I guess it's side for me to pick back up. What are you absolutely? And I'm looking forward to hearing more of this ornado and Joplin, Missouri, where it's reaching peak intensity. As the tornado track eastward, it maintained e F five strength as it crossed Main Street Route forty three between twentieth and twenty sixth Street. It heavily damaged every business along the stretch and virtually destroyed several institutional buildings. It tracked just south of downtown, narrowly missing it. Entire neighborhoods were leveled in this area, with some more home swept completely away, and some trees were even stripped completely of their bark. At the residences, reinforced concrete porches were deformed or in some cases completely blown away. Damage to driveways was noted at some residents as well. Ground scored. When that does that to the ground, that's like when they rate go back in the rate storms tornadoes. The damage that they can just do to the ground is part of how they rate these. So the fact that this storm is destroying the ground as significant, which it takes a lot to do that. Numerous vehicles were tossed up to several blocks, and a few homeowners actually never located their vehicle again. A large church, a nursing home, Franklin Technology Center, Saint Mary's Catholic Church and school, and Joplin High School were all destroyed along this corridor. The Greenbrier Nursing Home was completely leveled, with twenty one fatalities occurring there alone. No one was in the high school at this time, luckily, because the high school had just graduated and that day they actually had their graduation ceremony, but they held it about five miles away, at five miles north of there at Missouri Southern State University. You got to assume that that's very significant and fortunate that nobody was in school when this happened. I can't imagine what it would have been. This is at the school. Pieces of cardboard were found embedded in one of the few or many walls that were standing. Carboard embedded in the walls. Yeah, that's absolutely insane. Around the school, street beams and pieces of fencing were deeply embedded into the ground and filled near still. Fence posts were bent to the ground in opposite directions, and a school bus was thrown into a nearby bus garage. As the tornado crossed Connecticut Avenue further to the east, it destroyed several large apartment buildings, a Dylan's grocery store, and a bank. Only the concrete safety deposit box vault remained at the bank, everything else was completely gone. A wooden two by four was found speared completely through a concrete curb near this location. The tornado then approached Range Line Road, the main commercial strip in the eastern part of Joplin, affecting additional neighborhoods along twentieth Street in the corridor between thirteenth and thirty second Streets, The tornado continued seeing catastrophic damage as it reached its widest point. Tornado at this point was nearly a mile wide. Cross As the tornado struck a pizza hut on south Range Online Road, store manager Christopher Lucas gathered four employees and fifteen customers into the walk in freezer. With difficulty closing the door, he wrapped a bungee cord holding the door shut. On the other side, he wrapped it around his arm. He was sucked completely out and killed by the tornado. When this happened, the tornado completely destroyed a Walmart Supercenter and Home Depot, and numerous other businesses and restaurants in this area, most of which were flattened. Numerous metal roof trustles were thrown from the Home Depot building and were found broken and mangled in nearby fields. Cars that were originated at the Home Depot parking lot were found hundreds of yards away. Asphalt was ripped from the parking lots of Walmart and a nearby by pizza restaurant, and large tractor trailers were thrown over two hundred yards and Academy Sports, an outdoor store along range line, sustained major structural damage and a chair was actually found with all four legs pulled first into one of the remaining wall that was there. And nearby three story apartment complex was also devastated and two cell phone towers had collapsed in During this in the area, numerous cars were thrown and piled on top of each other. One hundred pound manhole covers were removed from roads and thrown the ground once again damaged, and a PEPSI distribution plant was completely leveled. Additional calculations with regards to the manhole covers by the Ohio State University wind engineer that referred to earlier revealed that the wind had to exceed two hundred twenty miles an hour for the manhole covers to be removed. Many fatalities occurred in this area and the damage was rated as EF five. Extreme damage continued in this area through southeast Jopland. Mini houses and industrial and commercial buildings were flattened in this area as well. The industrial park near the corner of twentieth was especially hit hard, with nearly every building flatten. Several large metal warehouse structures were swept cleanly from their foundation, and several heavy industrial vehicles were thrown up to four hundred yards away in this area. One of the many warehouses affected was a Cummins warehouse, a concrete block and still building that was destroyed. The last area of EF FI damage occurred in the industrial park and a nearby gas station inconvenience store was completely destroyed. Many homes were destroyed further to the east at EF three and EF four strength in a nearby subdivision, and East Middle School sustained major damage, weakening and dissipated at this point in time. The tornado then continued on an east southeast directory towards I forty four where it weakened. Nonetheless, vehicles were blown off off the highway and mangled near US seventy one on what is now I forty nine interchange. The damage and around the interchange was rate at EF two EF three. The weakening tornado continued to track into rural areas of south eastern Jasper in northeastern Newton County, where damage was generally minor to moderate, with trees, mobile homes, outbuilding and frame homes damaged at EF zero to EF one strength. The tornado lifted east of Diamond at six twenty pm. According to aerial surveys, the track length was twenty one point sixty two miles long and the tornado was up to one mile whitest point A total, and we'll get to this a little bit, total, one hundred and fifty eight people were killed and over one thy one hundred and fifty others were injured along the path. I'll play a video now, and the next part of this will actually go to the aftermath. But this is some of the footage that was occurring during this stuff. We just covered the CAZYRG twenty four hour storm Center. Homes are damaged in Joplin. One guy just called up. He says his home was totaled. So I just had another caller say, a couple of houses damaged over by Saint John's Hospital. I think our death told would have probably been much higher. But if it had down offer down two forty nine forty four, Well, that was a pavilion using our radio. Pavilion using our radio. It was three fifty seven speed hit Hall that she recalled from whom in our last contact with Officer Water, the last are moving. That's up, Sun's up, Carling's own colors down, go back the way you came, going on. We want to go east really really bad. That's going right in downtown, dropping away, going downtown. Watching this on your CAZy r G storm track of radar, and that is a big area concerned tornado warning still in event until six thirty. Got we're welcome to urs. We do have excessive damage to staking part. Yeah. Yeah, everybody's just trying to get through it. It's not only is it scary, it's sad. Yeah. These people are completely powerless, pretty crazy. When the cop car is found uh destroyed in the civilians, Officer down on the radio, that's crazy. You hear that. You hear somebody saying, is that a civilian on our radio? So yeah, once, what do you even do? There's nothing you can do. You just try to be as safe as you can. I don't I don't know you can. I literally don't know what you can do. Yeah, that's that's ridiculous. It puts things into perspective. You know, all times you you think about like different you have to deal with, and then you see people go through stuff like that, and then like it's just you can't even compare, you know. Yeah, it's kind of like your sad stories is what it should be called to night. It also pushs my stories perspective. I talking about like monsters probably don't exist, maybe, but at the same time, you know, this thing does exist. It exists a lot. It's not a damn thing you can do about it. No, and it is a monster on its own A mile wide, yeah, but a mile white is insane. It's huge. And it keeps talking about the ground being torn up. I guess, like I'm trying to think of the word they use for that, but it seems to be like if this thing can rip up asphalt, that's very bad. What else said it grabbed the uh, the manhole covers. Yeah, I ripped out the manhole covers. I think it through something. What was this here? Industrial vehicles were thrown up to four hundred yards. Yeah, that doesn't make sense, Like, how is that physically possible? Leveled a pepsi distribution plant that you said the manhole covers. It takes at least two hundred twenty miles an hour to win to do that, and along the way it's destroying neighborhoods. It found a chair. Let a chair is excuse me? The legs of the chair were impalled completely into the wall, all four legs. Did I also say it put two by four through a concrete Yeah, it said it put it. It stuck it clear into a concrete curb, just sticking out of there into it particularly possible. That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. But what it is is when the wind strength is simply that strong, it can happen. It can blow a card into brick. What makes it so scary and dangerous is this particular storm was moving at times ten miles an hour, which is absurd. Typically these things will move in I don't know, thirty to forty fifty miles an hour, So this storm was moving ten miles an hour, which is not so Imagine this wide, a mile long wide storm moving ten miles an hour. It's basically probably feels like it's sitting on you and salt. It was a siege. It's sucking up more and more debris that it's then using as Basically it's basically a deadly weapon at that point in time, any flying around. I mean, it breaks all laws of like what we believe is possible because of how crazy it is. Yeah, I was actually looking it up while you're reading. I had heard this before, but it means we should bring it up. Uh, In the US, all tornadoes in the entire planet happened in the US. Yeah, and everywhere else they're usually like yeah, zero whenever there is a tornado. Right, we were the only country on the planet that has these nightmarish tornadoes there. Yeah, they're France from Some countries have had them, but they're very rare, super rare. But here it seems to be this particular city, I think it said it had uh what I say, three tornado in the last forty years. None of them obviously were comparable with this but yeah, but it's it's interesting, like there was no there's this guy on online. This is a little bit of a tangent, but he talked about how he came. He used to live in England and he moved here and he saw the storms we have and he was like, what is wrong with you people that he would live here. It's funny that you say that, because there was a when I was looking into some of this footage, there was a guy from California that was the first time that day. He had only he moved there two weeks before. He had never heard a tornado, He had never been in a tornado warning. You know. He was I think he said thirty something when he moved, so this was just traumatizing him. But he didn't even know. He was actually the one earlier in the footage where he said, like where do we go? And I think they went in the closet and then the power went out immediately, like literally didn't know what to do. Right, It's not something you think about out unless you're obviously we know here what to do how we react those completely different. This is a city that in an area that's prone to tornadoes, right, but not prepared for something like this. No, you can't be. And we'll get into it in the aftermath part. When you go to like Oklahoma City, there's so many tornadoes of great strength that travel a very similar path from like more Oklahoma City that area, and they have a whole other building code on how they build home build homes there. This area is not quite up to that, and we'll get into that a little bit. But yeah, I don't think you can be prepared for something like this. No, and I don't think. I don't. I don't know if you picked up on it. But we've also at this point in the in the story, identified that the fire stations have been taken out. Uh, the hospital was on the it was in the beginning part of the town, and we'll get to that in the aftermath. So systemdically, this thing has it's damaged communications, their search and rescueability. Then they're medical say systematically, Yeah, of course I didn't mean to, but it almost seems like it does seem like as a creature, right, Yeah, you take out all those things, what are people going to do? Yeah, and some of this footage that we're seeing, obviously it's not the worst of the things that happen, and when you see this aftermath, it'll blow your mind. But uh, it's because they couldn't. The people that could have probably film the worst are dead, to be honest, Yeah, or didn't have probably couldn't physically do it. So these areas that we're seeing were really bad. But I'm I don't want to say I'm excited, but I'm excited to share with you what the aftermath is, just so everybody watching can get the whole grasp of it. Good. Some of that, Yeah, we're live across all social media. We have some people saying, what a massive force force of nature, What a scary, dangerous thing. All you can do you as duck and cover. Yeah, and then somebody points out that a lot of times, yeah, and we'll cover that a lot of times these things cause fires, electrical issues and other things. What the person's saying, it's a lengthy comment, but they're saying that the this is just the first part of it. It's what comes next to and we'll get to some of that. Absolutely, this is a nightmare. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Jeff Townsend Media sees you good night, and the question is do I stay here? Will you be back? Are you gonna come back. Will you be back, Are you coming back?
