November 13, 2017
Rumbling bulldozers and front-loaders have started scraping up the ash, charred wood and crumbled bricks and concrete left from thousands of homes and buildings destroyed by blazes in California wine country, launching a new phase in the largest wildfire cleanup …
October 9, 2017
Firefighters battled roughly 10 wind-whipped fires across Northern California’s wine country early Monday, triggering a rush by residents to flee the area. Mandatory evacuations were ordered after blazes broke out late Sunday across four counties as strong winds buffeted the …
September 7, 2017
Bad design and construction of the tallest U.S. dam a half-century ago and inadequate state and federal oversight since then led to a disastrous spillway collapse in February, an independent national team of dam safety experts said this week as …
April 21, 2017
Late in the afternoon of Feb. 12, Sheriff Kory Honea was at the emergency operations center for the tallest dam in America when he overheard someone say something that stopped him in his tracks: “This is not good.” Over six …
March 24, 2017
California is not just fighting nature as it attempts to repair the nation’s tallest dam, badly damaged last month by surging storm waters. It’s also racing the clock. Safety experts say there is no time for delay in a state …
February 15, 2017
Environmental activists and local government officials warned more than a decade ago about the risk of catastrophic flooding below a major Northern California dam – the very scenario that threatened to unfold over the weekend, prompting evacuation orders for nearly …
December 27, 2016
The parents of a 20-year-old college student who died in the arms of her boyfriend in Oakland’s deadly warehouse fire filed the first lawsuit Friday in the disaster, blaming the building’s owner, chief tenant and others. The lawsuit, filed in …
December 7, 2016
The founder of a ramshackle Oakland artists’ colony where dozens of people burned to death saw himself as a kind of guru and loved to surround himself with followers but showed chilling disregard for their well-being, according to relatives, neighbors …
August 1, 2016
Lodge managers and cafe owners along California’s dramatic Big Sur coast were looking at a summer of jittery guests and cancelled bookings after fire officials warned that crews will likely be battling a wildfire raging in steep, forested ridges just …
July 13, 2016
California Gov. Jerry Brown has launched a campaign to extend some of the most ambitious climate-change programs in the country and ensure his environmental legacy when he leaves office in two years. The centerpiece of the push is a cap-and-trade …