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 A fire was confirmed at the Vistra Power Plant in Moss Landing on Thursday, forcing evacuations and closing roads in the area.

The fire was reported shortly after 3 p.m. The building was evacuated when the fire started. All Vistra employees, law and fire personnel are safe, per the County of Monterey.

Firefighters are not engaging the fire and are waiting for it to burn out on its own. It is unknown how long the fire will last.

KSBW's Joyce Kim said that as of early Friday morning, the flames have died down considerably, compared to Thursday afternoon, but there is still smoke and the fire is still burning in the area.

Emergency responders are staged in the area.

A spokesperson with the Monterey County Sheriff's Office told KSBW 8 that 40% of the battery plant has burned.

The County of Monterey’s Board of Supervisors will hold an emergency meeting at the Castroville Library at 8:30 a.m. Friday to discuss the fire. Fire officials and the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office will hold a news conference at 10 a.m. to give an update.

Moments Fire Erupted in Moss Landing

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The owner of the battery plant, Vistra, gave the following statement to KSBW 8:

"There is an ongoing fire at our Moss Landing Power Plant site. Our top priority is the safety of the community and our personnel, and Vistra deeply appreciates the continued assistance of our local emergency responders.

"Earlier this afternoon, Vistra personnel called for assistance from the North Monterey County Fire District after a fire was detected in the 300-MW Phase I energy storage facility at the Moss Landing Power Plant site. All site personnel were safely evacuated.    

"The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, but an investigation will begin once the fire is extinguished."

Earlier on Thursday afternoon, Vistra personnel called for assistance from the North Monterey County Fire District after a fire was detected in the 300-MW Phase I energy storage facility at the Moss Landing Power Plant site. All site personnel were safely evacuated.    

The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, but an investigation will begin once the fire is extinguished.

The county of Monterey sent the following message to residents in the area:

"North County Fire Department is currently responding to a fire at Moss Landing Power Plant. Out of an abundance of caution, the fire department urges residents in Zones MRY-B047 and MRY-B053 to close windows and doors and shut off air systems until further notice. Residents are also requested to stay out of the area to allow for access of emergency vehicles."

See what zone you are in, HERE.

"Santa Cruz County Public Health officials advise residents to stay indoors, keep windows and doors closed, limit outdoor exposure, and turn off ventilation systems. Monitor local news and social media for additional updates. Further information will be provided as the situation changes," according to a CruzAware message sent out to Santa Cruz County residents.

Monterey County health officials have also advised residents to stay indoors, keep windows and doors closed, limit outdoor exposure, and turn off ventilation systems

San Benito County says there is no immediate threat to residents in the county.

"We are monitoring closely and in contact with the National Weather Service and neighboring counties and following their recommendations," said the county.

Road Closures

• Caltrans says both ways of Highway 1 at Salinas Road is currently closed due to a fire at the Moss Landing power plant. Use Highway 101 instead advises CHP.
• Hard closure at Highway 183 (Merritt Road)
• Hard closure at Dolan Road at Castroville Boulevard.
• Highway 1 at Struve Road is closed.
• Paradise at Walker Valley Road.
• Elkhorn at Bayview Road.
• Elkhorn at Walker Valley Road.
• Elkhorn at Strawberry Road.
• Elkhorn at Hidden Valley Road.
• Elkhorn Rd between Kirby Road and Wauh Road.
• Elkhorn at the intersection of Hall Road at the fire station.
• Russo Road at Dolan Road
• Trafton Road to Bluff Road

There is no estimate for when the roads will be reopened.

Evacuation Orders

There are now evacuation orders for areas off Moss Landing south of Elkhorn Slough, north of Molera Road and Monterey Dunes Way and west of Castroville Boulevard and Elkhorn Road to the ocean.

There are 1,214 people in the evacuation zone, per the Monterey County Sheriff's Office. A total of 7,676 acres are under evacuation. The Sheriff's office says they have completed their evacuations.

School Closures

North Monterey County Unified School District announced that all of its schools and district offices are closed on Friday. There is a holiday on Monday, but after that, they will assess whether they need to remain closed.

Hartnell College will also close its Castroville Education Center on Friday due to the fire.

Pajaro Valley Unified School District said all its schools will remain open on Friday. It will monitor air quality and will update families with any updates.

Director-writer David Lynch, who radicalized American film with with a dark, surrealistic artistic vision in films like “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive” and network television with “Twin Peaks,” has died. He was 78.

Lynch revealed in 2024 that he had been diagnosed with emphysema after a lifetime of smoking, and would likely not be able to leave his house to direct any longer. His family announced his death in a Facebook post, writing, “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.'”

The “Twin Peaks” TV show and films such as “Blue Velvet,” “Lost Highway” and “Mulholland Drive” melded elements of horror, film noir, the whodunit and classical European surrealism. Lynch wove tales, not unlike those of his Spanish predecessor Luis Bunuel, which proceeded with their own impenetrable logic.

A four-time Oscar nominee, Lynch received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2020.

After years spent as a painter and a maker of short animated and live action films, Lynch burst onto the scene with his 1977 feature debut “Eraserhead,” a horrific, black-humored work that became a disturbing fixture on the midnight movie circuit. His outré and uncompromising style quickly won the attention of the Hollywood and international movie-making establishment.

He was hired by Mel Brooks’ production company to write and direct “The Elephant Man,” a deeply affecting drama about a horrifically deformed sideshow freak in Victorian England who became a national celebrity. The feature captured eight Academy Award nominations, including Lynch’s first for best director.

He found less success with his 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sprawling science fiction novel “Dune.” The production, made on a budget of $40 million during an arduous three-year shoot, was a colossal box office flop.

However, Lynch rebounded from the disaster with two films that defined his mature style: “Blue Velvet” (1986), a frightening hellride through the psychosexual underbelly of a small American town, and the sexed-up, violent road movie “Wild at Heart” (1990), which was honored with the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or.

In 1990, he revolutionized American episodic TV with “Twin Peaks,” a series he created with writer Mark Frost. With action springing from the investigation of a high school girl’s mysterious murder in a Washington lumber mill town, the weekly ABC show plumbed disquieting, theretofore taboo subject matter and made the inexplicable a fixture of modern narrative television.

Lynch’s first feature after “Twin Peaks,” 1990’s “Wild at Heart,” was an oddball exodus, based on a novel by Barry Gifford, in which an Elvis-fixated ex-con (Nicolas Cage) and his hot-to-trot girlfriend (Laura Dern) are pursued by the murderous minions of the girl’s jealous mother (Dern’s own mother Diane Ladd). Domestic reaction was mixed to the gory, sexually frank mix of “Detour” and “The Wizard of Oz,” but the Cannes jury was wowed.

Lynch’s association with Gifford continued with “Lost Highway,” for which the two collaborated on an original screenplay. A doppelganger murder mystery that foreshadowed “Mulholland Drive,” the disquieting, brutally effective thriller starred Bill Pullman, Balthazar Getty and Patricia Arquette as the players in a homicidal foursome.

After spending most of the decade on the far side of narrative coherence, Lynch came back down to earth with “The Straight Story,” the first feature in which he took no hand in writing. In the incongruously Disney-distributed picture, based on a true story, Richard Farnsworth starred as an Iowa man who drives from Iowa to Wisconsin on a power mower to visit his seriously ill brother.

Though not a major hit, the film was critically well received, and proved to Lynch’s naysayers that he was capable of bringing life to material that was not extravagantly outrageous. Farnsworth received an Oscar nomination for his performance; the veteran actor and stunt man, who was suffering from terminal prostate cancer during the production of the film, died by suicide in 2000.

 Nintendo has finally announced its successor to the Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo Switch 2.

In a video, below, Nintendo showed off the functionality of the next-gen console in vague terms, with a tease of more information to come via a Nintendo Direct dated April 2.

Unfortunately, Nintendo did not announce a Switch 2 release date, but did say the console will be available in 2025. Nintendo also failed to announce a price. In fact, there remain a number of details we still don't know yet, such as software launch line-up. However, the video showed a new Mario Kart.

Rumors about Nintendo's next system have been persistent for several years now, coming to a head in recent weeks as details about the console's physical form and even its motherboard began to leak via various accessory makers. In particular, this reveal confirms many of the details the leaks had recently converged on, including the console essentially being a slightly larger Nintendo Switch with magnetically connected Joy-Con and the apparent ability to use the Joy-Con as a mouse.

We also learned from Nintendo itself late last year that the Nintendo Switch 2 is backward compatible, and the video confirms the Switch 2 plays both physical and digital Nintendo Switch games, as well as Switch 2 exclusive games. Certain Nintendo Switch games may not be supported on or fully compatible with Nintendo Switch 2, however.

Nintendo Switch 2 - First Look

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Nintendo will also hold Nintendo Switch 2 Experience events, where consumers can go hands-on with Nintendo Switch 2 in cities around the world. A Nintendo Account is necessary to participate.

Nintendo Switch 2 Experience host cities and schedule. All dates are local.

North America:

• New York, April 4-6, 2025
• Los Angeles, April 11-13, 2025
• Dallas, April 25-27, 2025
• Toronto, April 25-27, 2025

Europe:

• Paris, April 4-6, 2025
• London, April 11-13, 2025
• Milan, April 25-27, 2025
• Berlin, April 25-27, 2025
• Madrid, May 9-11, 2025
• Amsterdam, May 9-11, 2025

Oceania:

• Melbourne, May 10-11, 2025

Asia:

• Tokyo (Makuhari), April 26-27, 2025
• Seoul, May 31-June 1, 2025
• Hong Kong, To be announced
• Taipei, To be announced

 Outgoing US President Joe Biden's administration on Wednesday announced a ban on Red Dye No 3, a controversial food and drug coloring long known to cause cancer in animals.

Decades after scientific evidence first raised alarm, Red 3, as it is also called, is currently used in nearly 3,000 food products in the United States, according to the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.

 If Senate Democrats’ uncoordinated performance at Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday is a sign of things to come, Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks can breathe easy.

Hegseth breezed through the bulk of the four-hour hearing, most of which he spent talking over Democrats who quietly waited for the “Fox and Friends” host to finish his monologues. Only a few lawmakers tried pushing back on Hegseth’s motor-mouthing, among them Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Maizie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.). But Hegseth, a veteran broadcaster accustomed to combative interviews, knew better than to take the bait.

If Hegseth’s goal was to be uneventful, he largely succeeded. But if Hegseth’s text was flat by design, his subtext was anything but. Time and again, Hegseth revealed himself to be a hard-line Republican partisan with big ideas and little practical understanding of America’s most important government department.  

Luckily for Hegseth, today’s Republican Party doesn’t view incompetence as a disqualifying factor.

Hegseth’s years at Fox News have evidently resulted in his mastery of the language of right-wing grievance. He ranted about the dangers of “electric tanks” and peppered his responses with condemnations of the “woke military.” He pledged to “tear out DEI and CRT initiatives root and branch” from the Defense Department and rattled a verbal saber at “Communist China.”

Hegseth’s responses brought all the energy of his Fox News segments — and were clearly intended for an audience of one watching from Mar-a-Lago.

But drill down past the superficial outrage, and Hegseth has nothing. Given three chances by Duckworth to name a country involved in ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Hegseth couldn’t name one. That’s especially concerning given that Hegseth had just finished a canned response about how supporting ASEAN will be critical for countering China’s growing influence in the Pacific. Whoops!  

It wasn’t just Democrats who tripped Hegseth up, either. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) asked Hegseth a straightforward question about whether America could fight a multi-front war against “near-peer adversaries” like Russia and China. That’s the kind of technical question a Secretary of Defense will face on a regular basis. Yet Hegseth had no answer. Instead of engaging any part of Rounds’s question, Hegseth instead offered another round of praise for Trump’s strength as a leader.

How Hegseth prepared for his hearing offers valuable insight into how the political dynamic has changed under a restored Trump. Despite pledging to serve “both Republicans and Democrats” if confirmed, Hegseth’s team refused to meet with a single Democratic lawmaker in the run-up to Tuesday’s hearing. When Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) asked why Hegseth had refused his multiple requests to meet, Hegseth dismissively replied that “schedules fill up.” 

It didn’t take Hegseth long to dispense with his poetic commitment to bipartisanship. In his first response, he blamed shadowy forces on the left for a string of media stories about his workplace misconduct and alleged sexual assault. “Our left wing media … doesn’t care about the truth,” Hegseth said. “They want to destroy me because I’m a change agent and a threat to them.”  

Gone also is the tradition of nominees racing to the center in an effort to appear palatable to both sides. In a pointed back-and-forth with Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), Hegseth refused to offer his unequivocal support for the Geneva Conventions, specifically their restrictions on torture. In one of his few direct responses of the day, Hegseth asserted that the Geneva Conventions and other laws written by people in “air-conditioned offices” hinder America’s ability to prosecute warfare.

Hegseth also took a stab at explaining his having sought pardons for convicted American war criminals — something that might have aroused skepticism from Republicans in another political reality. Arguing that in cases of war crimes he always “defaults to the warfighter,” Hegseth made no excuses for seeking pardons for those convicted by the military of human rights abuses. That outrageous answer didn’t even merit a follow-up from Democrats. 

Despite his claim early in the day that politics should play “no role” in the military, Hegseth’s fixation on rooting out DEI, CRT and other “progressive” politics from the Pentagon tells a different story. Like many of his MAGA kin, Hegseth sees liberal demons behind every door and feels a moral obligation to root them out. That those demons are entirely imaginary doesn’t seem to matter.

Hegseth is resolutely unqualified to be secretary of Defense, but Democrats’ uninspiring questioning did a dreadful job of showcasing that fact for the public. Hegseth is now on track for a Senate confirmation that would have seemed outlandish even a month ago. If that happens, America’s fighting men and women will be in for a wild ride.     

 Country music star Carrie Underwood is slated to perform “America the Beautiful” at President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a copy of the program obtained by CNN and confirmed by a spokesperson for the inaugural committee.

“I love our country and am honored to have been asked to sing at the Inauguration and to be a small part of this historic event,” Underwood said in a statement to CNN. “I am humbled to answer the call at a time when we must all come together in the spirit of unity and looking to the future.”

The presidential oath of office will be administered by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts with Justice Brett Kavanaugh expected to administer the oath of office to Vice President-elect JD Vance.

Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president of the United States will take place on January 20 at the US Capitol.

Underwood is a big get for Trump’s inauguration, considering Hollywood’s Trump blackout over the course of his political career.

In his first term and throughout the past three elections, Trump has struggled to garner support from major Hollywood stars. At the Republican National Convention last year, the two biggest stars onstage with Trump were musician Kid Rock and retired WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan – a far cry from a superstar at the height of their career, like Underwood.

The Grammy-winning artist is as high-profile as you can get in country music, not only with numerous platinum hits, but also with public-facing, mainstream business associations. Underwood is the face of Sunday Night Football and is set to make her debut this March as a judge on ABC’s “American Idol” – the singing competition show that catapulted her to fame when she won in 2005.

While many NFL fans will likely applaud Underwood for singing at the inauguration, any time a celebrity aligns themselves with Trump, they run the risk of alienating left-leaning fans and Hollywood allies.

Underwood has kept her politics under wraps over the course of her career. In her statement, she did not mention Trump by name and kept her focus on unifying the country – still, Underwood’s decision to publicly align with Trump is a big statement for any star, particularly one as private as the singer.

Historically, Hollywood has always been closely associated with the Democratic Party, but country stars have always been an outlier, leaning more conservative. In recent years, as new singers join the genre, country music has gotten to be more progressive. This past election cycle, country stars like Mickey Guyton and Maren Morris stood with Vice President Kamala Harris.

 A Philadelphia Eagles fan, identified as Ryan Caldwell, is under investigation by his employer, BCT Partners, after a viral video showed him verbally berating a female Green Bay Packers fan during the teams' Wildcard Game on January 12. 

The altercation, which occurred at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, sparked widespread outrage online and has led to calls for action from Caldwell’s employer.

The incident was captured by Alexander Basara, a Packers content creator, who was at the game with his fiancée, also a Packers fan. Basara began filming after a verbal confrontation broke out between his fiancée and an older Eagles fan. The fan, later identified as Caldwell, began insulting Basara’s fiancée with derogatory language. Basara, who had not responded to the insults initially, started recording when the abuse escalated.

In the video, Caldwell can be heard repeatedly using a vile slur directed at Basara’s fiancée. When Basara intervened, asking Caldwell to stop calling his fiancée a "dumb c*nt," Caldwell responded by doubling down on the insult, calling her "an ugly, dumb c*nt." Despite the verbal abuse, Basara remained calm, replying sarcastically, “Cool, cool,” while continuing to film the encounter.

The confrontation escalated further when Caldwell challenged Basara, saying, “You gonna do anything? Shut the f*ck up. Yup. Turn around. Watch the game.” Despite Caldwell’s attempts to provoke a physical confrontation, Basara chose not to engage, instead focusing on capturing the encounter on video.

Basara posted the footage to social media with the message: “What it’s like being an opposing fan in Philly. Unprovoked. Was the 3rd time he said this to my fiancée.” He also expressed his frustration on X (formerly Twitter), writing, “Unprovoked, uncalled for. Packers twitter, help me out and find this guy…. this is not okay. I hate that my fiancé had this happen simply cheering for her team.” The video quickly gained traction, amassing over 20 million views and drawing widespread condemnation of Caldwell’s behavior.

Within hours of the video going viral, social media users launched an effort to identify Caldwell. Through online research, it was revealed that Caldwell worked as a business analyst at BCT Partners, a management consulting firm based in East Brunswick, New Jersey. Caldwell has an extensive background in hospitality, having held managerial roles at Plamondon Hospitality Partners, Hersha Hospitality, Marriott International, and Cohenterprises. His now-deleted LinkedIn profile described him as a “highly motivated Project Manager” with a proven track record in managing IT projects and client service. Caldwell is based in Purcellville, Virginia.

Following the identification, social media users directed their attention to BCT Partners, calling for the company to take action against Caldwell. In response, BCT Partners issued a statement acknowledging the video and the behavior of their employee. The company expressed its strong disapproval of Caldwell’s actions, stating that his behavior was “completely unacceptable” and in direct conflict with the organization’s values.

“We have already begun a full investigation as an internal personnel matter to determine what actions will be taken,” the statement read. “We sincerely apologize to everyone affected by this behavior and remain committed to fostering a culture of respe