In November 1947 forty-one people died in a massive blaze that gutted the huge Ballantynes Department Store complex in the heart of Christchurch’s business district. This is the tragic story of New Zealand’s worst fire disaster.
When the 2004 tsunami hit the coast of Sri Lanka, 65-year-old Anton Ambrose's wife and daughter were killed. "In five minutes," he says, "I lost everything." A year later, Anton returns to Sri Lanka. With him is his nephew, award-winning filmmaker Rohan Fernando. A Tamil, Anton moved to California in the 1970s and became a very successful gynecologist. His daughter, Orlantha, made the opposite journey, returning to Sri Lanka where she ran a non-profit group that gave underprivileged children free violin lessons. Blood and Water is the story of one man's search for meaning in the face of overwhelming loss, but it is also filled with improbable characters, unintentional comedy and situational ironies.
Based on a real, in-flight incident in 1988, a passenger jet loses a portion of its fuselage in flight over Hawaii and is forced to make an emergency landing.
The Filomena snowstorm in central Spain was undoubtedly exceptional. Its return period in many places exceeded half a century, particularly in Madrid. Despite accurate weather forecasts, Filomena brought roads, public transport, health centers, and other basic services in Madrid to a standstill. What went wrong in the management of this weather event?
In the mid-1980s, the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of a small town in Kansas as they continue their daily lives. Dr. Russell Oakes maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.
93 million miles from Earth, geomagnetic storms are projected from the sun's surface. When they hit Earth, they have little effect on living things, but can knock out the entire power grid. Today is just another day on Earth. But in two hours, a total blackout deprives 200 million European people of power. All hospitals, airports, emergency services and communication networks fail. Europe descends into an apocalyptic Dark Age. In the midst of this unprecedented disaster, two missing kids, an escaped convict, a very pregnant woman and several others struggle to survive. They say we can survive three minutes without air, three days without water. How long can we live without power?
An account of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the subsequent effort to rebuild.
Having taken the blame for an accident beyond his control, pilot Mike Hogan has been on administrative leave indefinitely; however when the airline is desperately short of staff, he is offered to be first officer and accepts, without enthusiasm, received with disdain by the well-connected commander. Surprisingly his come-back proves less then routine, as the captain gets knocked out and a collision as well as a murderer being transported by police require courageous action from Mike, his crew and several passengers, including soccer star Ty Conner.
Explore the 1928 collapse of the St. Francis Dam, the second deadliest disaster in California history. A colossal engineering and human failure, the dam was built by William Mulholland, a self-taught engineer who ensured the growth of Los Angeles by bringing the city water via aqueduct. The catastrophe killed more than 400 people and destroyed millions of dollars of property.
The film explores the background and build-up to this final flight to disaster. Using dramatic reconstruction, archive footage and exclusive interviews with leading historians and engineering experts, the special delves into the political and scientific events that led up to the catastrophe.
Lost somewhere over the Pacific in a single-engine Cessna with low fuel, a pilot (Scott Bakula) awaits rescue.
On January 8, 2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 went down as it was leaving Iranian air space. All 176 people on board were killed, many of them Iranian Canadians. For weeks Iranian authorities vociferously denied responsibility, but foreign governments and agencies were certain the plane was shot down by Iranian military, a fact Iran’s government eventually admitted. There were no answers as to why the plane was fired on or even why it was allowed to take off, since hostilities had broken out in the region in preceding days.
Yellowstone is a park, but it's also the deadliest volcano on Earth. Beneath it, a sleeping 'dragon' is stirring. When an earthquake opens a crack for magma to seep through, other warning signs of an eruption start popping up, but they are ignored or dismissed as 'minor'. But when they learn an eruption will happen, panic breaks out through people of the USA and the world.
On a secret military base a group of scientists have made a discovery unequaled since the invention of the A-bomb; code-named Eruptor, it's a device that supercharges Dark Matter and uses it to change the molecular structure of its target, thereby eradicating it. But when the Eruptor malfunctions and a leading scientist on the project is blasted with Dark Matter, he receives incredible abilities
Global warming in context. What the climate of the past tells us about the climate of the future.
February 2010. On a remote island in the Pacific Ocean called Juan Fernández, everyone slept in town. But a 12-year-old girl felt a tremor and warned of imminent danger.
The last representatives of Mixteco culture inhabit a village in the Sierra Madre. Deprived of their identity by modern civilization, they are facing an even bigger threat: a landslide that may destroy the village during the next torrential rains. The mayor tries to prevent the disaster. He wants to invite a geologist, so that the approaching danger can be officially confirmed. But no help is coming and the inhabitants must simply wait for the disaster.
Leading Australian documentarian Eddie Martin puts viewers on the frontlines of the deadly 2019–2020 bushfires, capturing the catastrophe with a perspective and scale never before seen. 24 million hectares were burnt, 3000 homes were destroyed, 33 people died, and nearly three billion animals perished or were displaced. Fire Front is a powerful account of that calamitous antipodean summer, told from the ground where climate change took on the face of hell.
A look at the state of the global environment including visionary and practical solutions for restoring the planet's ecosystems. Featuring ongoing dialogues of experts from all over the world, including former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, former head of the CIA R. James Woolse
The history of lighter than air transportation culminating in the Hindenburg explosion which gets thoroughly covered and analyzed.