they smelled it in the area. in one case a gentleman told me he was at his house, garage was open and doing work, and pg&e tells him to shut his garage and tells everybody to shut their garage because they believed they had a natural gas leak. no indication though there was any connection between that and what happened at 6:00 p.m. on thur night. thursday night. i did want to point out we had indication from some of the residents in the area, were down there when this was first going on, and they saw firefighters trying to get water out of the high drants and unable to hydrants and unable to do so because there was no water. that s a bad situation, no water with a fire like that. absolutely. they talk about this high pressure gas line, people hearing this massive explosion. and they said they were unable to get close enough to it to shut it off. that s not the case now, they
help relief the red cross. it helps the city of san bruno, all of the mutual aide, police, fire, healthcare workers, safety workers in terms of providing funding to allow the funds to make it out expeditiously. i understand the lieu 10 the lieutenant govenor is coming down tomorrow as well. in situations like this, you mention the mental health workers that you bring in. people obviously are going to be upset. they had to leave as fast as they could and take anything you could salvage. why is that so important after an ordeal like this? it is a very traumatic experience. and it is important to have people there to help them work through the issues and deal with what s going on around
gentleman lost his home in the fire. as you can imagine some people will be staying with family. some people will be staying with friends. others probably don t know what they will do. the red cross is there. i m sure they are at that bay hill shopping center, and they are doing what they can to take care of everybody. thank you, john, so much for joining us and for all of the information you just gave us. ktvu reporter, thank you. now we will go to mary mcmillan. she is with the san mateo department of emergency management and talk about what is being done with the relief effort, helping those people who had to leave their homes quickly to escape that massive, raging fire that we have just been showing you all night and all morning. mary, what can you tell us right now about the we are talking about the shelter and about what is being done to help people right now? sure, and san mateo county s role is just a support role. we have been working since just after 6:00 setting up t
will be lost as well. john, you have watched this fire. it looks like it has happened really fast. you can only imagine what it must be like to watch your home burning around you and you are trying to get out and grab anything you can. have you been able to talk to any of these people who had to get out quick? we kind of had some conversations with some people who said that most of the people up here we were talking to were from the neighborhood above the fire zone. we talked to a couple of people who simply said they didn t have time to do anything other than grab a pet or grab a purse and run out of the house. they didn t have time to grab their car or anything. they had to run out. this fire was spreading so quickly. it was pretty windy this afternoon. fortunately it wasn t windy like down in southern california they have the santa ana winds. it has been a very cool summer and we have an offshore flow that kicks up about now.
them. we have also had a terrific response from the faith-based community to be present and provide support to folks as well. now, i covered a lot of disasters like this, mainly weather-related. and it is always important. it seems like at a time like this, you know, prayers help. yeah. tough time. definitely. and it will be as bleak tomorrow morning when they really need to get back out there, building inspectorses and the rest. all right. mary mcmillan, thank you so much and good luck with everything you are doing out there to help those families. thank you. appreciate you. just a recap if you are just joining us, massive fire in san bruno, california. it is a suburb of san francisco. it started about 6:00 p.m. pacific. firefighters now have it about 50% contained. at least one person dead, dozens injured.