Speaker 1: Fire crews are once again scrambling to stop a wildfire. The Hughes fire, burning north of LA, has ripped through more than 10,000 acres and about 4,000 hectares in less than a day. And it's only 14% contained. Tens of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate. And the National Weather Service has extended a red flag warning for most of Los Angeles and Ventura counties until early Friday.

Speaker 2: Eww, that is not good, guys, not good at all.

Speaker 1: Well, students attending the Castaic Middle School and High School were among those evacuated Wednesday. The California Highway Patrol says they wound up in a supermarket parking lot.

Speaker 3: It happened real fast. Like, it was like a little bit of fire, and then we went outside like that, and there was a lot of fire. Like, it was crazy.

Speaker 1: Well, dark plumes of smoke also providing an eerie backdrop to the rides at an amusement park in nearby Valencia, which was forced to close. The fear is that growing winds overnight and dry brush will provide new fuel for the flames.

Speaker 2: Right now, our priority is the front of the fire, the fire front. We have engines at the houses that are in front of this fire there to protect those structures. We're concentrating the aircraft where you see the orange glow. That's our main priority is to slow this fire down and eventually stop it. And then we'll worry about getting a fire perimeter cut around the whole thing once we get the main head of this fire slowed down and put out.

Speaker 1: Well, CNN's Veronica Merkel has our report from the fire zone.

Speaker 3: Right now, 31,000 people are currently under mandatory evacuation orders. We are just 45 minutes away from the last deadly and destructive fire that burned in Los Angeles just a few days ago, the Eaton fire. This is the Hughes fire that you're looking at, and you can see the flames roaring behind us over that hillside. Luckily, the fire is burning right now in an area that is desolate. It's just shrubs and a lot of plants, and it's not moving toward residences. But there is, of course, major concern that winds could shift, winds could pick up and blow embers in the direction of houses, of businesses. There's also an RV park just right over the hill there. So firefighters have descended upon this community coming from the Eaton fire and the Palisades fire, moving over here. About 4,000 of them are working to make sure that they can contain this overnight and take advantage of cooler temperatures and lower winds. Veronica Merkel, CNN, Castaic, California.

Speaker 1: Well, a retired Cal Fire operations chief spoke to CNN earlier about what worries him the most about the Hughes fire.

Speaker 4: Several thousand people have had to be evacuated because you're running into conditions that have extreme winds coupled with steep terrain and heavy fuels. Access points in rural areas are more difficult as well. And so the conditions for doing direct fire attack, doing perimeter control operations are challenging right now until those winds subsided. And I believe that that's the case, that they have subsided somewhat since the daytime. But what is expected is that they're going to come up again tomorrow. And so the work that they're trying to do right now is going to be key during the night to make sure that they can try to get this contained ahead before the wind speed picks up in those areas.

Speaker 5: A new evacuation warning just issued in the L.A. neighborhood of Sherman Oaks because of a new fire there. People were seen leaving overnight as firefighters scrambled to try to put out those flames. Crews had already been battling the Hughes fire, which started yesterday. As of this morning, that fire is about 14% contained. You can see the smoke from that fire in this video from inside the cockpit of a California Air National Guard plane. Some people trying to save their homes from the flames.

Speaker 6: Everybody's watering their roofs. We are doing this house and the house next to us. We're hoping for the best. It's getting worse. It gets better. It gets worse. It gets better. It gets worse. But we have no expectations.

Speaker 5: Joining us now is Ariel Cohen, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service station in Los Angeles. Ariel, thanks for being back on the show this morning. I appreciate it. Can you give us the latest on where this fire is, what the status is, is it getting worse, getting better, what the fight looks like?

Speaker 7: Yes, we have two wildfires right now in Los Angeles County that continue to grow at this point. There's definitely been a lot of work done also to slow their growth, and we're seeing that. One is in northwest Los Angeles County. That's the Hughes fire, and that developed explosively during the daytime hours on Wednesday. Early this Thursday morning, the environment remains highly conducive for these fires to continue to spread and any new fires to develop and grow very significantly if there were to be ignitions. The Sepulveda fire also had expanded across portions of eastern Santa Monica, including the 405, threatening some areas that are very highly populated. And so overall, we remain in a very high state of readiness when it comes to the fact that we're still dealing with this prolonged extreme fire weather event across Southern California.

Speaker 5: Can you give us an idea, you know, for people who don't live in the Los Angeles area but may be familiar with, you know, some of the many landmarks that do exist? This fire, I understand, is close to some of them. I mean, what areas might people recognize that are under threat right now?

Speaker 7: Exactly. The area around the Getty Museum is definitely an area where evacuation warnings have been issued earlier, and everyone needs to be paying attention to the potential for evacuation warnings or orders. Evacuation order is issued for your area. You know, you have to take that seriously. Leave now. You don't want to wait at all seconds, make the difference between life and death. You know, this particular fire is not too far away from UCLA, not too far away from Beverly Hills area, although it is more located over the eastern extent of the Santa Monica Mountains and southwest LA County. Farther to the north, the Hughes fire is located far from the main population center of Los Angeles. However, communities around Custaic and Custaic Lake are certainly being impacted by all of the smoke, as well as the fire spreading around the perimeter of Custaic Lake. And so, you know, as we head through the remainder of the overnight hours, the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, we're dealing with a continued red flag conditions, highly critical conditions. Everyone has to stay at a high state of readiness, not only for these fires, but any other fires that if they were to form, could grow rapidly, grow explosively, and everyone needs to know where to go, have that go kit, and have multiple ways to receive emergency information from emergency management officials and law enforcement. Because again, those seconds make the difference between life and death when it comes to these evacuation orders.

Speaker 5: Absolutely. And Ariel, the winds, what is the forecast in terms of how long those winds may continue to last, or will there be a reprieve here in the coming days?

Speaker 7: You know, unfortunately, we're looking at these strong winds to continue on and up, especially over the higher elevations. As we head through the daytime on Thursday, into Thursday night and even Friday morning, red flag warnings remain in effect into Friday. Highest winds will be over the mountains, although foothills locations could also experience gusty winds. Again, over the mountains, gusts upwards of 60 to 65 miles per hour already occurring, and will continue at times all the way through Friday morning. And so this environment continues to contain a volatile combination of ingredients, creating a very, very favorable setup for fires to grow rapidly. Everyone needs to be prepared, be thinking about what could happen if you were to be threatened by these fires and evacuation orders come. As we head into this weekend, a very dramatic change in the weather is expected as a storm system with a lot of cold air comes into the region. It will bring beneficial rains into many areas. We're talking about amounts upwards of a half to an inch in many spots of Los Angeles, Ventura counties, locally higher amounts over the mountains, especially coast facing slopes of those mountains. However, one thing to note is that if we were to get any thunderstorm cells or heavier rain cells set up, and if they go over some of the areas that were recently burned, that will be susceptible to debris flows, rock slides, mud slides, another flooding, talking about a very low chance, but one that's not zero. And we may not be particularly confident in those higher end impacts until right before they occur. So if you have susceptibility, especially near these recently burned areas, Palisades fire, Eaton fire, Hughes fire, and any other burn areas, be already thinking about what you would do if you were to experience a debris flow, because we could be looking at the low chance for that occurring this weekend. Beyond that, things will be drying out next week, although we don't see any significant Santa Ana wind events on the horizon beyond the end of this week.

Speaker 5: All right, Ariel Cohen for us this morning, sir. Very grateful to have you on the show. Thanks very much for being here.