Disasters

"When the federal government shut down twice this year, meteorologist Brandon Dunstan went to work, just like any other day at the National Weather Service office in Raleigh, N.C."

"A cyberattack on the power grid could erode trust in key U.S. institutions and cause billions of dollars in damage, a top White House advisory group said Friday."

"Using selective logging and controlled burns, Ashland has reduced fire risk on thousands of acres in the forested watershed that provides the city’s drinking water. The partnership that made it happen could be a model for other fire-prone communities."

"An explosion and fire at an electric substation threw much of northern Puerto Rico into darkness late Sunday in a setback for the U.S. territory’s efforts to fully restore power more than five months after Hurricane Maria started the longest blackout in U.S. history."

"One year after the worst structural failures at a major U.S. dam in a generation, federal regulators who oversee California's half-century-old, towering Oroville Dam say they are looking hard at how they overlooked its built-in weaknesses for decades."

"Forestry experts have a dire warning for California: the conditions are ripe for more catastrophic fire seasons like the one last fall. And an arcane federal funding arrangement is making it a lot harder for forestry officials to do something about it. Instead of fixing the problem, however, Congress just punted — again."

"Anchored in flood-prone areas in every American state are more than 2,500 sites that handle toxic chemicals, a New York Times analysis of federal floodplain and industrial data shows. About 1,400 are located in areas at highest risk of flooding."

"President Donald Trump’s 2019 budget proposal will again call for ending the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent agency that investigates major industrial accidents, according to a senior government official familiar with the plan."

"Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has rejected the recommendation of an independent pipeline safety advisory board to shut down an aging crude oil pipeline that has been losing sections of its protective coating where it crosses beneath the Great Lakes."