American Catastrophe: LA Burning -- Special Edition of 20/20

High atop Sinkut Mountain in northern British Columbia, Bart Vanderlinde begins each summer's day the way he has for the past nine years: scanning the forest for smoke. He's among the last lookout people in the province. Where three hundred lookouts once formed an interconnected network across the region, Bart now often keeps watch alone. This is an intimate portrait of a man and a profession facing obsolescence. The film gives insight into the craft of fire detection while capturing the quiet solitude of a life lived in observation.

On British Columbia’s remote Southside, wildfire is not an abstract threat—it is a lived reality. As flames close in on a frontier community, the Cheslatta Carrier Nation and their neighbours face an impossible choice: evacuate, or stay to protect the land that defines them. With limited access and little outside support, the community responds collectively, drawing on Indigenous leadership, cooperation, and generations of knowledge to confront the fire in near isolation. In the aftermath, the burn reveals a long-erased Cheslatta village site, resurfacing a suppressed history just as their response gains wider attention as a model for resilience. But when the flames recede, new constraints emerge—raising questions about the limits of community-led action, and the fragile balance between survival, autonomy, and authority.

China’s President Xi Jinping is a force to be reckoned with. As leader of the Communist colossus, he commands the world’s attention, but who is China’s strongman and what is his agenda?

What happened when terror gripped the rural town of Moscow, Idaho, when authorities found four University of Idaho students ― Ethan Chapin (20), Madison Mogen (21), Xana Kernodle (20) and Kaylee Goncalves (21) ― stabbed to death in an off-campus house in November.

For 100 years, we have waged war on wildfire in the United States, and ironically, have created a more volatile landscape than ever.

Ashes

In 2021, an extreme heatwave gave rise to huge wildfires in the vast subarctic forests of Sakha, a northeastern republic in Siberia. The village of Shologon lies in this taiga landscape, shrouded in orange smoke and black ash. The forest is burning and the flames are approaching fast.

Follows the deadly Australian bushfires of 2019-2020, known as ‘Black Summer’. Burning is an exploration of what happened as told from the perspective of victims of the fires, activists and scientists.

​On November 8, 2018, a spark flew in the Sierra Nevada foothills, igniting the most destructive wildfire in California history and decimating the town of Paradise. Unfolding during the year after the fire, this is the story of the Paradise community as they begin to rebuild their lives.

On January 18, 2019, 17-year old Nick Sandmann, a student at the affluent Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, was internationally villainized on social media and in the 24-hour news cycle as he and his classmates appeared to confront Native American elder Nathan Phillips on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. during a March for Life rally. Video clips of the interaction went viral overnight and Sandmann and his classmates faced worldwide outrage as the entire Covington Catholic community became the center of uncomfortable conversations about racism, privilege and politics.

"The Devil Worshippers" investigates Satanism and focuses on allegations that there are satanic cults committing crimes and murders in the United States. “Police have been skeptical when investigating these acts, just as we are in reporting them. But there is no question that something is going on out there, and that’s sufficient reason for ‘20/20’ to look into it.”

In a remote area of northern Spain, the wind has a name: Tramuntana. Tramuntana takes what it wants—clothes, trees, boats, and the people of the landscape who live with the endless threat of being carried away by its force. This film is a lyrical portrait of this furious wind, woven from the stories passed down by local villagers.

June 26,1990, the Dude Fire rages across Zane Gray country in the towering ponderosa forests below the Mogollon Rim in Central Arizona, killing five prison crew members and a female supervisor on her first fire. Follow along with the survivors and firefighters as they share their experience as inmate firefighters and their harrowing story of courage, loss and redemption.

A 14-year-old girl and the rising music star D4vd are involved in a mysterious disappearance turned gruesome murder. David Anthony Burke, known as D4vd, got his start as a gamer and was on the verge of stardom. New details have emerged from text messages, photos and DNA that authorities say destroyed two lives.

They Break the Tree of Peace explores the reality of life under military occupation in Masafer Yatta, documenting the violence, intimidation, and demolitions carried out and coordinated by illegal settlers and Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian communities.

Covering China's powerful leader, his signature foreign policy, U.S.-China trade and technology wars, how Chinese technology helps stifle dissent, and more. A collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, PBS NewsHour conducted more than 70 on-camera interviews in eight Chinese cities and across eight countries.

The practice of setting small burns to clear ecosystems of overgrowth by prescribed fire is a critical tool for climate resiliency and forest health. But in 2022, a burn set by the U.S. Forest Service in northern New Mexico escaped its fire lines, spiraling out of control to become the largest wildfire in the state’s history. Weaving together the stories of locals struggling to rebuild and the Forest Service’s efforts to resume stewardship after tragedy, Burn, Scar becomes a personal, nuanced story of conviction and connection to the land.

A penetrating look at homelessness in Seattle, the impact on the city, the homeless and the residents who must deal with the crisis. KOMO News' Eric Johnson spent a year piecing together the story of homelessness in Seattle.

Shocking, devastating and unflinchingly real. KOMO News' Eric Johnson looks at the heroin crisis in Seattle.

A filmmaker moves his family cross-country only to arrive in their new city, Redding, California, as a fire tornado rips through neighborhoods during the deadly 2018 Carr Fire. As the smoke clears he sets out to investigate several heroic stories, discovering why people in Northern California are “Stronger Than Carr”.