"PORT ARTHUR, Texas — The church was empty, except for the piano too heavy for one man to move. It had been 21 days since the greatest storm Wayne Christopher had ever seen dumped a year’s worth of rain on his town, drowning this church where he was baptized, met his high school sweetheart and later married her."
As this month's fatal California fires demonstrated, the risk of wildfire at the wildland-urban interface rises as development moves into fire-prone zones. The latest TipSheet explains this complex phenomenon, and provides story ideas and a wide range of resources to help you get ahead of the problem.
"'If you listen to the news coverage about Irma, you'll hear about damage to the farms. You don't ever hear about impact to farm workers,' said Jeannie Economos, the pesticide safety and environmental health project coordinator with the Farmworker Association of Florida."
"Raw sewage is pouring into the rivers and reservoirs of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. People without running water bathe and wash their clothes in contaminated streams, and some islanders have been drinking water from condemned wells."
"This fall, the number of chinook salmon making their way from the ocean up the Klamath River in the far northwest corner of California is the lowest on record. That’s devastating news for the Yurok tribe, which has lived along and fished the Klamath for centuries. Salmon is integral to their entire culture and way of life, essential to Yurok ceremonies, for food, and for income."
"The Interior Department is preparing to set aside a decades-old ban on development in federally protected wilderness areas by pursuing a controversial proposal to build a nearly 12-mile road through a wildlife refuge in Alaska.
"The fossil fuel has been an environmental threat and economic necessity for Native American tribes in Arizona. What happens when it's gone?"
"Hurricane Maria's destruction on Puerto Rico could spawn one of the largest mass migration events in the United States' recent history, experts say, as tens of thousands of storm victims flee the island territory to rebuild their lives on the U.S. mainland."
"A sprawl of mobile home parks house 10,000 people in Southern California’s Coachella Valley, but their drinking water is chronically contaminated. Now some solutions are in sight."
"A week after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, the US commonwealth's residents are struggling to survive without basic necessities as federal officials say aid is still on the way."
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