to the word partnership. banking. loyalty. analytics. synchrony financial. enagage with us. 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 looks 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! >> ooh, that's going to be loud. >> a fire at a rocket fuel plant creates an explosion and schockwave. minutes later, there's an even bigger explosion. >> wow! >> it was the biggest explosion that i've ever been on in my career. >> may 4, 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 saw this fire with this brilliance, like a fourth of july sparkler. unlike anything i'd seen before. >> the fire is so bright because >> the fire is so bright because it's fueled by ammonium pechlorate, 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 solid rocket motors of the shuttles that take off are

filled with ammonium perchlorate. pepcon employees, knowing how explosive the factory is, run for their lives. >> the employees know what is happening and they all took off. they self-evacuated across the desert. >> before firefighters arrive, there's a massive explosion. >> boom! >> 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 in the front a windshield was blown out. both groups of people were slightly injured. >> you 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 aren't the only combustible material fueling the out-of-control 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 there in barrels. >> and another one! >> geez!

>> then the fire penetrates the main storage area of ammonium perchlorate and unleashes one of the largest 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 was one of the most amazing things. >> 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 could 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 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 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 are 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 measures 3.5 magnitude and even felt by a commercial

airplane on approach to the las vegas airport. >> as that shockwave 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. ring ring! progresso! it's ok that your soup tastes like my homemade. it's our slow simmered vegetables and tender white meat chicken.

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it's a fresh approach on education-- superintendent of public instruction tom torlakson's blueprint for great schools. torlakson's blueprint outlines how investing in our schools will reduce class sizes, bring back music and art, and provide a well-rounded education. and torlakson's plan calls for more parental involvement. spending decisions about our education dollars should be made by parents and teachers, not by politicians. tell tom torlakson to keep fighting for a plan that invests in our public schools.

people are shocked when an office building inexplicably falls over and crashes into the street. july 23, 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 for several days and is now in critical condition. fearing the worst, authorities evacuate the building and other buildings in the air. the busy street is cordoned off, and local tv news camera crews record the 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 21, 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 it down the street and turn it into a museum. however, moving a 122-year-old building is no easy feat, and many firefighters were 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 professional videographer peter korowitz decides to record the scene. >> 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 hart, an employee at dane's lumber, repositions the store's security camera to capture the massive endeavor. >> just in case there was some kind of 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 was leaning. in what 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. >> can you believe that? >> yeah. >> oh, man. there were guys all around that. >> holy [ muted ]. >> where's my father? >> 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 ran down from one side of the building. >> where is he? where's my father? >> he got out. he's all right. he's over there. he's over there. >> workers scramble to see if anyone is trapped or injured. >> everybody's accounted for, right? >> within less than five

minutes, all of the men knew 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 the mobile platform fails when the firehouse is being rotated to clear power lines. to honor the centennial building, some bricks are displayed in a trophy case at the current firehouse. coming up -- the roof of the milwaukee brewers new stadium comes crashing down. >> there was nothing you could do. it was terrifying. and a massive storm floods more than the basement. there comes a time in everyone's life when you want more. like a new meticulously engineered german sedan. finely crafted. exactingly precise. desire for such things often outpaces one's means. until now. hey matt, new jetta?

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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 21, 2010, little field, arizona. torrential rain causes massive flooding along the virgin river. >> mother nature, isn't she something? >> yeah. >> she can be mean and nasty when she wants to be. >> oh! look at that. >> man, wow! that was awesome. >> they call it the 100-year flood, and they had the 100-year flood in 2005 and the 100-year flood in 2010. >> this was the second time for a 100-year store in five years. 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 began 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 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 that this house was 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. >> we knew it was coming. the sound is extremely eerie, the cracking and 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 intact, the roof was intact. and 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 wished 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 downriver. >> 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 against the house, causing it to break apart. >> i bet if you went down there with metal detectors, you'll find washers, dryers, appliances, maybe some silverwa 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 debris left after it broke up. >> justin rushes to get his video onto 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 web site in the three years i've been with the "las vegas review-journal". >> watching the destructive powerful nature of mother 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. i have the worst cold with this runny nose. i better take something. dayquill cold and flu doesn't treat your runny nose. seriously? alka-seltzer plus cold and cough fights your worst cold symptoms plus your runny nose. oh, what a relief it is. ♪ ♪ you're not doing anything hand, as fast as you used to. do you need help? what is that? swiffer dusters. i can extend it so i don't have to get on the step stool. it's like a dirt magnet just like my kids. i think swiffer definitely gave me some of that time back.

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here's what's happening this hour. heightened fears of ebola led to a scare in new jersey. a plane arriving from brussels with 269 people on board temporarily quarantined because the passenger was vomiting. the passenger was escorted off the plane before everyone else was permitted to lever. the paej was taken to the hospital. the condition of thomas duncan, the ter first diagnosed in the united states with ebola has been downgraded today to critical. 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 area for truckers. >> i am going to say there are probably four or five hits in the 25 years i've worked here. >> this man works for a lumber company right near the rail crossing where freight trains 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 25, 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 per 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 onto 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? you know, like, don't take a chance like that. >> the fast moving canadian northern train makes a direct hit knocking the driver's section side ways. >> 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 nagey runs to the

accident scene fearing the worst. >> i 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 24, 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 shot of a lifetime. november 21, 2007, salisbury, north carolina. a tractor trailer is slowly crossing the railroad tracks when a 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 sheared off the rear axle. >> it 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 preddie, 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 over to the train tracks in greensboro. and once i started getting a little bigger and we started going outside the tracks and watching trains, and he got interested and started 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, preddie quickly realizes he, too, is in danger. he makes a split second decision to run to a safer location. >> i noticed that it was about to be a bad day so i took off running with my camera farther away from the tracks because 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 but 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 because 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.

>> preddie was stunned. >> i was like, holy cow, this just happened. >> preddie's father was on the other side of the tracks and checks on the truck driver. >> he said he was okay. he didn't have a lot to say at the time. i reckon he was trying to figure out what happened, you know. >> the train engineer is also unharmed. the heart-stopping incident doesn't stop preddie from watching trains with his dad and recording them. >> to this day, i'm still videoing trains. i've always enjoyed doing it and this is the owner one i've ever seen where something bad happened, 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. use it gives me...

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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 2, 2009, irving, texas. a massive thunderstorm moves the dallas cowboys 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 angle, 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? is anyone under there? >> irving fire department? >> i'm at the dallas cowboys practice facility, it just collapsed. >> what has collapsed? >> their indoor practice facility. >> okay. anybody hurt? >> i have no idea. i went out of there.

there could be people still in there. i have no idea. >> sam! >> sam! >> sam! >> the team realizes videographer sam 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 made of fabric to protect players from bad weather. practice is moved indoors because of a thunderstorm. >> you could start to 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.

when those huge lights begin to sway, it quickly becomes obvious 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 mean, i'd be lying to you if i said -- because 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 immediate 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, an 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 14, 1999, milwaukee, wisconsin. a new major league ballpark for the home team brewers is under construction. a giant crane is lifting part of a retractible 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.

stuff was flying like toothpicks. >> the event registered on the richter scale at the university of milwaukee and had around impact that they noticed on their seismograph there's. >> 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 pat ostringa is on site that day for a scheduled visit. seconds before 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 retractible roof 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 like a concussion in 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 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 there was my crane and then blue, and mine was the only one left standing that day. 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 fisher 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 guys, 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 as an ironworker. >> 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 havish 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 ironworkers will never be forgotten. coming up --

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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 fireball. then we started doing more acrobatics. i was thinking about how i was going to get out of the airplane. >> september 30, 1981, 5,000 feet over the naval air station in maryland. test flight photographer randy happ is filming an f-18 hornet from a chase plane. >> the bomb 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're 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 happ know it's his plane that will run into trouble. when the planes reach 5,000 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 chase plane's wing, the wing hepp was in. >> when it hit us, it was nothing. i felt a little bump.

nothing even like when you run into a telephone pole backing out of a parking place. but then we did two 360-degree rolls in less than a second and a half. so that got my attention. >> hepp and the pilot are the only two people in the plane. as they spin wildly around and around, their plane becomes engulfed in flames. hepp doesn't know the plane is on fire and critically damaged. >> and i thought, oh, we lost control because we tried to evade the weapon. i didn't know it took off the 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 in and land. >> as they continue their fiery spiral towards earth, hepp's 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 crystalized 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 hepp and the pilot parachuting to safety. they activate their emergency rocket-propelled 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 shoot out from the doomed aircraft 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 my eyes finally or could see again. grabbed hold of my parachute and looked up and saw the big circle and said, okay, i'm happy now. i said some other words, too. >> hepp and the pilot float to

safety. incredibly, both are okay. an investigation reveals several problems. the biggest being that the chase plane isn't in perfect position 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 finally pile up into one line, call it the layer of swiss cheese. as the holes line up, you have a problem. >> hepp'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, well, weren't you petrified? i says, actually, no. i didn't have time to think about being scared.

the most dramatic moments. the biggest explosions. >> oh, my god! >> unbelievable fires. >> i truly believed we were going to die that day. >> astonishing footage. hear from those who saw it. filmed it. lived it. you won't believe your eyes. >> it shot out one of my filters in my camera. >> whoa! holy [ muted ]!