NOVA PBS Official (May 10, 2023) – In January 2022, one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in recorded history rocked the Pacific islands of Tonga, sending shockwaves around the world.
Video timeline:00:00 Introduction 01:47 The Day of the Eruption in Tonga: Firsthand Accounts 08:44 Geologists Study the Volcano to Determine the Cause of the Eruption 20:49 Understanding the Unpredictability of Submarine Volcanoes. 27:00 The Tsunami Caused by the Eruption in Tonga 41:55 Studying Tofua: The Volcanic Twin of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai 50:10 How Communities Can Prepare for Future Eruptions and Tsunami
Through first-person accounts of the disaster and eyewitness footage, experience the terrifying power of the eruption and the devastating tsunami that struck the shores of Tonga. Why was this eruption so big, how did it cause the tsunami, and could another disaster loom?
The Independent (March 28, 2023) – The tiny Pacific island state of Vanuatu was hit by two category-four cyclones and two earthquakes over three days this month, in a devastating onslaught that destroyed homes, cut power, and impacted 80 per cent of the population.
Scientists say global heating is already making major tropical cyclones like those that hit Vanuatu more frequent. Under moderate and worst-case climate scenarios, the country is expected to lose around 20-25 per cent of its GDP from natural disasters each year, according to a recent UN report. Later this month Vanuatu’s proposal for a top international court to clarify the obligations of states to tackle climate change and the consequences of not doing so under international law will be put to a vote at the United Nations.
Vanuatu is a South Pacific Ocean nation made up of roughly 80 islands that stretch 1,300 kilometers. The islands offer scuba diving at coral reefs, underwater caverns and wrecks such as the WWII-era troopship SS President Coolidge. Harborside Port Vila, the nation’s capital and economic center, is on the island of Efate. The city is home to the Vanuatu National Museum, which explores the nation’s Melanesian culture.
Four days after Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida, and then again in South Carolina on Friday, there are dozens dead, millions without power, and billions in damage. Correspondent Kris van Cleave reports on the aftermath of the catastrophic storm.
On a dead still November morning in the Sierra Nevada, two researchers walk through a graveyard of giants. Below their feet: a layer of ash and coal. Above their heads: a charnel house of endangered trees.
This is Alder Creek Grove, a once idyllic environment for a majestic and massive specimen: the giant sequoia. It is now a blackened monument to a massive wildfire—and humankind’s far-reaching impact on the environment. But these two researchers have come to do more than pay their respects.
Linnea Hardlund and Alexis Bernal, both of the University of California, Berkeley, are studying the effects of record-breaking fires such as the one that destroyed large swaths of Alder Creek Grove in the hopes that their findings will inform forest management that might preserve giant sequoias for future generations.
So far, those findings are grim: mortality in Alder Creek Grove is near 100 percent. Of the mighty trees that stood watch for thousands of years, only charred skeletons remain. About a century of aggressive fire suppression and a warming, drier climate have created a perfect environment for unprecedented fire.
On August 19, 2020, it came to the Giant Sequoia National Monument. The SQF Complex was two fires—the Castle and Shotgun fires—that burned for more than four months, affecting nearly 175,000 acres. And a preliminary report on the Castle Fire estimated that 10 to 14 percent of all living giant sequoias were destroyed.
Hardlund, who is also at the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League, and Bernal fear that, without scientifically informed intervention, such fires will continue to return to the Sierra Nevada—leaving the once proud guardians of the forest a memory and another casualty of our ecological failure.
Following 20 years since the fateful events of #9/11, we've put together a chart providing an overview of what happened on that morning in 2001, from the first plane taking off in Boston to the collapse of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.https://t.co/a5VvXVszB5pic.twitter.com/N9fdi3lAbI
The USS Ronald Reagan cruised into a radioactive cloud from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011. Sailors on the aircraft carrier were exposed to radiation. This documentary looks at the event and what came before it. The discovery of the atom and radioactivity are among the most important advances in 20th Century science. This film provides a comprehensive, historical examination of a century of radioactivity. At the same time it remembers the victims – from the Curies to Fukushima.
The film-makers visit Japanese families who sued Tepco, the operator of the Fukushima reactor, after their children developed thyroid cancer following the tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster. Sent to help tsunami victims, sailors from the USS Ronald Reagan give detailed accounts of what happened on board the carrier. Radiation victims on both sides of the Pacific recount their difficulties in getting information. The film also introduces others harmed by industrial and military secrecy over the issue. Among them are fishermen and veterans exposed to radiation during the nuclear bomb tests on Bikini Atoll, Hiroshima survivors and young women who worked with radium in US factories in the 1920s. Radioactivity is invisible and odorless, yet very harmful to life. A Japanese doctor tells viewers how radioactivity affects the human body, why it causes cancer, and what can be done to shield people against it.
From the St. Helen’s eruption to havoc caused by a tornado, these clips capture just how terrifying natural disasters are.
Video Timeline: 0:00 – Intro to 10 Frightening Natural Disaster Videos 0:23 – Footage of the 1980 Mt. Saint Helens Eruption 4:06 – This Brave Student Captured the Mt. Saint Helens Blast 6:09 – Why the 1989 San Francisco Quake Was So Disastrous 10:08 – Chilling Footage of the 1989 Cypress Freeway Collapse 12:56 – The Most Powerful Tornado Recorded on Earth 16:36 – This Family Hid from a 300 MPH Tornado in a Water Pipe 19:50 – This Couple Filmed the Everest Avalanche Coming at Them 21:56 – Footage of the Alarming Moments Just Before the Everest Avalanche 24:56 – The Damage a Twister Can Do in 15 Minutes is Horrifying 28:00 – The 1974 Double Twister That Hit Alabama
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