Survival Mode Season 1 Episode 1

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Survival Mode Season 1 Episode 1 #SurvivalMode #PrimeUSTV   🎞 Please join  https://t.me/CinemaSeriesUSFilm

Transcript

00:00We cannot stress enough how dangerous the situation is.

00:19It's safe to say you need to be in your shelter.

00:23It was the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life.

00:26There were severe thunderstorm warnings, there were tornado warnings.

00:29The storm is growing.

00:31That was the moment I realized, oh dear God, that's a tornado.

00:37The tornado has touched down in the city of Joplin.

00:42As soon as the tornado hit, the whole house came out from under us.

00:48It was definitely a moment of absolute panic.

00:55I was terrified.

00:56I felt like this might be my last moment.

01:01The single deadliest tornado since 1947.

01:06There was no time to think.

01:08It was just, we got to run.

01:10There's a monster chasing us.

01:11You get that sense of community a lot whenever you visit Joplin.

01:31It's kind of a good in-between space between a bigger city and a smaller town.

01:39I love the fact that it seems like a small community.

01:43It just felt like that type of neighborhood that I always wanted.

01:47But when I moved to Missouri, I did not think, oh, there's going to be tornadoes.

01:58Growing up in Tornado Alley is always interesting.

02:01It was pretty normal to have at least one or two warnings, tornado warnings, or at least severe weather warnings per each season.

02:09But for the most part, it was typically just hear the sirens, wait for the storm to blow over.

02:16Right now, not a whole lot going on.

02:18It's very quiet, but the ingredients are there.

02:21The perfect ingredients, unfortunately, this time of the year for tornadoes and supercell storms.

02:29In 2011, I lived with my nine-year-old son, Augie, and my boyfriend, Scott.

02:36That day, Scott was helping his mother.

02:39So we were separated for the day and were to meet back and do dinner and all of that that evening.

02:44Augie and I were spending the day at the ball field.

02:50I had baseball practice that day.

02:51We had the pitching machine.

02:53It would pitch around like 60 miles an hour.

02:55Just hit the ball. It was fun.

02:57It must have been cloudy.

02:59But I remember it just felt like a normal day.

03:05I was scheduled to work at the Bastrop convenience store.

03:08On Sundays, there was only one employee per shift, and that was me that day.

03:12We have a radio station that we listened to.

03:16They would break in every once in a while with weather updates and that sort of thing.

03:20We are watching a severe thunderstorm warning.

03:23It has potential to hit the Jasper County area.

03:27But for most of the day, people were just coming and going like normal.

03:31Not really concerned about the potential of something bad happening.

03:34I was a weekend weather anchor and reporter at the TV station.

03:45Between noon and 1 o'clock, my phone rings, and it's our chief meteorologist.

03:52And he said, did you see the discussions that are being put out by the National Weather Service?

03:57The National Weather Service in Springfield has issued a tornado warning.

04:01This is a radar-indicated threat.

04:04We start watching the radar.

04:07And the only thing that I remember was one tiny little cell.

04:13Barely noticeable.

04:15The kind of thing that wouldn't have caught your attention any other day of the week.

04:20There was no sense of impending doom.

04:24But by early afternoon, we started getting those first handful of warnings.

04:31This, of course, over the southeast corner of Kansas now.

04:34And that storm moving close to Joplin now.

04:37So we have some very active weather firing.

04:42We were at batting practice.

04:44And we had heard about the storm.

04:47But the whole time, it was, it's going to hit north of Joplin.

04:51And we lived in southern Joplin.

04:53So we didn't really think much of it.

04:56And then, in the middle of batting practice, one of the parents came and grabbed her son and said,

05:03the storm is shifting.

05:04We got to go.

05:07It still didn't really register how big of a storm it was.

05:11We packed up our stuff and headed home.

05:14And I got home around 4.30 and called Scott and said,

05:20OK, you know, are you almost here?

05:22And he's like, yeah, my sister is bringing me home.

05:25And we had the news on.

05:27Right now, we're expecting damaging hail in addition to the very real possibility of a tornado.

05:32The meteorologists were saying there is a tornado risk.

05:35There's a high tornado risk.

05:37There's an imminent storm coming.

05:38This marks Joplin High School's 123rd graduation ceremony.

05:48And it is truly a day to remember for our graduates and their families.

05:53That day was finally my high school quarterback boyfriend's graduation.

05:57I was just a sophomore in high school.

06:00Aaron was the senior.

06:01He had a football scholarship.

06:03So it was very, very exciting.

06:04To reach that milestone meant a lot to me.

06:07I worked really hard in high school, not only academically, but also athletically.

06:12Everybody was so focused on the graduation that nobody had even known that the weather was turning.

06:17I would say within five minutes of walking outside, we heard the first set of tornado sirens.

06:25That was very normal.

06:27Oh, goodness, the tornado sirens, here they are again.

06:33You could definitely feel something in the air.

06:38The air was thick and heavy.

06:40So we got in the car together.

06:42And we were driving down Duquesne Road.

06:48And I remember thinking to myself, well, the weather looks bad.

06:52It looks stormy.

06:54But it's not downpouring rain.

06:56There's no hail.

06:57A tornado warning has been issued until 6.30 p.m. in Missouri.

07:02You need to be taking caution at this hour.

07:05We reached a roundabout at 20th Street.

07:07And around that time was when Allie and I's phones were both just being blown up by our parents.

07:14So we cannot stress enough how dangerous the situation is.

07:18Many of you joining us are listening on your phones, listening in your cars.

07:21It's safe to say you need to be in your shelter.

07:24My mom made me promise that I would pull over and take shelter.

07:28As an 18-year-old who had just graduated and obviously knows the world, I originally had no intention of stopping.

07:38But something in me made that decision that I was going to take what she said to heart.

07:46The first place that we came up upon was the Fast Trip gas station.

07:52And outside was the Fast Trip employee.

07:56He was standing outside of the door very urgently waving people inside.

08:02The storm was heading our way and we needed to start thinking about taking shelter.

08:07You could just feel the ominousness of the weather start to get worse and worse.

08:12As we got into the gas station, we saw the other nervous customers as well.

08:20There were children crying.

08:21There were people saying, I can't reach my family members.

08:24Something's wrong with the phones.

08:27As all of these words of concern were coming out of the other customers, that continued to increase my fear.

08:33And then seconds later, the power went out.

08:42This storm is already producing a funnel cloud.

08:54So no doubt it is an active day if you're out chasing.

08:58I was doing my forecasting that day and I'm looking at this storm that was developing heading towards Joplin.

09:06So we jumped in the vehicle and we just made a beeline towards Joplin.

09:12I like storm chasing because there's always that adrenaline.

09:21I get to watch, you know, the tornado and record it.

09:25And then storm chasing allows me to help people be safe.

09:31I chased for the National Weather Service, helping them get warnings out that would allow people lead time to seek a safe place out of the storm.

09:39I decided I would start going with him.

09:43That way I knew he was safe.

09:46I'm Sean's navigator.

09:47So I watched the radar.

09:49We have satellite Doppler radar on our truck.

09:53We could see on radar that it was probably a pretty intense, fairly big tornado.

09:59So we're just really just pumped up and wanting to get out there and start our chase.

10:06Good evening.

10:11We're back.

10:12We've got some information on this storm.

10:14Let's go ahead and go to the Freeman First Alert Doppler radar.

10:17There were severe thunderstorm warnings.

10:18There were tornado warnings.

10:21The storm is growing.

10:23That would appear to be a power flash.

10:25That could be from a lightning strike.

10:27But that is the portion of the storm that we have been concerned with.

10:32We were driving up to our friend's house.

10:44Our kids were sitting in the car seats.

10:47Ethan is in his car seat behind me.

10:49Emily is in hers behind my husband, Andrew.

10:51Emily just had her third birthday, and Ethan was a year and five months.

11:01As we're driving, we get a call from my husband's dad.

11:05And he said, so there's a tornado warning that just went off.

11:09It's coming over, like, where you're heading.

11:13Andrew turned and went toward St. John's Hospital, thinking it had, like, a tunnel where people could, like, go and seek shelter.

11:22There is a widespread power outage in our area.

11:25Trees are being whipped around, emphasizing the danger of this situation.

11:30I am immediately feeling very concerned for our safety.

11:34Andrew pulls up to the backside of the hospital where they have a glass entryway.

11:39I hop out of the car and scoop up Ethan.

11:45The wind was getting stronger and stronger.

11:48I walk into that glass enclosure, but the sliding glass door to get into the main hospital building is locked,

11:55probably because the hospital is on lockdown.

11:58I turn around, and I see Andrew hunched over with Emily in his arms, holding her tight, bent over against the wind.

12:06What we have bearing down on us is very dangerous.

12:09I have a confirmed sign of a tornado on the ground.

12:12And we have glass all the way around us.

12:15The situation was serious and scary.

12:17It just kept getting darker and stranger, and at one point, you could hear the newscasters talking about how the storm had switched.

12:33Right outside of the KSN studio here in western Joplin, we can kind of see those clouds rotating.

12:39Tornado sirens once again.

12:40Tornado sirens once again going off in Joplin.

12:42I told Augie, get your shoes on, get your helmet on.

12:45I was sitting down on the couch, and we had our puppy that we had just got.

12:50His name was Sid Vicious.

12:51And he was sitting just on my lap, you know, little dog shaking.

12:54And he was a little bit stressed out.

12:56Those are definitely power flashes that we are seeing on the ground.

13:03My boyfriend Scott got home, and right around the time Scott came in, everything changed.

13:10It got dark outside, and the people on the news were shaky.

13:17They were saying things like, take cover, imminent, it's going to hit Joplin.

13:22We do have a tornado on the ground.

13:23This is a tornado.

13:24If you are in Joplin...

13:26Take cover.

13:27Yes, please.

13:27Right now, I am telling you to take cover.

13:30Take cover.

13:30Right as the news people are screaming, take cover, the power goes off.

13:34So then we headed into the bathroom.

13:39We decided to go in the bathtub.

13:41Augie climbed on top of Sid.

13:43I was over Augie, and Scott was trying to get on me.

13:46He's 6'3", you know, this big guy.

13:49And he was like, I can't fit, and I'm fit.

13:52And so he was about three quarters in the tub.

13:57But I'm pretty sure his leg was hanging out.

13:59Scott had grabbed a mattress to put over us for things falling.

14:05We just put our heads down, and Augie had his helmet, but he was under my body, like right

14:10under my chest, and Sid was under his chest.

14:13And as we were down like this, we could hear it coming.

14:21Probably the worst part of it was that wait.

14:24Just that anticipation of you don't know what's going to happen, and like just being so powerless.

14:33You could hear that sound.

14:38It sounded like a freight train was coming toward us, and there was nothing we could do.

14:43It was terrifying.

14:46Scott said, I love you guys, and Augie said, I love you, and I said, I love you.

14:50And then there's like a quiet, calm.

14:56And then it just, boom!

15:00The loudest boom, like an explosion, and the whole house was gone.

15:06And Scott was off the top of us in a second.

15:09I could feel him gone.

15:11And all I could think about was, hold on to the bathtub.

15:15Don't let this bathtub pull you off the top of your son.

15:20Things got really scary, because we knew something was coming.

15:28And then the power went out.

15:30God!

15:31Everybody back up?

15:32You couldn't see anything, because it was just almost pitch black.

15:37Even though it was 5.30 in the afternoon.

15:39It's pretty crazy.

15:40This is getting real.

15:43Somebody's door.

15:43Go, let's go, man.

15:44At that point, we were supposed to, by company policy, lock the door.

15:48It's a security measure.

15:50But I became much less worried about keeping the door locked, and more worried about safety

15:55of people, and said, you know, forget about store policy.

16:03Hey, where do you want me to put everybody?

16:05I contacted my manager by phone, trying to determine what to do with the people who were there.

16:12Three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

16:15There were 25 of us total.

16:17I was in the middle of a discussion with my supervisor, and the phone went dead.

16:22And that was about the time you could hear the debris start flying around, and the wind's

16:26really starting to pick up and blow things over.

16:29I remember telling people to keep away from the windows, just in case something happened.

16:34And it was about maybe 15 seconds later, the wind blew really hard, and all of the glass

16:41blew out in the front of the store.

16:45I'm thinking, this is going to be the last moment of my life.

16:56Once again, that tornado just to the south of us on the ground.

17:00We can see it on our tower cam.

17:01Looks like this is a pretty powerful tornado.

17:04You can see that it was taking out those transformers.

17:07It continues to push off to the east in Joplin.

17:10It looked like the blackest, most evil cloud I had ever seen.

17:19It looked like hell had descended on Joplin.

17:22The lightning, the power flashes, the debris.

17:26I remember thinking, this is for real, and people are going to die.

17:38Once we got to Joplin, I knew this could be one of those once-in-a-lifetime tornadoes

17:43that you see.

17:44I tell Sean, this is really, really bad.

17:47You feel in your heart that you know there's a huge tornado, and you can't stop it.

17:53Oh, my gosh!

17:54Oh, big tornadoes!

17:55This is bad.

17:56That went right there.

17:56Really, really bad.

17:57This is really, really, really bad.

17:59I'm panicking because we are in a glass entranceway.

18:15The whole time, I'm still holding Ethan, and Andrew is still holding Emily.

18:20And I see Andrew just ramming his shoulder into the sliding glass door.

18:24And I realized that he has broken the door off the slide rail, and so there's a wedge

18:31of space, and so I shouted him to duck under there.

18:36He ducks under with Emily, and we don't see each other again, because as I'm ducking under,

18:42that's when the tornado hits in absolute full force.

18:47I remember thinking, we are not going to survive.

18:54When the glass broke, I think that just pushed everybody into action, and the closest place

19:07that we were at was the cooler.

19:12I was responsible for all these people, and in a matter of, like, five or six seconds,

19:17all 25 of us had rushed in there, and just trying to get in there before something bad

19:22happened.

19:22Once the door was open, Aaron physically tossed me into the cooler.

19:31I remember being very adamant about her being the first one in there, just because I had

19:37that overwhelming need to protect her and keep her safe.

19:42I was the last person in the cooler, just because I wanted to make sure that we got everybody

19:46in there.

19:47And I looked out to the front of the store, and I saw the window frames and the door frame

19:52of the store lift off into the air, like the tornado was actually picking the front

19:57of the store up as I was shutting the cooler door.

20:06Pretty quickly after we shut it, you could start hearing the debris flying around and hitting

20:11everything.

20:11We started feeling the suction from the tornado.

20:14The suction was very, very strong.

20:19I knew if I wasn't able to hold on, that was it.

20:23You're going to go up into the air.

20:24The only thing I'm thinking is, I'm going to die.

20:26We're all going to die.

20:30As soon as the tornado hit, the whole house came out from on top of us and Scott went right

20:40with it.

20:41And I'm like, oh my God, he's gone.

20:44I was scared I was never going to see him again.

20:47But I'm still trying to protect my child.

20:51All I could think of was, stay alive for your child.

20:55Don't let him out from under this bathtub.

20:58I was pressing my arms and legs, almost like I was trying to hold a plank.

21:03And the bathtub would just keep getting pulled up and slammed back down.

21:08It was being held on by one pipe, one water pipe.

21:13The tornado is just throwing every single thing around you.

21:16It's like you're in a wood chipper.

21:20Our dog, Sid, he was moving around in the tub because he's freaking out.

21:26Sid went to jump out of the bathtub and Augie reached out from under me and went to grab

21:33Sid.

21:34And the toilet flew up, hit Augie in the head and it broke his helmet.

21:39The same toilet spun around and nicked me on the head.

21:43And I could feel things hitting my back and knowing that I am definitely something's breaking.

21:48You know, just that reality that something is breaking but pleased to let my son have to get up out from under a dead mother.

21:55We can see that tornado on the ground.

22:10It is certainly going off.

22:12Caitlin, I'm just looking out the door right now.

22:14This is a dangerous, dangerous situation.

22:17If you can hear us, if we are still able to broadcast, please continue to.

22:23All right, we're off air.

22:25In that moment, we switched from warning everybody else to warning ourselves.

22:30It was, okay, guys, start taking shelter.

22:33This is it.

22:34This is worst case scenario.

22:36I could feel the sky all around me.

22:44Scott was gone.

22:45And every single bit of my body was just holding on with all of my might to the sides of the bathtub with my legs and arms.

22:53At that point, it let up for a second and everything was kind of calm.

23:04And I was like, I need to find Scott.

23:07Augie and I kind of sit up and at that point we saw Scott right beside us on the ground in a pile of debris right by the bathtub.

23:15And then he slowly, you know, starts to come up out of the debris.

23:23And I said, oh, thank God.

23:26So I was just laying on top of him with the mattress.

23:28You could see the wall and it just swelled out and then just boom.

23:33And then the wind caught me.

23:35I mean, I created like a updraft under the mattress and just pulled me right off the top of him.

23:41Felt like being in a meat grinder.

23:43I was being thrown around.

23:45And stuff was just pelting you.

23:47It felt like an eternity.

23:49It was almost in slow motion.

23:51And then you see this big piece of porcelain, big toilet just smash into him.

23:55And you think, you think that's it.

23:57That's, that's it for the people you love.

24:03And then bam, hit the ground.

24:05Still getting pummeled.

24:07And something hit my arm and pulled it away.

24:10So I kind of struggled to get it back.

24:12And then it, then everything just stopped.

24:14And I'm like, you know, is it, is it over?

24:18And then, uh, you could see, uh, like debris and stuff move.

24:22And you could see them crawling out of the bathtub.

24:24It was, is, uh, you realize at that moment just what's important to you.

24:34And I'm looking at them and I realized my arms broke.

24:40I was losing a whole lot of blood.

24:42You could see his bone, but it was no time to think about what our little injuries were.

24:47Because then I realized we were in the eye.

24:49This was not done.

24:50It was not over.

24:51And we were not covered at all.

24:53Her eyes get real big and she's pointing behind me.

24:55And I turned around and there was a back wall or something was headed right towards us.

24:59But there's, there's nothing.

25:01The whole neighborhood's just flat like a bomb and went off.

25:05I was still in survival mode.

25:07Even though my back was probably broken and I could have had internal injuries.

25:11We could still walk.

25:12We could still get to safety.

25:13So keep going, keep going, keep going.

25:15We gotta run.

25:16There's a monster chasing us.

25:18I knew that we had to run toward the closest thing, which was the culvert right near our house.

25:25And we just headed toward it.

25:27Scott picked up Augie at one point and that's when his arm got worse.

25:31He got to the edge of the ditch and I slipped with him and stuck my arm out to catch myself.

25:36And that's when it finished breaking and the bone come out of the skin.

25:40We ended up getting into the culvert under the road.

25:43We put Augie into the culvert first and then we got all the way in.

25:48Augie said, why is this happening?

25:52At that point, the manhole blew up.

25:55And the culvert started filling with water very quickly.

26:00It started flooding from the back of the sewer.

26:03Like just more and more water came up.

26:05I thought, oh my God, after we just survived the worst part of it, we're gonna drown now.

26:10The hospital was hit in full force right as we were ducking under the door that we had broken.

26:27And I think that's when I fell with Ethan.

26:30I fall completely forward kind of catching Ethan underneath me and he starts to cry.

26:36And it is so loud.

26:39The last thing I saw of Andrew was him ducking under with the door had broken off the hinge.

26:48I had no idea where Andrew and Emily were.

26:51I couldn't see them.

26:54I moved forward into the alcove underneath the stairs and was crouched in that back corner.

27:02I remember feeling things hitting me.

27:05I thought that was it for me.

27:07I had Ethan under me.

27:11I really thought that someone would find him and my body would have sheltered him and he'd be okay.

27:17But I didn't think I would be okay.

27:22Ethan was calm and I just sang over him and felt this like, okay, I think this is it.

27:29When the wind died down a little bit and everything sort of subsided, we thought, okay, that's, we made it through.

27:44Everything is okay.

27:45But that, that, that was not the case.

28:01There was more to come.

28:02We just didn't know it.

28:03Somebody toward the back of the cooler said, I love you, man.

28:16I love you.

28:17I love everyone.

28:20It sort of became contagious and everybody just sort of picked up on it and it just went down the line of people like, I love you.

28:27I love you, man.

28:28I love everyone, man.

28:29Yeah, I love you guys.

28:30We're gonna be okay.

28:31I love you.

28:32That was just one of those moments where everybody sort of comes together and feels like, you know, sort of like a little family at the moment.

28:40Allie and I were down on our knees and I remember wrapping my arms around her, the top of her head, and we were basically cheek to cheek.

28:51I remember saying, I love you as many times as I possibly could.

28:56At that moment, it felt like a connection that was way deeper than anything I'd ever felt before.

29:01I wanted to make sure if we were gonna leave this earth at this point that he knew that I loved him.

29:07And when Aaron said, I love you, that's when I felt like this might be my last moment.

29:22When we were in the culvert and it started filling with water, I was terrified that we were gonna drown.

29:26There's a lot of screaming and crying.

29:28The culvert is just getting beat.

29:30And then it stops.

29:32And we're like, okay, we're alive.

29:35We have to push all the debris off of the culvert to get out.

29:39We got out.

29:41At that time, our small dog, Sid, just darts, ran off, um, throughout into the neighborhood.

29:47And we didn't have time to get him.

29:49I felt awful seeing our small dog just run off.

29:53But every part of my vibrant being was to be alive and to listen to what my mom had said.

29:59I wanted to chase after Sid so bad, but I also, we were still not sure what was going on.

30:05We were still running for our lives.

30:06We just need to get to the hospital and make sure I don't have any internal injuries.

30:09But Scott needs stitches.

30:11He is bleeding to death.

30:13He needs help now.

30:14We're in the rear flank right now.

30:19There's the tornado right there in front of us.

30:23I've seen a lot of tornadoes.

30:24And this one was probably one of the worst ones I've ever encountered.

30:29From the time we got off I-44 heading into Joplin, we turned our cameras on.

30:35And in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, let's get some good footage here.

30:40That's when we saw that monster.

30:42Oh, my gosh.

30:43Oh, my gosh.

30:44Look at that.

30:45Oh, there's people in those cars.

30:48Once we saw the amount of damage, we just put our cameras down and we went out on search and rescue.

30:54We were just trying to get the people that were the most injured into our vehicle.

30:58There are people right there that are hurt.

31:00We got to go help them.

31:02We started bringing people to the hospital and then go back to the same spot.

31:08Well, people had heard there was help on Rangeline.

31:12So people started coming from everywhere.

31:19We heard there's triage on Rangeline.

31:22And so we started walking and there's live wires.

31:27We're kind of like zombies at this point.

31:29And I was freezing because clearly I was in shock.

31:33Everybody's wanting to just lay down and stop.

31:35I'm like, we can't, we can't.

31:36We got to keep going.

31:37We get down to where they're doing triage and there's ambulances everywhere.

31:42At this point, I can hear Augie going, I need an ambulance.

31:46My mom needs an ambulance.

31:48I was going to everybody that I could.

31:50Can you help me?

31:51Can you help us?

31:52Can you help us?

31:53And then out of nowhere, he walks up with this lady.

32:01A boy that approached me, I could tell his mom was really, really hurt.

32:08And she could barely walk.

32:10So I just opened up the door to let her get in the vehicle.

32:15And so we headed off for Freeman Hospital with her and her boyfriend and son.

32:21We get there and it's like a scene from a disaster movie.

32:26People were walking into the hospital with wood sticking out of them everywhere.

32:32People were coming in, carrying people on doors.

32:35They were bringing people in the hospital any way they could.

32:39Once we got to the hospital, I opened the back door where Natalie was and she could barely move.

32:45I said, Natalie, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to carry you to get you into the hospital.

32:49And so she was looking at me about the time she threw up on me.

32:53She was in so much pain, you know, that it just made her nauseated and sick.

32:58He carried me in and laid me down there where all the other adults were laying all beaten and battered.

33:08I put her there in the hallway where she could get some help.

33:11And then we went back out to my SUV so we could go back in to the damaged path and look for some more people.

33:28The storm started to die down and we started to feel that feeling of, oh my gosh, we made it.

33:43I think we're going to be okay.

33:45That feeling died down a little bit because we were essentially buried beneath the destruction and the rubble of the gas station.

33:53The structure of the building may not be safe to move.

33:56The only light that we could see coming through was between the separation from the ceiling and the wall of the cooler.

34:03That was the only viable route out.

34:06We ended up building a staircase of beer boxes to try to help people get out.

34:12The teamwork was amazing in that moment of absolute panic.

34:16The way that people who had never met each other still were able to come together and get out of that cooler together.

34:25And then as far as you could see, nothing.

34:28It looked like a bomb had gone off.

34:31It felt like Armageddon.

34:33Like everything is gone.

34:35So we had no idea what was going to happen.

34:42I was hunkered down with Ethan and as the wind died down, my thoughts were for Andrew and Emily and praying for them at that moment.

35:09Because I didn't know where they ended up.

35:17And then Andrew popped his head around the corner from outside.

35:20I went through the bottom part of the door with Emily.

35:29I got picked up off my feet, carried 10, 12 feet across the room, still holding Emily.

35:36I slammed into the door frame and ended up on the bottom stair of the outside staircase with Emily underneath me.

35:45And I was holding the railing as the tornado went over.

35:48As the wind stopped and I could finally stand up and I still had Emily, I just knew I needed to find Danielle and Ethan.

36:00I was totally relieved.

36:03But instead of like relishing that moment and being like, oh, we're okay.

36:07There was panic.

36:08Because I walked out of the hospital and there was nothing recognizable.

36:15Like, oh my goodness, like the world is not the same.

36:21That is, was St. John's Hospital.

36:28This is a parking lot.

36:29There were cars there, completely packed.

36:32The cars are now strewn everywhere.

36:34As far as the eye can see, 360 degrees of devastation.

36:39It was the deadliest U.S. tornado in decades.

36:44It killed 161 people, injured more than a thousand, and did nearly $3 billion in damage.

36:51Entire neighborhoods have been turned into debris fields littered with the splintered remains of homes, cars, and trees.

36:58All right, here's the gas station that we were at.

37:03That right there is where we climbed out.

37:09I remember once we were through the tornado, when we were still in the cooler, I remember one of the first things that I thought was, oh my God, what if I missed somebody?

37:21Like, what if somebody had been in the store or around the store and I, I didn't let them in?

37:29Somebody else in the cooler was like, no man, you got, you got everybody. It's okay.

37:34And at that point, I was just like, oh, you know, it's just the relief was like, wow, I got everybody.

37:40It's like, everybody's okay. Like, I didn't, I didn't miss anybody. Nobody died, you know?

37:45Ruben was the glue that allowed Aaron to keep me safe and to keep everybody safe.

37:52He was this, essentially this unspoken leader and this protector of us this whole time.

37:58I can, I'm getting teary about it now.

38:01It's been 13 years.

38:05And I'm still, still overjoyed that I didn't lose anybody.

38:11Before the tornado, Aaron and I were already pretty smitten with each other.

38:23It was definitely what I would consider young love.

38:27But the tornado solidified it for both of us immediately.

38:32We ended up getting married in December of 2016.

38:36Marrying Allie was the best day of my life, the greatest decision I've ever made.

38:44After living through that together, it elevated it beyond anything that I even ever thought was possible.

38:55Me and Natalie, we were not married before.

39:02We didn't need all that.

39:04But after the storm, I realized how, you know, how important they were to me.

39:09I knew I wanted to be with them, her and Auggie, forever.

39:13And so I just say, hey, marry me.

39:15And she said, yes.

39:17It was like going through all that stuff.

39:19And they were like, okay, now we're finally a unit.

39:21So, not that we weren't before, but it was almost like, like it's official now.

39:30There were several days where I didn't know if Sid had made it or where he was.

39:35So we made our way back to the lot, and I kept calling out for him.

39:42We never did find him.

39:44I kept looking at my phone, hoping that somebody would call.

39:50Finally, we did get that call.

39:54There he is, isn't it?

39:58He is.

39:59He's okay.

40:00He's still very tough.

40:03He's got cloudy eyes and a gray beard.

40:06But, yes, he changed him.

40:12Hello.

40:14Hey.

40:15You look so pretty.

40:16Oh, I love you.

40:17Okay, how you doing?

40:18Good to see you.

40:19Good to be here.

40:20Joplin has become a part of us.

40:22The people.

40:23It's like the people that we've been able to meet now are kind of like family to us.

40:29Trisha and Sean are so amazing.

40:31They cared about saving the people in this town.

40:34I've never seen so many people come together so quickly and just instantly help each other.

40:42Do you remember me throwing up on you when you were carrying me to the hospital?

40:47We took it home.

40:48We took it home.

40:49We took it home with us.

40:51That was the highlight of my day.

40:54That tornado changed my life.

40:57People will go, oh, what are you grateful for today?

41:00I'm grateful I'm alive.

41:01I'm grateful I'm walking the earth.

41:03I had a broken back and it made me a little crooked, but I'm alive and I have my family and that's the most important thing.

41:10And I think Sid feels pretty good too.

41:15The tornado is one of those epoch moments and this town was forever changed by it.

41:27There was never a single moment where there was ever a thought of us not coming back.

41:36We're going to be okay because we're going to go through this together.

41:40Now we have four kiddos.

41:47We built community around us and that's how you move forward.

41:53And honestly, it's a chapter in a book.

41:56It's a page in the scrapbook.

41:58It doesn't define us.

42:00We can tell the story, but it doesn't get to be the whole story.

42:28Now we're going to deal with all our life and the ocean.

42:29We're going to go through this place, but we're going to be worth

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