Disasters

"A tropical depression in the southern Gulf of Mexico is strengthening, prompting the closure of two top oil export terminals, and could unleash life-threatening flooding, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Thursday."

"The depression, called Ten, was expected to strengthen over the next 24 hours into a tropical storm, the center said.

[Mexico's] two biggest oil export terminals, Dos Bocas and Cayo Arcas, were closed, the government said, although the port of Coatzacoalcos remained open."

"Drop by drop by drop, historic rainfall across a 150-mile expanse of Colorado's Front Range turned neighborhood streams into rampaging torrents that claimed at least three lives and continued to flood homes and destroy roads into the night."

"Twelve years ago, terrorism seemed to be the biggest safety threat to the D.C. region. Now many area emergency management officials think a bigger threat has emerged: natural disasters."

"WASHINGTON -- Newly obtained government documents are prompting concern among critics that Environmental Protection Agency officials are seeking to use the organization’s new guide for nuclear-incident response to relax public health standards, but the agency is denying the claim."

"Reggie Hilaire was a rookie cop on September 11, 2001. He worked at ground zero for 11 days beside his colleagues -- many of them, including Hilaire, not wearing a mask. He was later assigned to a landfill in Staten Island, where debris from the World Trade Center was dumped."

"A fast-moving wildfire ripped through rolling hills and ranch land in rural northern California on Tuesday, after destroying 30 homes overnight and prompting more than 500 area residents to evacuate, fire officials said."

"Hurricane Sandy and the havoc it wreaked on New York City and the rest of the Northeast in 2012 could prove to be a turning point in how people think about the way electricity is produced and distributed, particularly in storm-prone areas, with some states and cities starting to turn to what are known as microgrids."

"There’s been a lot of excellent analysis of the mysterious storm-free first half of this year’s hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean and, more generally, tropical weather trends in the context of human-driven global warming. So rather than add to it, I’ll direct you to some highlights. This is how networked knowledge works."

"Japanese authorities are unable to control the radioactive water leaking out of the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. Now the government plans to install a wall of ice around the facility to contain the contaminated water. Ed Lyman, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, tells host Steve Curwood that the new ice wall plan is likely an act of desperation, and that some American reactors are at risk for the same kind of flooding disaster."

"MIAMI -- The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which forecasters had predicted would be more active than normal, has turned out to be something of a dud so far as an unusual calm hangs over the tropics."

"As the season heads into the historic peak for activity, it may even enter the record books as marking the quietest start to any Atlantic hurricane season in decades.

'It certainly looks like pretty much of a forecast bust,' said Jeff Masters, a hurricane expert and director of meteorology at the Weather Underground."