Disasters

WASHINGTON (AP) — With three strong hurricanes, wildfires, hail, flooding, tornadoes and drought, the United States tallied a record high bill last year for weather disasters: $306 billion. The U.S. had 16 disasters last year with damage exceeding a billion dollars, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday. That ties 2011 for the number […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is spending more than $200 million a day responding to recent hurricanes and wildfires, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency told Congress Tuesday in testimony that also slammed the $300 million Whitefish contract in Puerto Rico. FEMA Administrator Brock Long told a Senate panel that about 25 million […]

GATLINBURG, Tenn. (AP) — Crews discovered the remains of more people as they searched the rubble of wildfires that torched hundreds of homes and businesses near the Great Smoky Mountains, bringing the death toll to 11, officials said Thursday. Authorities set up a hotline for people to report missing friends and relatives, and after following […]

NEW YORK (AP) — After two bodies were pulled from the rubble of a Manhattan apartment building collapse, authorities shifted their focus to what caused the massive explosion and fire and the possibility that someone may have improperly tapped a gas line serving one of the buildings. “There’s reason to believe so far that there […]

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Sites where levee failures led to the catastrophic flooding after Hurricane Katrina would join Civil War battlefields and Mount Rushmore on a federal list of the nation’s historic icons if an activist has her way, but legal foot-dragging by the agency that many blame for the flooding is slowing the effort. […]