California Bridge Fire updates: Newsom expands emergency due to ‘extreme behavior’
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(NEW YORK) — The Bridge Fire straddling Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties was late Wednesday the largest wildfire in California, as authorities battled several large blazes aided by federal assistance and the state National Guard.
Some 2,500 structures are under threat from the Bridge Fire, Cal Fire said in its latest Wednesday night update, with the wildfire consuming 50,258 acres and at 0% containment.
The blaze — the cause of which is still undetermined — “continued to exhibit extreme fire behavior” through Wednesday, Cal Fire said, growing by 13,000 acres “mainly on the north and east flanks.”
At least 13 structures were destroyed in the Wrightwood area, it added, with power infrastructure also affected. Mountain High West and East Ski Resort were both affected by fire activity, while 20 homes in Mount Baldy and six wilderness cabins were destroyed.
Cal Fire warned that the expanding inferno may cause “spot fires” as it reaches areas of “receptive fuels with little to no fire history.”
The Bridge Fire is one of three large wildfires active in southern California. The Airport Fire — straddling Orange and Riverside counties — continued to burn on Wednesday, at 23,140 acres with 5% containment.
Though firefighting crews ensured minimal growth of the blaze through Wednesday — partially thanks to improved weather conditions — two civilians and 10 firefighters have so far been injured.
Evacuations orders are in place for 5,513 homes in Riverside County, and evacuation warnings in place for 9,581. Some 53,000 Riverside County residents are affected by the fire.
Gov. Gavin Newsom traveled to southern California on Wednesday, proclaiming a state of emergency in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange and Riverside counties in response to the Bridge and Airport fires, his office said in a press release.
Newsom declared a state of emergency related to the Line Fire last weekend. That wildfire — east of Los Angeles in San Bernardino County — was 18% contained as of Wednesday night, Cal Fire said, at 36,481 acres in size.
More than 100,000 people have been displaced from the affected area amid evacuation orders and warnings, with 65,600 structures threatened. One arson suspect was detained earlier this week on suspicion of starting the blaze.
Newsom visited the Line Fire command post in Highland on Wednesday.
“California is deploying every available resource to combat these devastating fires, and we’ll continue to work in lockstep with federal and local partners in this herculean effort,” Newsom said.
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for the first time this cycle, will soon hit the campaign trail with former President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, according to a senior campaign official.
The vice presidential nominee will be out with his party’s former standard bearers this week and next week in an effort to push for early voting in battleground states, ABC News has exclusively learned.
The governor will first rally with Clinton in Durham, North Carolina, on Thursday — the first day of early voting in the critical battleground state. Next Tuesday, Walz will travel to Wisconsin, another battleground, with Obama for the start of early voting in that state.
The joint campaign blitzes come as the Harris-Walz ticket has deployed both former presidents — some of its strongest political assets — headed into the final stretch of the election cycle.
Obama hit the trail for the ticket starting on Oct. 10 and has additional stops planned in the run-up to Election Day, according to the campaign.
His first stop was in battleground Pennsylvania in the Pittsburgh area — a visit where he sternly chided Black men over “excuses” to not vote for Harris, saying he finds them sitting out or voting for former President Donald Trump “not acceptable.”
Obama will also independently hit the campaign trail in the Sun Belt this week, with stops on Friday in Arizona and on Saturday in Nevada — the first days of early voting in the state.
On Sunday and Monday, Clinton made his trail debut with travel across rural communities in Eastern and South Georgia to encourage Georgians to vote early.
Last night, on the eve of early in-person voting in the state, Clinton stumped for the Harris-Walz ticket in battleground Georgia, mounting the stakes of the election and the importance of voting.
“I want you to be happy, and I want you to know that I am here because I believe. I believe, based on my personal knowledge of the job and the candidates, that Kamala Harris will be a fine president,” he said.
“All we gotta do is show up. If we show up, we’ll win,” Clinton added.
The joint principal campaign events also come as Walz himself has made campaign stops related to early voting. The governor campaigned last week in Phoenix and Tucson on the first day of early voting in Arizona.
“I know you’ve started voting here in Arizona. It’s happening across the country. We can make a difference. And I think just the idea of having an administration building on these strong relationships, this is our opportunity to take this to the next level that we need to do,” Walz said at event with tribal leaders in Chandler, Arizona last Wednesday.
ABC News’ Selina Wang, Fritz Farrow, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.
(SPRINGFIELD, Ohio) — Two elementary schools were evacuated and a middle school was closed on Friday in the wake of a new threat sent via email in Springfield, Ohio, according to the school district and the mayor.
The elementary schools released students to their parents, officials said.
It’s unclear if the person who sent Friday’s threat is the same person who sent Thursday’s, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue told ABC News.
On Thursday morning, bomb threats were sent via email “to multiple agencies and media outlets” in the city, according to the city commission office.
Explosive-detecting K-9s helped police clear multiple facilities listed in the threat, including two elementary schools, City Hall and a few driver’s license bureaus, Springfield Police Chief Allison Elliott told reporters. The county court facilities were also cleared “out of an abundance of caution,” she said.
The FBI is working with local police to help identify the source of the threat, Elliott said.
The mayor said there’s a lot of fear in Springfield in the wake of the threats.
“This is a very concerning time for our citizens, and frankly, a lot of people are tired of just, you know, the things that have been spread about our community that are just negative and not true. We need help, not hate,” Rue told ABC News on Friday.
The mayor said he believes these threats are directly connected to the baseless rumors spread online in the wake of viral social media posts claiming Haitian migrants were abducting people’s pets in Springfield order to eat them. The rumors were amplified by right-wing politicians, including former President Donald Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said at Tuesday night’s presidential debate. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
A spokesperson for the city of Springfield told ABC News these claims are false, and that there have been “no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals in the immigrant community.”
“Additionally, there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes,” the spokesperson said. “Furthermore, no reports have been made regarding members of the immigrant community deliberately disrupting traffic.”
The mayor added, “Your pets are safe in Springfield.”
Springfield estimates there are around 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants living in the county; migrants have been drawn to the region because of low cost of living and work opportunities, according to the city. The rapid rise in population has strained housing, health care and school resources, according to the city. City officials also said the migrants are in the country legally and that many are recipients of Temporary Protected Status.
The Haitian Bridge Alliance condemned the “baseless and inflammatory” claims about Haitian migrants, arguing they “not only perpetuate harmful stereotypes but also contribute to the dangerous stigmatization of immigrant communities, particularly Black immigrants from the Republic of Haiti.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who dispelled the rumors this week, said the state would send more resources to Springfield.
The mayor stressed, “Anybody on the national stage that takes a microphone, needs to understand what they could do to communities like Springfield with their words. They’re not helping. They’re hurting communities like ours with their words.”
(PHOENIX, Ariz) — A deaf Black man with cerebral palsy who was violently arrested by two Phoenix police officers in August said he tried to alert the officers that he was deaf before they repeatedly punched and tasered him for an alleged crime he had been falsely accused of by another suspect.
Records show that the incident occurred when officers were dispatched to investigate a report of a man causing problems and wouldn’t leave a Circle K convenience store, according to ABC affiliate in Phoenix KNXV-TV.
According to police records, the original description of the suspect was for a white man who had been creating a disturbance in the store, but that man later claimed he was assaulted by a Black man and pointed to Tyron McAlpin – a claim that was disputed by store employees and surveillance video, KNXV-TV reported.
“The officers took me down … And I told them, I was trying to get to my ears to tell them I can’t hear, I can’t hear, pointing to my ears,” McAlpin said through an interpreter as he used sign language, according to KNXV-TV. “I was trying to gesture, and that’s when the cops grabbed me. (I was) trying to show, hey I can’t hear, pointing to my ears, and they grabbed me.”
McAlpin gave his account in the hospital to a medical worker after his arrest, according to KNXV-TV. Two police officers are seen present in the body camera video during the medical examination.
The Phoenix man is seen in the footage telling medical workers he’s having trouble seeing out of his left eye and complaining of neck and chest pain, according to KNXV-TV.
“White male, 20s, grey shirt, blue shorts,” Ben Harris, one of the officers involved in detaining McAlpin, could be heard saying repeatedly to himself on the way to the call, according to the footage.
The newly released video appears to show that Harris knew the suspect was a white male.
In body-worn camera footage recorded after the arrest, employees at the store told law enforcement that the white male had gotten into a physical altercation the night before, according to KNXV-TV. The staff in the footage explains that McAlpin comes to the store regularly, holds the door for people and was trying to help the employees get the man out of the store.
Harris originally told another officer at the scene that he believed he broke a bone in his hand after striking the Phoenix man in the head, according to body camera footage obtained by ABC News in October.
Harris told a different story in court during an October hearing.
“At one point, when I was trying to regain control of his arm, following his initial swings, punch swings, it appears that these fingers were jammed in his forearm, and bent over all the way to my palm,” Harris testified, according to KNXV-TV.
The two Phoenix police officers who were involved in the arrest were placed on paid administrative leave in October amid an investigation into the incident, a spokesperson for the Phoenix Police Department confirmed to ABC News.
ABC News reached out to the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, a union representing the officers, but a request for comment was not immediately returned.
The union’s president, Darrell Kriplean, previously defended the officers’ actions in a statement to ABC News, saying that people should know what to do if uniformed officers approach and that the officers, who did now know McAlpin was deaf at the time, had to force him to comply.
McAlpin was initially charged with felony assault and resisting arrest following the Aug. 19 encounter with Phoenix police, but the charges were dropped on Oct. 17.
The decision to drop the charges against McAlpin was announced by Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, who said in a statement that she personally reviewed the case after a member of the local chapter of the NAACP expressed concern over the incident and poured through “a large volume of video recordings, police reports, and other materials that have been forwarded to my office.”
“I also convened a large gathering of senior attorneys and members of the community to hear their opinions as they pertain to this case,” Mitchell said. “I have now completed my review and have made the decision to dismiss all remaining charges against Mr. McAlpin.”
In the body camera video, police are seen pulling up to McAlpin and ordering him down to the ground. He doesn’t appear to immediately comply. The video then shows the officers punching him at least 10 times in the head and shocking him with a stun gun at least four times while yelling: “Get your hands behind your back.”
McAlpin’s attorney said that his client, who is deaf, didn’t know what was going on and could not hear the commands.
“It is our sincere hope that the County Attorney’s Office will respond to what is shown in the video and to the voices in the community who have raised alarms about what is shown in the video and will dismiss all charges against Tyron,” McAlpin’s attorney, Jesse Showalter, told ABC News in a statement on Oct. 14.
ABC News reached out to Showalter for additional comment after the newly released video became available.
Interim Phoenix Police Chief Michael Sullivan said in a statement on Oct. 16 that the Professional Standard Bureau (PSB) launched an internal investigation shortly after the incident took place.
“Their work is important to ensure all facts are known before drawing any conclusions. I ask for the public’s patience during that process,” Sullivan said.
“I recognize the video is disturbing and raises a lot of questions. I want to assure the community we will get answers to those questions,” he added.
According to Sullivan, the findings of the PSB will be reviewed by himself, as well as by the Office of Accountability and Transparency and the Civilian Review Board “to ensure it is thorough and complete.”
When ABC News asked the Phoenix Police Department if the white man who made the allegedly false allegations was charged, a spokesperson said in a statement that no additional arrests have been made at this point during the investigation.
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.
