Over. Destructive and now deadly, socalled valley fire is roaring through small communities tucked along droughtstricken forest land with flames scorching enough ground to cover San Francisco twice. Fast moving fire killing a 72 disabled woman who was unable to escape her home. T look at the flames right there. Reporter evacuees are now posting video of their harrowing escapes. Hidden valley may be going up in flames. Reporter and sharing stories of survival. Something out of a Science Fiction movie. Refuses to flee staying behind to protect their home im not going to let this outrageous beautiful place go down. This is all i have. I grew up here. I live heard my whole life. I love it. I want to save the last little piece of it. Reporter across california at least eight firefighters have st their homes, including robert taylor. For a time his girlfriend mary her house. Its terrible. I really want to go back up. I just dont know when we can go see everything. Reporter our camera crew checked her address taking images of what they discovered, a home untouched by flames. Is that your house . Yes. Okay. Thats what our crew found. Oh, my god. Wow. Oh, my god. Thank you. Thank you. Reporter a surprising piece of good news pulled from the rubble of a community overwhelmed by loss. Two huge wildfires are burning right now in northern call. 700 homes destroyed and 20,000 people evacuated. The weather has cooled down and rain is in the forecast, but firefighters also need winds to calm down. Savannah and matt. All right, joe fryer on the fire lines, thank you. Let us turn now to the president ial race and a couple of campaigns that appear to be directions. While Republican Donald Trump packed a house at a massive rally in dallas, his democratic rival Hillary Clinton is trying to win back support from a group once firmly in her corner. We have two reports this morning beginning with nbc national coierrespondent peter alexander. Library. That is the site of tomorrows second republican debate. Peter, good morning to you. Hey, matt, good morning to you. This is Hallowed Ground for republicans, actually this morning its wet and Hallowed Ground, but tomorrow night there will be 15 candidates here all trying to outdo one another to claim the mantle of ronald reagan, but will any of them break his 11th commandment . Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow republican. Once again donald trump is not holding back. For candidate who does everything huge, a texassized welcome. Donald trump rallying supporters in dallas predicting a rough and tumble debate. I have a little debate coming up on wednesday. I hear they are all going after me. Whatever. Whatever. Reporter trumps Harsh Criticism of undocumented immigrants resonated with the border state crowd. We have to stop illegal immigration. We have to do it. We have to do it. [ cheers and applause ] reporter but outside tempers flared as trump protesters clashed with supporters over immigration. With mounted Police Moving in to break it up. Ahead of tomorrow nights debate trump isnt laying off his republican rivals. Carly is giving me a little bit of a hard time even though her poll numbers are horrible. Jeb, nice guy, really a nice guy. Jeb, hillary, well, jebs more popular than one person i know. Reporter six weeks after their first showdown in cleveland, trump will again be center stage flanked by bush and the surging ben carson. Look at this face. Reporter and debuting on the main stage carly fiorina. In her first facetoface appearance with trump since his controversial comments about her looks. This islc the face of the 61yearold woman. I am proud of every year and every wrinkle. Reporter one more thing. This network nbc which parted ways with donald trump months ago after his controversial comments about undocumented immigrants has now announced the man who will replace trump as the host of the celebrity apprentice, the states former governor, perhaps its most famous immigrant Arnold Schwarzenegger. Trump last night congratulated his friend saying hell do great. Matt and savannah, since he cant say youre fired, its either hastra la vista, baby, or my personal favorite, you wont be back. Peter, thank you very much. The fact that this is all intertwined now, what can you say . On the democratic side meantime Hillary Clinton is targeting women voters, Group Essential to her campaign. Shes trying to stop a recent skid in the polls with that very group. Nbcs Andrea Mitchell is on that story this morning. Andrea, good morning to you. Reporter good morning, savannah. Hillary clinton is reaching out to that group that she had always counted on, white women voters, who are now abandoning her in droves during the last two months. Make these hard choices, and i really hope you will join our campaign in iowa. Reporter crisscrossing iowa monday, Hillary Clinton trying to shore up her support among women. Today i want to send a message to every survivor of Sexual Assault. Dont let anyone silence your voice. I want to defend a womans right to choose and fight against defunding planned parenthood. Reporter even stopping for popcorn at a business owned by a woman. Got to try that. Reporter this after seeing her support among white woman in one new poll go from 71 in july to just 42 now, a 29 drop in only eight weeks as clinton has been hammered with questions about her private emails. Polls go up and down. Peoples attention and decisionmaking changes over time. Reporter clinton is also doing softer interviews on entertainment news, talking to extra about meeting kim kardashian. She came to one of my fundraisers in los angeles, and i really enjoyed meeting her. Reporter and Bernie Sanders campaigned in virginia, clinton supporters are focusing more on joe biden who they think is running a Shadow Campaign to test the waters. This week biden heads to battleground california, michigan and ohio where like clinton he will speak about Sexual Assault on College Campuses. State legislators in South Carolina where the bidens vacation say if biden wants to run his wife jill will be on board. The information i get is, you know, shes going to be supportive of him. Shes supportive of him running if he is ready to do it. Reporter and supporters argue that joe biden is in no hurry. As long as he decides by the end of october after clinton testifies to the House Benghazi Committee but before the november filing deadlines for those super tuesday primaries in march. Savannah . All right, Andrea Mitchell in washington, thank you. As we mentioned at the top Chelsea Clinton will be joining us in our next half hour live. Turning now to a disturbing situation overnight, this happened on a chicagobound American Airlines plane. The flight had to be diverted after a woman assaulted a fellow passenger and a member of the cabin crew. Nbcs tom costello has that story. Tom, good morning to you. Reporter hi, matt, good morning. It started off as a routine flight but passengers aboard american flight 1284 last night quickly realized something was wrong. The captain even reportedly asked the passengers to help restrain a woman who had become violent, hitting another passenger and a friendant. Ow. Ow reporter incident caught on camera by fellow passengers. I thought it was a kid crying in the back, but it ended up being she was kind of being belligerent, drunk on the plane. Reporter American Airlines flight 1284 from miami headed to chicago was diverted to indianapolis after a female passenger struck a flight crew member. Apparently during the process she also kicked one of the Airport Police officers. Most of it was profanity and just, you know, just very disturbing, and, you know, you feel very bad for her. Police pick me up. Reporter just the latest incident of passengers behaving badly. This time the passenger was arrested and now facing a list of charges, including battery and two felony charges. It was a good decision that they made. They had to do what they had to do. Reporter the flight finally arrived in chicago about an hour later or so. Its a federal crime to interfere with a flight crew, and this morning the suspect is waking up in the Marion County jail. Guys, back to you. All right. Tom costello on this, tom, thanks very much. Meantime, a professor wanted in connection with the murders of his girlfriend and a coworker is dead, this after one of the shootings led to some frightening moments and a frantic search on a College Campus in mississippi. Nbcs Janet Shamlian is there this morning. Janet, good morning. Reporter savannah, good morning to you. Terrifying moments on this campus. Not just for the students and faculty but for the moms and dads who received that same text message of an active shooter on campus. This morning its all over, but the motive, why one professor gunned down another, still remains a mystery. This morning a sigh of relief in cleveland, mississippi. The crisis is over. Van none lamb, the man Authorities Say shot and killed fellow delta state professor Ethan Schmidt is dead. Police say he took his own life. He pulled off to the site of the road, exited his vehicle and went into a wooded area. There was one gunshot that was heard. 1272 en route to washington county. Late into the night, authorities spread a wide dragnet looking for lamb, finally locating him using license plate recognition technology, all less than a day after terrified delta state faculty and students are alerted to an active shooter on campus and forced to barricade themselves in classrooms. We all just froze, and we all huddled in there and put book shelves against the wall. Reporter Police Arrived on the chaotic scene in minutes and make a grim discovery. 39 years history professor Ethan Schmidt gunned down in his office. They connect the killing to another crime scene 300 miles away where earlier in the Morning Police say lamb called 911 to report the woman he lived, amy prentiss, had been shot and killed in their home. Still unanswered the question of motive. We cant answer that. We dont know why this man did what he did. Reporter even at school lamb was something of a mystery. Members. Knew. Reporter but the two professors did know each other. In schmidts book lamb was one of those he acknowledged writing im so lucky to have such wonderful people. Schmidt was married with three children. Friends called him a terrific man. He was a special guy, a great scholar, comary of native american history, and were reporter this was scheduled to be a big day at delta state, the celebration of its 80th anniversary. Instead the events will be rescheduled and the campus here and faculty, staff and students will be praying tribute to professor schmidt. Matt and savannah, back for you. All right. Janet shamlian, thank you. Other people waking up this morning to a startling announcement from north korea. Natalies got that. More saber rattling from north korea and a strong warning there, leaders there saying the country is working to improve the quality and quality ntity of its weapons it could use against the United States at any time. North korea has revamped and started all of its atomic bomb fuel production plants coming on the heels of mondays announcement that pyongyang is ready to launch satellites aboard long range rockets. Many outside analysts say both threats will push north korea further to a standoff with the u. S. And its allies. Mexico is condemning egypt for an accidental air strike on a group of tourists. The weekend incident left 12 people dead, including at least two mexican citizens. Mexico says the tourist convoy d come under an aerial attack with bombs launched from an airplane and helicopters. Egyptian Officials Say the tourists were mistaken for terrorists. Two kayakers had a close call when they paddled into a pod of whales feeding just off of monterey bay, california. You can see they were nearly crashed when the massive humpback whale breached and landed almost on top of them. They managed to keep their kayak afloat. Humbacks can weigh up to 50 tons. You dont want to come near one of them like that. And a touching tribute monday night to the late Frank Gifford. Espn commentators jon gruden and mike tirico wore the gold jacket just like the ones gifford used to wear during his run on monday night football. Gifford, of course, was an icon in the broadcast booth working as an announcer from 1971 to 1997. He died in august at age of 84, and who could forget that gold jacket that he wore . Such a nice thing that they did for him. I was reading in another part of the opening, part of a highlight package. They lit the number 16 just above a highlight clip in his honor as well. Nice gesture. Thank you, natalie. Al. Whats shaking . A lot more rain out west, muchneeded rain in parts of california, but in utah we could see the chance of more flash flooding today. Weve got heavier pockets of rain through utah and up into idaho and it doesnt look like a lot of rain, but its the topography that causes all the problems in that part of the country so with this pattern more rain will continue to stream in off the pacific and because of all the mountains here, you have the rainfall and then it funnels into these canyons. It causes the creeks to rise and feet within minutes so we have seen yesterday some of the reports coming in in just 17 to 19 minutes. Some of those creeks rose three to five feet with some of the heavier downpours so thats the biggest concern again today for the flash flooding because we could end up with another inch or two rain especially near Salt Lake City and up into jackson, wyoming. Thats where weve got most of the rain today. Scattered showers along gulf coast and down into florida. The rest of the country looking like a pretty another cool start out there. Generally, 60 to 65 in the boroughs. Outside, a lot of 50s. 52 morristown and 40s. Monticello, sussex and bridgewater in the upper 40s. We warm up nicely today. Lots of sunshine. A high of 84 degrees this afternoon. Not as breezy as yesterday either. Check out the sevenday forecast. We hold on to the sun. It gets warmer wednesday, thursday. Middle 80s friday. Lower 80s saturday. Clouds, maybe a brief passing shower on sunday. Cooler early next week. Your latest forecast. All right, dylan, thank you very much. Anticipation is growing. Preparations are well under way for pope francis first ever visit to the United States next week. Huge crowds are expected wherever he goes, and with that comes major security concerns. Nbcs kier simmons is at the vatican this morning. Kier, good morning to you. Reporter hey, matt, good morning. The vatican behind me this morning confirming that they do expect the president himself to meet the pope as he touches down in the u. S. For the first time, but youll know that pope francis will have been in cuba beforehand, and they are saying now that they think that it is likely that he will have met fidel castro there. Meanwhile the vatican saying that they expect the pope to conduct some of his tour in an opentop jeep, a kind of converted pope mobile as you would like. As ever with this pope, expect the unexpected. This morning new details from the vatican spokesman as the pope gets ready for his first trip to the u. S. Next week. President obama. Reporter president is expected to meet his holiness at Andrews Air Force base. Pope francis will begin his tour on the 23rd at the white house before an historic speech before congress. Meanwhile in new york, officials are gearing up for an unprecedented security test. An ied explosion from a backpack. Reporter screens at Police Headquarters showing many high priority concerns during an exercise led by homeland security. This event is going to be the largest security challenge that the department and this city have ever faced. Reporter the papal visit coincides with the seventh Year Anniversary of the United Nations which will bring 170 of the worlds leaders to the city at the same time. Literally never seen Something Like this before and we welcome it, we embrace it and we look forward to it. Reporter pope has a habit of breaking away to approach people or hole imprump you events. Pope francis say those who know him will not stick to the script. This pope has made it quite clear as hes traveled around the world thats not what he does. For those of us wearing security hats its always a concern. He answers to a higher authority. Reporter mayor de blasio not impressed with reports that people are selling some tickets for the events, guys on craigslist and ebay. Those tickets, of course, were part of a lottery for free and the mayor saying its completely inconsistent with the principles that the pope stands for. Guys. Kier simmons at the vatican this morning. Thank you very much. Coming up, imagine how you would feel, why lottery winners in one state who are owed some 180 mill 1 280 million in all are being given ious as well. And Chelsea Clinton in our studios and well hear a little caring about the things that make each of our clients unique. Thats what makes Riverspring Health unique. Coming up, would your kids actually learn more by going to school less in the new push, fet this, fourDay School Weeks which i think could fourday workweeks be far behind . A parade at the lauer house. And should you take an aspir