As wildfires rage across the West, the costs of the fight to protect lives and property are up. But budget cuts imposed by an austerity-minded Congress have meant that funds to protect people are down.
"At least three people were killed by an ammonia gas leak from a pipeline owned by state oil monopoly Pemex in southern Mexico on Tuesday and 1,500 people were evacuated from the area and taken to shelters, the company said."
"The Interior Department [Wednesday] proposed a new rule designed to strengthen the safety of offshore oil and gas production technologies as industry reaches into deeper and riskier waters."
"An advisory panel to Tokyo Electric Power Co. urged the utility to tighten water-management procedures at its crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant weeks before 300 metric tons of radioactive water seeped out, the panel’s chairman said."
"Quebec's government last week added rail giant Canadian Pacific Railway Corp. to its list of companies deemed responsible for cleanup costs following last month's deadly oil train derailment."
"Japan will raise the severity rating of a recent toxic water leak at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant to level 3, or 'serious incident', on an international scale for radiological releases, underlining the deepening sense of crisis at the site."
"Trains smack of progress, freedom and adventure. It’s said that railroads revolutionized America. The Association of American Railroads (AAR) touts the safety record of the rails: 'In 2012, North American railroads safely delivered more than 2.47 million carloads of hazardous materials.' But sometimes trains leak, derail or just plain explode."
"TOKYO -- Contaminated water with dangerously high levels of radiation is leaking from a storage tank at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the most serious setback to the clean up of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl."
"In less than 40 years from now the cost to the world's biggest coastal cities from flooding is expected to have risen to $1tn – 0.7% of the value of the entire world economy in 2012."
"SALMON, Idaho -- Firefighters mounted on Sunday an all-out ground and air attack on an Idaho wildfire that has forced the evacuation of some 2,250 homes and threatened the world-class ski resort of Sun Valley, where snow-making water cannons were used to keep the flames at bay."
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