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Firefighter david erickson. some say this is the worst they've seen in this area you can tell by looking at this scorched earth. the smoke is thick. it comes and goes. it dries and the sun is making it difficult for firefighters. earlier i spoke to a pio from the u.s. forest service. she told me how this compares to past ones she's seen. >> i've never seen headers the way i did earlier in the week this week. it was astounding to see the power of what i witnessed earlier. our main objectives right now, structure protection, judge just making sure we keep everyone safe and we protect that park a...

Firefighters again tried to contain the fire as best they could with bulldozers, aerial firefights and handcrews. you have had double the manpower doing the structure protection, putting people on the homes, clearing brush and so forth. here is an assessment of operations last night from the incident commander. >> what a difference a day makes, as we were here yesterday granted we are still faced with the winds, however, as we mentioned yesterday the increased humidities helped the incident overall to keep the fire in check for the most part, aside from what chief walker just mentioned, a coup...

And possibly australia. but that's basically what does it. >> the speed at which this thing has grown, it just seems so rapid. is it moving fast? is it stronger than other fires like it around this time of year? >> oh, definitely. it's very unusual to have a santa ana wind this early in the year. they do occur in the wintertime but they're not a factor due to the fuel moistures. our fuel moistures are extremely low right now. they're normally about where they are now in august. so we've got very dry brush, we had a very high wind event with high temperatures and low humidities in the single di...

For fire. >> for the firefighters, what is the biggest challenge at this point? >> well, there are several. civilian safety, civilians that are involved in the fire area, firefighter safety, structure protection and the environment. >> and in terms -- how do they know when to build a fire line, fire break? how do they figure out exactly how to go about -- how to battle this thing? because it just seems scientifically they're able to be very effective now. >> well, in these wind-driven fires it's basically not much fire suppression that goes on until the wind slows down or stops, because you ju...

Dryist winter on record. five inches of rain, not 15 which is normal. you see some green in the hills, underneath that is a lot of dead under growth and a lot of it has been dead for decades. a lot of native plants create a lot of oil making nor a fast-burning fire. the steep canyons accelerate the wind, difficult for firefighters to get in there and cut line. you can't get bulldozers in the steeper areas. 15 square miles burned, a fast-moving trifle out of control. 10% contained. 950 firefighters as you said, jon. 4,000 homes threatened. 15 structures destroyed or damaged. the air attack bega...