Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00As a geologist, I believe the rocks beneath our feet are fundamental to civilizations
00:24around the world.
00:27I'm taking a tour of the Pacific Rim, stopping off at some of the most dramatic, diverse
00:32and rugged landscapes on the planet to see how human history has been shaped by the rocks.
00:41My journey includes the awesome peaks of the Andes, the perilous volcanoes of Indonesia
00:48and the breathtaking landscape of Japan.
00:55In this program, I'm in California, where I want to find out what makes millions of
01:01people put themselves at peril in the path of geological devastation.
01:25California is one of the most geologically volatile and dangerous places on Earth.
01:31Every day, people that live here are under constant threat from devastating earthquakes
01:36that cause billions of dollars worth of damage, landslides that sweep away entire towns and
01:43terrifying firestorms that can whip over suburban hillsides at over 70 miles an hour.
01:53I study these geological hazards and I'm intrigued to know why Californians are prepared to live
01:58with the risks and how we cope with them.
02:02What's going through their minds and is risk embedded in the culture?
02:11To find the answers to these questions, I'm going on a 3,000-mile journey around California,
02:16the most populated state in North America, through searing salt pans and deserts, frozen
02:22mountain heights and narrow canyons, all the way back to the time of the gold rush.
02:28It's a journey that will go back 150 years in human history and millions of years in
02:32geological time.
02:47As with all the places I'm visiting around the Pacific, California's landscape has been
02:52created by huge geological forces.
02:57I'm starting out from San Francisco, a city that's long attracted fortune-seekers from
03:02across the world.
03:05I'm heading east to discover what brought them here in the first place.
03:26Even across California, you realize that the landscapes are as diverse as the people
03:30who live here, a contrasting mishmash of fertile valleys and barren deserts, deep canyons and
03:36towering peaks.
03:38My first stop is up in the Sierra Nevada foothills, the starting point for modern California.
03:45It was on this ordinary river in 1848 that a carpenter by the name of James Marshall
03:53made a chance discovery that would transform California forever.
03:57In fact, I'm underselling it.
03:59It would transform the history of the world forever.
04:05Marshall was one of the first few white settlers in the area and he was here to make a living
04:09out of lumber.
04:11He'd been trying to stop timber from blocking the flow of water passing through the sawmill
04:17and his solution was to blast a deeper channel with explosives.
04:26Hopping down into the blast zone to check how much sand and gravel had been removed,
04:31his eye caught sight of something glittering.
04:33He picked it up and examined it and in his hand was something heavy, very heavy.
04:39Marshall had discovered gold.
04:55Just here near the town of Bridgeport, there's a whole string of hot springs and they help
04:59explain why gold was found here in the first place.
05:11This pool is called Travertine Hot Spring and the water is really warm even though it's
05:18freezing out here and it's this heat that tells me that there's hot rocks down below.
05:26Those rocks heat up water underground and force it up to the surface, creating these
05:31pools.
05:32Because the water's hot and under pressure, it dissolves the rock, forming a kind of mineral
05:37soup.
05:39But not all the water makes it all the way to the surface.
05:42Sometimes it gets trapped in cracks and fissures and as it cools, its cargo of minerals and
05:48elements gets precipitated out and amongst them is gold.
05:59The gold in Sierra Nevada has been exposed by weathering, making it relatively easy to
06:04find.
06:05Ice, water and wind erode the rocks.
06:11Over time, they're crumbled into fragments and get washed down the mountains to form
06:16the beds of streams and rivers.
06:19And some of that crunched up rock contained fragments of gold, which ended up in the hands
06:24of the likes of James Marshall.
06:29Here in the Sierra Nevada in the 1850s, the gold was just lying in the stream beds, waiting
06:33to be picked up.
06:34The easiest way to find it was to sift the sediments with a pan.
06:40Ed and Norm Allen are brothers who've spent countless hours working this river.
06:44Okay, Ed, what do I do here?
06:47Well first you've got to get some dirt in your pan.
06:49You're going to get in as deep as you can and pull up a load of material.
06:58What I'm going to do is I'm going to start shaking this pan back and forth pretty violently
07:03and what that's doing is it's getting the gold down in this crevice at the bottom of
07:08the pan here.
07:09The reason that that occurs is the gold weighs so much more than the rock that it's in.
07:15So it sinks down.
07:16That's correct.
07:17So I can start washing this other material out of the pan.
07:22This is a long process.
07:23Yes, it is.
07:25Fifty pans a day were considered about all a man could do.
07:30Fifty?
07:31Fifty pans a day.
07:33It was hard work.
07:34The temperature in this canyon gets to over 100 degrees in the summertime.
07:38It doesn't feel like it today.
07:40This river's been pretty cleaned out.
07:42People pan over where we're panning almost every day.
07:45So do you really get gold in here?
07:47Yes, yes we sure do.
07:49There's gold in this river.
07:50Do you want to see some gold from here?
07:52Yeah.
07:53Let me put my pan down.
07:56That's beautiful.
08:01Look at that.
08:02That nugget was found right here last March.
08:05Wow.
08:06And how much is that worth?
08:07About $90.
08:08That's 23 carat gold right out of the river.
08:11Norm!
08:12Norm!
08:13I think I've got something.
08:16Oh yes.
08:23That's very nice.
08:25That's very nice.
08:26Good.
08:27That's at least a clinker.
08:29A clinker?
08:30A clinker.
08:31All right.
08:32It's a sign.
08:33That's a beauty all right.
08:34I'll be having that then.
08:36Finest keepers it says on that sign up there.
08:38That's what it says.
08:39Thanks.
08:40That's great.
08:41Sure.
08:42My pleasure.
08:43That's a nice one too.
08:44Yeah.
08:45Well I'm going to keep going actually.
08:46I think you've got the fever.
08:47Yeah.
08:48It's absolutely.
08:49The gold fever.
08:50I know.
08:51It's completely addictive.
08:52Within weeks of Marshall's discovery, people were running through the streets shouting
09:16about gold in the mountains.
09:19From all around the world, thousands began pouring into what was then the tiny coastal
09:24port of San Francisco and working their way by hook or by crook into the mountains.
09:30The dramatic red cliffs at Malakoff Diggins look natural, but they're one of many huge
09:35quarries the miners left behind.
09:38Historian Jim Henley has explored how risking everything to make a fortune became the bedrock
09:43for the modern Californian mindset.
09:46Oh sure.
09:47It's an illusion to think that miners were grizzly old men.
09:51They're young men coming from the east coast who grew up in a technological environment
09:56and they had concluded that there's a lot of gold here, but it's not big nuggets.
10:02It's little fine dust.
10:04And by the end of 1848, it's a business.
10:08It's an industrial operation that requires the scale that a single person can't do.
10:14Within a couple of years, the pans and picks were replaced by mass mining on an industrial
10:19scale.
10:20A quarter of a million miners were to reshape the Californian landscape.
10:25But how did this ambition to make money transform the culture of California?
10:30Big towns like San Francisco and Sacramento become the supply centres to these miners
10:36and there becomes a culture of mining the miner.
10:39There's more money to be made in supplying the miner with his needs and relieving him
10:45of his gold than there is to be made standing in a stream that's cold or standing out in
10:50the rain like we are here.
10:53It's nasty environment doing this and the infectious nature of mining as a risk-taking
10:59venture infected the merchants in the same way.
11:02It was okay to take big risks.
11:05So you had this growing commercialization very fast.
11:08Lots of entrepreneurs coming through and then is there a real start of a risk-taking
11:12culture?
11:13It is a risk-taking culture and that is what it's really all about because nobody is here
11:18to criticize you for making a mistake.
11:23You look around, everybody else has made mistakes and they get up and try again.
11:27That's okay.
11:29And so that's the mindset and it goes from the miner to the banker to the commerce and
11:35commercial people right through the line.
11:38So it was in this culture of anything goes freedom that the Californian mentality was
11:42born and it was all down to the geology, down to gold.
11:50Gold was a geological jackpot that transformed California into a magnet for risk-takers.
12:10In fact, they took enormous risks just getting to the gold fields in the first place.
12:20California is loosely divided into three.
12:23A low range of mountains along the Pacific coast, a wide, fertile central valley, and
12:30in the east, the biggest mountain range in the state, the Sierra Nevada.
12:44This virtually impenetrable mountain range was a barrier that filtered out all but the
12:49most determined of gold-seekers.
12:53And it's easy to see why.
12:55Towering above me is Mount Whitney.
12:58At well over two and a half miles high, it's the tallest peak in the continental United
13:03States.
13:04Crossing the Sierra Nevada really was a formidable task and one that forged a pioneering spirit.
13:10But further south, the trails could be even worse.
13:16Especially here.
13:19Death Valley, a 250 mile long desert, one of the hottest places on earth.
13:27The thousands who flocked westward in 1849 became famously known as the California 49ers.
13:48Some of them tried to shorten the route by cutting across Death Valley.
13:53One of the early pioneers saw this landscape, which to me is absolutely magnificent.
13:58It must have been absolutely terrifying.
14:07Stumbling into uncharted territory, the immigrants wandered about for weeks in this barren waste
14:12of dried up lakes and weird salt formations.
14:18Once here, it was virtually impossible to escape.
14:29This is Badwater, the lowest point in the western hemisphere, 85 metres below sea level.
14:35At certain times of the year, you do get water here.
14:38It floods in through some of these canyons and transforms this place into a shallow lake.
14:43The trouble is the water can't get out, it just evaporates away, leaving behind all this
14:48salt.
14:49Just like those early pioneers, it's easy to get into these valleys, but really difficult
14:54to get out and dig on to the gold fields beyond.
15:07Death Valley is so dry because it lies in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
15:15Clouds coming east from the Pacific dump their load of rain as they pass over the cold mountain
15:20heights, leaving the air dry and clear here on the other side.
15:26The stranded pioneers only just made it across, having killed their oxen for food and burned
15:32their wagons to cure the meat.
15:36It's legendary adventures like this that became woven into the Californian risk-taking psyche.
15:44Bodie Ghost Town, elevation two and a half thousand metres, population zero.
15:51This is what greeted many who came to make their fortune, a harsh mining town in the
15:58middle of a mountain wilderness. Prospectors the world over were blinded by the slim possibility
16:05of making a better life wrought from gold. For many though, this is what lay in wait,
16:12a tough life in bitter isolation.
16:17It's a place where you have to make a choice.
16:22It's a place where you have to make a choice.
16:27It's a place where you have to make a choice.
16:32A tough life in bitter isolation.
16:39In the year following Marshall's discovery, 100,000 so-called 49ers poured into California
16:46and towns like these sprung up throughout the state.
16:51It was here that these young ambitious men came to gamble with their futures and although
16:56hopes were high, the odds were stacked against them.
17:01You may think James Marshall was a lucky man, but he wasn't. He was just one of many
17:07for whom gold would bring nothing but broken dreams. He didn't own the land where he made
17:13his discovery and his sawmill went down the pan as soon as all the able-bodied men were
17:19dazzled with a hunt for gold.
17:22Although the chances of success were small, miners went to any lengths. Many who came
17:28risked everything and ended up with nothing.
17:46On my journey, it's becoming clear to me how the rush for gold laid the foundation for a
17:51risk-taking culture.
17:54Thanks to the geology of California, the ultimate home of the American dream was born.
18:00If you took a chance, the world could be yours for the taking.
18:04With the construction of the Transcontinental Railway in 1869, it was suddenly no longer
18:09a five-month ordeal to get here.
18:12And as if gold hadn't drawn enough risk-takers to California, there was another geological
18:17jackpot to pull them in.
18:25I'm on Highway 150 near Ojai, Santa Barbara and right here on the roadside, this black
18:31gooey stuff is oozing out of the hillside. It's a naturally occurring tar and it's a
18:37sign that beneath these rocks lies another fortune spinner, black gold.
18:55Cairn County in the Central Valley sits on top of one of the largest oil fields in California.
19:01The whole landscape here has been completely transformed into a vast sea of oil wells.
19:07The scale of this is absolutely immense. There's something like 50,000 oil wells here.
19:13And to give you an idea of how massive the oil field must be underground,
19:18They pump out about 220 million barrels of oil every year here.
19:23But there's still 3.5 billion barrels left in the ground.
19:28The crude oil here formed from plankton that lived on the surface of the ocean over six
19:34million years ago. As they died, they settled to the ocean floor.
19:39They were covered in a layer of oil called planktonite.
19:44The whole of Central California is one enormous valley, the San Joaquin Valley.
19:50And its formation is key to how the oil got here in the first place.
19:56This area used to be a huge section of sandstone.
20:00The sandstone was used to build bridges and bridges were built here.
20:04The sandstone was used to build bridges and bridges were built here.
20:10This area used to be a huge section of seabed that's been lifted up by geological forces.
20:16And as it was raised up, the sand and silt layer that contained the oil was bent and contorted,
20:22trapping the oil and leaving it down in the ground ready to be tapped.
20:28So the richest land-based oil wells in the United States were formed thanks to the forces of geology.
20:40Just like the influx of the 49ers of the Gold Rush, thousands poured into the state in search of their own gushers.
20:46Just like the influx of the 49ers of the Gold Rush, thousands poured into the state in search of their own gushers.
20:54For some, it would become a personal passport to instant wealth.
21:00With all that oil and the old gold before it, this state had an ingrained mentality of commercial risk-taking and speculation.
21:06With all that oil and the old gold before it, this state had an ingrained mentality of commercial risk-taking and speculation.
21:13Huge numbers of money-minded entrepreneurs poured in, selling everything from Levi's jeans to cars.
21:19New industries are often regarded as risky because they're trying to find a footing in an uncertain area of commerce.
21:25New industries are often regarded as risky because they're trying to find a footing in an uncertain area of commerce.
21:31But in California, cutting-edge ideas were embraced.
21:35And this made it the perfect place for new ways of making money, like the movies.
21:49People say filmmakers came here because of the great weather and fabulous locations.
21:54I'm sure there's something in that, but it's not the only state with good weather.
21:58Just as important is the bedrock of innovation.
22:01A culture that was open and hungry for new ideas, new industries and creativity.
22:06The natural place for an upstart industry like film.
22:14And that culture continues today.
22:20Silicon Valley is the largest concentration of high technology in the United States.
22:26Just like the gold, the oil and the movies, it's no surprise that this 20th century industry emerged in California.
22:34New high-tech ventures can be just as risky.
22:37Think back to the collapse of the dot-com boom.
22:40But if you are successful, the rewards could be huge.
22:45In California, you really can turn up with nothing and become a self-made millionaire.
22:51Thousands have done just that.
22:53So it's no surprise Californians are so positive and have this who-dares-wins attitude.
23:01But what I want to know is whether this explains why they're prepared to live with geological peril.
23:15To dig deeper, I'm heading back to San Francisco.
23:23Jutting out into a natural harbour, you'd think there couldn't be a better place to build a city.
23:28The early settlers probably thought that too.
23:32At first sight, you get that same thrill of excitement that must have greeted the immigrants.
23:40When the first miners came running through the streets in 1848 with bags full of gold, there were only 800 residents.
23:48Within two years, there were over 30 times as many.
23:52Today, San Francisco has all the hallmarks of the liberal, open-mindedness that grew out of those early gold rush days.
24:01Japantown, Chinatown, Russian Hill and the Italian Quarter.
24:05They all reflect the worldwide influence of the gold rush.
24:11But what about the rest of the world?
24:13What about the rich?
24:15What about the poor?
24:17What about the rich?
24:19What about the gold rush?
24:29These streets look great in Hollywood car chases,
24:32but I'm amazed they even considered building a grid system on such steep slopes,
24:37let alone a network of cable cars.
24:41In a culture where anything is supposed to be possible,
24:44this must have seemed like a triumph over nature and all that troublesome topography.
24:52But Mother Earth has dealt a cruel blow to San Francisco.
24:57All 43 of our hills and 800,000 residents
25:02lie right across the most geologically unstable zone in California.
25:09The San Andreas Fault.
25:14San Andreas Fault
25:24In 1906, a colossal earthquake tore through San Francisco.
25:30The city was almost completely destroyed,
25:33leaving over half the population homeless and at least 3,000 dead.
25:38Today, inhabitants are still prepared to take huge risks,
25:42even though the warning signs are right under their noses.
25:47Just south of San Francisco, in Hollister,
25:50you can see what happens when a fault cuts right under people's homes.
25:56If you take this wall here, there's a lot of cracks in it.
25:59There's one running across here, there's one down here, right across.
26:02Here's another one. That's a big one.
26:04And the whole thing gets twisted around.
26:06And also bent down.
26:08In fact, there's a steep slope in the garden where the fault line passes through
26:12and goes off, crosses the pathway, and it continues on to the side of the road.
26:17And at the side of the road, the kerbstone is offset.
26:20And there's a little crack in the tarmac which continues off.
26:23And if I don't get killed here, over in the old kerbstone,
26:27yeah, there's a bend and this is all broken.
26:30The fault crosses the park as that gentle slope.
26:34And it literally slices the neighbourhood in two.
26:40The Earth's surface is covered in giant plates
26:43which float around on a plasticky interior.
26:46The whole of California is one big collision zone where two of the plates meet.
26:51The San Andreas fault carves right through California,
26:55where the Pacific plate is grinding past the North American plate.
27:00Several kilometres beneath my feet, huge stresses are building up.
27:04As the enormous pressure builds up as the two plates try to move,
27:08eventually the rocks can't take it anymore.
27:10Friction is overcoming the two plates move and slip past each other.
27:14And that's what radiates out massive seismic waves.
27:18The violent shaking that we feel during an earthquake.
27:23San Francisco is rocked regularly by terrifying earthquakes.
27:27One of the worst was in October 1989.
27:31At 5.04pm, there was a huge earthquake at Loma Prieta near Santa Cruz.
27:37The quake killed 63 and injured nearly 4,000.
27:44I'm close to the spot where a double-decker highway, Interstate 880, once stood.
27:50It wasn't designed to withstand the huge stresses
27:53created by the buckling and shaking earth, and it collapsed.
28:04If it wasn't for the fact that there was a World Series baseball game on TV,
28:08it would have been gridlocked with rush hour traffic when the earthquake struck.
28:12Even so, 42 people were killed when the upper concrete tier collapsed down
28:17and the lower one, crushing the vehicles.
28:24So why are people in California prepared to live with this kind of geological threat?
28:30Is this all down to a culture of risk-taking?
28:33Or is something more subtle going on?
28:35Someone who's been looking into these attitudes is psychologist Dr. Christine Rodrigu.
28:41Well, the California culture has had a risky streak probably since 1849
28:46with the advent of the gold rush.
28:48But this risk-taking culture does not really have anything to do
28:52with the riskiness of the physical environment here.
28:55There's earthquake risk, there's wildfire hazard risk,
28:58there's landslides, there's floods, there's droughts, you name it.
29:02But that does not have an impact on the culture so much
29:06because people's perception of risk is very faulty.
29:10People tend to not understand probabilities very well.
29:15That's what keeps Las Vegas in business.
29:17You know, you talk to people about what is their retirement plans
29:21and they'll say, well, I'm counting on winning the lottery.
29:24And the chance is less than being struck by lightning in the state of California
29:28but a lot of people really sort of think of that as their retirement plans.
29:31How do people in California then feel about earthquakes?
29:34Do they feel like they're going to die?
29:37How do people in California then feel about earthquakes?
29:40Do they accept there's a risk there?
29:42They do accept them but most of the time people just tune it out.
29:45They want to live here and earthquakes come with a package
29:49and they just would rather not think about it.
29:52It's a denial mechanism and people use denial mechanisms
29:55in many parts of their life to avoid facing things that are very unpleasant
30:00like a conflict with their boss or with their children.
30:03We tune out the risks that we're taking getting to our car to drive to work.
30:07We just assume not to think about it.
30:09But sometimes that nervousness about the environment is still there
30:13so what we'll do is displace it.
30:15And so everybody in California seems very, very concerned
30:19about tornadoes in Oklahoma or hurricanes on the Gulf Coast.
30:25And when I was visiting Puerto Rico, the big thing there,
30:29instead of focusing on their earthquake hazard and on their hurricane hazard,
30:32they were fascinated with earthquakes in California.
30:35So there's a basic human trait to misjudge risk.
30:38Yes.
30:39But this is particularly bad when you live in such a perilous environment.
30:42Yes, we have so many risks to perceive inaccurately.
30:50There's undeniably a history of risk-taking here
30:53when it comes to making money and fortune-seeking.
30:56But when it comes to geological disasters,
30:58it seems like Californians aren't risk-takers after all.
31:01It's more that they avoid thinking rationally about the odds in the first place.
31:05And I don't think it's unique to Californians.
31:08With natural disasters, our mind plays all sorts of tricks on us.
31:12We avoid thinking about life's dangers in order to cope with them.
31:15We bury our heads in the sand when we don't really realise that we're doing it.
31:20Unfortunately, this human trait may leave many Californians
31:24unprotected from the real sources of danger.
31:27You'd think that with such a catalogue of disasters behind them,
31:30Californians would be more prepared for catastrophe.
31:33Instead, they seem to carry on as normal.
31:36Somehow, the lessons of history have been ignored.
31:41This is the San Franciscito Canyon,
31:44site of one of California's worst catastrophes.
31:48Built in the 1920s by engineer William Mulholland,
31:52the St Francis Dam was one of several crucial water supplies.
31:56It was also the site of one of the world's worst natural disasters,
32:00the San Francisco River.
32:02It was also the site of one of the world's worst natural disasters,
32:06the San Francisco River.
32:08It was also one of several crucial water supplies for Los Angeles further south.
32:13But on the 12th of March, 1928, the dam gave way.
32:18A ten-storey wall of water surged towards the Pacific,
32:22wiping out everything in its path.
32:25The flood destroyed 1,200 homes and over 500 lives were lost,
32:30a disaster second only to the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
32:39It's incredibly eerie to revisit the site of such a devastating disaster.
32:44It's also quite difficult to know what goes where.
32:47It's a bit of a jigsaw here.
32:49I guess one side of the dam was over there,
32:52and it swings over where we are
32:55and goes to the other side in the shadowy ravine there.
32:58These massive concrete blocks are all that's left of the dam.
33:02The remains were blasted away with dynamite,
33:06The remains were blasted away with dynamite,
33:09almost as if to erase the memory of it forever.
33:20These huge chunks are all that's left of the front of the dam.
33:24The side facing downstream away from the reservoir
33:27was built with a series of concrete steps,
33:30and here they are lying on their side like giant tombstones.
33:36To find the reason why the dam failed,
33:39you have to clamber up above the dam site itself
33:42onto the steep sides of the ravine.
33:49This is probably the spot where the dam gave way,
33:52and you can see why when you look at the rock.
33:55This is a rock called schist,
33:57which is made up of lots of little slippery layers.
34:00You can see them glinting in the sun.
34:02This whole slope is made of those same slippery layers
34:06which are pointing downslope
34:08and probably just gave way, took the dam with it.
34:16So with weak layers of rock forming the dam's eastern foundation,
34:20it's not surprising it gave way.
34:23The steep valley sides were in fact the result
34:26of an ancient mega landslide,
34:29so the entire mountain was a vast mound of rubble.
34:34The valley that Mulholland thought was so ideal for a dam
34:37was because of those weak rocks on the foot
34:40riddled with landslides.
34:42You can see them all around here, disfiguring the grassy slopes.
34:46Mulholland accepted all the blame for the disaster,
34:49telling the coroner that he envied the dead.
34:52He resigned, and seven years later he died a virtual recluse.
34:58The tragic story of the dam disaster should have been a warning
35:02that much of the rock in California is unstable
35:05and susceptible to devastating landslides.
35:08But it seems to have gone unheeded.
35:11Similar mistakes have been made to this day,
35:14right next to people's homes.
35:17I'm travelling along the Pacific Coast Highway,
35:20north of Los Angeles.
35:22Landslides happen somewhere along this stretch of coast
35:25every few years,
35:27but it doesn't seem to stop people living here.
35:30With the Californian population ever increasing,
35:33more and more people are spreading along the coast.
35:36In competition for a piece of the idyllic Californian lifestyle,
35:40I've decided to go to the Pacific Coast Highway.
35:43In competition for a piece of the idyllic Californian lifestyle
35:46is driving people into the danger zone.
35:52Steep slopes made of weak, sedimentary rock
35:55are found all over California.
35:57I'm standing on a mountain of it.
35:59200 metres of sand, silt and gravel.
36:03And down there is La Conchita.
36:14Sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean
36:17and steep walls of crumbly sedimentary rock,
36:20La Conchita had been a disaster waiting to happen.
36:31Early in 2005,
36:33the Californian coastline endured a record-breaking winter storm.
36:38It rained continuously for five days,
36:41so that the ground became completely saturated with water.
36:48One January afternoon,
36:50the hills above La Conchita suddenly gave way.
36:53Nearly half a million tonnes of debris
36:56slid down the mountainside,
36:58ploughing into the community below.
37:01Ten people were buried alive
37:03as a wall of mud engulfed their homes.
37:06Virginia Acostas watched from her upstairs window
37:09as the landslip careered towards her home.
37:12I didn't know what it was.
37:14I thought it was a train, but it was much too loud to be the train.
37:17So I looked out my window,
37:19and that's when I saw just the mountain moving
37:22with fences and treetops and bushes and garage doors.
37:28The street was covered,
37:30so it hit the top story window.
37:33And there's crosses and things like that,
37:35so I guess houses under there?
37:37I mean, what's the story?
37:38The houses were buried.
37:40People were buried.
37:41Ten fatalities.
37:43And the emergency workers lived in my home for a week.
37:47And what they dug out were crayon books and Halloween costumes
37:51and the things of daily life.
37:53I don't know if you were aware of the story of the Wallet family,
37:56but they were staying here temporarily
37:59with my friend Charlie who owned the house across the street,
38:02and he lived in his bus temporarily to give them a place to stay.
38:08His wife and three children were in the house,
38:11and he went down to the store.
38:13That's when it occurred at 1.30 in the afternoon.
38:16They were walking up the street just like you and I just walked up
38:19when the hill let go and buried his children and his wife.
38:22So he saw the thing come down?
38:24He saw it come down and bury all five houses.
38:26Charlie lost his life, and his friend lost his family,
38:29his wife and his three children.
38:31On this street, we all had birthdays, December 1, 2, and 3.
38:36Charlie's was the first.
38:50Maybe it's understandable,
38:52that after nearly a century,
38:54people forget about historical events like the St. Francis Dam disaster.
38:58But here at La Conchita, there had been a much more recent warning.
39:02The hillside had already plummeted into the town 10 years earlier,
39:06burying nine homes.
39:08Miraculously, no-one was killed.
39:10Despite this near-miss, people went on living in the danger zone.
39:14My father lives here full-time.
39:17He wanted to come back to the house.
39:19He helped me repair it
39:21and expects to be here with the risks.
39:26He thinks it's worth it.
39:28Others have sold because Los Angeles commuters would like a beach house
39:34and have purchased the properties, knowing the risks.
39:38So this is still a place that people want to buy?
39:40Yes.
39:41And even this street?
39:42The house now belongs to me.
39:44So this is a place that people want to buy?
39:45Yes.
39:46And even this street?
39:47The house next door to me was sold three months after the slide.
39:50In March, the slide was January.
39:52They know they're buying a house at the base of a landslide zone.
39:56Correct.
39:57But just go up 10 minutes up the road
40:00and Fixer Uppers started a million dollars with a view like this.
40:04Gosh, it's got an amazing kind of hold on people, this place, hasn't it?
40:07It does.
40:08It does.
40:09You stay here any longer, it'll hold you too.
40:12So why do people cling to their homes in the face of certain danger?
40:16Somehow lessons from history about landslides seem to have been forgotten.
40:21Dr. Susanna Hoffman is an anthropologist who's found similar stories all over the state.
40:26California, in a funny way, has been a cutting edge of coastalization.
40:31Tons of people moving to the coast for good life, the view, for the recreational activities.
40:41Part of the good life has also led to this incredible unbridled development
40:46in which any private piece of land could suddenly become 25 lots or 300 lots
40:52and people will move into it.
40:54It's a cultural illusion that we can have good life and there is no consequence,
41:00there's no price, there's no risk here.
41:04In La Cuchita, we've had these repeated landslide disasters,
41:07but people still want to live there. Why is that?
41:09Actually, it's one of the hardest things to understand.
41:12We call it place attachment.
41:14In disasters, people repeatedly go back to where it was before,
41:18even if there's extant danger and they know it's going to happen again
41:22or they're aware that it's very likely.
41:25So now also, as well as place attachment,
41:27you get the fact that it's somebody else's responsibility to make everybody safe
41:31and that the government or somebody should do something about it.
41:37But it's becoming increasingly clear that people have to take some responsibility
41:41for the acknowledgement of the extant dangers around them.
41:45Society has to understand that they can't put up a wall,
41:48they can't change a beach, they can't protect against the waves.
41:52There's no physical solution to disasters.
41:55The solutions are social.
42:00Instead of learning from repeated disasters and moving away,
42:03people prefer to live with the risks.
42:05They look for a safety net to protect them.
42:08But I'm not convinced it's a battle you can ever win
42:11when you're dealing with Mother Nature.
42:26I can't deny that California is breathtakingly beautiful.
42:31The views from the mountains down onto the Los Angeles basin are world famous.
42:37People are prepared to pay any price for a house on the hilltop.
42:41But is it a price worth paying?
42:44If earthquakes and landslides aren't bad enough,
42:46there's another catastrophe just waiting to sweep over these hills.
42:52In October 2003, a fire exploded into light in Southern California.
43:00Freak conditions had coincided to create a towering firestorm
43:04that stretched from L.A. to the Mexican border.
43:08It was the worst wildfire in California's history.
43:11Nearly 4,000 homes were destroyed and 24 people lost their lives.
43:24Houses are continuing to be built in areas where raging fires are a dead certainty.
43:29They're inevitable because here, the environment, the landscape, the climate,
43:34the vegetation is primed for them.
43:40The steep slopes of Southern California's mountain ranges
43:43form an ideal habitat for highly flammable brush vegetation called chaparral plants.
43:50There's some common ones here. This one is called chemise.
43:54It's the most abundant and flammable plant in Southern California.
44:01And dotted around here is a lot of sagebrush.
44:04The unique thing about them isn't just that they've adapted well to hot Mediterranean climate.
44:11It's that over thousands and thousands of years,
44:13they've evolved to live with and benefit from a good fire.
44:19They actually require it to stay healthy.
44:24Chaparral plants contain oils and resins that actually promote fires,
44:29and most contain seeds that won't germinate until after a fire.
44:34Plants like these have evolved so that they're not destroyed by the flames.
44:38Many of them have a large base or root crown like this.
44:42The top of the plant burns, but the root survives.
44:45Within weeks, the crown has started to sprout and grow again,
44:49and after about a year or so, it could be up to four feet tall.
44:54South-facing slopes become extremely hot and dry because they face directly into the sun.
45:05As hot air rises, it preheats the vegetation above, so the fires spread even faster.
45:13The steep terrain accelerates the fires in other ways too.
45:18Canyons funnel air currents, and ridges increase the wind speed flowing over them.
45:23Each year, the hot desert Santa Ana wind acts like giant bellows,
45:27blowing westwards directly towards people's homes.
45:33In 2003, they fanned the inferno into a 10-metre wall of flames,
45:38blasting them faster than cars could drive to get away.
45:4214,000 firefighters were called in from across the USA.
45:47The fire raged for days. Only when it reached the sea did it finally run out of fuel.
45:56So why do people here continue to build in the fire belts?
46:00Author Mike Davis has observed some very interesting attitudes.
46:05People tend to have a schizophrenic attitude toward the landscape.
46:10They regard the landscape as a benign, sunny, given environment
46:16until something happens, and then people tend to have an overreaction, a paranoia.
46:22So here you have people living in an absolutely controlled environment.
46:28Every aspect of their environment has been carefully planned and regulated,
46:31and it's wholly artificial.
46:33But right next to them is these chaparral-covered hills,
46:37so you can live in a landscape like this for 30, 40, even 50 years before it burns.
46:42But when it does burn, you get catastrophic fires.
46:45So the view from the backyard is looking at the equivalent of a lake full of gasoline or crude oil,
46:51but it has the power to sweep away this entire development.
46:55Are people in these communities surprised when wildfires burst up in their midst?
47:01Well, probably with the exception of a few old-timers, most people are hysterical.
47:05They're always searching for anyone to blame, not on the location of the housing or the ecosystem.
47:11They want to see the hand of an arsonist lurking in the trees or the bush,
47:15the maniac with his lighter in his hands,
47:18although it's almost immaterial whether there's an arsonist or not.
47:22Given enough fuel mass, enough unburned chaparral, wildfire happens.
47:27That's the message the landscape's trying to tell the suburbs.
47:31It seems like what has to be told is those communities have to be told you can't do that,
47:35but that's very much against the Californian mindset.
47:38Well, of course it is, or rather it's against the culture of people who still want to imagine
47:45they're living on the Jacksonian frontier,
47:47that they have this kind of untrammeled personal freedom to ride their motorbikes
47:54or drive their four-wheel drives, to live in big homes.
47:57Everything about this form of settlement is contradictory and ironic
48:02and, in my way of thinking, ultimately unsustainable.
48:06After a while, what you end up with are dead bodies as a result of this.
48:23It seems staggering to me that people have ignored these lessons for over 100 years.
48:29Today, seven million people live amongst the chaparral.
48:33The allure of somewhere beautiful is simply too tempting.
48:36But if we can blame people, not nature, the threat seems somehow more controllable.
49:04With over 500 miles of freeways in L.A., you can't go anywhere without a car,
49:10which means only one thing.
49:18Heading back to L.A., you realise why so many people head for the hills.
49:22Traffic is terrible.
49:24You have to admire the positive attitude of the people here.
49:27But sometimes, it's almost as if they feel they're invincible.
49:30And there are signs of this way of thinking all over the place.
49:55If building homes in the fire belt is an act of faith, then take a look at this.
50:01This cathedral is built almost entirely of glass,
50:05but it sits, just like the rest of L.A.,
50:08alongside one of the world's most dangerous earthquake zones.
50:13Nothing can really quite prepare you for this dazzling piece of religion-turned-showbiz.
50:19Built in the 1980s, the Crystal Cathedral towers 12 stories high
50:24and is made from 12,000 glass panes.
50:34Regardless of what you think about churches and religion,
50:37there's no getting away from the fact that this is incredibly impressive.
50:40I'm still not sure I'd rather be standing here in a big coat.
50:45Remarkably, according to the cathedral's founder, Reverend Robert Schuller,
50:49it's designed to be earthquake-proof.
50:52The world's leading consultant on builders and architects
50:57when it comes to earthquake-proofing structures is a Christian,
51:02and he's been my guest here.
51:04He said, if you know an earthquake is coming, let me tell you.
51:07He said, if you know an earthquake is coming, let me tell you.
51:10He's been my guest here.
51:12He said, if you know an earthquake is coming, let me tell you.
51:15Run into the cathedral.
51:17Oh, that's cursing.
51:18That's the safest building in all of California.
51:21Wow.
51:22Barring none.
51:23It symbolises what, at the heart, a true Christian should become.
51:27The prayer is, Lord, make my life a mirror to reflect your love to all I meet,
51:33and a window for your light to shine through.
51:37So can you get, like, through prayer, avert natural disaster?
51:41Is that possible?
51:42Well, I don't really... I can't say yes, but I'm not sure that's the right answer.
51:46But all I can say is, I went through a disaster when our farm home
51:51was the centre of a tornado.
51:53We escaped with our lives, but everything, all of the animals,
51:57all of the buildings, all of the crops in the field were sucked up
52:01and we never saw a hair of it again.
52:04And you never look at what you've lost.
52:07You always look at what you have left.
52:09Is that positive?
52:10Absolutely. What's the option?
52:12Yeah, yeah.
52:13What's the alternative?
52:14No, absolutely.
52:15I just wonder if, in people in Los Angeles,
52:17that are very strong Christian beliefs,
52:20I'm just curious as to whether they are praying against earthquakes or what.
52:26Oh, I don't know.
52:27I never pray against earthquakes because I have no control over them.
52:31And I don't think God's in the business of creating them and launching them.
52:35If he is, that's his business and I'm not going to try to defend him.
52:44At first glance, this would seem to be the ultimate image
52:47of Californian trust in God.
52:49It's designed to withstand a major seismic shake, but to be honest,
52:53if you were at all worried about earthquakes,
52:55you wouldn't choose to build everything in glass.
52:59Instead, this seems to cry out a very different kind of statement.
53:03It seems to shout out a triumphal message of invulnerability,
53:08a confident defiance in the face of disaster.
53:15To me, it does seem like a brazen symbol of the Californian belief
53:19that man can conquer nature.
53:22Maybe he can.
53:24But time will tell.
53:29For the end of my journey, I'm heading back to the mother of all make-believe,
53:34home of the disaster movie itself, Hollywood.
53:46In my travels, I've come across plenty of different ways
53:49in which I've been able to explore the world.
53:51I've been able to explore the world in a different way.
53:54I've been able to explore the world in a different way.
53:57I've come across plenty of different ways in which people escape
54:00from the reality of geological disasters.
54:03They misjudge the odds.
54:05They forget history all too quickly.
54:07They blame humans for natural occurrences.
54:11But I have to say that there's something weird
54:13about escaping the reality of geological disasters
54:16through the Hollywood fantasy of disasters.
54:21Here at Universal Studios,
54:23they've actually turned the whole disaster movie experience into a ride
54:26which you can relive again and again.
54:30I'm meeting up with James Ulmer, author and movie journalist,
54:33who knows all about the blurring of fact and fiction on the silver screen.
54:37Universal fantasy. This is what we do.
54:49Why is Hollywood fascinated by the disaster movie?
54:53Here we are at the War of the Worlds set.
54:56Tom Cruise in this movie plays a character
54:59who is an emotional cripple, okay?
55:02Who is healed by disaster, okay?
55:05And the only way he can rescue his family
55:07is to go through disaster and come out the other end.
55:10Americans like to see that,
55:12because we are so desensitized to everything around us,
55:15especially in California where we all go around in SUVs.
55:18We amputate our legs because we drive a car.
55:21SUVs are like huge tanks.
55:24We celebrate the whole idea
55:27of being so desensitized to the world.
55:31It's not that the disaster films make us less sensitive.
55:34Oh, God, no. The movies follow life.
55:36I don't think they push us toward anything.
55:39But I think they do celebrate the fact that we're cutting ourselves off
55:43and the only way we can heal anything
55:46is to be tilted in a tram and going into the pond.
55:52CHILDREN LAUGH
56:05He's a bit tamer these days, I think.
56:08Yeah, plexiglass. Plexiglass.
56:12One of the things about disaster films
56:15is that no matter how big the disaster
56:18and how awful it is,
56:20society pulls together in the end.
56:23So it creates social cohesion. Absolutely.
56:25If you talk to people who lived through the riots in Los Angeles,
56:28which were in 1994,
56:30you'd think, oh, my God, it was horrible.
56:32There were floods, there were fires,
56:34people were burning down the buildings.
56:36Most of the people who lived through that, and I was one of them,
56:39it was our favorite time to be in L.A.
56:42It was the only time where people drew together
56:45and found a common cause
56:47and could really relate to each other on an individual basis.
56:51The idea that there's a whole industry built around this
56:55is something that I think just helps us cope with it.
57:18What was that?
57:20You're very calm.
57:22I am... This is what I mean.
57:24I'm completely jaded to this.
57:26You're used to this, is it, in California?
57:28In California, unless you have...
57:30That was a 4.2 earthquake.
57:32Unless you have a 6.0 earthquake, you know,
57:34I give a seismic yawn.
57:36LAUGHTER
57:46So is it only really movies
57:48that make Californians sit up and take notice?
57:51Maybe the land of make-believe
57:53is the only way they can acknowledge the risks around them,
57:57at least until the next catastrophe.
58:02The geology, gold and then the oil,
58:05it's a Californian mindset which I have to say I really admire.
58:09It's free-thinking, optimistic and adventurous.
58:13Because of the Californian geology, you can live the American dream.
58:17If you're successful, you can have whatever you want.
58:21But it seems to me that it's just a cultural illusion
58:24because that same geology can turn the dream into a nightmare.
58:31It's the same story all round the Pacific Rim.
58:34If you can't suffer the downsides, you can't enjoy the benefits.
58:45And Ian journeys into the Ring of Fire in Peru on Wednesday at 9.
58:50Tonight, French fashion and fashionistas and avant-garde artists
58:54as Kirsty Wark brings us up to date with tales from Paris next.