Transcripts For KOFY ABC7 News At 900PM On KOFY 20140731 : v

The impact on visitors. Reporter several helicopters and more than 800 firefighters are working to contain the el portal fire. But their battle has now taken a new turn. Fire has been very active today, mostly along that Northern Edge of the fire. Reporter the flames are burning toward crane Flat Campground but the community of soresto remains under evacuation orders as a precaution and to leave room for all the firefighting resources. Two families whose houses burned there on saturday got their first look at the destruction today. Donations continued to pour in for both of them. Its a Great Community around here. Weve seen everyone kind of step up and be really suve. Reporter the fire has had little impact on the rest of yosemite other than occasional periods of smoky skies. In Yosemite Valley families are still camping, bicycling and soaking in the sights. The park is 1,200 square miles and theres one or two square miles being impacted by this. Reporter the Mariposa County Visitors Center has brought in extra staff to answer questions and redirect tourists from highway 120. Many are using highway 140 instead. Those that need Emergency Rooms and things, the Visitor Centers been so good putting hundreds of people into rooms on the new route in and were pleased that were set up to handle this influx. Reporter park Officials Say its too early to tell when highway 120 will reopen. As we drove up highway 140 there was a lot of smoke in the valley and the foothills but conditions were better inside yosemite. A fastmoving fire jumped from house to house in san jose destroying two homes and damaging a third. The fire broke out this morning in an upscale neighborhood on hampshire place. Video shot by a sat hoe firefighter shows billowing smoke. There was immediate concern embers would spread the flames and it did not take long. Barbara staffords house was damaged. She was not home at the time of the fire. We got a call from our Alarm Company that there was some glass breaking and movement in our house. So we came back to see what was the story and came back to find it in flames. Nobody told us ahead of time. So seeing it with flames shooting out of the roof was pretty hard. 90 firefighters battled the flames for just over an hour today. 18 people are out of their homes tonight after a devastating Early Morning fire in oakland. One home was destroyed and another heavily damaged in the fire on melrose avenue near 46th. It began just before 4 00 this morning, middle of the night. Downed power lines created added danger for firefighters forcing crews to wait for pg e to shut off the power. The homes were so badly damaged they were both red tagged. Look at it. Theres nothing left. We lived in there, my husband and i, we started our marriage there. It was it was hard. We had to make sure everyone was out of the house. My dad woke me up, he said there was a fire, we all started running out. Everyone inside, including eight children, did escape those homes by the time firefighters arrived. As bad as it was, very glad to tell you that no one was injured. There is urgent new concern tonight about the deadly ebola virus. Two American Peace corps workers in africa are in quarantine tonight, possibly exposed. Here at home, anxiety creates a scare at a hospital in north carolina. Abc 7 news chief medical editor dr. Richard besser on the high alert all over the globe. Reporter the deadly ebone la outbreak causing the peace corps to pull out 340 american volunteers from guinea, liberia, and sierra leone after two were quarantined after coming in contact with an ebola victim who died. The two missionary workers stricken in liberia are showing improvement. Dr. Kent brantley in texas and nurse nancy in isolation. Staff communicate through windows. Doctors and nurses wearing protective suits. Trying to recover and still feeling the effects of the virus and struggling and fighting through that right now. Reporter we spoke with the son tonight. Momming reading. Shes resting a lot. As much as you can. That helps her right now. But when i called the other day, there was muthic playing in the background to help with her spirit, help her worship. Reporter the urgent question now, will the american patients be evacuated back to the u. S. For emergency treatment . The cdc uses special isolation pods like these to transport contagious patients without exposing the crew. Theyre airtight and totally disposable, apart from the metal frame. Air travel leading to global fears of contagion. From nigeria you can fly direct to three u. S. Cities. Flights carry passengers to more than 30 countries around the world. This is the most serious outbreak of ebola virus weve faced, a mutual highfront war against the virus. Reporter today in liberia, doctors using handheld thermometers to check passengers for fever. The french government provided 100 heatdetecting cameras. In the u. S. 20 airports are equipped with quarantine stations, responding to any passengers appearing ill, including those with symptoms of ebola. Its not spread through the air, you only get sick through close contact with body fluids like blood or touching contaminated surfaces. Hospitals in the u. S. On high alert. The door to one in charlotte shuttered after a visit from a patient who had traveled to a highrisk country. It was a false alarm and the patient was discharged. A number of Emergency Rooms are asking every patient with fever their recent travel history. Thats a got idea not just for ebola but many infectious diseases. Congress voted today to sue president obama. The vote came down along party lines with every democrat voting against the lawsuit as well as five conservative republicans who prefer impeachment. Once filed it will charge the president with delaying implementation of the Affordable Care act. The president today said he is ready to willing to work with congress. I mean, everybody right now says its a political stunt. But its worse than that because every vote theyre taking like that means a vote theyre not taking to actually help you. When they have taken 50 votes to repeal the Affordable Care act. That was time that could have been spent working constructively to help you on some things. The suit is expected to fail once it reaches the inside of a courtroom. The president advised congress to stop being mad all the time. Back in california, cleanup continues at ucla after a water main burst on sunset boulevard. It flooded the campus and it could take days before crews are able to fix this nearly 100yearold pipe in westwood. It burst under the street creating a 15foot hole and sending about 20 million gallons of water surging onto the streets. The bay area has miles of aging pipeline underground that is also at risk of breaking and abc 7 News Reporter Alisa Harrington has more on one of our oldest pipelines thats actually leaking fresh water into the bay right now. Reporter the bay area has pipeline problems of its own. In 2012, a 78yearold pipe split in daly city sending thousands of gallons of water into a neighborhood. In 2013, a water main near San Franciscos wiwona street broke damaging homes. Last month water rushed downhill in potrero hill. It broke during pressure testing. A spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Says some pipelines in the bay area date to the 1920s. So the any sort of major shock to it could cause a separation and a break. Reporter utility crews are on track to repair 15 miles of aging pipeline each year. One of the biggest jobs, the bay tunnel project. Tunnels will pump water to the peninsula and San Francisco and replace this old, leaky pipe that has already dumped up to 65 million gallons of fresh water into the bay. Its unfortunate because you never want to have a leak, especially during a drought. But in this case were waiting for the bigger fix to take place. Reporter yesterdays scene in los angeles was dramatic. Water raging for three hours. Theres no quick off switch. You cant close the valve right away because you get a water hammer effect. A water hammer effect is, you snap off the flow of water immediately, the water hits an immovable object and reverberates back through the system causing shock waves essentially to blow other connections. Reporter the key is to gradually decrease pressure. He would not speculate if crews here could respond faster but did say they are on standby 24 hours a day. Alisa harrington, abc 97 news. The attorney representing Raymond Shrimp Boy Chow says the Chinatown Association leader may testify in his own defense. He was in federal court pleading not guilty to a new set of racketeering charges. The fbi says chow used his status as dragon head of the guinea gong tong to carry out criminal activities. Chows Attorney Says prosecutors are trying to pin crimes committed by others on his client. Weve examined the charges and theres utterly, from our perspective at this time, no new evidence against our client. State senator leland yee will be in federal Court Tomorrow to face racketeering charges, accused of working with chow to solicit donations through his political campaigns in exchange for favors. A lot more to bring you this wednesday on abc 7 news at 9 00. Coming up, critics say its like playing whack a mole. The frustration over homeless encampments and why some say the homeless provide a valuable service. A suspected car thief goes on a joyride running into cars. What finally put an end to an obstacle course. We had a few locations today that had tripledigit heat in our inland areas and doesnt look like the heats going away when wed like it to. The accuweather forecast coming up. What may be the worlds most dedicated mother. The octopus who took longer to hatch her eggs than any known animal. Fema announcer right now, at sleep train, save hundreds on beautyrest and posturepedic. Choose 300 in free gifts with tempurpedic. Even choose 48 months interestfree financing on the new tempurchoice. The triple choice sale ends soon at sleep train. With a new volkswagen turbo. Turbocharged reward card why are we so obsessed with turbo . Because we like giving you power, but we also like giving you fuel efficiency. Like the sporty jetta. And the turbocharged passat tdi® clean diesel. Okay. And the iconic beetle. And the powerful tiguan. Okay you cant forget the cc. Guys, this is going to take a while. Avo hurry in and you can get a 1,000 turbocharged reward card when you lease a new 2014 jetta se for 199 a month. Save hundreds on beautyrest and posturepedic. At sleep train, choose 300 in free gifts with tempurpedic. Even choose 48 months interestfree financing on the new tempurchoice. The triple choice sale ends soon at sleep train. A massive oak tree has fallen in unincorporated areas of walnut creek blocking the driveway to three houses. Its a huge mess. No one seems to know whos responsible for clearing it out of the way. Neighbors say the tree is about 150 years old and they noticed it leaning farther than normal earlier this morning. And now it just came down. An outofcontrol driver tore through San Francisco streets until a member of the Fire Department brought him down. Police say the man stole this construction truck in the lower haight, hit cars as he drove across the city. Police spotted him on 11th street. He stopped at polk and grove but got out and tried to run but was tackled by a member of the Fire Department. Fortunately no one was injured in this series of crashes. A lot of damage. A homeless encampment at the albany bowl was shut down earlier this year. Not before battling an illegal settlement that bought out those campers paying some of them thousands of dollars to get up and leave. Now theres a new homeless camp not far away. As knick smith found out today those living nearby are not entirely happy with their new neighbors. Albany just dumped their homeless problem on somebody else . Absolutely not. Reporter Nicole Almaguer ra, assistant city manager. She says albany has been successful tackling a large problem with limited resources and through a Settlement Agreement giving some as much as 3,000 to help with transition. Albanys payout is a misnomer. What occurred was the settlement of litigation filed against the city. Reporter nicole says even though some of the homeless have moved to neighboring communities, albany is not to blame. That would be a very difficult thing to connect. Theres definitely an unsafe element at this point. Reporter this woman lives and works in this industrial section of West Berkeley east of the freeway. She says she noticed the trash piles start to grow when the encampment popped up on jones near second. There has to be some other solution than just moving them from one homeless place to another. Thats not working. I lost all my stuff. Reporter caught in the middle, guys like ohio. I met him in april. He was among the dozens evicted from the albany bulb but the city didnt have to give him a check when they told the Homeless Community to move. Because he was not part of the legal settlement. And says transitional programs offered by the city of albany did not work for him. Since then his life has been on the road, or in this case, barely off of it. Not far from where it all started. For me, i dont care what you say. I got to make it happen for me, period. Okay . Thats what im going to do. Reporter the city of albany says their work isnt done saying theyve helped 26 people find a place to live and have hired a case work tore assist others with permanent housing. Two baby opossums are growing up strong thanks to the care at a san rafael wildlife Rehabilitation Center. Video from wild care, the brother and sister were found on the side of the road in marin county. Their mother had been hit and killed about i a car, unfortunately. The two babies were found alive and well in their mothers pouch. They survived somehow. The 3monthold critters are being cared for at wild care, a Rehabilitation Center in san rafael. They will be fostered at the facility for a few weeks before being graduated to an outdoor facility. Theyre doing pretty well. Cute little guys. They are really cute. Spencer christian has been known to play possum. Exactly are its too hot for that right now. I do that in the winter when its holder. Looking at live doppler radar, mainly clear skies over the bay area. Clouds have been building up and retreating along the coastline. Right now we see little areas of clouds offshore. Their conditions are quiet here. Conditions are quiet now in the sierra. But this afternoon we had outbreaks of powerful thunderstorms with drenching downpours of rain up and down the sierra. As a matter of fact, there was a flash flood around 4 30 this afternoon in the city of chester. Heavy rain produced flooding on highway 89 west of the lake. There was a Flash Flood Warning issued in the earlier hours before the flooding actually occurred. So we can only hope that helped residents and motorists in that area. Bay area, things are quiet right in and out. A partial view, partially obscured view of the skyline of San Francisco. 58 right now here in San Francisco. Oakland 61. San jose 68. 67 gilroy. 57 in half moon bay. A nice view from our emeryville camera looking out westward across the bay. 61 in santa rosa. 64 napa. Novato 61. 72 fairfield. 79 concord and livermore. Rooftop cam looking along the embarcadero, partly cloudy, mild overnight. It will be hot inland for the next two days. But slightly cooler this weekend as temperatures start to moderate a little bit. That pattern will hold into next week. What has not held is what was Tropical Storm hernan. Its gone, remnants of clouds and moisture continue to flow into southern and Central California to our east. Not through the immediate pay area. Theres an area of scattered clouds offshore. It seems to be less of a factor now than it did earlier in the afternoon. So probably wont play into our forecast at all. Overnight we are forecasting low clouds and fog near the coast and locally pushing inland. It will be mild with low temperatures in the upper 50s to low 60s. And tomorrow it will be a mainly sunny day except for some coastal clouds lingering. Down to the south bay warm to hot with highs ranging from 80 in santa clara to 90 san jose. 88 at redwood city and mountain view. Upper 60s to 70 on the coast. Downtown San Francisco 71 degrees tomorrow. 69 in the sunset district. Up in the north bay, highs of 88 at santa rosa. Sonoma 90 at napa. East bay, oakland will top out at 78. San leandro 83. The inland east bay will sizzle, highs in the upper 90s at fairfield, antioch, livermore, and walnut creek. Heres the accuweather sevenday forecast. One more day of this kind of heat inland on friday. Temperatures drop off a few degrees on saturday. Further cooling on sunday and monday. Monday the coolest day of the forecast period in our inland areas with highs reaching 90 in the warmest spots. But temperatures start to climb a couple of degrees again on tuesday and wednesday. So it looks like were in for another warmup by midweek next week. Looks like it. 98 tomorrow and friday. Coming up next, headsup for drivers. What to know as crews begin closing lanes on the Golden Gate Bridge for a big construction project. These are some of the young people who have received disney abc Youth Service awards to recognize their volunteer work. The deadline to apply for one of this years awards is tomorrow at midnight. So no