Original subtitles

♪

Narrator: Disaster zones... They litter our planet.

The first thing you see is devastation, wreckage,

ruined buildings, torn-up highways.

Auerbach: An entrance gate collapsed.

A running track twisted and cracked,

and then it starts to dawn on you, this place was a school.

Narrator: Sites struck by unexpected forces.

Others, the victim of human ambition.

Mitchell: Life can barely survive here,

so why on earth would anyone build a village here?

It looks like a post-apocalyptic landscape.

You have to wonder, was it bombed?

Did anyone survive?

What happened here?

Narrator: 10 of the world's strangest disaster zones,

annihilated by mother nature,

fatal miscalculation, or bizarre phenomena...

Cassell: My goodness, at times,

it was like turning day into night.

The whole environment is being changed.

There was an entire town there that's now gone.

Narrator: Each with a unique story to tell,

some still revealing their secrets.

Selwood: Is there still life?

Is this finished, or is still yet more to come?

Bell: What's happening here is terrifying.

The destructive forces unleashed could be catastrophic.

♪

Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by discovery communications

♪

Narrator: At number 10

on the world's strangest disaster zones,

in Ethiopia, a place that screams danger

but where humankind chose to settle regardless.

♪

Meigs: This is one of the most otherworldly places

on planet earth.

♪

Mitchell: It's an alien landscape

where yellow, green, and red

color these mystical geological formations.

♪

Barratt: These colors are psychedelic.

These are danger signs.

These are warning signs.

It feels unnatural.

♪

Jerram: This place is really a furnace.

There's no shade to be found for miles.

There's no vegetation,

and you've got the sun beating down on you.

It really is a hotbed.

Narrator: You would never imagine finding people here,

but yet, there are signs of life.

Rising up out of this strange, blasted landscape,

you see the ruins of some kind of community.

You see some houses, broken-down trucks,

some pipes, bits of infrastructure,

but everything kind of encrusted and growing

right out of the material that makes up the ground itself.

♪

Today, the village looks desolate and abandoned,

but at one particular time, there was a group of people

determined enough to make this their home.

Mitchell: It's nicknamed the land of the dead.

Life can barely survive here,

so why on earth would anyone build a village here?

♪

Narrator: This arid location lies in the northernmost part

of the afar region in Ethiopia.

Worku kebede is a local guide

who has explored the dangerous place extensively.

♪

Interpreter: So this is afar.

We have a really brutal geology here,

so we come across a lot of skeletons.

♪

It's one of the lowest and hottest places in the world.

It's around 400 feet below sea level.

Narrator: The Mercury here can skyrocket

to more than 120 degrees fahrenheit,

but it isn't just the temperatures

that make this location so hostile.

♪

Jerram: You walk around this area,

you can hear the sort of salty crust crumble under your feet.

In fact, it's quite dangerous

as you get close to some of these stagnant pools.

They can be a ph of one or less.

They can be just like sulfuric acid...

And so there is a danger

that if your foot falls through the crust,

you can actually burn your skin.

So it's quite a stark environment.

Meigs: It's part of a rift-valley system

where two tectonic plates are essentially pulling apart,

and the earth is literally getting ripped open.

♪

Narrator: Yet flanked by steaming fissures

are the shattered remains of a settlement.

This is the town of dallol.

♪

Barratt: So there's not much to see here,

but there are clues as to what happened in the past.

Narrator: What brought these intrepid souls

to this hell on earth lies beneath your feet.

This crazy landscape where biology tips into chemistry

is clearly why man came here.

It's a chemical wonderland.

Narrator: And there was one element

in dallol's chemical cauldron that the whole world wanted.

Meigs: There's one particular mineral deposit known as potash,

which is a mishmash of various chemicals,

but it has a lot of potassium in it.

Jerram: It's almost unique to have

such concentrations of potash actually at the earth's surface,

and without much processing, you can literally scrape

the potash off the earth's surface.

Barratt: Potash is an amazing thing that we use in fertilizers

and other chemical reactions,

and here it is on the surface of the earth.

Narrator: In 1912, two Italian adventurers

obtained the first potash mining concession,

and the industrial excavation of this precious resource began.

Meigs: There was a big demand for the potash.

Agriculture was increasing around the world.

There's a big demand for fertilizer,

so more workers began to flood into this community

to be part of this operation.

Narrator: Once here, they built houses however they could.

♪

Interpreter: The people who came here to dig the mines

lived in houses like this,

which they built from local salt rock.

Narrator: In such a harsh and remote location,

everything, including drinking water,

had to be brought across the parched land,

but the mining community in dallol prospered.

Interpreter: Here, you can see a generator

that was used for water

and the wires they used for electricity.

♪

Narrator: The blistering heat and unstable earth below

couldn't stop money being made.

Soon, larger companies followed,

and in 1918, a 45-mile-long railway line

was built to transport the precious potash

to the port of mersa fatma in modern-day Eritrea.

Barratt: The railway really opened up production,

and it also opened up the town to other people.

At its peak, 50,000 tons were being mined.

This was a place of opportunity,

a place where fortunes could be made.

Narrator: Potash flowed out of dallol,

but the working conditions were punishing.

♪

There's acidic waters floating around.

You've got sort of noxious fumes and salty fluids

getting into your hands.

Mitchell: The miners were working

in the hottest place on earth.

This had to have been a perilous environment at best.

Still, the potential of what could be found here,

what could be extracted, outweighed the risks.

They developed a thriving little operation,

but it wasn't going to last.

Narrator: The harsh climate

and the risk of volcanic disaster

threatened to shatter dallol,

but in the end, its decline was driven by changing economics

following the first world war.

It became easier to get potash from different sources

in Germany and the U.S.A.

Jerram: The minute the global market

for potash changes slightly,

all of a sudden, you're tipped from profit to nonprofit,

and when there's no profit, people leave very, very quickly.

♪

Narrator: Since then, various international operators

have tried to exploit the rich resources

that lie under the baking Ethiopian sun,

but mother nature was always against them.

It is no surprise that the word "dallol" itself

means "disintegration."

Jerram: Anything that's metal is rusting.

You've only got to go and see what's happened to a Land Rover

or another truck that's only been there a few tens of years,

and it is literally in pieces.

The place is a horrible place to live.

Meigs: Mother nature didn't set up this environment

to be friendly to humans,

and I think it took a few decades,

but humans eventually got the hint.

♪

Narrator: Though the village lies desolate and abandoned now,

not all the mining has stopped in the area.

Meigs: There's no longer

any industrial mining of these resources,

but people from the local afar tribe will often come in,

often at night, with camel caravans

and carve out large slabs of salt,

load them on their camels, and take them out to market.

Barratt: When you look at ruins like this village,

it really does bring home

how determined humans are to exploit to the environment,

how determined we are to make money to create wealth,

wherever that should be.

♪

Narrator: From one arid wasteland to another,

this barren desert in Uzbekistan is not quite what it seems.

♪

At over 40 miles from the nearest shoreline,

this stranded ghost fleet feels a long way from home.

Jerram: It's a very odd thing, seeing a boat in the desert.

A boat is an indicative sign of water,

but then you look around and there's none available.

Narrator: But a clue on the town's sign

suggests those vessels do in fact belong here,

so what extraordinary event created this bizarre scene?

♪

In the 1960s, the town of moynaq sat on the edge of the aral sea,

the world's fourth largest body of inland water.

Almas tovashiv was one of the many employed

in the booming local fishing industry.

Interpreter: More than 200 vessels

were engaged in the fishing industry,

and over 100 vessels were transporting fish

to the fish-canning factory,

where 1,200 people worked and annually produced

up to 12 million cans of fish.

Narrator: But by 1990, all the fishing here had stopped.

Somehow, the sea had become a desert.

Interpreter: People understood that there was less water.

There was not even water for watering the gardens

or for use on the farms.

Narrator: Incredibly, the cause of this disaster was man-made.

The aral sea was fed by two rivers,

but under Soviet rule, a flawed decision

to prioritize cotton production in Uzbekistan

and divert that water away from here

had devastating consequences.

Meigs: It was ecological suicide

because once they took all of the water out of those rivers,

there wasn't enough water to feed the aral sea.

In this hot environment, it's sunny most of the time.

There's a lot of evaporation.

Without water continuing to flow into it,

the aral sea began to evaporate.

Narrator: In just 30 years,

the sea level dropped by 55 feet,

and in places, the shoreline receded by almost 100 miles.

♪

Today, a third of the seabed is now exposed,

displaying a layer of dust,

salt, and the toxic residue of pesticides

just waiting to be swept up by the next strong breeze.

♪

Still to come...

A tropical paradise built in a danger zone

but finished off by something unexpected

and an island struck by immense force,

yet the culprit was not who the islanders feared.

♪

♪

Narrator: Coming up on

"the world's strangest disaster zones,"

a towering dam spookily empty,

a land of spewing mud that swallowed a town,

and a remote arctic community

bearing the brunt of a global threat.

♪

In the Caribbean is a retreat

that was built right in the firing line,

yet the destruction visible today

doesn't fit with what you might expect to see.

♪

Bell: The hills level out into coves,

and the beaches give way to forests.

There's a quiet, rugged beauty to this place.

Auerbach: Large houses nestle in the hillside,

and the views must be amazing for the people who live there.

It feels like an exclusive private-island resort.

Narrator: But abandoned structures litter this place,

and clues point to a trail of destruction.

Jerram: When you look all around,

there's a gray material on the ground

that seems to have silted up all of the buildings

and covered the whole area in a gray, Sandy material.

Narrator: The indiscriminate nature

of the damage wrought on this site

only adds to the mystery.

Jerram: There's a variety of different types of buildings,

and in them, you can see things like government documents

are lying around.

Bell: One is round with many rooms and beds inside.

Another is full of office equipment.

Another, you realize, is part of a shopping center.

There's bits of infrastructure lying absolutely everywhere.

Bell: Amongst all the decay,

you can see these buildings once had opulence.

Whoever lived here used to live the high life.

♪

Auerbach: It feels as though everyone left in a rush.

There's crockery on the tables.

Video tapes were left on the floor.

Important documents are left on desks.

What caused everyone to leave in such an incredible hurry?

♪

Narrator: Just 10 miles long and less than 7 miles wide,

this is the tiny island of Montserrat.

Local guide Norman cassell

is one of the few remaining residents.

He remembers the island's capital, Plymouth,

before disaster struck.

♪

Cassell: Plymouth was really a special place.

It could've made a hustling and bustling town,

but it was always still a bit of a relaxed atmosphere here.

Narrator: Plymouth now lies within

a perilous exclusion zone.

Auerbach: Getting into this area is not easy,

and it gives you some sense

of just how serious this disaster was

and how it hasn't ended.

It's still ongoing.

♪

Narrator: Wreckage of the capital's infrastructure

clutters this place.

♪

A lot of the businesspeople

stayed at the four fountain hotel

because of its location in Plymouth,

and so it was very popular with the business folk.

♪

Narrator: Holiday makers once generated

25% of this small nation's economy.

♪

This was just a wonderful place.

The rich and famous gathered here,

people from different part of the world,

for conferences, parties, weddings.

And now they're all gone.

Narrator: The gray ash that cloaks this site

is a telltale sign of what happened here.

This is the soufrière hills volcano.

It looms over Plymouth

and the whole of Southern Montserrat.

It had been dormant for more than 300 years.

Bell: The islanders had almost forgotten about it.

It had never occurred to them that it would stir at all,

let alone emit steam and ash.

Narrator: In 1995, the soufrière hills volcano burst into life.

Cassell: Well, it started out with us

hearing this sound like jet engines.

But never knew that it was the initial cracking

of the rocks and steam venting which created that sound

until there were a few bits of black ash dusting areas,

and it is after that that it was found out

that it was actually the start of volcanic activity.

Narrator: In volcanic terms,

the '95 eruption was relatively tame

because earth's fiery, molten magma

had not yet reached the surface.

Jerram: These are eruptions which occur

when magma meets groundwater and flashes that to steam,

and it can break open and break open the rocks

and make sort of big thunderclap noises.

Narrator: It also spewed out so much ash

that Plymouth was plunged into darkness.

Cassell: My goodness, at times,

it was like turning day into night.

You can put your hand in front of your face,

and you couldn't see your hand.

It was that dark.

Narrator: As the first layer of ash coated this ill-fated site,

scientists flew in from all over the world

to figure out what the volcano would do next.

Seismologist Roderick Stewart was one of them.

Stewart: When I first came here,

I was basically full of questions,

trying to find out what was going on and things,

and this is a type of volcano that can change very quickly

from looking very calm to being very dangerous.

Auerbach: A month after that first eruption,

the activity increased,

and scientists felt that they could no longer guarantee

the safety of the people in that part of the island.

Narrator: Plymouth lay in direct line of fire,

so residents were evacuated to the north of Montserrat,

out of the volcano's deadly range.

But many could not be persuaded to leave their homes behind.

Auerbach: Every day, the residents had to make

a difficult decision...

Stay and watch your business collapse,

or leave and save your life.

Bell: The islanders managed to live with the volcano

and despite the exclusion zone

returned to as much of a normal life as possible.

Everyone understood the risks and chose to live with them.

Narrator: While Plymouth had been covered in a layer of ash,

the volcano hadn't yet released any lava,

but scientists feared the worst was yet to come.

♪

Stewart: The lava that comes out of this volcano is so viscous

that it cannot form a lava flow, so it just comes out,

and it stays at the top of the volcano.

And it builds what we call a lava dome.

Narrator: The lava dome blocked the mouth of the volcano,

effectively a plug sitting on top of an unstoppable force.

The question was, how long could it stay in place?

♪

What covers this site now is not lava rock

but a solid river of mud, so what happened?

♪

♪

Narrator: On the island of Montserrat is a disaster zone

stretching for miles.

In the mid-1990s, the volcano that overlooks

the capital of Plymouth erupted without warning.

Lying in the line of fire,

most residents had already been evacuated,

but some to chose a play a deadly game of chance.

Some people started to defy orders

and go back to the strict exclusion zone.

Narrator: With a dome of solidified lava

blocking the volcano's cone,

pressurized magma had been building up

deep within its core.

♪

June 1997, the volcano finally unleashes its full fury.

It got to a point where it couldn't sustain itself.

It collapsed with a major eruption.

♪

Cassell: June 25th of 1997, when folks lost their lives,

those were some of the longest days of my life.

Narrator: Norman was acting airport manager at the time.

Cassell: It was almost like a continuous

set of pyroclastic flows, pulse after pulse,

and then there were some larger and larger ones,

and scientists sounded the siren for evacuating the airport.

♪

You've got an avalanche of pulverized lava and ash and gas.

They travel very, very fast,

and they basically just smash everything in their way.

So they are very, very, very dangerous.

You saw the clear line of demarcation

where that pyroclastic flow came down and struck these buildings,

but then the hospital and those other buildings

higher up on the slope were untouched,

so it's just amazing how different parts of Plymouth

was just devastated in a way,

and then others were just left standing.

♪

Narrator: Millions of tons of ash

were deposited across this vast site,

filling all the valleys and riverbeds.

For the residents who had returned to their homes

in these areas, the results were deadly.

Cassell: As it got later towards evening,

an elderly lady,

she walked all through those hills and came,

and she met us down below, here.

And she said, "you know, I'm the only one who made it."

There was some of the staff who had gone up there,

and never saw them again.

Sorry.

Narrator: Over the next 4 months,

the volcano exploded 75 times,

burying Plymouth in layer upon layer of superheated ash.

Cassell: At one point, there was a pyroclastic flow

which came and hit the parliament building at the back

and started a fire, which lit most of these buildings.

If you look below here, you can see some of the charred remains.

At that stage, when they saw Plymouth burning,

that was when folks knew, "that is it.

We are not going back to the Plymouth that we knew."

♪

Narrator: When the pyroclastic flows had stopped,

Montserrat's wet, tropical climate

delivered another blow.

Investigating this strange site reveals many structures

aren't buried in ash but mud set hard as concrete.

Stewart: When it rains, it forms mud flows,

which pick up all this material, and they've got immense power.

And they can bring boulders down.

They can bring trees down,

so Plymouth now is almost totally buried.

Cassell: Over the years, the low sections were filled,

and then it goes higher and higher,

and eventually, it covers completely

some of these buildings.

The city was now permanently evacuated

and left as a ghost town.

♪

Narrator: The soufrière hills volcano slumbers for now,

and away from this devastated disaster zone,

the north of Montserrat is beginning to thrive

out of the volcano's deadly reach.

Auerbach: The population is growing.

It's about 5,000 now. Tourism has picked up.

These are tough folks,

and they're determined to survive and thrive,

even if they have to have a monster for a neighbor.

♪

Narrator: Disaster zones leave wreckage and ruin,

but one off the cost of mainland China

provides a unique set of clues

to understanding mother nature's secrets.

In central Taiwan, in the town of jiji,

sits a structure covered with intricate sculptures.

Auerbach: You come across these highly decorative doors,

these ornate statues, and there's these dragons.

♪

Barratt: Looking over to this temple,

this wonderful holy building,

it all looks incredible, doesn't it?

But as you look further down, you realize it's collapsed.

It's all over the place.

Selwood: It's been completely destroyed.

There's rubble strewn everywhere.

Narrator: This is wuchang temple.

Its almost-intact roof sits lazily on the rubble below.

♪

Somara: When you look inside,

you see smashed concrete and leaning pillars,

almost like it's been pulverized from the inside.

Narrator: Yet, for some reason, this ruin has been preserved.

It has become a memorial.

Pilgrims visit, and legends swirl around the temple.

Narrator: What forces were at play here?

Were they purely natural,

or did something more sinister take its toll?

♪

Wuchang temple is not as ancient at it appears.

Built in 1923, this is isn't the only structure on the island

that displays terrible damage.

15 miles away in taichung city,

an even younger building lies in ruins.

♪

Selwood: You see a three-story building with floors

collapsed in on what look like rooms of varying sizes.

It actually looks like quite a functional building,

but as you really peer into it,

you begin to see what look like chairs and even blackboards.

Auerbach: An entrance gate collapsed.

A running track twisted and cracked,

and then it starts to dawn on you.

This place was a school.

You can only hope the children weren't inside

when this destruction took place.

Narrator: This is guangfu junior high school.

♪

Many in Taiwan remember the day

that brought such devastation to the school and temple.

For luo weizhen,

September 21, 1999, was a day that changed his life forever.

Interpreter: I got back home around 11.

I went for a shower and prepared to go to sleep.

Interpreter: Around 1:00 A.M.,

I suddenly felt a severe headache.

Then I felt like I was eating rocks.

I was buried alive.

I thought, "was this the communists?"

Historically, Taiwan has had a complex

and tense relationship with mainland China,

so at first, many people thought that China's communist party

had launched a military strike against the island.

♪

Narrator: What force decimated these buildings?

Were the communists of mainland China really to blame?

♪

♪

Narrator: Off the cost of southeast China,

on the island of Taiwan,

a catastrophic force shattered thousands of buildings

one September night in 1999.

When luo weizhen woke up buried in his ruined house,

he, like his neighbors, initially believed

Taiwan had been the victim of a strike by communist China.

However, as he clawed his way out of the rubble,

a different picture began to emerge.

Interpreter: I climbed out of the ruins

and saw everyone was crying.

Then, because there were aftershocks,

all of the houses kept shaking.

Narrator: Taiwan had been struck

not by a communist military strike

but by a major earthquake.

Selwood: Roads buckled,

Bridges collapsed, and landslides diverted rivers,

causing the formation of completely new lakes.

Narrator: Liquefaction occurred.

Soil became almost fluid,

leading to mud flows, landslides, and avalanches.

♪

Selwood: In and amongst these rolling hills

that almost look like they've been crumpled up like a carpet,

you can see these buildings

that seem like they've been sucked down into the earth.

Narrator: As many as 300,000 people were made homeless.

2,500 people were killed.

The second deadliest earthquake in recorded taiwanese history,

it exposed nationwide shortcomings

in the building and construction industry.

Barratt: Taiwan's construction industry

really took off in the 1990s.

It was a massive boom in building.

What we're looking at here is what happens

when design codes and factors of safety...

They're pared down to the minimum.

Narrator: Lessons had to be learned.

Interpreter: Actually, the 921 earthquake is a collective pain

shared in Taiwan.

Even if we try to forget it, it's a lesson...

A lesson in history.

We hope our government will enforce education

and raise awareness about natural disasters,

how to take preventative measures and adapt.

Auerbach: Incredibly, Taiwan has between

20,000 and 30,000 earthquakes annually.

Only 20 to 30 of these are strong enough

for people to actually feel, but it really highlights

the need to prepare for future generations

so they don't suffer in these events.

Narrator: And the 921 earthquake, as it became known,

offered a great opportunity to do exactly that.

In 1996, a vast network of detectors had been installed

across the country, which collected huge amounts of data.

♪

Interpreter: It was the first earthquake in history

to be recorded in such precise detail.

Therefore, the earthquake was crucial

in informing the country about earthquakes

and preventative measures.

It brought about huge change.

Narrator: Chloe huang works as a guide at this battered school,

now preserved as a memorial.

Interpreter: The classroom was built right on the fault line,

and this road was built along the fault line.

As you can see, the impact these buildings suffered

was absolutely huge.

Narrator: But the school offers something else.

Something totally unique.

Interpreter: This is one of the fault lines in chelung.

It strikes past the playground of the school.

You can see here there used to be a running track,

but the track here has been lifted up.

Narrator: As the two plates along this boundary pulled apart

and lifted up, the school was torn in half.

This was the first time an earthquake fault line

could be seen and analyzed in such detail.

Furthermore, the material of the track

protects the exposed fault line from weathering and erosion.

This was a huge moment in the research of seismology

and the development of earthquake-proof engineering

and construction.

Barratt: So, out of this massive disaster

came a great civil-engineering challenge...

How do we keep people safe in the future?

Narrator: It was the dawn of a new era.

Although the unstoppable forces of nature

had taken a devastating toll,

Taiwan would choose to tackle them head-on.

♪

Narrator: In 1999, Taiwan was struck by a deadly earthquake.

Wreckage and destruction were accompanied

by a new era in research and civil engineering.

The pièce de résistance was this.

Auerbach: Taipei 101 opened in 2004,

and it was a real statement to the world.

But to an extent,

it was also thumbing its nose at mother nature, saying,

"we can take whatever you've got to throw at us,"

and they even built some of the stories in the pagoda style.

We're talking about what was the highest skyscraper

in the world at the time.

It still represents a marvel of cutting-edge design.

It has isolators, dampers, and a shock absorber

that sits between the 88th and 92nd floor.

So, when the building sways, these dampers absorb

all of that earthquake energy and reduce vibration.

Narrator: In jiji, the wuchang temple

sits shattered yet preserved.

In common with Taipei 101, its design was inspired

by the ancient wooden pagoda-like structures

found across the region.

Yet, as with many of Taiwan's buildings,

they hadn't accounted for the full potential

of earth's tectonic forces.

When the 921 earthquake struck,

its modern concrete-and-steel construction

collapsed into the dust.

Today, many still bear the scars of that infamous day.

♪

Interpreter: I haven't slept well for 20 years.

The aftershocks remain.

They remain in our hearts.

Narrator: And like all taiwanese people, he's ready for the next warning.

Auerbach: When the government sensors pick up an earthquake,

a message is instantly sent to everyone's phone in the system.

It tells them where the epicenter is,

and it tells them the magnitude of the quake

so they've got time to prepare,

so it's a very sophisticated government warning system,

and it's a culture that is preparing itself for the worst.

♪

Narrator: In the mountains of northern Italy,

just 60 miles from venice, is a confounding site.

♪

Towering above the town of longarone,

one of the world's tallest dams

appears to be holding back nothing but empty space.

What freak occurrence explains this peculiar situation?

In the aftermath of world war ii,

Italy turned to hydroelectricity

to re-energize its shattered industries.

Jerram: Hydroelectric power is incredibly attractive

in a mountainous region

because if you can have a tight valley,

and you can trap water high up,

you've suddenly got the ability for that water to move downhill

very quickly and generate free electricity.

Narrator: Engineers constructed the vajont dam, and in 1960,

the 3-mile-long reservoir behind it was filled with water.

Throughout the construction of the vajont dam,

there were repeated warnings both from locals

and expert geologists that the mountain behind the dam

was extremely unstable.

Jerram: When you're filling the dam up with water,

it's a lot of weight.

A lot of pressure is being exerted

on the sides of the valley.

Narrator: On October 9, 1963,

the prophets of doom were vindicated.

Over 9 billion cubic feet of rock

broke away from the mountainside

and hurtled into the reservoir below.

It wasn't just a mass of earth

that slid away into the reservoir.

It was the ferocious speed at which it came...

45 seconds for effectively half of the mountainside

to drop into the water.

Narrator: The landslide pushed a Tsunami of water over the dam

and down the gorge towards longarone.

Forced down such a tight gorge, it displaced all of that air,

and it was almost like a shock wave of air

hit the village directly before the water did

and started destroying some of the buildings.

Next minute, a wall of water hits you.

It's got rocks in it. It's got trees in it.

It is like liquid sandpaper, and it just wipes the village clean.

Narrator: The town was obliterated

and nearly 2,000 people killed.

Bell: The tragic irony of this story

is that whilst the villages below the dam

were completely destroyed by the onrush of water,

the dam itself remained completely intact.

♪

Narrator: Today, the vajont dam remains a testament to the dangers

of underestimating the forces of nature.

Bell: From an engineering perspective,

the vajont dam should have become one

of the most impressive dams in history.

Instead, it's become one of the most infamous.

Narrator: Still to come, an eerie town in Argentina

covered in a mysterious white powder...

An American ghost town where the ground heaves and bubbles...

And a notorious Japanese site

that formed part of a disastrous chain of events.

♪

Narrator: On "the world's strangest disaster zones,"

a pennsylvanian community that vanished,

a group of Indonesian settlements suffocated by mud,

and an arctic town feeling the heat of an invisible threat.

While some disaster zones are cleaned up quickly,

others leave a terrifying legacy.

In Japan is a confusing picture of deserted buildings

and security cordons.

Barratt: It's apparent that once upon a time,

this was a bustling, thriving landscape

full of homes, buildings, factories,

but now it's just torn apart, destroyed.

Meigs: There's no question this entire landscape

was subjected to an overwhelming force.

The whole area looks like some kind of a giant child

just tossed it helter-skelter.

Narrator: But just a few miles away,

an altogether different scene seems to be playing out.

Somara: There's something not quite right about this town.

It feels like a zombie movie or like a ghost town.

Barratt: It's on lockdown. You can't get anywhere near it.

There's security fences.

You are not allowed in this zone.

It's a no-go area.

What's happened in this area is so confusing,

because on the one hand,

there's absolute devastation and destruction,

and on the other hand,

things seem perfectly normal and fine,

yet no one is there.

The big question for me is, how are those two things linked?

♪

Narrator: In the town of tomioka,

the local high school now sits vacant and locked up.

Little seems to have changed

since it was last filled with students.

Interpreter: This is the main school building.

There were three classes per grade.

In total, nine classes were studying here.

Students would play soccer and then baseball around the back.

They were training hard.

Narrator: Toshiko aoki is a former principal of this school.

Having left a few years before disaster struck,

she still recalls the promise of this place on the sports field.

Interpreter: Golf, badminton, soccer...

These were the three sports the school was focusing on

with the aim of producing athletes

that would be successful internationally.

The school program was therefore designed around this goal.

♪

Narrator: But in 2011, those ambitious plans for the future

were suddenly put on hold,

and the buildings have remained empty ever since.

Hanging on the wall is a stark reminder

of the exact moment tragedy stuck this place.

Interpreter: Look.

This clock on the school building, it stopped at 2:46.

The time on the clock hasn't changed since march 11, 2011.

Narrator: On that day at 2:46 P.M.,

a magnitude-9 earthquake

struck the east coast of Japan.

Meigs: This was one of the most intense earthquakes

ever recorded.

It lasted for 3 minutes.

Usually, earthquakes just last for a few seconds.

Somara: The earthquake was so powerful

that it supposedly moved

the entire country of Japan east by 8 feet.

I can't even fathom that.

Narrator: But while the earthquake caused an evacuation here,

it wasn't the reason no one was allowed back.

Meigs: Well, here's what's amazing about the earthquake itself,

is, it didn't do as much damage as you'd expect.

Japan leads the world in earthquake preparedness,

and they really plan and build accordingly,

so when this earthquake hit,

it didn't knock down lots of buildings

the way it might have in other parts of the world.

Narrator: The epicenter of the earthquake was 80 miles

to the east in the pacific ocean,

and that positioning meant a second devastating event

was set in motion.

Barratt: When an earthquake happens and its epicenter is at sea,

the land shifts,

and, of course, it causes the water above to move.

Where is that going to go?

Narrator: The low-lying lands near the coast

were now in the firing line

for the next stage of this catastrophe...

A Tsunami that, at its fastest,

was traveling 500 miles per hour.

Even though they have very high seawalls along this coast,

these waves were high enough to crest those walls

and flood the coastal plain.

Barratt: When you see the pictures of the water

tearing through that landscape,

tearing through people's homes and lives,

it doesn't matter whether you live 100 miles away,

or you're on the other side of the globe.

On a very human scale, you can actually imagine

how terrifying that would be.

Narrator: In the end, the Tsunami

reached as far as 6 miles inland,

affecting around 200 square miles of the east coast.

Meigs: The Tsunami was devastating.

It wiped out the coastal towns, it tore up the infrastructure,

and some 19,000 people were killed or missing.

Barratt: I trained as a civil engineer,

and I'm really aware of how,

you know, we build our buildings

and our structures to withstand failure,

but in the face of a natural event like that,

how can we possibly design to take that into account?

It's phenomenal the amount of power that nature has.

Narrator: Nearby, new efforts to shore up the coastal defenses

are evident,

but while these areas are slowly being reclaimed,

other sites remain off-limits.

Somara: So, you've got some areas that it's clear

there was devastation and destruction,

but there are other areas that are just abandoned

but look completely normal.

There's just no one there, and the only people you can see

are security guards.

Barratt: The fact that there's still security here and guards

patrolling the area

means that there's still some kind of threat.

♪

♪

Narrator: On march 11, 2011, a series of disastrous events

unfolding on the east coast of Japan

threw the region into turmoil,

but the situation was about to become even worse.

Meigs: This region got hit really with a triple disaster...

First the earthquake, then the Tsunami,

but, third, the Tsunami knocked out

the local nuclear power plant.

Woman: The nuclear plant momentarily vanished

behind a cloud of white smoke Saturday.

It's not clear how much radiation

is leaking from the plant.

Meigs: And when those nuclear reactors melted down,

that created a release of radioactivity

that had an enormous impact on the region.

Somara: The government declared a nuclear emergency,

and the evacuation order was announced.

Narrator: Initially, only those

around a mile away from the plant were affected,

but soon tomioka and its high school

would be swallowed up

by the rapidly expanding restricted area.

Interpreter: For people at the time, the earthquake was strong,

but the Tsunami only really affected the area by the sea.

So the next morning, on march 12th,

everyone was going to go home and tidy up,

but then there was an instruction

to leave the city immediately.

There was absolutely no time to prepare.

People just had to get in their cars and leave.

♪

Narrator: By the end of that second day,

the evacuation zone had stretched

to a radius of around 12 1/2 miles from the plant,

but as the feared spread of radiation continued,

other areas up to 34 miles away were also ordered to empty.

In total, nearly 200,000 people were removed from their homes.

Interpreter: In reality,

from the moment we left the city on march 12th

until the 31st of march 6 years later,

the residents of tomioka weren't allowed back home.

Narrator: Cutting through what remains of the off-limits zone today

is route 6.

Barratt: Route 6 has to be the weirdest road trip

you could ever undertake.

You're not allowed to go too many times in 1 day,

and you're not allowed to stop anywhere along

that particular part of the route.

Somara: The radiation levels are just too high,

so you're told to keep your windows up

and just keep on going.

Interpreter: There are houses inside,

but, of course, nobody lives there.

There are stores around here,

but they've been left completely untouched,

the same as they were 8 or 9 years ago.

Narrator: In recent years,

the most expensive nuclear cleanup operation in history

has been under way,

and gradually, more and more areas are being reopened.

Somara: Contaminated topsoil has had to be removed

in order to stop the spread,

and you can see across the region large mounds

full of this soil.

They're trying to contain it.

Barratt: Mankind doesn't stand still after a disaster,

and although it's difficult and expensive to clean up,

that's what's happening,

and gradually, more and more areas

are opening back up with a clean bill of health.

Interpreter: The reason there are so many trucks

is because they are carrying

decontaminated things and building materials.

Either way, it's mainly work vehicles in this area.

If the radiation level goes down,

the evacuation order in this area

will gradually be canceled,

but at the moment, this area is still a no-go zone.

♪

Narrator: The Tsunami claimed thousands of lives,

but the fallout from the power plant

has left behind a controversial legacy.

Interpreter: The greatest damage from the nuclear accident

is not the spread of radiation

or the increase in level of radiation,

but the people's lives that have been drastically altered.

I think that what is really polluted is not the air,

but the soul of the people.

Meigs: The results of this accident are so paradoxical.

We think of it as a devastating nuclear release,

but the total amounts of radiation were not large enough,

according to the world health organization

and others who've studied it, to cause mass fatalities

or potentially any fatalities.

But here's the big irony.

In a follow-up study, they found out that more

than 1,600 people who were evacuated died

partly from the stress of the evacuation.

Narrator: Many of those people were elderly or suffering

from medical conditions, and it's for similar individuals

that toshiko is now doing her part

helping as an advisor for the local support center.

Interpreter: Since the evacuation order was partially canceled,

I moved my residency documentation back.

I'm living in tomioka city now and doing this job,

so for the people of tomioka and for me,

the disaster changed our lives.

♪

Narrator: Still to come, towns on opposite sides of the planet

succumb to unexpected subterranean forces...

And a seemingly isolated disaster

that has the potential to impact the entire planet.

♪

♪

Narrator: Strange disaster zones strewn across our planet.

Settling some of these locations was tempting fate.

Others are found in the most unlikely of places.

♪

One such peculiar site

is in Columbia county, Pennsylvania,

where a town appears to have been wiped off the map.

♪

In a way, it's a ghost town without the town.

This shot was taken in October of 1983

looking up toward the top of town,

and you can see there was an entire town

there that's now gone.

Narrator: A freeway with no cars.

Foundations, yet no houses.

A police station but no police force.

It's the victim of something that most of us

couldn't believe could happen.

Narrator: Until the 1970s,

centralia was an ordinary American town,

but then people started reporting strange incidents...

Dizzying fumes, steaming cracks in the ground,

and a local boy narrowly survived

falling into a sinkhole.

You would see steam coming out of this gigantic highway crack.

People wondered what was causing this.

They may have thought it was some kind of volcano

down there maybe.

Narrator: In fact, the ground beneath their feet was on fire,

and it's still burning today.

So, this is a borehole, and if we unscrew this cap,

we're going to see what the fire is like underneath.

♪

Ooh, nice and hot.

I can smell the distinctive kind of sulfur-ish smell of the fire.

Narrator: Centralia sits on a vast network

of abandoned coal mines.

It's thought a landfill fire found its way

into this subterranean labyrinth

and began spreading beneath people's homes.

Dekok: There were citizen groups in centralia saying,

"hey, you got to get us out of here,"

but they still took almost 2 years

to come up with a solution.

Narrator: In 1984, the population of centralia

was relocated,

and the houses demolished.

Today, there is little evidence the community of centralia

ever existed, but one question remains.

Dekok: So, how long could it burn?

I've heard figures like 200 years, 250 years,

but in the end, nobody really knows.

It'll go until it stops burning, runs out of fuel,

runs out of air.

Neither of those are likely to happen anytime soon.

Narrator: From a subterranean inferno in America,

to a perplexing disaster on the Indonesian island of java.

One where the cause is known.

The other where rumor and intrigue envelop the site.

Jerram: There's homes.

There's factories.

There's religious shrines.

But there's nobody around.

It really looks a very strange environment.

There are roads, but they stop at this strange bank

that just seems to cut everything off.

Meigs: It's got warning signs.

It's not clear what's on the other side,

but clearly something did happen here

that has profoundly affected this whole area.

Narrator: Past this mysterious barrier,

further questions are raised.

Meigs: So, if you can peek over the top,

you see the strangest thing...

A vast lake of mud,

and some parts are still wet and running and bubbling,

and other parts have dried and cracked in the sun.

Selwood: The surface area of the mud is absolutely vast.

This goes on as far as the eye can see.

It's mind-bendingly large.

And the very unnerving thing that creeps up on you

as you're looking at it is a sense of questioning,

"is this still live?

Is this finished, or is there still yet more to come?"

Closer inspection of this muddy surface,

you can actually see things on it.

You see structures.

It's clear that there was something there before,

and the mud is now completely draped over everything.

So, how did this happen?

Was this a natural disaster?

Did this happen in a man-made way?

♪

Narrator: Turns out, in this case, it could be both,

but with the site submerged in suffocating mud,

scientists would struggle to prove it.

♪

♪

Narrator: Back in 2006,

this was the flourishing rural district of porong.

Muawanah once lived here.

Interpreter: This used to be my village...

Jatirejo village.

It used to be a prosperous village,

but now all you can see is the mudflow.

We used to live together as a family,

but now our relatives are scattered everywhere.

Narrator: This is the lumpur sidoarjo mudflow, aka lusi.

The relics of homesteads, mosques, and infrastructure

fester around the edge of this enormous mud lake.

This was a buzzing, thriving agricultural area.

Around 60,000 people.

There were fields. There was work to be done.

It was a fertile area.

Narrator: This deadly deluge started without warning

on may 29, 2006.

Today, the lusi mudflow coats nearly 6 square miles of porong,

and it's still growing.

Interpreter: People were running for their lives.

They were shouting, "mudflow. Mudflow. Mudflow."

And then, all of a sudden, it got even bigger.

Narrator: The mudflow buried 16 villages,

as well as hundreds of paddy fields,

commercial fish ponds, and 24 factories.

Interpreter: Here, down here, was where the houses,

the cemetery, the school, and the mosque used to be.

Now everything is buried by the mud.

Narrator: Muawanah and thousands more porong residents

have been evacuated ever since.

The impact of all of this mud was utter carnage.

Some 60,000 people were displaced,

their homes just gone, the area unlivable.

A gas pipeline was severed,

resulting in an explosion that killed 13 people.

What had been a very functional agricultural area

was now a complete war zone.

Jerram: Imagine these people just happily

going along with their lives,

the hustle and bustle of everyday living,

but little did they know that there was something

going on underground

that was going to change their lives instantly.

Interpreter: I still remember that day.

I was running with my children.

And now I just don't know.

I'm worried about my children's future.

Will I be able to put food on the table?

Will I ever get a decent job now?

That's what I keep thinking about.

I don't know.

I'm just fighting for the children.

Narrator: At first, the cause of this baffling phenomenon

was a mystery.

Jerram: Something caused an explosion of mud out of the ground.

It was jetting up more than 10 meters high into the sky,

and it's been measured to have been erupting

180,000 cubic meters of muddy material every day.

Narrator: Now porong lies buried under 130 feet of mud.

Economically, it's been incredibly destructive.

It's estimated that it's cost about $3 billion

in terms of lost infrastructure.

And all the efforts to contain this mud lake have failed.

♪

Interpreter: So, this is the mud.

When it's half dry, you can see all the cracks.

But when it's fully dry, it's soft like desert sand.

The mud is salty.

The salt content is very high.

Whoa. Yes.

That's salty. Very salty.

This place used to be full of trees,

but now it's like the desert.

Vegetation can't grow here anymore.

Meigs: The mud that's leaking out

is not like the mud in your backyard.

It's full of various heavy metals,

and gas is coming up with it... Carbon dioxide and methane,

which is also very unhealthy for people.

So it's really an environmental catastrophe for the region.

Narrator: There's little sign as to where all this noxious mud

is coming from.

So why did this catastrophic mudflow start so abruptly?

Jerram: What's clearly happened here is something extraordinary.

People don't just build buildings in and around places

where mud's going to spew out of the land.

Narrator: The mud that drowns this site is bubbling hot...

A clue to where it's coming from.

The complex, ever-shifting tectonics

below the 17,000 islands of Indonesia

mean this archipelago is underlain by a violent geology.

Jerram: Indonesia's a lively place geologically.

There's earthquakes. There's volcanoes.

But people have been living there for thousands of years.

This area itself is not necessarily

directly affected by volcanoes.

Narrator: But below porong,

geothermal heat is pushing underground water,

mixed with mud, up to the surface,

where it erupts as mud volcano.

But the amount of mud coming out of the lusi mud volcano

confounded experts

because it could only come from one place.

Jerram: The lusi mud volcano is tapping

into a much larger geological phenomenon.

Narrator: The gases emitted with the lusi mudflow link it

to a large active volcano system

10 miles away that produces an endless supply of mud

that powers through a system of natural tunnels.

But this still doesn't explain what caused the lusi mudflow

to suddenly start here.

Jerram: There's the real question as to whether this is entirely

a natural phenomenon, a natural disaster,

or is there something else that's gone on,

something maybe from a human perspective

that's helped to trigger this?

Narrator: The finger of suspicion pointed to an oil

and gas exploration company drilling in porong.

The process of drilling for natural gas

is really very tricky.

When you drill down into the earth,

and you go through layers of rock

that keep everything sealed in,

you're punching a hole through that rock,

and the gas wants to squirt up out of that hole,

and anything that's mixed with the gas... water, oil,

muck, mud... that will come squirting up, as well.

The gas itself is under huge pressure.

It's like opening a soda bottle, you know,

and the way it all comes foaming out.

Narrator: Some claim that in 2006,

below the district of porong,

the unthinkable happened.

Meigs: A company drilling an exploratory well for natural gas

basically bungled the drilling operation,

and that allowed pressurized water and mud

to flow up to the surface from deep underground.

Narrator: The theory is that this drilling,

just 200 yards from the lusi mud eruption,

fractured an old fault system that links

porong to the active volcano.

Now there is no way to stop the deadly flow of mud.

But the drilling company pointed to yet another cause.

Meigs: An earthquake a couple of hundred miles away 2 days before

might have opened up a fault

or somehow set off this flow of mud.

Narrator: The drilling company claim the earthquake

created the pressure to reactivate the fault system.

Many experts dispute this possibility,

and those whose homes lie buried in mud are in no doubt.

♪

Interpreter: Why did they have to do the drilling in a residential area?

Couldn't they have done it somewhere else...

In the forest or something, where there are no houses?

Narrator: Muawanah and her neighbors have received

a small amount of compensation from the drilling company.

Interpreter: They gave us 20%, and then they said, at first,

that they were going to pay the remaining 80% in cash,

but they didn't.

Narrator: Today, the horrors of the recent past

remain in plain view,

with the flow of mud shooting from the depths

of the earth continuing relentlessly.

Selwood: The landscape has been fundamentally

and radically altered,

but, actually, at heart, this is a tragic human story.

There are people still fighting for compensation.

Narrator: Still to come...

A south American disaster zone

covered in a strange white substance

that holds the key to what happened here...

And scientists uncover an even-greater threat

when studying an arctic tragedy.

♪

♪

Narrator: The fate of the world's strangest disaster zones

is not always determined in an instant.

Some of the most malevolent forces creep up slowly

and have devastating consequences.

♪

One such disaster zone sits in the heartlands of Argentina,

where the remains of a town are set within a tortured landscape.

Clinging to every surface is a white substance

that paints this place a bleak monochrome hue.

And while there appears to be little evidence

of what caused such destruction,

it is that bleached layer that holds the answers.

♪

While most disaster zones lie deserted, this one does not.

Interpreter: I'm Pablo novak,

the only resident left in the ruins.

I stayed, and I was sure someone would come back eventually.

It used to be so famous.

So many people used to come here from all over.

Narrator: These are the ruins of villa epecuén.

For much of the 20th century,

this was a luxurious lakeside retreat.

Interpreter: This was started as the recreo almaza...

A dance hall.

And because the room was small and lots of people came,

they also used it for a theater,

with theater companies coming from Buenos Aires.

Narrator: The town's main attraction, however,

lay beside it...

The mineral- and salt-rich lake.

Famed for its supposed healing powers,

no one foresaw the true destructive potential it bore.

In 1985, an unprecedented period of rainfall began,

and soon the town's flood defenses were overcome.

Gough: The floodwaters gradually, slowly consumed the entire town.

And by 1993, it was submerged under 30 feet of water,

effectively becoming a modern-day Atlantis.

Narrator: In the passing decades, the water has since receded,

leaving behind the evidence of what occurred.

Interpreter: Everything that you can see now

hadn't been seen for 20 years.

Gough: And the twist is, this highly salined water

left the town covered in a thick layer of salt,

giving it this unique appearance.

Narrator: For Pablo, the town's last resident,

the battle to remain continues.

Interpreter: As long as I can walk,

talk, and have a good memory, I will stay here.

♪

Narrator: From tectonic violence to silent killers,

mystifying natural events and man-made calamities,

humans have a habit of placing themselves in the firing line.

The final site stands on the icy shores of Svalbard,

where immediate peril looms large,

but the cause of that danger threatens the entire planet.

♪

Bell: Svalbard feels like it's on the edge of the earth.

It is a brutal landscape,

cold, barren, and fierce.

Jerram: In winter, the place is completely covered with snow

and in darkness,

and in summer, you get 24 hours' daylight,

and so it's a real area of extremes.

Auerbach: The town itself is the world's northernmost settlement

of 1,000 people or more.

You can't live any farther north than this.

Narrator: As the seasons change and the snow melts,

crumbling ruins appear on the mountainside

above the main town,

but these old wrecks aren't the only deserted structures here.

Meigs: Most of the town seems to be doing fine, and it's populated,

but then you have these pockets that are abandoned.

Auerbach: We're used to seeing old abandoned buildings

on the brink of collapse, but these buildings look fine.

Bell: It looks like you could move in.

It just doesn't seem to make sense.

That's because the real issue is hidden completely from view.

Narrator: A first clue to what's happening here

may be found in those collapsing ruins above.

Bell: On the edge of town are these old industrial-looking features,

just standing there, forlorn and forgotten.

The way these buildings have fallen into this condition

makes you wonder if the same fate awaits

those modern buildings in town.

Narrator: A deadly threat hovers over this town,

and it could yet have far-reaching consequences.

Meigs: The issues that are facing this town are quite serious.

In fact, potentially deadly.

Already, two lives have been lost.

Bell: What's happening here is terrifying.

What we're seeing here is the beginnings of something

that could soon be beyond our control,

and the destructive forces unleashed could be catastrophic.

♪

Narrator: A distant and perilous place

to visit in the 19th century,

over 100 years ago, this land held little value for most.

Meigs: Originally, the only people who would go to this

far-northern collection of islands

were whalers and people hunting seals.

But in 1906, an American named John longyear came here

looking for coal.

Jerram: Early 20th century, late 19th century,

the world is going through changes

which are driven by coal.

So a resource such as coal found in an area like this

is potentially very, very valuable.

Narrator: The town of longyeargood byen

grew on the back of the coal industry.

But in the modern world,

the luster of coal has diminished,

and structures like these have paid the price.

Jerram: More recently, coal has become

sort of more of a dirty word

than something people want,

and so the actual scaling back of coal mining globally

has happened, but it's also happened in Svalbard.

Narrator: A slump in the market

could mean less demand for housing in the town,

but there is more to this story than first meets the eye.

The apartments that have been abandoned...

That is not related to the decline of coal.

There's a completely different problem there.

Bell: These people have been forced out

because of a deadly threat to those buildings.

With all that mining in the area over the years,

you've got to wonder if that's created an issue.

Has it destabilized the land somehow?

♪

Narrator: What danger lurks here?

Why have virtually brand-new buildings

been abandoned to the arctic tundra?

♪

Narrator: In the northernmost town in the world

sits a group of condemned buildings

deemed unsafe to live in by the local authorities.

Meigs: There's nothing wrong with the building.

It's structurally sound.

The problem is the location.

Something has changed that makes it more dangerous.

Lorensen: It's a terrible feeling

to see all these empty buildings

standing around, and nobody can use them.

Nobody lives up here anymore.

Narrator: Niels lorensen lived in a similar apartment near here

until recently.

And he's seen more and more places become off-limits

to residents.

Lorensen: There are red zones, a lot of places in this area,

and a lot of people are affected by these red zones,

and it cost the community and people a lot of money.

We have a kindergarten.

Both my kids went there.

And that kindergarten is closed now.

It's a sad, sad story.

Narrator: During the summer months,

those apartments are not at risk.

But when winter comes, the threat level rises...

as niels experienced firsthand just a few years ago.

Lorensen: I was just cleaning my house,

and suddenly there was a big bang in the house,

and straightaway I understood that this was an avalanche

and it was big.

It was enormous.

It had a lot of speed.

I saw in my daughter's bedroom,

and I could see straight out her wall

because of the building has broke apart.

Narrator: Niels' apartment can be seen in aerial footage

taken before the avalanche struck.

But it wasn't the first victim.

Other buildings have also been destroyed in recent years.

In 2015, a massive, sudden avalanche hit the town.

Imagine a huge sheet of ice, snow, and stone

crashing into these houses with such force

that it literally lifted them up

and deposited them across the street.

Narrator: It soon emerged that eight people had been injured

and two people had been killed.

Lorensen: Nobody believed that it could be so large avalanche

that it could hit the houses and kill people,

and I think nobody thought that that could happen.

Narrator: While avalanche barriers stand above the town today,

for those hollowed-out apartments,

the risks are just too great.

Bell: The danger that those other apartments

faced in recent years...

This place now faces that same threat.

Come winter, they'll be right in the firing line,

and the order has come down to completely evacuate

and demolish this place.

Narrator: Today, it's not only those apartments

that lie inside this red zone.

These structures weren't built in a dangerous location.

The location has become dangerous.

So, what caused this?

Standing solemnly on the outskirts of the town

are the collapsing structures

that hold the clues to the issue at hand,

and there's a startling conclusion being drawn.

Meigs: The irony here is that the very industry

that built this community also endangers it,

and that's the process of mining and burning coal,

which releases so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere

that, ultimately, it starts to warm the planet.

Narrator: At the local university,

glaciologist Heidi sevestre

has been studying the changes affecting Svalbard.

The black curve is the changes in temperatures

globally for the past 120 years, and the orange curve

is the changes in temperatures in Svalbard.

When we look what's happening for the past 2 or 3 decades,

there, the temperatures really diverge,

and we see the temperatures in Svalbard increase

twice as fast as the rest of the world.

Bell: Since 1971, on average,

temperatures here have risen by 4 degrees celsius.

This is the fastest-warming place on earth.

Jerram: It's like an exaggerated version

of global warming, if you will.

But it has deadly consequences.

And it's really changing the local environment,

and the people living there have to dramatically change

their lifestyles to cope with it.

Narrator: For the homes that have been lost already

and for those now in the firing line,

this drastic temperature change

has made large avalanches a very real threat.

This kind of avalanche isn't uncommon,

but it's not supposed to happen in the high arctic

in a super-cold environment.

It was made possible by this unprecedented warmth.

Sevestre: Today, we can absolutely draw a link between climate change

and the 2015 avalanche.

And, unfortunately, our predictions define

that there will be more and more events like this in the future.

Narrator: Today, avalanches are not the only consequence

of climate change Svalbard faces.

Its glaciers are rapidly receding,

and the archipelago's seas no longer freeze in winter.

The location may be remote,

but these alarming events are a warning to us all.

Arctic ranges like this are kind of like the canary

in the coal mine.

Whatever is happening to the whole planet

is going to happen faster here

because the weather there is so extreme in the first place.

Auerbach: It's human nature not to appreciate the scale of danger

until it's right in front of us,

until the catastrophe is actually happening.

And if you wait until the snow and ice is sliding down

the mountain towards you, it's already too late.

♪