Burning Down the House
From the L Times: "In what appears to be the latest symptom of the nation's mortgage meltdown and credit crisis, insurers, law enforcement officials and state agencies nationwide report a jump in home and automobile fires in the last year believed to have been set by owners unable to pay their debts".
Los Angeles Times:
In what appears to be the latest symptom of the nation’s mortgage meltdown and credit crisis, insurers, law enforcement officials and state agencies nationwide report a jump in home and automobile fires in the last year believed to have been set by owners unable to pay their debts. The numbers are small, but they’re leading the insurance industry to scrutinize more closely what seem to be accidental blazes.
“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in this kind of fraud,” said Dan Bales, director of fraud investigations at Mercury Insurance. “People upside-down on their house with variable-interest-rate loans, or upside-down on their cars, are pretty quick to burn their property right now.”
Last week, a Sacramento-area couple were arrested on allegations that they burned their Jeep and drove their Nissan pickup into a river, then filed fraudulent insurance claims. According to investigators, the wife admitted she was trying to escape her $600 monthly car payment.
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Seven Southern black churches burned in the past week, and at least four -- possibly six -- were victims of arson.
Since May, four main houses in Tyree Guyton's internationally known Heidelberg Project have been leveled by arson fires. In many ways, the showdown between the artist and the arsonist says more about Detroit than does the city's recent bankruptcy filing.
One inmate's reported death wish led to the immolation of more than 300 people at a Honduran prison after the apparent instigator set fire to his mattress on Wednesday in the town of Comayagua, where some 356 others were still missing after the blaze, according to The Associated Press.
It's been over a week since the latest and biggest fire to scorch large parts of the Greater Los Angeles region began, and according to U.S. Forest Service officials it's now known that the blaze was caused by deliberate human intervention -- otherwise known as arson.
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