Fox News - Thirty people were hospitalized Sunday night after a huge blaze ripped through multiple stories of a Long Island apartment building, MyFoxNY reported. Hundreds of firefighters responded to the five-alarm blaze which was called in at 6:19pm in Hempstead, N.Y., 25 miles east of New York City. The fire began inside a single apartment unit on the second floor of a seven-story building and quickly spread to multiple floors of the building, according to fire officials.

CNN - A drum technician for the band Radiohead died when overhanging metalwork crashed onto a stage in a Toronto park, the band’s representative confirmed Sunday. The incident occurred about 4 p.m. Saturday, an hour before spectators were set to begin arriving for the concert by Radiohead, an alternative rock group. Several people were on the stage at the time, preparing for the show, when the scaffold-like structure collapsed from about 50 feet overhead, sending crew members fleeing.

Business Insurance - The Tennessee Supreme Court says a man who witnessed the deaths of two co-workers should receive workers compensation for his post-traumatic stress disorder claim, even though it was filed more than a year after the accidents. Steven Ratliff worked as a melt shop attendant for Joliet, Ill.-based Gerdau Ameristeel Inc. according to court records. He saw the body of an Ameristeel employee who died after falling from a platform in February 2008, and saw the body of another co-worker who fell to his death in a different area of the Ameristeel plant in April 2008.

wftv.com - A Longwood family will sift through the charred remains after investigators think a bolt of lightning sparked a fire that destroyed their home Wednesday night. Neighbors said they saw a lightning bolt, and when they came outside, the home across the street on Rangeline Woods Cove was on fire. "One single strike, (it was) extremely loud. You can imagine being that close. It put out the lights a couple houses away as well," said eyewitness Jim Hammersley.

Fox News - Authorities are trying to determine the type of business operating in an industrial workshop south of downtown Los Angeles where one person was killed and three injured in an explosion. Authorities confirmed that a gas cylinder exploded in a building tucked behind a meat market and a bakery at about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, said Mario Rueda, deputy captain of the LA fire department. One person died after being taken from the scene, said Police Capt. William Hayes. The three others were taken to hospitals, one of them in critical condition and two in fair condition.

Insurance Journal - As the fire season begins in the West insurance professionals who’ve been around for a while are calling this potentially one of the worst in recent memory. The season is shaping up to be “one of the most dangerous and active on record,” said Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association. Aside from the Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest — the nation’s largest at 287,708 acres and the largest in the state’s recorded history — one of the West’s other big blazes is the High Park fire just over a dozen miles west of Fort Collins, Colo., which has grown to more than...

ktnv.com - One person was killed and another was injured in a construction accident near Lake Mead on Monday afternoon. The incident happened at about 4:30 p.m., 600 feet below ground at the Southern Nevada Water Authority Intake No. 3 project area. Crews were working on the assembly of a steel tunnel ring when one of the sections came loose under pressure, causing grout to fall onto workers, a spokesperson for the SNWA said. Initial information from the National Park Service stated that several workers were trapped in the tunnel and exposed to toxic gases, but the SNWA dispelled those reports.

Insurance Journal - Like the economy, the workers’ compensation market has suffered in recent years. Results for 2011 were no better than 2010. The good news: results for the workers’ comp market were not worse either. The combined ratio held steady at 115 for the workers’ comp line of business, according to the NCCI Holding Inc.’s “State of the Line” report published in May. That’s the same as in 2010. While stable, the reported combined ratio stands as the highest combined ratio for all major commercial lines for the third straight year.

Business Insurance - The cost of narcotic painkillers in workers compensation claims has grown in the past several years as more injured workers have received prescriptions for such medications, NCCI Holdings Inc. said in a study. The Boca Raton, Fla.-based rating and research agency said Tuesday that narcotics accounted for $35 of the average workers comp medical claim paid in 2009, the latest data available. That is up 14% from 2008. Despite the increase in costs, narcotics accounted for about 21% of total drug spending in workers comp for 2009, which NCCI said has remained mostly stable during the past decade.

Business Insurance - A May 20 earthquake followed by two May 29 aftershock quakes that struck Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region caused an estimated $375 million to $875 million in insured losses, catastrophe modeler EQECAT Inc. said Tuesday. “This loss estimate is particularly sensitive to uncertainty in estimates of exposed values and insurance penetration rates,” said Oakland, Calif.-based EQECAT in its analysis. EQECAT said its estimate was based on assumed insurance penetration rates of about 3% to 5% for commercial lines and less than 1% for residential.