Disasters

"SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Predictably, the clash of the titans ended loudly Tuesday. With the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento and lumber giant Sierra Pacific Industries Inc. trotting out competing versions of a settlement's meaning, their epic legal match over who started the Moonlight fire and who should pay for the damages is closed."

"Pacific Gas and Electric Co. suggested to managers before the San Bruno pipeline explosion that downgrading more than 2,300 natural-gas leaks - and potentially not fixing them - would save the company nearly $5 million, according to an internal document obtained by The Chronicle."

"More than 50 percent of the United States is under drought conditions right now, putting 2012 in the same category with some of the worst droughts in the nation's history."

"It took less than an hour last month for a Montana wildfire to reduce Scott McRae's ranch to thousands of blackened acres devoid of the grasses that were to sustain hundreds of cattle."

"The beleaguered federal agency that oversees oil and gas pipelines meets today to consider lobbying push-back against congressional orders that it stop charging the public up to $995 to read one of its industry-developed safety standards."

"Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. has become the first major insurance company to say it won't cover damage related to a gas drilling process that blasts chemical-laden water deep into the ground."

"Federal investigators seeking the cause of a North Side train derailment are taking a close look at the tracks, after early scrutiny of the crew's actions and the train itself revealed no glaring problems."

"More than 1,000 counties in 26 states are being named natural-disaster areas, the biggest such declaration ever by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as drought grips the Midwest."

"WASHINGTON -- The worst Midwest drought in a quarter century is doing more damage to U.S. crops than previously expected with the government on Wednesday slashing its estimate for what was supposed to be a record harvest."

"WASHINGTON, DC -- The same 'man-made' problems underlying last year's nuclear disaster in Japan exist today in the United States, warn five U.S. groups responding to the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission's report to Japan's Diet, or parliament."