New Biden administration rules aim to unsnarl FEMA relief for disaster victims

Jan 23, 2024
The rules include up-front housing vouchers and broader access to flexible, critical-needs payments in the aftermath of a disaster.
Two years after the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history, hundreds of victims are still waiting on FEMA payouts. Updates to FEMA’s regulations are meant to cut through red tape.
Mario Tama/Getty Images

U.S. is formally out of the Paris climate agreement

Nov 4, 2020
Slowing climate change and adapting to it requires cross-border cooperation, even though many costs will be local.
Greenpeace activists painted "No coal no Trump" on the side of a coal ship leaving Texas in 2017 after Trump said he would pull out of the Paris climate agreement.
Bodo Marks/DPA/AFP via Getty Images

Farmers need to adapt crops to climate change to stay profitable, experts say

Oct 20, 2020
Climate change has arrived in American agriculture, and it could cause profits to drop 30% over the next 30 to 50 years.
Workers harvest zucchini on a farm in Florida City, Florida, in April. Climate change is shifting which crops farmers can grow — and when they can grow them.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Floods, fires and financial risk: What climate change could do to the financial system

Aug 5, 2019
A regulator warns the changing climate could cause a financial crisis.
Midwest states are battling some of the worst flooding they have experienced in decades.
Scott Olson/Getty Images

Another day, another storm

Apr 11, 2019
Businesses in the Midwest are in the process of recovering from last month's floods.
A tractor drives through flooding in Missouri last month. Midwest businesses are struggling to shoulder the financial burden of flooding and storm damage by two recent storms.
Scott Olson/Getty Images

Repairing Nebraska will take money and time

Mar 22, 2019
Nebraska officials report that the flooding in the wake of the recent "bomb cyclone" has caused more than $550 million in damage.
Floodwaters in Fremont, Nebraska, on March 16.
Courtesy of Scott Olson/Lee Valley Inc.

Midwest flooding has agriculture reeling

Mar 21, 2019
Nebraska officials estimate that flooding has caused $1.3 billion in damage in the state, more than half of it to crops and cattle. The disaster there and in neighboring Iowa follows a difficult year for both states’ farmers, who’ve been reeling from the ongoing trade war and softening global economy. Now Iowa and Nebraska, with […]
Floodwaters in Fremont, Nebraska, on March 16.
Courtesy of Scott Olson/Lee Valley Inc.

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A year after the floods, Texas mulls lessons of Hurricane Harvey

Aug 24, 2018
Greater Houston area residents are voting on a bond to fund flood mitigation.
Residents evacuate an apartment complex in west Houston where high water coming from the Addicks Reservoir flooded the area after Hurricane Harvey on Aug. 30, 2017.
Photo by Erich Schlegel/Getty Images

Investors flock to previously flooded Houston neighborhoods with hopes of big returns

Aug 22, 2018
Some homeowners are eager to sell, but officials fear new renters will be put in harm's way.
In the Meyerland neighborhood in southwest Houston, Texas, house debris is still being cleared a year after Hurricane Harvey.
Andy Uhler/Marketplace

In Baton Rouge, big brands come to help — and get known

Aug 22, 2016
Tide, Duracell and Clorox are just some of the brand names flocking to the region.
Tide brought a portable laundry services truck to Baton Rouge for the displaced.
Tim Mettey