christopher carlson, victim of the noble fire there in oklahoma joining us live on the phone. thank you, christopher. oklahoma is not the only victim. it's just the latest one of this hot, dry year. it has plenty of company. here's a look at the drought monitor map. check it out closely. the version of the map updated just a couple days ago. right now more than half of all u.s. counties in the lower 48 have been designated disaster zones. last hour i talked with ernie goss who just finished a new study that shows how the drought is dragging down the economy. >> what we tracked in our two surveys for the month of july is the spilling over to other industries because obviously when consumers have less money, spend more on food, they have less money to spend on other factors. we haven't seen all of that yet. we'll see it in the months ahead and, in fact, the next -- coming in the latter part of 2012 and into 2013. >> estimates for crop losses from the drought to top $20 billion this year. if we could only get some of the rainfall from the tropical systems up there. we have two tro

i have christopher carlson on the phone right now. safe in norman now i'm told, christopher. tell us about your harrowing experience. >> well, yes, rob. i am safe. my family is safe at the moment. thank god. we were watching the north fire. there was a major wildfire north of my house. it started out there and it was going north so i wasn't too concerned with that. about an hour later, my wife called me and told me there is a major fire north of us, which i already knew. i went out to look at that and i noticed there was smoke and embers blowing from the south across my vision. i'm like, okay. what's going on there? so i went to the back of the house and went out the back porch and walked into literally a forest fire in my back yard. the entire neighborhood behind me was engulfed and all the forest around me was on fire right up to my porch where i was standing. >> what went through your head and what did you do next? >> the very first thing was to get my step son out of the house. i have two step sons. only one was there at the time.