Original subtitles

Woman: Almost the entire state of florida

Is bracing for the impact of hurricane ian, a monster storm

Stretching 700 miles across and getting stronger.

Derek van dam: Miles matter in a storm.

They can wobble back and forth.

That means one town can be obliterated

And one town can be saved.

For anybody who decided to ride out this storm,

It is time to be in your safe place.

Because right now, minutes matter,

And this storm is coming.

One of the things that we emphasize

Is that you can hide from the wind,

But you really need to run from the water.

About 90% of the deaths in a hurricane come from the water.

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence

That with the approach of hurricanes, animals who

Can sense that a hurricane is coming, by the winds,

By the barometric pressure, they can take

Steps to protect themselves.

There's some evidence that sharks

And fish head to deeper water.

So it's not surprising that animals, which

Are very sensitive to their environment,

Could pick up the cues that a hurricane or a bad storm

Was on the way and get out of the way.

But that doesn't mean they're all successful.

[thunder crashes]

Hurricanes are an organized mass of thunderstorms.

It's an enormous release of heat.

Eric jay dolin: They generally form where the ocean's top layer

Reaches the trigger temperature of 80 degrees

Fahrenheit or higher, and that creates the massive amounts

Of heat energy.

Derek van dam: Hurricane impacts are worsening with an increase

In our ocean temperatures.

A seemingly harmless tropical storm

Can erupt into a major category 5 hurricane.

Michael brennan: Rapid intensification

Is exactly what it says.

A storm intensifies, strengthens very quickly, a 30-

To 35-mile-per-hour increase into sustained

Winds within about 24 hours.

And that can result in some of the most dangerous storms

That we've seen.

Allison chinchar: Hurricane patricia, back in 2015,

Was the most intense tropical cyclone on record

In the western hemisphere.

It went from a tropical storm to a category

5 hurricane in just 24 hours.

Watch out.

Holy crap.

[thunder crashes]

We see that lightning activity tends

To become frequent right before a storm is going to intensify.

[thunder crashes]

Imagine a fireworks show and you see all of the fireworks

Popping, popping.

And that has been something of an indicator

That that storm may rapidly intensify.

[thunder crashes]

Derek van dam: No, we're not necessarily getting an increase

In the number of hurricanes, but the proportion

Of the most severe hurricanes is becoming more frequent.

Michael brennan: Warmer atmosphere holds more moisture,

And storms are going to get worse as the climate continues

To warm.

Paul flaherty: Water temperature is the fuel for hurricane.

But winds is what most people think about when

It comes to hurricanes.

Max olson: The wind is the one you

Think of first because the wind damage is dramatic.

Derek van dam: The wind can make projectiles

Of the most simplest thing.

Think about if you've got a piece of wood

From the side of a house, a coconut

That had fallen off of a tree--

Whoa!

Derek van dam: --And that thing's

Flying at a hundred miles an hour.

That's going to be lethal.

Max olson: My least favorite thing in a hurricane

Are-- you know those stoplights that hang on like a cable?

Those things are, like, 300 pounds each.

[music playing]

Eric jay dolin: Hurricanes have an eye, which is a calm center,

And then the eyewall, which has the strongest winds of all.

Max olson: That area directly surrounding the eye,

The eyewall, is where those extremely

Catastrophic winds are.

I've been storm-chasing since I was nine years old.

I started with my father.

Ok, we have a big storm right over there

That is tornado-warned.

After years and years of being obsessed

With primarily tornadoes, hurricane harvey was going

To be my first hurricane chase.

We decided that rockport, texas, was going to be ground zero.

It looked like it was going to be a lower-end storm.

And then it just went all downhill from there.

Man: Oh, my god.

Harvey was insane.

The winds start really picking up.

We get our first hundred-mile-per-hour gust,

And things start just whipping down the road.

There's sheet metal flying down the road.

There's branches falling.

Man: Oh, my god.

Max olson: And it's just pure chaos outside.

Man 1: Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Man 2: What was that?

Where'd that come from?

Man 3: I have no clue.

And then at one point, we hear this really loud boom.

[violent rattling]

The whole building just completely shook.

[rattling continues]

Oh, my god.

The whole [bleep] wall is gone.

The storm had completely ripped the wall

Off from the fourth floor all the way down to the first floor.

And we basically just look out and all you see is blackness.

We can see there's absolutely nothing left.

This is incredible.

That was shocking, and that was kind of my first taste to--

Ok, these things are legit, and you have

To take these things seriously.

Allison chinchar: These storms can cause such force within

The ocean that they can uncover long-buried shipwrecks,

Like this ship from the 1800s, found

Off the coast of florida after the 2022

Hurricanes ian and nicole.

Shirley murillo: We categorize hurricanes based

On the saffir-simpson scale.

It looks at damage caused by wind.

Eric jay dolin: And that's how we

Have category 1 through 5, which starts at 74 miles per hour

For a category 1 hurricane.

Up to anything above 157 miles per hour is a category 5.

Category 5, it'll seem apocalyptic because the power

Is just intense.

Man: Oh, man.

Shirley murillo: The first storm I

Weathered as a child was hurricane

Andrew in south florida.

Was a powerful category 5 storm.

Derek van dam: Hurricane andrew, in 1992,

Was one of the most intense category 5 hurricanes

To ever strike the united states.

It started out as this little incipient whirl.

But with every day the hurricane got stronger.

And then when it finally hit the florida coast,

It was a category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 165.

Man (on phone): It's just-- just all hell

Is breaking loose right now.

I didn't realize this thing was going to be as bad as it is.

Jack parrish: Hurricane andrew did hit at night.

You can't see much even in the daylight.

But at night, you can't see anything, and all you can do

Is hear.

And what you hear is that horrible screaming of the wind.

[wind whistling]

Extremely scary night.

Scary enough in the day.

Max olson: Andrew changed south florida forever.

Eric jay dolin: 160,000 people were made homeless overnight.

You can take a look at before the hurricane

Struck, with all the houses.

And then after the hurricane struck,

Half of the houses or maybe 3/4 or all of the houses

Have been totally wiped away.

Reporter: The pictures of buildings

Splintered and cracked open by the storm

Convey more than words can ever tell.

[music playing]

John cangialosi: Hurricane ian, category 3 hurricane, starting

To pull away from western cuba.

Maximum winds near 115 miles an hour.

[music playing]

Rebecca van fossen: And dave had gotten a heads-up

From the dock master that the marina

Would have to be evacuated.

The intention was to get the boat out of harm's way.

[music playing]

Kevin trueblood: And everybody in southwest

Florida got a wake-up call at 5:00 am,

With their phones going off.

And it was that the hurricane warnings

Had shifted further south.

We think the worst area is going

To be in this red hatched area.

So we're talking more or less the fort myers area.

The angle of approach put them dead square

In the center of the worst possible impacts

From hurricane ian.

It really, really strengthened this monster.

[music playing]

Rebecca van fossen: The storm was turning east,

And it was heading towards fort myers,

Which is where dave was headed.

It was so scary.

Allison chinchar: Many people think of hurricanes

And tornadoes as separate entities,

But, actually, many tornadoes can form inside of a hurricane.

Jack parrish: Normally, the kind of tornadoes

That a hurricane will spawn are in the outer rain bands.

So probably some hundred, hundred-twenty miles

From the center, the outer periphery of the storm.

Allison chinchar: And hurricanes are not

Exclusive to the planet earth.

Jupiter actually has a hurricane, which has been

Going on for over 300 years.

It can be seen as the red spot on the planet.

An average hurricane season in the atlantic ocean

Produces a total of 14 named storms.

Eric jay dolin: Centuries ago, they just

Called hurricanes after the year that they hit

Or the location they hit.

Like, there was the 1900 hurricane

In galveston, which is the deadliest natural disaster

In american history.

It killed as many as 10,000 people.

But then there was the change.

In 1979, the world meteorological organization

Had hurricanes named after men and women

In an alternating basis.

Michael brennan: When a storm has done enough damage

Or caused enough fatalities that could

Be traumatic for the area being affected,

The name needs to be retired.

Storms going back to andrew or hugo or katrina.

Derek van dam: When hurricane katrina came ashore in florida,

It was a relatively minor storm.

All of that changed in the blink of an eye.

Michael brennan: Every 20 or 30 years,

You'll have a significant storm surge event that can kill

Hundreds or thousands of people, and katrina

Turned into one of those.

We knew all the pieces were there

For-- for katrina to become an incredibly strong storm.

I had that gut feeling that this was going to be really bad.

Jack parrish: Katrina intensified to a cat 5.

And then it started to spread out and it increased in size.

Very, very large.

Allison chinchar: What's interesting about katrina

Specifically is that it had a rare double eyewall.

And that is significant because the eyewall is

Known for being the part of the storm

That causes the most damage.

So having a second, larger eyewall meant more places

Sustained that catastrophic damage.

Jack parrish: It was a cat 3 when it made landfall.

It wasn't a cat 5.

But it didn't matter because it built

Up this huge, huge storm surge and wiped out that whole coast.

And then, of all things, it flooded lake pontchartrain,

And those barriers in the city of new orleans failed.

Man: I started taking videos of the water coming up

And told my wife that things are not looking real good.

The next thing, the water was pouring into the house.

Woman: I didn't want to go into that water

Alone and not ever see him again.

When I called 911, I was thinking that they would

Just come and find our bodies.

Man: When the levees were breached, 80% of the entire city

Was under water.

The new orleans we have been seeing scenes

Of just incredible rescues of people literally--

Their lives hanging in the balance,

Being plucked from the roofs of their homes.

Rescuer: Can you all get to that flat roof?

Man: Which one?

Rescuer: This one right here.

[helicopter whirring]

Officer: As old as I get, the emotions become stronger when

You see what you see, you know.

Ultimately, 1,800 people gave their lives during that storm.

And you see that kind of devastation, it is just amazing.

[music playing]

Ying]

Max olson: With a hurricane, the storm is very slow to approach.

You know it's coming.

You might not know exactly how intense it's

Going to be when it makes landfall,

Winds start really picking up and getting worse.

Man: Whoa.

Max olson: It's just dumping all this rain.

You then may get trapped trying to escape.

Man 1: Here we go.

Man 2: Uh-oh.

Oh.

Whoa.

Goodness gracious.

[music playing]

Rebecca van fossen: Fans of rain were coming through.

[residents exclaiming]

And we were getting weather alerts,

Tornado alerts on our phones.

The whole family's like, have you heard from dave?

Have you heard from dave?

No one-- oh, I haven't heard from dave.

But I don't-- I've called him probably a hundred times,

But it's not answering.

[thunder crashes]

Allison chinchar: We use the term the "cone of uncertainty."

It's sort of a big-picture overview

Of where the center of the storm is expected

To go or is likely to go.

But those forecasts are not perfect.

Jack parrish: The cone can give you

Such a bad sense of impending doom or "I'm safe."

And in both cases, you can be dead wrong.

David littlefield: I'm alone on the boat.

I'm approaching fort myers.

Boat's rocking and rolling, and the wind's howling.

And all of a sudden, wind and waves, hurricane force,

Blow the boat over on its starboard side,

Rolled it 90 degrees.

[music playing]

I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't believe that even hurricane-force

Winds could roll a 22-ton boat.

I look in the engine room, and there's a big hole

In the side of the boat.

And water starts coming in.

And I'm like, this is not good.

I got on the radio, and I sent out a mayday.

Hopefully someone heard me.

[thunder crashes]

The only two doors were both underwater.

[waves crashing]

And I was like, god, I wonder if I can do this.

[waves crashing]

We have 120-mile-per-hour winds with gusts of 150,

Winds that are going to be relentless for hours on end.

Robert campbell: I was worried more about the wind damage

Than I was water, not knowing that the surge

Was going to be 14 feet tall.

Man: Surge is coming in.

Let's hope for the best.

Mitch was a prolific user of facebook.

And every now and then, he would get up and go to the window,

And he would post something.

Man: 16 years, never seeing a river on our street.

Michelle schuline: I was watching

My dad post on facebook.

I knew it was getting pretty bad when

Some of the bar and such underneath their house

Started floating away.

I knew he was going to be devastated.

Allison chinchar: A major hurricane

Can unleash up to 2 trillion gallons of rain a day

And release the energy of 10 atomic bombs every second.

Max olson: There's two types of water

That you have to contend with.

You have the fresh water flooding

That can happen after the storm makes landfall,

And it's just dumping all this rain.

With hurricane harvey, for example,

More than 50 inches of rain fell within the span

Of about a day and a half.

It was so heavy, the rain in just the houston area,

That the crust of the earth in that area sank by about an inch.

20 trillion gallons of water will

Fall on the southeastern portions of texas

And into louisiana over the next couple of days.

[waves crashing]

Max olson: Storm surge is probably the scariest, though.

Storm surge is literally the ocean being pushed inland,

And it can happen very quickly, especially

With those intense hurricanes.

Michael brennan: Storm surge is getting worse

Because sea level is rising.

It's not just this slow, steady rise of water.

It's a violent push of water with catastrophic wave action

On top that can destroy houses.

Storm surge has the potential to kill the largest

Number of people of any of the hurricane hazards

In a single day.

[music playing]

I had been texting back and forth with marty and bob.

Marty was still in her house, and she sent me a text.

My house is collapsing around me.

And within probably a very few minutes

Of my last text with marty, her house collapses.

Derek van dam: Fort myers beach, in particular,

Was in a very unfortunate position.

Max olson: Fort myers beach, it's flat.

There's no seawall.

There's little to no elevation.

There's nothing protecting that whole community from the water.

It was going to receive the full effects of hurricane ian.

Derek van dam: All the water pushed up

From the gulf of mexico into fort myers and just getting

Deeper and deeper and deeper.

Mary wojciechowski: And once that water started,

It was all over with.

It just kept coming and coming.

Man: It gets a little higher, and I have to go on the roof.

The water was coming up, and the roof was coming off.

And everything was gone.

I mean, the [sniffles] balcony and the stairs and everything.

We knew that house was going to sink.

And I knew we were in trouble because there was no help.

Man: This could be the storm that we've hoped

Would never come to our shores.

Air station clearwater is the primary air

Station that responds to hurricanes in the gulf.

David mckinley: The thing the coast guard's most known for is

Our search-and-rescue mission.

Around midnight, we got the call for an epirb activation

Near the fort myers area.

Megan howard: Epirb is the emergency device

That broadcasts your position.

Jethro hauser: It transmits a signal over the radio

That we can locate and then hone in on.

David mckinley: We knew it would be bad.

Thunderstorms, high winds, turbulence,

And complete darkness.

Jethro hauser: You just start seeing explosions,

And it was the electrical transformers blowing up.

It was like-- it was crazy.

Never seen anything like it.

We had the location.

Epirb was going off, so we were trying to find it.

The vessel was a 44-foot boat.

So it's a fairly decent-sized vessel,

And it was completely on its side.

And you could clearly see someone crawling around it.

He was pretty much laying on the side of his boat.

Jethro hauser: So that was our first glimpse

Of mr. Littlefield.

And all of a sudden, I hear helicopter rotors.

And sure enough, here comes a coast guard helicopter.

Out jumps jethro, and he's making his way towards the boat.

Jethro climbs on board, and he did a real quick triage.

Are you ok?

Can you walk?

Are you injured?

And I said, no.

Let's get the hell out of here.

I can't begin to imagine what he had gone through that night.

David littlefield: The wind was blowing so hard,

And the waves were so high.

Rolled the boat 90 degrees.

And I got my two life jackets, my personal locator beacon.

So I squeezed out the window.

I clip on my epirb, and now it's transmitted.

I'm outside, and I'm exposed to the full force of the hurricane.

The sun goes down, and, of course,

The temperature goes down, too.

[helicopter whirring]

David mckinley: Jethro had to actually fashion

A little rappelling system out of some dark lines

To safely get david down off the boat and into the water.

Megan howard: And once he got him in the water,

I sent the basket down, and mr. Littlefield

Climbed in the basket.

And I hoisted him up to the cabin.

And I could hear him, you know, yelling out to me, thank you.

Thank you.

David littlefield: Mother nature, she

Is a force to be reckoned with.

She took 150 people's lives.

By the grace of god, I wasn't one of them.

By the grace of god and the coast guard.

Derek van dam: The coast guard saved over 300

People, a hundred pets.

Sadly, not everybody was that fortunate.

[music playing]

Robert campbell: The wind was quite strong.

A section of the front roof detached,

And I heard it crashing.

But that's crazy.

You know, that took a hundred-mile-an-hour

Gust to do that.

Our street was underwater, and there were

Cars floating out on the road.

Surge was still-- it was over my 6-foot privacy fence.

I went in to the bathroom.

The toilet lid popped open, and water gushed

And nearly hit the ceiling.

And that's when all hell broke loose.

It went from seemed like--

That 6-foot, 7-foot mark to 10 feet within minutes.

We're going to have to jump.

We're going to have to get in the water.

The plan was for mitch to go first.

But mitch can't swim.

When I opened the door, a wave came by,

And it knocked him down.

So mary and I helped him up, and I lowered myself into the water.

And I was holding on to where the door was.

I lost my grip, and I was gone.

Mary wojciechowski: I said, come on, mitch, we gotta go.

And then I tried to get out, and part of the ceiling hit me.

Mitch was sitting at the couch, and me on the arm chair.

I go, we gotta go.

We gotta go.

Come on.

And so then us, I and lulu--

I went into the water.

I was already in there.

And I went into the water, and lulu jumped out of my arms.

And I thought, ok, well, she's gone.

I turned around.

I said, mitch, come on.

And then the next thing I knew, the roof fell.

I didn't see him.

I called him.

I didn't hear him, and so then I don't know what happened.

[sniffles] but then the water took me.

Robert campbell: The street was like a whitewater rapid.

And that's when I realized that I'm probably going to die.

Reporter: Good evening from florida.

A state under attack by mother nature.

Man: Check it out.

Whoa, man.

Oh, man

Man: Oh!

Oh, my god.

Eric jay dolin: It used to be, you know,

Centuries ago, nobody knew a hurricane was coming

Unless there was maybe a red sky in the morning

Or there were long swells or you saw

Massive clouds in the distance.

Then there was a massive breakthrough in the early 1900s.

Radio came into being.

And this was great because ships could be sending reports back

To meteorologists on land, telling them where hurricanes

Or disturbances were at sea.

Then in the 1940s, we started with

Our hurricane-hunting plane.

[music playing]

Paul flaherty: We actually hunt in that very center

Of the storm, and that helps us draw

A full picture of the storm.

Michael brennan: We detect storms now that we didn't

Detect 20 or 30 years ago.

Brett copare: Flying in the storms, you go through,

You know, a hundred-plus-mile-an-hour winds,

Going through the eyewall.

And then you get to the center, and it's

Just this calm, eerie moment.

[wind gushing]

[music playing]

I went down once into the water underneath.

I crawled up on what happened to be our floating balcony.

I just held onto the railing.

[sniffles] and I just told myself, there's no way

I'm letting this kill me.

Robert campbell: I grabbed on to a tree.

It was just an amazing stroke of luck that this tree was there.

I looked around and saw no sign of mitch at that point,

And her house was gone.

It was just not visible.

Oh, my god.

[music playing]

Max olson: There's boats on top of houses.

There's cars flipped over.

It's crazy.

It's so surreal to see a place for the first time,

And then 24 hours later, see that exact same spot,

And it's just gone.

Robert campbell: 6 o'clock, the first light, I went back

Where our house used to be.

There was still a few pilings standing.

And that's when we found lulu.

Lulu was in the bar, looking around like,

Where the hell is everyone?

I ran back and got mary.

Mary, we have lulu.

I just cried.

Robert campbell: That was amazing.

We went on a search, you know, yelling for marty and mitch.

For mitch, it was several days before they found his body.

With my sister, it was 10 days.

Marty and I, we saw each other every day.

We ate together.

We drank wine together at sunset.

We were buddies.

Marty loved florida.

She lived there for 30 years, year round.

And that's where she wanted to die.

Mary wojciechowski: I never thought I'd lose mitch that way.

It was our dream to go there.

And we made it our home.

I still can't believe he's gone.

Oh, god, I miss him so much.

Robert campbell: Not a day goes by I don't think about mitch

And mary and my sister.

And the storm.

Liev schreiber: Hurricane ian caused a staggering $114 billion

In damage and took more than 150 lives,

Including marty campbell and mitch pacyna.

In April 2024, 18 months after his death,

Mitch was posthumously awarded the citizen of the year

By the fort myers beach chamber of commerce for his dedication

To the community.

And the video of the storm surge flooding fort myers beach,

Captured by max olson, is now being used by the national

Hurricane center to educate the public about what happened,

Why it happened, and how we might be able to prevent

It from happening again.

For more information on what you can do in a hurricane and how

To help combat the growing climate crisis, please

Go to cnn.Com/violentearth.

I'm liev schreiber.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.