Original subtitles

Tom ward (narrates): A breathtaking tower

in the forests of Croatia.

If this was in any town or city in the world,

it would make for an extraordinary landmark.

A groundbreaking complex in New York City.

It's quite a mystery what this is,

it has this big hanger-like feel,

something like I've never seen before.

A columbian ghost town reclaimed by nature.

They've almost been sucked down in to the earth beneath them.

It's quite an eerie place.

And a majestic facility on the banks of the river thames.

As you enter, you can really feel the grandiosity of this place.

It's almost cathedral-like.

Decaying relics.

Ruins of lost worlds.

Sites haunted by the past.

Their secrets waiting to be revealed.

(Dramatic music)

On the edge of New York harbour

is a colossal, modern-looking building.

This one you can't miss.

Even from miles away, you can see this structure

is absolutely enormous.

You actually come to realise that there are two buildings

that are linked by these huge hovering Bridges.

Only when entering inside does its abandoned state

become clear.

Its purpose however, is anything but.

In the centre of the building is this giant atrium that goes up

for several storeys

and there is railroad tracks that run right through it.

But then it has these strange protuberances,

these balconies jutting out of the walls.

Something like I've never seen before.

This building was a response

to an unparalleled logistical challenge.

There's probably few buildings in the world that saw

so many people come in and out of its doors.

And unfortunately, many of those

who passed through the doors of this place

never came back alive.

In 1917, the United States entered the first world war,

but fighting on battle fields

thousands of miles away posed an unprecedented problem.

The us had a huge logistical challenge

of getting tens of thousands of troops

and thousands and thousands of tonnes of equipment,

food, and supplies back and forth across the Atlantic.

An army of two million needed to be raised

and shipped across the ocean.

To achieve this mammoth task,

they designed this extraordinary complex.

In so many areas this building is a record breaker,

and the reason for that is its incredibly innovative design.

This is the Brooklyn army terminal, and the man behind its creation

was the renowned architect cass Gilbert.

Now, cass Gilbert is really well known

for designing buildings like the Neo-gothic skyscraper,

the woolworth building.

This is obviously a very different building,

very utilitarian.

Andrew gustafson is an expert on the history of the structure.

This building was built entirely out of reinforced concrete

and when it was built it was the largest concrete building

in the world.

You can see it was built with floors,

you know, almost 10 inches thick.

The concrete structure was so robust it

was rated to handle 250 pounds per square foot.

They actually allowed the workers to drive around in military jeeps

and you can still see some of the speed limit signs today.

This was a vast logistical hub that would carry

urgently needed troops, weapons, and supplies

to the trenches of Western Europe.

And at its heart was the atrium.

This was designed to be the main cargo handling area

for the facility,

this was an indoor rail-yard where you could drive

two trains directly in to the building

and overhead used to have glass

so, it could operate 24/7 year round regardless

of the weather.

These trains would pull in and they would unload them

on to this central platform, and then above us,

we also have a pair of old 5 tonne electric gantry cranes.

So, these cranes could be positioned over that cargo,

they would lower a cable, pick it up,

and then they would drop it into these balconies.

It was really a marvel,

it had 96 centrally controlled freight elevators,

giving it just amazing logistical potential.

And it was the most advanced freight terminal

in the world at the time.

The cargo wasn't just here to be stored.

It needed to be moved in and out at a moment's notice.

For this, cass Gilbert designed something unique.

So, we're standing in the sky-bridge,

essentially they built

a whole separate grade on the third level

that connected warehouse a out to the piers.

The idea was that once you loaded a piece of cargo

in to the warehouse

it never touched the ground again until it was loaded on to a ship.

It meant that the army terminal had the capabilities

to do inter-modal shipping.

There's no sort of barrier in between

where things have to be offloaded,

carried to the pier and then loaded again,

they come straight from the train and on to the ship.

Vastly speeding up the process of supplying armies

or transporting troops.

It was a ground-breaking site built in record time.

This massive 4 million square foot facility of piers

and wharfs and warehouses and terminals

was constructed over just 17 months.

4 million square feet in 17 months!

And yet it wasn't quick enough,

the summer offensives of 1918 led by britain and France

had bought Germany to its knees.

By Autumn, allied victory was all but complete

with 10,000 American troops arriving in France every day.

But not one of them came through this complex.

United States joined the war in April of 1917

but didn't get its first troops into battle

until June of 1918, so, we were planning

on a 1919 campaign,

but the war ends in 1918, so, what do you do with this place?

Completed in September 1919,

they had missed the war by 10 months.

But it wasn't long before the government found

a new enemy of the state,

this time internally, and it would give the terminal

a new lease of life.

Prohibition starts in early 1920,

and all of a sudden,

the federal government is mobilising tonnes of resources

to fight the scourge of alcohol.

They confiscated an awful lot of liquor

in the city of New York, a lot of it was stored here.

At any given time during prohibition,

there was something like a quarter of a billion dollars

in today's dollars

worth of confiscated drugs and alcohol

in these big buildings.

In fact, at one point, they had so much they started

to dispose of it through a hole in the dock.

One new yorker had a cunning plan to exploit the situation.

Now, one day in 1927,

when they opened up that hole in the pier,

they discovered strings of about 20 buckets

that were hanging on wires underneath that hole,

so, someone had actually rode underneath the pier,

strung up those buckets, waited for them to dump out

that slurry of beer and wine.

I don't know what they would advertise it,

as but probably some pretty unpleasant stuff.

The terminal proved a useful tool in the fight against alcohol,

but its original wartime design was about to be put to the test.

Most Americans had regarded world war one

as the war to end all wars but then December 7, 1941

the Japanese attacked Pearl harbour,

sinking most of the American pacific fleet.

America suddenly finds itself in a world war again.

With world war ii

you really have the Brooklyn army terminal

coming sort of full circle

so to speak to fulfil its original purpose.

The first two major deployments of the us army

following the attack on Pearl harbour

both started right here on January 15, 1942,

operation magnet began and so this was a deployment

of about 4,000 us army troops going from Brooklyn

to Belfast northern Ireland to help reinforce the British there.

Just about a week after operation magnet,

we had another task-force that was assembled

that was bringing the first American troops

into the pacific theatre.

Over the course of the war, 3.2 million military personnel

moved through this building

and 37 million tonnes of equipment.

The Brooklyn army terminal became the largest supply base

anywhere in the world during world war ii.

The terminal also holds another sobering record.

It was the solemn duty and responsibility

of the Brooklyn army terminal

to actually receive the remains of Americans killed

in the European theatre.

In fact, 140,000 Americans came back to the Brooklyn army terminal,

that represents about 3/4 of all of the Americans

whose remains were repatriated to the United States.

Although the second world war came to an end in 1945,

the terminal's work didn't stop there.

This really became, you know, the major military port

on the east coast but also there was this,

you know, routine rotation of troops coming in and out

of Europe during the cold war.

And one of the more famous soldiers

to depart from the terminal was Elvis Presley.

(Up-tempo music)

He's drafted in to the military and what he decides to do

is rather than serve in special services

which would have enabled him to perform

as a musician and entertain troops,

he actually decides to enlist as a regular soldier.

So, he goes through basic training and in September 1958,

he decides to hold this massive press scene

at Brooklyn army terminal before he departs.

This is a huge PR and marketing moment for the us army

that this massive rock star was putting his career on pause

to serve his country.

Despite its once revolutionary design,

the terminal's days were numbered.

In 1966, it was forced out of business,

outdated by the advent of containerised shipping.

Yet its strength and design has ensured

that the Brooklyn army terminal still has a future.

It's a sign of how well made and functional this building is,

that even though much of it has sat empty for decades,

parts of it are now being reused

and new businesses are moving in, restaurants, start up companies,

so some corners of this complex are actually thriving with new life.

In rural Columbia, in the shadow of the andes mountains,

a site lies shattered

and semi-hidden in the undergrowth.

You've got sort of roads that sometimes appear

to lead nowhere or just disappear.

And then you've got buildings either side that seem

to have almost been engulfed by the ground.

Everything is really odd, you don't know

if the ground has risen up or if the buildings have sunk down.

I mean, when you look in a bit more detail,

it's clearly not just one or two buildings,

there's whole streets of buildings that seem to be half missing,

partly destroyed.

The roofs have been removed off many and the walls are caving in.

This isn't just the ravages of time that's done this.

Whatever happened here didn't just destroy the buildings.

There are crosses, gravestones, and shrines everywhere.

People must have died here, and by the sheer number of shrines,

we're talking hundreds if not thousands.

Columbia has a really tumultuous

and dangerous history, was this war? Was this violence?

Or was this something else?

And this is one of the worst disasters

of this kind in human history,

it's certainly up there as one of the most dramatic.

This is the town of armero.

When Freddy Gutierrez lived here, it was a thriving community.

(Speaks foreign language)

At its height, this town was home to around 30,000 residents.

Freddy lived here with his parents and two brothers.

(Speaks foreign language)

Overnight this town was transformed from a place of life

and vitality into a wasteland,

and the reason lay 45 miles to the west.

We are in the plateaus of nevado del ruiz,

which completely dominates

the landscape.

Although the volcano had been silent for decades,

in 1984 all that started to change.

There were signs it was starting to come back to life.

The first sign was tremors, and then the following march,

a UN seismologist actually observed a 500ft vapour column

and determined that this was a precursor

to a massive eruption.

By October 1985,

a fairly detailed hazard map had been put together

and it was clear that they'd outlined

a number of places

that should or needed to be evacuated.

At the centre of that map lay armero.

And the damage would likely be catastrophic

due to the unique features of this volcano.

It's some 17,400 plus feet high

and even though it's near the equator,

because of its height, its upper parts and its peak

is covered in snow and ice.

If you impart hot volcanic material on to snow and ice,

you very quickly turn it into water

and you can mix that loose volcanic material

into almost like what we call a volcanic slurry,

and this phenomenon called a lahar can be quite deadly.

The hazard map placed armero directly

in the firing line of these lahars,

but what the geologist predicted and what the residents were told

were two very different things.

The map met with criticism from the authorities

because they felt that it was too alarming,

and so they decided not to widely distribute it

amongst the population.

Armero's residents were completely unprepared

for what was coming their way.

The possibility of lahars was high,

and geologists predicted that any magma

coming through the summit could have devastating effects.

They desperately urged local officials to evacuate,

but it seems that their warnings fell on deaf ears.

Six weeks after the hazard map had been produced

and the evacuation of armero first recommended,

disaster struck.

On November 13, 1985, black ash began to spew

out of the volcano and immediately geologists demanded

the evacuation of armero and the neighbouring villages.

Despite this, radio armero called for residents not to panic

and stay in their homes,

a message echoed by the town's priest

over the church's loudspeakers.

Just after 9:00pm, the volcano blew.

With a massive storm raging and lashing rain outside,

few heard the warning signs.

As predicted,

the eruption produced pyroclastic flows

that melted the summit glaciers

and snow creating four thick lahars.

But these were far worse than anyone could have ever imagined.

(Speaks foreign language)

Freddy's parents didn't hang around,

they grabbed their three children, fled the house

and headed down the street, ash falling in the darkness.

(Speaks foreign language)

Lahars cascading in to the West Side of town,

but Freddy was a mile from the initial impact

and they pushed north towards the church.

(Speaks foreign language)

Within minutes, 85% of the town

was covered in mud and debris.

The sheer volume and speed of the mud-flows was astounding.

(Speaks foreign language)

Many were swept away or pulled under

and suffocated by the thick mud of the lahars.

(Speaks foreign language)

Soon they heard a familiar voice.

It was a local man taking refuge on a nearby roof.

And he helped them climb the trees to safety.

(Speaks foreign language)

Huddled together, they prepared to see out the night.

No idea what scene awaited them in the morning.

(Speaks foreign language)

Freddy and his family survived the night on the rooftop

as everything around them was consumed by mud.

They were rescued the next day,

but after a disastrous relief operation,

around 23,000 people are believed to have died,

many of their bodies were never found.

It had been the deadliest lahar in recorded history.

It erupted some 35 million tonnes of material,

but that's only about 3% to 4%

of what came out of the famous mount st Helen's eruption

in 1980.

So, in many ways, it was a relatively

small explosive volcanic event,

but if you couple that with the hot material landing

on snow and ice, when you then funnel that power

down the river valleys, you can turn something

that's a relatively small eruption into a deadly lahar.

The towns buildings, most destroyed or buried,

some still visible but half sunken are testament to its power.

It serves as a warning that ignoring advice of scientists

is a dangerous game.

This is a really devastating story,

and it should be a stark reminder

to us in the present day that we should not gamble

with people's lives.

The only small positive to come out of this

was that after the disaster,

the government did create an office to promote awareness

of natural disasters.

The remains of armero are preserved as a memorial to those

who died on that fateful night,

and for the survivors the events of the 13 November 1985

are always with them.

(Speaks foreign language)

12 miles east of central London on the banks of the river thames

is a diamond in the rough.

This location is far from appealing,

and I speak as a fan of the city of London,

this site is not easy on the eye.

But inside is a building very much at odds

with its setting.

You have this magnificent arched doorway,

but you'd never imagine what lays beyond that doorway,

it's a complete contrast

to the really industrial nature of the surrounding area.

The first time you walk into this building,

it's like walking in to one of the great cathedrals.

It really does have a feeling of grandiosity about it,

all those ornate ironwork interiors with vivid bright colours.

Some of the machinery in this place is huge

and you can tell that this place

was of some significance at its time.

The site played a vital role in the growth

of what was the largest city in the world.

This wasn't just a well designed complex.

It also housed a public health solution.

This is really one of the most magnificent feats

of victorian engineering and yet most people,

even though it's right under their feet,

have never seen it and know that much about it.

One day in 1989, I got a strange phone call,

it turned out from a small group of retired engineers.

And they said, "we're trying to restore

"one of your great, great grandfather's places.

"Come and have a look."

Peter bazalgette arrived at a decrepit facility,

left abandoned for decades.

When I first came into this mysterious place,

it hadn't been properly used since the second world war,

it was rusting away full of dead pigeons.

I was overawed by the grandeur of it.

But sadly, it was a decaying grandeur.

Neglected in this industrial wasteland,

Peter joined forces with a team of retired engineers

and set about saving this forgotten piece of heritage.

When I was a kid in the 1950s and '60s,

I knew I had a very famous relative

from the victorian age, nobody else did.

We didn't value what the victorians had done for us.

That's very different today.

Designed by his great, great grandfather,

sir Joseph bazalgette

and still boasting the biggest rotative beam engines in the world,

it was the product of a health crisis

in mid-19th century London.

In London's poor east side, construction and sanitation

were completely unregulated,

and London became known as a city of two halves

with the wealthy being able to afford

to escape to the cleaner air of west London.

In the poor half, you had a dense population,

crammed together in tiny houses with rats and sewage

running between them down the narrow cobbled streets.

You didn't have clean running water,

you had houses that were infested with vermin,

and people living just cheek to jowl,

crowded with one another in very, very unhealthy conditions.

These were the victorian slums.

But soon enough, even those in the west

couldn't escape the smell of human excrement.

The long hot summer of 1858 caused a horrendous stench

to emanate from London's mighty river.

It was known as the great stink.

The smell began wafting into buildings everywhere

including the houses of parliament.

And because they still believed in the miasma theory,

that disease was spread by air or bad smells,

they all thought their own health was at serious risk.

Cholera had been ravaging London's population for decades,

sewage pumped directly into the river

was spreading the disease,

but through the water supply

not through the air as they believed.

Cholera is a highly infectious disease

that is spread through water

that has been contaminated by faecal matter.

Physician John snow had made the connection years earlier

and understood that this was a waterborne disease,

but even by 1858, few accepted his findings.

These politicians literally believed that they were inhaling diseases,

so, that was really the last straw to get them to act

and to commission bazalgette to begin his project.

Bazalgette's task was to clean up the city

and prevent the spread of disease.

Joseph bazalgette was the chief engineer

of the metropolitan board of works,

and his first job in this relatively new organisation

was to fix London's sewage problem.

And his plan was to run main sewers

from the west of the city to the east.

And those sewers would run parallel to the thames

but keep the sewage out of the thames.

The whole system consisted of 1,300 miles

and 82 miles of west-east intercepting sewers.

For seven years Joseph bazalgette dug up

the whole of London,

he had to cross railway lines, he had to cross canals,

he had to redesign the centre of London,

he had to build an embankment on the river thames

to take one of the main sewers.

I imagine everybody in those days was cursing Joseph bazalgette

for disrupting London, but not after 1865

when it was all finished and London was cleansed

because his sewage system was trailblazing,

it was an innovation.

It showed how a modern city could work.

But how did this building fit in to that revolutionary system?

The network of sewers carried the city's waste water

to two vast pumping and filtration systems

either side of the thames

just east of the metropolitan conurbation.

One of those was the pumping station

here at crossness.

Well, this flywheel belongs to a rotative steam beam engine,

in fact there are four in this building,

the four largest ever built ever in the world,

and they're named after the members of the British royal family,

queen Victoria, prince Albert, Alexandra, one of their daughters,

and bertie, one of their sons.

The four massive engines at crossness pump sewage

into a reservoir that held 25 million gallons.

The sewage was then released with the ebb tide

so, it flowed safely out to sea.

The opening ceremony in 1865 was held here with great pomp.

The pumping station

became known as the cathedral of sewage

and in a fashion typical of ceremonies

in the capital of imperial britain,

it was opened with a grand ceremony, possibly the most lavish meal

ever served inside a sewage facility.

Just look at this!

Some of the finest victorian wrought ironwork ever commissioned.

And it shows one thing about the victorians,

immensely proud of public works,

this was a building essentially for pumping excrement,

London's odour.

But they were so proud of the public effort

of cleansing London

that they did this to show what a great enterprise it was.

For 80 years, the beam engines at crossness turned,

but after the second world war

more advanced engines left them redundant,

but thanks to a group of enthusiasts,

crossness found a new lease of life.

With all of the colours and intricate metal design,

it's clear that a lot of work went into this restoration project.

The trust decided to intervene and restore part of the building

and also to restore one of the engines

and now it can be seen operating in all its former glory.

30 years after I first walked in here

and thanks to the extraordinary efforts

of the members of the crossness engines trust,

determined to preserve this place and celebrate it,

we now have a living museum, a living steam museum.

And if you look at this magnificent beam arm

of this restored engine,

look at the way it's painted, look at the majesty of it,

you can tell that today we really appreciate

what the victorians did and how they really created

modern society that we still rely on today.

While this pumping station has been restored,

parts of bazalgette's system never went out of use.

So, they're building a new super sewer

not to replace but to complement Joseph's system.

That the intercepting sewers are still in use 150 years later,

it's really a testament to the overall build quality

of the system as it was originally constructed.

60 miles south of Zagreb in the wooded hills of petrova gora,

a dazzling building sits high on a mountain peak.

The building almost swallows you whole.

It's simply otherworldly.

It looks modern, it makes you think of something

that would be in a city,

but this is in the mountains in the middle of nowhere.

As you venture in, you realise it is just as modern

and abstract inside.

This is something that you merge into as you would come

into a place of worship.

Although there aren't any windows it's surprisingly light inside.

The offset slices allow streams of light to flood in from above.

It's not some abandoned industrial works,

but it's on an industrial scale almost,

it's just this really perplexing building

that looks out of place.

These vast concrete curves covered in stainless steel,

spiralling up 120ft in to the sky

make for an extraordinary landmark.

Somebody is trying to make a point with this structure.

But what was its purpose?

And why has such a striking landmark seemingly been left to ruin?

Cedomir studen is a local historian

and custodian of this remarkable complex.

(Speaks foreign language)

The reason for its existence can be unearthed

from the woods it overlooks.

This huge towering building dominates the hillside,

but it's not the only structure here.

When you start exploring, you come across

some more abandoned buildings, very deep in the woods.

These buildings are scattered about,

and when you go inside

it's clear that people once lived here.

Those that filled these empty cabins

were engaged in a desperate fight for survival.

Part of an ethnic conflict that dates back

to the inter-war period.

Between the first and second world wars,

there was constant fighting

amongst the various ethnic groups that comprised yugoslavia.

At the forefront of the power struggle

were the right wing fascist group, the ustase.

The Croatian ustase believed that croats

were ethnically superior

to especially Serbs.

Many croat nationalists supported the ustase

because they believe that this was a ticket

to independence from Serbia.

When the Nazis invaded yugoslavia in April 1941,

the ustase were their natural allies.

The Nazis were very happy

to contribute to the disintegration

of the kingdom of yugoslavia

and to take the Croatian part

and turn it into a puppet state

that was ruled by the ustase.

The Nazis didn't have to go

and repress anyone in Croatia

because the ustase did it for them.

For a brief moment,

the Croatians had their own state

away from yugoslavia,

but it wasn't so much a Croatian state

as it was a terrorist state

of this brutal militia.

But their dominance was about to be challenged.

Hidden in the thick forest of petrova gora,

a number of settlements were being built.

(Speaks foreign language)

Those behind it were the kordun partisan detachment,

part of the people's liberation army of yugoslavia,

and at the helm was one of history's most notorious leaders.

The kordun partisan detachment wasn't just led by anyone.

It was led by a figure who would become a major player

in 20th century politics.

Joseph braus who was also known as tito.

He's a communist and envisions a yugoslavia

that is going to share that political ideology.

To over throw the ustase tito needed an army

and secure bases to operate from.

They needed to have headquarters,

they needed to have hospitals to look after their wounded,

they needed places to collect weapons

and the wooden hills of petrova gora,

the Peter mountains were an ideal place for this.

(Speaks foreign language)

Using guerrilla tactics they ambushed the ustase

from their bases deep in the woods,

while recruiting more Serbs to join their cause.

(Speaks foreign language)

For the partisans to survive

it was essential their stronghold remained hidden.

(Speaks foreign language)

This 30-building strong hospital masked a network

of underground bunkers,

capable of sheltering hundreds of soldiers.

It wasn't long though before the ustase

had the stronghold of petrova gora firmly in their sights.

In early April 1942

there was a sudden breakthrough of defences,

ustase forces stormed multiple partisan positions

around petrova gora.

Given that these ethnic Serbs only had crude weapons

and pitchforks, given that they were going

against armed soldiers, they really stood no chance.

(Speaks foreign language)

The ustase continued their vicious attempts

to cleanse the region of Serbs,

yet this hospital was never discovered

and the tide of war soon turned in tito's favour.

The partisans may have lost this fight,

but over the course of the war they did gain ground.

Backed by their communist allies around the world

and later the British and their allies,

by the end of the war, when the Germans retreated

much of the area was under tito's control.

(Dramatic music)

Tito's prestige as the man

who led the opposition to the Nazis

and to the ustase

made him a national hero across what was yugoslavia.

Under tito's firm grip,

yugoslavia was bought back together

and for many years there was relative peace

between the ethnic groups.

This structure was built as a symbolic Phoenix

rising from the ashes of war.

(Speaks foreign language)

The stainless steel panels are hugely reflective

and this effect symbolises light overcoming darkness.

Within the structure was originally a museum

which housed hundreds of documents, relics, and artefacts

related to the battle and the history

of the ethnic Serbian struggles in the region.

But just before it opened in 1981, tito died

and with him the peace he had bought.

Ethnic divisions resurfaced and in 1991 war again erupted.

With the onset of the Yugoslav wars,

the monument falls into disrepair, it's looted,

it is defaced, so, it has a really sad ending.

Today yugoslavia is a distant memory,

but the monument that still stands here

tells a story that must never be forgotten.

(Speaks foreign language)

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