Rescue Efforts Continue Following Mexico’s Earthquake: Rescue efforts continued Wednesday in the aftermath of the major earthquake that hit near Mexico City Tuesday afternoon. The earthquake was centered in nearby Puebla state approximately 75 miles south, and has killed at least 230 people. More than 40 buildings completely collapsed in Mexico City, with thousands more left damaged and unstable. Police officers were using special thermal cameras to locate survivors under the rubble. The Enrique Rebsamen school, a private school in Mexico City, was destroyed and at least 21 children and four adults died. Mexico City mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera reported that as of Wednesday afternoon 52 people have been pulled alive from the rubble. Mexico’s president Peña Nieto ordered the evacuation of patients from damaged hospitals amid widespread power cuts and fears of further collapsed buildings from aftershocks. He also declared three days of national mourning to honor the victims.
The EPA – No Longer Protecting The Environment Or The Public: Houston, Texas, overwhelmingly flooded by Hurricane Harvey less than a month ago, is home to some of the country’s dirtiest Superfund toxic waste sites. Shortly after the drenching rains finally stopped, the U.S. government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received reports via a federal emergency hotline, followed up by photographic evidence, of three spills at the U.S. Oil Recovery Superfund site, a former petroleum industry waste processing plant contaminated with a dangerous brew of cancer-causing chemicals. The Associated Press reviewed aerial photos showing dark-colored water surrounding the site as the floods receded, flowing through Vince Bayou and into the Houston ship channel. The EPA has not publicly acknowledged the three reported spills, but has said an on-scene coordinator was at the site last week and found no evidence that toxic material had washed off the site. It also has not released the photos, nor any information about lab results of samples it said were taken at the site.
The EPA was established by a Republican president in 1970 for the purpose of protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress. In 2017, Donald Trump appointed Scott Pruitt to lead it. Pruitt, an avowed enemy of the institution, has made it clear that he sees his mission to be dismantling its policies and even portions of the agency itself, and he has worked to roll back regulations, close offices and eliminate staff while taking extraordinary measures to conceal his actions. William Ruckelshaus, a former EPA director who worked under two Republican presidents, said such secrecy could pave the way toward another disaster like the contamination of public drinking water in Flint, Mich., or the 2014 chemical spill into the public water supply in Charleston, W.Va. “Something will happen, like Flint, and the public will realize they can’t get any information about what happened or why,” he said.
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