Disasters

"The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says it has spent $290 million on a drug to treat radiation sickness in the event of a nuclear emergency."

"Before the Dixie fire came barreling through the Sierra Nevada last year, leveling everything here but a few houses, businesses and a school, this was a charming — if dying — Gold Rush-era town that about 800 people called home. Now, much of the charm is gone along with most of the residents, replaced by the skeletal remains of conifer trees and the deathly silence of block after empty block."

"Human-caused global warming has made severe droughts like the ones this summer in Europe, North America and China at least 20 times as likely to occur as they would have been more than a century ago, scientists said Wednesday. It’s the latest evidence of how climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels is imperiling food, water and electricity supplies around the world."

"DOLLOW, Somalia — A man in a donkey cart comes wheeling through the dust, carrying two small, silent boys. The sky is overcast. It could rain. It won’t. It hasn’t for a very long time."

"Hurricane Ian’s wrath made clear that Florida faces some of the most severe consequences of climate change anywhere in the country. But the state’s top elected leaders opposed the most significant climate legislation to pass Congress — laws to help fortify states against, and recover from, climate disasters, and confront their underlying cause: the burning of fossil fuels."

"Sewage pipelines overflowed into waterways. Toppled portable toilets spilled into floodwaters. Gasoline and motor oil leaked from partly submerged vehicles. Downed trees have started decomposing on waterlogged roads."

"A few hundred farms in the southern tip of California, along the Mexican border, may hold the key to saving the drought-plagued Colorado River from collapse."

"South Asia’s monsoon is inextricably linked, culturally and economically, to much of Asia. Climate change is making it increasingly violent and erratic."

"Isabelle Cormier spent the days after post-tropical storm Fiona picking through what could be salvaged of her family's 40-year-old cottage."

"President Joe Biden on Monday pledged more than $60 million in aid to help U.S. territory Puerto Rico and said more money was coming, as he sought to present a more compassionate image than his predecessor, Donald Trump, while surveying damage from Hurricane Fiona."