Safety Inspections

Frustrations and worries mounted Tuesday at U.S. airports after American Airlines said it was canceling as many as 500 flights for another round of maintenance checks. More flight delays are expected today. Cancellations by the world's largest airline were the biggest yet in a rash of maintenance- related disruptions for passengers over the last month that has been accompanied by fare hikes, increasingly crowded planes, higher fuel surcharges and airline shutdowns.

The Federal Aviation Administration is ordering U.S. airlines to conduct safety inspections to look for cracking on overwing frames on certain MD-80 series aircraft, a directive that could be a headache for an industry reeling from soaring fuel prices. The airworthiness directive, listed in the Federal Register on Tuesday, affects 670 MD-81, MD-82, MD-83, MD-87 and MD-88 aircraft registered in the United States. American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp.

Regulators are launching a special inspection at Southern California Edison's San Onofre nuclear plant to make sure the utility fixed electrical problems with crucial backup power systems, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday. The visit next week by a three-person team marks the third special inspection in the last 12 months for the coastal facility near San Clemente.

U.S. safety inspectors will be allowed to check trucks on Mexican soil before they enter the United States under a program that officials said would remove the last barrier to the long-delayed opening of U.S. highways to Mexican truckers. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters and her Mexican counterpart, Luis Tellez, announced the plan Thursday during a visit to a trucking firm in Monterrey, Mexico. "This is a historic agreement to ensure the safety of these vehicles ...

Los Angeles city firefighters, already seeing dangerous fire conditions because of unusually hot and dry weather, will begin inspecting publicly owned hillside properties ahead of schedule this spring, officials announced Thursday. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he is activating a 40-member brush fire task force early because of the danger posed by arid conditions that can fan fires in the hills that ring much of Los Angeles.

Spooked by devastating wildfire seasons, the nation's top insurers are inspecting homes in high-risk areas throughout the West and threatening to cancel coverage if owners don't clear brush or take other precautions. The inspections have angered homeowners and watchdog groups, who accuse the companies of trying to cut risk at the expense of customers while the industry's profits soar.

Federal authorities are sending inspectors into the sprawling Duroville mobile home park Thursday and Friday hoping to document what they called widespread health and safety problems at the site, which is on the Torres Martinez reservation in Thermal. "Right now we think the park poses an imminent safety risk," said James Fletcher, superintendent of the Southern California Agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs said Tuesday that Desert Mobile Home Park in Thermal, a dense warren of trailers housing thousands of farmworkers, had failed to make necessary repairs and the bureau would decide next week whether to try to shut it down or give the owner another chance. "Based on what we have seen it is unlikely we will give them another chance," said James Fletcher, superintendent for the Southern California Agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Caltrans officials on Thursday began emergency structural inspections of 69 bridges across California in the wake of the collapse of a span in Minnesota. Many of those bridges are among nearly 3,000 in the state that the federal government found to be structurally deficient, with inspectors concluding that they must be repaired or replaced. State transportation officials said Thursday that the federal findings don't mean the bridges are unsafe for vehicle use.

Hoping to head off possible closure, representatives of the troubled Desert Mobile Home Park on Thursday accused the Bureau of Indian Affairs of racism and failing to provide them with detailed reports that criticize the park as a health hazard. "If the park shuts down it will be a disaster for Riverside County," said Alan Singer, who was recently hired by park owner Harvey Duro as his spokesman. "Before the mobile home park, people were living under trees, in cars.