"Hawaii, Alaska and the Southwest face an above-average threat of wildfires this summer, but most of the country should see normal or below-normal problems, forecasters said Sunday."
"A CSX freight train derailed in northeastern Washington [DC] on Sunday, spilling hazardous material near a subway station and disrupting commuter rail and long-distance Amtrak passenger trains but causing no injuries, authorities said."
"Government says 330 million people are suffering from water shortages after monsoons fail".
"A grandmother and four of her grandchildren were killed and another person also died in floods in Texas caused by storms that unleashed tornadoes, damaging hail and torrential rains on several central U.S. states, officials said on Saturday."
"The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted Wednesday to pass a bill to reauthorize the federal government’s safety oversight for hazardous pipelines."
Many local and state agencies, set up under a 1986 federal law to inform the public, are a great resource for stories at the local, state, and even national level. Some don't — often based on a fear that terrorists could use the information to harm people. Here's how to find yours.
"Six years on, scientists are continuing to tally the ecological harms caused by the deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."
"It will be 30 years ago Tuesday that Pripyat and the nearby Chernobyl nuclear plant became synonymous with nuclear disaster, that the word Chernobyl came to mean more than just a little village in rural Ukraine, and this place became more than just another spot in the shadowy Soviet Union."
"More than 5 billion gallons of oil are transported by boat and barge to the five refineries located in Puget Sound each year. With so much petroleum moving along our coastlines, accidents are, sadly, almost bound to happen. Is Washington ready for the next big one? That’s the question the state Department of Ecology had in mind at the first-of-its-kind “worst-case” oil spill drill off the coast of Anacortes earlier this month."
"The death toll from a huge explosion at a Mexican petrochemical plant that forced the evacuation of surrounding neighborhoods has risen to 24, authorities said."
