Disasters

"Ohio filed a lawsuit against railroad Norfolk Southern to make sure it pays for the cleanup and environmental damage caused by a fiery train derailment on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border last month, the state’s attorney general said Tuesday."

"The latest in a series of atmospheric river storms soaked California on Tuesday, bringing another deluge of rain to the already-saturated state, while a Nor'easter swirling over New York and New England prompted emergency orders and closed roads."

"Accidents that result in the release of hazardous materials are rare, but when trains do crash, the consequences can be serious. Most of the recent ones that caused evacuations have happened near small communities, NPR found. Local firefighters who respond are uniquely vulnerable to the effects. But across the country, they are often under-prepared to handle the chemicals when they come off the tracks."

"The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Water. These aren’t merely tough weather events, they are leading to extremes such as crop failure, infrastructure damage, even humanitarian crises and conflict."

"Diplomats from nearly 200 nations and top climate scientists began a week-long huddle in Switzerland on Monday to distill nearly a decade of published science into a 20-odd-page warning about the existential danger of global warming and what to do about it."

"Another atmospheric river is creeping into storm-ravaged California, pummeling communities with more rain, prompting fresh evacuation alerts and putting rescue teams on notice as residents work to recover from last week’s flooding storm."

"Gregoriy Sidorenko watched in disbelief as the Russian cruise missile slammed into storage tank number four at the oil depot here, sending enormous plumes of black smoke overhead and sparking a massive fire that would last roughly 16 hours. More than 1 million gallons of oil from eight incinerated tanks seeped into the soil, raising concerns about potential contamination at a nearby drinking water reservoir in this industrial city about 200 miles south of Kyiv."

"A Washington Post investigation has found that some policyholders had their claims cut by more than 80 percent".

"Last month, Brenda Foster stood on the railroad tracks at the edge of her yard in East Palestine, Ohio, and watched a smoky inferno billow from the wreckage of a derailed train. The chemicals it was carrying — and the fire that consumed them — were so toxic that the entire area had to evacuate."

"Emergency officials in several California counties spent Friday patrolling levies and swollen rivers as an "atmospheric river" storm drenched the already-sodden state with torrential rains, causing floods that washed out roads and prompted evacuations."