Homes on Via La Mirada burning in Norte Fire

You know, the fire, the fire has gotten through there, it has devastated the vegetation through a lot of this area, and it's the firefighters and also fire planning, you have to think that a lot of these homes, modern homes, and I'm sure Orange County, much like Los Angeles, they probably have fire inspectors that go through there and basically say, hey, you need clearance, you know, you're on this hillside, or you've got shrubs that are this close to your house, you know, you need to clear that. And also when these homes were built, they were built with in mind that, you know, this is a fire area. So, yeah, the modern technology and the firefighters and, of course, the diligent homeowners are all the reasons why a lot of these homes are standing. But for the most part, it's going to be the firefighters in this case because they have gotten so close to so many of these homes. The one that we showed you, you know, we saw the eaves starting to catch fire and somebody somewhere, probably that battalion chief, put it out there and that next Phos-Chek dropped from that plane, basically painted that house red, but put out that fire and that structure is still standing. So it is a testament to the firefighters and their planning and their strategies to keep these homes safe. It's so great to see all that Phos-Chek down below. Of course, hate to have to report the fact that there were homes actively on fire. That is underway in San Juan Capistrano, but it is good to see the pink, that Phos-Chek. It does work wonders. I just put up the evacuation zone map because those are in place. I just want to remind folks that evacuation orders in San Juan Capistrano, No, those are zones four, five and 10 and San Clemente zones 12 and 13. The 13 is the newest zone that was added. It has been under evacuation for a few minutes now, but that was the zone that was added. And what a shot that is, Stu, with all of that pink down below. Definitely. And I'm sure that, you know, that that pool probably going to be a problem there. There's probably going to be some cussing going on from somebody. But in the long run, you just got to look at it. The house is still standing. And that, I think, is where that fire was licking up against that structure right there. Also, that fire truck, those guys, they're going to have to clean that. I can attest to it is very difficult to get off of vehicles and clothing. But you can also see that truck probably was parked right there when the drop was made. And then they backed out a little bit. They pulled out the hose lines, and they're just kind of cleaning up those hot spots as it is. You know, it is amazing work in coordination by the firefighters and then the aerial assets. Those are also firefighters. But how they work together to keep those structures safe, it's amazing. And, like, as I'm pulling out there, I can see a little bit of a hot spot. But, again, not really near any homes, and it doesn't have any place to run to. That's the technical firefighter term, meaning the wind is going to basically push it back on itself or push it to where the fire check is. So it will put itself out, but that doesn't mean the firefighters are just like, you know, cleaning their hands and walking away. There's going to be crews out here probably for days afterwards working through these areas, going through those between the houses, checking a lot of that area that has burned just to make sure that all those embers are taken care of and all those hot spots are taken care of. And if we get that rain, that'll be the best. Oh, without question. Bring on the rain, and that is expected next week. We could use it now, though. Not on, I mean, we need it of all days on this red flag day. And we are seeing just this home, it looks like, with that smoke. Is it enveloped in smoke, or is this one actually on fire? I certainly hope it's not on fire. We're zooming in on these beautiful properties in San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente. Go ahead, Stu. No, I was going to say, Marla, that's the reason why I was looking. It definitely looked like that smoke was coming off of that home, but I think it really truly was just the way the wind was moving it around there, but it definitely looked like it, right? But they definitely had firefighters around that one as well, keeping an eye on it. It seems, though, that that fire, I'm going to go back onto a wider shot, basically ran up this hillside up here. uh you know the ignition point i think was over here like in this area uh this is where i think it started when we first arrived it seemed to be coming from there and then moving its way this way uh that was the way the wind was pushing it up into those hillsides and then down onto that other side down there where those homes are again i just i'm so happy to say that the bulk of the fire has moved along and is basically is kind of out and hopefully it's going to stay that way could it reignite of course um you know is the firefighter saying oh this fire is out no but you can just tell by the the sight picture we're not seeing those big blossoms of fire anymore on the hillsides yes there's some fire here and there but not like it was even some of that smoke is starting to uh you know basically evaporate because there's no more fuel here and that's what we want to see. I just want to see that smoke get out of those, get away from those home areas. Not so much so we can see the homes, but more just to know that those homes will be safe because that fire has basically passed through there. But there is still a heavy bulk of fire like right there on that hillside. You can see that smoke just blossoming and carrying across those homes. And we all know it. It is very dangerous. There could be embers in there, could be creating could be creating some more issues uh and uh just got the dylan saying our 20 minutes has just turned into 15 because the timer has been running and so we're gonna have you're gonna have skyfox for about another 15 minutes or so before we're gonna have to go and get fuel and we understand that there may be another helicopter to take over our spot at some point absolutely your safety is our number one priority so you just let us know when you have to cruise away and we'll continue to work to get some aerial shots for our viewers vital information that we're able to provide on this friday afternoon where this Norte fire erupted in san clemente 250 acres that's the last that we heard from orange county fire authority this is a mutual aid effort let's be clear it's ocfa the lead agency laguna beach is also part of the firefight down below also angeles national forest lending its air resources to the firefight Air resources are critical in these situations. We know that. We've seen that absolutely the case, especially in the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire in Altadena and the devastation that we saw on January 7th of 2025. At least three homes we've seen have caught fire in this Norte Fire. There are those evacuation zones that have been announced. And with that new information that we reported just recently, evacuation shelters have been named. So both the community centers, one in San Juan Capistrano, another in the city of San Clemente, those community centers are open to be used as evacuation shelters. So if you need a place to go, you can go to your community center in your city, whether that's San Juan Capistrano or San Clemente. Clemente. Stu, I'm still working to get somebody on the line from Orange County Fire Authority. And in the meantime, we know how important the weather is in this firefight. So I'm going to lower your microphone, Stu. Holler if you have new information. I'm going to raise the microphone, though, of our meteorologist, Adam Kruger, who joins our coverage now. Adam, this is those red fly conditions that you forecasted. What's the current situation down on the ground? Yeah, I mean, it's hot. The air is dry. We've got those winds that are gusting around 30 or so in this area. And I'm going to get to a wind forecast eventually, but winds will not really let up much all the way through tomorrow morning. So I've got some resources here or some visuals. Zoom one. And I know we, you know, I don't want to get too far from the aerial shots because they're quite compelling. I don't know if we can split screen it. But just to give you an idea, again, here's the area we're talking about. You see the red, that's the mandatory evacuations. So I'm going to switch from that over to the same area, and here's where we have a cluster of weather instruments. Notice over a lot of the hills here, we actually don't have specific data there, but very close to it, around Capistrano Beach, for example, I'll click this weather station right here. That red number indicates there's a wind gust of 29 miles per hour right now, and I want to show you the history of what this weather station has been reporting, and so I know you might have to squint a little bit on the screen to view this, but we've got to report every five minutes out of this station. So here's 210, here's 205, here's two o'clock, for example. The temperature is 100 degrees there right now. And again, we're talking right near the beach. That's pretty wild. The relative humidity is around 17, 18%. And then the purple numbers here are the wind gusts for each five minute increment. So we've got a gust of 29, five minutes ago, 29, five minutes before that, 29. And generally those gusts have been 20 to 30 or so. You go back to around noon, you can see some gusts here that were around 39 miles per hour. If we switch over to radar three, I'm going to show you a wind forecast now, which will give you an idea of what we're expecting for this specific area. And so I've got my weather graphics lined up there. So this is what we call future gusts. So we're going to look into the future. You can see the timestamp on the top middle part of the screen. And so this is three o'clock this afternoon. There's Dana Point, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Laguna Niguel. You see the gust forecast over 30 miles per hour. We're going to advance this in three hour increments and give you a really good idea of what we expect for the rest of today and tonight. So now we're looking at six o'clock tonight. Maybe the speeds are down slightly, but it's still hot. It's still dry and the winds are still significant. And you see the direction of the wind pretty much out of the east northeast blowing towards the ocean, which is what we've seen out of this whole event. There we go into 9 p.m. Still, the gusts are generally around 30, even a little stronger, perhaps at some of those higher elevations. You know, San Clemente, it's forecasting 37. Here we go into midnight. And this is like what we saw last night where the winds really didn't come down much during the nighttime hours. This is not one of those normal days in Southern California where the winds pick up during the day and calm down at night. The winds are being driven by our atmospheric setup right now, not by day versus night. So because of that, winds stay strong overnight. That's midnight, still some gusts over 30. Here we go into three o'clock tomorrow morning. Here's six o'clock tomorrow morning. Those purple colors indicating still gusts over 30 to 35. We do expect late day Saturday, a drop off in the winds, but Saturday morning is going to be about as windy is what we see right now. There's 9 a.m. Saturday, there's noon on Saturday, and here's three o'clock now Saturday afternoon, which not only do the wind speeds come down, but we probably get an ocean breeze actually coming in by Saturday afternoon. So that's the part we're looking forward to. Late day tomorrow, the winds change.