Disasters

"The two top lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee reached an agreement to extend the National Flood Insurance Program another four months, the 11th short-term extension of this financially troubled program in less than two years."

"Is climate change exacerbating record flooding along the Mississippi River that's ravaging parts of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri? Yes, it is, experts say."

"Hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless after a cyclone packing winds of about 200 km per hour slammed into eastern India, ripping out tin roofs and destroying power and telecom lines, officials said on Sunday."

"The Mississippi River has reached record high levels in the area of Rock Island, Illinois, as melting heavy snowpack coupled with rain has caused widespread flooding, a national hydrologist said on Friday."

"A cyclone barreled into eastern India on Friday, bringing down trees and power lines and “extensively” damaging the tourist town of Puri, but there were no early reports of casualties with a million people evacuated before it made landfall."

"The Trump administration on Thursday made public its rollback of a major offshore-drilling safety regulation, significantly weakening an Obama-era rule that was put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 people and sent 4.9 million barrels of oil gushing into the sea, causing the worst oil spill in American history."

"Five weeks after historic flooding in the midwest, waters still cover pasturelands, corn and soybean fields. Much of the water has receded, but rivers still run high and washed out roads force people to take long detours. Residents in Missouri are putting their ruined possessions on the street and corn stalks heaped by floodwaters look like snowdrifts in the fields."

"Aid workers in northern Mozambique scrambled planes and helicopters packed with aid to communities cut off, sometimes without any supplies, for at least two days after Cyclone Kenneth brought torrential rain to the region."

"The Environmental Protection Agency published a 150-page document this past week with a straightforward message for coping with the fallout from natural disasters across the country: Start planning for the fact that climate change is going to make these catastrophes worse."