The Superfund program was established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 to address abandoned hazardous waste sites. The law was enacted, by Congress, following the discovery of several toxic waste dumps in the 1970’s. The law enables the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up these sites or force the responsible parties to perform the cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA-led cleanups. The Superfund process begins when a site containing potentially hazardous substances is discovered by or reported to the EPA. Sites can be reported by various means.
Assignment 1: Centralia No. 5 Professor Raby PAD 500 Modern Public Administration January 26, 2014 Introduction March 25, 1947 marks a very devastating day in Centralia, Illinois. This marked the day where 111 coal miners and their families’ lives would forever be changed. The day 111coal miners went to work just like every other day not knowing they would never return home. There was an explosion at the mine and that massive explosion would change Centralia residents forever.
1. Introduction In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil platform spit nearly five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, making it the largest oil spill in history. The 1989 oil spill surpassed Exxon Valdez's oil spill in 1989 as the largest oil spill ever seen in US-controlled waters and the Ixtoc I oil spill of 1979 as the largest oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. On April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon, an ultra-deepwater offshore rig, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico about 41 miles off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 riggers and injuring 17 others. The fire burned for 36 hours and the Macondo Prospect delivered about 4.9 million barrels of oil before being closed and sealed on 15 July almost three months later.
This is an analysis on what is known to be the largest earthquake and biggest tsunami ever to hit Japan on March 11, 2011. The earthquake and tsunami Japans coast lies in ruins after the earthquake hit followed by the tsunami picking up everything in its path like cars, houses, and warehouses. Seismometers, strain gages, and title gages records the disaster. P-waves travel at four miles a second and within seconds warnings flash across the country. The S-waves shake the ground making earthquakes so damaging and the reactor core is shut down (Kerger, 2011.
Crisis Management Jason Borrego, Annette Davis, Christie Fischer, and William Isenhart CJA/585 Concepts of Physical and Personal Protection December 12, 2011 Mr. Richard Sapp . Abstract Whether natural or man-made, crises and disasters have been experienced or witnessed for centuries. In recent years, earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorism, and school shootings, have increased. Other disasters have included bridges falling down, arson, workplace violence, and through cybercrime. This research will explore how crises and disasters are changing and what organizations can do to prepare for such incidents.
Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen then mixed and ignited, causing the explosion that destroyed the Challenger" (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin, 2009, p. 375). All the astronauts aboard the Challenger perished. Seventeen years later, on February 1, 2003, the Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. During lift-off, insulating foam fell from the fuel tank onto the wing, which caused a breach in the fragile tiles that were to protect the shuttle from the heat of reentry. Days later, when the shuttle attempted reentry, the breach allowed heat into the wing, which caused destruction of the craft.
In a matter of three hours the ship had split into two sections and had become complete submerged, slowing sinking to the bottom of the ocean, taking with it people, possessions and its unsinkable title. Seventy-three years later, in 1985, when Dr. Robert Ballard drove the research submarine ALVIN to the ocean floor the world finally was able to see the first photograph of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. Thus began the struggles of archaeology associated with the Titanic. Hundreds of people, archaeologists and enthusiasts alike, have taken the two and a half mile dive down to the ocean floor to view the Titanic. One of the main questions that has arisen from these visits and findings is whether or not the Titanic should be treated as an archaeological find or as a memorial site for the lives that were lost on April, 14, 1912.
The immediate aftermath of the reactor meltdown is seen here, this picture being taken a few days after the incident The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles, crippling the Soviet economy. The disaster began during a systems test on Saturday, 26 April 1986 at reactor number four of the Chernobyl plant, which is near the city of Prypiat and within a close proximity to the administrative border with Belarus and Dnieper river. There was a sudden power output surge, and when an emergency shutdown was attempted, a more extreme spike in power output occurred, which led to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of explosions. These events exposed the graphite moderator of the reactor to air, causing it to ignite. The resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive smoke fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical
The shifting of the earth’s plates in the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004 caused a rupture more than 600 miles long, displacing the seafloor above the rupture by perhaps 10 yards horizontally and several yards vertically. As a result, trillions of tons of rock were moved along hundreds of miles and caused the planet to shudder with the largest magnitude earthquake in 40 years. Within hours of the earthquake, killer waves radiating from the epicentre slammed into the coastline of 11 Indian Ocean countries, damaging countries from east Africa to Thailand. A tsunami is a series of waves, and the first wave may not be the most dangerous. A tsunami “wave train” may come as surges five minutes to an hour apart.
1984- Toxic fumes leaking from pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kill at least 6,000 people and injured 50,000-60,000. 1985- Scientists discover annual seasonal thinning of the ozone layer above Antarctica. 1986- Explosion of Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. 1987- Montreal protocol to have emissions of ozone-depleting CFC’s signed by 24 countries. 1990- National Environmental Education Act authorizes funding of environmental education programs at elementary and secondary school level.