Disasters

Hazardous conditions hindered firefighters' attempts Monday to search for some 40 people still missing after a runaway oil tanker train exploded over the weekend, killing at least five people, officials said.
State and federal officials begin assessing damage today from the severe thunderstorms that hit Minnesota last month.
Injured SF passenger: 'It's miraculous we survived'
Police officers threw utility knives up to crew members inside the burning wreckage of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 so they could cut away passengers' seat belts. Passengers jumped down emergency slides, escaping the smoke. Amid the chaos, some urged fellow passengers to keep calm, even as flames tore through the Boeing 777's fuselage.
Authorities in Otter Tail County say a man has lost two fingers after the firework he was holding exploded in his hand.
San Francisco crash victims identified as Chinese girls
Two people died Saturday in the crash-landing at San Francisco International Airport of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 from Seoul, South Korea, San Francisco's fire chief says. Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White says everyone who had been on board the flight is accounted for.
An Eden Prairie woman died Friday after being pinned under a 90-year-old basswood tree.
Wildfire cut off Hotshots' access to safety zone
An erratic wildfire driven by ferocious and shifting winds curled around the location of a team of Arizona Hotshot firefighters, cutting off their access to a safety zone and creating a death trap that quickly consumed them.
Three died in two separate motorcycle crashes on July 4. Benjamin Jones, 24, was killed after hitting an SUV in St. Louis county. Terrance Armstrong, 57, and Kari Armstrong, 47, died on I-35 in Pine county.
AZ town honors 19 fallen wildfire fighters
On a day meant to ponder the nation's birth, and those who built and defended it over 237 years, Prescott, Arizona's residents had 19 of their neighbors, their friends, their relatives to remember: The 19 wildfire fighters who died last Sunday fighting a massive blaze 60 miles from Phoenix.
Interactive map, photos and video of deadly blazes across the United States.