captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, november 17: dozens are dead and more than 1,000 are unaccounted for as california's wildfire continue to burn. in our signature segment, dental health in west virginia leaves little to smile about. and wilco front-man jeff tweedy on a career spent outside the boundaries. next on "pbs newshour weekend." >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. sue and edgar wa.chenheim i theton melvin. cheryl and philip milstein family. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. fouation. rosalind p. walter.

barbara hope zuckerbg. corporate funding is provil d by mut america-- designing customized individual ctand group retirement pro that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers le you. thank you. from tch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening and thank you for joining us. more than 70 people are now confirmed dead in northern california's "camp fire" and there are re than 1,000 reported missing. it is the deadliest and most destructive in the state's history. day president trump traveled to the scene of the fire's worst destruction. >> nobody would ever thought this could have enppened. >> sasan: standing with california governor jerry brown, trvernor-elect gavin newsom, fema adminor brock long and the mayor of paradise jody asnes, mr. trump again mentioned

forest managemen possible contributing factor in the deadly fire. >> you got to take care of the floors. you know the floors of the forests. very important. you look at other countries wher do it differently. and it's a whole different story. i was with the president of nland and he said, "we have a forest nation." they spend a lot of tiing and cleaning and doing things and they don't have any problem. and when they do, it'sery small problem. >> sreenivasan: firefighters and forestry experts have repeatedly criticized the president for blaming forest management practices. more than half of california's forests are managed by the federal government. the president also met firefighters and first responders before returning to the white house late tonight. ts. intelligence officials ha"" high confidence"t prince mohammed bin salman of saudi arabia directed the assassination of journalist jamal khashoggi. it was first reported by the "washington po" last night. the government of saudi arabia has repeatedly denied that the prince was involved, but has

said it will seek the death dipenalty for five saccused of carrying out khashoggi's murder in istanbul turkey last month. as early as this morning, prt esidump stated "we were told" the crown prince "did not play a role" and called saudi ara abiauly spectacular ally in terms of jobs and economic development. he then boarded air force one to california and is said to have spoken with the head of the c.i.a. gina haspel and secretary of state mike pompeo about the c.iin.a.'s findgs. >> sreenivasan: the cae's devastation in and around paradise california means many thousands of people are homeless. some aren shelters, others with family or friends, and still others are camped out in tents. for the latest, we turn now to julia sulek, a reporter for the "san jose mercury news" joins us via skype from chico, california. first, tell us where you're standing. >> reporter: i'm standing in

front of whathey're calling a tent city on the edge of the-- of a walmart parking lot here. people with no place to go have put up tents here.th 've been well taken care of by-- by walmart and lots of donors. but they're asking that the tent city be broken up and people go to shelters. the rain's coming next week, and it's realler cold out >> sreenivasan: and what kind of shelter capacity exists in the area? is fema on the ground? and what are they dng? >> reporter: fema is here. they have set up in an old sears, empty sears building, lots of services for peop with every disaster, the churches have opened their doors, the elks clubs. there's enough room for people. >.>> sreenivasan: there's quite a poax of the source of ts and mr. p.g.& e.then shelled accountable. >> in recent firestone there have been transformers and wind

that have knocked them down. there has been a lawsuit filed against p.g.& e. after the fire in santa rosa last year, p.g.& e. started a system with they had the red flag warnings and the winds got over a certain speed and the humidity was low they would turn off power. and they actually were warni people that they were planning to turn off power in the. paradise are they didn't. but, of course, in the meantime, as people were getting these notices, locals were complaining, "hey, i have a freezer full of meat. do you really have to turn them off?" it was an interesting dynamic of people not really realizing what was coming. >> sreenivasan: in terms of the number of people stil missing and. unaccounted f new yorkers are familiar with it after 9/11-- i should say the country is familiar with it. but you see these bulletin boards and just these incredibly emotional plea pleas to try to d relatives. >> reporter: oh, it's just so-- it's so awf

and i'm telling you i've been at these press conferences with the sheriff every night, and he gets up with the grim news, and it goes up by eight or 10 every day. i spoke with a search-and-rescue guy who is up there with, you know, huge teams, like 600 people are actually looking for the remains of the dead. and it's horringifying and the isscale of it. s double, almost twinle what former fires it's most devastating fires ever. so i actually got a call last night from a man who was missing his mother and stepfather. i had been in touch with him earlier in the week. and told mehat he got a call that his mother and stepfather were found dead in their home. and tha1s, you know, what 0 days later, it's just-- just horrifying. >> sreenivasan: julia sulek, a reporter for the "san josey mercws," joining us via skype live from cheek oh, california, thank you very much.

>> sreenivasan: tonight we bring you the third story in our series about poverty in america, this time in west virginia. newshour weekend special yrrespondent simon ostrov has been following in the footsteps of the united nations' special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, philip alston. alston recently toured america, spotliting third-world-style poverty in our first-world country. supported in part by a grant from the pulitzer center on crisis reporting, this report is part of our ongoing series about poverty and opportun america, "chasing the dream." m >> reporter:owell county is emblematic of the poverty still rgagging down parts of america. it leads west ia in the number of people hospitalized ovr opioid-related reasonser 36% of the population lives below the poverty line, and the population has dropped from 50,000 to less than 20,000 since 1970. a disproportionate amount of residents here rely on medicaid and medicare as their primary

health insurance. because programs don't cover dental in a meaningful way, it's led to a dental health crisis. the crisis is playing out in a town called welch. this facility is run by health right. it's a nonprofit medical group that deploys a mobile clinic staffed with three health professionals to areas of the stat care.served for dental >> we expect about 17 patients today all from the surrounding area, near welch itself. welch is one of our counties that we can't see as many patients because we have to travel longer to get here. >> reporter: nearl57 million people in the u.s. live in areas designated as "lacking basic ntaccess to care." >> and open. >> reporter: mcdowell county is one of them because of its cedistrom larger cities, a shrinking population, and an

increasing amount of those living in poverty. >> a lot of patients that we see never had any type of dental care before because they could never afford it. i grew up in india, and you see this a lot. i didn't really expect to see that in a developed country, but we do see that pretty much every day. >> i have 60-year-old patients o have never been to the dentist, who don't know what dental floss is. no one's ever taken the time to show them hoto brush their teeth. >> reporter: in 2014, west virginia's thegovernor, democrat earl ray tomblin, expanded medicaid under obamacroviding nearly 170,000 low income people medica before.e who had none but medicaid doesn't help much with dental problems. neither does medicare, which serves the elderly. medicare patient patricia mccguinness is well aware of that. >> dentist wants anywhere between $230-$500 to pull a tooth, and i don't have that much money.

and thank god to the health rite. i'm grateful. they're ing to let me come and get my tooth pulled. >> here it comes, okay? deep breaths. i'm done. >> you're done? >> yep. >> thank you, jesus! thank you, jesus. >bl> no p, dear. >> some of us who are on mfeedicare, no e, but the program is not working like it should be working. even when obama was in and even though trump is in, it's not helping us any. >> thank you. >> no problem, no problem. >>( thank you. sobbing ) >> no problem. all done, dear, okay? >> medicare pays for nothing as far as dental goes. all that a medicaid card will cover is extractions. >> reporter: a couple of day after our first visit, the mobile clinic had moved on to

another area of the state. >> start there and don't stop ou get over there! >> reporter: ledford hunt, a retired coal miner who once worked for a unionized mining company, has arrived to have his entire top row of teeth removed, a procedure that would have cost him one month's social security check had he gone to a private dentist. when you were still in work, what was your dental care like ba then? >> i had dental covered, everything. didn't have no problem. i had a good hospital card. it covered everything and didn't have no problem with it. >> reporter: what do you think is the overall reason that there are so many peoplehat can't afford their dental ot their other medical care? >> there's not enough work. i've worked all my life sie i was a baby, but this is something el i. ifwasn't for this, i couldn't have my teeth fixed. i couldn't afford it. >> reporter: this black rock was once the lifeblood of the west virginian economy, but, these days, retail chae the biggest employers, and they

often don't provide th workers with adequate health coverage. so, with the decline of the coal industry and retailers unwilling medicaid was expanded to cover more people and that coverisag continued under a republican governor, jim justice. >> when all we look for is bad. you know what it does? it drives people away. we have to stop that. we want people to celebrate how great this state i and we want to be happy. >> reporter: seth distefano is the policy outreach coordinato for the west virginia center on

budget and policy, which campaign's on behalf of low income west virgians. believes several pieces of legislation backed by governor justice and passed by the legislature would ultimately hurt the state's poor. >> to the surprise of a lot of people, there were a series of bills took upwds of close to a 00 million of medicaid and pushed it towards things that had thing to do with althcare. among those things, senate bill c385 took a significank of money and put it towards fixing ofcilities under the domai the department of military affairs and public safety-- prisons, basically. >> reporter: distefano says he and other advocates had lobbied for a different state-spending path. >> one of the things that was put forward was that maybe we should look at taking this money that has been dedicated fixing roofs on, you know, correctional facilitiesand instead maybe dedicate it to restorative deweal work. ould have made a generational impact on something a that has drug west virgiwn for a very, very long time. >> reporter: back at the health

right mobile medical unit, i asked dental hygienist greta nelson if she expected the situation to change any time soon. >> in my lifetime, i don't see it changing to where we're going to get a health care s that's going to take care of people the way that it should. a lot of our patients are working poor. these people work two jobs but still don't have the means necessary to provide dental care for their family or for themselves. >> sreenivasan: newshour's jeffrey brown is at one of the country's biggest book fairs this weekend in miami. watch him interview authors on our website at pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: for nearly 25 gears, the band wilco has been bending the of rock, country and independent music. lngong a critical darthe group has built a legion of fans without ever scoring a top ten hit. but with his new memoir, the singer, songwriter and wilco frontman jeff tweedy appears to have a literary hit on his hands. newshour weekend's christopher booker recently sat down with tweedy in wilco's chicago loft-

sustudio to discuss aal career spent well outside the usual boundaries. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> reporter: even after reaecordingy 20 albums, winning two grammys, and writing a nearly 300-page memoir, trying to explain where it all comes from remains an elusive task for singer-songwriter jeff tweedy. >> it's all... it's all mysterious still. i n't... i can't explain. i can't even explain how people can whistle in tune, you know? you could read everything that i say authoritatively in the book with a, "huh?," you know. you could put a question mark at the end of most of the sentences. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

>> reporter: tweedy's memoir, let's go (so we can get back)," is an exploration of ctiativity, moti and heritage-- the story of a child of an alcoholic fats her; the starts and st musical stardom; and the struggle against anxiety, depreson and addiction. in a lot of ways, the book isn't just workingo pull back the rtain but almost remove the curtain all together. >> yeah, i reject the premise of the curtain to begin with. i've aays felt like the more human... the musicians that i love have become the more i have felt empowered to be, a musician or an artist. >> porter: the youngest of four kids, tweedy was raised in a belleville, illinois, a old manufacturing town about 20 miles outside st. louis. his father worked for the railroad, his mother designed ens for a local cabinet manufacturer. >> my mom and dad were both really, really smart, and it was recognized, but not in the traditional way, you know.

that's the thing i've really looked back and probably put together for the first time in... time in my life recently is, like, "oh, i've... i've had a life very similar to them." i didn't really makit much past high school, but i taught myself a trade, you know? >> reporter: tweedy's trade started with a love of punk rock-- bands like the ramones, the clash and the minutemen. a bt icycle accidpt him indoors for an entire summer. to pass the time, he picked up the guitar stashed in his closet. as a teenager, he played in a number of cover bands before co- founding uncle tupelo, a critcal darling of the early '90s credited with spawning an entire new genre of music: alt- country. but after four albums, his partner and childhood friend,un jay farrar, and he was no longer interested in making music with tweedy and that he upelo ending the way it ended. and then...nd then, it just, like, kind of like a practical notion of, like, "well, nothing i can do about th now. that's over with." and then, it dawning itn me, relatively, that presents opportunity somehow.

you know, as a... as a child of... of an alcoholic or an environment of alcoholism, there's a lot of unpredictability.ve though my dad's routine was predictable, his moods were unpredictable. which inhibit i think, a lot f feeling comfortable with your projection of the ture. that's probably where it really comes from, is, like, have... having a... having to adapt to your best projection of the future not really working out. >> reporter: for tweedy, the adaptation that followed uncle tupelo was the formation of wilco. a lot of wilco's history is here? >> yeah. for, like, 20 years, we have been here. almost everything from "yankee hotel foxtrot" on has had at least part of the record worked on here or recorded here.

♪ ♪ >> reporter: butols the 51-year- d recounts, this path was by no means simple and tidy. while their fan base and critical acclaim grew steadily during theiearly years, wilco was famously dropped by their record label after they refused to alter 2002's " foxtrot."tel the process was captured c the umentary, "i am trying to break your heart." >> titely, what it came down to is, they told jeff tweedy, "we don't like your album, we don't want to release it." ♪ ♪ >> reporter: for the band, the album was a new direction, moviring from tlt-country base to experimental alternative rock. but the label didn't hear a hit single. released online and in stores under a new label, the album was certified gold in 2002, and "rolling stone" magazine now yankee hotel foxtrot" amongst the top 500 albums of all time. the scess of "yankee hotel foxtrot" was followed two years later by their grammy-winning "a ght is born," cementing the

band's status as a force in american music. but tweedy. little joy for in the late '90s, he had begun taking vodin, at first to alleviate symptoms from migraines, depression and anxiety. by the time the band entered the studio in the fall of 2003 to record "a ghost is born," he was battling a full-time opioid addiction. >> you know, 15, 16 years ago, it used to be on a nightly basis, being in a debilitated heap, crying on the floor moments before walking on stage, you know. just really, really struggling to get through the first few songs. >> repter: upon completion of "a ghost is born," tweedy quit opioids cold turkey. but inhe weeks that followed, he sufa ferental collapse and checked himself into a intensive inpatient treatment center in chicago. did you find writing the book and chrngonicli it this way, did it change the way you think about your addiction? >> no, i don't think it did. that's the thing i've thought

about the most for the past 15 years, isprobablyhat i need to do next to stay healthy or to stay sober, or however you want to put it. i'm a big believer in when this get a little bit overwhelming, to slow yourself down and... and think of what the next right thing to do is. and i have all this evidence from many more years of... of my... of living that reassures me i'm... i'm probably going to be okay. ♪ ♪ >> reporter: being okay has also ment being prolific. in the years since his time in tal, wilco has released five studio albums, launched its own music festival in western mass tachusetts; whiedy has also produced a number of albums with gospel legend mavis staples, released a solo album as well as an album with his side project, tweedy, a duo with

his oldest son, spencer. at the end of this month, he .bll release his second solo >> there isn't, like, a... a career goal that i'm like, "oh, i want to achieve this." it's... i really very simply just... that i like being en ngagedcreative process. i feel sustained by it. i feel good about it. ♪ ♪ ie lovat feeling of being unburdened by self, or un... you know, you can really get in a super meditative state in, like, in the act of creation that... that i don't know where to... i don find it anywhere else. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

>> this is "pbs newshour weekend," satuay. >> sreenivasan: more than 100,000 protesters marched and drove throughout france today to demand that the government stop raising fuel taxes. moone person was killed an than 40 injured from the protests. drivers blocked toll booths, roundabouts, and caused roadblocks. the new fuel taxes are a part of president emmanuel macron's strategy to wean france off of foil fuels. protesters say it shows that the president is disconnected from the economic hardships of the average french citizen. cl london today, protesters ged bridges while calling for the government to take stronger action on climate change. a group calling themselves" extinction rebellion" organized the demonstrations. the protestors disrupted traffic on five major bridges critical ton's road system. britain recently announced plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero by the year 2050. speaking at the annual asia

pacific economic cooperation summit meeting today, president mike pence challenged china's approach to global trade as tensions over tariffs continue. >> we don't drown our partners in a sea of debt, we don't coerce, compromiseour independence. the united states deals openly, fairly. we do not offer constricting belt or a one-way road. when you partner with us, we partner with you and we all prosper. >> sreenivasan: speaking before pence, chinese president xi jinping said countries have to choose between cooperation or onfrontation. president xi and president trump are expected to discuss trade and tariffs at the g-20 meeting later this month. argentina's navy says it found a submarine that went missing just over a year ago with 44 crew members on board. the navy said that the ara san juan submarine reportedly" imploded" shortly after it went missing. itnd was fearly 3,000 feet below the surface off the coast of patagonia. the announcement comes only two days after families of the missing sailors held a ceremony to commemorate them

>> sreenivasan: join us tomorrow for a report from budapest where the movie business is paiking a new home away from hollywood. and we'll have the lon florida's vote count in the race for the u.s. senate. that's all for this edition of "pbs newshour weekend." i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by:rn

d and irene schwartz. sue and edgar wachenheim iii. seton melvin. the ch yfamily.hilip milstein dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company s additionport has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by co ributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. be more. pbs. [ theme music plays ]

-next on "great perfmances," how did a musical based on the life of an overlooked founding father become the hottest ticket in town? ♪ the ship is in the harbor now ♪ ♪ see if you can spot him -find out poser lin-manuel miranda kes us on his personal journey from original inspiration to broadway sensation. -i grabbed a biography off ilthe shelf of alexander hn, and i found it deeply moving and deeply personal when i read it. -♪ i'm thehiamn fool that sho♪ -something that really sort of spoke to me when i was, you knowto reading this and beginning to research and write it is that moment when we trade away capital in exchar the debt plan. we call it "the room where it happens." -♪ i've got to be -♪ the room where it happens -♪ i've got to be -♪ the room where it happens -♪ oh, i've got to be in -♪ the room where it happens ♪ i got to be, i got to be