The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "disaster reporting" ...
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No. 9: The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster
The 1968 Farmington Coal Mine Disaster prompted Congress to pass the 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, the first law to set meaningful underground safety standards and fines for violations. Despite the importance of the tragedy, which took the lives of 78 men, neither federal nor the state government determined the cause of the disaster. The state did not produce a final report as was required by West Virginia law, and the federal government did not make public its final, inconclusive report until 1990. This book pieces the story together, documenting the dangerous conditions that plagued the No. 9 from 1935 through the first deadly disaster in 1954 that killed 16 men and up to the 1968 tragedy.
Tags: farmington coal mine; virginia; united states; safety; coal
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Saving Millions to Cost Billions
The executives who run the local power plant in St. Petersburg said from the start that their customers should help pay a $2.5 billion repair bill at their nuclear plant because no one could have predicted or prevented the disaster that crippled the facility and shut it down. But the Tampa Bay Times revealed gaping holes in that argument. Porgress received multiple warnings from employees and contractors about their approach to the project. An internal report obtained by Tampa Bay Times even warned the utility against self managing such an ambitious construction effort.
Tags: St. Petersburg; Tampa Bay Times; Repair Bill; Utility
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Florida's Insurance Nightmare
Six years after eight hurricanes ripped across Florida, state residents still struggle to recover from the storms' legacy - a wrecked property insurance market. Exorbitant premiums, the highest in the world, have soured the state's struggling economy, killed real estate sales and forced families from their homes. Homeowners were told that unless they paid even more, no insurance company would take their hurricane risk. The Herald-Tribune showed that is a lie. Floridians have been lied to about why there is a crisis, where their money is going, and whether they're even protected against storm losses. Public policy has been corrupted by fiction spun by the insurance industry and its supposed regulators. Billions of dollars desperately needed for the next disaster have been siphoned offshore. And millions of homeowners are left to entrust their financial security on a system rigged to extort profit. To expose the hidden truth of Florida's insurance crisis, St. John cultivated key sources deep within every aspect of the insurance industry and sought massive amounts of financial and policy data from multiple state and national entities. When it became obvious Florida's crisis was manipulated from afar, she traveled to Bermuda and Monte Carlo to discover the hidden players truly in charge.
Tags: home insurance; property insurance; Florida; hurricane; real estate; insurance premiums; homeowners; Bermuda; Monte Carlo; state regulators; anti-trust law; State Farm
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The Blowout
Three-and-a-half weeks after the Deepwater Horizon blowout, 60 Minutes gave an accurate depiction of what happened. Michael Williams, the rig's chief electronics technician, described key events he had witnessed in the weeks leading up to the disaster.
Tags: Deepwater Horizon; blowout; oil rig; accident reports; oil drilling; environmental disaster
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Disaster Ahead? Deregulated Dams
A Tennessee law allows old watershed dams to be downgraded to farm ponds from high-hazard dams, exempting them from state safety inspections. The reporter discovered 13 of these dams were downgraded in 2008. The lack of oversight poses serious consequences because fatalities are likely to occur should one of the dams fail.
Tags: dams; farm pond; regulation; inspection; safety; public safety
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Insurers Criticized for New Rate Models
This story investigates property-casualty insurers' use of controversial computer models created by various modeling firms; the computer models use complex data to project potential losses from hurricanes and other natural disasters. But investigative reporting revealed the models can be flawed in their design, in their assumptions or in their application by insurers.
Tags: housing; rate increases; computer models; potential losses; property insurance; premiums
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Meadowlands for Sale
"The stories examined how a $1-billion plan to clean up and reclaim a large swath of the Meadowlands -- New Jersey's infamous toxic swamps and trash dumps -- lead to an environmental disaster underwritten by the state's taxpayers." The reporters found that the plan was plagued with corruption. For example, the developers who were supposed to be cleaning the area made $30 million by opening it up to dumpers. The Meadowlands site is now more polluted than when the project began.
Tags: development; developers; EnCap; toxic waste; garbage; environment; EPA; state government
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Dirty Bombs
"Radioactive devices are stolen from cars, disappear from construction sites, fall off trucks and generally go astray at a startling pace. A computer database compiled by The Canadian Press showed how dozens of these tools - from a darkroom truck in northern British Columbia to a device used for molecular separation in Montreal - have gone missing in the last five years. The items vanished despite federal disaster planning reports that warn terrorists could wreak multimillion-dollar havoc if a nuclear gauge was used to build a crude 'dirty bomb.'"
Tags: radioactive; dirty bomb; bioterrorism; terrorism
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Katrina Crime: Perceived or Real?
These stories showed that many months of steep declines in major violent crime in San Antonio ended within weeks of the arrival of Katrina evacuees and began a steady double digit climb in homicide, aggravated robbery and a variety of other violent crime categories. The stories pointed out that, while it was impossible to conclusively link crime to evacuees, this correlation was almost identical to that which was successfully cited by Houston in funding requests to FEMA and other agencies. The series identified crime hotspots in and around a number of resettlement areas and portrayed the feelings experiences of evacuees, native neighbors and business owners in these areas.
Tags: Hurricane Katrina; evacuees; natural disaster; relief aid; FEMA; crime; crime data; mapping; homicide reports; computer-assisted reporting
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Peoria Selected Storm Ready
Okeson looked at how adequately Peoria County, Ill., was covered by tornado sirens. She found that the sirens covered census blocks for all but about 5,400 people in the country, or about three percent of Peoria County residents.
Tags: tornadoes; natural disasters; Peoria County; ArcGIS