This is a 1950’s era, black and white movie produced by Calvin. It is a movie about natural and man-made disasters of all sorts. It opens with men waiting online to go to work in a mining shaft. Men mining, 1:00. Men carry canaries, 1:15. Simulated cave-in of a mine, 1:45. Town is alarmed as whistle blows indicating tragedy in the mine, 2:32. Bodies being taken out of the mines, 3:09. John L Lewis, President of United Mine Workers Union, 3:18. Bodies of 111 miners are taken out of a mine in Illinois that suffered an explosion, 4:36. The movie turns to the tragedy of floods, we witness a raging flood, 4:53. Horse makes its way across a flooded river, 6:20. People in rowboats escape floods, 6:50. Cats and dogs left stranded during a flood, 7:48. Children get inoculated, 8:06. People clean up after the floodwaters recede, 8:47. The movie turns to the tragedy of earthquakes, we witness an earthquake in Ecuador, 9:55. Tokyo in 1923, before an earthquake, 10:18. Mother carries her dead child after earthquake, 11:12. Long Beach earthquake in 1933, 11:40. Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, 12:15. April, 1947, Texas City, “Port of Death”, explosion aboard a freighter set off many fires on land along with chemical plants, 14:20. Oil containers catch fire and explode, 14:47. Charred human remains are carried off the port and out of the factories, 15:21. Death roster in local high school takes form, 15:30. Wounded are attended to and the relatives mourn, 16:00. Cave explorers in the Pyrenees take their chances at incredible depths, 18:21. Spelunker climbs down rope ladder to the cave bottom, 18:42. Stalagmites and stalactites, 18:50. Cave divers don scuba suits to navigate underground rivers, 19:40. May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg disaster, 21:00. Hindenburg explodes, 21:28. 1919, the R34 made first transatlantic flight. The dirigible Roma crashes near Virginia and 34 men die, 23:17. The Shenandoah helium inflated dirigible gets shredded in a storm, but does not explode, 23:33. 1930, the British dirigible R101 crashes and over 40 men die, 23:52. April 1933, the US dirigible Akron crashes into the sea and 73 men die, 24:49. The movie turns to the tragedy of tornados, in opening, we witness several tornados, 9:55. We see the aftermath of a tornado, 28:00. Weather center employees track tornado equipment, 29:20. Radio broadcaster makes tornado warning, 29:40. People prepare for the incoming tornado, 30:54. Radar stations begin to track the tornado, 31:40. The tornado arrives in the town of Elmville, 33:26. The aftermath of the tornado is covered, houses and cars are destroyed, but no lives are lost, 34:30.
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26:07
The first tornado warning was issued in 1948. Tornadoes weren't a well-understood phenomenon, and it was generally taboo to even mention the word in a forecast around this time. Weather radar was cutting-edge technology around this time as well, having been first been put into use by the NWS in 1942. It's amazing both how far we've come, and the things that have hardly changed since the 50's about how we predict and detect severe weather.
I was waiting for a tornado to trap the coal workers underground. Rename this please!
From the start…what the F has mining got to do with tornadoes?????
No offense toward the tragedy; but hearing about an airship catching fire and plummeting into the ocean followed by another airship coming to the rescue which also burst into flames and plummeted into the ocean was so ludicrously hilarious that I broke out laughing.
26:07
500 mph
33:42… Warner-Robbins Air Force Base, 1953.
dang
The advice in the tornado section is so far off of what we know today they should update the film with a voice over