The Charlotte Observer from Charlotte, North Carolina • 1

fi WITH HOUSEPLAOT5 AND WIN A RAIN BARREL! I CAROLINA LIVING i A Wife Boston clubs Colorado 13-1 SPORTS rj? -7'- jt 4 Hi ft 1 1 SPORTS 3EgfeEg -Til teetlner THURSDAY OCTOBER 25 2007 I Price varies by county I wwwcharlottecom Coach Fox: QB Carr will play Sunday if healthy Roughed up in 3rd quarter bank to notify workers Monday of companywide cuts SAVING THE SPEEDWAY Where the street has his name? Cabarrus wants to rename road for track owner Bruton Smith Head of corporate and investment banking out Impact on Charlotte No city is losing more than 150 jobs (Bof A did not disclose the number of cuts per city) Charlotte has about 15000 employees and was not the hardest hit location 2007 CEO COMPENSATION ID I Will pay drop for BofA and Wachovia chiefs7 ter earnings report The restructuring is a blow to the 60-year-old CEO who has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a bid to expand the corporate and investment bank which provides Wall Street-style services such as stock and bond offerings The job cuts are throughout the bank but the majority are re-SEE LAYOFFS I 9A porate and investment banking after last dismal third-quarter earnings report The Charlotte bank said that executive vice chairman Gene Taylor would retire at year end after nearly four decades with the bank He will be succeeded by wealth management head Brian Moynihan The reductions announced after the stock market closed amount to less than 2 percent of the 198000 em ployees worldwide The cuts are among the larger under chairman and chief executive Ken Lewis who telegraphed plans for layoffs af By Rick Rothacker rrothackercharlotteobserver com Bank of America said Wednesday it will eliminate 3000 jobs throughout the company and replace its head of cor LACK OF RAIN COULD BE HURTING YOUR BIGGEST INVESTMENT By Sharif Durhams sdurhamscharlotteobserver com concord offered to let him build his drag strip They may offer him a tax break Now Cabarrus County officials arc offering billionaire Bruton Smith the ultimate form of civic love if he keeps Motor Speedway in Concord: his own road Concord City Council members and Cabarrus County commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday to ask the state to change the name of Speedway Boulevard to Bruton Smith Boulevard A committee of the NC Board of Transportation would have to endorse the change Concord is trying to get back in good graces after the City Council forced him this month to stop building a $60 million drag strip on property he owns near the speedway City leaders said they just wanted to delay work until they learned how much noise the drag strip would produce But Smith said he would move his racetrack and the drag strip to some other Charlotte-area com-SEF SPEEDWAY I 14A GAYLE SH0MER gshomerfacharlotteobserver com Javier Vasquez (left) and Jose Antonio from Ram Jack of Charlotte work to provide support recently for a damaged concrete foundation at a home in Huntersville Foundation repairs are typically under $10000 Cracked earth foundations Drought conditions causing clay to give way which can damage the homes above SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Wildfire victims returning to rubble Thousands face reality of devastation By Gillian Flaccus Associated Press SAN DIEGO Patty mouth was dry her hands shaking as she stepped out of her car in front of the hulking blackened piles of concrete and twisted metal that were once her home Days earlier she had barely escaped in the pre-dawn hours from flames advancing on her Rancho Bernardo home flames that licked at her feet and burned her robe On Wednesday Thompson like thousands throughout San Diego County returned home after mandatory evacuation orders were lifted in various communities Some found their homes just as they left them except for a fine layer of soot and the heavy smell of smoke Others like Thompson were left with nothing but memories just sick to my SEE WILDFIRES I 6A Crews Get Some Control Easing winds gave fire crews in Southern California a chance to Fight back against some blazes Wednesday Firefighters had contained the three major fires in Los Angeles County by nightfall and had largely contained many of the fires north of San Diego None of the six major blazes in San Diego County was more than 15 percent contained and those fires threatened more than 8500 houses The top priority was a fire in San Bernardino County that threatened 6000 homes and continued to rage out of control ASSOCIATED PRESS CHARLOTTE-AREA RESIDENTS TO HELP WILDFIRE VICTIMS 6A I Volunteers from local organizations are helping in Southern California Online Extras Read the full resolution passed by the City Council and county commissioners at WWWCHARLOTTECOMnews is under $10000 contractors say But it can be much more and likely to be covered by insurance (call) volume is up 200 percent and due to this said Mark Beckham owner of foundation repair service Ram Jack of Charlotte Instead of the typical 10 or 12 calls a day he received SEE HOMES I 14A COMING SATURDAY IN An in-depth look at how the repairs work dangerous during fireplace season Engineers and foundation repair services say receiving two or three times the normal number of calls Complaints mount as the drought drags on and a little rain help much Rainfall in Charlotte is about 14 inches below normal for the year and other spots in the region are even drier It will be months with lots of rain before the soil recovers The typical cost for foundation repairs By Allen Norwood Home Editor The prolonged drought across the Piedmont is causing home foundations to sag and crack sometimes so suddenly that homeowners report loud pops Clay soils that have supported homes for decades are drying and shrinking causing foundations to sink walls to crack doors to stick Concrete floor slabs can collapse Your chimney can pull away from your house which could be Cracked Foundations Foundations are cracking as drought dries the earth below them nothing you can do to prevent this problem CRAWL SPACE FOUNDATIONS SLAB FOUNDATIONS SOLUTIONS A thin concrete mixture is piped underneath the slab SYMPTOMS The slab cracks and a portion falls as the clay dries Smaller cracks can be hard to spot if covered by flooring SOLUTIONS A long steel pipe or pier is screwed in like a giant corkscrew A bracket on the pier lifts and supports the footing clay SYMPTOMS cracks in brick foundations especially near corners Long horizontal cracks in interior walls Sticking doors and windows If your chimney pulls away from your house get an engineer to check for problems fUi Footing Dry Pipe ijBEEBEa Clay Clay Pressure from the concrete mixture lifts and levels the slab UP 23 FROM 2006 Desperate homeowners fueling rise in bankruptcies Surge bolsters calls for changes in lending laws By Mike Drummond mdrummonckcicharlotteobserver com Homeowners struggling to avoid foreclosure increasingly are turning to a perceived lesser evil filing for bankruptcy Last month amid a continued US housing slump consumer bankruptcies increased almost 23 percent from a year earlier according to the American Bankruptcy Institute The uptick in filings is adding urgency for calls to tweak lending laws Yet filing for bankruptcy often only delays the inevitable default and loss of the home The increase in filings approached the flood of bankruptcy cases consumers launched in 2005 as they raced to beat a change in federal law that made it harder to declare personal bankruptcy Nonetheless it reflects the sense of desperation many feel as housing values fall lending standards tighten and hundreds of thousands of mortgages with low introductory SEE BANKRUPTCY I 9A shrinks as it dries JASON WHITLEY jwhitley(a charlotteobscrvercom ALLEN NORWOOD anorwoodija-charlotteobservercom INSIDE Nation I 4 fi Future war costs estimated in the trillions World IDA Sanctions on military The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $24 trillion by 2017 an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says Vy Wetter better? i Low: 60 High: 65 Periods of light rain then showers overnight and into Friday possibly lingering early Saturday Forecast 6D GO 6 2007 The Charlotte Observer Vol 138 No 298 The Bush administration will announce an unpiccedented set of unilateral sanctions against the Iranian military today senior officials said The package is the broadest set of punitive measures against Iran since hostages were taken at the US Embassy in 1979 The pressure could affect hundreds of foreign companies by squeezing them to drop Iranian business or risk US sanctions Coming Friday Get ready for Oct 31 Fifteen ways to get your spook on: 5 scary things to do 5 scary movies to see and 5 scary candies to eat Ask Amy 7E Horoscope 7E Business ID Movies 4E Classified IF Obituaries 4B Comics 6E Sports 1C Editorial 12A TV 4E Delivery Assistance or to Subscribe 800-532-5350 1 I.