Disasters

"Tropical Storm Iselle battered Hawaii with driving winds and rising surf on Friday, knocking down trees and causing power outages, the first of two major storms due to hit the archipelago as the more powerful Hurricane Julio gathered steam behind it."

"BAGHDAD — The crisis gripping Iraq escalated rapidly on Thursday with a re-energized Islamic State in Iraq and Syria storming new towns in the north and seizing a strategic dam as Iraq’s most formidable military force, the Kurdish pesh merga, was routed in the face of the onslaught."

"Carriers with the U.S. Postal Service this week were delivering a last bit of expected bad news from the Army Corps of Engineers to 565,000 individuals and businesses who filed claims for trillions of dollars of damages caused by failures of New Orleans area levee systems during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005."

"Wildfires are ravaging the West Coast, burning homes and prompting evacuations. Responding to wildfires has proven costly and now the Obama administration is reevaluating how it pays to fight them.""

"HONOLULU -- Hawaiians braced for a one-two punch from a pair of major storms headed their way on Wednesday, as Hurricane Iselle bore down on the islands packing high winds and heavy surf and Julio, tracking right behind, was upgraded to hurricane status."

"A tropical rain storm that caused deadly floods and destructive mudslides in the San Gabriel Mountains on Sunday was the kind of weather event seen only once about every 500 years, the National Weather Service said."

"Local residents are calling it an environmental disaster. A breach of the tailings pond on Mount Polley Mine sent five million cubic metres of toxic waste into Hazeltine Creek, Quesnel Lake and Polley Lake, with fears it could spread far and wide in the coming days."

Several hundred thousand residents of the Toledo, Ohio, area remained Monday morning under an advisory not to drink their tapwater. Labs found microcystin, a toxin produced by blue-green algae, in the water. The algae are blooming in western Lake Erie, from which the city draws its water, because of phosphorus frpm farm runoff, lawn fertilizer, and sewage overflow. At a 3 am news conference, Mayor D. Michael Collins said the advisory would ramain in effect for some hours although tests showed microcystin in the water returning to safe levels. The crisis disrupted people's lives on a massive scale as bottled water was distributed.

"WASHINGTON — Oil companies that locked up more than 1.3 million acres of the Beaufort Sea for drilling in 2007 have since relinquished nearly half that territory."