Tornadoes Fierce Earth

Today on Fierce Earth, we get inside the spinning fury of a tornado

to reveal where these ferocious winds get their punch

and why we're most at risk from the lethal debris they carry.

We'll meet the nine-year-old American boy

who was sucked up into a tornado.

It kind of felt like I was flying.

It felt like I was in The Wizard Of Oz, or something.

And we get right up close to their record-breaking winds

with storm chaser, Mike.

As you can see, we have complete destruction.

The Fierce Earth team are on the case to find out

what makes the tornado weather enemy number one

and how it's possible to survive when one has you in its sights.

One...zero.

What happens when the ground shakes, the seas rise up

and the air tears itself apart?

The Fierce Earth team move in,

taking on the most powerful forces on the planet.

Get ready for Fierce Earth.

The Earth and how to survive it.

I've got a my video camera on it

and the other camera I'll take a still with it.

Tornadoes contain the fastest winds in nature,

speeds up to 300 miles per hour,

that's 100 miles per hour faster than a Formula One car!

The most extreme can strip trees back to their bare wood

and leave entire towns reduced to rubble.

And if the conditions are right, they can form anywhere on Earth.

The first thing we need is hot, moist air at the Earth's surface

which rises quickly to form huge thunderclouds.

If we get winds blowing from different directions,

this rapidly rising warm air, feeding the thundercloud,

starts to rotate.

This causes the famous cone you see below the cloud

that appears to touch the ground.

This rapid spiral gets faster and faster

and then starts to pick up the soil, and everything in its path,

as the tornado drifts over the landscape...

..causing miles of destruction.

The bad news for people and buildings

is that the most violent winds inside tornadoes

are often the ones nearest to the ground.

Clare now takes a trip to an ice rink

to reveal why a tornado's distinctive funnel shape

is the key to such incredible wind speeds.

MUSIC: "The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy" by Tchaikovsky

Scientists who measure the winds inside tornadoes

have found that, as the tornado gets narrower near to the ground,

the winds get faster.

Right, here we go.

Ohhh...

We can explain why this is by watching an ice skater

do a pirouette.

And I know just the person to show us how to do one.

Lorna, can you do us a pirouette, please?

Look at the way Lorna spins when she does a pirouette.

As she pulls her arms in to form a narrower shape,

her spin gets faster.

The same thing happens inside a tornado.

Nearer to the ground where the tornado is narrower,

and the circle tighter, the winds become more concentrated,

causing them to spin faster and faster.

It's these faster winds near to the ground that can lead

to the terrible destruction we find in their wake.

When tornadoes do touch down, you don't want to be too close,

unless you're a storm chaser like Mike.

He now takes us into his dangerous world of tracking tornadoes.

There is nothing more awe-inspiring than watching a tornado

drift across the landscape.

I spend my life trying to get as close as possible to them

in my job as a storm chaser.

Here we go, we got a tornado.

My aim is to measure wind speeds and air pressure

to help build up a picture of what kind of weather creates

the most devastating tornadoes.

I've encountered more than 50 of them...

It's coming towards us it's not that far away, you know.

..and I've seen the full range of destruction.

By studying this destruction, scientists can work out

the speed and the force of the winds inside a tornado.

The severity of each one recorded is given a rating on a scale

from zero to five, known to experts as the Fujita, or F-scale.

Let's go through the scale a little bit.

Trees like this in the F0 to F1,

branches are going to be broken,

street signs are going to be snapped in half.

That trash can's going to be flying through the air.

Even the wildlife is going to get out of the way.

An F3 tornado,

you can have windows blown in, the doors will blow in,

bits of the roof will go flying off.

Now you're getting into some more extreme damage.

Now let's talk about the biggest tornado on the scale,

that's an F5 tornado.

When that happens, you have complete destruction.

This building will be completely gutted,

and probably 80% of it will be gone.

Everything will be blown away, left to concrete slabs.

This asphalt will be completely ripped off the ground,

with only the dirt left behind.

That's a scary tornado.

During 15 years of chasing,

I've only witnessed a handful of F5 tornadoes.

Nearly all of them have occurred in a part of America

known as Tornado Alley.

It runs from Texas in the south,

north and east up to Iowa

and experiences on average 600 tornadoes per year.

In 2007, I was out chasing storms right in the heart of this region

and witnessed the aftermath of one of the most powerful

tornadoes on record.

Here we are at Greensburg, Kansas and, as you can see...

..we have complete...

complete...

destruction.

It happened overnight, turning this pretty little town into rubble.

I arrived the next morning and found very little left.

Here's one of the destroyed homes in Greensburg, Kansas

and this is where they used to sit.

This is the foundation.

I came across this fork here embedded in this tree

and all the bark is ripped off the tree too.

Look at these pictures showing the town before and after the tornado.

Most of Greensburg had been flattened,

including this iconic landmark.

Here we are at the famous hand dug well,

and all that's left is a pile of rubble

Imagine being caught in the 200-mile per hour winds that did this.

When you have sheet metal and boards and nails

flying through the air,

that's what makes a tornado so dangerous.

It claimed 11 lives but this would have been much higher

had tornado warnings not been sent out beforehand.

Thankfully, extreme F5 tornadoes, like Greensburg,

are very rare indeed.

There have only been nine measured in America

since the start of the century.

But when they do hit, the damage they cause is catastrophic.

The top three most costly tornadoes ever recorded are...

..in third place, a 1970 tornado which hit Lubbock in Texas,

causing £900 million of destruction.

Next, it's a huge tornado which hit Kansas in 1966,

leading to over £1 billion worth of clean-up costs.

And the most costly tornado ever hit

Joplin, Missouri in the southern US in 2011,

causing a mind-blowing £1.75 billion worth of damage.

For people caught up in extreme tornadoes like these,

the experience must be terrifying.

But incredible escapes are possible.

Zoe now takes up the amazing survival story

of a nine-year-old American boy.

In April 2011, perfect storm conditions generated 350 tornadoes

which swept through America's southern and eastern states.

It was the most deadly outbreak in nearly 90 years,

killing 324 people across six states.

The city of Tuscaloosa in Alabama was one of the worst hit.

It's home to the Epps family.

They are dad Reggie, mum, Danielle,

James Peter, seven, Joel, five,

and nine-year-old Reggie Junior, known as RJ.

They live in a quiet, safe neighbourhood,

ideal for a young family.

One spring morning shortly after 5am,

Reggie got up for work on a day that would shatter this tranquillity.

This morning I decided to look at my phone

and it showed there was a line of rain coming through.

So there was no warnings on it, nothing of that nature.

I remember hearing a slight thunder

and then I heard the wind increase.

It got real loud, real quick.

The thing making all that noise was a 200-mile-per-hour tornado

which was cutting a path through the morning gloom.

One neighbour's house after another was being reduced to rubble

and the Epps' family home was next in its sights.

Everything was rumbling, you could feel the shakes,

you could hear the tearing and the ripping.

As the winds tore into their house,

Reggie made a desperate attempt to save his family.

RJ gets to the side of the bed and I reach up to grab him

and right when I grab him, everything intensifies,

the walls caved.

And it was just like he was a slingshot taken away from my hands.

It was just an instant.

My boy's gone.

The tornado winds had snatched RJ from his father's grasp

and up into the air.

At first I thought it was a dream.

It kind of felt like I was flying.

There wasn't really anything under me. I looked down.

It felt like I was in The Wizard Of Oz, or something.

Just felt like I was floating.

Inside a 200-mile-per-hour tornado, RJ was at the mercy of nature.

Huddled together in what was left of their home,

his family feared the worst.

My wife, she yells out for RJ and she yells out for him twice

and the second time you could see him,

I could see a silhouette of him walking back to us

through the rubble and stuff.

With lethal debris all around him, he had been flung

over ten metres across the road and dropped into a neighbour's garden.

I got up and started walking.

He was able to walk back and I got him up onto me

and said, "It's OK, Daddy's got you, don't worry about it.

"Daddy's got you."

Against all the odds, RJ had walked away from a terrifying experience

few people have survived.

Oh, no!

The tornado was so powerful, it hadn't just lifted up RJ,

it had ripped apart and thrown their house across the street.

This is what was left.

Imagine seeing your home reduced to a pile of wood

and belongings in seconds.

Somehow, amongst all this mayhem, only dad Reggie suffered

serious injury and had to be taken to hospital with broken ribs.

Two years on from the tornado, the landscape still bears the scars.

The family are now in their new house on the same site.

It's similar to their old home but with one very important addition.

OK, guys, siren's going off. Come on.

Safe room.

Reggie has added a tornado shelter, a special reinforced room

and steel door which is designed to resist tornado-strength winds

of over 250 miles per hour.

The family know this is the only room guaranteed to survive

next time there's a tornado in town...

..not that RJ needs any convincing about how dangerous tornadoes are.

My friends they were like...

.."Wow, you're like so lucky that you survived

"and stuff...

"..and still have your family and stuff."

The lesson learned by RJ and his family was that only

a shelter is sure to keep you safe from a tornado.

Leo now heads to Texas to find out how scientists test

whether shelters can resist the violent force of tornado debris.

Wind speeds inside tornadoes can reach 300 miles per hour

but it's not just the wind that's dangerous,

it's the things it picks up.

If you look at footage of a tornado sweeping across the landscape,

you can often see dark, dusty mist surrounding it.

This is actually soil and debris that has been picked up

by the rapidly-spiralling winds.

But because of the amazing energy in these winds,

tornadoes can pick up almost anything.

For a few seconds, pieces of wood, metal,

even cars can become deadly missiles.

'I've come to this lab in Texas to find out how

'this mayhem can be recreated in a very controlled way.'

Wow!

'Larry and his team use this very powerful air cannon

'to do life-saving research into how to protect family homes

'from killer tornadoes.

'There is no other lab like this in the world

'and, today, Larry's agreed to let me take it over

'for a special Fierce Earth experiment.'

So how fast are we going to be firing these pieces of wood

out of your cannon, Larry?

-We're going to fire it at 100 miles an hour.

-Wow!

So our piece of wood's caught in the tornado

and it's going to come crashing into someone's window, that's the idea.

'We've constructed parts of a Fierce Earth house,

'which we're going to put at the mercy of this lethal cannon

'to find out what happens to windows and walls

'when a tornado comes knocking.

'OK, let's get started.

'First, we load the cannon with some wood very similar

'to the missiles thrown by tornadoes.'

That weighs about seven kilos?

It's about three metres long?

In she goes.

OK...

Cannon loaded, sir.

'Such is the force of the impact,

'everybody must retreat behind the safety glass before firing.'

This is the mission control or the command centre for our cannon.

'Just like if a real tornado hit the lab,

'it's impossible to know where the splinters and debris will fly.'

-So do we need to aim it?

-Yes.

Probably a good idea

You can just see the laser coming across

to the middle of the window, the upright.

That looks pretty good to me, sir.

'We're ready...

'..and I'm in charge of the red button.'

BUZZER ALERT

Clear?

Three...

..two...

..one...

zero!

Oh, ha-ha!

'The wood leaves the cannon at 100 miles per hour

'and arrives at the window in one fifth of a second.

'It shatters the plastic frame like it's made of paper,

'hardly slowing at all.'

-That's lethal force.

-That is very lethal.

-My goodness, shall we go and check out what's happened?

-Sure.

'The impact looks terrifying from the front,

'but look at what happens once the wood carries on into

'the Fierce Earth house behind.

'It smashes into this wood, which represents furniture.'

-That's pretty bad, isn't it?

-This is quite devastating.

Yes, that's true.

Oh! I bet this stuff could cause a hideous injury.

Now that's... Stuff like that's what we see prickling buildings

and interiors of walls, little projectiles.

-You've got a toothpick factory here, Larry.

-Yes.

Oh, dear.

'It's no real surprise that a plastic window does little

'to slow 100-mile-per-hour debris.

'But what about when a stronger internal wall stands in its way?'

Locked and loaded.

Clear?

BUZZER ALERT

Well, that was a little bit more dramatic.

'The wood has cut through the wall like a knife through butter.

'For anything behind it...

'..including our camera...

'the result is devastating

'Anyone behind here would have been seriously injured.

'The first two tests have shown that a typical wooden house...'

Zero!

'..offers little or no protection against high-speed debris.

'That's a big problem in America, because most homes are made of wood.

'When you look at the aftermath of the fiercest tornadoes,

'they're often left as piles of rubble.

'Your best chance of survival is to be inside a tornado shelter,

'special safe rooms within houses that are built to withstand

'tornado winds and debris.

'And Larry's got an example for us to try

'in today's final extreme test.'

This is a reinforced concrete and brick wall.

This should be tornado proof.

Let's see what happens.

'In theory, this shelter would protect me if I was stood behind it,

'but Larry never permits people

'to put themselves at risk during tests.'

BUZZER ALERT

Clear?

'Can this wall do its job and resist the huge force

'of one final missile?'

Three, two, one...

'It's a success. The wall takes a huge impact, but stands firm.'

-That's a little bit more like it, eh?

-Absolutely.

The projectile came a lot worse off than the wall that time.

-Reassuring.

-It certainly does.

So, basically, if you were stood behind a wall like that,

when a tornado hit, you'd stand a good chance?

99% near probability of survival.

'Tornadoes kill, on average, 70 people a year in America,

'but that number would be far higher if it weren't for the thousands

'of tornado shelters in homes across the country.

'Before I go, Larry's got one more job for me.'

What an interesting day.

It's amazing to see the devastating force of a tornado up close.

You see it on the telly but it's not until you see

these big bits of wood, smashing through walls,

that you really get an idea how dangerous they can be.

On the rare occasions that tornadoes do happen,

you want somewhere in your house,

made out of brick and reinforced concrete, just like that,

and then you've got a place to hide.

'Planning for a tornado is a part of daily life

'for millions of Americans, but over in Britain,

'the idea of one rampaging through your neighbourhood

'is almost beyond belief.

'But, as Clare now discovers,

'encountering a tornado in the UK isn't as unlikely as you'd think.'

Now where in the world would you think

gets most tornadoes per square mile?

It's actually not America.

It's over here in Europe.

Top of the list is the Netherlands

and we come a close second here in the UK,

with, on average, 35 tornadoes per year.

Hundreds of people in Birmingham have been told

to stay away from their homes after a freak summer tornado

caused major devastation in the south of the city.

Winds of up to...

In 2005, a tornado with wind speeds up to 150 miles per hour

struck a Birmingham neighbourhood, leaving it in ruins.

Although Britain is hit by a number of tornadoes,

they're normally tiny, so this was a freak event.

I'm here to meet Nasir who was at home on the fateful day

a tornado came knocking.

The weather was fantastic, blue skies, beautiful day.

Nasir and his friend were in this room

when very quickly things turned scary.

All of a sudden, I noticed it did get dark

but usual British weather, I thought.

All of a sudden I can hear some banging and some popping,

some glass pops. As I turned around and thought,

"Where's the sound coming from," I walked in this direction

and as I went out and looked from this angle upstairs

I could see that the windows had smashed

and all the furnishings upstairs were moving around in the room.

Nasir's street was being targeted by a large tornado.

It had touched down and was cutting a path of destruction

through his neighbourhood.

This amateur footage caught the moment.

Imagine how scary it must have been

not knowing what was doing all this damage.

Instead of heading upstairs to investigate

what was causing all this terrible noise,

Nasir made a decision which could have saved his life.

We made our way to the pantry in the back room.

We came through here

and just squashed ourselves into the pantry here.

Hiding was a very good idea.

The pantry worked just like the tornado shelters

they have in the USA.

But, as soon as they were in there,

as quickly as the tornado had arrived, it was gone.

Within two seconds, silence, absolute silence.

We eventually plucked the courage to open the front door

and we had the biggest surprise of our lifetime.

The roof from that house had actually flown across

and was half up against our door.

That's just incredible.

There was debris, bricks, slates from all the houses here.

A lot of foliage from the trees, which are not here no more,

scattered across the ground.

Some of the houses had their furnishings out on the road.

All you could hear was silence

and some of the car alarms going off,

some of the house alarms going off

and eventually sirens as the fire brigade made its way to the scene.

Keep moving back, another 20 yards, please.

As he looked, Nasir realised it wasn't just bits of houses

that had been picked up and thrown around.

My car, at the time, was parked round about here.

But when we came out, we noticed it had moved towards

-where that lamp-post was on the opposite side.

-Show me, show me.

His car, weighing around a tonne, had been picked up by the tornado

and thrown almost 20 metres!

It was about here.

The tornado damaged most of the houses on Nasir's street,

as well as dozens of neighbouring homes and a school.

Along the tornado's 1,000 metre path, trees had been uprooted

and cars flung across roads.

Although there were injuries, incredibly, everyone

who experienced it, lived to tell the tale of the Birmingham tornado.

It was something we saw in the movies,

something which took place in America and tropical climates

but, no, never here,

but, yeah, it happened.

The Fierce Earth team have passed through the terrifying

centre of the tornado.

Its winds are the fastest and most destructive in nature

and the debris it carries can pierce buildings and throw cars.

If you end up in the path of a tornado,

remember our Fierce Earth Survival Guide.

Track the route the tornado is moving and aim to avoid it.

Make sure your home has a tornado shelter

to protect you from flying debris.

And regularly rehearse what to do if one strikes.

This is how you maximise your chances

of surviving the fierce Earth.

Next time on Fierce Earth...

we're heading into the deep freeze as we find out

what life is like in one of the world's coldest places.

And we're going to find out how to survive.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd