"A series of tornadoes, including a major twister, touched down southwest of Oklahoma City on Wednesday, injuring several residents of a trailer park, causing severe flooding and the escape of bears from a wildlife park, officials said."
"A train carrying highly volatile crude oil derailed and erupted into flames on Wednesday morning, forcing the evacuation of a small town in North Dakota, according to local and federal officials."
Congress does not release reports done by the Congressional Research Service to the public, even though taxpayers fund them. Thanks to the Federation of American Scientists' Government Secrecy Project, you can read them anyway.
Since U.S. oil production started booming, the news has been full of tanker trains blowing up. Under a May 2014 emergency order, the Federal Railway Administration increased requirements that railroads disclose oil train routes. But a new regulation issued May 1, 2015, leaves the public — and firefighters — with less information about the risks they face. Photo: The latest oil train derailment and explosion, today, in ND/Curt Bemson via AP.
"Safety checks following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in March 2011, when a 10 metre-high sea wall was overtopped by a tsunami, have shown that nuclear plants are at greater risk of catastrophic flooding as a result of climate change."
"Amid one the West’s worst droughts in centuries, more than 5,600 wildfires scorched more than 600,000 acres last year in California alone. It could happen again."
"A federal judge ruled Friday that the Army Corps of Engineers' construction and management of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) channel had created a "ticking time bomb" for the New Orleans area and that the federal government must pay for some of the flood damage from Hurricane Katrina and subsequent storms."
"U.S. and Canadian officials unveiled regulations [Friday] that would effectively overhaul the entire fleet of U.S. crude oil tank cars in five years."
"More than 300,000 gallons of gasoline have leaked from Texas-based energy company Kinder Morgan’s pipeline in Belton, S.C., since a structure failure in December, according to the Savannah Riverkeeper."
"On Friday, May 1 at 10:30 a.m., U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Canada’s Minister of Transport Lisa Raitt will hold a press conference to announce the next generation of stronger, safer rail tank cars for the transportatio
n of flammable liquids in North America. Secretary Foxx will also announce other aspects of DOT’s final rule. The press conference will be streamed live online here."
