District about whats ahead for kids returning to the classroom and more self driving taxis are coming to the streets of San Francisco, even as residents and city leaders are split on the decision. My from jack london square. This is morning time to the nine to today is friday, august 11th. Were looking live from maui right now where the sun is coming up. Just past this shot is a devastating scene on the Hawaiian Island. Welcome to the nine. Officials in hawaii have now confirmed the deaths of at least 55 people from the fire on the western side of maui. Yeah, crews start searching through burned out buildings and that could lead to a rise in the death tolls. Most of the deaths are in lahaina. The wildfires there destroyed more than 1000 buildings and more than 1000 people are still reported missing, though the Maui County Police chief says that that number could be much smaller. He went on to say they truly dont know how many people are unaccounted for because its so difficult to get a hold of people and to check family, family and friends to check on their loved ones because the Communication System on the island is down. Hawaiis governor says this is the worst Natural Disaster in the states history. It is going to take many years to rebuild lahaina. When you see the full the full extent of the destruction of lahaina, it will shock you. It does appear like a bomb and fire went off. If i may add. And all of those buildings virtually are going to have to be rebuilt. It will be a new lahaina. Some of the people who survived the fire say hawaiis Emergency Warning System did not alert them as fire raced towards their homes. Officials confirmed that Emergency Management records show no sign that warning sirens ever went off. A woman who owns a shop on front street in lahaina that burned to the ground says the destruction is just devastating. Line is such a special place and not just for the people that live there, but for so many people that. Sorry, im holding it together, but im on the edge for the community and for all of the islands and for so many visitors that come see us every year. Its the historic significance and id just be the memories there. State Officials Say it will take billions of dollars to rebuild lahaina. More help is on the way to maui. Thats right. Strike teams and volunteer groups from the bay area will play a role in helping survivors of the wildfires burning in lahaina. Ctvs james torres is live from san jose Bonita International airport. And james, you just talked to a volunteer who was heading to hawaii this morning. Tell us about it. Yeah, andre, alyssa, good morning to you this morning. That volunteer has been with red cross for about 18 years. He says hes responded to a number of different disasters wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, you name it. He says this one shouldnt be much different than what hes seen in the past, despite hearing lots of what hes seen in the News Coverage and what some of the images and photos that weve all been exposed to coming out of lahaina. And he says what his goal is there is to support all the evacuees, support all the survivors, and also be somewhat of a liaison between those folks and some of the resources that will be offered there. Now, lets talk about some of the mission of the red cross in general. About 13 relief workers left for the Hawaiian Island yesterday. More leaving this morning and this weekend. We spoke to the ceo of the red st. She says that she owned a house along front street thats now destroyed and this volunteer that i spoke to this morning also said that hes been on this flight several times in his lifetime and just like responding to pretty much any other Natural Disaster, i asked him if he felt nervous today. Heres what he had to say. But ive been trained and ive read up on the on the web on whats going on. I watched your newscast. Thank god that i could see all of that and get prepared. And then ive been doing this for a while. So well give it a go. And ive got a lot of people to help me both locally and in the local government. People are trained to deal with disasters so its not just me. Im a part of a whole team. Additionally, governor gavin newsom signed off on sending an urban search and rescue strike team to maui. Part of that team also includes a firefighter from oakland. Each of those members have extensive experience handling wildfires and the aftermath, Officials Say in maui, there is another search and rescue team thats there from nevada already with boots on will plan to play a variety of different roles. You heard from the gentleman earlier talking about his service as a government liaison. Other folks will be there just to hand out supplies, collect supplies, run some of these donation shelters, something that tom tanner, who we spoke to earlier, says that hes served many of those roles in a number of different of these Natural Disasters. And, of course, he says hes been having to prepare himself to see what exactly he will see when he gets there. Again you heard from the governor a little earlier this morning talking about it looks like a bomb went off. Mr. Tanner tells me that the red cross puts these people through some trainings to kind of expect some of that impact and that shock, as well as trainings to deal with some of the emotions of the folks that you talked to there who are dealing with homes lost, family members lost, a whole variety of things that come with a Natural Disaster. He says he expects to be on the island anywhere between 2 to 3 weeks or a lot this morning. From the san jose manette airport. Im james torres, ktvu fox two news help on the way for those people there. James thank you so much. For more insight on the response to the disaster in hawaii right now were joined by former fema coordinator mark duvall. Mark, thank you so much for joining us. Mark we know femas going to be heavily involved here and that started after the Emergency Declaration from the president. Actually a little bit before that. Yeah, because theyve got a Permanent Office already in oahu. So as soon as they knew there were problems, they started sending staff over to maui to be able to coordinate as well as putting staff in what they call the crater, which is Emergency Operations center in hawaii on oahu. All right. So lets go to the number of fatalities now jumping overnight here. Were learning its gone up from 36 to 55. And were also learning it happened in the three mile stretch. What does that tell you as someone who worked with fema before, what are you thinking in your mind as you were part of fema on the ground there right now . Well, you think about a three mile stretch in a 2000 acre fire creating such devastation. And as we start to go through more searching area, youre going to find, unfortunately, more fatality. So now were starting to approach that. This could possibly be one of the worst fires, if not the worst in our countrys history. So pray that does not happen. Yeah well, lets jump to this real quick, because there are some comparisons between this fire something people that died in that one. Yeah what you this has been noted right now. Thereintee fires start burning in in a forested area and then they roll down into a very populated area, which is what exactly what happened here in a three mile stretch, we devastate, you know, thousands of buildings. Number of fatalities, destroyed, infrastructure, and all took place in a relatively short time, same as the paradise fire. So we know it doesnt take long. 80 mile an hour winds pushing those flames, devastation. This will be something that that will be studying. Emergency officials will be studying this. And as well as Something Else that happened on the island, were getting a report from the Associated Press that the sirens didnt go off. Right. But we know electricity was affected because the fire moved so, so quickly, so fast. Now, Officials Say they did send out Emergency Alerts on the phones that you normally get. Now, thats the new way of sending things out. But we also had an issue with Cell Phone Service as well. This is something, you know, as youre looking at this as an emergency official, this is something youre going to have to consider Going Forward now, right . No question. And thats the challenge to any emergency official or any disaster. Electricity is probably number one priority. Restoring that so you can recover and rebuild. But in this case, the sirens that youre talking about did not operate, it sounds like, because of downed electricity, there were notifications sent out in the Emergency Alert system, which does allow peoplet its me to be able to send those messages to cell phones. Personally. We have better response than the sirens work. They came from the Civil Defense days, not as effective as effective. Right. But but now what do you what do you do now when you have the cell service thats thats disrupted, thats going to be something to be considered Going Forward now, no question like yeah, like in maui as well, because they dont have any backup on the mainland. Weve got backup grids to be able to energize, but we still face the same situation. Theres no solution necessarily. They can bring out whats known as cals cellular on wheels, which brings power to those areas. And they can get that in relatively, which were seeing happening right now deploy those. So people are able to communicate not only by phone, but by texting as well. Something that fema does when these situations are the ones that bring out these portable equipment to help people communicate, not so much. They coordinate with the telephone. At t verizon, there are Emergency Response units within those companies. The federal government, fema can mandate with them and mandates that, yeah, okay. So thats thats one of the roles that they could be playing there right now. Absolutely. It is going on. All right. Sose support civilians, authorities. And, you know, this is very rare. What is it and why is it not used as much . Well, its access in the department of defense, army, navy, air force and those resources and to move that is pretty bureau matic and its hard to do its typically used in like probably the last time katrina is where it was mostly used. But because there are so many uniformed personnel in hawaii due to the bases being there and they were close distance and being able to get them from, if you will, oahu over to maui. And those resources. Otherwise, a lot of the resources would have to come from the mainland. So theyre putting them into service. And ive got family that work on the tarmac and they were telling me yesterday, sending pictures about how many military aircraft were flying in and out of the airport. Yeah wow. Wow. So youve got people there on the ground giving you information about whats happening there. Yeah, a lot of people looking to get some more information. Thank you for your insight to give us kind of a picture of whats happening there on the ground right now, because a lot of people are worried still cant get in touch with family on still cant touch a thousand people still missing. Yeah, thats thats the challenge question. Its pretty sad. Mark, david, thank you for your insight today. Youre welcome. Andre, nice to see you. For the very latest updates on the situation in maui, you can head to our website. Just go to ktvu. Com. Coming up on mornings on 29, despite opposition from some residents in first responders, there will likely be more robo taxis rolling through San Francisco. The controversial vote that has both strong supporters and harsh critics, too. Also ahead, the sun is setting on summer for students in the Berkeley Unified School district. Next on the nine, were talking live with the districts superintendent to see what students and parents can expect for the new academic year. Well be and now please welcome ana montoya. [applause] [suspense] hello there, fellow students. There it is. That feeling you get. When you can du more with less asthma. It starts with dupixent. Dupixent is not for sudden breathing problems. Its an addon treatment for specific types of moderatetosevere asthma. And can help improve lung function for better breathing in as little as two weeks. Dupixent helps prevent asthma attacks. And can even reduce or eliminate oral steroids. Can you picture it . Dupixent can cause allergic reactions that can be severe. Get help right away if you have rash, chest pain, worsening shortness of breath, tingling or numbness in your limbs. Tell your doctor about new or worsening joint aches and pain, or a parasitic infection. Dont change or stop asthma medicines, including steroids, without talking to your doctor. Who knows what you can do when you du more with less asthma. Ask your asthma specialist about dupixent. Largest School Districts. We want to welcome this time superintendent nikki ford. More with the Berkeley Unified School district. Thanks for being here this morning. Thank you for having me. When you were last here a year ago, you were just about to start your first year as a superintendent for usd. Now you have a year under your belt. Youre starting your second year. What are the things youve done or changed in the last year that you felt were the most impactful for the district . Yes, we had an amazing year last year. I would say that really thinking about our partnerships was a critical focus of ours last year, thinking about how do we focus first when partnering with our families and focusing on partnering with the cities and our Community Based organizations, partnering with our students to really understand who we are as the usd, whats working, whats not working, and then use that to create a plan to do better. So started off the year with listening and learning and found out about all the issues with parents and students and students and Community Partners and just folks who dont even have students in the district anymore. Just to really, again, figure out how well are we doing in Movement Towards our mission and our accomplishment, our four es equity excellence, enrichment and engagement, and then use that information to create a plan. What was the number one thing they wanted you to change when you talk to them . The number one thing, of course, is to focus on student achievement. And then the second one was to think about student wellness, wellbeing and sense of connection and those are all been a part of our plan. Last year, and were going to continue those efforts going into this year. We did a lot to focus on the classroom, focus on instruction, making sure our educators had what they needed, to make sure they able to reach our students and all of their diversity, and that we created a really a data informed system to figure out where our students are and how what we need to do to move them to the next level to realize all of their brilliance. How does that data system work . I mean, do you take like record the test every week or theres a number of different ways you can use data to figure out how kids are doing, but how did you do that in berkeley . First and foremost, we definitely see and saw data as information. It helps us tell a story. When we talked about our data, we werent just talking about achievement or assessment data. And the more traditional form were talking about talking to our students and understanding who they are and what their interests are and how they learn and whats working for them, whats not working for them. So we also had more qualitative data as well. But we have a new system called edge climate where our educators are able to input data achievement data on the various interim assessments, attendance data, social, emotional or behavioral data so that we can, on a regular basis, look at our students and where they are figuring out what they need and come up with plans and so data monitoring or progress monitoring is what we call it which helps us to be morert of responsive and helpsng scores, because they did go up for black and latino studentspast year. The percentage of students in that group that were identified as being as high risk for not reading at grade level dropped almost in half. How did you do that . So were still waiting for those final results, but we have definitely seen from our interim assessments for sure the a positive trajectory. And what i think was the was the key. If you will, was that we really focused on our teacher collaboration, professional development and coaching, and really started to streamline and get on the same page around what good quality instruction looks like, what is good quality reading instruction, because theres a big debate among parents whether it should be very phonics based or a balance of sight reading and phonics where does berkeley stand in that . So berkeley stands on implementing research based, science based instruction, the science of reading, science, of reading definitely brings in years and years of research and understanding around how reading develops, and that includes the foundational skills like phonemic awareness, that includes being able to comprehend, that includes writing. And so were trying to create a comprehensive literacy experience for our students. And because of that, we focused a lot on professional development. Our students, our teachers are kindergarten through eighth grade and engaged in common planning and common pd. This whole year was the first time last year where they were able to collaborate not just within their sites but across sites. They had a shared book study and were going to continue that focus on literacy going into this school year so everyone can collaborate and share what works, what didnt. This is what i hate, i think you should do in third grade. In. Yes, yes. This class. Yes, yes. And again, root that in what . Science and research tells us. Works for reading acquisition a