Disasters

Tropical Storm Nicholas slows, dumps rain along Gulf Coast
Tropical Storm Nicholas slowed to a crawl over the Houston area Tuesday after making landfall earlier as a hurricane, knocking out power to a half-million homes and businesses and dumping more than a foot of rain along the same area swamped by Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
The Pagami Creek Fire in 2011 blew up into Minnesota’s biggest wildfire in over a century, burning more than 90,000 acres in the Superior National Forest. Ten years later, the forest has been reborn and lessons learned from Pagami now shape how rangers and firefighters respond to wilderness wildfires.
Survivors reflect on the day the Pagami Creek Fire exploded 10 years ago
Ten years ago this weekend, the Pagami Creek Fire exploded into the biggest wildfire Minnesota had seen in over a century. What had been burning slowly in the Boundary Waters for weeks became an inferno, sweeping across 16 miles of the wilderness in a single day, overtaking campers and Forest Service rangers caught in its path.
Biden to survey NY and NJ storm damage after deadly flooding
President Joe Biden will survey damage in parts of the northeast that suffered catastrophic flash flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Ida, and use the muddy backdrop to call for federal spending to fortify infrastructure so it can better withstand such powerful storms.
Divers identify broken pipeline as source of Gulf oil spill
Divers at the site of an ongoing oil spill that appeared in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Ida have identified the apparent source as a one-foot diameter pipeline displaced from a trench on the ocean floor and broken open.
Descendants of slaves found shelter from Ida in a historic plantation's Big House
Joy Banner's family took shelter in a house on a plantation their ancestors helped build. "They were not able to have this kind of house for their own protection when a hurricane hit them," she says.