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National Geographic Top Ten Natural Disasters
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00:01Tsunamis that obliterate our best defense systems.
00:05The scale of destruction was almost absolute.
00:10Volcanoes that kill millions.
00:13You don't want to record one of these blows because you're simultaneously burnt, suffocated and pummeled to death.
00:22Earthquakes that expose the planet's inner secrets and diseases that push humanity towards extinction.
00:30The travel doctor took one look and said, you have the bubonic black.
00:39But which catastrophes have had the biggest impact?
00:44We're going to reveal the top ten ultimate natural disasters that have changed the world.
01:11A natural disaster. The moment a force of nature collides with humanity, with tragic results.
01:27Now, together with some of the world's leading experts, we've put together a list of the ten most devastating disasters
01:34ever.
01:37Two, one.
01:39Disasters are rated by their magnitude, their lasting legacy, death toll and the economic cost of the damage they caused.
01:56First on our list is the deadly 2011 tornado season that meteorologist Karen Kosiba firmly places in the top ten.
02:10Spring in middle America.
02:12We have a tornado on the ground.
02:14A time when a vast swathe of land from Texas to the Canadian prairies is transformed into Tornado Alley.
02:22Don't even stop! Just go! Go! Get the hell out of here!
02:26This part of the world is used to twisters, but the 2011 outbreak stands out.
02:33Holy cow!
02:36You can actually hear the house coming apart. The wood, the walls.
02:43My wife had to grab ahold of some of the plumbing pipes because she was being sucked towards the stairwell.
02:50Look at that! Destruction!
03:02I've been collecting data on tornadoes for over seven years now, and I haven't seen anything like the 2011 tornado
03:07season.
03:10Weather experts like Karen are only just beginning to piece together how a tornado forms.
03:22We do know the ingredients that are necessary to come together in order to form the storms that spawn tornadoes.
03:27In particular, there are three ingredients that we need.
03:30First of all, we need a very unstable air mass.
03:35Also, we need wind shear, so we need a lot of turning of wind with height in the atmosphere.
03:41And then thirdly, we need some sort of trigger, some sort of impetus to get these storms started.
03:47In 2011, all three factors come together to create the perfect tornado breeding ground.
03:55By early April, a massive weather system forms over southeastern USA, spawning an outbreak of twisters.
04:06Only a small percentage of them were violent, but there were a lot of them.
04:13Unfortunately, in 2011, the violent tornadoes were impacting larger cities, and that's where we ran into our issues with people
04:23being unfortunately killed and injured.
04:25April the 25th, the start of a series of storms that will generate 343 tornadoes in less than a week,
04:34killing 321 people.
04:37It's one of the deadliest outbreaks in US history.
04:42Jumbo outbreak of tornadoes, which is probably the worst kind to get.
04:48On April the 27th, a ferocious tornado batters Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
04:55This is a large, violent tornado coming up on downtown Tuscaloosa being a safe place right now.
05:02Wind speeds approaching 300 kilometers per hour leave 65 people dead.
05:10The destruction was, in some cases, total and complete.
05:19After the horrific events of April 2011, the start of May is eerily quiet.
05:29Until May the 22nd, a massive tornado takes shape.
05:35In its path is Joplin, Missouri.
05:38My daughter came rushing out of her bedroom and said, you know, my friend's mom called, she said, there's tornado
05:44coming, we need to get her home.
05:48Joplin resident Tim Bartu grew up in tornado alley.
05:52But even he's caught out by the storm's ferocity.
05:56Within a matter of a couple minutes, sirens actually started to go off.
06:00Cover on the ground right here.
06:02Get the sirens going, get the sirens going, I'm telling you.
06:05The tornado carves a path through Joplin's southwestern suburbs.
06:11We're not stopping, I don't know what happens.
06:13You gotta go, man, you gotta go.
06:15With just seconds to spare, Tim Bartu and his family find cover.
06:20As I was going around the corner to go down the basement, the corner of the kitchen was coming apart.
06:31You could hear the sound coming, it was like these, you know, people say it was like a, it sounds
06:35like a locomotive and it sounds like a dozen.
06:46There was debris and chunks of mud and sludge and rain and glass and rocks and bricks and everything blowing
06:52in through that door and all around us.
06:54And it was at that time that I realized the tornado was right on top of us.
07:00We could actually hear the house coming apart.
07:08And I thought there's nothing between us and the vortex of this tornado except one inch piece of wood that
07:15we have in the floor.
07:16And of course the rest of the family, they were crying and they were just hysterical.
07:23I love everyone. I love everyone, man.
07:25Yeah, I love all you guys.
07:32Intense updrafts near the surface, wafting all different sorts of debris, lifting houses and cars, creating a very dangerous, dark
07:39and volatile environment.
07:40Tornadoes really are one of the most devastating forces in nature on the planet.
07:44The carnage caused by a direct hit from an EF-5 tornado is all too real for the residents of
07:51Joplin, Missouri.
08:02The south side of Joplin has just been leveled.
08:04Houses are gone. People are thrown, injured. I know we're going to have casualties.
08:08It's gone. It's gone.
08:10At that point, I didn't know how bad it was, but I knew we had survived a direct hit.
08:16Unbelievable. Look at the houses.
08:17That's when I got my first look at what had happened.
08:24With winds in excess of 320 kilometers per hour, the energy released is equivalent to that of a 10-ton
08:31bomb detonating.
08:35Hello? Hello?
08:37Oh, give her, sweetie. Give her, honey.
08:41The house now was gone. The kitchen was totally gone.
08:44And there were parts of other people's houses in our kitchen.
08:49And one by one, you'd see these piles of rubbles where an arm would poke through or a leg would
08:56poke through.
08:59Most of the family broke down and started to cry.
09:05Leaving 158 people dead, the Joplin tornado is the deadliest since modern records began.
09:12And with over $2.8 billion worth of damage, it's also the costliest.
09:20The 758 twisters in April are the greatest number ever seen in one month.
09:27It's for these reasons Karen Kasiba rates the 2011 tornado season as one of the top 10 natural disasters.
09:37Not only do we have a lot of tornadoes, especially in the months of April and May, but we also
09:41had tornadoes hitting populated areas.
09:43And not just any type of tornado, so the highest possible wind speeds that could be associated with tornadoes.
09:49Those factors in particular are what made that season so devastating.
10:06March 2011. A massive earthquake rocks the world on its axis.
10:14The epicenter, 65 kilometers off the coast of Japan.
10:19In Japan, we get earth tremors every few weeks. There's amazing earthquake technology.
10:25Within minutes of the quake, a huge tsunami is detected racing towards Japan's northern shoreline.
10:34What follows will leave the world reeling.
10:42Absolute destruction, not a building left standing.
10:45The 2011 Japanese quake and tsunami is the costliest natural disaster of all time.
10:52And the reason why coastal engineer Alison Raby puts it in the top 10.
11:02Japan has a long history of being hit by big waves.
11:05In fact, the word tsunami is Japanese for harbour wave.
11:10And it's this history that has led to Japan having the most sophisticated protection systems on the planet.
11:18Japan sits at the junction of four major tectonic plates.
11:23It's why the area is so geologically volatile.
11:28And why the Japanese are so well prepared to deal with the threat.
11:33So what went wrong in 2011?
11:39The problems begin on March the 11th.
11:43Earthquake detection systems predict a huge tremor with a magnitude of 7.2.
11:54Warnings are sent out.
11:58Chris Alderson has lived in Japan for 13 years.
12:01He's come to expect such tremors as an everyday part of life.
12:06Earthquakes are sufficiently common that people don't usually concern themselves with them overly.
12:10Some of them are so minor they barely even stir comment.
12:14Others people perk up their ears a little bit, point out the earthquake to their co-workers and get back
12:18to their work.
12:19At 2.46pm local time, the earthquake hits.
12:32With a magnitude of 9, it's 100 times more powerful than predicted.
12:41You tend to expect them to fade away as usual.
12:44Instead, they sort of grew in strength and intensity to an extent that none of us had experienced before.
12:53It's the largest known quake in Japanese history.
12:56One of the five most powerful ever recorded.
13:02The quake's epicentre is 65 kilometres off Japan's east coast,
13:06where a 300 kilometre section of the Earth's crust is pushed upwards by about 5 metres.
13:13It's a seismic event known as an undersea mega-thrust earthquake.
13:18The force of the shockwaves is so enormous, Japan moves 2.5 metres.
13:24And the axis of the entire planet shifts about 18 centimetres.
13:33Despite the magnitude of the quake, precautionary measures limit the damage.
13:40There's a great deal of education among the Japanese population about how to behave during such disasters.
13:47So whilst there was concern, there wasn't the sort of terrified panic which one might suspect.
13:52It appears technology has protected the Japanese.
13:56But the earthquake is just the first phase of a double disaster they are to face that day.
14:01Because the tremor has given birth to a tsunami.
14:05And it's heading towards Japan's northern coastline.
14:10Coastal engineer Alison Raby has been studying why the events of 2011 escalated into one of the worst disasters of
14:17its kind, placing it in the top ten.
14:19We're going to simulate that mega-thrust type events using this hinged ball down here.
14:27That's going to represent the edge of the crust that comes up in that type of rupture.
14:35And we're going to spring that plate up and that's going to raise a huge body of water.
14:42Three, two, one.
14:49In open water, the initial wave is relatively small, just a metre high.
14:58But as it approaches the shoreline and enters the shallows, it begins to slow and grow in height.
15:21All too aware earthquakes can cause huge waves, Japan has a sophisticated tsunami warning system.
15:28In Japan, when there is a tsunami, warnings are automatically generated, which are heard on cell phones, brought onto television
15:36stations.
15:37Immediately, people were aware that something was going on.
15:41Along Japan's northeast coastline, people begin to evacuate or take refuge in designated shelters.
15:48Japan had one of the best-defended coastlines in the whole world, and here we recreated certain parts of the
15:58Japanese coastline.
16:00Rabie and her team have reconstructed particular towns and their defences to examine how they coped when the tsunami hit.
16:09We start here in the city of Kamaishi.
16:11Kamaishi was a deep-water port, and it had the world's deepest breakwater.
16:17This was protecting the very large steel factory and a large population.
16:25Further south, we had the settlement of Minomi San Riku, and here we've recreated one of the vertical evacuation structures.
16:34This was clearly signed so that people who were on low ground could escape from the incoming wave.
16:42And then we move into the coastal plains.
16:44Now these were protected by concrete revetments, and behind that are pine forests, and those were all designed to protect
16:53the settlements behind.
16:55The Japanese have taken a calculated risk.
16:58Their fortifications are only designed to cope with waves up to 12 metres high.
17:06But the tsunami surging towards them is a monster, peaking at 40 metres.
17:14It's a monster!
17:15It's a monster!
17:17It's a monster!
17:21It's a monster!
17:24It's a monster!
17:26It's a monster!
17:27In Tokyo, Chris Alderson is stunned by what he sees.
17:31As we watched images on the screen of hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes and being hauled from
17:38their day-to-day Hondrom lives,
17:41it was something none of us could comprehend at first.
17:46Alison Raby recreates the tsunami in miniature.
17:55By comparing footage from each of the towns hit by the tsunami to the model recreations,
18:01a demo can help understand why the best defences on the planet failed so catastrophically.
18:08Not only did the trees do little to stop the wave, the shattered stumps added to the debris flow,
18:15making the tsunami even more lethal.
18:24The shelter in Minimi San Riku remained intact, but many similar shelters were too close to the shore,
18:31with over a hundred ending up underwater.
18:39And after the tsunami passed, the state-of-the-art Kamaishi breakwater wall lay in pieces.
18:51To help the victims, Chris Alderson heads north to the flood zone.
18:55We went from the Hondrom day-to-day life in the big city to suddenly travelling through what appeared like
19:02a set from a science fiction post-Holocaust movie.
19:07To suddenly see these people torn from their homes, to see the scale of this destruction and death,
19:13where a boat is dropped in the middle of a village, or a large articulated truck is stranded on the
19:18roof of a factory,
19:19it was unworldly, it was very difficult to believe that this was a new reality.
19:26The disaster gets even worse when a flooded reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant melts down.
19:37Initially, reports were unreliable.
19:39We were not certain to what extent the radiation had spread,
19:42and whether or not the situation was about to get worse, or was going to come under control.
19:48Thanks to the courage of the reactor workers, the situation is brought under control.
20:02The tsunami leaves over $200 billion worth of damage in its wake,
20:09making it the costliest natural disaster ever.
20:16The scale of destruction was almost absolute.
20:19There were no people in the ruins that we could see other than military workers putting flags on human remains,
20:26marking cars with X's after they checked them to see if bodies were included.
20:32The smell of the decomposition of what had been washed out of the oceans,
20:36human remains, fish hung heavy in the air, and it was an experience I think nothing can prepare you for.
20:46For Alison Raby, it's not just the cost, but also the way the tsunami exposed the frailty of our most
20:53sophisticated protection systems,
20:56that elevates this disaster into the top ten.
21:00Japan was supposedly the best prepared nation on earth to survive a mega tsunami,
21:06and yet even they underestimated the power of the wave.
21:11And for that reason, I believe that this event is one of the world's worst natural disasters.
21:271918. A viral disease known as the Spanish flu is spreading around the globe like wildfire, decimating every country it
21:36touches.
21:36The virus kills an estimated 30 million people in less than six months.
21:44And a hundred years on, its deadly descendants are now one of the biggest threats we face.
21:50The CDC is working to develop a vaccine.
21:53We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the United States.
21:57The speed with which the Spanish flu killed millions is why virologist Dr. Mike Leahy nominates it as one of
22:05the top ten natural disasters.
22:18By 1918, the First World War was roaring to an end.
22:23For the last four years, the world had been locked in conflict centred on the battlefields of Europe,
22:28with around nine million soldiers losing their lives.
22:31But the fighters of the front lines were about to face an enemy far more deadly than any human adversary.
22:38In the spring of 1918, an influenza outbreak causes a few reported deaths.
22:45But amidst the carnage of trench warfare, such casualties are hardly a priority.
22:52Unknown to the men on the front line, the virus that causes the flu is mutating into a far deadlier
22:59strain.
23:00When there was another outbreak of flu in the winter of the same year, it raised few alarm bells.
23:07But this time, it was different.
23:10The onset of disease was alarmingly quick, with some dying within the first 24 hours.
23:19Even battle-hardened medics were horrified by the gruesome way the men died.
23:26The lungs of many victims were so full of fluid they were compared by pathologists to the lungs of the
23:32drowned.
23:33It was the start of a pandemic that would affect almost every country in the world and leave tens of
23:40millions dead.
23:44In the warring countries, news about the outbreak was limited.
23:49But the disease was heavily reported in neutral Spain, earning it the name Spanish Flu.
23:58Lihie believes the conditions in the trenches could provide clues to the source of the outbreak.
24:04The emergence of new viral diseases can often be triggered by close associations between large numbers of people and animals,
24:13such as pigs.
24:15When humans become infected with an animal flu virus, an entirely new strain of influenza can be created.
24:23Hence the name of outbreaks such as swine flu or bird flu.
24:28So it's not difficult to imagine that during the First World War, when large numbers of soldiers were barrapped right
24:35next door to animals, often in the presence of gases that could possibly be mutagenic, a new virus could surface.
24:44With the men crammed together, the disease tears through the ranks.
24:51In the U.S. Army, as many as one million men contract the virus.
24:57But the epidemic in the trenches is only the beginning.
25:02On the 11th of November, 1918, peace is declared.
25:07Returning troops unwittingly spread the disease across the globe, escalating it into a pandemic.
25:15Mass celebrations accelerate the transmission and up to one billion people, half the world's population at the time, become infected.
25:28One of the most frightening aspects of the 1918 epidemic was the way it struck people down in their prime.
25:35The death rate among 15 to 34 year olds was around 20 times higher than that of other flus.
25:41Why was Spanish flu so deadly to those who should have been the fittest?
25:49Breakthroughs in understanding how the virus attacks our body may provide the answer.
25:55The key thing about Spanish flu and other severe pandemics is that the immune system attacks the lining of the
26:02lung.
26:03And that causes liquids and fluids to start to seep in.
26:07People effectively start to drown in their own fluids.
26:11It must have been horrific to experience and actually horrific to observe as well.
26:16There's lots of descriptions in the medical literature at the time of these patients slowly turning blue.
26:23And when nurses and doctors saw that, they knew it was their end.
26:25And this wasn't something that was unique to weaker or old people, quite the opposite.
26:31Absolutely. In fact, the fact they were young and healthy probably contributed to it.
26:35Because what caused the damage to the lungs is part of the immune system.
26:39And it's called a cytokine cascade.
26:41So the immune system started to damage the lungs.
26:44And that's what allowed the liquids and the fluids to get in there and for people to actually drown.
26:49The viral descendants of Spanish flu are still claiming lives in the 21st century.
26:562009, the H1N1 swine flu kills up to 500,000 people, causing the World Health Organization to raise the pandemic
27:06alert to the highest level.
27:10Swine flu is just one of many diseases that can trace their origins back to the World War I outbreak.
27:18Other diseases may have killed more people, but none so swiftly.
27:23In 12 months, Spanish flu claimed the lives of between 20 and 100 million people.
27:29Potentially, that's 10 times the number of soldiers who died during the four years of World War I.
27:35In the US, the epidemic reduced average lifespan by 10 years.
27:41And it's these horrific statistics that place Spanish flu firmly in our list of natural disasters.
28:02In the summer of 1883, the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa is becoming increasingly restless.
28:11It'll soon blow itself out of the water in a horrific spectacle that will guarantee its iconic status.
28:21Professor Nick Petford votes this first globally reported disaster into the top 10 because of the dramatic way it led
28:28to the birth of volcanology.
28:43Professor Nick Petford travels to where the legendary Krakatoa once stood.
28:57Anik Krakatoa is one of the most volcanically active places on the planet.
29:03Here, one vast tectonic plate is being pushed below another.
29:08Allowing super hot lava to surge to the surface.
29:16Since the 1950s, the volcano has grown in height by an average of four metres a year.
29:25Anik Krakatoa is a classic cone-shaped volcano with one peak.
29:29In 1883, the Krakatoa volcano comprised three separate peaks.
29:35And what people thought was that meant it was three small volcanoes.
29:38Well, that was a big mistake because underlying those volcanoes was one single magma chamber.
29:44And when it blew, the amount of energy that was released in the eruption was enough to blow the entire
29:49island apart.
29:57At the time, there were hundreds of Europeans living in the area,
30:00trading the spices that flourished on the fertile volcanic soils.
30:05But there was one Dutch expat in particular, a man called Roger Verbeek, a geologist.
30:11And Verbeek spent the summer before the eruption of 1883, surveying the islands.
30:17Verbeek's report would play a crucial role in establishing Krakatoa's lasting legacy.
30:25Sunday, August the 26th, 1883.
30:30The morning calm is shattered by one massive explosion after another.
30:40Clues to what the 1883 eruption would have been like can be seen on Anak Krakatoa, which is littered with
30:46huge lava bombs.
30:48Now, this is a big piece.
30:50It's about the size of a car.
30:51And around me here, there are two or three similar sized bombs.
30:55But in 1883, when Krakatoa was in full eruption, the sky would have been full of hundreds of these sorts
31:02of bombs,
31:02flying not just hundreds of yards, but perhaps tens of miles, literally a rain of fire falling from above.
31:11By 2pm, a black cloud three times the height of Mount Everest surges up from the volcano.
31:20In the immediate aftermath of the 1883 eruption, we know from eyewitness reports that the skies darkened, day turned into
31:28night.
31:28And that was because so much ash and dust was thrown up into the atmosphere.
31:33But the effects were felt farther away than just Indonesia.
31:36People talk of strange sunsets with vivid colours in London, in Paris, New York.
31:42And all of those things were due to the volcanic eruption in 1883.
31:5027th of August, 5am.
31:53Four monstrous eruptions ripped through the volcano.
31:57The force of the blast is 13,000 times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
32:04The sound generated is the loudest in recorded history.
32:11The explosive eruptions throw out billions of tons of pulverized rock, scalding hot ash and gas that accelerate down and
32:20away from the volcano.
32:24It's been calculated these pyroclastic flows have enough power to climb over 830 metres.
32:32Twice as tall as the Empire State Building.
32:35They might expect a pyroclastic flow when it hits the sea to stop because of the water.
32:41But that's not the case.
32:43Sometimes a pyroclastic flow, if it's strong enough and hot enough, it can hit the sea and keep on travelling.
32:49Steam forms around the front of the flow and protects it from the water.
32:54And we know this was the case in the 1883 eruption.
32:58Because on that morning, villagers in a town called Kettenbang gathered to watch the spectacle.
33:06Within minutes, the super-fast, super-hot debris crosses the 40 kilometres of water towards the residents of Kettenbang.
33:16Probably the last thing that they ever saw was a pyroclastic flow emerging from the waves.
33:22And you don't want to record one of these flows because you're simultaneously burnt, suffocated and pummeled to death by
33:30the rock.
33:32Around a thousand of Kettenbang's residents die instantly.
33:41And the disaster isn't finished yet.
33:46During Krakatoa's final death throes, the volcano collapses into the ocean.
33:52The splash triggers a tsunami of epic proportions, travelling at 320 kilometres per hour.
33:59In its path is the small Javanese settlement of Anya.
34:06On the west coast of Java, a Dutch lighthouse, very similar to the one that stands here today, towers above
34:13the surrounding buildings.
34:17It's constructed to cope with the worst that the weather can throw at it.
34:22Even though the tsunami is heading their way, the keeper and his family choose to stay to ensure the lighthouse
34:28remains operational.
34:32So on a building like this, made from reinforced steel, they must have felt safe, even from the most powerful
34:38of waves.
34:41But adding to the power of the wave are huge chunks of rock torn from the seabed.
34:46When the wave struck, it was 40 metres high.
34:49That's about 130 feet, nearly as high as I am here now.
34:53The wave ripped up from the sea floor great big lumps of coral and slammed them against the side of
34:59the lighthouse.
35:00And despite being reinforced with an iron girder, the lighthouse collapsed.
35:10These bricks are all that remain of the ill-fated lighthouse.
35:16Miraculously, the lighthouse keeper survived.
35:19But his wife and child perished in the water, along with tens of thousands of others.
35:29It's the most destructive tsunami created by a volcano in history.
35:37As the sun sets on the 27th of August, 1883, Krakatoa is no more.
35:45The volcano has blown itself out of existence.
35:53As what has been a spectacular volcanic eruption, Krakatoa is important for other reasons.
36:00Just before the eruption, undersea telegraph cables had been laid between Jakarta and the rest of the world.
36:05So as the eruption unfolded, people could follow it in real time, the same way that we would do today,
36:10using the internet.
36:11So in that sense, Krakatoa became the world's first globally reported disaster story.
36:17The Dutch geologist Roger Verbeek also played a critical role in raising Krakatoa to its iconic status.
36:25After the eruption, his report was so insightful that it laid the foundations for an entire new science, volcanology.
36:33And it's for these reasons that Krakatoa was one of the top ten natural disasters of all time.
36:53On August the 24th, 2005, a tropical storm forms over the Bahamas.
37:04Five days later, it will leave the city of New Orleans in ruins.
37:10Everything was gone within the flickering of an eye.
37:14A chain of natural events and human error will conspire to make Katrina the world's most expensive hurricane.
37:23It's just all just gone.
37:27It's for these reasons meteorologist Tim Marshall thinks this disaster should be in the top ten.
37:44New Orleans is a city surrounded by water.
37:48300 years ago, it was just a small settlement on the bank of the Mississippi River, high above sea level.
37:56But over time, it's expanded out into marshlands, and people now live below sea level in much of New Orleans.
38:07With large sections of the city below the waterline, people here are particularly vulnerable to hurricanes.
38:16Because it's not just the high winds that make these weather systems so dangerous, but the body of water that's
38:22pushed before them, known as a storm surge.
38:27Many hurricane deaths are the result of drowning.
38:32On the 24th of August 2005, the National Hurricane Center is tracking the tropical storm that will become Katrina.
38:42Katrina first formed. It was nothing really unusual. It was pretty much like any other tropical system at that point.
38:50The storm soon intensifies to a category one hurricane.
38:53So our demeanor at that point was to treat it like a normal hurricane that we've seen many times before.
39:00Like all hurricanes, Katrina forms as rising warm air from the sea creates strong winds and thick clouds full of
39:08moisture.
39:11Fueled by the unusually warm seas of the Gulf of Mexico, Katrina quickly grows into a much bigger and more
39:18powerful hurricane.
39:23Back at the weather center, Katrina looms large on the screens.
39:28The satellite imagery revealed a huge eye.
39:33It became apparent that we were dealing with a category five hurricane at this point.
39:38The data shows Katrina will strike New Orleans in less than 24 hours.
39:43We had to start issuing our watches and warnings and statements.
39:47Every person is hereby ordered to immediately evacuate.
39:54Those that can get out of town.
39:57One million people flee the city.
40:01But many people simply can't afford to leave.
40:06Stanley and Betty Stewart live in the Lower Ninth Ward.
40:10The decision was made that we weren't going to be able to go anywhere under the financial conditions.
40:16And we elect to just stay and pray and hope for the best.
40:20So it ended up being 13 of us in the two rooms basically.
40:24All of us know we hunker down.
40:27Up to 100,000 people are left behind to face whatever nature has to throw at them.
40:33We padded our back door with some towels to just keep the water from actually seeping on there.
40:43With a long history of hurricane strikes, New Orleans is surrounded by 560 kilometers of protective levees.
40:53A levee is just made of combinations of clay and sand.
40:59The big problem came with all of these miles of levee that some levees were high and some levees were
41:06low.
41:07Some were sinking.
41:09Worse still, the levees were not built to withstand a hurricane of Katrina's intensity.
41:19The 29th of August, 6.10 a.m.
41:23Hurricane Katrina strikes land with wind speeds of 210 kilometers per hour.
41:32With waves up to eight meters high, the largest storm surge in American history pummels the Gulf Coast.
41:40New Orleans is inundated with water.
41:43You can actually hear the waves coming over the roof of the home.
41:49Those stranded have little idea what to do.
41:52Don't panic. Keep these children down.
41:58My brother, you know, looked at me.
42:00I said, man, we just really need to pray.
42:02I said, because visually it actually looked like it was going to be your last day on Earth.
42:082 p.m.
42:10And the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward are in serious trouble.
42:13We got major flooding here.
42:15Lots of problems here. Lots of problems.
42:19Some people were actually by that time in 20 feet of water.
42:25Some of our friends that were in homes, they had a loss of life.
42:33The 30th of August. The hurricane has blown itself out.
42:36All the main communication lines are down.
42:41Just trying to figure out, are we the only people left? Or is there anybody else around?
43:14No one?
43:16No one?
43:17No one?
43:17I can tell you my life changed right at that point.
43:23Everybody didn't realize that this was a new ballgame now
43:27That now the city was flooding.
43:29Chris and his colleagues face a disaster of epic proportions.
43:37Everywhere you went, you saw bodies floating.
43:43They didn't have enough coroners to come pick up the bodies.
43:53The survivors are corralled into the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center.
43:59The conditions that was at the Convention Center was unbearable.
44:04People were thinking that they were going to go to a lit shelter,
44:07where maybe they would have been food or clothing or water. It was nothing.
44:11And people were literally just abandoned out on the streets.
44:15With over 46,000 people, some are left with little option but to fend for themselves.
44:21People were dying for lack of resources.
44:25We were like, oh my goodness, is this the end of the earth? Is this the end of life?
44:35The failure by the authorities to deal with the rescue and evacuation of so many compounds the disaster.
44:42The big thing that caught people off guard was the flood waters.
44:48Nobody expected 80% of the city to be under water.
44:55Almost a decade later, one in five of the population still hasn't returned.
45:01And large sections of the city lie in ruins.
45:06I'm currently driving through the Lower Ninth Ward here, one of the areas that was hardest hit from Hurricane Katrina.
45:15And most of the houses here, people didn't come back to.
45:19They just abandoned them or just left them here to rot.
45:24And it's sort of sad because the neighborhood is gone.
45:28It's going to take a generation or more to rebuild this area.
45:34Two weeks after Katrina swamped New Orleans, President George Bush apologizes for the administration's failure to deal with the aftermath.
45:45Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government.
45:52And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility.
46:01The impact of human error is why Tim Marshall places this disaster in the top ten.
46:09Certainly, Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster.
46:12But that natural disaster was compounded by the effects of man.
46:18The fact that Katrina happened was a wake-up call.
46:22Now, the levees are built a little higher, maybe a little stronger.
46:26But this disaster can happen. In fact, it will happen again.
46:45This is how the Earth looked at the end of the last ice age.
46:51The northern hemisphere, covered in ice.
46:55Europe, barely recognizable.
46:59But evidence suggests the world map is about to be redrawn.
47:04By a mega flood of biblical proportions.
47:08Oceanographer Simon Bobson is fascinated by the idea of a planet changing flood and has nominated it for the top
47:15ten.
47:25This disaster begins around 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age.
47:32A huge glacier covering an area we now know as Canada is receding.
47:38As it melts, a vast freshwater lake, bigger than Texas, forms.
47:46For a time, the water is contained behind a wall of ice.
47:51But 8,500 years ago, this ice gives way.
47:55Releasing this colossal body of water into the world's oceans.
48:03This had a dramatic impact on the already rising sea levels.
48:07Adding a further one to two metres, that's three to six feet, in a very short period of time.
48:13And if that was to happen today with the same speed, it would completely devastate London, New York.
48:21In fact, it would impact on every coastal nation around the world.
48:28And in the ancient world, the rising waters spreading across the planet could have also led to disaster.
48:39Because according to some studies, the area now covered by the Black Sea was once home to one of the
48:45largest populations of the time.
48:499,000 years ago, this would have been an enormous valley leading down to this huge freshwater lake.
48:58It would have been filled with settlements, farmlands, a population of over 100,000 people.
49:05But that all changed when the floodwaters hit.
49:10Swollen by the mega-flood, water from the Mediterranean begins to pour into the region,
49:15transforming the once-fertile land into a saltwater sea.
49:27Simon Boxall meets Konstantin Cheriv, who in 2011 took part in a survey of the Black Sea,
49:34that produced an astonishing find.
49:37When we scanned the seabat, we found a formation that's really unusual.
49:42It was sort of a round hill, and that's not very common for the Black Sea.
49:47So we decided to send a probe and take a sample of it.
49:51As they carefully inspected the core sample, the scientists made an unexpected discovery.
49:57Tiny pieces of wood.
49:59When we analysed the wood and carbon dated it, we found that it's 9,000 years old, and that's amazing.
50:06Where do you think it came from?
50:08The most exciting scenario is that this underwater hill is actually an ancient human settlement.
50:15Because as a shape and size and height, it exactly matches the settlements on the ground we found all over
50:23Eastern Europe.
50:26Cheriv is certain an area that's now under 90 metres of water, was once dry land.
50:34Absolutely. I'm 100% positive about it.
50:39To find out more about the people that were living in the region hit by the flood,
50:43Simon Boxall has been given rare access to examine an incredible archaeological find.
50:57Unearthed from a nearby burial site dating back over 6,000 years were over 200 skeletons,
51:04along with a spectacular treasure trove of gold.
51:15Expert Christo Smolinov believes this precisely made jewellery is proof of a surprisingly advanced civilisation.
51:23For instance, those are two separate gold objects, quite different, and still they fit perfectly.
51:30And this is more than you can expect from a culture 7,000 years old.
51:38It is a superculture.
51:41It's amazing how precise their measurements were in a culture that is so ancient.
51:49Christo has little doubt this superculture was living right in the mega-flood's path.
51:57And he believes the exodus of these people played a crucial role in the development of Western civilisation.
52:06I think the migration of this superculture that followed some of the catastrophic events that took place here
52:13is responsible for the migration of knowledge as well.
52:19If Smolinov is correct, it is possible that the scattering of this ancient population may have sowed the seeds
52:26from which the Egyptian and Greek cultures eventually grew 2,000 years later.
52:35Simon Boxall is also convinced of the profound effect this mega-flood had on humanity.
52:41This flood drove apart a burdening civilisation, possibly one of the earliest we know.
52:47And yet, this flood could have been the catalyst that led to our modern civilisation.
52:54And it's for this reason that I believe that this ancient flood deserves its place
52:59amongst the world's top ten natural disasters.
53:181906. San Francisco is the biggest and most powerful city on America's west coast.
53:25But what none of its inhabitants know is they're living over a ticking time bomb.
53:31That's all about to change when a massive quake strikes.
53:40Seismologist Thomas Jordan has selected this earth-shattering event for the top ten
53:44because of the way it helped unlock the inner secrets of our planet
53:48and revolutionised our understanding of how we can protect ourselves from these deadly forces.
54:04modern day San Francisco.
54:08Its famous switchback streets provide clues to just how geologically active the area is.
54:15The hills here in San Francisco and around the San Francisco Bay remind us that the forces that caused them
54:22are the same as those that caused the 1906 earthquake.
54:26At the time, of course, people didn't understand that this beautiful topography was related to earthquakes.
54:32That would become very evident on April 18th, 1906.
54:39On the night of April the 17th, the famed tenor Enrico Caruso performs at the San Francisco Opera House.
54:50But in just a few hours, this proud city will be turned into a disaster zone.
54:56At 5 in the morning, things were pretty quiet.
54:59But suddenly at 5.12, the earthquake hit.
55:05An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 shakes the city.
55:10Roads rip apart and people panic.
55:14People realised it was an earthquake.
55:16But very few understood where the earthquake might be coming from
55:20and what might happen next.
55:25Buildings never designed to withstand earthquakes crumble.
55:33The city hall was the biggest building west of the Mississippi River.
55:37It took humans 25 years to build it.
55:40It took the earthquake two minutes to destroy it.
55:48It's not just the collapse of their homes the residents have to deal with.
55:53The tremors crack gas pipes.
55:57All it takes is one flame to ignite the fumes.
56:06In just a few hours, an inferno engulfs San Francisco.
56:12There were probably 50 fires that began in this part of San Francisco.
56:17And they eventually coalesced into a massive firestorm that consumed on the first day all of the central business district
56:27down along Market Street.
56:29Those flames then spread on the second and third day to the west and north up to Fisherman's Wharf.
56:37During those three days, the city was almost completely destroyed by fire.
56:44After three days, the fires burn themselves out.
56:49To leave a scene of utter annihilation.
56:5280% of the city is in ruins.
56:57But it's what happens next that makes the 1906 earthquake one of the top ten disasters.
57:06Three days after the 1906 earthquake, before the fires of San Francisco had stopped burning,
57:12George Pardee, the governor of California, appointed a special commission to study the earthquake and learn from what had happened.
57:21It falls to Professor Andrew Lawson and his team from Berkeley University to conduct the first comprehensive survey of an
57:28earthquake.
57:30The Lawson Report in two volumes represents a most incredible breakthrough in our understanding of how earthquakes work.
57:39At the time, people thought the fault line that runs near San Francisco was caused by the quake.
57:46But Lawson's report confirmed it was the other way around.
57:50And he named the culprit behind the 1906 disaster, the San Andreas Fault.
57:57It's a revelation that's helped geologists like Alan Lester to better understand the mechanics of earthquakes.
58:05The disastrous 1906 earthquake turned out to be a huge learning point for geologists regarding how big faults like the
58:15San Andreas move.
58:16Strike slip faults like the San Andreas have the capacity to build up huge amounts of strain and stress within
58:24the earth.
58:25It's very much like taking a stick and...
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