All language subtitles for Earthstorm - 01x01 - Tornado.NF.WEBRip.x264-SMURF+ION10+NPMS.English

This is a once-in-a-generation catastrophic tornado.

You've got to get, to your safe place... now.

We had a tornado. I'm scared.

Is there anybody else out there?

All my co-workers are screaming,

"I'm gonna die. Tell my family I love them."

And I'm like, "We're not dying in here. We're not dying."

And then, boom! Everything fell on us.

Somebody please, send us some help. We are trapped.

Nobody can get to us.

I couldn't move and I started to panic.

I've watched all these movies about disasters and people getting trapped.

And I never would have thought that I would have lived,

through something like that.

Every year, there are more than 1200 tornadoes in the United States.

Four times more than in the rest of the world combined.

Each is simply a vortex of air.

But when that vortex is spinning at 200 miles an hour,

it becomes unstoppable.

This is a film about people who chase tornadoes.

Lured by their terrible beauty.

This whole place is gone.

And about the people whose lives are pulled apart,

by the destructive power of nature.

Brandon Clement has been chasing tornadoes for over 20 years.

I had a tornado warning at the school I was going to

and they were trying to get us all in the hall and,

I may have kind of skipped out and went to the parking lot,

got in my car and started chasing it. So...

It was probably a dumb move but, instantly I...

it was like, "Okay, I like this."

By 2003, I was building chase vehicles,

and eventually started shooting video with it.

Brandon is a professional chaser.

He makes a living posting footage of tornadoes online,

selling it to different media outlets.

His chase partner is Brett Adair.

The chase is an adrenaline rush,

and anyone who says it's not, they would be lying.

This RFD is about to slam into us.

Right there's where the tornado would be though, right over the tree line.

You don't know what to expect because every storm is different.

Every system is different.

This RFD started coming in.

We gotta go. We gotta go back north.

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Then that adrenaline starts to kick in.

Come on.

My passion is to be in violent weather.

Brandon and I,

we don't work together in a sense of being in the same vehicle.

There we go.

We may have a different opinion of where the best storm's gonna be.

That's the storm. It's got lightning on it.

And it's great, because you need somebody to push you.

We have two spots.

Three spots now, if you look out to your two o'clock.

So, it's kind of a competitive nature for the two of us too.

Looks like a tornado on the ground.

It is.

And that's how we operate.

Each tornado, is spawned by a thunderstorm.

Warm, moist air rises.

It cools and condenses to form towers of cumulonimbus cloud.

But only one in 5000 thunderstorms has enough moisture,

energy and wind speed to become a tornado.

Forget the core of the storm. We need to stay northeast of that.

Yes?

Whatever's gonna take you northeast of the cloud base.

I'm an observationist.

I like to go out in nature and observe these storms.

And then ask questions like, "Why are they there?

What causes them? What makes them look the way they do?"

The ultimate goal is to look at a storm and say,

"This one is likely to produce a tornado, and this one is not."

The source of the rotation of tornado is the horizontal row

that occurs along the boundary between the cool air,

where rain has fallen and evaporated,

and the regular warm moist air that's outside the storm.

That's where the spin comes from.

That air which is spinning approaches the updraft,

the main buoyant updraft in the storm,

and it gets tilted up.

And lo and behold, you have a low level mesocyclone.

And this mesocyclone is a swirl of winds,

maybe, two, three, four kilometers across.

And as the air rises,

air has to come in from the sides to feed that updraft.

And that region of air which is spinning, contracts.

And that stretches the column of air

and then you get a very intense vortex, right near the ground.

That's when you get the tornado.

This is spectacular, I can't even talk.

We dream of getting something like this.

Man! Look at that.

I hope someone is getting that. Don't get me, get that.

Spring is tornado season in the US...

when there's both warm and cool air in the atmosphere,

enough for a storm to start spinning.

It's alchasing season,

when there's the best chance of catching a twister in action.

Brandon is chasing in Texas.

Heading Northwest towards Red River County.

Right here is where the storms are starting to form.

You see the first storm blowing up.

And as they're coming towards you, you want to go towards them

and then you can get ready for Tornado Time.

Tornado Time is what I call, in the afternoons, in the plains.

That five o'clock to eight o'clock hour,

that's where you get most of your tornadoes.

Brett is alin Texas, driving south to Jasper.

Chasing down a different tornado.

We're going to stay on these until they start to show those MCS signs

and then we're going to blow East.

It's good to know that they're coming across.

I see your area over there is now

under a severe thunderstorm watch for the afternoon.

They have put a tornado watch out for us.

It's the last circle on the drylines.

Do you know anything that's good to eat down near DeRidder?

Of course, he would lose signal.

Brandon, I'm getting hangry. Answer me, boy.

Here it goes.

You definitely see it trying now.

See how the width of the clouds in the front are going up?

The back side is coming back around.

That's exactly what you want to see.

Hopefully it can continue to develop and then we'll get a nice,

tight tornado right in front of us.

Like we were talking about earlier, Tornado Time.

We're now getting into that window.

This storm may put one down.

Full tornado on the ground.

I'm getting out right here.

Most tornadoes only last a few minutes.

Sometimes seconds.

Oftentimes, our footage is the only evidence that they ever existed.

We're like journalists, documenting each storm.

Bearing witness to the destruction it causes.

Is anybody in the car?

Chasers like me,

we're here when the destruction is happening.

It's before the First Responders even get here.

Watch the power lines.

It's our moral obligation to find out if anyone is hurt

and do what we can to help.

Y'all okay?

They were in the shelter.

Good place to be.

Scary, man.

Is it you?

You?

- Yes.
- Nobody else inside or anything?

- No.
- Good.

Can you turn that main switch on the propane tank off?

We can.

- I cut it back on.
- Watch out.

Pretty good.

Come on. They're

Good thing they were in the shelter.

You can still see the tornado. Quite a rope.

Okay.

It always amazes me,

how something beautiful can do much damage.

I'm over here near Jasper with this one that's coming, out of Woodville.

Meanwhile, Brett is 200 miles further south,

trying to locate a different storm.

This has got some wind. It's...

you can see the inflow but man, it's super

I can go south of town right here at Jasper, that's what I'm,

I'm trying to make a decision here though pretty quick.

Maybe we should go a little south, get in a better position.

Man, we'll talk. Bye.

Right here.

I hate this, man.

By the time he hones in on a tornado,

it's wrapped in rain, he can't see anything.

Copy that.

There it is. Look out your window, right there.

That's a tornado over there to the left.

When you get in those situations in the rain,

it's like a big washing machine.

Buckle up and get ready for the ride.

Most tornadoes in the US,

happen on the Great Plains in Tornado Alley.

It's wedging out, and you're probably seeing a sheer,

a sheer zone,

with it going up and over.

The geography is perfect, for the formation of big storms.

When the air comes in from the Pacific over the Rocky Mountains,

it subsides.

And as that air subsides,

pressure increases, and that pressure squeezes the air

and it warms it up.

As it warms up,

you get southerly winds ahead of it.

And those southerly winds bring up moisture

from the Gulf of Mexico to fuel the storms that form.

So, it's very important to be here,

because we have the mountains and we have the Gulf of Mexico.

Howie, we should go.

We need to go.

Tornado Alley, has more violent tornadoes than anywhere on Earth.

Each is measured on the EF-Scale.

Based on wind speed and structural damage.

Only one percent of tornadoes in the US

are EF4s or EF5s,

classified as violent tornadoes.

Until you see this in person, you have no idea.

It's devastation.

On average, there's fewer than one EF5 per year,

but they're the storms that live on in the memory.

Look at the size of that monster.

Jesus!

The El Reno Tornado still haunts those who were there.

We are near El Reno, Oklahoma.

We have a rapidly rotating wall cloud to our west.

Once that first lightning strike happens,

I'm instantly wondering, how long until I see a tornado.

This thing keeps forming new vortices.

In that moment, I see one little funnel and it touches the ground.

And then I see another little funnel and it touches the ground.

But what I don't realize is that the whole sky

is actually about to become a tornado.

Because we knew there was a lot of potential

for strong tornadoes on this day,

and we knew there were many storm chasers everywhere,

we decided to give the storm a lot of space.

So, when we went to our first position watching the El Reno storm,

we were about six miles away from it.

You're kind of hoping that the rear flank downdraft is going to clear out

and you're going to get a beautiful shot of the tornado that's under there.

We were there chasing. I actually had my dad with me.

And when the tornado formed, it was several miles off to our west.

Had a good viewing position.

Very relaxed environment.

And the tornado started growing...

from when we first got in the car, as a small,

few hundred yard wide multi-vortex,

to at this point, a two and a half to three-mile-wide monster.

Looking right at it.

We got 30 seconds. Turn the car around!

I wanted the car turned around

that we wasted no time in getting out of there.

But all I wanted to do in that moment was,

was film it,

because I'd never seen anything like it before.

The fact that it was mesmerizing kept me in that moment

for too long.

There were 250 chasers on the scene that day,

their locations mapped by GPS.

They weren't prepared for the speed of the oncoming storm.

We were only 90 seconds away from that tornado hitting our location.

Jump in!

We've got to haul ass.

We got in our vehicle

and we pulled out and screamed east as fast as we could.

Go. Go. Go. Go!

- Drive! Fuck.
- Let's go.

Fuckin' shit.

Imagine being chased by something that's two and a half miles wide,

moving at 55 miles per hour.

And it was actually gaining on us.

All you can hope is that the road you're on continues for miles and miles,

you can continue to drive away as fast as you can.

We had to turn around back across the tornado.

At this point, I'm having trouble keeping the vehicle on the road.

And I knew we're about to take a direct hit.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

All I could think, is keep the nose of the car in the wind.

I knew if we got sideswiped in any way that car was going rolling

and we weren't gonna make it.

I realized this tornado was going towards my escape route.

Go! I'll get the tripod. Drive! Drive!

And that's when we decided to go south as fast as we could.

Go! Winds!

And we started having headwinds

that were probably over 100-mile-an-hour.

And the car could not go any faster.

Forty is not enough!

I can't see.

You're fine. You're good. I can see for you. Go!

Go!

I yell at my driver to drive south.

Go! Don't stop now! Go!

Because if he stops, if we hesitate

any more than we already did by me taking too much time...

we're not gonna make it.

Go south! If you don't go south, we're gonna die!

- It's okay?
- Yes, drive south!

There was farm equipment coming right at my vehicle.

Shit.

It shattered my windshield immediately.

Get down! Duck down! Duck down!

Drive forward if you can.

We slam into this 2000-pound hay bale.

You're good.

Shit!

And it adds to the chaos of the moment.

I can't see.

Okay, that's fine.

We realized then that the worst has passed us

and that the tornado had curved back off to the northeast

and we had escaped out of the south.

My God!

My car is totaled.

Drive.

I've seen many tornadoes.

And I've seen the damage that they cause.

But actually being in that situation and thinking you might not make it out

totally reframes the perspective,

and the respect for Mother Nature.

When we felt we were in a safe enough position to stop,

we got out.

And when we looked up at the storm,

we can see the entire mesocyclone.

It was totally and utterly awe-inspiring.

And for a moment you forgot the horrible beast that was underneath it.

I said out loud, " I hope all the storm chasers are safe."

And, that ended up being about six minutes after

Tim Samaras, Paul Samaras, and Carl Young had actually been hit by that tornado.

They were the first storm chasers ever killed by a tornado.

I can only imagine, that it was very hard to see.

It probably moved very fast

and they probably didn't realize

the danger that they were in until it was too late.

The season is over in Tornado Alley.

There have been no violent tornadoes.

When that, that storm complex dives...

Brett Adair and Brandon Clement are back on home territory

in the South.

You're in Mississippi, you live here, I live in Alabama.

For me, personally, I might stay a little east tonight.

If we get those type of parameters along I-20, Birmingham...

the symbol is right there.

Right.

Alongside Tornado Alley, is Dixie Alley.

Cutting through the southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

It has more violent tornadoes per square mile than its larger neighbor.

And those tornadoes continue later in the year.

With a second spike in the fall.

Chasing in the South, to me, is different than the Plains.

I have kids, I have a mother, I have friends.

And it's terrifying knowing that

these tornadoes that I'm out here chasing could,

be going at them next.

- Hi.
- Hey.

Be ready, 'cause they're a lot worse

than what the radar is representing all day long.

Be careful.

It's coming right towards the house.

Yes.

I, if you can hear me, I love you. Gotta go.

- I love you too. Bye.
- Bye.

Tornadoes in fall are normally weaker than those in spring.

Blowing out by Thanksgiving.

But not this year.

Shit.

The Gulf of Mexico is warmer than it's been in December for 40 years.

Increasing evaporation adding moisture into the atmosphere.

As warm, moist air heads inland,

it collides with cold air further north

and strong winds in the upper atmosphere...

a recipe for the worst winter tornado in Kentucky's history.

This is the most remarkable,

destructive tornado that I have seen around here.

As this storm moved over our area,

we were able to detect winds of well over 150 miles per hour.

And that's incredible.

This was a storm, on radar,

you might see out in Oklahoma or Texas, but not here.

In 14 years of working at the station,

I've never seen anything this powerful.

That night, we had to take our message up to the highest level of urgency.

We may be looking at a one-mile-wide tornado.

Incredible, incredible winds.

This is a once-in-a-generation catastrophic tornado

that will be talked about for years.

We were telling people to get mattresses,

pull those off your beds.

Take those into your, your safe room with you.

Get baseball helmets, football helmets.

Put those on your head.

Make sure that you've got, pull out some pillows...

This was the type of storm that if you weren't in a basement,

you were in danger.

And we had to try to tell people,

to take every precaution necessary to try to save their lives.

I cannot, cannot tell you with any greater urgency.

You've got to get to your safe place now!

When I heard the thunder, I came over to this door.

And then I turned around.

And when I looked again,

I saw a big flash of white light.

I looked outside

and all of a sudden, debris started whipping up

and the door started shaking.

I went ahead and locked the door.

I said, "Everybody, let's go to the bathroom."

we started walking all the way over here.

Came into the restroom, and we all huddled in here.

We were scared, it was terrifying.

The sound and the debris hitting the house.

I can hear tree trunks hitting and slamming.

And the windows breaking from that side,

and, the way it came.

It felt like it was coming this way, like this.

It's, it's a terrible feeling.

It's, not a wonderful feeling.

And right now I'm hearing it like if it was that day.

Talking about it makes me feel that it's happening right now.

As a Southerner, Brett was the only professional storm chaser

in a position to capture the tornado on camera.

This storm dropped tornadoes

all the way from Arkansas to Northeast Kentucky.

That's literally like the storm chaser's lottery.

And when it lights up and you're like, "Holy smokes!"

You can see the debris being lofted and thrown,

and that's what we were watching for

when Mayfield was hit.

And unfortunately, it was hit, and hit hard.

The full wrath of the storm was focused on the city of Mayfield,

in Western Kentucky.

We roll up

and everything's trashed all around you.

People yelling, the candle factory's been destroyed.

There was much debris.

It took first responders and took us a moment to get through that.

And it looked like an unworldly, ungodly situation

that you can only imagine that you see in movies.

This is a factory that employs well over 100 people.

And seeing that, the entire building structure, gone.

Honestly, I thought, "There's no way anybody survived this."

We're at the candle factory in Mayfield,

and we are trapped.

Please, y'all, get us some help.

Please. Please.

I went on Facebook Live because

for one, I needed to keep talking.

I needed to ramble

that I wouldn't be focused on what was going on.

But albecause I needed somebody to know that we were stuck.

I don't know who's watching.

We had a tornado and the building fell.

I'm scared.

Is anybody out there?

All my coworkers are screaming,

"I'm gonna die. Tell my family I love them."

And I'm like, "We're not dying in here. We're not dying."

And I'm like, "It's almost my birthday."

And so, a lot of that was on the Live.

It's almost ten o'clock. Y'all gonna sing "Happy Birthday" to me.

We're gonna sing now. Y'all gotta sing "Happy Birthday" to me.

Okay. Okay, y'all.

I wanna get out.

We pulled three or four people out the whole time I was there,

which was around four hours.

But you know there were people underneath the pile that didn't make it.

All you can do is...

is comfort the ones that could hear you and say,

"hold on. Hold on.

We're coming. We're trying. We're on the way."

And...

it was rough. It was really rough.

Help!

I hope that's people that, like, know what the fuck they doing.

- Y'all.
- No, you loose?

Andrea got loose first and they pulled her out.

Then Dakota, then Daniela.

But I was afraid that they wasn't gonna be able to get me out.

I said, "I got a big ass."

And I'm like, "I'm not going to fit." And they got underneath me.

See, this is a State Trooper.

Got my butt and pushed it up,

and Gary was at the top and he was pulling.

Hey y'all, they got me out.

And I got up to the top and I got out.

I'm out.

Seeing the factory now, it is unbelievable.

You would have thought that one of the Three Little Pigs made it.

Like the one that made it of straw.

The next morning, Brandon got the first drone footage,

of the damage at Mayfield.

It's,

this whole place is gone.

I love seeing the power of Mother Nature,

until you see this.

It looks like somebody hooked up a giant tiller

and came for a mile-wide, right through this area.

Slab right there. Slab right there.

- Right.
- Slab right there.

Right.

It's almost like a CSI case, trying to unravel a murder, you know.

Right there is where, debris rowing and stuff.

You see all that debris going out.

That's as intense as it gets right there.

Yup.

There's a small little sector.

I've been hit by big tornadoes before but,

at least I had a chance.

These people didn't have a chance.

We've seen storms. We've been through storms.

But nothing like this.

Nothing like this.

This is more than a house.

It's where I raised my children.

My son said,

"Man,

I played on this property, I played all around in here."

And, he had never expressed his nostalgic views of, the home...

until this, you know?

I'm not giving this up. I'm fighting for it.

Breeanna Glisson still hasn't figured out

how she and her four and two-year-old children are alive.

There was warnings going off like crazy and sirens going off.

But I had nowhere safe to go.

I grabbed my kids

and I laid down in my bed, my mattress.

Held onto them.

The windows shattered.

Any and all glass was gone.

And that's when I saw the roof coming at me.

It felt like one solid motion.

It crushed us and then we were flown,

and was the whole house.

In a millisecond,

we were no longer in the bed or in our house.

We were on the ground all the way over there somewhere.

Like on the other side of those cars?

Like over this rubble, on the ground, in mud.

We were stuck there for hours and hours.

And it took long for someone to come and help

because there was... nobody could get in.

There was much damage and debris over the roads.

They couldn't get to us.

That tornado was huge.

I don't understand how I'm even alive after going through it.

Every time I close my eyes, I see the roof, crushing us.

I wouldn't wish my worst enemy to go

through something like what I've been through.

The tornado outbreak killed at least 88 people.

It caused four billion dollars worth of damage.

We've had more billion-dollar disasters over the past ten years

than we have in decades prior to that.

These types of events, are going to happen more frequently

as we see a warmer climate develop.

We have to be prepared for more extreme events to occur.

We usually don't have tornadoes in Kentucky.

Seriously, like, it is not a normal thing.

And with the way that the planet is changing,

I feel like it's going to get worse.

In recent years, as the planet warms,

the boundaries of Tornado Alley and Dixie Alley

have been shifting further north and east

into more heavily populated parts of the country.

Areas without storm shelters.

There's definitely some causation with climate change.

Because you're getting these strong systems that come in

that normally don't have enough energy, enough juice to produce,

the big tornadoes.

And now they do, and this is the result.

It's just,

If we don't start doing something about climate change,

it's gonna continue to get worse.

A month after the tornado, the demolition crews move in.

The clean up operation begins.

Every disaster you go to is different,

but the personal impact is the same.

People are grieving, people are hurting.

People don't want to walk out their door every day

and see the disaster and piles like this.

They want an ounce of hope and an ounce of recovery.

And if we can bring that, then that's our goal.

That's what keeps us coming back.

The mindset is, this is my home.

This is where I grew up.

This is where my family is and so, you're gonna rebuild.

A symbol of the disaster was a photograph,

taken in the rubble of a movie theater.

I posted the photo and everybody liked it.

And I didn't realize how quickly it would catch on,

but now it's got close to like 160,000 uploads.

As of now, we've raised over 70,000 dollars on GoFundMe.

I had a guy hand me a big wad of cash one day.

And he said, "I heard what you were doing. I saw it on CNN.

Like, I want to help you out as best I could. Here you go."

And that really says a lot about this community.

When this thing first started,

a lot of people couldn't get a hot meal.

Of course, by me being a cook,

I've been trying to help people as much as I can.

We're all in this together.

And we need to stick together to help one another to rebuild it.

Okay, you want to take those and then come back?

- I can. Yes. Thank you.
- Okay, there you go.

The people of Mayfield make Mayfield.

And each one of us will play a part in the rebuilding of this.

- Thank you, Ma'am.
- Thank you.

And the people that are here, that are gonna stay here,

that are gonna to rebuild,

that's Mayfield.

Here's the thing. Mayfield is not unique.

It's the latest city to be hit by a tornado.

There will be more.

There are always more tornadoes.

And people like me, will be there to record the power of Mother Nature

when it strikes.

It makes you feel kind of vulnerable,

never knowing when that next tornado is going to come your way.

Subtitle translation by: Antoinette Smit