Natural Disasters Science

Told in luminous, perceptive prose, The Last Fire Season is a deeply incisive inquiry into what it really means—now—to live in relationship to the elements of the natural world. When Manjula Martin moved from the city to the woods of Northern California, she wanted to be closer to the wilderness that she had loved as a child. She was also seeking refuge from a health crisis that left her with chronic pain, and found a sense of healing through tending her garden beneath the redwoods of Sonoma County.

On September 1, 1894, two forest fires converged on the town of Hinckley, Minnesota, trapping over 2,000 people. Daniel J. Brown recounts the events surrounding the fire in the first and only book to chronicle the dramatic story that unfolded. Whereas Oregon's famous "Biscuit" fire in 2002 burned 350,000 acres in one week, the Hinckley fire did the same damage in five hours. The fire created its own weather, including hurricane-strength winds, bubbles of plasmalike glowing gas, and 200-foot-tall flames.

For readers of Station Eleven and Good Morning, Midnight comes an electric, heart-pounding novel of love and sacrifice that follows people around the world as they unite to prevent a global catastrophe. When dark comet UD3 was spotted near Jupiter's orbit, its existence was largely ignored. But...

From the international bestselling author of Baby Doll comes a post-apocalyptic mystery exploring the unshakeable bond between mothers and daughters and the sacrifices we make for the people we love. If you knew the world was ending, what lengths would you go to protect the people you love? How...

Ignited by a lightning strike in a remote forest, the Currowan fire was one of the most terrifying episodes of Australia's Black Summer. It burnt for 74 days, consuming nearly 5,000 square kilometres of land, destroying well over 500 homes and leaving many people shattered. In the aftermath, there were questions. Why were resources so few that many faced the flames alone? Why was there back-burning on a day of extreme fire danger? Why weren’t they better prepared?

A Malaysian cargo ship on its way from Seattle, Washington, to China ran aground off the coast of western Alaska's Aleutian Islands on December 8, 2004, during a brutal storm, leading to one of the most incredible Coast Guard rescue missions of all time. Two Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopters lifted off immediately from Air Station Kodiak during the driving storm, in an effort to rescue the ship's 18 crew members before it broke apart and sank in the freezing waters.

This book presents the fullest account yet written of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Rooted in a wealth of oral histories, it tells the dramatic but underreported story of a people who confronted the unprecedented devastation of sixty five thousand homes when the eye wall and powerful northeast quadrant of the hurricane swept a record thirty-foot storm surge across a seventy-five-mile stretch of unprotected Mississippi towns and cities. James Patterson Smith takes us through life and death accounts of storm day, August 29, 2005, and the precarious days of food and water shortages that followed. Along the way the narrative treats us to inspiring episodes of neighborly compassion and creative responses to the greatest natural disaster in American history

Rethinking Readiness offers an expert introduction to human-made threats and vulnerabilities, with a focus on opportunities to reimagine how we approach disaster preparedness. Jeff Schlegelmilch identifies and explores the most critical threats facing the world today, detailing the dangers of pandemics, climate change, infrastructure collapse, cyberattacks, and nuclear conflict. Drawing on the latest research from leading experts, he provides an accessible overview of the causes and potential effects of these looming megadisasters.

Natural and man-made disasters have the power to destroy thousands of lives very quickly. Both as they unfold and in the aftermath, these forces of nature astonish the rest of the world with their incredible devastation and magnitude. In this collection of 10 well-known catastrophes such as the great Chicago fire, the sinking of the Titanic, and hurricane Katrina, Brenda Guiberson explores the causes and effects, as well as the local and global reverberations of these calamitous events.

Norman MacLean spent the last 14 years of his life determined to sift through grief and controversy in search of the truth behind the Mann Gulch tragedy, one of the worst disasters in the history of the Forest Service. Young Men and Fire is the culmination of his investigations. It is a story about honor, death, compassion, and the human spirit.

International best-selling author Bobby Akart delivers pulse-pounding thrills in The Geostorm Series, the story of a planet-changing phenomenon, a natural disaster brought about by the Earth itself. Listeners will become enthralled with the discoveries of Chapman Boone, former storm chaser, and full-time field meteorologist who begins to experience extraordinary weather anomalies. His sister, Kristi Boone, is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine known for being attune to the exotic animals within her care. At first, the changes in the animals' behavior are subtle...until they aren't.

“In Fernanda Santos’ expert hands, the story of 19 men and a raging wildfire unfolds as a riveting, pulse-pounding account of an American tragedy; and also as a meditation on manhood, brotherhood and family love. The Fire Line is a great and deeply moving book about courageous men and women...

Hurricanes and Floods is a tale of the forces of nature that cause more human death than any other. The 1900 disaster in Galveston, Texas, the ordeal of Hurricane Camille, and floods from Johnstown, Pennsylvania to Los Angeles, California, Listeners will be "swept away" by this fast-paced listen. Hurricanes and Floods is part of the Natural Disasters non-fiction series that will engage listeners of all ages, including English Language Learners.

Wildfires are one of nature's most frightening forces. In this exciting and historical account of many of the worst fires in American history, all the terror, destruction and human tragedy are vividly retold. The 1871 Peshtigo, Wisconsin fire is relived, as well as the Yellowstone fire of 1988 and the 2003 Southern California fires. Wildfires is part of the Natural Disasters non-fiction series that will engage listeners of all ages, including English Language Learners.

For most San Franciscans, April 18, 1906 started at 5:12 a.m. with 65 seconds of violent quaking followed by a relentless, raging fire that left 98% of the structures in the most populated part of the city in ruins. However, while everyone felt the earthquake equally, they did not all suffer to the same degree. In Saving San Francisco, Andrea Rees Davies, a former firefighter, tells a new story of the 1906 catastrophe. Saving San Francisco challenges the long-lived myth that the fire brought out altruism and leveled class distinctions among residents.

From acclaimed actor and producer Wendell Pierce, an insightful and poignant portrait of family, New Orleans and the transforming power of art. On the morning of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina barreled into New Orleans, devastating many of the city's neighborhoods, including Pontchartrain Park, the home of Wendell Pierce's family and the first African American middle-class subdivision in New Orleans. The hurricane breached many of the city's levees, and the resulting flooding submerged Pontchartrain Park under as much as 20 feet of water.

The Anti-Catastrophe League, informed by the author’s experience of working in the field of what is known as existential risk, tells the story of a species that is working out how to defuse several bombs at once. From ancient risks to very modern apocalypses, the book charts the imminent dangers to the human race and introduces listeners to the groups of scientists, eccentrics, diplomats and visionaries who are doing everything in their considerable power to prevent the worst from befalling us.

The incredible story of a flood of near-Biblical proportions - its destruction, its heroes and victims, and how it shaped America’s natural-disaster policies for the next century. The storm began March 23, 1913, with a series of tornadoes that killed 150 people and injured 400. Then the freezing rains started and the flooding began. It was the nation’s most widespread flood ever - more than 700 people died, hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings were destroyed, and millions were left homeless.

For more than fifty years, a power plant in the small town of Kingston, Tennessee,  burned fourteen thousand tons of coal a day, gradually creating a mountain of ashen waste sixty feet high and covering eighty-four acres, contained only by an earthen embankment. In 2008, just before Christmas, that embankment broke, unleashing a lethal wave of coal sludge that covered three hundred acres, damaged nearly thirty homes, and precipitating a cleanup effort that would cost more than a billion dollars—and the lives of more than fifty cleanup workers who inhaled the toxins it released.

Den 26. december 2004 sidder de på en lille café og har netop bestilt morgenmad, da en mand kommer farende ind i caféen, mens han råber og vifter febrilsk med armene. I de efterfølgende minutter oplever Rikke sit livs mareridt – en kamp om liv og død. Tsunamien er fortællingen om den naturkatastrofe, som ramte store dele af Asien, fortalt af Rikke Wang, der oplevede katastrofen helt tæt på.