Disasters of the Century

An urgent message from pilot Urs Zimmerman to ground control signals the start of one of the worst air disasters in Canadian history.

Ocean Ranger disaster; Hurricane Juan.

Examines the Truxtun and Pollux and the PWA 737 Cranbrook crash.

British Columbia forest fires; a Toronto snowstorm.

A mild winter weekend becomes a prelude to destruction from above, and a summer day full of promise ends in a whirlwind of devastation and death.

An examination of famous historical catastrophes.

Traveling across the vast Canadian landscape can quickly turn deadly when fate intervenes.

Some regions seem more prone to disaster than others; through the sheer accident of geography, life on disaster row can be fraught with frequent danger.

One of the worst mining cases in 1958 in Nova Scotia; a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911 in New York City.

Tragedy strikes one afternoon at a circus and one winter night at a movie theater.

Allegheny Airlines Flight 736 hits treetops on its descent; fighter jet crashes into a convent near Orleans, Ontario.

A gas explosion destroys a school and kills 455 people.

Dry temperatures and strong winds cause a destructive wall of fire that destroys townships and kills 71 people.

Explosion at a nitrate plant in Germany; weather front traps a layer of air under fog in Belgium.

The Malpasset Dam bursts, killing 421 people; the new Second Narrows Bridge collapses into the water.

Examines the Queen Mary and Curacoa crash and the Newfoundland sealing disaster.