Tony Kovaleski exposed the critical problems with Denver’s ambulance response to a crash in December 2008, in the KMHG investigative report “33 Minutes to 34 Right: Denver’s Broken Ambulance System.” A year-long investigation by Kovaleski, producers Tom Burke and Arthur Kane and photojournalist Jason Foster uncovered serious emergency response issues in Denver, at Denver International Airport and at Denver Health. When Flight 1404 crashed with 115 passengers, a computer-assisted analysis of the emergency response showed it took 40-minutes before three ambulances were at the airport, 50-minutes for five ambulances and a full hour before 10 ambulances were at the crash scene.

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Megan Chuchmach of ABC.com reports that new FEMA rules stipulate that states must provide their own ice in emergency situations. FEMA changed its policy is due the high cost of storing ice and its high perishability. Many relief aid workers and state officials did not know about the change, causing problems in areas affected by Hurricane Ike. Ice is important in the aftermath of disaster, used to regulate temperatures for medicine, food for other medical uses. With no government aid, Houston Mayor Bill White appealed to Sam’s Club, which willingly provided the ice.

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Following the October 2007 wildfires, the city of San Diego contracted with two companies for demolition and clean-up of homes destroyed in the fire. Original estimates for the service was around $28,000 per home, but the final costs surpassed the original estimate by more than 68 percent according to a watchdog report by Dana Wilkie, Brooke Williams and Danielle Cervantes of The San Diego Union-Tribune. Cost overruns have been attributed to gross misjudgment on the amount of ash and landscaping debris removed, as well as the amount of erosion-control supplies used. The city of San Diego is responsible for $1.6 million of the overage, funds that will come out of taxpayers pockets.

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Chinese officials are offering “hush money” to families who lost children in the May 12 earthquake, reports Edward Wong of The New York Times. “Local governments in southwest China’s quake-ravaged Sichuan Province have begun a coordinated campaign to buy the silence of angry parents whose children died during the earthquake, according to interviews with more than a dozen parents from four collapsed schools.” More than 240 children died when schools collapsed during the earthquake. Many parents had raised concerns that the high death toll was due to corruption and negligent construction.

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CBS News‘ Armen Keteyian reports that Congress is investigating the manufacturers of the trailers used as emergency housing in the Gulf following Hurricane Katrina. Employers of Gulf Stream Coach, which received $522 million for 50,000 trailers following the storm, said they knew that the trailers were toxic. The increased production volume forced the company to use cheaper materials, resulting in formaldehyde contamination in over 35,000 of the trailers.

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An investigation by CNN’s Abbie Boudreau and Scott Zamost discovered that FEMA gave away $85 million of new supplies meant for Hurricane Katrina victims . The items, ranging from clothes to cleaning supplies, sat in FEMA warehouses for two years before being declared federal surplus by the agency. The merchandise was then offered for free to other federal and state agencies, ending up in prisons, schools, the post office, and other agencies — but not Katrina victims. CNN also found that Louisiana declined the free items because an official there had not been contacted by any agency who wanted them, but community groups in New Orleans told CNN they desperately still need those supplies.

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The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette published a two-day package marking the 30th anniversary of the Willow Island Disaster, the largest construction accident in U.S. history. Fifty-one construction workers died on April 27, 1978, when a scaffold collapsed during construction of a coal-fired power plant along the Ohio River. The Gazette examines the disaster’s causes, interviews survivors and discusses continuing workplace safety problems nationwide.

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A series by The Washington Post explores the causes and implications of the current global food crisis, the likes of which have not been seen since the 1970s. “A complex combination of poor harvests, competition with biofuels, higher energy prices, surging demand in China and India, and a blockage in global trade is driving food prices up worldwide.” The impact is not limited to impoverished countries; consumers in the U.S. and other countries are feeling the impact of rising food costs.

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After tornadoes ripped through the southern part of the state earlier this month, Ben Poston of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that thousands of southeastern Wisconsin residents are out of range for tornado warning sirens. Using mapping software, Poston plotted nearly 75 siren locations in Milwaukee and Racine counties and then overlayed census data to identify gaps in the warning system.

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The Star Tribune spent months reconstructing the locations and identities of the more than 150 people who were on the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis when it collapsed into the Mississippi River on August 1. With the help of an aerial photo, an interactive Flash graphic titled “13 Seconds in August” offers the most comprehensive archive of victims’ stories (including video, audio, still photos and text) accessible by clicking on individual vehicles in the photo. The Star Tribune has encouraged readers to comment as well as submit additional information to flesh out the story of the bridge collapse.

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