Property Damage

Brother Nicholas Radelmiller tolled the bell amid the ruins of the Mt. Calvary Monastery, but no worshipers were there to hear it. Down the mountainside, workers revved up their chain saws as homeowners burned out by November's devastating Santa Barbara wildfires prepared to rebuild. But at the monastery on a promontory 1,250 feet above the sea, acres of rubble awaited the bulldozers that are to arrive this week. The fire that swept through on the night of Nov.

Until the evacuation orders were lifted at 10 a.m. Sunday, Paul Reide held out hope that his home on tidy, tree-lined Montrose Place in the foothills north of downtown Santa Barbara had survived last week's devastating Jesusita fire. Less than 30 minutes later, the tall, silver-haired retired salesman stood forlornly on a block of concrete that was once the foyer of the 3,000-square-foot tri-level home he liked to call "a quiet little paradise."

Big Tujunga Canyon residents and others reeling from the Station fire called Monday for a federal investigation into what they termed a poor initial response to the deadly blaze by the U.S. Forest Service . "It was beyond irresponsibility, beyond neglect," said Cindy Marie Pain, who lost her Big Tujunga Canyon home to the fire, which broke out in the Angeles National Forest on Aug. 26. Pain and other residents said they were outraged by...

Intense rain pelted the Southland overnight early Saturday, flooding buildings, downing power lines, snarling traffic and causing at least four rain-related deaths. The region is bracing for one more significant storm today but has so far been spared major damage. The latest storm, blasting in from the northern Pacific Ocean, was expected to arrive early this morning and dump up to an inch of rain along the coast and up to 2 inches in the mountains.

Residents of an upscale retirement community near here knew Douglas Hoffman was upset that trees were blocking his backyard view of the Strip. But at a hearing Monday, where Hoffman was sentenced to up to five years in prison for killing more than 500 trees, a prosecutor said the retired construction worker had threatened to unleash "chemical, biological, nuclear mass destruction" because of it.

Fire destroyed a 610-year-old landmark that was considered South Korea's top national treasure, officials said today. Police said the cause of the blaze was unclear, but one official said arson was suspected. The fire broke out Sunday night and burned down the wooden structure at the top of Namdaemun, or "Great South Gate," which once formed part of a wall that encircled the capital.

Before floodwaters sent mud, timber and debris roaring through it, Boistfort Valley Farm was a model of modern food production based on old-time values: community involvement and organic growing methods. The family farm supplied veggies, fruits, herbs and flowers for farmers' markets in Seattle, Olympia and Chehalis, Wash.

An incident Monday morning in which six vehicles were shot at with a BB or pellet gun on the 10 Freeway appears to be unrelated to two freeway shootings that occurred over the weekend, authorities said. The windows of six vehicles were struck by pellets or BBs during a five-minute period around 8 a.m. along the westbound stretch of the San Bernardino Freeway between Frazier Street and the 605 Freeway in Baldwin Park, California Highway Patrol Officer Edmund Zorrilla said.

A jury Tuesday awarded $3.6 million to a Marine captain serving in Iraq after concluding that a nationwide company that specializes in insuring military personnel tried to cheat him out of coverage for water damage to his Oceanside home. The San Diego County Superior Court jury found that the United Services Automobile Assn.'s Casualty Insurance Co. had attempted to defraud John Colombero in its handling of his 2004 claim.

Alvin Hewitt was the first baby born at Kiowa County Memorial Hospital after it opened in 1950. Today, the hospital is gone. So are the red brick high school, the single-screen movie theater, the soda shop, City Hall, the county courthouse. Like 95% of this little town on the prairies of southwest Kansas, they were destroyed by a tornado that struck a year ago Sunday, killing 11. Hewitt could have taken his insurance check and moved away, as about half the town's residents did. He didn't.