Jet Stream | Wild Weather

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