Disaster Area
253 episodes - English - Latest episode: 28 days ago - ★★★★ - 723 ratingsA podcast about disasters throughout history - what caused them, how people survived, and how we've responded to keep those disasters from happening again.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Episode 147: The Wellington avalanche
October 16, 2020 05:30 - 1 hour - 96.6 MBYou're stuck inside, unable to leave where you are and growing more frustrated by the day. But it's not quarantine, it's 1910 in the Cascade mountains, and you're stuck in a train that's been snowed in beside a small Washington town that's little more than a speck on the map. And as the snow falls for the sixth day in a row, the steep hillside above you, packed with heavy snow, silently threatens to fall. All it needs is one tiny push for disaster to strike.
Episode 146: The 1992 Los Angeles riots
October 01, 2020 03:35 - 1 hour - 101 MBThe city didn't have to burn. Looters didn't have to break windows and rob businesses of everything that wasn't tied down. People didn't have to die. But in certain circumstances, when there is no justice, there will be no peace.
Episode 145: The Brescia explosion
September 01, 2020 04:14 - 52 minutes - 57.8 MBPlease don't store all of your explosives in one place. Particularly if there are thunderstorms in the weather forecast.
Episode 144: The fire on the General Slocum
August 31, 2020 18:59 - 1 hour - 107 MBThe congregation of St. Mark's Lutheran church in New York City's Little Germany had been waiting for the Sunday school picnic excursion all year. Mothers dressed their kids in their best clothes and packed up good food in baskets to bring with them on the trip up the East River and out to Long Island. On June 15th, 1904, thirteen hundred people would be aboard the General Slocum as it left the pier near the Williamsburg Bridge. Within two hours, over a thousand of them would be dead.
Episode 143: TWA Flight 800
August 24, 2020 11:37 - 1 hour - 82.9 MBYou're at a midsummer evening party at a friend's beach house, enjoying a cocktail or two as the sun sets, when a loud noise draw everyone's gaze to the skies above the ocean. Something has exploded up above - a plane, raining down in fiery pieces on the water below. The sight is already terrifying enough until the whispers start. Did anyone else see something arcing up toward the plane before it blew up?
Episode 142: The sinking of the Marchioness
July 31, 2020 19:44 - 1 hour - 94.7 MBIt was just supposed a late-night birthday party on the Thames - a little drinking, a little dancing, and a lot of fun with all their friends. But in the early morning hours of August 20th, 1989, the 131 people onboard the pleasure boat Marchioness found themselves at the mercy of a ship three times her size.
Episode 141: The eruption of Mount Pelee
July 19, 2020 20:30 - 1 hour - 102 MBIt spewed smoke and ash that destroyed crops and killed livestock, and yet they stayed. It caused earthquakes that damaged buildings and mudslide which killed hundreds, and yet they stayed. It sent insects and venomous snakes fleeing down into the town, and yet the people of Saint Pierre on the island of Martinique - or more specifically, some of their political leaders - refused to listen to the wordless threats issued by Mount Pelee.
Episode 140: The 1918 influenza epidemic
July 01, 2020 05:25 - 1 hour - 115 MBIt came out of nowhere, flowing in waves throughout the world during a time of great international upheaval. Some did what they could to fight it. Some were struck down, and tragically lost so quickly it was hard to believe they were gone. Some were careless about the whole thing, refusing to wear masks or continuing to gather together for parades and parties. But in the end, what mattered was the virus, and the damage it wrecked.
Episode 139: The Elaine massacre
June 19, 2020 22:18 - 1 hour - 82.7 MBThe gathering was just a union meeting, the Black sharecroppers of Phillips County, Arkansas, banding together and trying to get a fair pay for their work in the cotton fields. But when the night ended in bloodshed, the county's white citizens thought it was something more. Then the posse formed, and all Hell broke loose.
Episode 138: The sinking of the Estonia
May 16, 2020 05:37 - 1 hour - 93.3 MBIt should have just have been a rough-and-tumble overnight ride across the sea, enjoying a good beer or a meal as the waves crashed outside. But then, early in the morning of September 28th, 1994, a loud noise rattled through the ferry Estonia, and the countdown to the ship's quick death began.
Episode 137: The story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi
April 24, 2020 06:27 - 54 minutes - 61.6 MBAll of us are in the middle of trying to survive a disaster. Tsutomu Yamaguchi managed to do so twice in one week.
Episode 136: The story of Mauro Prosperi
April 14, 2020 11:23 - 1 hour - 82.3 MBIt all started when the sandstorm kicked up. Hours later when the winds died down, Marathon des Sables entrant Mauro Prosperi found himself alone in the Moroccan desert, unable to locate the rest of the runners. Nine days later, surprising everyone, he would be found alive.
Episode 135: The Royal National Lifeboat Institution
March 06, 2020 08:04 - 50 minutes - 55 MBFounded in 1824, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution provided the British Isles with a standing organization of trained volunteers ready and willing to save those in peril in the surrounding waters on a moment's notice.
Episode 134: Valujet Flight 592
February 29, 2020 22:51 - 50 minutes - 54.9 MBThe images were striking - the faint outline in the marshland of the Everglades where a DC-9 struck the ground, killing all 110 people on board. But what killed all those people within only minutes of takeoff from Miami?
Episode 133: The 1909 Cherry mine disaster
February 25, 2020 08:28 - 1 hour - 107 MBYou're working down in the mine several hundred feet below the surface when you start to smell smoke. It's growing thicker with every passing minute, and it's coming from between you and the only way out of the mine.
Episode 132: DashCon
February 12, 2020 05:19 - 1 hour - 76.2 MBIn our first commercial disaster, it was supposed to be the first Tumblr convention, a safe place for fans to share their joy in things like Sherlock, Welcome to Night Vale, anime, and other interests. But what was supposed to be a good time ended up being a prolonged dumpster fire, complete with a bouncy house and a ball pit.
Episode 131: The 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting
January 31, 2020 15:19 - 1 hour - 93.6 MBIt was the last night of the Route 91 Harvest Festival and people were eager to see country star Jason Aldean take the stage. Twenty-five minutes into his performance, he stepped up to the mike ... only to make a run for it off the stage. Soon, everyone else in the audience would be running for cover as well.
Episode 130: The shipwreck of the Empress of Ireland
January 22, 2020 10:39 - 1 hour - 78.2 MBIt was one of the most respected ships on the sea, a luxurious way to travel from Canada to Europe. But one foggy night was all it would take to send the Empress of Ireland to the bottom of the St. Lawrence River in a mere fourteen minutes.
Episode 129: The story of Samantha Smith
January 01, 2020 03:24 - 1 hour - 83.3 MBWould the United States and the Soviet Union nuke each other out of existence? In the 1980s, no one could be sure. So in 1982, a little girl named Samantha Smith just went ahead and asked -- the leader of the Soviet Union, that is.
Episode 128: Chernobyl - Part Six
December 25, 2019 02:31 - 1 hour - 69.4 MBIn this final episode of our Chernobyl series, we look at how Pripyat has fared in the years since it was evacuated, among other things.
Episode 127: Chernobyl - Part Five
December 20, 2019 08:33 - 55 minutes - 63.2 MBIn the penultimate episode of our Chernobyl series, we look at the investigation into the causes of the accident and the failures behind the scenes which led to the disaster.
Episode 126: Chernobyl - Part Four
December 13, 2019 06:07 - 1 hour - 84.7 MBThe break is over and it's back to Chernobyl, where everything is covered with radioactive dust and the remains of reactor #4 are a continuing danger to everyone - both in the immediate vicinity, and quite possibly to all of those in western Europe.
Episode 125: Chernobyl - Part Three
November 12, 2019 17:00 - 1 hour - 87.2 MBIn this part of our Chernobyl series, we reach the moment of truth - the day when all of Chernobyl's underlying problems rose to the surface and led to the worst nuclear power disaster in history.
Episode 124: Chernobyl - Part Two
November 06, 2019 17:00 - 45 minutes - 49.8 MBIn this episode, we see Chernobyl's beginnings, and just where cracks begin to form underneath the surface.
Episode 123: Chernobyl - Part One
October 31, 2019 06:19 - 1 hour - 68.5 MBBefore we get into the story of Chernobyl, we explore a few previous nuclear disasters, learn how radiation and nuclear accidents are measured, and find out just how sick ionizing radiation will make you.
Episode 122: The Stardust fire
September 27, 2019 06:40 - 1 hour - 77.4 MBIt's St. Valentine's Day weekend, and love is in the air. Young people throughout northern Dublin flocked to the Stardust in 1981, drawn by the promise of a disco dancing competition to start at one in the morning. But within an hour of people gathering around the dance floor to start the contest, all eight hundred people in the Stardust would be fighting for their lives against a deadly inferno.
Episode 121: British European Airways Flight 609
September 19, 2019 04:24 - 1 hour - 78.8 MBThey were some of the best and the brightest in British football. In the mid-to-late 1950s, the Busby Babes were young talented players signed on to Manchester United F.C. by manager Matt Busby to mold into a winning side. And win they did, creeping ever closer to Busby's goal of the European Cup. But on February 6th, 1958, the crash which would come to be known as the Munich air disaster would break the hearts of Manchester United fans, Great Britain, and the sporting world at large.
Episode 120: The 1900 Hoboken Docks fire
August 30, 2019 07:48 - 50 minutes - 53.8 MBIt was a normal working Saturday at the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey - until it wasn't. After the cotton bales on pier three caught fire so very close to barrels of oil and turpentine, every ship docked along the waterfront was under threat, and not all of them would make it out in one piece.
Episode 119: The Balvano train disaster
August 01, 2019 03:06 - 41 minutes - 46 MBWith World War II raging on throughout Europe, those civilians who were merely trying to survive in their day-to-day lives in southern Italy were on the brink of starvation. They needed food, and to find some they opted to hop a freight train to the countryside to barter for whatever they could find. On March 2nd, hundreds of people either boarded the no. 8017 train at Balvano station with legitimate tickets or snuck into one of the train's many freight cars. The vast majority of those onboa...
Episode 118: The Carolean death march
July 31, 2019 13:30 - 46 minutes - 51.5 MBFeeling hot this summer? It could be worse. In January of 1719 during the Great Northern War, six thousand troops from the Swedish army began what should have been a two-day walk back over the Norwegian border to their own empire, mentally and physically exhausted from a four-month-long losing battle. But then the snow came, and what was supposed to be a two-day hike turned into a week-long nightmare.
Episode 117: Iran Air Flight 655
July 19, 2019 07:25 - 1 hour - 79.6 MBOne country said it was a tragic mistake during wartime. One country claimed it was a deliberate and heartless act. But one thing was true - whether it was one or the other, the shootdown of Iran Air Flight 655 took the lives of 290 innocent people in July of 1988.
Episode 116: The 1986 Mount Hood incident
June 27, 2019 09:24 - 1 hour - 75 MBIt's time for the yearly school trip - no, not to Washington, DC, or the Grand Canyon or New Orleans. In 1986, as every year before it, the kids in the Basecamp program at Oregon Episcopal School participated in a special trip - a climb up Mount Hood in the Cascade mountain range. But when the group left the school late on the night of May 11th, 1986, to head to Mount Hood for the opportunity of a lifetime, they had no idea nine of them would not be coming back alive.
Episode 115: The Cocoanut Grove fire
June 18, 2019 07:54 - 1 hour - 93.7 MBIt's 1942, and it's men in uniform and women in pretty dresses everywhere you go. Tonight's you're at the Cocoanut Grove, arguably the most popular supper club in Boston. The decor matches the name, with a tropical theme and fake palm trees surrounding a dance floor bracketed by Spanish-tiled eaves. You and your steady beau are all set up with drinks and ready to watch the floor show when there's a commotion from the direction of the stairs down to the basement Melody Lounge. Is it the fight...
Episode 114: The Pulse nightclub shooting
May 29, 2019 09:48 - 1 hour - 72.8 MBIn two weeks, it will have been three years since a man walked into Pulse in Orlando, FL, bearing a rifle and intent on turning the last day of that city's Pride week into the last night many in the popular gay nightclub would ever see.
Episode 113: The Hermosillo nursery fire
May 24, 2019 04:12 - 53 minutes - 57.9 MBIt was something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. On June 5, 2009, a spark caught on the other side of the wall of the ABC daycare center in Hermosillo, Mexico. On that side of the wall, a growing fire. On the other side, over a hundred and forty children between the ages of six months and five years old and only six adults to watch them - and save them when the fire broke through.
Episode 112: The Our Lady of the Angels fire
May 01, 2019 06:33 - 52 minutes - 59 MBThere's only a half an hour before the end of the school day, and your teacher is working through her final lesson - geography, geometry, Shakespeare. Then you think you smell something - a whiff of smoke. The room starts to warm up. In only a few short minutes, you and the rest of your classmates find yourself with a horrific choice - burn to death, or leap down to the pavement below? The young students of Our Lady of the Angels Catholic elementary school in Chicago, IL, faced that very dec...
Episode 111: The Black Saturday bushfires
April 23, 2019 06:56 - 1 hour - 87.9 MBAll it would take was one spark. The southeastern Australian state of Victoria was dried out and temperatures were tipping into the high forties Celsius. In early February of 2009, the region could burn so very easily. Everyone knew February 7th was likely to be the day that summer Victoria burned.
Episode 110: American Airlines Flight 191
April 12, 2019 14:25 - 52 minutes - 57.5 MBThere are certain things you don't want to see out the window when you're sitting on a plane that's taking off. Seeing pieces of the plane fall off - like, say, the engine - are pretty high up on the list. Passengers sitting on American Airlines Flight 191 as it took off from O'Hare International Airport on May 25, 1979, were horrified to look out their windows and see exactly that happen to the engine on the left wing. They would only be horrifed for another thirty-one seconds.
Episode 109: The journey of the MS St Louis
April 01, 2019 01:53 - 52 minutes - 56 MBWhat do you do when your home is no longer safe enough to be a home anymore? You try to find a new home, even it means hurrying things along for your own protection. The Jewish refugees on board the MS St Louis in May of 1939 were looking for just such a place. All they found were doors slammed in their faces.
Episode 108: The Mont Blanc tunnel fire
March 29, 2019 06:17 - 54 minutes - 58.6 MBYou're driving along on a road trip and your engine starts to smoke. You give it another half mile or so, then pull over. By the time you pop the hood, the smoke has turned into actual flames spewing out of your car somehow. So you back away as far as you can for your own safety. It's terrifying enough if this happens to you while driving down an everyday country road or rural highway. But what if it happens when you're in the middle of one of the longest highway tunnels in the world?
Episode 107: The Beverly Hills Supper Club fire
March 21, 2019 09:45 - 1 hour - 89.5 MBIt was a little slice of Vegas transplanted to a Kentucky hillside just outside of Cincinnati, an elegant showcase for the likes of the Rat Pack, Marilyn Monroe, Liberace, and Frankie Valli. The Beverly Hills Supper Club went from a mafia-run illegal gambling den to the sort of place you could hold your kid's bar mitzvah or the Elk Club awards ceremony. But on Memorial Day weekend in 1977, all of that would end in a terrible fire those in the area would remember for years.
Episode 106: The Dyatlov Pass incident
March 09, 2019 20:53 - 1 hour - 84.3 MBIn late January of 1959, ten hikers left the city of Sverdlovsk heading for an adventure in the wilderness. Only one of them returned alive. So what happened to Igor Dyatlov and the other eight hikers who died at what would later come to be known as Dyatlov Pass?
Episode 105: The 1996 Air Africa disaster
February 22, 2019 19:54 - 43 minutes - 47.1 MBN'Dolo Airport could not have been any worse of an airport to take off from in 1996 if it tried. Whether it be the pitted runway or the handwaving of appropriate documentation and procedures, flying out of N'Dolo was a nightmare, one which anyone with bad intentions could use to their advantage. This is why so many different factors came together at once to cause a horrific tragedy in the city of Kinshasa in January of 1996, a catastrophe which left hundreds of innocent people dead in its wa...
Episode 104: The Top Storey Club fire
February 16, 2019 21:34 - 40 minutes - 44.8 MBIt was almost like a terribly kept secret. The Top Storey Club sat hidden away on the topmost story of an old warehouse you needed to wander through furniture workshops and storerooms on lower floors to reach, like a princess in a tower. But on May 1, 1961, the combination of a popular nightclub and workrooms cluttered with flammable materials below it would prove a deadly equation.
Episode 103: The Halifax explosion
February 08, 2019 16:20 - 1 hour - 91 MBIt was the worst manmade explosion in human history prior to the bombing of Hiroshima. On December 6, 1917, Halifax, Nova Scotia, was one of the busiest ports in the world, with wartime traffic passing through on a daily basis. The French ship, the Mont Blanc, was just another ship in the harbor, but its cargo hold carried a deadly secret which would wipe out thousands of lives in an instant.
Episode 102: The Great Yarmouth bridge disaster
January 25, 2019 07:52 - 42 minutes - 46.5 MBHear ye, hear ye! Come one, come all, on the evening of May 2, 1845, to see a fantastic sight! Nelson the clown of the Cooke Royal Circus will be performing for you all on the river Bure in Great Yarmouth - floating along on the tide in a wooden washtub pulled by four of the finest geese in the land! Simply head to the suspension bridge over the river with all of your other young friends and wait - and cross your fingers that you know how to swim.
Episode 101: The Great Stink of London
January 01, 2019 04:44 - 50 minutes - 54.1 MBThe river was a sewer - almost literally. In 1858 London, the Thames wound through the city carrying everything from fecal matter to slaughterhouse offal. Even worse, that was the city's drinking source. If three separate cholera outbreaks weren't enough to change people's minds about how to handle the problem, adding a heat wave to the mix might do the trick.
Episode 100: The attack on Nakatomi Plaza
December 28, 2018 06:23 - 33 minutes - 36.3 MBFor the 100th episode of the podcast, we examine a genuine Christmas miracle, in which the bad guys lose, one man wins, and Twinkies survive an entirely different kind of disaster than we thought they would.
Episode 99: United Airlines Flight 629
December 21, 2018 11:23 - 1 hour - 83.5 MBIf you're afraid of flying, it's usually a more understandable fear - bad weather may bring your plane down, your pilot might screw something up, something on the plane might break. But a much more unlikely fear might be that someone on board might decide that in order to milk out a little insurance money, they're going to blow up the plane you're flying in, either to take themselves out or to get rid of someone they'd much rather do without. On November 1, 1955, just such a bomb knocked Uni...
Episode 98: The Hajj pilgrimage of 2015
December 12, 2018 15:58 - 1 hour - 91.3 MBEvery year, three million Muslims arrive in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to complete the hajj, an important series of rituals which must be undertaken by all physically and financially capable Muslims at least once during their lifetime. But three million people crammed into any place is a magnet for disaster, and over the years Mecca has seen multiple tragedies which left thousands of innocent pilgrims dead - plane crashes, fires, crushing incidents. The hajj season of 2015 was forced to deal with ...