A solar anomaly causes the temperature in Los Angeles to rise to fatal heights. This leads to power failures, fires, flooding from the melting of the mountain snows, and other natural disasters.
This story focuses on the recently struck off Dr Coleman West (James Remar) who lost his license due to hospital politics. Despite this he rises to the occasion in the emergency along with an inner city school teacher, Ryan Tibbet (Kathryn Morris).
Meanwhile a parolee called Eddie (Jonathan La Paglia) harasses the teacher and is eager to make a fast buck out of the tragedy by staging a robbery in amidst the ever increasing looting that is taking place in the heat of the disaster.