Natural Disasters News

Fire crews were battling two fast-moving wildfires in California that threatened many homes and forced hundreds of evacuations, officials said.

Spokeswoman Gina Breeding with the office of emergency management in east Tennessee's Claiborne County told The Associated Press that searchers were going door to door amid the debris of ruined homes Sunday night in one particularly hard-hit community, Speedwell.

Authorities now say 14 people - including a 15-year-old - have been struck by lightning during rare summer thunderstorms that have swept through Southern California, injuring two critically.

The Ebola virus ravaging West Africa is taking a toll on the doctors and health workers battling it.

Scientists and public health officials are studying a Vermont whooping cough epidemic to determine if the current vaccine is less effective against a new strain sweeping the country.

Firefighters traveling from the Wye Fire get a rest before getting assignments for the Mill Fire at the incident base camp at the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds on Aug. 16, 2012.

BEIJING: A typhoon has killed 13 people in China and left thousands in need of basic living supplies, the Civil Affairs Ministry said Sunday.

An information officer with the B.C. Wildfire Management Branch, says temperatures are expected to rise again next week, especially in the southern interior, where they could reach the mid-30s.

A rapidly spreading wildfire in Northern California forced the evacuation of about 700 homes Saturday as it raced through Sierra Nevada foothills turned tinder-dry by drought.

Even for a regular like Allen Keeten, who has been visiting here since the late 1970s, the retreating shoreline of Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam is a shock to witness.

The Pikes Peak Stormwater Task Force is trying to explain its stormwater prevention proposal so the public will understand why they might be asked to pay $10 a month.

The sprinklers outside the California's state Capitol are off and the lawn is withering, the lemon- and cucumber-infused "water stations" at the state pension building are gone, and prison inmates are taking shorter showers while campers at some popular parks can't take them at all.

Thousands of utility customers in the Valley were without power for up to several hours Friday evening following a massive dust storm, but a temporary "ground stop" for all incoming flights at Phoenix Sky Huge dust storm envelops Phoenix area Thousands of utility customers in the Valley were without power for up to several hours Friday evening ... (more)

At least one gym in California is trying to conserve water during what is called the state's worst drought in nearly four decades using a technology appropriate for its Silicon Valley setting.

The chief designer of the new, $6.4 billion eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge says more than 2,000 bolts and rods on the span that have been called into question are safe and can remain in place, a newspaper reported.

About 300 homes - twice as many as previously estimated - have burned in a massive wildfire in north-central Washington, a county sheriff said Friday.

Earthquakes occur in 3 parts of Alaska One of the earthquakes was a magnitude of 5.9. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: http://usat.ly/1mNNYl9 Your Take contributions have not been reviewed for accuracy by USATODAY.

Overall U.S. food inflation will remain near the historic norm in 2014, even as prices for meat and seafood are pushed higher by disease and widespread drought, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Friday.

Stocks are ending the week on a sour note, putting the S&P 500 in reverse on the road to 2,000.

Hilary Anderson was in grade school then, but she remembers the “swampland of molasses” in the kitchen after Southern California's last destructive earthquake throttled her Simi Valley home.