and it's still coming back. so we at least know we get a little bit of a break. i can show you what that looks like how the wind is at least the next couple hours considering the number of new fires l.a. is dealing with. the wind is still moving in the same direction generally north to south. as we play this through to tomorrow, we're still looking at winds in the mountains here and a lot of the new fires are in and around here. you still have 20-mile-an-hour winds at the higher elevations, but watch what happens after that, friday night into the weekend, much calmer. it's a short window they'll need to make the most of. the wind has been the big focus in southern california, but the weather of the last two winters is probably even more important. i want to explain why. we've been showing you nothing but fire video from southern california from what's going on now. that is l.a. last winter. we were talking about how this winter

is record dry. it can be easy to forget last winter downtown this is video through the sepulveda basin in the san fernando valley, but l.a. as a whole got about 240% of average rainfall last year and the year before that they got about 150% of average rainfall. those were two huge rainfall years which were then followed by this year, which is in some cases historically dry. we went from big extremes which really allowed all the vegetation to grow like gang busters and now all that vegetation which has died got really dried out through a very hot summer and well into the middle of winter it's totally dried out and just waiting to go up in flames because they haven't gotten any rain in southern california. that is meteorological whiplash, something we've talked about a lot here in california. it's pretty timely that a paper came out today. so we'll go to the journal here which was published by one of the leading climate scientists who has really been forwarding this notion that we should probably start getting used to the idea

that we'll be going through more whiplash of one extreme to the other. daniel swain and his group of researchers out of ucla and originally stanford published this paper today. the timing is uncanny. if we leave behind the paper that they published and switch back to the weather computer, just a review on how this went this winter, we've shown you that. the red shows where we're record dry. this was last winter and this was the winter before that. if we come on in for a close-up look at l.a., 0 percent average rainfall this winter. last year numbers were 190% and the year before up 240%. so swinging wildly from one extreme to the next is the hallmark that we should be thinking about. sure, this was a big wind event, but the winds were only the last little element of this. it was really the preceding two winters that set us up for the fires that california is now seeing and

the paper tells us as we go ahead over the next several decades of warming, we're likely going to be seeing that whiplash become more intense. that's kind of like the simple takeaway. we'll talk about this again in a little more detail during the 5:30 newscast. i'll be back with our forecast in a few minutes. the federal government, back to the fires, is expected to cover 100% of fire recovery costs. today president biden was briefed on the situation and said the feds would foot the bill for the next six months. this is expected to be one of the costliest disasters in the state's history. let's go back to that palisades fire. this map shows where it is burning along the coast up into malibu. you can see hills and canyons have been causing real problems for firefighters there. we have sent some of our cbs news bay area reporters down to southern california. kevin ko was in pacific palisades where he talked with a man trying to save his childhood home.

>> they wouldn't let us back up and then i just -- i know the back routes up here. i grew up here my whole life since i was born. my mom's still there, and doing our best to try to save mom's house. >> reporter: i'm not here often. when i see this, i see ash that looks like snow and houses completely gone. i mean what was this neighborhood to you? what did it mean to you and what is it like seeing it now? >> went skateboarding down these streets. this is home. this is for sure. palisades is my home and it's nothing like it. i never seen nothing like it. it's heavy. it's heavy. a lot of it's gone. >> reporter: my last question for you is a lot of people have been watching a lot of this coverage. >> yeah. >> reporter: you've been in this. >> yeah. >> reporter: what is one thing you'd just like for people to know? >> we'll rebuild, you know.

it's gone, you know. we'll just rebuild and fingers crossed and, you know, just try to stay positive and stay as a community and, you know, i give my heart out to my neighbors who lost their lives, lost their houses and i just did what i could and i pray for everybody in the palisades. i love all of you all. please just hold tight and we'll get through this. >> reporter: chris, appreciate you. >> appreciate you. >> reporter: thank you. best of luck to you. >> this is some video from elsewhere in the palisades fire taken by our photojournalist brian kiley in southern california, a preschool burning to the ground today along with several buildings in that neighborhood. stay with us for more wildfire coverage coming after the break. we are with a

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>anne>and we are continuing to follow breaking news this afternoon. this is a live look at yet another new fire that has broken out in the los angeles area. this is called the ken that kenneth fire that broke out about an hour ago and has burned about 50 acres. back to the eaton fire near pasadena, >> i heard there was a fire in altadena and all i said was let's get the photos and videos. there were embers flying over our head. so we just started loading boxes and boxes of videos and photos and rescuing all of that. we put on hard hats while loading up the car because embers were flying and police were going all around the neighborhood saying evacuate. this is before we even got the alert. so it was

word of mouth. that's how quickly all of this happened. my mom is so angry and so sad and she wishes we had more time. i think everybody wishes they had more time to have taken more stuff and as the days go on, we're processing more. we're finding more. we're realizing we're never going to see this again. you're never going to see your grandmother's crocheted knit stuff again. you'll never see your blanky again. one of the things i think is so important is to actually acknowledge how much this sucks and how painful this is and my mom, my brother, and i, we actually had -- i felt like -- when you're grieving a loss, you can't do it with your loved ones sometimes. so i came here on my own yesterday and a friend came and she hugged me and i burst into tears. my mom came with support. my brother wanted to see it on his own. he just wouldn't shed a tear until he came and he actually saw it with his own eyes. when he shed a tear, when i showed him that i saved a stuffy of our first

dog that i had for 20 years and it was one of those i'll take that, too, just in case and that's when he got emotional. i think one of the most important things when you're going through something like this and seeing it from my perspective, we're always asking people how are you feeling, what's going on through your mind? it comes in waves. one second i'm okay and i'm like i'm so grateful. my town is burning down. we're seeing embers fly over our cars, but i'm alive. everybody is alive and well. >> cbs news is partnering with the red cross to try to raise money for people impacted by those wildfires in southern california. you can donate to the red cross by going to redcross.org/cbs. you can also call 1-800-red cross or text red cross to 90999. that way you'll automatically make a $10 donation. now to our local forecast, darren, it looks like it is going to get a little windy

around here but nothing like what they're seeing in southern california. >> no. even that, the offshore winds happening here and we're getting offshore winds like they are, but obviously way lighter and a lot more confined. it gets windy in the mountains at times, but we don't notice a whole lot down here. >> right. of course, we've gotten more rain than they have. we're feeling very lucky for what we have. >> we're very shielded this winter. >> i know. >> we've done about 100% of average in general. some places are way above that. it can be hard to kind of keep track of what's going on in terms of which fire where. that's the high resolution satellite imagery right before the sun started to get too low. you're looking up to about the last half hour. this is what southern california looks like right now. let's come back over here and bring up the smaller monitor. the most recent fire has broken out on the west side of the san fernando valley called the kenneth fire. if we can come in for as tight of view as we can,

that would be this new one of watch right here. you'll see a plume of smoke that appears out of nowhere. that's the most recent one that has started and for those who are familiar with southern california, if you've got friends or family down there, this is the san fernando valley. this is a part of southern california which as of yet has not been experiencing the wildfires. so that one's new. that's the original palisades fire there. you can see that one is really putting off another good plume of smoke today and burning a little higher up towards the ridge of the santa monica mountains. it's kind of going the other way than it had been, going upslope primarily. this is the eaton fire burning in altadena. those are the three primary ones and the smoke kind of merges. it's going to be busy. we talked about winds in the last visit there and wind at least is going to die down starting tomorrow. they will get a little break. the upper level winds want to take some of that smoke and drift it a bit our way. we really won't

experience much from that. we aren't really getting much impact at all from a smoke standpoint. low end of the concern scale, i know, but some people have asked and are wondering considering our recent awareness level of how bad it is to breathe that stuff in, which is a whole other side of this story, by the way, for everybody down in southern california who has been breathing this now for days in places, more on that in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. there's your seven-day forecast, nothing going on

coming up next at 5:00, as the devastating fires continue to burn out of control in l.a., how animal shelters are stepping up to help. and an app from a bay area developer credited with saving lives, we'll show how it helped saving evacuees when every second counts. former president carter celebrated for his character and compassion, today the state funeral and tribute by his family and long