Fire crews are battling a fire near eastbound Interstate 8 and Lake Jennings Park Road in Lakeside. 

Crews from Cal Fire and Heartland Fire were called at 1:40 p.m. to what is being called the Harbison Canyon Fire. 

The fire was burning at a rapid rate of spread in an area described as having medium fuel.

In less than an hour, 30 acres burned, Cal Fire officials said.

By 2:45 p.m., 150 to 200 acres had burned. 

There was no current structure threat. 

There were no evacuation orders issued at this time in the Harbison Canyon Fire.

However, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department advises residents to monitor the news for updated information.

California Highway Patrol officers issued a Sig Alert for I-8. The interstate has been closed in both directions between Tavern Road and Lake Jennings Park Road until further notice.

Drivers on State Route 52 could see the smoke as far as Tierrasanta and Mission Trails.

Are you and your family prepared for a brush fire? 

County officials advise residents to download the free emergency smartphone application SDEmergency and follow three key steps. 

GET READY: Do your 100-foot defensible space in advance

GET SET: Have an emergency plan. Pack your car when Santa Anas arrive.

GO: When told to leave, leave.

A wildfire ripped through five acres of brush in Santee Tuesday morning, leaving behind blackened terrain that made for a compelling visual from above.

Firefighters in their bright yellow uniforms could be seen hosing down hot spots at around 11 a.m. from the blaze that sparked in a field at Mission Gorge Road and West Hills Parkway about a half-hour earlier.

Video captured by the NBC 7 news helicopter showed the stark contrast between the yellow uniforms and the dark, scorched Earth.

Heartland Fire-Rescue Department officials said crews were able to surround the fire and knock it down quickly. A helicopter helped from above, while crews from Santee Fire, Lakeside, El Cajon, San Diego and Viejas also assisted on the ground. Firefighters planned to remain at the scene for a while monitoring for flare-ups and mopping up hot spots.

No one was hurt in the fire, and no structures were damaged. The cause of the brush fire is under investigation. Santee Fire officials said a preliminary indicates the fire may have been caused by landscaping work being done in the area.

The temperature in Santee was around 84 degrees at the time the fire sparked. The inland community in San Diego’s East County is prone to intense heat and heightened fire dangers in summer months.

Just before 12:30 p.m., the San Diego County Sheriff's Department (SDSO) said westbound Mission Gorge Road was closed at West Hills Parkway as crews continued to clean up the fire area. Motorists were advised to used alternate routes.

By 1:15 p.m., the roads had reopened.

NBC 7 Llarisa Abreu explains what will feed the Jennings Fire.

“I just got a new job and I wanted a new car,” Taggart Plain said. 

In March, after months of research, Taggart said he went to Westcott Mazda in National City to buy what he thought would be the perfect car. For six days after the purchase, everything was going great for Taggart’s dark blue Mazda 3, until something unexpected happened. 

“All of a sudden the car started sputtering,” Taggart said. “All the lights on the dash came on, check engine and everything, and it just died.” 

Taggart had the car towed back to Westcott Mazda where he said it stayed for four weeks. From the ignition coil to the onboard computer, he said the technicians, continued to tell him the problem was something else. Taggart said nothing seemed to work. 

“I never thought it would take this long,” he said. 

When the repairs didn’t work, Taggart asked for a new car. He said the dealership agreed but only if he paid them $1,600 for taxes and a license fee. Taggart said he didn’t think that was fair. 

“I would like a new car, a replacement car, not that car because I’m not sure it’s reliable,” Taggart said. “I think it’s a lemon.” 

According to California lemon law standards, if a newly purchased car breaks down, the dealership has thirty days to make the repair. In Taggart’s case, the dealership’s repair took over a month to complete. 

Taggart contacted NBC 7 Responds and we reached out to Westcott Mazda. When the dealership wouldn’t respond to our calls, we turned to Mazda’s U.S. Corporate Headquarters. 

Mazda acknowledged Taggart’s car was covered by California’s Lemon Law and found him the replacement car he was looking for. 

“Same one I had before except this one actually runs properly and the check engine light doesn’t come on,” Taggart said. 

In a statement, Jacob Brown with Mazda’s U.S. Corporate Headquarters said, “it is our goal to delight customer with our Mazda cars and crossovers and throughout their ownership experiences. We’re glad Mr. Plain’s situation was resolved with a positive outcome, and we hope he enjoys his new Mazda3 for many years to come.”

To read more from the Department of Consumer Affairs on California's lemon law, click here.

NBC 7 Omari Fleming reports on the traffic delays in the East County due to the large fire burning near Lakeside.

Cal Fire Capt. Issac Sanchez talks with NBC 7 about the Jennings Fire in the East County of San Diego.

A Poway couple, accused of hoarding almost 200 Yorkie dogs inside their homes and a restaurant were sentenced Tuesday, confirmed prosecutors.

Christine Calvert, 62, and Matt Vattimo, 73, were placed on three years of probation at their sentencing on July 11, and ordered not to have dogs for ten years, said prosecutors.

Calvert was also ordered to continue counseling.

The felony could be reduced to a misdemeanor, according to Superior Court Judge Kathleen Lewis. The couple could apply to have animals within five years if that happens.

The Deputy DA Karra Reedy wanted to make sure the public is aware that many of the adopted dogs still have health issues including tumors and behavioral issues.

"There are 180 dogs here that did suffer neglect in the hands of the defendants. And some of the owners have contacted the District Attorney's office," said Reedy. "They have stated [in] both letters and phone conversations to me that they are still dealing with some problems with these Yorkies that they adopted."

Calvert and Vattimo previously pleaded not guilty in March, and later switched to guilty pleas.

Back in January, the Humane Society received a report from a concerned veterinarian that suggested the Poway couple was keeping 180 dogs in deplorable conditions. The dogs were kept in dark, unsanitary rooms filled with feces, urine and mice at the defendants' homes.

Their motorhome was given to the San Diego Humane Society as restitution. It was purchased last January for $82,000, said the defense attorney.

It was unclear why the couple kept so many dogs in terrible conditions, Reedy said. All the animals had health problems, ranging from ear infections to severe matting.

The couple was charged with 10 felony counts, including animal abuse and neglect, and one count of resisting an officer.

The dogs were placed in the care of the San Diego Humane Society. More than 1,500 adoption applications were submitted for the Yorkies, prompting the organization to close the adoption process earlier than planned.

One woman who adopted one of the dogs was in court. She told NBC 7 that all she wanted was for the couple to not be able to have animals again.

Fire crews continue to make progress battling a 150-acre brush fire on the Camp Pendleton base, near the San Mateo campground area. 

The fire broke out Tuesday afternoon around 4 p.m., five to six miles northeast of the Cristianitos gate on base, according to Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA) Spokesman Larry Kurtz. 

No homes in the area are threatened, and no structures are threatened. 

The fire was fire reported as five acres, but steadily grew to 150 acres as crews conducted backfire operations along surrounding roads and the perimeter of the fire. 

No one has been injured. 

No evacuations have been issued.

No further information is available. Check back for updates. 

After the History channel revealed last week that a hidden and mislabeled photograph suggested vanished aviator Amelia Earhart survived her crash, the channel announced Tuesday it is investigating claims that a Japanese blogger made against the autenticity of the photo, NBC News reported.

The blogger on Tuesday wrote that the photo was actually taken in 1935 and does not show Earhart. The photo also appears on Japan's national library website with a publication date of 1935.

"History has a team of investigators exploring the latest developments about Amelia Earhart, and we will be transparent in our findings," the channel said in a statement on its Twitter page. "Ultimately historical accuracy is most important to us and our viewers."

History aired a two-hour special on Sunday about the photo to help clear up one of the 20th century's greatest mysteries.

BAE Systems announced hundreds of layoffs of its San Diego shipyard employees Tuesday.

The United Kingdom-based defense contracting company notified about 300 employees that they could lose their job in early September this year.

According to the company, the layoffs come after a decrease in near-term ship repair work--which has been handed over to some local contractors. 

Due to a change in the Navy acquisition process, contractors compete for work on a ship-by-ship basis, the company said, instead of it being "bundled by ship class over several years."

In a statement, BAE Systems said: "We recognize that the workforce reduction will impact our dedicated employees and our shipyard team overall. We greatly appreciate the contribution and hard work of the employees who will be leaving our organization."

The shipyard currently employees approximately 1,570 people.

It was state of panic at a Santee high school after a driver came dangerously close to a large group of people, including children on Independence Day.

The incident occurred just after the fireworks show on July 4, outside Santana High School. 

Darlene Brown said watching the fireworks at the school is a tradition for her family. The group of 22 joined dozens of others at Santana High School's practice field for the celebration.

But this year's festivities quickly took a terrible turn. 

"I was holding my 3-month-old grandchild and my 4-year-old grandchild was next to me screaming, 'My family, my family,'" said Brown.

"It's just terrifying," said witness Laura Tallant. "What kind of person does that? Knowing that there's people down there, knowing that there's kids down there--to come back."

The women told NBC 7, they were with their grandchildren when the driver of a Ford Explorer directly towards them. 

According to witnesses, the driver, at one point, circled around a group of small children doing donuts.

"My son was pushing kids out of the way--kids he didn't even know out of the way so that they wouldn't be harmed," said Brown.

The SUV then took off but San Diego County Sheriff's deputies caught up to the suspected driver a few blocks away.

Parker Higgins, 18, was arrested for child endangerment, hit-and-run, and driving under the influence among other charges.

Investigators told NBC 7 there was also a 19-year-old passenger in the SUV.  He also had alcohol in his system.

Brown's son has injuries to his neck, shoulder, elbow, and back but is expected to be okay.

Detectives are still searching for more witnesses and victims.

If you have any information, you are asked to call the San Diego Sheriff's substation in Santee at (619)956-4000.

A third school in the San Diego Unified School District has higher than recommended amounts of lead in the school's drinking water, according to the most recent testing results reviewed by NBC 7 Investigates. 

Tuesday, test results for the Montezuma Child Development Center show one water sample had 53 parts per billion of lead in it. 

To read the results, click here.  

The EPA requires action to be taken if the amount of lead in the water is greater than 15 parts per billion. 

The sample was taken from the school's Room 1 outdoor drinking fountain last month. 

The district tells NBC 7 Investigates they called Montezuma parents on Friday and sent letters home Monday. 

A public meeting will be held for Montezuma parents Wednesday, July 19th at 3 pm on the school’s campus at 4950 Curry Drive. 

The two other schools in the district that had test results showing higher than recommended levels of lead are the Emerson and Bandini shared-campus and Birney Elementary School. 

NBC 7 Investigates has created an interactive map of SDUSD schools and their water test results. 

To see the map, click here.

It was a chaotic scene at a Southwest Florida Chick-fil-A Tuesday as animal rights activists clashed with customers and employees during the fast food chain's annual Cow Appreciation Day celebration.

Customer Tina Lealock posted a video to Facebook showing the group of advocates rallying inside the Pinellas Park Chick-fil-A with customers and employees inside. Some demonstrators wore cow and chicken costumes with fake blood splattered on their clothes. One protester was seen carrying what appeared to be a fake knife as the group chanted, "It's not food; it’s violence!"

Some parents were outraged by the group, including Lealock. She wrote in her Facebook post that some activists went too far when they pretended to cut costumed demonstrators in front of children eating at the restaurant.

“People running in with knives, bleeding. Like bleeding on their shirts and just bloody knives. It scared the kids,” said Nichole Kretchmar.

One woman is seen on video yelling at the protesters, "Why y'all acting like this? Stop!"  Other patrons screamed, "Get out!" 

The group eventually left the restaurant before police officers arrived.

NBC 6 affiliate in Tampa, WFLA, said the group was part of Direct Action Everywhere Pinellas, an organization that opposes eating meat or anything else from animals.

“People might be upset, but I think that putting it out on the table and showing people, like this is the reality of where the animals are coming from and how bad the animals are suffering,” spokeswoman Kayla Leaming told WFLA.

A huge iceberg the size of a Great Lake, one of the largest ever, split from an ice shelf in Antarctica sometime since Monday, according to researchers tracking its progress.

The iceberg weighs more than a trillion tonnes, is larger than Rhode Island and contains twice the volume of Lake Erie, according to scientists with Project MIDAS, a British research group that monitors the Larsen C ice shelf.

"The iceberg is one of the largest recorded and its future progress is difficult to predict. It may remain in one piece but is more likely to break into fragments," said Swansea University professor Adrian Luckman, the project's lead researcher.

The iceberg had been been cracking away, or calving, from the ice shelf for months, but it surprised scientists by taking so long to break off completely, Luckman said. Satellite imagery incidated that the iceberg had calved.

Worldwide sea level won't be affected by the event because the Larsen C ice shelf is already floating, and calving of smaller icebergs is normal.

But that ice shelf helps prevent glaciers from running off land in Antarctica and into the water, which could impact the sea level around the world, and the loss of the masssive iceberg reduces its size by 12 percent, according to the researchers.

They note that a nearby ice shelf disintegrated in 2002, seven years after a large iceberg calved from it.

"Although this is a natural event, and we're not aware of any link to human-induced climate change, this puts the ice shelf in a very vulnerable position," Swansea University glaciologist Martin O'Leary said in the statement. "This is the furthest back that the ice front has been in recorded history. We’re going to be watching very carefully for signs that the rest of the shelf is becoming unstable."

With extreme temperatures racking Los Angeles, North Hollywood resident Ada Flores says she hasn't slept well for three weeks.

Then, at 1:00 p.m. Tuesday, her fan gave out.

So, Flores set out to get an air conditioner – but it wouldn't be an easy search. She soon found that this summer's relentless heat has left many Los Angeles stores sold out of air conditioners. Even many online stores are out of stock.

"Everybody's looking for one," Flores said. "We're all on a scavenger hunt for AC."

Carson residents Michelle Harrison and Lalonie Williams searched across four different cities looking for an air conditioner. Flores eventually settled for buying a new fan.

DIY Home Centers in Burbank stocked up ahead of time and is one of the few stores in Los Angeles that still has air conditioning units.

This week, they're selling more than six times as many AC units as usual.

People looking to buy air conditioners should call ahead of time to make sure that the store they're going to has AC units in stock.

Those who live in areas with an AC shortage can buy from an online store that hasn't sold out and have an air conditioner shipped right to their house.

For frequent Disneyland-goer Alexander Rodriguez, the hand stamps at the amusement park remind him of the excitement he felt as a child about which character or design he would be wearing that day.

So the news that Disney Resorts has done away with its lemon-scented re-entry hand stamps struck him as bittersweet.

"It's sad because I remember getting hand stamps as a kid and now my kids won't be able to have the same enjoyment," Rodriguez said.

Starting this week, every park visitor who visits Disneyland or California Adventure will have to take a photo, which will then be encrypted into the barcode of his or her ticket, according to park officials.

When park-goers try to re-enter the park after leaving, staff members will scan their tickets and check their identities against the photo they took earlier, rather than checking their hand under ultraviolet light for a stamp.

Annual pass-holders have not needed hand stamps for several years because Disneyland already keeps photos of them in their system.

Rodriguez thinks that the change is just part of the natural progression of technology in the park. With the old policy, people would try to duplicate the stamps to get into the parks for free.

Walt Disney World in Florida fingerprints visitors for re-entry and Disneyland's Shanghai location puts visitors' photos directly onto their tickets.

Similarly, at Universal Studios Hollywood, a fingerprint is required for guests to gain entry to the theme park. 

Universal Studios and NBC-owned TV stations operate under the same parent company, NBCUniversal.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are big shopping days on Amazon, but the online retailer's own shopping holiday, Prime Day, has them both beat, the company said Wednesday. 

The July 11 event that saw 3.5 million toys purchased around the world was "the biggest day ever in Amazon history," Amazon said in a news release.

Only Prime members can make purchases as part of the day, and tens of millions did so this year, according to the statement, more than half again as many as the of Prime members made a purchase on Prime Day 2017, more than 50 percent higher than the prior year — though Amazon didn't give specific numbers.

Amazon's Echo Dot was the most popular item globally, while the most popular non-Amazon products purchased in the United States were a programmable pressure cooker and the 23andMe DNA test.

Some deliveries came incredibly quickly — in Sunnyvale and Berkeley, California, and Kirkland, Washington, people who ordered snacks, writeable DVD packs and a Samsung hard drive through Prime Now received their purchases in 12 minutes, according to the company.

One police officer was injured Tuesday evening at the scene of a skateboarders' street rally in San Francisco's Dolores Park that turned into a standoff lasting more than one hour, according to police.

San Francisco police were warning the public to avoid the area of Dolores and 19th streets after multiple skateboarders traveling at high speeds down Dolores refused to comply with officers' attempts to shut down the rally, police said.

The rally started at 7:11 p.m., police said. The skateboarders were being towed up the hill by vehicles and then riding down the hill on the boards, some performing tricks on the way down.

The police response initially was for a call reporting someone needing medical attention. But the crowd did not allow the officers to tend to a person in the street with a head injury, police said.

A large fight broke out at some point, with multiple officers involved, so SFPD tried to clear the park, police said. For more than an hour, skaters shouted and threw objects such as bottles.

Police described the scene as a hostile environment, but one skateboarder who didn't want to be identified claims officers overreacted. 

A police spokeswoman said two patrol cars were vandalized and one officer was injured and transported to a hospital. The extent of the officer's injury was not known.

Ambulances were called for skateboarders who lost control, police said. Multiple skateboarders were taken to hospitals with head injuries, police said.

One video posted to social media appears to show an officer on foot bumping into one traveling skateboarder, causing the skateboarder to crash into a parked patrol car. That skateboarder also was treated for injuries, police said. 

It appears as though a similar skateboarding event also took place this time last year in San Francisco. It's not clear if Tuesday's event was a repeat performance.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A 14-year-old West Texas teen died early Sunday after being electrocuted while in the bathtub, according to her family.

Family members told KCBD-TV in Lubbock that Madison Coe was in the tub when she either grabbed her phone or plugged it into the wall outlet.

"There was a burn mark on her hand, the hand that would have grabbed the phone. And that was just very obvious that that’s what had happened," said her grandmother, Donna O'Guinn.

Lovington police and EMS were called to the home at 12:24 a.m. on July 9 and attempted life-saving measures on the unresponsive young woman, KCBD reported. She was later pronounced dead at the hospital. 

While initial evidence showed signs of electrocution, no cause of death has been established, according to Lovington police. 

Police said Tuesday that Coe died while visiting her father, The Associated Press reported. A cellphone, charging cord and extension cord were found by the bathtub, Detective Sgt. David Miranda said.

Coe's family believes the terrible accident is something that could happen to anyone.

"This is such a tragedy -- that doesn't need to happen to anyone else. And we want something good to come out of this as awareness of not using your cell phone in the bathroom as it is plugged in and charging," O'Guinn said.

KCBD reported Coe was involved both with athletics and the arts, playing on the basketball team while also holding down the number one chair with her tuba in the Terra Vista Middle School band.

A memorial service for Coe will be held Saturday, July 15 at 2 p.m. at Kings Ridge Church of Christ in Lubbock.

Investigators were awaiting an autopsy report.