the loss to the owner of the houses destroyed, is a doctrine well established in the common law."); Hale v. Lawrence, 21 N.J.L. 714, 730 (N.J.1848) ("[In a densely populated town, all may unite in destroying a building to stop a conflagration which threatens destruction to the rest."); Respublica v. Sparhawk, 1 U.S. (1 Dall.) 357, 363, 1 L.Ed. 174 (Pa.1788) ('Houses may be razed to prevent the spreading of fire, because [of] the public good."); The Case of the King's Prerogative in Saltpetre, (1606) 77 Eng. Rep. 1294 (K.B.) (analogizing taking saltpeter from a private landowner during wartime to destruction to prevent the spread of fire). 50 . See Muller, supra note 44, at 508-10; see also Lucas v. S.C. Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 1029 n. 16, 112 S.Ct. 2886, 120 LEd.2d 798 (1992) (<HOLDING>). 51 . 101 U.S. 16, 18, 25 L.Ed. 980 (1879). 52
recognizing that there is no compensable taking when the states destruction of property is done  in cases of actual necessity to prevent the spreading of a fire or to forestall other grave threats to the lives and property of others holding that provocation is a proper defense to the charge of malicious destruction of property holding that the fact that the fire was communicated to other property may reasonably be inferred from common knowledge of the operation of the established laws of nature in the familiar forms of combustion  and the effects of wind on fire  holding person is at grave risk of death when directly in the line of fire or when in a zone of danger holding that a taking occurred where flooding of the plaintiffs property amounted to an almost complete destruction of the value of the land