A Southern California business gets a needed jolt, after owner starts making healthy tortillas. CNN's Ted Rowlands reports.

CNN's Ted Rowlands reports on the devastation from a U.S. Marine Corps jet crash and talks to those who saw it happen.

Ted Rowlands speaks with Wade Kirkwood, a convicted serial arsonist, who is serving a 9 year sentence for setting 11 fires. Watch the extended interview here, and watch the full report on AC360° tonight at 11p ET.

Program note: California investigators are trying to track down a suspected arsonist who may have set one of the current wildfires burning. Watch Ted Rowlands' full report on how a community tracked down a serial arsonist; along with Ted's jailhouse interview with the man whose compulsion destroyed hundreds of homes and terrified thousands of people.

Firefighters battle a wildfire that broke out early Thursday morning in the western part of Los Angeles, California.

Ted Rowlands
CNN Los Angeles Correspondent

Who starts fires for thrills? Wade Kirkwood does. We met Kirkwood in prison, where he's serving a nine year sentence in Washington State for setting 11 fires in 2004.

Kirkwood told us he's had the urge to set fires since he was a teenager, he says the rush he gets from setting a blaze is better than anything he's ever felt.

I understand on some level the motivations for a lot of different crimes, but arson has always been difficult for me to appreciate, until I met Wade Kirkwood.

There's no doubt in my mind that this guy, and I assume other arsonists, are wired differently. Wade Kirkwood loves everything about setting fires, he says he likes planning them, lighting them and watching them.

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Ted Rowlands
CNN Correspondent

On the Vegas strip dozens of people, who'd had no intention of watching election results, stood on Las Vegas Boulevard, glued to the Planet Hollywood Jumbo screen showing CNN.

It was a watch party nobody intended to attend, and that people were reluctant to leave.

When the race was called, there were some cheers. And when Barack Obama finished his speech I saw a few glassy eyes and heard some applause.

But mostly people just stood and stared, taking in a moment of history they hadn't planned to experience, but will likely never forget.

A firefighter stands by as two mobile homes go up in flames early Monday morning, north of Los Angeles. Intense Santa Ana winds swept into Southern California Monday and whipped up a 3,700-acre wildfire, burning mobile homes and industrial buildings and forcing the evacuation of eight patients from a nearby hospital.

Ted Rowlands | Bio
CNN Los Angeles Correspondent

Firefighters say a man and his dog died under a homemade shelter trying to ride out one of the wind-driven fires burning in Southern California.

He died overnight when the Santa Ana winds kicked into full gear.

I've covered a lot of fires, many with more devastating consequences, but I've never seen winds like this. Usually only hurricane winds are strong enough to knock us off the air. But our truck, which is "rated" to withstand 65-mile-per-hour winds lost its ability to transmit because of winds hitting 70 miles per hour.

Firefighters are having a terrible time, too. When the gusts are up, the helicopters and planes have been grounded.

This fire hasn't killed anyone else so far, besides the man and his dog, though it has destroyed about a dozen homes and about 3500 acres, mostly in the Angeles National Forest.

A second blaze nearby has destroyed 750 acres, and forced evacuations.

Forecasters expect the winds to get even more intense overnight, meaning the worst may be yet to come.

Ted Rowlands
CNN Correspondent

Morgan Doran did his best to stop the bailout plan. The 37-year-old Los Angeles attorney, who says he’s not a blogger, turned into one while on paternity leave for the past few weeks.

Between changing diapers and enjoying his newborn son he launched stopthehousingbailout.com, a full out assault against the bailout. Morgan, who works in the field of finance, says he thinks the government plan is “appalling,” and wanted to do everything in his power to educate people on the reasons why he doesn’t think this is good for the country.

Speaking by phone, Morgan told me the biggest issue he has with the plan, besides the “appalling” lack of detail, is the ridiculous notion that there is some sort of immediate catastrophe waiting if government doesn’t step in to save the day.

Morgan says everyone knew this was coming and yet just as lawmakers were set to leave town the White House and Treasury Secretary Paulson came running out to scare people into believing that a bailout is needed “right away” to avert dire consequences.

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