Disasters

"BP engineers today succeeded in intercepting the damaged Deepwater Horizon oil well with a relief well they have been drilling since May 2."

"The Interior Department said Wednesday that oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico need to do more to permanently plug nearly 3,000 inactive wells and dismantle about 650 production platforms that are no longer in use."

"A trio of potentially dangerous storms swirled over the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday, as Tropical Storm Karl formed in the Caribbean on a path that could take it over oil-production facilities in Mexico's Bay of Campeche."

"Most levees in the city of Sacramento have technically failed a maintenance inspection by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers because they are bristling with trees and other structural intrusions. But the city won't be penalized — for now — while long-term solutions are being developed."

"The tragic explosion of a gas pipeline  in a San Francisco suburb has shed light on a problem usually kept underground: Communities have expanded over pipes built decades earlier when no one lived there. Utilities have been under pressure for years to better inspect and replace aging gas pipes — many of them laid years before sprawling communities were erected around them — that now are at risk of leaking or erupting."

A 30-inch natural gas pipeline routed through a densely populated area in San Bruno, Calif., exploded Thursday, killing at least 7 people. The fireball rose some 1,000 feet in the air and destroyed dozens of homes.

"Scientists on a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico are finding a substantial layer of oily sediment stretching for dozens of miles in all directions. Their discovery suggests that a lot of oil from the Deepwater Horizon didn't simply evaporate or dissipate into the water — it has settled to the seafloor."

"U.S. Department of Agriculture experts found growing sanitary problems including bugs and overflowing trash earlier this year on the Iowa farm at the center of the national egg recall, but didn't notify health authorities, according to government documents and officials."

"BP spent months this summer trying to contain the gusher of oil  on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Now the company is trying to contain the legal and financial fallout from the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, and on Wednesday it released the results of an internal investigation that mostly pointed fingers at other companies."