TRIALS BY FIRE: The U.S. was scorched by a string of unusual but unrelated fires this week, wreaking havoc in three cities spanning 2,500 miles across the country. The first one began Monday, when something — possibly a car crashing into a propane tank — sparked a wildfire in the foothills outside Boulder, Colo. The area was already full of dead trees due to a pine-beetle infestation plaguing the U.S. West, and combined with strong, shifting winds, the fire spread so quickly that by Thursday it was already the most destructive in state history. No deaths have been reported, but as of Friday afternoon, the Fourmile Fire had burned 6,400 acres and destroyed 169 homes, as hundreds of firefighters worked 16-hour shifts to contain it. The second big fire outbreak struck Tuesday in Detroit, where 85 separate blazes swept through multiple neighborhoods, fueled by howling winds up to 50 mph. No deaths were reported there, either, but the flames did cause widespread damage throughout the already-blighted city, which has an estimated 33,000 vacant houses. Most of those fires have been blamed on fallen power lines, although two are believed to be arson. The week's third major inferno came Thursday evening in San Bruno, Calif., triggered when a natural gas pipeline ruptured and exploded (pictured), sending flames as high as 300 feet into the air. At least four people were killed and 53 homes were destroyed, but the damage was so severe that officials warned the death count could rise as they searched through the rubble. "A terrible, terrible tragedy has fallen on our city," San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane said Thursday night. The cause of the blast remains unclear, but some residents tell MSNBC they had complained about a natural gas smell for weeks. "If it is ultimately determined that we were responsible for the cause of this incident, we will take accountability," a spokesman for the Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which owns the pipeline, tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "Our thoughts go out to everyone affected by this terrible situation." (Sources: Boulder Daily Camera, KUSA-TV, AccuWeather, Detroit News, San Francisco Chronicle, MSNBC)

 

FRACK RECORD: The EPA took a key step Thursday toward figuring out whether hydraulic fracturing is safe, demanding that nine gas-drilling companies divulge the contents of their so-called "fracking fluids" within the next 30 days. It's part of the agency's broader study into the safety of fracking, an investigation that was ordered by Congress and is expected to yield results in late 2012. Fracking is a process used to loosen rocks deep in the Earth's crust so natural gas can flow more easily to the surface, and it mainly involves pumping pressurized water and sand into the ground. But chemicals are also added to reduce friction in the mixture, and gas companies aren't legally required to report what those chemicals are, since they're considered trade secrets. Communities near gas-drilling operations have been complaining for years that fracking fluids contaminate their groundwater, along with escaped methane, and have pushed the EPA to re-evaluate its controversial 2004 ruling that fracking fluids are generally safe. Current EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is now walking a fine line between touting the importance of natural gas while also admitting that fracking may not be entirely safe. "Natural gas is an important part of our nation's energy future, and it's critical that the extraction of this valuable natural resource does not come at the expense of safe water and healthy communities," she said in a statement Thursday. In her letter to gas companies, Jackson raised the prospect of legal action if the chemicals' identities aren't released quickly. "To the extent that EPA does not receive sufficient data in response to this letter," she warned, "EPA will be exploring legal alternatives to compel submission of the needed information." That irritated many in the gas industry, even though it has long resisted such pushes for disclosure. "I'm a little disappointed with the threats," says a policy adviser with the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade group, "because I thought we'd made it clear all along that we want to be helpful." (Source: New York Times)

 

'TIS THE SEASON: La Niña is steadily gaining strength, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center announced Thursday, and that means the Atlantic hurricane season may just be getting warmed up. Forecasters have been projecting all year that the 2010 season would be unusually severe — with the most recent outlook anticipating 14 to 20 named tropical storms — but there have been fewer than 10 so far, with few posing much real danger to U.S. coastlines. That could be about to change, however, since the most intense part of Atlantic hurricane activity usually comes during September; historically the average peak is Sept. 10. And while no storms are washing ashore this year on Sept. 10, one potentially dangerous one is on its way. Tropical Depression Igor (pictured) weakened slightly from a Tropical Storm Thursday night, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expects it to not only boost back up to tropical storm strength over the weekend, but to become a Category 2 hurricane by Monday. Igor is currently located in the open waters of the mid-Atlantic, churning west at 13 mph as it regains some of the power it lost to wind shear earlier in the week. But since La Niña allows stronger storms to develop by decreasing wind shear in the Atlantic, Igor could be the first in a late-season surge of cyclones to take advantage of the increasingly favorable conditions. (Sources: Associated Press, South Florida Sun Sentinel, St. Petersburg Times, National Hurricane Center)

 

PEPPER POWER: The world has a new hottest chili pepper, as tests conducted by the University of Warwick confirm a British company's claim that its new "Infinity Chili" is hotter than any other on Earth. Fire Foods of Lincolnshire, England, cultivated the new pepper, which measures a record-breaking 1,176,182 on the Scoville scale, a test used to quantify a pepper's spiciness. The previous record holder was a Bangladeshi pepper known as the bhut jolokia (pictured), or "ghost chili," which measures a relatively mild 1,041,427 in Scoville testing. The new Infinity Chili will be sold in the form of a sauce, selling for £6.50 per bottle, or about $10, and the company says it's "in the process of getting another batch tested which we believe will be even higher" on the Scoville scale. That scale was created by American chemist Wilbur L. Scoville in 1912, offering a way to less subjectively measure concentrations of capsaicin, the active ingredient that gives hot peppers their kick. But there's still some subjectivity in calculating a pepper's Scoville score, since the process involves mixing increasing amounts of sugar solution with the pepper until its heat is no longer detectable to a panel of taste testers; the score thus represents the amount of sugar solution needed to neutralize the pepper's power. That means an Infinity Chili must be diluted by a factor of 1,176,182 before its spiciness it squelched, a figure that dwarfs two common hot peppers: The habanero's Scoville score is 100,000 to 350,000, while the jalapeño's is a paltry 2,500 to 5,000. No word yet on how the new creation stacks up against the "Guatemalan insanity peppers" famously eaten by Homer Simpson at Springfield's annual chili cook-off, or whether it can induce hallucinations of a coyote voiced by Johnny Cash. (Sources: Discoblog, Register)

 

— Russell McLendon