Natural Disasters

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A Better Way on the Trinity Highway

Let's build a road on the river, not a wall.

Connection Between Quakes and Underground Frack-water Disposal Looks Solid

There's a reason State Farm wants to insure Johnson County homes against earthquakes. Injecting millions of barrels of fracking waste water loosens faults the way whiskey loosens tongues. Cliff Frohlich of the Jackson School of Geosciences deployed seismographs throughout a 43-mile grid in the Bar ... More >>

On Flood Control, Dallas Better Think Nationally or Be Ready to Drown Locally

Man, talk about whistling past the graveyard. At yesterday's Dallas City Council meeting, council members Tennell Atkins and Delia Jasso asked good questions about the city's flood control plans, and City Manager Mary Suhm and her assistant, Jill Jordan, gave good answers. But it was all deck chairs ... More >>

Between the Lines in Corps' Trinity River Enviromental Assessment: Don't Blame Us

​Buried between the lines in a 246-page document released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today is a significant national story about the future of flood control in American cities. I doubt very many reporters will dig it out. I'll give you the thumbnail sketch. You may wish I had kept my ... More >>

Deep Into the Corps: Agency's Own Leaky Docs Express Doubts About City's Levee Fixes

​On November 10 I wrote a column for the paper about documents leaked to me from within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers indicating that the corps has no faith in repairs to the Trinity River levees being proposed by the City of Dallas. I can show the documents to you now. They tell quite a st ... More >>

Shelter for the Storms

For Bastrop: 10 Songs About Putting Out Fires

​The wildfires raging through the greater Austin area have everyone on edge. The Forest Service has stated that they're taxed to the limit, Rick Perry briefly abandoned his presidential run to focus on the blaze and the smoke is causing breathing problems as far north as Waxahachie. Meanwhil ... More >>

Dallas' Southern Recipes Sends Truckloads of Pork Rinds to Alabama Tornado Victims

​Dallas-based Southern Recipe, the world's largest manufacturer of pork rinds, has donated $10,000 of their pork rinds to The Today Show's Lend a Hand Tour benefiting tornado victims in Birmingham, Alabama. We're not sure if the first thought on the Alabamans' minds was, "What I wouldn't give ... More >>

It's Been Truly Inspiring to Watch D Apologize for Rah-Rah'ing Trinity Toll Road. Oh, Wait.

​I'm sure at some moment in history, all of the people who had insisted the earth was flat went very quiet. After some centuries of debate, burnings at the stake and loud dinner-table arguments, the jury was in. Everybody knew it was round. The exponents of flat were suddenly extremely reticent o ... More >>

Tom Leppert on the Trinity River Toll Road, Again Slicing the Truth with a Razor Blade

​I'm doing an informal poll. Is there anyone left out there who gives a rat's ass what former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert did or did not say about the safety of the Trinity River toll road project? Wait. Wait. I'm looking. I've got my binoculars on. A-ha! I do spy at least one rat's ass out there ... More >>

Last Night: Here We Go Magic, Caveman, Carlo Canlas at Dada

Here We Go Magic, Caveman, Carlo CanlasDadaMay 24, 2011Better Than: Sitting in a bathtub at home with a dog and a baby both trying to eat each other.Pete Freedman's phoneHere We Go Magic goes unplugged. Because, you know, they had to.​First, there was a crash, followed by a series of booms, and th ... More >>

Watch: The September Tornadoes Land A Direct Hit And Total Bonedome's Parked Band Van

The above fairly harrowing footage comes to us straight from the surveillance cameras mounted outside of Allan Hayslip's day job in West Dallas and focused on the warehouse's parking lot, where his Bonedome band van was parked as tornadoes ripped through the area in the early evening of September 8, ... More >>

Send us Your Earmark: Could Congress Turn off the Tap on Trinity Money?

What Two Sentences in The WSJ Suggest About the Future of the Trinity River Project

U.S. Army Corps of EngineersFrom the Dallas Floodway Extension Project Description, this 1989 photo: "US175 blocked by water backed up into White Rock Creek. Normally, this is a busy traffic artery leading to the central business district."​Wilonsky sent me an interesting Wall Street Journal artic ... More >>

North Texas Food Bank's Text Donation Program Falters

​Mobile giving, which was touted in the wake of the Haiti earthquake earlier this year as a high-tech way of invigorating philanthropy, hasn't panned out for the North Texas Food Bank. The hunger relief organization rolled out its text-to-give program this month, and has thus far collected on ... More >>

The Daily Fail: Kanye West

It seemed like the biggest hindrance to Kanye West -- or "Conway" as Dubya calls him -- earning a wide-ranging pop music acceptance was his ego. Turns out a persecution complex may have trumped the producer/rapper/auto-tune aficionado's legendary ego, though.

What This Town Needs is Some Good Ward Heelers.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison Took A Meat-axe To Federal Law To Get The Mayor His Toll Road. But Did She Even Think About The Consequences?

Talkin' Trinity With the Corps Because Dave Neumann's Committee Clearly Doesn't Want To

Sam MertenLeft to right: Kevin Craig, Mayor Leppert and Dave Neumann.​Ever since Mayor Tom Leppert, City Manager Mary Suhm and Trinity River Corridor Project Committee chair Dave Neumann fired off a missive in which they claimed "public safety and flood control always come first," we've been t ... More >>

Regarding Those Levees, Let Me Break Out My Tin-Foil Hat And My Crystal Ball

​In the weeks ahead I'm going to be tied up with some stories that will demand a lot of my time, so, I'm sorry, I'm just not going to have time to do my regularly predictable clockwork swat-down reaction pieces to Dallas Morning News stories on the Trinity River project. I wondered if it would be ... More >>

Keep Your Eye On The Sky

Wanna See Dallas Destroyed By an F5 Tornado? Then You're in Luck Tomorrow.

Back in April, Tom Korosec wrote for the paper version of Unfair Park a story that asked, Just how prepared is Dallas for an F5 tornado? Short answer: Not very. But only because "it would be too big for a simple quick response," wrote city of Dallas emergency management director Kenny Shaw in the co ... More >>

Courtesy Hurricane Ike, Now You Seafood, Now You Don't

Courtesy Gustav, Dallas Might Feel a Little More Crowded This Weekend

The Colors of Katrina

Burkholder shows the blues...and other hues

Spike Lee's School Daze at UTA

You Can't Go Home Again

Singing Samaritan

The Blame Game

Bayou Blues

Katrina hits the big(gest) screen

Schutze Defends Kunkle, and That's No Crime

Weird and Wonderful

A True Horror Classic

The Rip

When does an evacuee cease to be a guest and become a pain?

When Evacuees Become Residents, Part 3

Who'll Pay the Rent?

Here She Comes to Save the Day

Katrina: Bad for People, Good for Business

CBS v. Belo v. Katrina

You Can Run...

Hot Links

Hit the mini-greens downtown

Hotel Katrina

While the feds fumble, hurricane survivors find relief thanks to a Dallas hotel owner and friends

Big Not-Easy

Thought the RIAA was bad when they sued downloaders? You ain't heard nothin'.

Shawn Sahm, Flaco Jimenez and Augie Meyers

Friday, August 19th, at Sons of Hermann Hall

Union Suit

Plus: The Next Wave; Strand of Evidence

Bait and switch

The Trinity Project hits some expensive setbacks, but leave it to the News to look on the bright side

Getting dumped

Despite shoddy science, bad economics, and catastrophic health risks, a West Texas border community may become the nation's nuclear dumping ground

And your little dog, too

Putting the audience in harm's way gives Twister its punch

Storm warning

When a tornado ripped through Lancaster, it also laid bare the city's racial wounds