Property Damage

A massive scoreboard above Anaheim Stadium's left-field stands collapsed during Monday's earthquake, crushing hundreds of seats and strewing metal debris over others. The Sony "Jumbotron," about 800 square feet in area and weighing 17.5 tons, broke from its moorings atop the stadium's roof and landed in a partially upright position in the upper deck, taking a portion of the roof with it. Late Monday morning, the board was held precariously in place at a 45-degree angle by some of its beams.

Nobody is sure why deer bound onto rural roads, offering themselves as sacrificial lambs to unsuspecting motorists and causing crashes that take lives nationwide every year. But a Wyoming researcher, Morgan Graham, wants to find a way to prevent such crashes. Graham, with the Conservation Research Center of Teton Science Schools, is the lead investigator in a study with the Wyoming Department of Transportation to determine whether new high-tech highway reflectors can prevent collisions between vehicles and deer.

WASHINGTON -- A yearlong investigation into whether Clinton administration aides left the White House in fraternity-party disarray as they vacated the presidential premises has turned up about $15,000 in damage, according to a government report released Tuesday. Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.

Bill Diffendale's grandparents used to come here at the turn of the century, when the only access to Breezy Point was via boat and when most visitors pitched tents in the sand. Diffendale's father met his mother here in the 1950s. Years later, Diffendale met his wife here, and like earlier generations, he embraced the community of narrow lanes and bungalows painted the colors of the sea: green, blue and stormy gray. His neighbor Mary Bosch met her husband here. Scott Winik's wife came here as an infant.

A greasy mist that rained down on a Huntington Beach neighborhood when an oil well valve malfunctioned affected 360 homes, more than three times the number originally thought, authorities said Thursday. But most of the homes, within a quarter-mile of the former Ascon landfill near Magnolia Street and Pacific Coast Highway, did not suffer much damage, officials said.

Friends said Marvin Heemeyer hadn't been seen much. Now they know why: He was turning a bulldozer into an armor-plated vehicle that was impervious to SWAT team bullets. On Saturday, crews used a crane to remove Heemeyer's body from the improvised tank. The muffler shop owner drove his contraption through town on Friday and within two hours had knocked down or damaged nine buildings before the machine ground to a halt in the wreckage of a warehouse.

Are flooding and mudslides covered by most common homeowners insurance policies? No. Standard homeowners insurance covers rain and wind damage but not property ruined by flooding, landslides or mud. The rule of thumb is that if the damage is caused by falling rain, it's covered; if it's caused by rising water, it's not. Flood insurance is available but takes 30 days to activate and costs $300 to $600 a year, according to the Insurance Information Network of California.

Property damage claims filed against Manville Corp. calling for removal of asbestos insulation total $69 billion, the corporation says. The total comes from 9,500 suits seeking specific damages out of some 11,000 property damage claims filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court here by a March 1 deadline, company spokesman Cliff Bowers said Monday.

Inspectors found toppled chimneys and minor structural cracks Saturday in an area on the east side of San Francisco Bay rocked by two moderate earthquakes. The jolts, which struck along the southern end of the small Concord fault Friday night, measured 4.6 and 4.3 and were followed by several smaller temblors, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

A tornado swept through part of Milwaukee on Wednesday, injuring at least 16 people, damaging a commercial area and lifting some homes off their foundations. The twister touched down on Milwaukee's far south side, damaging areas there and in the neighboring community of St. Francis, not far from Mitchell International Airport. The Milwaukee County Sheriff's office said none of the 16 injuries appeared to be life-threatening. Damage, however, was extensive.

Estimates of the economic losses caused by Hurricane Sandy earlier this week reached $50 billion as experts assessed the costs of severe property damage, shut-down subways and power outages. On Thursday, Eqecat Inc. said it expects storm-related losses to fall between $30 billion and $50 billion. Of that, $10 billion to $20 billion will be insured, according to the firm, which calculates estimates for insurers. Earlier this week , Eqecat had said that damages could reach $20 billion, with up to $10 billion in insured losses.

TAMPA, Fla. -- Mitt Romney offered sunny optimism about the nation's future -- and no direct criticism of President Obama -- as the GOP presidential nominee returned to the campaign trail Wednesday after a pause in stumping as Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast. Romney, Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, speaking at a morning airplane hangar rally here, prefaced their remarks with thoughts about the victims of the major storm that killed dozens and left parts of the Eastern Seaboard underwater.

New Yorkers took their first tentative steps Wednesday to regain their lives in the stressful aftermath of super storm Sandy despite continuing power outages, a snarled transportation system and the shock of floods and fire. But in parts of New Jersey, across the Hudson River , the new day revealed the extent of devastation. Serious flooding inundated the area around Hoboken, where emergency evacuations continued. Along the Jersey Shore and barrier islands, crown jewels of the state's important tourist injury, entire neighborhoods were crushed, flooded and swamped with mountains of sand.

As Hurricane Sandy heads toward the East Coast, one independent estimate has put the potential exposure to residential property damage at about $88 billion, with 284,000 homes at risk. The real estate research firm CoreLogic released a report over the weekend that warns that the risk of storm-surge flooding has the potential to cause massive damage in seven states and eight metro areas from Boston down to Virginia Beach. PHOTOS: Hurricane Sandy approaches In the broader New York metro area - which includes all five boroughs of New York, northern New Jersey and Long Island - the firm estimates that about 119,312 properties are at risk worth an estimated $48 billion alone.

Michael Turner was sitting on his porch when the lake roared in. Hurricane Isaac had not even made landfall, but suddenly water was roaring like a big-river rapid through the neighborhood, swallowing streets that had never seen such flooding, not even after Hurricane Katrina. "It was like a wave," Turner said Thursday as boats plied the still-submerged neighborhood of River Forest in St. John the Baptist Parish, about 30 miles northwest of New Orleans. Some residents here suspect the improved, post-Katrina levee system that protected New Orleans during Isaac may have contributed to their misery by pushing more water back into nearby Lake Pontchartrain.

The state of California is likely to receive tens of millions of dollars more from insurance companies to clean up the Stringfellow Acid Pits toxic waste dump as a result of a ruling Thursday by the California Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision, the high court said consecutive insurance policies by various companies required each to pay up to their policy limits for damage caused by the Riverside County waste site. The companies wanted to restrict liability to just a share of the damage that occurred during the time each insurer's policy was in effect.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday that owners of homes near Burbank Airport cannot sue the airport for property damage caused by aircraft noise, dealing a severe blow to aircraft noise protesters and boosting plans for a larger airport terminal. Although the opinion by Judge Robert I.

Two former Simi Valley residents are suing Metrolink and its operator for allegedly causing their house to flood so badly during a February storm that they can no longer live in it. In a suit filed Friday in Ventura County Superior Court, Gary and Deborah Moss are seeking unspecified damages from the Southern California Regional Railroad Authority, which runs Metrolink, for the losses caused by the river of mud that swept into their home last winter.

Parts of Wyoming and Colorado were working Friday to recover from the week's harsh weather, including tornadoes that caused minor injuries. A rare tornado cut through open country in southeastern Wyoming on Thursday, injuring at least one person and causing some property damage in the Wheatland area. In Colorado, four tornadoes were reported in the Elbert County area, southeast of Denver. A minor injury was also reported there. The tornadoes were blamed on an unusually powerful storm system moving through the region packing heavy rains, strong winds and conditions that can spawn twisters.

Nearly 20 years after Los Angeles was shaken by one of the worst outbreaks of civil unrest in U.S. history, residents say the city is safer and relations between its racial and ethnic groups are significantly better than they were in 1992. Most also say L.A. is unlikely to see riots in the coming years like those that swept the city after the 1992 acquittals of four Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of Rodney G. King, a new report shows. The survey by the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University suggests, however, that many Angelenos are relatively pessimistic about the city's overall direction.