violation, try being polite. remember, the trooper could have just been dealing with a drunk, a felon. or a child. if you have a video you'd like to send to us, you can logon to our website, caught on camera.msnbc.com. i'm contessa brewer. that's it for this edition of "caught on camera." i'm melissa rayburger with the latest on tropical storm isaac. for the latest for cast we go to meteorologist jeff morrow. >> yeah, we have a trop skical storm as it moves out the gulf a hurricane and fairly dangerous hurricane. here is the latest we have as of the 5:00 p.m. advisory if the national hurricane center, the pressure is pretty much starting

to drop now and is starting to move off of the northwest. the center is not quite an eye yet, but it is south of key west and a lot of heavy bands and squalls are coming into key west and the keys and the sol of the winds are gusting up over 60 miles per hour. you can see the track up generally up to the northern gulf and we may have a category two hurricane, but it could land anywhere from the western panhandle to talabama. thank you, jeff. we now return to "caught on camera." damage on a massive scale. huge structures reduced to rubble in seconds. crashing to the ground. >> i've never seen anything like this before. it's terrifying. >> trains demolish trucks in their path. >> i was stunned. i though, what is he doing? don't take a chance like that.

>> houses crumble. >> and i had never seen anything like that before. >> wow. >> a factory erupts. >> wow! >> it look like some kind of a nuclear detonation. >> and fire rains down from the sky. stories of chaos, survival, and courage. "caught on camera: total destruction." >> oh! >> that's going to be loud. >> a fire at a rocket fuel plant creates an explosion and shock wave. minutes later, there's an even bigger explosion. >> wow!

that was loud. >> it was the biggest explosion that i've ever been on in my career. >> may 4th, 1988, henderson, nevada, just ten miles from the las vegas strip. dennis todd is doing routine repair work on a tv transmission tower on the top of black mountain when he notices an extremely bright fire down below. >> we looked down and we saw this fire with the brilliance like a fourth of july sparkler and unlike anything i'd ever seen before. >> the fire is so bright because it's fueled by a highly volatile chemical used to make rocket fuel. todd grabs his video camera and begins recording. >> i set it on a tripod, pointed down at the fire, and went back to eating my lunch. >> the fire has broken out at the pacific engineering and production company, known as pepcon.

the ammonium prochlorate is developed for solid rocket motors and shuttles. >> the solid rocket motors of the shuttles that take off are filled with ammonia perchlorate. >> pepcon employees run for their lives. >> the employees knew what was happening and they just self-evacuated across the desert. >> before firefighters arrive, there's a massive explosion. >> ooh, that is going to be loud! >> i saw the explosion about five or six seconds before we actually heard it. up to this point, that was the biggest explosion i had ever seen. >> firefighters on the way to the scene are stopped in their

tracks by the blast and back off. >> the fire chief was driving and got the window blown out. both groups of people were slightly injured. >> we could see the shockwave coming across the desert and we just ducked down, tried to get under the dash. but it was too low. the windshield came out and caught me in the forehead. >> others ten miles away in las vegas hear and feel the shockwave. >> we honestly thought that there had been some kind of an airplane crash or something like that. >> but the biggest blast is yet to come. several additional fire departments respond. >> we were en route to the disaster site and as i started realizing the magnitude of the disaster that unfolded, the thought occurred to me that i could lose my life here today. >> the chemicals are not the only combustible thing fueling

the fire out of control. underneath the facility is a natural gas line that rupture and ignites, making the blaze virtually unfightable. fire officials evacuate a five-mile radius around the plant. >> oh, there's another one. they had all of that fuel stored out there in barrels. >> and another one! >> geez! >> then the fire penetrates the main storage area of ammonia perchlorate and unleashes one of the largest explosions in industrial american history. >> whoa. loud! >> it was incredible. i think most people agree that it looks like some kind of a nuke ler detonation. it was the most amazing thing.

>> the shockwave ripples across the desert, blowing out windows and doors in homes and businesses throughout the cities of henderson and las vegas. >> the plant was pretty close to a mountain range and when the pressure wave went out, it rebounded off the mountain and came back with even more force. >> nearly everybody you talked to, no matter where they were at in las vegas, felt a tremendous hit. we realized that this was a serious, huge disaster. as you can see the damage, it really began to hit home. >> dennis todd watches from the mountain top in disbelief. >> i was not ready for the mother lode explosion when it came. it looked like nothing that i had ever seen before. >> the explosion kills two people, one whose body is never found. both are employees of pepcon who don't make it out in time. more than 350 people are injured.

>> i remember one person describing it as, they were on a run, just a dead run away from the facility and as the shockwave of the blast, you know, hit them, they ended up basically opening their eyes and they were on the ground. >> the blast consumes most of the remaining chemicals and there are no more explosions. the natural gas line is shut off and the fire burns itself out by the next day. >> and nobody can believe it. i think there was a realization from the residents of henderson that they had a dangerous industry in their backyard and nobody had stopped to think about it prior to the di ssaste of that magnitude. a marshmallow factory next door is leveled by the explosion. fortunately, all its employees evacuate beforehand. but it creates a sticky situation for firefighters who search through the debris. >> all of us had brown syrup all over our safety gear and pretty much saturated with marshmallow syrup. kind of a brown, sugary syrup.

>> 200 miles away, the final explosion measures 3.5 magnitude on earthquake size mow graphs at the earthquake institute of pasadena and even felt by a commercial airplane on approach to the las vegas airport. >> as that shockwave went across the desert, anything its path was leveled, destroyed, disturbed. >> an investigation finds the fire is started by a welder's torch during maintenance and is spread by chemical residue that causes a fiberglass wall to ignite. the plant is rebuilt in utah and a power substation eventually takes its place in nevada. those that experienced the disaster firsthand will never forget it. >> the last explosion and the shockwave is burned into my brain forever. coming up -- workers moving a building run into serious trouble.

and truckers make big mistakes. >> i'm thinking, what are you doing, guy? get out of there. >> when "caught on camera: total destruction" continues. that has changed the modern world... would define you as an innovator. to hold more than one patent of this caliber... would define you as a true leader. to hold over 80,000... well, that would make you... the creators of the 2012 mercedes-benz e-class... quite possibly the most advanced luxury sedan ever. ♪ join mercedes-benz usa on facebook for the best summer sweepstakes. tter chase scenedes-benz usa on facebook netflix coming soon extra butter tickets swoon penguin journey junior mints movie phone evil prince bollywood 3d shark attack ned the head 5% cashback signup for 5% cashback on movies through september. it pays to discover. but that doesn't mean

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people are shocked when an office building inexplicably falls over and crashes into the street.

july 23rd, 2004, the philippines. an alarming situation develops when the eight-story building leans precariously over, one of the city's main shopping districts. age is not the problem. the building is just five years old, but the modern structure has been leaning over the street the last couple of days and is now in critical condition. fearing the worst, authorities evacuate the building and other buildings in the area. the busy street is cordoned off and local tv news cameras record the dangerous scene from both sides of the street. then, just a few hours after everyone gets out of the building, it falls over.

the building brings down power lines and kicks up a huge cloud of dust and debris. the collapse leaves a mound of rubble about half as high as the original structure. no one is injured. an investigation determines that flawed design and faulty construction, particularly with the building's foundation, are the main reasons for the collapse. across the globe, a much older and smaller building, a 122-year-old brick firehouse is being moved to a new location when something goes terribly wrong. the historic firehouse crumbles into a pile of rubble.

august 21st, 2008, peekskill, new york, after months of planning, workers begin the slow and delicate operation of moving the firehouse. the firehouse, built in 1890, is home to the centennial hose company. it serves the peekskill community for 90 years before closing in 1980 because of recurring problems with flooding. >> every time we had heavy rains, it would flood out our firehouse. we used to be knee-deep. sometimes chest-deep in water at the fire station. >> despite decades of neglect, firefighters cherish the centennial and the memories it holds. but to make room for a new bridge the centennial is scheduled to be demolished. instead, the city of peekskill decides to move the station down the street and turn it into a museum. however, moving a 122-year-old

building is not easy feat and firefighters were concerned. >> i was kind of skeptical as to whether it would be able to be moved or not. >> a local movie company decides to document the move and a professional filmmaker decides to document the move. >> they were turning the building 90 degrees so the front of the building would now face another direction so they could retool and get it to its new location. >> across the street from the firehouse, bobby, an employee at dane's lumber, repositions the store's security camera to capture the massive endeavor. >> just in case there was a mishap, i wanted to make sure that i had the camera pointed at the firehouse so i could have a record of it. >> as soon as workers begin rotating the fragile building, it falls apart. >> all of a sudden you heard a pop and the whole building was leaning, and in what amounted to about three seconds, it was on the ground. >> a huge cloud of dust and

debris surrounds the area and onlookers fear that workers are hurt. >> do you believe that? >> yeah. >> oh, man. those guys were all around that. >> can you hear anyone? >> there was about 20 workers and the company itself was a father and son team. and the son can be heard vividly on the video screaming, where's my father? where's my father? as he was running down >> where is my father? the side of the building. >> he got out. he's all right. he got out. he's over there. he's over there. >> workers scramble to see if anyone is trapped or injured. >> everybody is accounted for, right? >> within less than five minutes, all of the menu that everyone was accounted for. and then at that point it just became cleaning up, getting the police department, fire department down. >> an investigation concludes a hydraulic lift supporting to

mobile platform fails when the firehouse is being rotated to clear power lines. to honor the centennial's history, some of the bricks that are salvaged are displayed in a trophy case at the current firehouse. coming up -- the roof of the milwaukee brewer's new stadium comes crashing down. >> there is nothing you can do. it is terrifying. >> and a massive storm floods more than the basement. when "caught on camera, total destruction" continues. [ male announcer ] while many automakers are just beginning

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a house breaks off from its foundation and floats down a river. >> i think everybody was just in absolute awe. >> instead of breaking apart, the house somehow stays together and drifts away. >> i had never seen anything like that before. >> i used to be a general contractor, so i'm amazed, number one, that the house stayed together after it fell in the water and floated. >> december 21st, 2010, little field, arizona. torrential rain causes massive flooding along the virgin river. >> did you guys see something? >> yeah. >> wicked, mean and nasty. >> oh. look at that. >> dang.

wow. >> that was awesome. >> they call it the 100-year flood and they have the 100-year flood in 2005 and the 100-year flood in 2010. >> this is the second time for a 100-year storm in five years when we had two. >> flood gauges reach critical levels and the local fire department warns residents in the known danger zone to get out. >> we actually went door to door telling everybody that, you know, the flood was coming, that they needed to move out of their homes. >> after warning the neighborhood, battalion chief andre ojeda begins warning a stretch of houses most at risk. >> let's pick up a little bit. it's getting close to the edge. hey, don't get too close to the back. >> there's nothing more he and his colleagues can do but watch and wait. >> when that moment arrived, it was kind of sad because people were losing their homes.

>> it turns out ojeda is not the only one videotaping the devastation. >> where are you from? >> from "the las vegas review journal." >> a videographer for "the las vegas review journal" was also on the scene. >> you could see this house hanging on its edge of the foundation and undercut it and about a third of the house was completely out in the air. >> all eyes and cameras are on the beige house with white trim. no one is inside. the owner just completed construction and hasn't moved in yet. >> it's not finished yet, nope. >> i just talked to him and he said he just finished painting it, and he was laying down the floor. >> there it goes. >> then, the unfinished house is finished forever. >> knew it was coming. the sound is extremely erie. the cracking, the popping -- >> the house shears off from the

garage and falls into the river. >> wow. look at that. look at that. >> it starts floating away, but then rams into the neighbor's house. >> when it hit it and spun it around, i thought the house would then kind of fall apart but it continued down the river. >> everyone is stunned as the well-constructed house stays together. >> the walls were still in tact, the roof was in tact. it floated down the river like a boat. >> it was hard to believe that a home would stay whole like that and just go down the wash like it did. the guy that built it must have built it very well. >> firefighters wish there was more they could do to help. >> when the house started going down the stream, it's just very emotional at that moment. >> just felt a bad for the owners. i don't know how else to describe it. just felt bad for those guys.

>> incredibly, the house continues making way down river. >> it stayed pretty upright, it didn't wobble. it was like somebody could have been in the kitchen cooking. it didn't appear to be a rough ride. >> but its voyage doesn't last forever. the house gets tangled up with a tree. the turbulent water smashes the house against the tree. causing it to break apart. >> i bet if you went down there with a metal detector you would find all kinds of appliances, wash washers, dryers, maybe some silverware. >> after taking quite a beating, the house is gone. >> just disappeared. i did several flights over the area and we could see piece of roof downstream. a lot of just debris. you know, after they broke up. >> justin rushes to get his video on to the newspaper's website. the amazing footage quickly goes

viral. >> i uploaded the clip raw and it was by far the most popular on the website this the three years i have been with the "las vegas review journal." >> watching the destructive powerful nature is a humbling experience for the firefighters. >> at least they will talk about it's unbelievable what we see in that video. >> it's the american dream to own a house and to see one float down the river is devastating. coming up -- it's train versus truck. and the dallas cowboys versus nature's fury. >> it was terrifying. >> when "caught on camera: total destruction" continues. with the fidelity stock screener, you can try strategies from independent experts and see what criteria they use. such as a 5% yield on dividend-paying stocks. then you can customize the strategies and narrow down to exactly those stocks you want to follow. i'm mark allen of fidelity investments.

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i'm milissa rehberger a heend is what is happening. hurricane warnings up from louisiana to the florida panhandle as tropical storm isaac makes its way up the gulf

coast. isaac is expected to make landfall late monday or tuesday. and so far, they have escaped the worst after the storm took a turn to the west. now back to "caught on camera." a railroad crossing in maple ridge, british columbia, a canadian logging town about an hour outside of vancouver is a known danger zone for truckers. >> i am going to say there are probably four or five hits since i have worked here for the last 25 years. >> he works for a lumber company right near the rail crossing where 20 commuter and freight trains barrel through each day. >> mostf of the trains are going between 80 and 100 kilometers an hour, which is between 50 and 60 miles an hour.

>> on july 25th, 2008, one of walden's security cameras captures a tractor-trailer pulling up to the railroad crossing just as the gates are going down. >> i could see the train coming around the corner and the train must have been doing about 55 miles an hour. >> ian woodruff is driving a tractor-trailer right behind the one on the tracks and watches as the rig backs up. >> i watched him and to my amazement i couldn't believe he was going on the tracks. and as he got on to the set of tracks, the front warning gate came down. >> the truck begins backing up but the back gate closes just behind the driver's section of the 18-wheeler. the driver stops again, losing precious seconds as a speeding freight train heads right at him. >> i'm thinking, what are you doing, guy? get out of there. >> the big rig then lurches forward trying to outrun the train. >> i was stunned. i thought, what is he doing? don't take a chance like that.

>> the fast moving northern canadian train makes a direct hit knocking the driver's section sideways. >> the train just smoked him, just t-boned him. the noise of it was like a sonic boom. >> employees at the lumber store hear the collision. >> just all of a sudden, bang, and we all knew instantly what had happened. >> kirk runs to the accident scene fearing the worst. >> came running out and thought i was going to see something pretty bad inside the truck. >> he finds the driver walking around physically okay but badly shaken. >> the driver looked like he had just been transported from another place in time. he was in a daze. he was quiet. he looked like he knew he could have been killed. >> the train didn't hit the cab. it hit the last axle on the tractor, on the truck. and just spun it around. and that's what saved that guy's life.

>> the massive collision is a learning experience for truck drivers who view the dramatic footage and especially for the one who sees it firsthand. >> every time i cross that train track crossing, i think of that day. other train crossings, i slow down, i stop, and i make sure there's nobody coming. another direct hit at a railroad crossing. this time, in the american midwest. may 24th, 1991, lafayette, indiana. a freight train blows its horn and then slams into a tractor-trailer trying to cross the tracks. the norfolk southern train forces the truck 75 feet down the track before finally coming to a stop. >> it was like slow motion.

it hit in the trailer and it kind of scooted down the trailer and then it was pushing on the cab. and then it knocked down signal s. rocks were flying everywhere. >> mark skaggs lives in town and videos trains for a hobby. he's recording a different train moments before impact and almost misses the collision. >> i heard the whistle blowing and i spun around and caught it just at that instant. i kind of had a sinking feeling because i thought, oh, man, this guy could be dead. >> the train engineer and conductor check on the truck driver. he survives. rescue workers arrive quickly and take him to the hospital. he's released the next day. >> he was fortunate that the train wasn't going any faster. it could have been much worse. >> and in the southeastern united states, another train enthusiast gets the shock of a lifetime.

november 21st, 2007, salisbury, north carolina. a tractor-trailer is slowly crossing the railroad tracks when a norfolk southern freight train plows right into it. >> the train hit the trailer pretty much dead center in the middle of the trailer. >> the train lifts the 18-wheeler right off of the ground and sheers off the rear axle. >> it went through the air like a frisbee. stuff was going everywhere. >> the massive collision is caught on camera by benjamin, who also videotapes trains as a hobby. he inherited his love of trains from his father who, in turn, got it from his dad. >> when i was small, my father and grandfather would take me to the train tracks in greensboro and once he started getting a little bigger and we started going outside the tracks and watching trains and he got

interested nit and started filming them and taking pictures of them. >> on the day of the collision, father and son head to one of their favorite spots to train watch. a railroad crossing by a recycling transfer station. while dad waits in the car, the young train buff walks to the other side of the tracks and starts recording a tractor-trailer that stops right in the middle of the crossing. as the gates start to close, he quickly realizes he, too, is in danger. he makes a split second decision to run to a safer location. >> i noticed that there was about to be a bad day so i took off running with my camera farther away from the tracks. i didn't want to get hit by any flying debris or anything. >> he plants his tripod and starts adjusting the camera moments before impact. >> i didn't think i was going to be able to get it on video but luckily the camera was pointing in the right direction so i got the video. i was about scared to death.

captured something i thought i'd never see. >> the truck driver starts inching forward but it's too little too late. pieces of the truck fly towards the camera. >> i was scared. i didn't know if something was going to hit me or anything. i was just hoping that i was out of harm's way. >> he was stunned. >> i was like, holy cow, this just happened. >> his father was on the other side of the tracks and checks on the truck driver. have any seen the truck driver and asked him if he was okay, but he didn't have a whole lot the say at the time. i figure he was trying to fig ire out what happened, you know. >> the train engineer is also unharmed. the heart-stopping incident does not stop him from watching trains and recording them with his dad. >> to this day, i'm still videoing trains. i've always enjoyed doing it and

it's the first time i've seen something like that bad happen, thankfully. coming up, the construction of a new baseball stadium comes to a screeching halt. >> you don't expect to see one of the most catastrophic construction accidents that we've ever had. >> and a fighter jet falls from the sky. capella university understands rough economic times

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a massive thunderstorm moves the dallas cowboy's rookie practice indoors. all seems fine until the lights start to sway. >> that's when i got nervous. i thought, one of these things is going to snap. >> seconds later, the entire facility collapses. about 70 people struggle to escape, including mack, a reporter for the ft. worth "star telegram." >> it's so fast and so chaotic, your first thought is, just get me to safety, wherever this is. >> a tv cameraman keeps rolling as people try to figure out what just happened and if anyone is injured. >> is anybody under there? >> hey, is anybody under there? >> irving fire department. >> i'm at the dallas cowboy's practice facility collapsed.

>> yes, sir. >> indoor practice facility has collapsed. >> what has collapsed? their indoor practice facility. >> okay. anybody hurt? >> i have no idea. i ran out of there, and there may still be people in there, i have no idea. >> sam! sam! sam! >> panic realizes as the team realizes their videographer is missing. minutes before the collapse, he was 40 feet above the ground on a hydraulic lift. >> sam! sam! sam! >> miraculously, he survives unharmed. the terrifying incident takes place at the cowboys' headquarters and practice facility known as valley ranch where one of the fields is covered by a dome that is made

out of tension forms and fabric to protect the players from bad weather. practice is moved indoors because of a thunderstorm. >> you could hear the rain and then you hear the wind. you can hear it shaking against the material there. >> as the storm progresses, the walls begin to flap violently in the high winds. the huge lights begin to sway and it quickly becomes obvious that the facility is no longer a safe haven. >> that's pretty eerie. you don't see that every day. they were just sort of swaying back and forth. and your first thought is, well, i want to get out of the way. >> but there's no time. the structure collapses in front of engle's eyes. >> it was terrifying. i'd be lying to you if i -- i had never seen anything like this before. it was terrifying. the sound of it was panic. i think that's the best way i can describe it. panic. >> sam! >> sam! >> sam!

>> 12 people are treated for broken bones and bruises at the nearby hospital. no players are injured but the cowboys' staff suffers a devastating blow. the most severely injured is 33-year-old assistant scout rich beam. his spine is severed and he's permanently paralyzed from the waist down. >> the initial reaction from the media and everybody else was, man, we were lucky, and nobody got really hurt. it wasn't until much later that we real izized that not everybo was so lucky and we found out about rich. i think that changed everybody's perspective of all of it. >> the cause of the collapse is immediately investigated. at first, it is thought that the tornado hit the facility, but it turns out that the collapse is caused bay microburst, a concentrated intense down draft of air usually caused bay thunderstorm. the investigation reveals that wind speeds during the

microburst are estimated to be between 55 and 65 miles per hour. and because of structural flaws, the facility is unable to withstand the impact. the indoor practice facility isn't rebuilt. now when bad weather strikes, the team practices inside the cowboys' stadium. ten years earlier, tragedy strikes another professional sports complex. july 14th, 1999, milwaukee, wisconsin. a new major league ballpark for the home team brewers is under construction and a giant crane is lifting part of a retractable roof into place when something gets everyone's attention. >> what the hell was that? what's going on here? >> several more loud noises follow.

>> watch it! watch it! >> then -- >> i thought i was going to die. the stuff was flying like toothpicks. >> the event registered on the richter scale at the university of mill a wau key and had an impact they noticed on the seismographs there. >> the terrifying accident is caught on camera by an employee of the occupational safety and health administration, a federal agency charged with setting and enforcing workplace safety standards. osha inspector is on site that day for a inspection. seconds before the collapse, his colleagues begin recording the crane, not for work, but for

pleasure. >> we were videoing it just to see and it turned out to be the best evidence we have. >> iron worker jeff kasinski is watching it from a bucket suspended from a crane inside the stadium. >> you don't go to work expecting, you know -- you don't expect to see one of the most catastrophic construction accidents that we've ever had. >> the retractible roof we've ever had is the showpiece of the cutting edge baseball stadium but lifting the reconstructed structure into place isn't easy. it weighs 400 tons. >> you may as well be lifting the world. that's a lot of iron to be lifting at one shot. >> the crane, nicknamed big blue, is the largest in north america at the time. it lifts the roof nearly 200 feet into the air. everything proceeds as planned until -- >> it was loud to the point where i could feel almost a concussion to my chest. i mean, it was ground shaking. it was a really loud boom. >> the noise is caused by the snapping of the kingpin, the

main anchoring device that c connects the crane's main boom to the base of the crane. >> what the hell is that? what's going on here? >> that is not a sound that you ever want to hear. and it was bad. >> without the kingpin, the crane is doomed. seconds later, big blue and the roof come crashing down. >> watch it! watch it! >> there's no -- there's nothing you can do, you know. it's terrifying. >> the crane and roof fall away from jeff's yellow man basket seen on the right and miss him. but another crane on the left is hit. it's holding a man basket with three other iron workers in it. >> there was a crane holding my

three friends and then my crane and then blue and mine was the only one left standing, i think. all of the other cranes went over. >> all three men lose their lives. it's a devastating blow. >> jerry star was a really nice guy. he was our union steward on the job. jeff is the guy i knew the most. and bill, diver we called him on the job, i had just met him. he was a real nice guy, you know. >> several other people are injured, including kasinski. he sustains a career-ending back injury when his basket is lowered and stopped too quickly. >> that was my last day on the job. >> an investigation finds several factors are to blame for the collapse. the biggest being the wind is blowing too hard for the crane to operate safely. >> the wind was 35 mile an hour gusting. it caught like a sail and pulled this big crane over which fell into the crane that my people were suspended from in a man box

and that's how it happened. >> robert represents the widows of the three men killed in a wrongful death lawsuit against the contractor mitsubishi heavy industries of america. a jury awards them nearly $100 million in punitive and compensatory damages, calculated in part from the video. >> from the video, we were able to time how long it took for the crane to go down with these guys fell to their death, 14 seconds, and the jury was asked to award per second what their conscious anticipation of death meant to them because they knew they were going to die. >> the verdict is appealed and eventually settled out of court. the stadium, named miller park, opens nearly two years after the accident featuring the only fan-shaped retractible roof in the country. a memorial to the men who lost

their lives greets fans when they enter, ensuring the three iron workers will never be forgotten. coming up -- an f-18 test hornet flight turns into a fight for survival. >> i didn't see anything. i didn't realize they were on fire. >> when "caught on camera: total destruction" continues. al ] [ male announcer ] more power. more style. more technology. less doors. the 2012 c-coupe. join mercedes-benz usa on facebook for the best summer sweepstakes. humans -- even when we cross our t's and dot our i's,

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a u.s. navy fighter jet is conducting a bomb deployment test when something goes horribly wrong. >> it was quite an event. with a big fire ball. then we started doing more acrobatics. i was thinking about how i was going to get out of the airplane. >> september 30th, 1981, 5,000 feet over the naval air station in maryland. test flight photographer is

filming an f-18 hornet from a chase plane. >> the bomb that we were dropping was a practice bomb basically filled with concrete. the mission was to find out how the mark 82 would separate from the airplane in an emergency mode. >> dozens of other cameras are also recording the critical test of the navy's newest fighter jet. >> they are all stuck all over the airplane and then i'm there as the insurance policy. if something goes wrong and they lose the airplane, they have my film that can come back and reassemble what happened. >> little does he know, it's his plane that will run into trouble. when the planes reach 500 feet, the hornet releases the bomb flying at more than 500 miles per hour. >> everything was going according to plan. we had just gotten into position and it came down a little bit and then turned on its side and took our right wing off. >> a slow motion camera on the

f-18 records the bomb shearing off part of the wing. >> when it hit us, it was nothing. i felt a little bump. nothing like when you run into a telephone pole backing up out of a parking place. nothing drastic. but then we did two 360-degree rolls in less than a second and a half. so that got my attention. >> hep and the pilot are the only two people in the plane as they spin wildly around and around, their plane becomes engulfed in flames. hep doesn't know the plane is on fire and critically damaged. >> i thought, oh, we lost control because he it tried to evade the wing. i didn't realize it had taken off our wing. i just thought we recover the airplane, thought we just lost control of it a little bit. i thought, okay, we're good. we're going to fly it and land. >> as they continue their fiery spiral towards earth, his vision

gets blurry. >> i could not see anything. all i could see was black and gray. i didn't realize at the time that our canopy had glazed over. inside the fireball, it all crystallized and i didn't realize that we were on fire at that particular time. >> the plane slams into the ground. then a camera scans the sky and finds hep and the pilot parachuting to safety. they activate their emergency rocket repeled ejection seats in the nick of time. >> i saw the fire and i said, okay, i think it's time to get out. i'm no longer having fun. i'm going to eject myself. >> he and the pilot evacuate seconds before impact. >> i don't remember coming out of the airplane visually. i felt the parachute. that's when i opened my eyes

finally or could see again. grabbed ahold of my parachute and looked up and saw the big circle and said, okay, i'm happy now. i said some other words, too. >> they float to safety and incredibly both are okay. an investigation reveals several problems. the biggest being that the chase plane isn't in perfect condition when the hornet releases the bomb. >> we were just about in a very safe position before the weapon was released. we thought we could make it. there's also a whole bunch of what we call layers of swiss cheese that are involved in a mishap. it's all of those little things that layer up into one line. the holes line up and you have a problem. >> hep's camera and film are never recovered. he works as a test flight photographer for 28 more years. >> this is the worst thing that er