i'm jane pauley. we hope you have enjoyed our outing in the city. please join us when our trumpet sounds again next sunday morning. ♪ ♪ ♪ moving on unto the top ♪ ♪ to a deluxe apartment in the sky ♪ ♪ moving on up ♪ ♪ to the top ♪ ♪ we finally got a piece of the pie ♪ ♪ fish don't fry in t n n n n n♪ ♪ beans don't burn on the grill ♪ ♪ took a whole lot of trying ♪ i'm margaret brennan in washington. this week on "face the nation" yet another extraordinary severe weather event. republican presidential candidates prepare for the first debate without the frontrunner.

hurricanes in late august. not unusual. but the one aiming for the west coast and threatening catastrophic and life-threatening flooding, that's unchartered it territory. >> make no mistake, this is a very, very dangerous and significant storm. >> we'll talk with two key officials preparing for hurricane hilary expected to be a tropical storm when she hits southern california. palm springs mayor grace garner and los angeles mayor karen bass. as the recovery efforts continue in maui, the questions about the state and local response continue to grow. we'll speak with hawaii's governor joshua green. >> i'll get to the bottom of exactly how the fire started, how our emergency procedures and plow toe calls need to be strengthened, and how we can improve our defenses. >> president biden will visit the devastated area monday. we'll get an update on the federal response from fema

director deanne criswell and ask her how the agency plans to deal with the increasing number of natural disasters. plus, with coronavirus cases on the rise former fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb will tell us what we need to know about the arsenal of fall vaccines to fight covid, the flu and rsv. will wednesday's republican primary debate give any of the candidates the boost they need to come close to competing with the former president? our cbs news poll has insights into what the voters are looking for and how that field is shaping up. it's all just ahead on "face the nation." ♪ good morning. welcome to "face the nation." as we come on the air, hilary is a weakened category 1 hurricane nearing landfall. we begin this morning with

meteorologist kelly cas from our partners at the weather channel. >> good morning, margaret. hilary no longer a major hurricane, but it's still a major threat when it comes to its impacts, first for the baja of california into mexico, but eventually working its way up into southern california packing some winds of at least 50 miles an hour and the rain i think is going to be the worst problem. there are your tropical storm warnings. very rare to see in southern california. you've got l.a. right on down towards san diego, and you can see the path of the storm, this is the cone for the center of hilary. there will be impacts on either side of that cone, especially the flooding rainin, but the guy winds that could also knock out power as it it continues to track into southern california by about midday, san diego, up towards los angeles. you can see the heavy rain really begin to fill in, and especially for those higher elevations, the burn scars, where we've had fires in the past, we could have terrible mudslides and landslides to go along with that heavy rain and

flood threat. look at the widespread yellow on the map. that's 3 to 5 inches for these areas that typically don't get a trace of rain this time of year. this is our dry season and there will be some spots where we see more than that. 5 to 8 inches. that's why we have this high risk of flash flooding from eastern california in to nevada as well. the high wind warnings are also in effect from the southwest all the way up into the great basin. the winds could exceed 60, up to 70 miles per hour. and unfortunately, we can't rule out the possibility some of tropical tornados that come in with some of these outer rain bands of hilary working throughout the day today. we hope everybody stays safe. >> kelly cas with the weather channel. for more on the extreme weather across the country here's mark strassmann. >> reporter: hilary's now hammering mexico and soon, why southern californiaens could feel like south floridians. tropical storms are rarities here. the last one, 1939.

>> it's crazy. never seen anything like this and i've lived here my entire life. >> reporter: forecasters predict the storm could dump up to a year's worth of rain if one day. it's another 2023 weather moment. extraordinary, ominous, an one many experts pin it in part on our changing planet. on maui, charred and scarred, two words probably share the same space. hawaii. the death toll 114 and rising. most of the fire zone has been searched. the governor says climate change helped fuel those flames. >> the consequence of global warming and storm change is changing things, but we've never had anything like this near a city. >> reporter: winds from hurricane dora and then south of maui, pushed fires across an island suffering a flash drought. >> it took less than a single day for us to lose lahaina in

the deadliest fire our country has seen in more than a century. >> reporter: heat records keep falling like sweat, by some measures, all of us just lived through the hottest july ever. noaa is tracking temperatures, and it pays to grab some shade. through july, the agency says there's nearly a 50/50 chance to 2023 goes down as the warmest year on record. in washington state, near spokane, a new wildfire forced thousands to evacuate and prompted a state of emergency. the mayor of medical lake warned people get out now. and the middle of the country from the northern plains to texas, already swelters under the summer's most expansive heat dome. temperatures up to 20 degrees above normal. with this year's weather related events, the abnormal seems constant. ask people living along the san diego tijuana border this morning with the tropical storm bearing down.

>> it's our mark strassmann reporting. we'll speak with the mayors of two cities in the storm's path, but we turn now to maui, 12 days after the wildfires devastated the historic town of lahaina, jonathan vigliotti reports. >> reporter: 470 search and rescue agents with the assistance of 40 cadaver dogs are combing through this american pompeii. more than three quarters of the five square mile disaster zone have been clearered. x markiking the spopots already checked. more than 1,000 people are still missing, and there are more businesses, condos and entire neighborhoods to go. what rescuers are finding speaks to both the scale of destruction and the county's failure to issue evacuation orders. this is french street. without a procedure evacuation order people in an attempt to run the flames got in their cars and took to the road.

the fire quickly caught up and you can see the desperation in how these cars are lined up. we're talking dozens as far as you can see. there was so much panic as the fire hit. many tried to flee into the ocean while governor joshua green described the firestorm that swallowed lahaina as a bomb going off, there was a very long fuse as the fire burned in brush for nearly two hours before exploding, spreading a mile a minute. >> i realized when it was time to go when the smoke was so dark we could not see anything outside. >> reporter: the state attorney general announced an investigation into maui county's response, before, during and after the disaster, and on wednesday, cbs news learned the man in charge of activating the sirens intentionally did not. >> do you regret not sounding the sirens? >> i do not. the reason why -- >> so many people could have been saved if they had time to escape, had a siren gone off,

they would have known that there was a crisis emerging. >> as i mentioned earlier, the sirens are used primarily for tsunamis. >> reporter: the explanation given by herman andaya head of the maui emergency management agency, was defended by the mayor and governor, until survivors and the world weighed in. >> do you think had those sirens gone off, it could have saved lives? >> absolutely. i don't think. i know. we all are prepared for that. we know that sound. people are not dumb. people know what to do. >> reporter: andaya resigned the following day citing health reasons. now mounting anger as questions go unanticipated, did downed power lines cause the blaze and why weren't they deactivated and why did it take up to three days for help to arrive after the fire. >> there's an airport up the road. why isn't that being used? there's an oceanfront 20 feet from our lobby. why are we not using that.

>> reporter: today there's not just an active search for the missing in what is now the deadliest wildfire in modern american history but demands for more accountability. >> jonathan vigliotti in lahaina. we go to joshua green in honolulu. good morning. thank you for getting up so early, and i'm so sorry for what is going on in your state. >> thank you, margaret. >> governor, can you tell us how many are still unaccounted for, and how long will it take to identify remains? >> more than 1,000 are unaccounted for. about 1050. it will take self weeks still. some of the challenges are going to be extraordinary. as you reported, 85% of the land of the impact zone has been covered now by what amounts to an army of search and rescue teams and 41 dogs. 85% of the land has been

covered. we go into the larger buildings which require peeling back some of the floors and structures. that last 15% could take weeks. we do have extreme concerns that because of the temperature of the fire, the remains of those who have died in some cases may be impossible to recover meaningfully. they're going to be people that are lost forever, and right now we're working with the fbi and everyone on the ground to make sure that we do what we can to assess who is missing. >> that is hard to hear, governor. i know local maui official said a large number of the dead may have been children who were left home that day because schools were closed. many of them alone or with their grandparents. is that the case? >> that is possible. that's what we're sharing here internally, that is possible that there will be many children. this is the largest catastrophe

and disaster that has ever hit maui, probably ever hit hawaii outside of wartime events, so we just thank everyone in the world for reaching out and supporting us through all of the, you know, ways that they can. right now we are trying to make sure everyone is sheltered and we begin to get all the federal resources we can to make life in some way livable for the survivors. that's where we are at the moment. >> when will the surviving children of west maui be able to return to school? what do they need? >> in some cases they're returning later this week. children can go to any school that's in the region or where they are. we have six hotels that are basically full with families and their children that survived. we are doing distance learning. a lot of that was implemented during the covid pandemic. there are just so many things to share. the elementary school in lahaina is burned to the ground, totally gone. it used to host 650 children.

some of the children have passed. others, of course, will go to neighboring schools. you have to remember this is a rural part of hawaii and that's one of the challenges, so schools are far apart. we've authorized other means of transportation to help families get farther distances to school. >> we've been discusing there are now a lot of questions about all of the policies and procedures. you know, the national weather service had issued a fire watch for your state august 6th, a few days before the fire hit. would the siren system, you said to cnn on monday and tuesday, that you believe some of the sirens were broken. when did you learn they weren't fully functional? >> we assess every siren across the state on the first of the month and then we ask people to update them and fix them to their abilities.

of course as a person, as a father, as a doctor, i wish all the sirens went off. the challenge that you've heard and it's not to excuse or explain anything, the challenge has been that historically, those sirens are used for tsunamis. that's when i came to hawaii 23 years ago, was told when i was living down near the shore. it's usually tsunamis and hurricanes. for perspective, we've had six fire emergencies this august. we had six fire emergencies between 1953 and 2003. that's how fast things are changing. i know that there is debate out there whether we should be talking about climate change or not. let's be real, world. climate change is here. we are in the midst of it with a hotter planet and fiercer storms. >> right. >> and you asked the question i'm coming back to it now, do i wish the sirens went of snow of course -- went off? of course i do. i think the administrator from

maui who resigned was utterly unsatisfactory to the world, but it is the case that we've historically not used those kind of warnings for fires. >> i understand. and i know that you are conducting a review, but given that your state is experiencing a drought, and you're in hurricane season, can you say whether other hawaiian towns are as vulnerable as lahaina was? >> we worry about a lot of our state, on the big island, experiencing a fire at the same time and required evacuations, we're worried about them. we worry about all of our state. some of the state which is denser and more urban, like waikiki has more water and firefighters and support. >> yeah. >> oahu has three quarters of the population of the state. we've had, although it's not been reported in the press, we've had multiple small fires, some on oahu, some on big

island, of course more on maui, even in the days since the fire, and the firefighters i want to thank them. they've been heroic in this period of time. they've just been constantly working and everyone has stepped up. but yes, we're worried and we have done all that we can at the moment to continue to warn people that this is a season of fire and everyone, of course, doesn't need more reminding because of what happened in lahaina. >> there has been scrutiny of the largest utility hawaiian electric, because there were images, you know this, of power lines possibly starting fires. last year, that company had proposed an upgrade of the grid with lahaina as a priority area and suggested a rate hike to do that. do you know why that didn't happen, and if that contributed? >> i don't know personally whether or not the power lines

were the primary reason the fire occurred. that's why i asked for, you know, a comprehensive review two days into, which is very atypical. normal it these investigations come months or more later, but we have to ask that question. we have to ask the question on every level of how any one city, county, state could have done better in the private sector. this is -- this is the world that we live in now. in this case, and i've seen footage of it from some of the survivors, i've seen footage of how it looked during the fire and what fierce winds looked like. they were 80 miles an hour gusting and the fire i'm told was as high as 2,000 degrees farenheit destroyed everything. it's not to excuse anything else from any company. it's just to explain what the world should prepare for. i humbly ask all of the cities and states to spend that money now to prevent disasters like we are seeing here.

>> so just to be clear, when you're talking about global warmin warming, are you saying climate change amplified the cost of human error? >> yes. it did. there's always going to be incredible things that people do to save lives from the firefighters and citizens and always decisions made that i'm sure aren't perfect in the moment. and when you have fire that moved more than a mile a minute, and what happened, i'm told by some of the survivors, they were at the initial fire, it was put out late in the afternoon in lahaina, and then the firefighters had to go to three other fires that started because of the conditions. when they left, the fire stirred up again, and then when the storm winds from dora, which were that strong swept it out, it just destroyed everything. there's no excuses ever to be

made but there are finite -- there are finite resources sometimes in the moment. >> governor, we're watching. the country is watching. good luck. and thank you for your time. >> thank ou for your love and support. we appreciate it. we're going to turn to hurricane hilary. we go to the mayor of palm springs, grace garner. good morning to you. >> good morning. >> in california, i know you know this, but you're in this line of this tropical storm, which for people at home, this is very, very unusual for a desert city like yours. how are you preparing? >> well, in 2019, we had another storm, and it caused great amount of flooding. we had a little less than 4 inches at that time. so we're a bit lucky in this sense because we now know where our weak points are. we were able to prepare sandbags over 60,000 sandbags were distributed, 300 tons of dirt.

i was out with residents yesterday to help fill sandbags to prepare or prevent flooding into their homes. we have public safety personnel that were clearing storm drains and making sure any areas in our city that needed support had it. >> so about staying off highways, are you asking residents to consider evacuation or just stay put? >> at this point we're asking residents to stay inside, stay where they are. we don't have any reason to evacuate at this time. we have closed down preemptively three of our roads that are regularly flooded. that's our three main arteries into our city, which is part of the reason we've been working very hard to build bridges in these areas and requesting federal and state funds for that. >> governor newsom has a state of emergency. do you have what you need from the state is it. >> at this point we have what we

need. we've been working with the county, the state and we have robust resources and we're very grateful for everyone's quick response. we feel good about what we're looking at right now. it's drizzling outside. if it stays just this very light drizzle, we'll be okay. we do know there's going to be flooding. like i said even an inch or two of rain in the desert can cause damage. >> is one of the concerns power outages? it's still summer and the desert. that would cause some extreme heat to become that much more uncomfortable potentially >> there's always the potential for power outages when we're dealing with a storm and heat. of course the temperature is way down right now. i think it's under 80 degrees at the moment because of the storm. our utility provider is working really hard to prevent any outages. if there are any downed lines or any outages residents experience

they should contact southern california as quickly as possible. >> thank you for your time. good luck. "face the nation" will be back in one minute. years ago,o, we used t to justst fall asleleep wiwith a full l face of mamak. don't regrgret, just r revers. no7's nenew future r renew with a wororld-first peptidide technolology nono other skikincare prododuc.

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w are all hands on deck here at the city's emergency operations center. >> there is a lot to get to with you in with regard to your city and the impact on the unhoused as well. i want to talk about that after we take this quick commercial break if you would stay with us. we'll be back with more questions fofor the mayoyor. and, hi, i'm amanda on tiktkto. my scoototer broke d down. i wewent into a a depression. how w do you feeeel about tht? prpretty sad.. and d i posted i it to showw that k kenny's s not alwaysys . within 24 4 hours peopople had dodonated overer $5,000. no, yoyou're kididding. we setet up the papatriotic kenny founundation to give momobility scocooters to veteranans. it h has changnged my lifee tremenendously. nonone of thisis would've happd withouout tiktok.. hi, i'm m norma, and i lostst 53 poundsds on go. it h has changnged my lifee tremenendously. (sofoft music) a a lot of peoeople expectct to falall apart asas they ag, bubut since taking release, my e energy's imimproved, my skin'n's improveded. i've neverer felt betttter.

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an update on the state of the republican primary contest. stay with us.

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