Disasters

"Whether it's wildfires in the West, drought in the Midwest, or sea level rise on the Eastern seaboard, chances are good your state is in for its own breed of climate-related disasters. Every state is required to file a State Hazard Mitigation Plan with FEMA, which lays out risks for that state and its protocols for handling catastrophe. But as a new analysis from Columbia University's Center for Climate Change Law reveals, many states' plans do not take climate change into account."

"The second explosive oil-train derailment this year, which has finally burned out in rural Alabama, may raise new questions about the safety of the crude-by-rail boom, pointing to problems beyond those that surfaced following the earlier tragedy in Quebec."

"Key West is one of the U.S. cities most vulnerable to sea level rise, and so it's adopting regulations requiring new homes to have freshwater cisterns and to be built higher than the current flood plain level."

"UN negotiations in Warsaw must deliver emergency climate pathway as new storm brews in the Pacific, says government."

"For many of Japan's oldest nuclear refugees, all they want is to be allowed back to the homes they were forced to abandon. Others are ready to move away, severing ties to the ghost towns that remain in the shadow of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant."

"Rescue workers struggled to reach ravaged towns and villages in the central Philippines on Monday as they tried to deliver aid to survivors of a powerful typhoon that killed an estimated 10,000 people and displaced more than 600,000."

"TOKYO -- Operators of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant this month will begin a potentially hazardous operation to remove fuel rods from one of the reactor units, a critical step in what is expected to be a decadeslong cleanup of the site of one of the worst nuclear-energy accidents in history."

"TOKYO -- Operators of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant this month will begin a potentially hazardous operation to remove fuel rods from one of the reactor units, a critical step in what is expected to be a decadeslong cleanup of the site of one of the worst nuclear-energy accidents in history."

"Super Typhoon Haiyan -- one of the strongest storms recorded on the planet -- smashed into island after island as it plowed across the central Philippines on Friday, threatening millions of people."

"MONTREAL — Parts of the Chaudière River remain contaminated despite weeks of cleanup operations and the removal of nearly 43 million litres of oily water from the river."