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Historys Deadliest with Ving Rhames - Season 1 - Episode 01: Natural Disasters
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00:11History is full of killer stories, people, places, and events so lethal, so downright shocking, that we just can't forget
00:21them.
00:21Tonight, imagine an earthquake so strong, it ends up setting Tokyo on fire.
00:31People's feet are getting stuck in this burning, hot, sticky sludge of asphalt.
00:37Or a lightning bolt that unleashes hell on earth.
00:42You have this flaming tsunami headed right for the town of Drone.
00:46What about a volcanic eruption so powerful it buries a village under tons of mud?
00:55When it erupts, it sends about 35 million tons of ash 20 miles high into the atmosphere.
01:03These are the natural disasters so devastating they can only be among history's deadliest.
01:19Earth, water, fire, wind.
01:23For centuries, the world believed these elements were the building blocks of nature.
01:28But what happens when all these elements collide at once?
01:36It's the middle of the day, September 1st, 1923, in Yokohama, Japan.
01:42And many people are home for lunch.
01:44People along the shore and on land hear this tremendous, loud rumble.
01:50It almost sounds like thunder.
01:53That sound isn't thunder.
01:56It's an earthquake.
01:58And it's hitting Japan in the Kato region, which is home to two densely populated cities, Yokohama and Tokyo.
02:08This is a magnitude 7.9 earthquake.
02:11The ground doesn't just shake for a few seconds.
02:14No, it shakes for four to ten minutes.
02:18The impact is immediate and terrifying.
02:21Buildings along the waterfront begin to collapse.
02:25The pier falls apart.
02:27It is utter mayhem.
02:28All of Yokohama is reduced to waste.
02:32And half of Tokyo is brought down to rumble.
02:35But the quake itself is just the beginning.
02:39As the earth shakes, people's cooking fires are dislodged and knocked around.
02:44And suddenly, their houses catch fire.
02:47These buildings are made of paper and wood, traditional Japanese construction.
02:54And soon, entire houses, entire blocks, entire neighborhoods are completely engulfed.
03:02Then, as thousands of homes burn, the earthquake unleashes new horrors.
03:08Just a few minutes after the earthquake, a 40-foot tsunami wave strikes the city of Atami on Sagami Gulf.
03:20In comparison to Tokyo and Yokohama, the numbers aren't as extreme.
03:25But still, in this small town, 150 buildings are destroyed.
03:3160 people lose their lives.
03:33Up in the mountains, you have these landslides triggered by the earthquake.
03:38And it hits a train station.
03:40It takes out a train.
03:41It takes out part of the town.
03:44And it throws it all into the ocean.
03:47Ending the lives of 112 people.
03:50Adding to the absolute mayhem, Mother Nature next launches Hurricane Winds.
03:57There's a typhoon.
03:58And this sends tremendous winds into the Kanto region that whips up these individual fires into a firestorm.
04:08The fire creates its old, strong winds as hot air is rising and more air is drawn in.
04:14That rising heat from these intense fires creates a pyrocumulonimbus cloud.
04:19Basically, a tornado made of fire created by the fire itself.
04:25It is burning so hot, it actually burns the asphalt that's on the roads.
04:31So as people are trying to escape and get to safety, they're getting stuck in this melting, gooey asphalt.
04:3838,000 people take refuge from the earthquake in an old military facility in Tokyo.
04:45This facility has huge open areas.
04:48And the people here think that they'll be safe from any falling debris.
04:53But the problem is that all the fires are still raging throughout Tokyo.
04:57And this fire whirl ends up coming through this area and sets fire to all the buildings that are around
05:02everybody.
05:03Their refuge becomes their cemetery.
05:09And between the quake, the fire, landslides, the casualties from the Kanto event are utterly devastating.
05:18There's 140,000 people that lose their lives.
05:21There's 100,000 that are injured.
05:23And another 1.5 million people lose their homes.
05:28The devastation is almost unimaginable.
05:32But it doesn't stop here.
05:35Japan and Korea have long had a troubled relationship.
05:39The Japanese people want somebody to blame and their targets are the Korean people.
05:44So the rumors begin to fly.
05:47They claim that the Koreans were the ones who started the fires.
05:51It's so crazy that some even blame the Koreans for the earthquake itself.
05:55This sets the stage for the Kanto Massacre.
05:59Vigilante mobs go around hunting down and killing any ethnic Korean they can find.
06:06The massacre claims another 6,000 lives.
06:09Maybe even more.
06:14The 1923 earthquake in Japan is remembered as one of history's worst natural disasters.
06:22700 years earlier, another stunning event has its own devastating death toll.
06:31In the late 13th century, the Mongol Empire is the largest contiguous empire in the world,
06:37controlling vast swaths of Eurasia.
06:39They are ruled by the notorious Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan.
06:46Kublai considers himself the god-king of the entire known universe.
06:51And his unwavering goal is to unite the entire world under his blood-soaked banner.
06:59In 1266, Kublai sets his sights on conquering Japan.
07:04He amasses a large fleet of as many as 900 vessels and more than 30,000 troops.
07:13The fleet sets sail in early autumn of 1274, but when they reach the mainland at Hakata Bay,
07:20there's a massive army of Japanese samurai ready to greet them.
07:23But eventually, the Mongol forces overwhelm the Japanese.
07:29So ultimately, when the Japanese samurai retreat, the Mongols take this as a time to regroup,
07:36and they go back to their ships that are waiting in the bay.
07:38And that turns out to be a very bad idea.
07:43A once-in-a-century typhoon hits the Mongol fleet and tears it apart.
07:49Giant waves, 200 ships are churned into matchwood and sink to the bottom of the sea.
07:58Of the invasion force of at least 30,000 men, sources say something like 13,500 don't return.
08:07The disaster makes Kublai Khan even more determined than ever.
08:13Seven years later, in 1281, he launches a second, bigger invasion.
08:19He sends 4,000 ships and 100,000 soldiers to finish the job.
08:25But once again, Kublai and his generals have underestimated the Japanese.
08:31Japan has been preparing.
08:33They have been fortifying their defenses.
08:35After weeks of torturous fighting, the invasion is at a stalemate.
08:40No end in sight.
08:42On the night of August 15th, the entire Mongol fleet is anchored off the coast of Japan when another typhoon
08:50hits.
08:52They've latched their ships together in this tight formation to protect themselves against nightly samurai guerrilla attacks.
09:00Because all the ships are lashed together, they can't escape the typhoon.
09:04There's nowhere for them to go.
09:11This typhoon obliterates the Mongol fleet.
09:15The Mongol army are wearing this armor made of heavy metal plates.
09:21So once their ships are torn apart from under them, they're headed straight to the bottom.
09:29The soldiers that don't drown are washed ashore where they are greeted by samurai warriors who promptly behead them on
09:36the spot.
09:37The heads of high-ranking Mongols are put on display for all to see.
09:41After being twice saved by typhoons, the Japanese reason that these divine winds have a deeper meaning.
09:49And that is the Japanese homeland can never be invaded and the Japanese military can never be defeated.
09:56They even create a new word to describe the phenomenon.
10:00The first half is kami, meaning God.
10:02The second half, kazi, meaning wind.
10:04You put them together, you get kamikaze.
10:08The Mongols lose half their fighting force, 50,000 men and thousands of their ships.
10:14It is one of the greatest natural disasters in history.
10:23American southern coastline is used to hurricanes.
10:27One hits almost every year.
10:29But when most of us think of powerful storms, there's just one name that comes to mind.
10:38Hurricane Katrina is one of the worst hurricanes that we can remember in modern times.
10:47That came into an area that really couldn't afford to be hit.
10:51The entire city is underwater.
10:53And 1,800 people are killed.
10:56But Katrina is not even close when it comes to the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
11:04That event takes place almost a century earlier in Texas.
11:10At the end of the 19th century, Galveston, Texas is a boomtown.
11:15It's considered the Wall Street of the Southwest.
11:19Galveston is just nine feet above sea level and in an area prone to storms and high winds.
11:26That's a dangerous place to be.
11:3014 years before, a massive Category 4 hurricane hits Indianola, Texas.
11:36And this rattles the people of Galveston because they take a look at this and say,
11:40hey, do we need to protect ourselves?
11:42But Isaac Klein, the head of the Weather Bureau in Galveston,
11:47claims that it's an absurd delusion to believe that a hurricane would ever hit Galveston.
11:59The morning of September 8, 1900, people are walking around
12:04and they notice that the waves coming on to shore are a little bit different.
12:08They're a little bit bigger.
12:09They're a little stronger.
12:10They're coming more frequently.
12:11What nobody in Galveston except Isaac Klein knows is that four days earlier,
12:17a weather station in Cuba detects a strengthening tropical storm
12:20and they issue a warning to the U.S. Weather Bureau stating that they believe this is going to hit
12:25Texas.
12:27Klein completely ignores what they have to say.
12:30But Isaac Klein is starting to notice these darker clouds and this rain is starting to roll in.
12:37These waves starting to hit the coast of Galveston and all of this water starts making it onto the streets.
12:45At that point, Isaac Klein does a complete 180.
12:49Not only does he know that there's a hurricane coming, he believes it's going to be a bad one.
12:54So Isaac Klein decides to fly the storm warning flags.
12:58But don't forget that this is the guy saying that Galveston was impervious to having a hurricane impact them.
13:02So even though the warning flags are out, people are not paying attention.
13:06And then it hits.
13:09In the afternoon, waves build higher.
13:12The wind picks up.
13:14Buildings on the shore get knocked down.
13:20At 3.30 p.m., Klein cables with the U.S. Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C. saying that half
13:26the city is now underwater.
13:29At 8 p.m., you have a 15-foot storm surge that is inundating Galveston, which, don't forget, is at
13:36max 9 feet high above sea level.
13:38Now they're seeing winds ramp up to about 120 miles an hour.
13:43It's literally tearing bricks off of buildings.
13:46These are becoming deadly projectiles, taking out people.
13:50And buildings literally blow apart.
13:54In the blink of an eye, 20% of Galveston's population, which is about 8,000 people, are dead.
14:01Ground in flooding, crushed by debris, or they die while waiting to be rescued.
14:08There are so many dead that burying them is impossible.
14:12But what makes it even worse is that the storm has exhumed coffins.
14:18And the more recent dead are mingled with those who have just died.
14:23So all that's left to do is to pile them up on huge funeral pyres and burn them.
14:30And it takes days.
14:33The Galveston hurricane claimed more than 8,000 lives.
14:3970 years later, another failed warning system makes a bad disaster much worse.
14:48In 1970, Bangladesh is known as East Pakistan.
14:52And it's one of the most remote parts of the world.
14:57The only immediate source of information is shortwave radio.
15:02If you do have a working radio, on November 12, 1970, you hear a repeated broadcast over and over.
15:10Red 4. Red 4.
15:14Although the region is known for deadly cyclones, most local people simply dismiss the warning due to a tragic mistake.
15:24In 1960, a cyclone hits the Ganges Delta that kills hundreds of people.
15:30At that time, East Pakistan is using a storm warning system on a 10-point scale,
15:35with 10 indicating the most dangerous and destructive cyclones that will hit.
15:40And the government decides to work with the United States' National Hurricane Center.
15:45And they come up with a new scale that goes from 1 to 4.
15:50The problem? No one bothers to spread the word in East Pakistan.
15:56On this new scale, Red 4 means red alert.
16:00Catastrophic, destruction imminent. Seek higher ground immediately.
16:04So when people hear Red 4, they harken back to the 10-point system.
16:09And they think that this means a mild cyclone is coming. It's only 4 out of 10.
16:14In reality, they've got a Category 4 monster bearing down on them.
16:18By the time the residents of East Pakistan's low-lying islands realize that there's something catastrophic happening,
16:25it's too late. Water is already pushing further and further inland.
16:30As the cyclone races north across the Bay of Bengal, it brings 138-mile-per-hour winds
16:38and a storm surge three stories tall.
16:42The cyclone makes landfall on the evening of November 12th
16:45and, in the course of 24 hours, completely dismantles the Ganges Delta.
16:51It really is hard to describe what it's like to be in wind speeds this strong.
16:57The air starts to act more like a solid than a gas.
17:01You have difficulty breathing. You can't even stand up in.
17:07The buildings that people are seeking shelter in essentially become tombs.
17:12They get drowned by the rising water.
17:14This storm surge wipes complete islands off the map along with all the inhabitants of the area.
17:21There are some incredible stories of survival.
17:26People survive for days by hanging on to the tops of palm trees as water rages below them.
17:34What happens after the cyclone is even worse.
17:39Diseases like cholera and typhus rage in the aftermath and send the death toll skyrocketing.
17:45The Ebola cyclone kills somewhere between 300,000 to 500,000 people.
17:52This is not just the world's deadliest cyclone in history.
17:56It's one of the deadliest natural disasters in history, bar none.
18:04They say lightning never strikes twice, but once is all it takes if it strikes in the wrong place.
18:11That's exactly what happens in Egypt in 1994.
18:17Upper Egypt gets hit with a severe thunderstorm.
18:23233 miles from Cairo, the heaviest rains in almost 50 years cause flash flooding
18:28that threaten not only some of Egypt's most valuable archaeological treasures,
18:33but dozens of smaller villages.
18:38Egypt is one of the driest places on the planet.
18:42It's mostly arid desert.
18:44These arid conditions are perfect for preserving ancient monuments.
18:51But when heavy rains do show up, they can cause widespread devastation.
18:57Flash flooding actually happens fairly frequently.
19:00The water does not permeate the sand.
19:03It stays on top of it, and it keeps going, and it takes the sand with it.
19:09And on November 3rd, 1994, these floodwaters set off a bizarre and deadly chain of events.
19:21Just north of the town of Dronka, the Egyptian army has a fuel depot.
19:25It's home to tanks that contain over 40,000 tons of jet and diesel fuel.
19:30So the depot doesn't have standard fail-safes like protective walls and safety confinement systems.
19:36Around 6.30 in the morning, the flash floods that have now hit that depot damage about three of those
19:42tanks,
19:42and those tanks start to leak.
19:44In a coincidence so perfectly timed, it defies belief.
19:49A bolt of lightning strikes the depot at exactly the same moment as the flood damages the tanks.
19:58The leaking fuel tanks explode, sending flame and black smoke shooting into the air.
20:04Because oil and water don't mix, the jet and diesel fuel float on top of the floodwaters.
20:10The lightning strike ignites the fuel, turning it into a flaming river of destruction.
20:17The 10,000 residents of the nearby village of Dronka are about to experience horror.
20:25The people of Dronka are awoken by the sounds of a massive explosion,
20:29and then huge clouds of black smoke engulfing the town.
20:35Survivors tell stories of flame-capped waves bursting into their homes and killing their loved ones.
20:43Of course, thousands of people fleeing their homes clog the roads,
20:48preventing firefighters from getting to the scene.
20:50The fire burns for 12 hours before being extinguished.
21:00The Egyptian flooding of 1994 destroys 22,000 homes and leaves over 110,000 people homeless.
21:10But the devastation in Dronka is the worst.
21:14469 people die there.
21:16The World Meteorological Organization says the Dronka disaster is the highest mortality event ever caused by a lightning strike.
21:25So, while it may not have been the lightning itself that killed the people,
21:29lightning still bears the blame for all those deadly events.
21:36It took just one lightning strike to kill 469 people in Dronka,
21:43decades before one of the world's busiest ports is just as unlucky.
21:48This time, residents do get an alert, but not soon enough.
21:56By the late 19th century, telegraph networks have spanned the globe.
22:01It allows people to share meteorological data from thousands upon thousands of miles away in just a matter of minutes.
22:11One city that's part of this new weather network, the jewel of the British colonies, Hong Kong.
22:18Everything about Hong Kong is about making money.
22:21It's one of the busiest and wealthiest ports in the world.
22:24The entire port is filled at this point with the British Navy, with cargo steamers from all over the globe.
22:32Ferries going back and forth between the mainland.
22:35The harbor is also the literal home of the Dronka,
22:38an ancient cast of Chinese people who live in floating fishing villages.
22:42In 1906, there are over 5,000 registered Chinese fishing ships in Hong Kong.
22:49You also have thousands of unregistered Tonka junks and sandpans.
22:53There's as much of a community living on the water as is ashore.
22:59When a typhoon nearly wipes Hong Kong off the map in 1874,
23:05the British set to work creating one of the first early weather warning systems.
23:10The early warning system changes over time, and by 1906, it has become refined.
23:17The weather observatory has a system of three-dimensional black symbols.
23:23Each one constitutes a different meaning.
23:26The black drum is the symbol indicating that a typhoon is 300 miles or less away.
23:33That means that all the boats in the harbor and that are very near out at sea need to take
23:38evasive actions.
23:39Hong Kong also has a typhoon gun, basically a big cannon.
23:43If it's fired once, strong winds are to be expected.
23:46If it's fired twice, look out for a typhoon.
23:50Bottom line, batten down the hatches.
23:54On September 18, 1906, Hong Kong's early warning system isn't early enough.
24:02The weather forecast from the Royal Observatory calls for moderate winds and showers.
24:07So at 8 a.m., everyone is quite confused when the black drum is raised.
24:13Meaning a typhoon is 300 miles or less away.
24:16Just 40 minutes later, the typhoon gun booms, not once but twice.
24:20But it's too little too late.
24:22The hurricane force winds have already begun to batter Hong Kong.
24:28Hong Kong's mainland suffers its share of destruction.
24:32But the typhoon saves most of its wrath for the packed harbors and fishing villages.
24:38Enormous ships are being tossed around like toy boats in a bathtub.
24:43The German steamer Petrart, which weighs 1,700 tons, is picked up and put down on top of two smaller
24:50ships.
24:50Then the whole mangled mess just crashes into the main wharf, demolishing everything.
24:57There's about 3,000 registered Chinese fishing vessels that are taken out by this storm.
25:04And the Tonka boats?
25:06Totally obliterated.
25:08Survivors struggle to describe the scale of the destruction.
25:12It's reported with hyperbole that Hong Kong harbor is so clogged with debris, wreckage, and bodies that you can walk
25:20over it.
25:23At least 10,000 people die from the 1906 Hong Kong typhoon.
25:28But later estimates go as high as 16,000.
25:32Epic disasters like this one remind us that as smart as we are, as prepared as we think we are,
25:40the power of nature can strip every bit of that away.
25:49Christmas Eve, 1953.
25:53It's a glare night with no rain.
25:55And the New Zealand postal worker is about to witness a deadly natural disaster.
26:06The levels of water are really high, 20-odd feet, and moving rapidly.
26:13Postal worker Cyril Ellis comes across a bridge, and it appears to be washed out.
26:18He sees the light of a locomotive coming in his direction.
26:24The night express from Wellington to Auckland passes through Tangiwai.
26:29There are 285 people on board.
26:33As the train approaches the bridge crossing the river, something spooks the engineer.
26:38It might just be Cyril Ellis signaling for the train to slow down.
26:42The engineer, Charles Parker, pulls the emergency brake.
26:46But it takes up to a mile to come to a complete stop.
26:51As the train begins to cross the bridge, it begins to buckle.
26:56The engine and first five passenger cars are sent plummeting into a rushing flood of mud and debris.
27:03The sixth car is left teetering off the edge of the bridge, and the remaining cars are still safely on
27:12the track.
27:12Cyril Ellis teams up with the train guard, and they climb into the sixth car to try and rescue people.
27:18But as soon as they do, that car goes plunging into the river.
27:25Amazingly, not only do Ellis and the guard survive the fall, but they're also able to break out the windows
27:30and evacuate people out the side of the carriage car.
27:33Somehow, they save 21 out of 22 people out of car number six.
27:38But the people in the first five cars aren't as lucky.
27:43There are a little more than 160 passengers riding in the carriages that go over the bridge, and almost all
27:49of them die.
27:50Even though many of the passengers survive the initial fall, they end up drowning in the muddy silt of the
27:58river.
27:58Many of the bodies are unrecognizable.
28:03As the thick sludge subsides, the question on everyone's mind is, where did it come from in the first place?
28:12Attention soon turns to a nearby mountain, one with an active volcano.
28:19Mount Ruapehu is an iconic volcano in the North Island of New Zealand.
28:24At the summit, between its peaks, is this deep crater lake, and it will sometimes fill up with water and
28:31ash and other debris.
28:33All this material is kept in place by a tephra dam, which is basically a natural dam made of cooled
28:40lava.
28:41In December of 1953, this crater lake holds 70 million cubic feet of water and debris.
28:49When that tephra dam breaks, a phenomenon known as a lahar is occurring.
28:53It's basically a high-speed flash flood, but it's water filled with volcanic ash and mud, rocks, and debris.
29:04When this 20-foot-deep lahar hits the train trestle, it dislodges one of the four piers that anchor the
29:13bridge,
29:14so it should no longer support the weight of a moving train.
29:21The grimest kicker of this whole ordeal is that the lahar hits the trestle just six minutes before the train
29:27crosses the bridge.
29:29If it hits ten minutes later, that train makes the crossing. Nobody dies.
29:39The New Zealand lahar just takes out a bridge.
29:44In 1985, when a Colombian volcano blows, it creates a mud flow 160 feet wide.
29:54Novato del Ruiz is a very active volcano in Colombia.
29:59It's 17,000 feet to the summit, which is under a permanent ice cap.
30:03We're talking huge glaciers and snowfall year-round.
30:08Ruiz is experiencing some low level of volcanic activity most of the time.
30:13But on September 13, 1985, it has a big eruption.
30:22When it erupts, it sends about 35 million tons of ash 20 miles high into the atmosphere.
30:29One of the most dangerous combinations, a volcanic eruption and a glaciated peak.
30:36These thick glaciers, these masses of ice, melt very quickly when there's a hot eruption of lava and ash.
30:43It creates not one, not two, but four individual lahars, a melted water, magma, ash mixture moving at immense speed.
30:56When these lahars go rushing down the mountainside and hit some of the existing rivers in the valley below,
31:02they swell exponentially to four times their regular size.
31:07The volcano erupts at 9.09 p.m.
31:10By 11.30 p.m., about two and a half hours later, the lahar hits the town of Armero,
31:16and it is immediately wiped from the face of the earth.
31:20Over three-quarters of its population perished in the first onslaught.
31:25A second lahar follows that lasts about 30 minutes, and a third smaller one occurs, but this one lasts for
31:33almost two hours.
31:37It takes the rescuers over 12 hours to reach the survivors in Armero, and when they get there, it's a
31:44horror show.
31:44The place is completely unrecognizable, buildings destroyed, washed away, literally bodies everywhere.
31:52Amazingly, there are some survivors, but they're caught in the rubble, buried beneath the rubble, glued beneath the rubble.
32:04The final official death toll from the eruption is 22,000, with 21,000 of them being from Armero alone.
32:15It's the second deadliest volcanic eruption in the 20th century.
32:24Natural disasters usually get lots of attention.
32:29But one of the worst in American history isn't even the top story of its day.
32:37It's 1871, and Chicago is one of the world's largest lumber trade markets.
32:42And a lot of that lumber comes from a town 200 miles away called Peshtigo, Wisconsin.
32:50On October 8, 1871, you have a bunch of factors that are going to lead to a horrific natural disaster.
32:57First up is a severe drought.
32:59It's lasted throughout the summer and has dried out the local vegetation.
33:03High winds gust across the region.
33:06You combine this with warm temperatures and dry conditions, and you have set the stage for a large-scale fire.
33:17People theorize that what happens next could have been due to sparks from a passing train.
33:22It could have been due to a controlled burn that got out of hand.
33:25Some theorize that it was a lightning strike.
33:29That night, the sky fills with an orange glow, and the people of Peshtigo hear a roaring noise like a
33:35freight train.
33:36It's a firestorm, and it's coming for them.
33:40There's no warning, no time to process what's happening before it's already on them.
33:46A wall of flame bursts onto the town.
33:49High winds push people to the ground.
33:52All of this instantly renders the air unbreathable.
33:55People are blinded.
33:58The Peshtigo fire forms in a dry, densely packed forest, rich with fuel.
34:04High winds suck the heat upwards, increasing the intensity.
34:08It erupts onto Peshtigo like a bomb, incinerating all the wooden buildings, the streets, and the sidewalks.
34:17Many people die instantly.
34:20It's surreal.
34:22People's hair and clothing burst into flames on their bodies.
34:27Because these winds are kicking up at such high rates of speed, swirls of fire then grow into these massive
34:33funnels,
34:33and they're not just burning people, but they're also picking them up and tossing them like ragdolls.
34:40Hundreds of people and animals make a beeline for the Peshtigo River.
34:45Some of them are burned to death, just feet from the water.
34:48A bridge packed with people collapses, sending them plummeting into the river, and many of them drown.
34:56One grim anecdote claims a local man slits the throats of his family to spare them an agonizing death.
35:08The firestorm burns itself out by morning, and there's almost nothing left.
35:15Survivors coated in ash and mud can barely recognize each other.
35:20Many have severe burns and suffer from temporary blindness brought on by prolonged exposure to smoke.
35:26Sand has been melted into glass.
35:30The grisly carbonized remains of the firestorm's victims litter the town.
35:35The Peshtigo fire burns more than 1.2 million acres right to the ground.
35:40Half of Peshtigo's population dies.
35:43The fire also destroys 16 other smaller communities.
35:47The total death toll may be upwards of 2,500 people, but it's impossible to know because town records are
35:54incinerated along with their buildings.
35:57It is the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history.
36:01If the Peshtigo fire is the deadliest in U.S. history, how come more people don't know about it?
36:09On the same day, 200 miles away in Chicago, the Great Chicago Fire breaks out.
36:17It will burn 2,000 acres of the city and leave 30% of the population homeless.
36:23Instantly, the attention turns to this disaster in Chicago, one of America's most bustling cities.
36:30News outlets cover this from around the world.
36:32Aid flows in.
36:33All the attention is on Chicago.
36:35Meanwhile, the residents of Peshtigo are sitting in the smoking embers of their town.
36:41All the telegraph lines have been destroyed.
36:44So no one even knows about this fire for two days.
36:48And for much of its history, the Peshtigo fire has been pretty much overlooked because of the Great Chicago Fire,
36:56which really doesn't compare in terms of damage and loss of life.
37:03The United States holds many records, including First in Flight and First Man on the Moon.
37:09The one record nobody's bragging about?
37:12Having more tornadoes than anywhere else.
37:16In 1925, one of them lays waste to three states.
37:27Tornadoes can form in lots of different ways.
37:30We get them in thunderstorms.
37:31We see them in hurricanes and typhoons from time to time.
37:33But typically, most tornadoes happen in what's called supercell thunderstorms.
37:37These happen when you have warm, humid air meet really cold, dry air.
37:42And in these rotating thunderstorms, you get tornadoes that can be produced.
37:46And the supercell thunderstorm tornadoes are the most dangerous ones out there.
37:51On March 18th, 1925, the South Central United States is slammed with a dozen tornadoes, all at the same time.
38:02Separate twisters run rampant across Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama, as well as Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas.
38:10And while these twisters all cause their fair share of damage, they're nothing compared to the tri-state tornado.
38:18One thing that makes a tornado like this so dangerous is that unlike places like Oklahoma and Kansas, where it's
38:25perfectly flat, in Missouri and Illinois and Indiana, you've got trees and hills that obscure the horizon.
38:33Even if the tornado is bearing down on you, you might not even see it until the last minute.
38:38This isn't a tornado that sticks around for 30 or 40 minutes.
38:41This one sticks around for three and a half hours and cuts a swath of destruction that is 219 miles
38:51long.
38:55Residents of Ellington, Missouri, know the warning signs for a tornado.
39:00They experience these conditions frequently.
39:02But on this day, they notice like an eerie, smoky fog instead.
39:06And so it doesn't send the bells and whistles off in their head that, hey, a tornado is approaching.
39:12It's not just a tornado.
39:14This thing is an F5 tornado, rated the highest level on the Fujita scale.
39:21A tornado this strong can have wind speeds up to over 300 miles an hour.
39:27It can lift up a train with its tracks and chuck them into a farmer's field.
39:32And the one that touches down outside Ellington is a mile and a half wide with winds that reach 300
39:39miles per hour.
39:41Towns in Missouri and Illinois are completely wiped off the map and some small mining towns are completely destroyed.
39:50There's a man in Griffin, Indiana who is in his house and he's holding on to his front door for
39:55dear life
39:56because he does not want this door to be blown open and have everything sucked out of his house.
40:00The noise is unimaginable.
40:03There's shaking, there's rattling, and he's just praying that everything's going to be okay.
40:08The tornado ends up blowing away the rest of his house from around him.
40:13And he's just left with the door handle, the front door, and the frame.
40:24After the tornado passes, fires start to break out.
40:27And not only are people killed by the tornado, but people die in the fires.
40:33By the time the tri-state tornado is over, it has set a number of grim records.
40:39The 219-mile track the tornado carves across three different states is the longest ever on record.
40:46It's killed 695 people, many of them women and children,
40:50mainly because the men were working underground in the coal mines.
40:53And this makes it the deadliest tornado in U.S. history.
40:59Today, modern technology allows us to track natural disasters.
41:05But no one controls Mother Nature.
41:07Nobody knows where or when she'll strike.
41:11Or which events will rank among history's deadliest.
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