Fire officials are suggesting a blaze that has destroyed at least nine homes in eastern Oklahoma and forced the evacuation of more than 100 others may have been intentionally set.

When the Schwerzenbach family saw a wildfire racing toward their remote ranch in Lipscomb, Texas, there was no time to run. "We had a minute or two and then it was over us," said 56-year-old Nancy Schwerzenbach.

Kansas rancher Greg Gardiner got into some of his scorched pastures for the first time Wednesday and surveyed what he likened to a battle zone: carcasses of dead cattle everywhere.

Wildfires burning in Colorado, Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma have forced evacuations and destroyed several buildings. A pair of fires in the Texas Panhandle burned more than 100 square miles. One of the blazes near Amarillo threatened about 150 homes.

The Pawnee Nation filed a lawsuit on Friday in tribal court in Oklahoma against 27 oil and gas producers, seeking damages for an earthquake they said was caused from man-made activity related to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

On Friday, the meteorology community was riding a major high as stunningly high-definition images came in from the nation’s newest and much-anticipated earth observation satellite. The high came crashing down that evening, though, as the first hints of significant cuts to the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began to emerge.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times: You don’t want your vehicle to catch on fire. For that reason, Mercedes-Benz is recalling more than 354,000 vehicles.

Three million Americans, primarily in Oklahoma and Kansas, are at risk from human-induced earthquakes this year, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday.

People sparked most US wildfires in recent decades, causing longer fire seasons and increasing the amount of scorched earth, according to a new study published Monday. Researchers found that humans caused 84 percent -- or four out of five -- of the total 1.5 million wildfires studied between 1992 and 2012.



In addition, human actions tripled the length of the fire season during those two decades and were responsible for 44 percent of the total acreage burned, researchers reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a worker was “acting in the course and scope of his employment” when he fell while leaving work, and therefore can receive workers compensation benefits.

Four people have been hospitalized with burns after a truck hit a gas line in Wagoner County Thursday night. Emergency personnel say private contractors were working with a track hoe when they struck a natural gas pipe, causing the explosion.

United Technologies Corp’s (UTX.N) Carrier unit expanded a recall of some air conditioners and heat pumps as their power cord plugs can overheat, posing a fire risk, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Thursday.

Insurity, a leading provider of core insurance processing and data integration and analytics solutions, announced that seven state property and casualty insurance guaranty associations (IGAs) have all successfully completed implementation of SIMS Claims™ to manage claims for various lines of property and casualty insurance.

It may not come as a surprise that bruises and open wounds are the most common injuries in every state across America — with the one exception of Colorado, where you’re more likely to have be injured by a ‘fall’. But did you know that ‘over-exertion’ is disproportionately common in North Dakota, and a ‘near-drowning’ experience six-times more likely in Hawaii?

Safe drivers who are in accidents caused by others often see auto insurance rate hikes, according to research released today by Consumer Federation of America (CFA). The research analyzed premium quotes in 10 cities from five of the nation’s largest auto insurers.