climate impacts
Rebuild stronger or risk losing disaster aid, FEMA orders
Communities that use federal disaster aid to rebuild public facilities must follow new construction codes to make them more resilient to future calamity.
Thomas Frank
Reporter
Tom covers the federal response to climate change, focusing on FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers and other disaster-response agencies. He worked previously at USA Today, BuzzFeed News, Newsday and several local newspapers. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2012 and has won other national journalism awards including from the Scripps Howard Foundation, the National Press Club and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. He has a bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Latest Stories
SCIENCE
Experts predict 2020s will topple heat record of last decade
Global temperatures will continue to rise over the next decade and will reach a critical milestone in the 2030s, two of the U.S. government's leading climate scientists said yesterday.
NATURAL DISASTERS
Climate fueling wildfire conditions in some places — paper
A new scientific paper has found that global warming has helped create wildfire conditions in regions worldwide, including the western United States. But the researchers were less certain how climate change has affected Australia's current bush fire crisis.
FEMA
Agency seeks $4B from utility accused of igniting wildfires
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is seeking nearly $4 billion from PG&E Corp. to reimburse the agency for helping California recover from massive wildfires that the utility caused in recent years.
DISASTERS
Don't flood survival zones with water, food — report
An influx of emergency supplies after a major disaster can have the unintended consequence of delaying an area's recovery and should be scaled back, according to a provocative new report written for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.