
04 Oct 1988

The Great San Francisco Earthquake
An account of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the subsequent effort to rebuild.
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.
04 Oct 1988
An account of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the subsequent effort to rebuild.
15 Feb 2020
Archaeologist Raksha Dave and historian Dan Snow return to Pompeii to gain special access to a variety of new excavations, including two never-before-seen discoveries.
06 Sep 2013
National Geographic gets 10 experts to pick the most significant natural disasters ever, adding eyewitness accounts and CGI to flesh out the stories.
15 Nov 2012
How young people took to social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to record Superstorm Sandy, from first dark warnings to devastating reality and chaotic aftermath. The first great natural disaster documented and shared on the social network, we speak to those who captured history with mobile phones and mini-cameras.
17 Aug 2007
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
11 Nov 2007
Global warming in context. What the climate of the past tells us about the climate of the future.
08 Oct 2021
The enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018: the daring rescue of twelve boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Northern Thailand.
20 Jan 2008
"Trouble the Water" takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. The film opens the day before the storm makes landfall--just blocks away from the French Quarter but far from the New Orleans that most tourists knew. Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist, is turning her new video camera on herself and her Ninth Ward neighbors trapped in the city. Weaving an insider's view of Katrina with a mix of verité and in-your-face filmmaking, it is a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes--two unforgettable people who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning.
11 Apr 2011
When a devastating famine descended on Soviet Russia in 1921, it was the worst natural disaster in Europe since the Black Plague in the Middle Ages. Examine Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration—an operation hailed for its efficiency, grit and generosity. By the summer of 1922, American kitchens were feeding nearly 11 million Soviet citizens a day.
18 Mar 2020
Follow the amazing work of Bear and his handlers as they spend the summer of 2020 scouring burnt-out bushland in southern Queensland and beyond searching for sick and injured koalas.
18 Jul 2023
Eyewitnesses give first hand testimony about the worst natural disaster to strike Britain in modern times. On 31 January 1953, a massive storm and its huge tidal surge flooded 250 square miles of land from the Shetlands to the Thames estuary, killing hundreds of people, sinking several ships, and destroying tens of thousands of homes. Few remember this disaster that shocked the country as it emerged from the trauma of World War II, but those who do remember it vividly.
24 Nov 2019
Forensic experts scan Pompeii’s victims to investigate why they didn’t escape the eruption.
01 Mar 2018
Wilder than Wild reveals how fire suppression and climate change have exposed Western forests to large, high intensity wildfires, while greenhouse gases released from these fires contribute to global warming. This vicious cycle jeopardizes our forests and affects us all with extreme weather and more wildfires, some of which are now entering highly populated wildland-urban areas.
28 Dec 2006
This astounding documentary delves into the mysteries of the Tunguska event – one of the largest cosmic disasters in the history of civilisation. At 7.15 am, on 30th June 1908, a giant fireball, as bright the sun, exploded in the sky over Tunguska in central Siberia. Its force was equivalent to twenty million tonnes of TNT, and a thousand times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. An estimated sixty million trees were felled over an area of over two thousand square kilometres - an area over half the size of Rhode Island. If the explosion had occurred over London or Paris, hundreds of thousands of people would have been killed.
07 Nov 2020
The story of Six Flags New Orleans, a theme park devastated by Hurricane Katrina that has become a holy grail of sorts for urban exploration and the efforts to restore the park to its former glory.
09 Sep 2021
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.
21 Dec 2014
Re-examines the dramatic events of Boxing Day 2004, and investigates the new science of Tsunami forecasting.
10 Nov 2022
Devastating hurricanes, torrential rains, the inexorably rising waters: coastal megacities are now up against the wall. The filmmakers have chosen three emblematic cities: New York, Singapore and Rotterdam. Cities that each face unique problems and must revisit their relationship with water in order to survive on the long run. In 50 years, all surge barriers in the world will be out of order. What solutions will then remain for coastal cities?
01 Jan 2003
On a stormy day in May of 1889, the South Fork Dam impounding Conemaugh Lake exploded, unleashing a 40-foot wall of water. The bustling industrial city of Johnstown, PA, in the valley below was reduced to a wasteland, killing more than 2,200. This heavily dramatized documentary reviews the factors that led to the dam's collapse, while dramatic reenactments and survivors' personal testimonies detail the horror.
21 Oct 2016
A look at how climate change affects our environment and what society can do to prevent the demise of endangered species, ecosystems, and native communities across the planet.