"No one understands risk better than the insurance industry — except, perhaps, the reinsurance industry, the companies that sell insurance to insurers, which also need protection from risk exposure. As the risk managers for the risk managers, reinsurers follow climate change obsessively. A great deal of money is at stake. ..."

"The largest wildfire in the United States continued its destructive march through the Sierra Nevada on Tuesday, pushing further into Yosemite National Park and for the first time burning nearly to the edge of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, the linchpin of the water supply for 2.6 million Bay Area residents from San Francisco to Silicon Valley."

"One of the firefighting teams trying to contain the Rim Fire in and around Yosemite National Park is the Geronimo Hotshots team from San Carlos, Ariz., one of seven elite Native American firefighting crews in the U.S."

"Beaver Valley nuclear power plant may have failed part of an April federal safety drill in which mock intruders attack the plant, federal regulators and the plant owners said on Monday."

"TUOLUMNE CITY, Calif. -- Crews were finally gaining ground by late Monday on a massive wildfire burning near Yosemite National Park as officials also expressed optimism that no water or power disruptions would come from the blaze burning along the shores of the main reservoir that supplies San Francisco."

"WASHINGTON -- The federal government is fighting with itself over a massive fire at a Chevron refinery in California that sent 15,000 people to hospitals with respiratory ailments."

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

"Even the best national data on chemical accidents is wrong nine times out of 10."

"A Dallas Morning News analysis of more than 750,000 federal records found pervasive inaccuracies and holes in data on chemical accidents, such as the one in West that killed 15 people and injured more than 300."

"In fact, no one at any level of government knows how often serious chemical accidents occur each year in the United States. And there is no plan in place for federal agencies to gather more accurate information.

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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.