It begins with a series of earthquakes. Then comes a thunderous roar, as the summit of a mountain splits open. In its place, a lightning-lit, roiling cloud roars downhill, scorching and suffocating every living thing its path. Volcano looks at the deadly forces unleashed when the safety valve on the earth's pressure cooker blows. -The sight of livid lava makes people run for their lives. But faster and more deadly is pyroclastic flow, the black cloud of super-heated ash and gas that comes with many eruptions. We'll examine spectacular pyroclastic events to learn about this most lethal of volcanic weapons. -Another volcanic killer is the enormous mud slides that come when tall, glaciated volcanoes explode. Colombia's Volcano Ruiz melted a glacier, and engulfed 22,000 villagers. We'll learn how the people beneath Mexico's Popocatapetl endure the possibility of a sudden eruption. -No one can forget the horrific sight of the ash-petrified people of ancient Pompeii. Now people on the island of Monserrat are at risk of a similar fate. -When the Philippines' Mt. Pinatubo blew its top, it was the world's largest eruption in 80 years. Yet even though 100,000 people were at risk, the death toll was under 500. We'll relive the harrowing eruption and meet the team of heroic volcanologists who predicted it, saving as many as 10,000 lives.
Towering many miles high and covering several thousand square miles, a hurricane rotates around its calm central eye like a giant pinwheel, bringing death and destruction as it reaches land. Hurricane Force focuses on what happens when hurricanes hit human habitation. Despite heated debate over an upswing in hurricane activity, most experts believe that damage figures are rising due to increases in coastal populations around the globe. -We'll stand in the howling winds of Hugo as they hit Caribbean shores, and witness the awesome aftermath on flattened St. Croix. Then we'll visit that island during this year's hectic hurricane season, as people who've survived one hurricane after another prepare to meet the next invader. -Roofs were torn off by Iniki, and mile-wide swaths of homes were flattened by Andrew. We'll go on damage assessment reconnaissance after Fran's recent rampage with an expert on wind's wrecking effects on buildings, and visit wind tunnel experiments that duplicate and explain why hurricane winds rip buildings apart. -We'll explore cyclones and typhoons in China and Bangladesh, where lack of meteorology and evacuation plans coupled with overpopulation, leave huge death tolls in the wake of deadly, drowning storm surges that claim 90% of hurricane victims.
Towering thunderclouds over the open plains are a godsend when they spill rain onto parched crops, but a nightmare when they spawn killer tornadoes, lightning, hail and plane-downing microbursts. Superstorms tells of close encounters with weather's most violent special effects and explains the inner-workings of supercell storm phenomena, which are as magnificent as they are terrifying. -A mile-wide twister chews the scenery across the Texas landscape. An armada of scientists races after it. After two seasons of chasing whopper tornadoes, scientists capture a twister's birth for the first time and discover its inner workings! -Hail is called "the white plague" by farmers who lose entire crops to its flattening force, which can injure, and even kill. We'll visit Denver, Colorado, during a disastrous thunderstorm that leaves 60 people injured and watch scientists measure the tremendous force of falling hail. -One lightning strike may not seem like a disaster, but lightning kills more people in the U.S. in a single year than tornadoes and hurricanes combined. We'll meet lightning survivors and learn of new research into the medical maladies caused by close encounters with high-voltage death. -"I see lightning straight ahead of us. We're losing airspeed!" The last thing these pilots heard while landing in a thunderstorm was the altitude alarm. They'd flown into a deadly microburst. Their tragic crash galvanizes efforts to create technology for microburst detection that may prevent future air disasters.
First there's the sound of a thundering freight train. Then the shaking begins. As the motion intensifies, walls wobble and the ground heaves. Earthquake! explores devastating seismic events and the tectonic forces that cause them. Heartwrenching scenes of earthquake aftermath remind us of our fragile hold on life. -In the pre-dawn hours of 1994, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake strikes Los Angeles. We'll learn that it was centered on an unknown fault line, which raises new concerns about other unknown areas of risk. -Precisely a year later, an unknown fault ruptures beneath the Japanese city of Kobe. Despite the country's advanced seismic engineering, some 5,000 people die, most of them in collapsed buildings. We'll discover engineering theories that evolved from the tragedy and are now being tested on shake tables.
People trapped in a tall building, their backs against flames, desperately jump to escape being burned alive. When fire erupts in an urban setting, unique problems face those confronted by the conflagration. Urban Infernos explores why urban fires happen, how they kill and who stands in their way. -A flash blaze breaks out in a crowded nightclub. The first fleeing human wave is crushed, the rest burned beyond recognition. We'll discover what happens when unsafe buildings go up in smoke and learn about the efforts to avert such disasters. -The worst risk a fireman faces is a large structure fire. Discover what it's like to climb down a 100-foot ladder with a struggling victim, and to travel blind into the dark heart of an urban conflagration. -A few times each century, major cities experience multiple fires at one time. The Fire Commander from the Los Angeles riots describes the burning dilemma of putting out 3,600 fires while his men are under attack. -When the refinery town of Texas City exploded in a chemical blaze, 512 bodies were found in the smoking rubble. In the 50 years since that disaster, southeast Texas has developed peerless expertise in fighting chemical fires. We'll learn how that knowledge is used to save lives and property.
A sudden cloudburst over-saturates the land. A wall of muddy water roars through city streets. Nearly everything in the waters path is swept away. This is the raw power of a flash flood. Floods kill more people and cause more damage than any other disaster. Flood Path examines how 100 years of engineering to control water has made many rivers far more deadly. -Disastrous floods in Northern Italy smash cars through city streets and drown 16 people. As the floodwaters recede, angry fingers are pointed at deforestation in the Alps. We'll look at the history of floods in Italy, and how man's interference on the landscape has increased storm runoff throughout the world.
A man yells for help as he clings to his home in a raging flood. A rescuer wades out to help, but the water is rising so swiftly he must cling to a lightpost to survive. His colleagues jump in a lifeboat and fight a violent current to free him. The rescue attempt goes awry as the engine dies and the rescuers are washed two miles down stream in their rescue boat. Witness harrowing rescues of individuals caught by surprise as their town is swamped by a torrential deluge caused by unusually heavy rains. When unusually heavy rains saturate the land, the run-off fills vast basins, swells rivers, swamps towns and destroys dams. Anatomy of Disaster immerses you in the disastrous effects of powerful floods that alter the landscape and change lives!
Witness never-before-seen footage of a forest in flashover as an amazing fire camera demonstrates what it is like to be in the middle of a wild fire inferno! From California to Australia, Anatomy of Disaster examines bush fires, rappels into forest fires, and faces runaway wildland fires of immense size. Large expanses of wild land, dry vegetation, dry weather conditions and a spark - add some wind and you have a super fire so large it creates its own thunderstorms, spitting out lightning and causing more fires! We'll see the devastation caused by powerful blazes that move hundreds of feet a minute, and hear terrifying stories of being chased by walls of flame.
An awesome orange explosion bursts across a black velvet sky. The Italian volcano of Etna has come alive again. But this tourist attraction turns deadly as lava runs toward a town. See how rescue workers attempt to divert the molten river with explosives. Anatomy of Disaster travels to the remote reaches of the planet to uncover volcanoes and earthquakes that are transforming the landscape of our planet. As the Earth's crust floats on its moving mantle, driven by a fiery inner core, giant continental plates bump and grind, or tear apart with tremendous force. Anatomy of Disaster explores the cataclysmic results. In Australia, climbers and skiers get the scare of their lives as the mountain they're standing on suddenly erupts. See incredible footage of research helicopters that plunge so close to showers of fiery lava that their instrument panels actually begin to melt! Experience the fiery lava showers of Mt. Etna in Sicily, and watch an army try to divert lava flows from a town. See entire villages in the Philippines disappear under rivers of ash. We'll travel to the remote reaches of the planet to uncover the incredible evidence of nature's tectonic wrath.
Witness an ocean liner ripped in half by killer waves and sail aboard a yacht tossed about on the open seas in fifty foot rollers as Anatomy of Disaster explores the origins and cycles of nature's most destructive force - the power of the ocean that drives intense storms an immense waves. Enormous energy, caused by storm winds, reverberates out across the surface of the ocean in what we experience as waves. And woe to ships or coastal residents in their paths! From an Australian sailing couple's struggle to survive a tropical storm, to an attempt to save crewmen off a cargo ship before it crashes into North Sea cliffs, Anatomy of Disaster takes us to the world's worst storms and the mariners who face them. We'll examine cyclonic storm surges, gigantic ocean rollers, and killer rogue waves. To better understand these incredible forces of nature, we'll stand onboard an oil tanker as it breaks up and then barely escape as it plunges into the depths, cling to a catamaran in a South Pacific Typhoon, and watch a ship off Mozambique sink after being hit by a rogue wave.
Our cameras place you in the middle of a deadly slide as rocks and debris seemingly come right at you! Wherever there are mountains slides can tumble down. Experience gravity's full force, as rocks, mud, ice and snow become a fluid flattening force. Anatomy of Disaster examines the deadly force of erosion meeting gravity. From the American Cascade Mountains to the Colombian Andes, Anatomy of Disaster captures incredible stories of human survival in the face of massive landslides, mudslides, and avalanches. Hear from a woman who survived buried alive by snow for longer than anyone else ever recorded. Learn what it was like to be swept off the road in a mudslide. And watch a newly engaged couple barely survive 80,000 tons of rock falling down on them in Yosemite National Park.
California coastal homes slide into the sea while fires in Indonesia rage out of control for weeks. From Australia and Asia to North and South America, experience heroic stories of El Ni–o survival. Travel with scientists exploring the delicate balance of the Earth's climate in crisis and the resulting extreme and unseasonable weather: floods, blizzards, brushfires, hurricanes, deadly droughts and typhoons all a result of the El Ni–o of the century! Emanating from a mysterious warming of water in the southeast Pacific Ocean, flowing west toward South America, El Ni–o causes trade winds to reverse, stealing moisture in the east, causing drought and wildfire in Asia and Australia. The moisture travels across the Pacific, dumping terrible storms on Southern California and South America. As the climate becomes more off-kilter, blizzards, mudslides, dust storms, floods and cyclones spiral around the Earth, killing thousands. We'll see how this El Ni–o was predicted. We'll also hear from experts who report that the recurring El Ni–o phenomenon is occurring more often, with stronger effects and lasting longer - a cautionary tale that could be proof of global warming - directly and indirectly affecting food supply, health and the world economy.