no, we're still going on the water, but i haven't gone on a cruise ship since. 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 thought 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! >> it was the biggest explosion that i've ever been on in my life.

>> may 4th, 1988, henderson, nevada, just ten miles from the las vegas strip. dennis todd is doing routine repair work on a tv transmission power on the top of black mountain when he notices an extremely bright fire down below. >> we looked down and saw this fire with this brilliance, like a fourth of july sparkler. unlike anything i've seen before. >> the fire is so bright because it's fueled by ammonia perchlorate, 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. where ammonium perchlorate is manufactured for the space shuttle and military rockets. >> the solid rocket motors of the shuttles that take off are

filled with ammonia perchlorate. you have a material that in this case can really debt to nature, explode. >> pepcon employees knowing just how explosive their factory is, run for their lives. >> the employees knew what was happening and they all took off. they self-evacuated across the desert. >> before firefighters arrive, there's a massive explosion. >> oh! >> that's 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. there was a fire truck on the front windshield was blown out. both groups of people were slightly injured. >> we could see the shock wave 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 shock wave. >> we honestly thought that there had been 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 had unfolded, the thought occurred to me that i could lose my life here today. >> the chemicals aren't the only combustible fuel fueling the fire. underneath the facility is a natural gas line that ruptures 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 in barrels. and another. >> another one! >> geez! >> then the fire penetrates the main storage area of ammonia perchlorate and unleashes one of the biggest accidental industrial explosions in american history. >> wow. loud! >> it was incredible. i think most people agree that it looks like some kind of a nuclear detonation. it's the most amazing thing. >> the shock wave 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 mountaintop in disbelief. >> i was not ready for the mother lode explosion when it came. it looked like nothing that i'd 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 shock wave 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 right in their backyard and nobody stopped to think about it before a disaster 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 mev yurs 3.5 on earthquakize month graphs in

pasadena and even is felt by a commercial airplane on afroech the las vegas airport. >> as that shock wave went across the desert anything in 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. ♪ take me into your darkest hour ♪

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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 in manila 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 a been leaning over the street for several 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 in 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 centennial down the street and turn it into a museum. however, moving a 122-year-old brick building is no easy feat. and many firefighters are concerned. >> i was kind of skeptical as to whether it would be able to be moved or not. >> a local video production company decides to document the move. and proefrl videographer sets up his camera and begins recording the scene. >> they were turning the building 90 degrees so the front of the building would now face another direction so the next day they could retool and get it to its new location. >> across the street from the firehouse, bobby hart, 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 some sort of pop and the whole building just leaned. what probably amounted to 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. and those guys were all around that. >> did you see the guy here running? >> holy -- >> where is he? >> there was about 20 workers, and the company itself was, i believe, 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 runs down the side of the building. >> where is he? where is my father? >> 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.

>> get everybody accounted for, right? >> within less than five minutes, all of the men knew that everybody was accounted for. and then at that point it just cleaning up. >> 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 salvaged from the building are displayed in a trophy case at the current firehouse. coming up -- the roof of the milwaukee brewers new stadium comes crashing down. >> there's nothing you can do. it's terrifying. >> and a massive storm floods more than the basement. [ female announcer ] made just a little sweeter... because all these whole grains aren't healthy unless you actually eat them ♪ multigrain cheerios. also available in delicious peanut butter.

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>> 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. >> mother nature. isn't she something? >> yeah. >> mean and nasty. >> oh. look at that. >> dang! wow! >> that was awesome. >> they call it the hundred year flood. and they had the hundred year flood in 2005 and the hundred year flood in 2010. >> this is the second time for a hundred year storm in five years we had two. >> flood gauges reach critical levels and the local fire department warns residents in the known danger zone called the

beaver dam wash, 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 bank. >> 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 isn't the only person videotaping the devastation. >> where are you from? >> from "the las vegas review journal." >> a videographer for "the las vegas review journal" newspaper was also on the scene. >> you could see this house hanging off the edge of its 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. >> we 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 fall apart, but it continued down the river. >> everyone is stunned as the well-constructed house stays together. >> the walls were still intact, the roof was intact. 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 fairly 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 just looked 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 causing it to break apart. >> i bet if you go down there with a metal detector, you'll find washer, dryer, all kinds of appliances, 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 pieces of roof downstream. a lot of just the 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 just uploaded the clip raw. it was by far the most popular on the website in the three years that i've been with "the las vegas review journal." >> watching the destructive powerful nature is a humbling experience for the veteran firefighters. >> we still talk about it. it's unbelievable what we see on that video. >> it's the american dream to

own a house, and to see one floating down the river is devastating. coming up -- it's train versus truck. and the dallas cowboys versus nature's fury. >> it was terrifying.

i'm milissa rehberger. the president of asiana airlines said they're sending an investigation team to work with the ntsb. yesterday's crash landing left two people dead. dozens are missing outside quebec after a train derailment sparked an intense fire that's still burning. five people were killed, more than 2,000 forced out of their homes. the fire chief says it looks like a war zone. 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'm going to say there are probably four or five hits in the 25 years that i've worked here. >> kirk nagy works for a lumber company right near the rail crossing where freight training barrel through each day. >> most of these 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 catches 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 the rig back 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 nagy 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 it knocked down signals. rocks were flying everywhere. >> mark skaggs lives in town and videotapes trains as 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 off the ground and shears off the rear axle. >> the trailer got split in half. 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 jim 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 and started filming 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 never thought i'd 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 at that point. >> he is stunned. >> i was like, holy cow, this really just happened. >> his father was on the other side of the tracks and checks on the truck driver. >> i seen the truck driver there. he said he was okay. he didn't have a whole lot to say at the time. i reckon he was trying to figure out what happened. >> the train engineer is also unharmed. the heart-stopping incident doesn't stop him from watching trains with his dad and recording them. >> to this day, i'm still videoing trains. i've always enjoyed doing it and it's the first time i've seen something bad happen, thankfully. coming up -- the construction of a new major league baseball stadium comes to a screeching halt. >> you don't expect to see one of the most catastrophic construction accidents we've ever had. >> and a fighter jet falls from the sky. ready?

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♪ dannon a violent storm wreaks havoc on the dallas cowboys practice facility forcing everyone inside to run for their lives. >> and i was trying to get through the door, the door collapsed. and i'll never forget this. one of the players pushed me out of the way to get through. so it wasn't like, hey, let's leave in an orderly fashion. it was, get out of the way. i want to get out of here. >> march 2nd, 2009, irving, texas. 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 engel, a reporter for the "fort worth 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. >> irving fire department. >> i'm at the dallas cowboys practice facility at valley ranch. >> yes, sir. >> the indoor facility collapsed during the practice. >> what has collapsed? >> their indoor practice facility. >> okay.

anybody hurt? >> i have no idea. i ran out of there. there might still be people in there. i have no idea. >> sam! >> panic rises as they realize their team videographer is missing. minutes before the collapse, he was 40 feet above the ground on a hydraulic lift. >> 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 white tension supported dome made of fabric and metal to protect players from bad weather. practice is moved indoors because of a thunderstorm. >> you could start to hear the rain a little bit. it was loud. 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. when those huge lights begin to sway, it quickly becomes obvious the facility is no longer a safe haven. >> that's pretty erie. 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 said -- because i'd 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 me and everybody else was, man, we were lucky. nobody got really hurt. it wasn't much later we realized not everybody 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's thought that a tornado hit the facility but it turns out the collapse is caused by a microburst, a concentrated intense downdraft of air over a small area usually caused by a 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. 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! >> then --

>> i thought i was going to die. the stuff was flying like toothpicks. >> the event registered on the richter scale of the university of wisconsin milwaukee and actually had an impact that they noticed on their 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. inspector pat is on site that day for a visit. 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 the lift from a man basket, 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 we've ever had. >> the retractable roof is the showpiece of the cutting edge baseball stadium, but lifting the preconstructed 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 connects the crane's 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! >> there's no -- there's nothing you can do, you know. it's terrifying. >> the crane and roof fall away from jeff cassenski'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 starr was a really nice guy. he was our union steward on the job. jeff wisher, he's the guy i knew the most.diver, we called him on the job. i just met him. he was a real nice guy, you know. >> several other people are injured, including jeff. 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 two factors are to blame, the biggest is that the wind was blowing too hard for the crane to operate safely. >> the wind was 35-mile-per-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, for 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, assuring the three ironworkers will never be

forgotten. coming up. an f-18 hornet test flight turns into a fight for survival. >> i could not see anything. and i didn't realize they were on fire. >> when caught on camera, total destruction continues. which is deposited in your fidelity account. is that it? actually... there's no annual fee and no limits on rewards. and with the fidelity cash management account debit card, you get reimbursed for all atm fees. is that it? oh, this guy, too. turn more of the money you spend into money you invest. it's everyday reinvesting for your personal economy. i get out a lot... except when it's too cold. like the last three weekends. asthma doesn't affect my job... you missed the meeting again last week! it doesn't affect my family. your coughing woke me up again. i wish you'd take me to the park. i don't use my rescue inhaler a lot...

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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. we started doing some more acrobat ickes. i was thinking about how i was going to get out of the airplane. >> september 30th, 1981. 5,000 feet over the naval every station in maryland test flight photographer is filming an f-18 hornet from a chase plane. we were dropping a practice bomb

basically filled with concrete. the miss was to find out how it 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. >> i'm there as the insurance policy. if something goes wrong and they lose the airplane, they have my film that they can come back and reassemble what happened. >> little does he know it's his plane that will run into trouble. when the planes reach 5,000 feet, the hornet releases the bomb while flying at more than 500 miles per hour. >> everything was going according to plan. weigh had just froen into position and as the weapon came down it came down a little bit but then it turned and took our right wing off. >> a slow motion camera on the f-18 records the bomb sheering off part of the plane's wing.

>> when it hit us, it was nothing. i felt a little bump, not even like you're running into a telephone pole when you back out of a parking place. but then we did two rolls in less than a second and a half. so that got my attention. >> he and the pilot are the only to people in the plane. as they spin wildly around and around, their plane becomes engulfed in flames. he doesn't know the plane is on fire and critically damaged. >> and i thought oh, he lost control because he tried to evade the weapon. i didn't realize it had taken off our wing. i thought we would just recover the airplane, that we just lost control of it a little bit. i said okay. we're good. we're flying now. we'll land. >> as they continue their fiery spiral towards earth his vision gets bury. >> i could not see anything. all i saw was black and gray. and i didn't realize at the time

our canopy had grazed over. the inside the fireball it all crystallized. and i didn't realize 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 eject their seats in the nick of time. >> i see the fire and i think it's time to get out. i'm no longer having fun. i'm go to eject myself. >> he and the pilot shoot out seconds before impact. >> i don't remember coming out of the airplane visually. i felt the snap of the parachute. that's when i opened me eyes finally or could see again, grabbed ahold of my parachute,

saw the big circle and said i'm happy now. i said some other words too. >> hep and the pilot float to safety. incredibly both are okay. an investigation reveals several problems. the biggest that the chase plane isn't in per pekt position when the hornet releases the bomb. >> we thought we could make it. there's also a whole bunch of what we call layers of swiss cheese that go into a mishap. it's all those little-bitty things finally pile up into one line, layers of swiss cheese. the holes line up, then 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's ever happened to me by far. i never felt scared. everybody says weren't you petrified? actually, no. i didn't have time to think

about being scared. amazing action, unbelievable rescues. a mother and her children trapped inside the twisted wreckage of a car. >> it did go through our minds that this vehicle could possibly go over the edge. >> firefighters who demonstrate courage anytime, anyplace. >> so basically, you're hanging 80 feet below the helicopter, which is not the plan i had in my mind. >> we first got on scene and looked over the edge, and it was like oh, this is a lot bigger than we thought. >> acts of