![]() Hailstones the size of golf balls can wreck a car, and kill a person. And it's not just the force of the wind that makes tornadoes so feared, but what the wind can carry with it. Yet even these can reach speeds of over a hundred miles an hour. The weaker ones are classed as F zeros, or F ones. Tornadoes are measured on a five point F scale. Compared to hurricanes they cover a much smaller area, and they form at incredible speed, it is this that makes them so deadly. There can be literally days of warning before they strike. Some violent storms, like hurricanes, are so huge they cover thousands of square miles. Because what had struck the town of La Plata was no normal tornado. NARRATOR: Eric Erikson was one of five people killed that day, by one of nature's most violent forces. There is no rhyme or reason why I was left behind, I just truly don't know if I was blown back where he was caught under the rubble or what exactly happened. The rescue team they said I shouldn't have lived, I really should have died with Eric because I was directly behind him. SUSAN ERIKSON: It was between the two surgeries before I went in for my orthopaedic surgery on my arms that they told me he had died. When she was recovering in hospital, they gave her news of her husband. NARRATOR: Some neighbours found Susan before she passed out again. So what I did was try to manoeuvre my legs so that I could stand up and drag my arms up with me. SUSAN ERIKSON: Both my arms were broke, they weren't functioning correctly. NARRATOR: Susan came too in a pile of rubble, and heard the groans of her husband Eric. ![]() We were getting ready to leave and then everything went blank. We had just come up from the basement, I remember silence, at that time no birds, no anything, I just heard silence. SUSAN ERIKSON: The only thing we had heard on the news that day was thunderstorms, and we had thought no big deal. They were visiting the construction site of their new dream house. NARRATOR: Yet as the tornado was ripping through La Plata, just outside of town, Susan Erikson and her husband Eric were oblivious to the unfolding disaster. It's amazing, you go from almost no wind up to two hundred mile an hour wind and back down. The tornado was probably through here in fifteen seconds, or less. NARRATOR: The monster tore through the town.īARBARA WATSON (National Weather Service): This tornado was moving close to sixty miles an hour, that's a mile a minute from, from here over to the buildings that are standing there. And my car lifted two feet up in the air, and actually moved to under the CVS sign.ĬONTRIBUTOR: Still I, I say it sounded like a jet, turbine engine, I can't even duplicate the sound. And briefly I thought oh I'll probably get decapitated. And it swept straight through the heart of La Plata, Maryland.ĬONTRIBUTOR: And I remember this tangled mess of metal was coming right at me, I mean directly at my car. And as they came to the top you could recognise things, like a tree, a couch, a desk.ĬONTRIBUTOR: And we're looking at each other thinking is that a tornado. And it was holding things in the air that were just whirling so fast. I'm leaving.ĬONTRIBUTOR: I remember seeing this huge funnel cloud. NARRATOR: In 2002, a small town on the east coast of America received an unwelcome visitor.ĬONTRIBUTOR: It's coming this way guys. Tonight, Horizon tells of the struggle to find a way of giving those few precious extra minutes warning, that might not save properties or possessions, but could offer people just enough time to reach shelter and safety. For any one living where these tornadoes strike, any extra warning time could quite literally save lives. Hundreds are killed and injured each year by these Supertwisters. NARRATOR: At stake is something that could not be more important, people's lives. Got to get back in, there's a very, very strong in flow in to the storm right now. Prof HOWIE BLUESTEIN (University of Oklahoma): It may be strengthening, and there may be another tornado possibly. It is the battle to understand what triggers the most terrifying and destructive tornadoes, the Supertwisters.ĭr JOSH WURMAN (Centre for Severe Weather Research, Colorado): A two hundred and fifty or a three hundred mile an hour wind can only be compared to those that might be experienced on the fringes of a nuclear explosion. NARRATOR (DILLY BARLOW): This is a story of science against nature at its most furious.
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