While it’s a near miracle that Travis Barker and DJ AM – real name Adam Goldstein – weren’t killed when their Learjet skidded off a runway in South Carolina on Friday night, the pair of them have suffered serious second- and third-degree burns.

However, both Travis Barker and DJ AM are expected to make full recoveries from their injuries. Meanwhile, investigators have claimed that a burst tyre prior to take-off my have led to the crash.

Travis Barker and DJ AM have, in the past, contributed the some of the most pointless stories we’ve ever dealt with. DJ AM, for example, was once engaged to Nicole Richie, while Travis Barker might have started a fight between Paris Hilton and some other woman in a nightclub once. All utterly inconsequential, yet still not enough for either of them to deserve what happened to them on Friday night.

On Friday night, after performing a free concert in Columbia, the Learjet carrying Travis Barker, DJ AM and four others skidded off a South Carolina runway, smashed through a fence and crashed into a nearby road. The crash killed the pilot and co-pilot, plus Travis Barker’s personal assistant and a man thought to be his bodyguard.

While it’s claimed that Travis Barker and DJ AM only escaped death by managing to free themselves from the wreckage in time, the pair of them have spent the weekend in a critical condition being treated for second- and third-degree burns. Travis Barker is said to have suffered burns to his torso and lower body, while Goldstein’s burns were to his arms and head. However, it’s thought that both stars will eventually make full recoveries from their injuries.

Meanwhile, investigators seem to be pinning the cause of the crash on a blown tyre, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

Debbie Hersman, spokeswoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators recovered the cockpit’s voice recorder and spent hours dissecting the relevant minutes of conversation between the Learjet’s pilots. “The crew reacted to a sound consistent with a tire blowout. The crew attempted to reject the takeoff, but they were unable to stop the aircraft before it departed the runway.”

That’s because 50 Cent’s house has just spectacularly and completely burnt to the ground. But don’t worry – 50 Cent is fine. The house that burnt down wasn’t the house he lives in, just the house that his ex-girlfriend and their 10-year-old son live in. Phew! Panic over.

They’re both OK as well, by the way – but that hasn’t stopped a fireman calling the blaze ’suspicious’, not least because 50 Cent has been trying to evict his ex-girlfriend and son from the property for a while now. Still, if we know anything about the hip-hop community, it’s that it’s full of exemplary citizens who like nothing more than to cooperate with potentially criminal investigations by the authorities.

50 Cent is an intensely private individual. Back when he got shot, for example, 50 Cent vowed only to refer to the incident in most of his songs, all of his interviews and a specially written pseudo-autobiographical movie. And chances are he’ll be just as coy about his house in Dix Hills burning down just now.

Because, if recently losing a high-profile challenge with Kanye West and being forced to quit music forever (at least in theory) wasn’t bad enough – let alone being implicated in a human growth hormone scandal and being robbed by a scrawny dude onstage – then watching his $1.4 million, six bedroom house go up in flames should be enough to reduce any man to a temporary state of blissful silence.

Well, that and the fact that the fire is being treated as suspicious and just a few days ago 50 Cent was seen furiously arguing in public with the tenant – his ex-girlfriend Shaniqua Tompkins, who lives there with their 10-year-old son Marquise. Newsday reports on the fire:

An eyewitness told Newsday that among the injured, all of whom suffered smoke inhalation according to fire officials, were 50 Cent’s ex-girlfriend, Shaniqua Tompkins, and their 10-year-old son, Marquise. “She was all right,” eyewitness Frank Hoyte, a Newsday employee, said, adding: “But she was angry.”One of the first firefighters to arrive on the scene told Newsday the fire was suspicious. “I would say there is a strong — a strong, strong — possibility that it is suspicious,” Dix Hills Fire Department Chief Larry Feld said.

This is great – anyone could be responsible for the fire. You see, 50 Cent recently filed a lawsuit trying to evict Shaniqua Tompkins and their son from the house unless he started receiving $4,500 a month in rent from them, while Tompkins countersued because she says 50 Cent promised to put the house in her name and then didn’t.

So did 50 Cent have the house burned down to get rid of Tompkins? Or did Tompkins burn the house down to punish 50 Cent? Or was it the doing of one of 50 Cent’s enemies? Or was it an accident? Or did little 10-year-old Marquise burn the house down partly as an effort to push his parents back together and partly because he hates them both for giving him such a gay little name? Can we stop caring about this any time soon?

No, really, that last one was serious.

That's because Flea, the man responsible for all of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' interminable bass solos, is the highest-profile victim of the wildfires that swept through Malibu this weekend. According to Flea himself, his $4.8 million Malibu mansion has been "burnt to a crisp." It's a tragic situation for Flea to be in, because not only was he forced to witness the total destruction of his house, but he's now also been forced into emergency accommodation in the form of the other $10 million mansion he also owns in Malibu. We sense the next Red Hot Chili Peppers album might be quite heavy on the bass-led ballads about how crap it is to only have one multi-million dollar Malibu mansion instead of two, you know.

As we speak the Red Hot Chili Peppers are busy suing Showtime because they have an album called Californication and Showtime has a show called Californication. Nobody knows which way the lawsuit will go yet, but we're assuming that Mother Nature wants Showtime to win, because she's just burnt down Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' house down. Personally if we were Mother Nature we'd have also set fire to David Duchovny's house as well, partly out of a sense of fairness and partly because we'd want to scare him into never making any more episodes of that rubbish TV show ever again, but we just don't have that power.

So it's just Flea who got hit by the latest wildfires to hit California this weekend, causing 15,000 people to evacuate their properties and thought to be started by either arson or a fallen power line. One of Flea's two Malibu mansions has been completely gutted by the fire – the one that was apparently on sale for $4.8 million, and was described by estate agents Pritchett-Rapf & Associates as being:

"Set in a botanical paradise, this private 2.4 acre compound also features a newly refinished pool and spa, private alcoves and pathways throughout the grounds."

Something tells us that Flea probably won't get the asking price for the mansion any more, unless millionaires exist who are equally enthusiastic about hopelessly generic middle of the road self-indulgent old man white boy funk-rock and smouldering piles of ash, which we can't really see happening. Nobody likes white boy funk-rock that much, surely.

But let's not mock Flea too much, because losing your house in a wildfire must be an indescribably traumatic thing to go through for anyone, and that includes slightly annoying members of bands we don't like all that much.

So instead, let's treat Flea's misfortune as a lesson here – what with all the violent displays of uncontrollable fire and the possibility of either being smacked in the face with Britney Spears' vagina or being ethnically insulted by Mel Gibson, we're going to strike Malibu off our list of holiday destinations for next year. That just leaves Kabul, which is probably better because we're really worried about the vagina thing happening.

Read more:

Flea, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist, Loses Home In Malibu Fire – Los Angeles Times