Original subtitles

♪♪

NARRATOR: Next on "Doomsday Caught On Camera"...

a monstrous dust cloud...

MAN: Look at the size of this [bleep] thing.

...swallows a city...

Nobody knew that this storm was coming.

It was so disorienting.

NARRATOR: ...floods of biblical proportions

lead to desperate measures.

WOMAN: This is flash flooding at its worst.

What happens when savage winds...

- There it is! - ...brutalize your town?

MAN: They don't know if they're going to survive

the next five minutes.

NARRATOR: A mountain unleashes its fury...

MAN: Avalanche! Avalanche!

...burying a person alive.

AHRAN: [ Grunting ]

INTERPRETER: I started digging like crazy.

Ahran could be dead.

...and even more jaw-dropping weather phenomena...

[ Dog whimpering ]

...that'll make you thank God...

MAN: Whoa! Oh, my goodness!

...it didn't happen to you.

AHRAN: Oh! Aah! Aaaah!

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Imagine this...

You're out for an epic day on the slopes with some friends.

Fresh powder and crystal clear blue skies all around

when suddenly...

snow begins to barrel down the mountain,

chasing you faster and faster.

Will it catch up and devour you whole?

AHRAN: [ Screaming ]

♪♪

NARRATOR: February 6, 2019.

Lleida, Spain.

In the scenic Pyrenees Mountains,

three friends, Aleix, Ahran, and Tommy

are gearing up for a day of skiing

and snowboarding at the Baqueira-Beret Resort.

[ Aleix speaking Spanish ]

INTERPRETER: My name is Aleix Oliveras Garcia.

NARRATOR: But Aleix and his buddies

aren't interested in the mountains'

regular marked trails.

Their sights are set on Tuc de la Llança,

a notoriously steep slope full of unmarked

and uncharted terrain.

But skiing off-piste comes with many dangers,

including the ultimate risk... An avalanche.

♪♪

Unfortunately, the Pyrenees region,

there's been a lot of avalanches over the years

with multiple fatalities.

NARRATOR: So Aleix and his friends

have come prepared for the worst-case scenario.

[ Aleix speaking Spanish ]

Complete with cameras on their helmets,

around noon, the trio takes the ski lift up the mountain.

They then hike through the back country

for about an hour to reach the summit.

Though the conditions seem fine,

Ahran skis down first to make sure the snow is packed

and secure.

3, 2, 1. Dropping.

♪♪

ALEIX: Be careful, Tommy.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

NARRATOR: But almost immediately,

Aleix senses trouble.

♪♪

NARRATOR: He then hears a mountain guide cry out.

Ahran and Tommy are already too far downhill

to realize the extent of the horror

unfolding above them.

While Aleix tries to outrun the oncoming wall of snow,

but it's too late.

On his helmet cam, we can see

Aleix bracing himself for the worst.

Once an avalanche starts, things really happen very quickly.

The speed of the snow can go from zero to 80 miles per hour

in about six seconds.

♪♪

After about 30 terrifying seconds,

Aleix finds himself buried alive.

[ Aleix grunting]

[ Aleix yelling ]

But then his survival skills kick in.

Suddenly, light bursts through.

Aleix is saved.

Now he is desperate to check on his two friends.

ALEIX: Tommy!

NARRATOR: He spots Tommy about 100 yards away and he is safe,

but Aran is nowhere to be found.

Aleix immediately pulls out his tracking device

to try and get a location on Aran.

PHOENIX: If you're caught in an avalanche,

you have roughly 15 minutes of breathable air

and then from there your chances of survival diminish greatly.

Where is your buried friend? How are you going to find him?

NARRATOR: Precious seconds tick away.

But then...

...the tracking device has located Aran.

They can only pray he is still alive.

And then they see what looks like his arm and then his hand.

And then a miracle.

Aran opens his eyes.

As the friends breathe a sigh of relief,

they hear a rescue helicopter approaching.

It turns out an onlooker witnessed the entire event

and called for help.

Aran is later taken to the hospital

where he makes a full recovery,

but the three friends will never forget their brush with death.

DELGADO: Luckily, these guys came prepared.

If they did not have the shovels and all the equipment

to get Aran out of there, Aran would have been trapped

and may not have actually made it out of that mountain alive.

NARRATOR: Coming up, an entire city...

COURY: Look at the size of this [bleep] thing.

NARRATOR: ...gets devoured by darkness.

- And... - Those are huge!

NARRATOR: ...a highway turns into a war zone.

MAN #2: Oh, come on!

♪♪

♪♪

NARRATOR: There's nothing like a cool breeze

to soothe the scorching desert heat,

but when conditions are just right,

those refreshing gusts can transform into chaos.

As collapsing air blasts millions

and millions of gritty particles into the sky.

Next thing you know, your senses are under attack

as a colossal wall of dust

barrels its way through the desert.

And if you're in its path, you better run or else.

♪♪

July 5th, 2011, Phoenix, Arizona.

It's the middle of summer,

and Blaine Coury, a recent college graduate,

is venturing into the world of professional videography

and he's about to get his first big assignment.

That particular day I will always remember it.

A good friend of mine was out on a hike

and he calls me up and says, "I don't care what you're doing.

You need to get to the highest hill you can find

and take your camera."

NARRATOR: Blaine gathers his equipment

and rushes over to Sunray Park,

anxious to see what awaits him.

COURY: They have a small little mountain that has some trails

that goes up a couple hundred feet.

I scrambled to the top

and that's when I saw the wall of dust coming.

NARRATOR: What Blaine witnesses is an intense dust storm.

And he's astounded by it.

COURY: This was a dust storm unlike any that I had seen.

I've lived in Phoenix for about 15 years

and we do get these storms over the summer,

but nothing quite as dense or as fast moving as this one.

NARRATOR: Blaine immediately sets up his gear

and starts filming.

COURY: We're behind the scenes, taking some time lapse.

Usually they're a few miles wide

and you can see where they start and stop.

But this one, it went as far east as you could see

and as far west as you can see.

NARRATOR: Stretching 100 miles

and towering over 5,000 feet into the desert sky,

the approaching cloud is the largest dust storm

the area has seen in decades.

This dust storm was ginormous.

It just seemed like it was never going to end.

COURY: Watch how fast it's going.

Watch it engulf that light over there.

I saw airplane lights.

One second you'd see them, the next second,

they were completely gone.

NARRATOR: Although Blaine realizes the dust cloud

is headed straight for him,

he has no idea how much danger he might be in.

Should be here in less than four minutes.

That's my guess.

The definition that this particular storm had,

the billows of clouds,

it really looked like something out of "Independence Day,"

like something out of some kind of end of days movie.

If you can imagine being in your city

and then this giant wave of sand and dust and wind approaches

and you're not prepared for that,

it is going to be absolutely terrifying.

NARRATOR: Although they look alien,

these gargantuan dust storms

are actually a relatively common phenomenon

in the desert regions of the world,

such as in the Middle East.

We use the Arabic word to describe it, "haboob,"

which means "strong winds."

These haboobs form primarily in the summer

when a late afternoon thunderstorm collapses,

the collapsing air hits the desert floor

and kicks out a massive cloud.

NARRATOR: As it hits the Phoenix metropolitan area...

COURY: Watch how fast it's coming.

NARRATOR: ...this monster-sized storm

begins to blanket the entire city.

COURY: Here it comes.

COURY: It was actually only 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon,

but the second that wall of dust enveloped me,

it felt like it was midnight.

PHOENIX: I've been caught up in storms like this,

and it is even more apocalyptic looking when you're in it,

you're getting bombarded by little particles

of dust and grit.

The visibility was just as far as your hand

in front of your face.

The winds that come with the dust storm

are typically 20 and 30 miles an hour.

The winds on this particular storm were much stronger,

probably in the 60, 70 mile an hour gust range.

With every breath you took, you were sucking

in almost as much dust as you were air.

[ Coughing ]

I was doing everything that I could to cover my eyes,

cover my mouth.

[ Coughing ]

NARRATOR: Which is a wise decision

because these dust storms pose a dangerous health risk

known as valley fever.

ABBOTT: A classic one of these things following the dust clouds

is coccidioidomycosis,

and when it gets into you,

it's one of these debilitating diseases

that's very hard for doctors to recognize.

COURY: Sometimes people don't ever get rid of valley fever.

So that was one of the concerns when I was out there.

NARRATOR: With the storm surging out of control,

Blaine attempts to unlock his car,

which is only a couple hundred yards away

at the bottom of the hill.

[ Beeps ]

But his car is invisible,

completely engulfed by the thick wall of dust.

COURY: I knew how to get back to my car,

but it was so dark and so disorienting.

And you're trying to find what little bit of a foot trail

there is without veering too far off

and stumbling into cactus and it was scary.

The sense of control he once had is gone.

He's at the mercy of the dust.

NARRATOR: After 15 minutes of sheer confusion,

Blaine finds his car,

but with practically zero visibility,

he's not going anywhere.

My immediate thought was I need to get home.

But you still couldn't see further

than the hood of your car.

The safest thing to actually do is just to wait it out.

NARRATOR: For the next hour and a half,

Blaine rides out the storm in the parking lot.

Then finally, the skies begin to clear and daylight returns.

Blaine is left shell shocked.

I was coughing up dust for a couple of days,

worried that I might end up with valley fever,

but in the end that ended up not happening.

But it took a couple of days to get back to normal.

NARRATOR: And he has definitely learned a lesson

from this intense once-in-a-lifetime event.

If you ever do catch yourself in one of these storms,

it doesn't take much to misjudge.

The best thing is to just seek shelter, ride it out,

take some cool pictures while you're at it.

Here it comes.

And look at the size of this [bleep] thing.

♪♪

NARRATOR: Coming up...

Raging waters invade the streets

as desperation takes over.

And... - There it is!

...wicked winds... - Oh, my gosh!

...torment a town.

MAN: That's a large tornado.

♪♪

♪♪

NARRATOR: Flash floods.

They can strike quickly and unpredictably,

taking more lives and damaging more property

than any other natural disaster.

And if you are unable to get to higher ground,

surviving this fatal force of nature

may require nothing short of a miracle.

♪♪

May 5th, 2018, Ankara, Turkey.

The country's capital is a sprawling concrete jungle

that sits about 120 miles south of the Black Sea.

It's business as usual in the busy

downtown shopping district of Mamak.

And Ozeran Marat Kuchuk is getting ready to make a delivery

when it begins to rain.

But instead of getting better,

the weather takes a turn for the worse.

And then it turns into this.

Within minutes, the torrential downpour

transforms the dry city streets into a dangerous water world.

This rainfall came down in just a matter of minutes, not hours.

This is flash flooding at its worst.

VAGELL: It's an urban area.

There's probably a lot of cement and asphalt.

So there's not a lot of area for the water

to be absorbed into the ground.

If you don't have good catch basins or areas

for that water to run off,

then the water just gets higher and higher.

NARRATOR: The raging torrent sweeps away

everything in its path,

including dozens of vehicles with motorists trapped inside.

Ozeran feels helpless.

Keep in mind, it only takes six inches of water

just to knock you off your feet.

It doesn't take much to send your vehicle down the river

or just to become submerged and washed away.

NARRATOR: A man is spotted, he's trapped on the hood of a car

which is headed straight downhill.

VAGELL: Can't imagine the thoughts that run through your head.

"Am I going to survive?

Is the water going to keep rising?"

It would have been extremely frustrating

to stand by on the sidelines and watch someone

and be completely unable to help them.

NARRATOR: Miraculously, Ozeran later learns

that the man managed to survive.

Fortunately, no one was seriously injured

in the fast and furious flood,

but over 160 vehicles and 25 businesses were destroyed.

[ People screaming ]

Coming up, a vicious onslaught from above.

Will this driver make it out alive?

And Earth and homes collapse into the sea.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

NARRATOR: Thunderstorms,

one of the most dangerous

and unpredictable types of extreme weather,

producing intense rain, damaging winds,

and scary pummeling hail.

So when these killer storms hit,

the last place you want to be is...

...in the middle of nowhere at night.

Alone and helpless.

♪♪

July 29th, 2018, southwest Kansas.

After a long day of deliveries, trucker Rick Blaga

in his brand-new semi tractor trailer

approaches his final destination.

The reason I was there is because I took a load

that I normally don't take.

Normally I just stay on Highway 80 or I-80.

This happened to be like a one-pick 6-drop load,

so I had six different cities to deliver it.

NARRATOR: But about 10 miles from the Colorado border,

Rick spots something unnerving.

A lightning storm.

BLAGA: Whoa!

Ooh.

I'm like, whoa, there was like lightning

probably within like 30 feet of me, that's how close it was.

It was everywhere

and probably every second there was one,

if it wasn't right by me, it was,

you know, in the distance going insane.

You know, these poor tractor trailer drivers,

they drive all across the country

dealing with the weather conditions,

they have one of the toughest jobs out there.

BLAGA: There was no cars on the road.

And I think maybe one passed me going in the opposite direction.

That should have been a huge red flag.

NARRATOR: With the lightning increasing, Rick ventures forth.

BLAGA: I continued forward because I was just unaware

of what was possible to be in front of me.

NARRATOR: Suddenly, huge pellets began to strike his truck.

Rick finds himself under attack.

I heard a couple of hits, maybe 10 seconds goes by

and I heard a few more this time.

I was looking in my side-view mirrors.

I couldn't figure out what else the noise was.

NARRATOR: Rick doesn't know it, but he is driving

right into the middle of a violent hailstorm.

I was like, "Okay, you know, we're gonna get a little bit

of hail, that's gonna go away."

That's why I continued down the road

is I thought it was gonna stop.

It sounds like somebody is shooting things at your vehicle

because it's a really loud noise when that ball of ice

hits the metal of your car.

One of the terrifying things about a hailstorm

is you don't know how big is the hail going to get

and then how long is it going to last?

BLAGA: And with the hail also came a very aggressive side wind.

I thought I was going to get blown off the road.

And they were big, they were like golf-ball sized.

And then the numbers increased.

And it's like you've gone from the golf course,

we're into a shooting gallery and you're now the target.

BLAGA: I thought it was gonna shatter the passenger side window

and I thought it was just gonna start pelting me.

NARRATOR: And sure enough...

BLAGA: Once the front windshield cracked,

I thought I was going to die.

DELGADO: Poor Rick, the fear factor is through the roof,

he probably felt like he was driving blind

because all he saw were missiles just coming at his truck.

One wrong move, hailstones hitting in the wrong place.

Could it be the end for him?

NARRATOR: With the windshield barely holding,

Rick pulls over to the side of the highway.

I had to completely stop at that point and I was just kind of

holding onto the steering wheel and just watching it all happen.

♪♪

NARRATOR: After what feels like an eternity, the storm passes.

Rick has survived the intense encounter without a scratch.

The same can't be said for his brand-new truck.

BLAGA: The front glass had to be replaced.

I lost a mirror on the passenger door,

the whole right side of the cab, like somebody with an uzi

just hit it and just lit it up.

That's a testament just to how strong those hailstones were

and when they were pounding his vehicle to crack his windshield.

He's really lucky he got out of there.

NARRATOR: Although Rick still makes those interstate deliveries

for his job each day,

safety has become more of a priority.

It's worth paying, you know, five bucks for a radar app

that tells you hours ahead of time,

like, you can expect lightning.

You can expect this, you can expect that.

So, yeah, because of this, I had to learn a lot

to prevent this from happening again.

- Coming up... - Oh, my gosh!

NARRATOR: ...destruction lurks on the horizon

and there's no way to stop it.

♪♪

♪♪

NARRATOR: Most people spend their entire lives

working hard to build their dreams.

Buying a brand-new home,

an expensive car, or launching a business.

But when Mother Nature rears her head,

those dreams can be destroyed in mere seconds

due to that violent, vicious disaster called

a tornado.

When sadistic spiraling winds crash down from above,

will anything be left?

♪♪

March 28th, 2020. Jonesboro, Arkansas.

This small town 130 miles northeast of Little Rock

is a peaceful and relatively quiet place,

but it hasn't always been that way.

Jonesboro is a town with tornadoes in their past.

In two different times, they've had EF4 tornados.

Those are the ones with wind speeds greater

than 165 miles an hour.

NARRATOR: Back in 1968 and 1973,

the town was ravaged by powerful twisters

that combined took the lives of 37 people and injured over 500.

And on this spring afternoon,

a familiar scene is unfolding once again

as local weather authorities

declare a terrifying alert for the area.

A tornado emergency means

a dangerous tornado is on the ground.

And it has been spotted and lives are in danger.

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh!

NARRATOR: Caught in the cross hairs of this churning chaos

is a couple driving in their car.

ABBOTT: A tornado can pick up and touch down on the ground.

They can take a sharp turn to the right or to the left.

And if you are near one,

don't stay out there in the open in your car.

CANO: They're in the middle of a disaster film.

They're trying to get away. They're trying to get to safety.

They don't know if they're gonna survive

the next five, 10 minutes,

but they're making the attempt.

NARRATOR: As hard as they try to escape it,

the twisted vortex of destruction keeps closing in.

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh!

Adrenaline has kicked in, its fight or flight,

and the idea is to just move quickly.

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh!

PINN: But it's important to remain calm.

When we rush in these sorts of circumstances,

we often push ourselves into greater danger.

WOMAN: There it is!

There it is!

NARRATOR: Luckily, the car is able

to safely outrun the tornado.

But as the devastating twister continues to rip across town...

...thousands of people are still in grave danger.

Said Said is in his electronics store

in downtown Jonesboro

when he first hears the warnings.

The warnings starts an hour or two before the tornado came.

NARRATOR: Instead of heeding the warnings to take shelter,

Said packs up his things

and prepares to head home to his family.

But Said doesn't realize what's happening right outside.

♪♪

Said is now trapped and surrounded by windows.

Stunned, he stares at the twister in disbelief.

PINN: Everyone's told if a tornado is approaching

move to an interior room,

move to some place where there are few windows.

DELGADO: This gentleman should have been in a closet.

He should have been in a basement.

He's way too close.

This is an example of what you should not be doing.

NARRATOR: But that's not lightning.

The tornado is now on a mission

to destroy the town's electrical power grid.

ABBOTT: They go to one electric transformer and knock it out,

and the next one and the next one,

and there could be live wires on the ground.

NARRATOR: And just like that, in a matter of seconds,

an entire city block is decimated.

Luckily, Said is unharmed and his shop suffers little damage.

Overall, 22 people were injured and millions of dollars

in property damage was sustained.

And for Said, this harrowing event reminded him

what's most important at the end of the day.

WOMAN: There it is! There it is!

There it is!

NARRATOR: Coming up...

the sea swallows up the Earth...

and everything on it.

[ Whimpering ]

♪♪

♪♪

NARRATOR: Picture this, you're in the safety

of your own home, eating, relaxing, even sleeping.

But completely unaware that a deadly danger lurks below,

because the ground on which your home stands

may not actually be as solid as you think.

In fact, the ever-shifting earth is a disaster waiting to happen,

so when nature's fury pulls the rug out from under you,

today is your doomsday.

♪♪

June 3rd, 2020, Alta, Norway...

A region known for its northern lights,

massive glaciers, and sweeping coastline,

making it the ideal vacation spot.

On this seemingly perfect spring day,

one local resident hears a sudden bang

and looks out his window

where he was struck by a terrifying sight.

A massive chunk of the earth slowly breaking apart,

ripping away from the mainland, dragging multiple homes with it,

and plowing straight towards the sea.

This video out of Alta, Norway, it is stunning,

I mean, it's impressive seeing how big this landslide is

and how slow moving it is as it's happening.

It almost looks like an island or a raft

as it's pulling away from the coastline.

NARRATOR: It's a shocking, unbelievable sight.

Dozens of homes being slowly and mercilessly swept out to sea.

Once the earth is cracked and you know that a slide has begun.

Mother Nature is not going to stop it.

Gravity's got a hold of it now and it's going to pull it.

It can be very difficult to predict where a landslide

is going to occur or when it might happen.

What we need to look for is areas

that have a relatively high slope angle

and where we see a lot of water present

because soil saturation is a big, big component

in the creation and movement of these landslides.

NARRATOR: As the ground softens, the Earth's surface liquefies.

♪♪

In a matter of minutes, multiple houses

once standing are now engulfed

by this deadly mix of gravity and instability.

It's a terrifying event, people's homes,

their livelihoods, sometimes even entire communities

and towns are just being submerged under water.

There's rocks and boulders

and mud sloshing everything together.

ABBOTT: It's not part of our consciousness to think

about solid earth

turning into a fluid and then flowing away

and then imagine you're living on top of this,

how could you sleep at night knowing that during the night

everything you own and yourself

might end up at the bottom of the sea?

NARRATOR: The monstrous landslide measures over 2,000 feet wide

and nearly 500 feet deep.

This really does feel like your world is coming to an end.

You're like, "What's next?"

Seeing all these homes just being swept away.

NARRATOR: And though the cause of the calamity is unknown,

many attribute it to an unusual amount of snowfall in 2020.

Any time that you see the Earth's processes at work,

it's just another demonstration

that we don't live on a cold, dead planet.

We live on a very vibrant, active planet.

And there are challenges that come with that.

Narrator: With many of the homes now sinking

under the swirling waves

while others float like toy boats,

a helicopter rescue team

is alerted and on the scene within minutes.

Fortunately, they soon learned that these demolished,

disappearing homes

were unoccupied when the landslide hit,

but there is one strong-willed survivor

who emerges from the wreckage... a dog.

DELGADO: It's heartbreaking to see scenes like this.

Seeing this helpless animal, not understanding

what's happening. And then eventually, finally,

somebody comes and rescues the dog.

I mean, gosh, that is just something

that makes everybody feel so much better.

But it was certainly nice to know

that nobody was actually killed

because a lot of people could have actually lost their lives.

♪♪

NARRATOR: So doomsday has arrived.

What would you do if you were...

MAN: Avalanche, avalanche.

NARRATOR: ...buried in a frozen tomb...

[ Aleix screams ]

...chased by a monstrous wall of dust...

COURY: Look at the size of this [bleep] thing.

NARRATOR: ...trapped in treacherous floodwaters,

or attacked by massive chunks of ice?

BLAGA: Those are huge!

NARRATOR: Just hope and pray...

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh!

NARRATOR: ...you live to tell about it.

♪♪

�moovlmvhd�&v@