Disasters

"HOUSTON -- It was DuPont's third deadly U.S. accident in five years and the deadliest of them all. On November 15th, a chemical leak in LaPorte took the lives of four workers, including two brothers."

"Medical experts reacted with alarm Monday as two top contenders for the Republican presidential nomination appeared to question whether child vaccinations should be mandatory — injecting politics into an emotional issue that has taken on new resonance with a recent outbreak of measles in the United States."

"Anadarko Petroleum Corp., a minority investor in BP's failed Macondo well, is on the hook for federal pollution fines for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, regardless of whether the company was responsible for the disaster, a federal judge said Monday (Feb. 2)."

"A new Army Corps of Engineers report warns that unless coastal residents and state and local leaders from the Carolinas to Maine rethink their approach to shoreline development, the next big storm will be equal to or worse than Hurricane Sandy – with its $65 billion in losses, 159 deaths and 650,000 homes damaged or destroyed."

"Ocean Street in the waterfront Massachusetts town of Marshfield was littered with lobster traps, downed wires and chunks of houses on Wednesday, after a massive blizzard hammered New England."

"A pipeline that ruptured recently in North Dakota and spilled nearly 3 million gallons of saltwater produced during oil drilling wasn't inspected by the state before being installed, according to state regulators."

"The U.S. Forest Service adopted a rule on Wednesday that requires managers of the nation’s nearly 200 forests and grasslands to formally designate where snowmobiles can be operated on the 193 million acres of public land the agency oversees."

"Oklahoma’s highest court is about to make a decision that could really shake up the way fracking companies do business in the state."

"Southern California gets the vast majority of its water from four aqueducts that flow from the north, but all of them cross the San Andreas Fault. That means millions of people are just one major earthquake away from drying out for a year or more."

"Three powerful accidents in recent years highlight weaknesses in the oversight of how natural gas providers maintain the largest pipelines in their networks, accident investigators said today as they issued more than two dozen safety recommendations."