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How Thousands Of Homes Escaped Wildfires

The Skinny is Keach Hagey's take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.



While hundreds of thousands of their neighbors fled their homes, residents of some of Southern California fire zone's newest planned communities sat tight, the Los Angeles Times reports, confident that they had made their own luck against the flames.

That "luck" consisted of fierce adherence to fire-resistant building standards like using concrete roof tiles, double-paned heat-resistant windows and enclosed eaves.

At Stevenson Raunch, a 5,000-home planned community in Santa Clarita that has emerged unscathed by fire, a 200-foot greenbelt with fire-resistant planting rings the property. Additional buffers of stone and concrete culverts were constructed behind properties adjacent to canyons and other open land. A homeowners association makes sure the area is clear of brush.

The Times doesn't specifically talk about how much is costs to live in Stevenson Ranch, but it's pretty clear it's not cheap. Even clearer is that there will be more places that look like the master-planned community in the future.

By next year, the state will require new buildings in "very high fire severity" zones to comply with much stricter fire safety standards. The devastation of this year's fires points to the hard reality that makes these standards necessary: there are not, nor will there likely ever be, enough firefighters to go around, fire safety experts tell the Times. Residents are going to be more and more responsible for themselves.

If that rhetoric seems overheated, consider this chilling description of what California's future holds: "Firefighters say neighborhoods and homes that appear girded for fire are more likely to be defended when hard choices about resources need to be made."

Wars Expected To Cost $2.4 Trillion

Speaking of hard choices about resources, USA Today reports that the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion through the next decade - or $8,000 for every American.

The estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, estimated for release today, is a big jump from the CBO's last war price tag of $1.6 trillion. This one ads $705 billion in interest, the paper reports, "taking into account that the conflicts are being funded with borrowed money." How completely American of us.

Naturally, the White House hates it when Congress starts throwing out numbers like this, and sent a spokesman out to let them know. "Congress should stop playing politics with out troops by trying to artificially inflate the war funding levels," said Sean Kevelighan, flak for the White House budge office, before declining to provide an estimate of his own.

The CBO's report estimates that Iraq accounts for about 80 percent of that mind-boggling number, or $1.9 trillion. In the months before the March 2003 Iraq invasion, the paper notes, the Bush administration estimated the Iraq war would cost $50 billion.

That's like a mechanic saying it's going to cost $50 to fix your car, and then charging your credit card for $2,000.

Troubled Times For Island Of The Dead

Any horror movie auteurs casting about for their next project might want to check out today's New York Times story about Tillamook Rock Lighthouse.

Built in the 1880s on a big rock about a mile off the Oregon coast, the lighthouse shone out over such a dangerous swath of ocean that it was dubbed "Terrible Tillie" before it was decommissioned in 1957. Then, the dead people moved in.

For the last quarter century, the rock has house privately owned Eternity By The Sea Columbarium, a place where people paid $1,000 to $2,500 to have an urn of their ashes placed in the old lighthouse. But recently, the resting place lost its license after a state board found it did not keep accurate records of people placed there, and the urns were sitting on boards, not niches, meaning it didn't officially qualify as a columbarium.

Two urns were lost years ago when vandals reportedly broke open the doors. Birds flew in and built nests, and now the whole place is caked in guano. Loved ones are suing.

Nevertheless, the Web site for Eternity by the Sea continues to make its pitch. "Honorary Lighthouse Keepers Wanted," it says. "We are currently not accepting new keepers but you can add your name to a waiting list where you will be notified when we can offer 'Columbarium Niche Options.' All future keepers will be offered a discount if their name is on this waiting list."

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