Catastrophic Calamities

Details of the tragic Hartford Circus Fire, 1944.

An exploration of the tragic wreck of the Iolaire, a wealthy man’s yacht turned into a transport ship that went aground on the rocks of the Outer Hebrides, killing at least 201 sailors as they approached their home port.

On the afternoon of July 9th, 1982, Pam Am Flight 759 suddenly fell from the sky into a residential subdivision in Kenner, LA, killing all 145 people on board and eight people on the ground.

It took systemic problems, design flaws and good old-fashioned human error to turn a minor mechanical function into an accident that could have wiped out the entire eastern seaboard of the United States.

The 6.7 Northridge Earthquake, followed by a 6.0 aftershock, less than a minute later, wasn't the biggest earthquake to hit Southern California, but it was one of the worst, because the epicenter was directly under a populated area. It did over $20 billion in damage and, more importantly, at least 60 people lost their lives—16 of them in one building. The official death toll stands at 61, with one study, by USC and the USGS, reaching 72. But Nobody really knows for sure. What we do know is...

Catastrophic Calamities is a twice-monthly 60-minute podcast telling the stories of famous and forgotten tragedies of the 19th and 20th centuries, with the occasional forays reaching further back in history. Host Susan Ferman, a witness to the tragic 1994 Northridge earthquake (Episode 1), focuses on the communities and people whose lives were changed forever by tragic circumstances beyond their control. Some episodes will cover natural disasters, some that were caused by people, some just...