Roofing

On Aug. 6, my parents were cited by Oxnard code enforcement for replacing old roof shingles on their house without a permit. They where charged $100.25 that I consider legalized armed robbery with a license. The professional roofers were told not to continue roofing the house until a city inspector comes and checks things out. Since when is it illegal to maintain your house? What gives the city of Oxnard the right to harass my parents and suck them dry of their cash? How come the code enforcement officer drove by my parents' house four times before he decided to cite them three days later while the house was being re-roofed?

A crew of burglars allegedly walked away with at least $6 million by cutting through the rooftops of San Gabriel Valley banks under the cover of darkness, according to law enforcement authorities. On Wednesday, authorities announced five Inland Empire men had been arrested on suspicion of carrying out the unusual bank heists. The arrests came after investigators searched for clues for more than a year and gathered DNA evidence from crime scenes. "It is one of the most elaborate crimes we have seen," Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said at a news conference.

Judging from recent letters to the editor about roofing felt, it seems we've forgotten that older homes, built throughout the '50s and '60s, were roofed with cedar shakes directly over wooden battens (or strips) without any paper used at all. During the dry summer months, you could even see sunlight through small pinholes that would swell shut with the first rain. Those roofs lasted 20 to 25 years. JOHN STEPHENS Costa Mesa

The bank heist crew didn't carry demand notes or confront tellers. The robbers' tools of choice included power saws, hand-held radios and ladders. They allegedly walked away with at least $6 million by cutting through the rooftops of San Gabriel Valley banks under the cover of darkness, according to law enforcement authorities. Once inside, the men used power tools to break into concrete vaults, then fled with bags of cash. FOR THE RECORD: Bank heists: An article in the April 11 LATExtra section about a series of nighttime heists at San Gabriel Valley banks described the crimes as robberies and the criminals as robbers.

A Tibetan peasant who was knocking down a dilapidated house in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa recently discovered that the wooden blocks that had been used as roofing materials were engraved texts of centuries-old Tibetan books. The 370 blocks included parts of an encyclopedia of Tibetan medicine, the history of Tibetan medical science and other books of the period of the fifth Dalai Lama more than 300 years ago, the New China News Agency reported here.

Legislation to prohibit the use of wooden roof shingles that don't resist fire is being considered again after disastrous residential fires in California. Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove), who failed to win passage of two similar bills after a disastrous 1982 Anaheim fire, said Friday he may try again. And state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), who represents the Baldwin Hills area where three people died in home fires last week, said she would introduce a bill immediately.

Morning rush-hour traffic backed up for three miles today when a spilled barrel of roofing nails punctured tires on 12 vehicles, including a Highway Patrol cruiser, officers said. The barrel bounced off a truck on the Beeline Expressway around 8 a.m.

Silvercrest Industries said Friday that it has agreed to sell the assets of its lumber subsidiary to Eadington Cos. in Fullerton for $3.1 million. Silvercrest, a Santa Ana-based manufacturer of mobile and modular homes, said it will receive $1 million in cash plus a $1-million, 5-year note. And Eadington, a private holding company whose operations include a fruit business, will assume the subsidiary's $1.1 million in debt.

Gerry Chicorelli was driving north on Paramount Boulevard in Downey in late March when he spotted a man holding a hatchet and walking into southbound traffic. The man had a glazed look. Drivers braked and yelled at him, peeling away as they spotted the raised hatchet in his hands. Chicorelli realized he knew the man. It was Steve Bours, a handsome kid who'd once worked for him in his roofing business. Bours, 30, had joined the Army Reserve and was sent to Iraq in 2004 with a supply unit based near Fallouja, site of the war's most brutal battle.

You are providing a wonderful service in publishing the names of physicians who have been disciplined by the Medical Board of California (March 24). This knowledge is crucial in allowing patient choice. However, it is incomplete as it doesn't mention the doctors' business names (i.e. doing business as "John Doe Medical Institute") or their affiliations (their HMOs). Why don't you publish names of contractors (building, roofing, construction, etc.) who have been sanctioned by the state contractors board?

The driver of a Cadillac apparently lost his brakes after he left his steep driveway, flying down a hill and landing on the roof of a home, Glendale police said. The car crossed a yard and went airborne, coming to rest in the 400 block of Audraine Drive in the Glendale hills on Saturday evening. The Glendale Fire Department had to call in a crane to remove the vehicle from the home, but no one was seriously hurt. An 80-year old man was in his bedroom below. Authorities said he was startled, but otherwise fine.

Authorities are investigating how a car landed on the roof of a home in Glendale on Saturday night. According to KTLA News, the driver of a Cadillac lost control of his vehicle and landed on the roof of a home. The Glendale Fire Department had to call in a crane to remove the vehicle. No one was hurt. The driver told authorities that the brakes on the car failed, according to KTLA News.  

Matthew Gordon Lasner is the official biographer of the condominium. (Well, as official as these things get, anyway.) Several years ago, the assistant professor of urban affairs and planning at Hunter College in New York became curious about how condo ownership of apartments, town houses and their legal cousins, co-ops, became ubiquitous in this country in so short a time. "Like everybody else, I just presumed they began in the 1960s and grew from there," Lasner said. But he started digging through legal documents, news reports and historical records, tracing the birth of the "owner-occupied apartment" to a building (alas, long since demolished)

We don't fight musical battles the way we used to. In the 19th century, you were expected to take sides between Brahmsian traditionalism and Wagner's music of the future. Gone too are the last century's partisan days of Stravinsky versus Schoenberg, serialism versus Minimalism, the avant-garde versus neo-Romanticism. Today's musicians take great pains to make different kinds of music get along even at the expense of bland conformity in much new music. Gustavo Dudamel, who seems captivated by nearly everything, is perhaps the last guy you'd expect to reopen musical wounds.

It's good to be turning 40 this year. Red Roof Inn , which also marks its four-decade anniversary this year, offers 40-year-olds a room for $19.73 when they stay at one of the budget motels on their birthday.  The deal: You have to show a valid ID to take advantage of this offer at more than 300 motels in 36 states and Washington, D.C. Besides the discount, the chain launched a 40 & Fabulous Sweepstakes with prizes of a seven-day trip...

NEW ORLEANS - Joe Flacco has come in from the cold. In five seasons, the Baltimore quarterback has played only eight games in indoor stadiums, and only three in true domes: at St. Louis (2011), Atlanta (2010) and Minnesota (2009). He's 4-4 in domes or retractable-roof stadiums. Sunday, he'll play in the Superdome for the first time. "Is that all I've played in domes? … That's pretty crazy," he said. "The truth of the matter is, when I get in here and start throwing the ball around, you really get kind of excited about it just because you can tell the difference.

More than four years after torrential rains inundated their homes, 24 former residents of an Encino apartment complex were awarded nearly half a million dollars this week by a jury that found their landlord did not properly fix the mess. After a three-week trial in Van Nuys, the former tenants on Thursday were awarded a total of $492,220 for property damage and emotional distress that stemmed from heavy rains in February, 1991. Individual awards ranged from $7,500 to $45,000, said V.

Scarlett Johansson is the latest star to take a shot at “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Tennessee Williams' feverish 1955 classic about a wealthy Southern family with two daughters-in-law who all but scratch each other's eyes out over who'll get the loot when Big Daddy, the dying (although he's the last to know it) paterfamilias goes to his final reward. The show has now had six lives on Broadway, including three in the past 10 years. The incarnation that opened Thursday at the Richard Rodgers Theatre finds Johansson playing the self-nicknamed Maggie the Cat, the daughter-in-law who has the biggest hill to climb because it has become extremely dubious whether her alcoholic husband, Brick, who is Big Daddy's golden-boy favorite, will ever touch her again, alluring though she be. Absent that, there'll be no offspring from their marriage - a prerequisite for Brick and Maggie to qualify for a goodly share of the massive plantation Big Daddy built from nothing.

The developers of a proposed $31-million hotel near Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles are ready to seek city approval to construct an indoor-outdoor complex in the brick shell of a condemned apartment building. Plans call for gutting the empty three-story building at 1130 S. Hope St. that was erected more than a century ago and is no longer structurally sound. The developers would build inside the perimeter of the old exterior walls, creating a landscaped open-air courtyard leading to a new tower with 44 guest rooms.