Disasters

"Agnolo di Tura was a sometime shoemaker and tax collector with a yen for keeping a journal. He was also his family’s sole survivor when the Black Death tore through Siena, Italy, in 1348. He buried his wife and five children with his own hands, he wrote in his journal. He was somehow spared."

"The Albright family left town after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed near their Ohio home. Now, they are back, facing personal, medical and financial crises in a newly divided community."

"Hurricanes in the U.S. the last few decades killed thousands more people than meteorologists traditionally calculate and a disproportionate number of those victims are poor, vulnerable and minorities, according to a new epidemiological study."

"The government of Canada's Northwest Territories declared a state of emergency on Tuesday due to wildfires that have largely destroyed one remote community and are also posing a risk to territorial capital Yellowknife."

"Postal worker Eugene Gates Jr. was delivering mail in the suffocating Dallas heat this summer when he collapsed in a homeowner’s yard and was taken to a hospital, where he died."

"Hundreds of South Korean activists gathered in central Seoul on Saturday to protest against Japan's plan to release treated radioactive water from the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean."

"Along Florida’s coast, multiple coral restoration projects have hundreds of people painstakingly attaching thousands of coral fragments to acres of endangered reefs. These efforts are yielding impressive results, but they won’t be enough — especially now, in the face of unprecedented high sea temperatures, as some projects scramble to rescue corals from in-water nurseries."

"The rest of the 2023 hurricane season will be busier than previously thought, according to new projections from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)."

"The death toll from the Maui wildfires reached 96 on Sunday as relatives of the missing frantically searched for signs their loved ones may still be alive, while survivors grappled with the scale of the disaster and sought solace at church services."

"The crack of a summer thunderstorm once comforted people in Ludlow, Vermont. But that was before a storm dropped eight inches of rain on the village of 2,200 in two days last month. And it was before the devastation of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. Now a coming rainstorm can stir panic."