Two years after the water came, Jen and RJ Garbowicz still own a piece of St. Petersburg. It is an empty lot on a bayou off Tampa Bay, nearly an acre, with a few concrete pilings jutting out of the ground where their house once stood. Hurricane Helene flooded it in September 2024. Hurricane Milton tore up the roof less than two weeks later. The couple had both flood and homeowners insurance.
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Floods, storms, wildfires, and other disasters can strike in every state and district, and members of Congress in both parties have incentives to improve the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the nation’s premier disaster relief outfit. However, current FEMA officials in the Trump administration were notably absent from a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing on…
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The Trump administration this week made abrupt cuts to the top federal disaster response agency, even as US communities face increased threats from natural disasters caused by the global climate crisis. Independent journalist Marisa Kabas reported on Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “has begun issuing termination notices” to staff at the agency’s Cadre of On-Call…
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Four months have passed since a Louisiana oil facility burst apart, spewing a dense black sludge that drifted across homes, farms, and waterways as far as 50 miles away. Since then, the U.S. Department of Justice and Louisiana environmental regulators have filed a sweeping lawsuit against Smitty’s Supply, the company that ran the facility storing oil and vehicle lubricants.
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