Wildfires in Southern California torch dozens of homes and force thousands to evacuate

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00:00Three major wildfires in Southern California's mountains east of Los

00:04Angeles have torched dozens of homes and forced thousands of people to

00:07evacuate there. At least a dozen people, mainly firefighters, treated for injuries

00:12that were mostly heat-related. The wildfires continuing to endanger tens of

00:16thousands of homes as they sprung up during a triple-digit heatwave over the

00:21weekend. Well let's hear from our correspondent Waseem Kornay in Los

00:25Angeles. This is a situation that is rarely seen here in Southern California.

00:32Three major fires burning close to Los Angeles. That has led the governor of

00:37this state, Gavin Newsom, to declare a state of emergency in four counties to

00:41facilitate the deployment of emergency personnel in the response to these fires.

00:466,000 emergency personnel are currently deployed. That includes 500 fire engines

00:51and dozens of aircraft. Let's start with the good news. The so-called line fire,

00:56which is burning east of Los Angeles, is now 18% contained and whenever we see

01:00numbers between over 10 or 15%, that means that firefighters are gaining the

01:05upper hand and will be able to extinguish the fire unless we see a

01:08major deterioration in weather conditions. And that is the other bit of

01:12good news is that these three fires really erupted at the tail end of a

01:17severe week-long heatwave here in Southern California. Temperatures are now

01:20currently dropping dramatically and they're forecast to stay below average

01:24over the next couple of weeks and that should really of course help

01:27firefighters in their efforts. But unfortunately there is a lot of bad news.

01:31We've already seen 445 square kilometers of vegetation go up in flames. We've

01:37already seen dozens of people, dozens of homes lost, dozen people injured and

01:42there are still at this hour tens of thousands of people that are currently

01:46under an evacuation order. Unfortunately the winds that have really led these

01:51three fires to explode over these past few days will continue gusting at least

01:56over the next 24 hours.

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