Disasters

"The blaze, now 134,000 acres, pushes into Yosemite National Park. Each day, what it does depends on the wind."

"A 'complete breakdown of safety' in 2010 has not been sufficiently addressed, a neglect that may spell trouble for its other aging lines, the report says."

"SALMON, Idaho -- U.S. wildfire managers facing increasingly strained resources have opened talks with Pentagon commanders and Canadian officials about possible reinforcements of personnel and aircraft to battle dozens of blazes raging across the drought-parched American West."

"Yosemite area wildfire destroys two homes and sends tourists, residents packing. Although officials haven't closed Yosemite, wildfire has forced the closing of one of three entrances to the national park."

As wildfires rage across the West, the costs of the fight to protect lives and property are up. But budget cuts imposed by an austerity-minded Congress have meant that funds to protect people are down.

"At least three people were killed by an ammonia gas leak from a pipeline owned by state oil monopoly Pemex in southern Mexico on Tuesday and 1,500 people were evacuated from the area and taken to shelters, the company said."

"The Interior Department [Wednesday] proposed a new rule designed to strengthen the safety of offshore oil and gas production technologies as industry reaches into deeper and riskier waters."

"An advisory panel to Tokyo Electric Power Co. urged the utility to tighten water-management procedures at its crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant weeks before 300 metric tons of radioactive water seeped out, the panel’s chairman said."

"Quebec's government last week added rail giant Canadian Pacific Railway Corp. to its list of companies deemed responsible for cleanup costs following last month's deadly oil train derailment."

"Japan will raise the severity rating of a recent toxic water leak at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant to level 3, or 'serious incident', on an international scale for radiological releases, underlining the deepening sense of crisis at the site."