Disasters

"In the 20 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, hurricane scientists have made great strides toward understanding how climate change influences tropical cyclones, at the same time as they have vastly improved hurricane forecasting. Better forecasts, in turn, save the country billions every time a storm makes landfall, according to a 2024 analysis published in the National Bureau of Economic Research."

"The Trump administration placed more than 30 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees on leave Tuesday after they signed an open letter of dissent about the agency’s leadership, according to people familiar with the situation and documents reviewed by The Washington Post."

"A powerful dust storm wreaked havoc on Nevada’s annual Burning Man festival over the weekend, tossing around early attendees’ campsites and trapping incoming Burners in up to eight hours of stop-and-go traffic."

"Exposure to high temperatures could result in long-lasting damage to health of billions of people, scientists warn"

"The operator of New England’s electric grid warned Monday that the Trump administration’s move to halt a nearly completed offshore wind farm will cause risks to the reliability of the electric grid."

"Israeli strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza killed five journalists Monday, according to health officials, including one who days earlier had reported for The Associated Press on children being treated for starvation at the same facility."

"Donald Trump’s attacks on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) risk exposing the US to another Hurricane Katrina, staff at the agency have warned Congress in a withering critique that also takes aim at its current leadership."

"A vaccine in development may slow the spread of Nipah virus, which kills up to 75 percent of the people it sickens, but reducing the environmental disruptions that bring people, livestock and bats together could be more effective." 

"The fire burned for about nine hours, billowing smoke and scorching the wooden trestles of a nearly 75-year-old railroad bridge that spans the Marys River in Corvallis, home to Oregon State University."