Five luxury homes in a subdivision marketed as “built green” near here were destroyed or severely damaged by fire early Monday, and evidence at the scene suggested the fires might have been started by radical environmentalists who viewed the homes as violating rather than complementing the wooded wetlands in which they were built.I'm reminded of the ecoterrorist destruction of Hummers at a Southern California car dealership back in 2003.
“Built green?” read letters spray-painted onto a bedsheet found hanging on a fence at the site, about 25 miles northeast of Seattle. “Nope Black!
“McMansions + R.C.D.’s r not green,” said the sign, apparently referring to “rural cluster developments,” which advocates say help prevent sprawl by limiting development density in rural areas. The section of the development, called Quinn’s Crossing, has fewer than a dozen lots on a cul-de-sac just off Echo Lake Road, an area where modest older houses and mobile homes are more common.
The message on the sheet was signed with the letters “E.L.F.,” the infamous initials of the Earth Liberation Front, a loosely organized group that has been linked to multiple bold acts of ecoterrorism across the Northwest and elsewhere for two decades. Banners have claimed E.L.F. responsibility for arsons at other housing developments in the region in recent years, and the fires on Monday came as jurors deliberated in a case involving an arson in 2001 at the University of Washington that was linked to E.L.F.
Fred Gutt, a special agent with the F.B.I.’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Seattle, said of Monday’s fires, “There’s a claim of E.L.F. responsibility and, given that, it’s being investigated as a domestic-terrorism act.”
“But the authenticity of the claims still needs to be borne out,” Mr. Gutt added, noting the elusiveness of the Earth Liberation Front. “There’s no membership rolls. There’s no clubhouse. It’s more of an ideology. They’re organized only to the extent of maybe cells that get together and decide to act on their belief.”
None of the houses were occupied at the time of the fires, and no one was injured.
Neighbors first reported hearing what sounded like gunfire or explosions early Monday, and firefighting authorities on the scene told reporters that the houses appeared to have had multiple fires set.
The fires stunned the builders and real estate agents promoting the development, who had cast it as reflecting the “best practices” of environmentally friendly high-end home construction. They emphasized features like landscaping that requires little water, sidewalks designed to minimize runoff and reused lumber for construction.
The five houses were models built specifically for the 2007 Seattle Street of Dreams tour, their size and price deliberately scaled back, to about 4,500 square feet and around $2 million, to respond to what one builder, Grey Lundberg, said was an increased interest in more subdued and “green” luxury homes.
“This is releasing more carbon into the air than they ever would have by building the houses,” Patti Smith, the listing agent for one house that burned to the ground, said of the fires. “That’s the tragic irony.”
It's tragic, alright, and frankly dumb.
It's not the Hummers (hybrid cars will not save the planet), it's the lifestyle.
Conspicuous pro-capitalist consumption, you know, in housing, cars, etc., it doesn't matter. The postmodern terrorists will burn them to the ground, damn the facts, and damn the consequences, to property, the environment, you get the picture.
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