- Additional Details
- Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
- Rating: Not Rated
- Number of Discs: 1
- Run Time: 50 Minutes
- Region: Region 1
- Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
- Language: English
- Studio: History Channel
- DVD Release Date: September 19, 2006
Is the increasingly unpredictable weather of the last few years a sign of disaster to come?
- Stunning computer graphics and actual footage combine to create convincing pictures of the risks faced by U.S. cities.
- Experts debate the potential effects of massive, global climactic change.
- MEGA DISASTERS explores the worst of what could happen.
The floods that destroyed so much of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina demonstrated how fragile levee systems can be -- and how devastating the results can be if they do fail.
Now, experts believe a devastating flood could also strike Sacramento, a city of 400,000 people in the heart of a booming economic region of California. It's an eerie case of Katrina déjà vu. The levees that are supposed to protect the area from two major rivers could fail, unleashing millions of gallons of water into the unsuspecting city. A 250-mile area could be turned into an inland sea. This is a flood that could change the course of history.
By revisiting the Katrina disaster, we witness the chaos of the levee failure and what happens when a city is flooded. We follow a team of investigators in New Orleans who are trying to determine what caused the levees to fail. We also hear eyewitness reports from people who were struggling during Katrina and directly afterwards to save - and then repair - the levees that were breached. These findings reveal how and why the Katrina tragedy unfolded.
We then explore how these results compare to the levee system in Sacramento. A catastrophic failure of the Sacramento levee system would be strikingly similar to the New Orleans levee system disaster. But we also see the ways in which levee failures in Sacramento could be even worse. Our team of experts in Sacramento shows us that if those levees fail, thousands of lives would be in jeopardy and the devastation could extend far beyond the Sacramento delta. A levee break would suck in salt water from the San Francisco Bay, fouling 50 per cent of the water supply to California and destroying one of the most important agricultural areas in the world. A Sacramento levee flood disaster would have a tragic human toll, as well as catastrophic global repercussions.