Of Sonoma County. The man that lives in this home is calling firefighters heroes. All of these vehicles on his property owned by his brother and by him were lost and so was his brothers home but his home was saved. He watched at firefighters battled the flames in incredible winds. He says what they did to save other homes was heroic. A chimney tower from this once proud chalkville hill road. A neighbor said it looked like arrows of fire were flying at him as wind gusts launched burning embers towards him, his home, and the antique jeeps parked next to his home. It created a tremendous problem for the firefighters. Fire was spotting well out ahead of the main front. Reporter kincade Public Information officer fred woods has been taking media tours into the burned areas all day but has been here since the weekend watching the fire fight and agrees with that neighbor, the effort to save homes was heroic. So far the fire has destroyed at least 96 homes. When you drive these homes and see how the fire came right up to so many homes that were saved its a big credit to the firefighters that worked hard since saturday night. Theres a lot of devastation here too. And its unreal at times. Reporter and you can tell that were on this property here, this private property. We got permission from the property owner, but you think about security. Thousands of people evacuated from their homes. I can tell you the National Guard and police from all over the region are out here. Theyre checking ids at road blocks and keeping this area secured while firefighters i dont know if you can hear the aircraft in the background are battling the kincade fire that still continues to move in the hills around it. Were live in smonoma county. Governor newsom has been active in the fire zone. You can see him meeting with evacuees in santa rosa. Hes held two news briefings today, in both of them being very critical of pg e and his plans for the months and years ahead of what hes demanding pg e to do moving forward. Some people forced out of their homes are having a tough time finding room at evacuation centers, half of the 16 across north bay and San Francisco are at capacity. Hundreds of people are sleeping in tents or their cars instead. And churches are trying to pick up some of the slack. Its an effort they started two years ago turgt tubs fire. We want to be known as people who serve in our community. So, i think as christians, being a servant is who were supposed to be. We have posted a list of all the shelters on our website, nbcbayarea. Com. Not just the north bay. As you know this is awe bay area wide event. In the east bay a last minute change of plans prompted thousands of families to scramble late this morning. The west Contra Costa School District decided to close schools at noon due to the unhealthy and smoky air. Laura sambol is with us. Reporter around 10 00 this Morning Health officials sent out advisory warning people the air is unsafe. Within the hour the School District decided to let kids out of school early setting off a chain reaction. With masks covering their faces, kids in tow, parents leave fair Mont Elementary School at noon. Fairmont is just one of the dozens of schools that closed early today with less than two hours notice. Its a good thing to do. I was really worried in the morning. I was worried that they had school in the morning. Reporter sam came to the rescue of his grandson. His mom was in the city and his dad works at ocb near here. Reporter so roth is taking his grandson and theyll have to walk home. When i told him i would pick him up i thought i would have the car but my wifes got the car so i walked over. Reporter Marcus Walter says closing schools early was a tough call. We were monitoring the situation throughout the weekend. We went to bed last night thinking that our main concern was the Public Safety power shut off and woke up this morning to severely deteriorated air quality. Reporter county Health Officials say the air is unhealthy for most people but say it doesnt come close to the unhealthy levels we reached last year. The big concern last year was how long the smoke lasted. But there were some days last november where the air quality was much worse than its been today. Reporter as for tomorrow, still no word whether schools will remain closed. The district says it will let parents know as soon as it can. But keep in mind, that information could change at any minute. Reporting live from contra costa county, laura sambol. Even the south bay Los Gatos High School was closed today. Heres walnut creek. Another wind event will hit the bay area as early as tomorrow. So, timing with all this is critical. Lets bring in your chief meteorologist jeff raniere. Were talking about wind, smoke, and fire. What are you seeing thooes next 24, 36 hours. Right now you can see smoke. Most of the smoke plume today pushed across contra costa and alameda counties with obviously the worst of the air quality over the north bay. I think we have to contend with that smoke as we head through tomorrow so you might need to limit the outdoor exposure. What about the fire . Lets get you the latest on the kincade fire. We did see the wind direction change a little bit more out of the south so that helped the fire blow back on itself so thats a little bit of good news. Only gusts of about 20milesperhour. But the real danger comes in tomorrow night into wednesday morning. Were looking at another wind event where you just have to stay alert in the north bay. 45 to 60mileperhour wind gusts coming out of the north and east will again push embers. If you have not evacuated, we know Evacuation Orders are in place, you should not be there with this next event moving in. Calistoga you should be on alert to possibly evacuate. What about the wind forecast. Lets lay it out for you. Tonight not bad. 5 to 10milesperhour winds. Tomorrow morning, 10 to 25. By tomorrow evening 7 to 11 00 p. M. 30 to 60milesperhour gusts possible in the mountains. Overall the north bay is going to bear the brunt of this. Well have more updates in about ten minutes. Just a few minutes ago pg e updated us about power shutdowns but also went over new shutdowns. Pg e restored power to 300,000 of the 970,000 customers who lost power. Pg e says it is moving forward with the new outages scheduled for tomorrow. The company will put 605,000 customers in Northern California in the dark. In the bay area, 8 of the 9 counties will be impacted. Pg e says it hopes this will be the last major shut off we have for a while. After wednesday, after we get out of this next high risk wind event for Northern California and into southern california, weather models do not show at this time another offshore wind event through at least the first week of november. Pg e says more than 20 preliminary reports of damage on the system during the extreme winds. It is inspecting lines and will get back the juice as soon as its safe. There are a lot of questions tonight about what the company is finding in those inspections. Mark matthews began his day today in a blacked out community in southern marin. Reporter the bakery was open despite the black out. I would like to see things improve so people dont have to go through this every year. Reporter folks told me they have been without power since 6 00 saturday night. And our refrigerator, we have to throw everything away. Reporter leah says it is not that big of a deal, bit does feel pg e is cutting the power for liability reasons. S i do think its to protect themselves. They just cant take another hit. Exactly. Reporter late friday the company filed a report with regulators about the first power outage earlier this month. They say they found 120 instances of damaged lines, 51 of them from tree branches falling across wires. The company included 18 pictures show some show the same tree from different angles. The question is why hasnt the utility trimmed the trees close to their lines as they are required to do . Pg e sent us a statement saying theyre focused on this week and theyll get back to our question next week at the Utility Reform Network executive director mark tony had this take on pg es report. It looked like a lot of negative negligence. I would like to start clearing trees for a start. Reporter last month pg e told a federal judge it completed less than a third of the scheduled tree trimming for 2019. Now that we are in the most dangerous part of the fire season, the latest estimate is is the Company Still has not completed 50 of that scheduled work and yet across the bay area more Power Outages are already in the works for later this week. Reporting from San Francisco, at pg e headquarters, mark matthews. Mark thank you. Up next at 6 00, were learning from the destructive fires. The lessons san jose is taking away from their time on the front lines. Plus are they ready to handle mass evacuations. Why some bay area communities will be boxed in if a disaster strikes. As weve been reporting for the last several days, this fires prompted the largest evacuation in the history of Sonoma County. People were stuck in traffic for hours trying to get to a safe place. With the devastating fires hitting Northern California regularly now, a senior investigator began digging in to see how much of a problem these evacuations have become. Steven. Jessica, we found its a big problem. Sometimes the evacuations are a safety hazard themselves. Witness last years paradise fires where people died in their cars trying to get away from the flames. A Company Found nearly 800 communities around the United States do not have enough exit roads to handle their populations. More than 20 of those towns are right here in the bay area including windsor where just yesterday the data met reality. This scene on u. S. 101 out of windsor sunday, more than even dramatic shots of flames concerns emergency planners the most. No one was hurt in this traffic jam but last year in paradise, 85 people died in the wild fire there. Many victims burned sitting in their cars in one of the only roads leaving town trying to flee the flames. We were talking to five young ladies that said it took them three hours to get out. Weve learned windsor is one of the most problematic communities in the country for evacuations. An analysis released this summer by street light databased here in San Francisco shows the town of windsor is one of only 22 towns in the bay area that pose a danger for their residents during a mass scale evacuation. We looked at the relationship between the number of people in the town and the number of physical routes out that we called kputs. We talked to street light datas Vice President for market and Product Management by telephone. He says they analyzed geolocation data from cell phones for every city in the u. S. With less than 40,000 residents to see which towns have the most congestion. Bay area towns include american canyon, foster city, pacifica, sausalito, and saint helena as well as bodega bay and windsor. We can use this information to prioritize where to go first where the potential danger is highest. And thats why we think this information is so powerful. Its difficult, some of these areas are rural. Some of these areas only have one core Evacuation Route but we still have work to do at some of these evacuation areas. And that will continue to be a stubborn reyall i the. A new state law requires emergency planners to reevaluate plans by 2020. And Governor Newsom says the state has said aside money to help. We talked with windsors mayor who called the evacuation a, quote, Great Success saying they were able to get everyone out of town with no afatality. Street light data is already working with cal fire and some communities here in the bay area to get ahead of this issue and try to improve these evacuation plans for the next time. To get a list of all these communities or see a link to street light data, just go to our website nbcbayarea. Com investigations. All right, steven, thank you. There are several communities on that list. Among hundreds of people on the fire lines, a group of south bay students and their professor. Theyre highly trained meteorologists with Cutting Edge Technology that can help firefighters. Scott budman joins us from campus at san jose state. Nothing new as you know. San jose state has a Proactive Group of experts on campus. Reporter yeah, and they went into action right away, raj. The truck behind me and the equipment is able to help crews by predicting where the flames and the smoke are likely to go next. As firefighters fought the kincade fire, the san jose state weather team measured it we saw the fire burning towards us. Reporter with radar. That allows us to measure winds at higher altitudes. Reporter tracking the winds to know what was coming next and which way the fire was likely to go. The most important thing for us is to collect these unique observations using the Doppler Radar and wind profiling system because those data are important to understand how fires create their own weather and how it may change the fire behavior. Greg clements leads the schools Fire Weather Research lab. They go towards the fire posting information on twitter for firefighters to check in real time. A way to help those on the front lines while showing students something way more real than what they see in a classroom. What we can offer is basically those data sets to the people who really care about them, and we can offer it firsthand as fast as they need it. Reporter the san jose state team has already been to the kincade fire twice. Theyre here now to download data. Theyre likely to head back up north soon again. Live at san jose state, scott budman, nbc news. Looks similar to our storm ranger which we have here. And theirs, theyve got to get right into the fire line because its going to be doing the High Resolution data close to the fire. So, i think thats going to become important with tracking embers in the future which will be great because of course we know that is one of the biggest threats were under right now as we head into the next wind event. The fire is so large that the emmers definitely could be spreading. I want to take you to one of the top scenes besides the fire were dealing with, thats the air quality. All this youre seeing is the smoke drifting across the bay area. We do expect air quality to stay smoky through tomorrow so you might need to limit outdoor exposure and it is going to be an on again off again problem until that fire is extinguished at this point. So, it is certainly hard for a lot of us to deal with. But youve got to go with it day by day. As we bring you into the forecast, we want to give you new information. Theres an evacuation warning meaning you might be asked to evacuate now issued in middle town. So, if youre watching from there, have a plan in place. Thats because of this southerly wind weve had today. Weve seen a little bit more growth here on the northern side of the fire. Calistoga also under evacuation warning where you may be asked to evacuate as well. As weve been reporting, geyserville, hillsburg, and windsor have those evacuations. Winds not bad today, 20milesperhour, but we are on the cusp of another wind event. So, yes, brandnew red flag fire warning has been issued for 8 00 a. M. Tuesday until 4 00 p. M. Wednesday. Were looking at mountain gusts of 45 to 60milesperhour. I want to underscore while the red flag fire warning is for much of the bay area, its really the north bay we think is going to have the brunt of the strongest wind and the best potential of the 45 to 60milesperhour wind gusts, gusts of 15 to 35milesperhour. I dont think overall this wind event is going to be as bad as what we just went through to put that in perspective for you. One other thing besides the fire i want to get in here right now is the temperatures. Tomorrow morning if you still dont have your power back, you might need an extra blanket. Santa rosa down to 35, petaluma 38, and walnut creek at 39. Well get you into tomorrows highs. Low 70s inland, 60s at the coast. Back with another update on the hour by hour wind forecast for this next round of wind tomorrow night and wednesday morning coming up in about 25 minutes. These are critical updates for us. Up next at 6 00, a crucial step for impeachment. We now know when the house of representatives is expected to vote on the resolution and what this means for President Trump. My parents never taught me anything about managing money. The amount of Student Loan Debt i have, im embarrassed to even say. We just decided we didnt want debt any longer. I didnt realize how easy investing could be. Im Picking Companies that i believe in. I think sofi money is amazing. Thank you sofi. Sofi thank you, we love you. Critical point in the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Trump. The full house of representatives will vote this thursday on how to proceed with all of this. There was a set back today for the democrats as the key witness was a noshow. Former National Security adviser Charles Cupperman was on that phone call between President Trump and the leader of ukraine. Cupperman has asked a judge to intervene since the administration is blocking him from testifying. House intelligence chair adam schiff says stalling does not help the president s case. They believe his testimony would be incriminating of the president. It is also, i think, very plain, additional, and powerful evidence of obstruction of congress. Hes a corrupt politic