Nature’s Fury
Press pack
Mother Nature is more powerful than any man-made bomb and is more ferocious and
destructive than any army.
Film-maker and adventurer Chris Terrill is fascinated by extreme situations and in this brandnew series for ITV1 he confronts nature head-on, going right to the core of the world’s
greatest storms to explore unique human experiences of severe weather.
Without a crew, Chris goes alone, with just his camera, into life-threatening situations,
confronting high-speed tornados, ferocious hurricanes and deadly firestorms.
And he meets the people who live and work in the path of these killer natural forces.
Chris says: “I suppose if I’m honest I’d have to admit that I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie,
there are those that think I’ve got a death wish, but I haven’t, I’m as terrified as anybody else
of what storms can actually do. But I’m also fascinated and beguiled by these extraordinary
forces of nature, that’s why I wanted to get as close as I could to look them in the eye, feel
their heart beat, really try to understand them from the inside.”
Nature’s Fury is an ITV Studios and Upper Cut Films production for ITV1. Chris Terrill is the
series producer and the executive producer is Will Smith.
Press contact: Lyndsey Weatherall at ITV
Pictures: Peter Gray at ITV
Tornado
In the first episode of the series Chris takes on the tornado – braving giant fist-sized hail, high
speed winds and skin-piercing rain as he risks his life to get up close to a twister as it hits the
ground.
Chris’s film provides a view of tornados from very different perspectives: capturing the
excitement and wonder of the awestruck storm chasers and weather tourists who are drawn
to their power, drama and beauty, which contrasts sharply with the fearfulness of the people
living in the path of twisters that continually threaten to destroy their communities and even
claim their lives.
After witnessing a tornado for himself, Chris says: “I’m still in a state of shock, I think, and it’s
relentless. Here we have the around-the-clock weather forecast giving warning after warning
after warning of flash floods, of tornados, of high winds, and the only thought I’ve got in my
head right now is, ‘How can people live here?’ I mean, it’s fantastic to experience it as a
tourist, but I can go home. I will never ever complain about the weather in my country in
Britain ever again, not after this.”
He meets the family plucked from their house by a tornado, takes cover in a petrol station with
terrified locals as they wait for a twister to strike and witnesses the extreme weather that the
tornado’s accompanying storms throw out.
The programme features footage of twisters forming in the clouds and spiralling down to tear
across the landscape. And, after waiting for days to get close to one, there are dramatic
scenes as Chris is almost sucked from his car when he opens the door to film as the tornado
rages around him.
He says: “The car was almost lifted from the ground, and we lost a window…they were the
most astonishing winds I’ve ever experienced. It felt like we were flying through the air.
“It was an exhilarating and scary experience, I have to say, the most exhilarating and perhaps
most scary moment I’ve ever been through. Having seen tornados up close it is difficult not to
think of them as vicious predators hunting their prey. Anybody living in this part of the world is
fair game for a killer twister.”
Chris starts his search for tornados, which can be up to two miles wide and move at 300mph,
in Wizard of Oz country - Tornado Alley in America. The area stretches from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Canadian border and in tornado season is hit by ferocious storms which throw
out lightning, thunder, giant hail and, sometimes, twisters.
Chris visits Greensburg, a small community on the Kansas plains hit by one of America’s
most terrifying tornados in 2007. The programme features footage of the two-mile wide twister
as it hit land and raced towards Greensburg, giving residents just 20 minutes warning before
it was upon them.
Chris meets the family who were cowering in their shower room when the twister ripped
through their home and sucked them into its grip, eventually dumping them 150 yards away
from their home. Daughter Mariah tells how she was lucky enough to land on her feet, but
was horrified to see her mum trapped under the remains of their bathroom floor.
Mum Suleenia reveals how she woke in hospital to the news that her husband was critically ill
in another hospital. Both survived, but 11 others died in the tornado and 95 per cent of
Greensburg was completely flattened. Chris attends a memorial service to those who died
and Suleenia shows the cameras around her new home which has been built with a safe
room underground in case a tornado should ever strike them again.
In his quest to capture the full force of a tornado in person, Chris teams up with a group of
storm chasers who spend their spare time following storms in the hope of seeing a tornado.
After travelling 650 miles in one day, they find a supercell – a huge thunderstorm with a
rotating updraft which dominates the sky and often creates a twister.
Chris says: “The thunderstorm is a vast ominous cloud. It’s like being underneath a giant
spaceship. It looks like any second it’s going to touch down.”
There is extraordinary footage as a tornado forms from the supercell and touches down a few
miles away. It only lasts a few seconds, but the storm rages on into the night and the radio
broadcasts warnings that tornados are still a threat but are obscured by rain.
As Chris drives through the storm he captures a glimpse of a tornado lit up by a power cable it
has just ploughed into.
The storm is still in full force the next day and, with more tornado warnings being issued,
Chris takes cover at a petrol station with a group of locals. Warning sirens wail out, torrential
rain pours down and, as the power cuts out, the locals explain what it is like living in the path
of the killer twisters.
The programme features more striking footage as Chris ventures into the path of another
storm and leaves his car to film an atomised rain storm - which herald the arrival of a twister.
The effect is like thousands of tiny pins piercing his skin.
Chris and a group of weather tourists on the hunt for a twister with their guide, who has seen
more than 400 twisters in his time, experience a full tornado develop less than a quarter of a
mile from where they are standing.
In 2008, 126 people died in the worst tornado season for a decade and Chris visits Pitcher,
the scene of one of the most badly hit areas, where almost every house was left devastated
by the twister that tore through the town. The whole area is covered in piles of rubble,
peoples’ possessions and children’s toys. Chris speaks to some of the people who lived
there.
One woman tells the programme: “It is hard to see the devastation because there is death
here and there’s the sadness that hurts people’s hearts. Our heart is always in our home. I
always say it can be beautiful one minute and then kill you the next, just don’t think it can’t
happen to you, because it can.”
Hurricane
In the second episode of the series Chris Terrill tackles the most violent, destructive and
deadly of all nature’s forces – the hurricane.
Despite knowing the life-threatening ferocity of these forces of nature, Chris protects himself
with body armour and waterproofs his camera before stepping into the paths of hurricanes at
the point when they are at their most dangerous, as they hit land, in an effort to experience
first hand the true force of this incredible weather phenomenon. He meets the people living
and working where they strike and the hurricane chasers who follow the storms as a hobby.
Chris tracks Hurricane Ike and chases it across the southern states of America hoping to
catch it as it moves from the sea onto land. Braving 100mph winds, 15 feet waves, lashing
rain and flying debris, he is there as the hurricane sweeps into a town, submerging it in water,
lifting boats onto land and sending trees and cars crashing into buildings. In doing so, he
captures rare film of the physical impact of a hurricane that ultimately claimed more than 100
lives and proved to be the third most costly in US history.
On his quest to get right into a storm Chris starts his journey in Louisiana as Hurricane
Gustav is about to hit. Evacuation warnings play out on the radio as Chris drives into the city
while bus loads of people are being shipped out for their own safety.
He teams up with a group of hurricane chasers who plan to use sophisticated radar
equipment to locate the hurricane as it comes ashore and guide them straight into its path. As
Gustav strikes Chris ventures out of the car to lie in the street to capture the full force of the
storm.
There is dramatic footage as he is pinned down by the 100mph winds and lashed with rain.
As the storm passes Chris discovers the hurricane was a category two, with five being the
most severe. Ten people were killed in the storm and Chris shows the devastation left behind
– trees have been ripped from the ground and roofs torn off buildings. He also speaks to
some of the people who sat tight through the storm and ignored the evacuation warnings.
One man tells him: “We’ve been watching the trees fall, the power lines fall, there’s been a lot
of wind, a lot of rain, but we’re sticking together, we’re family. We’ve got to stick together,
that’s the way it is.”
As Gustav subsides, Chris reveals that another hurricane is following right behind it.
Determined to capture Ike as it hits land, Chris heads to Florida’s sunshine coast, Key West,
where the hurricane is expected imminently.
On arrival Chris is surprised to discover a carnival-type atmosphere in the town. The tourists
have evacuated, but the locals are determined it’s business as usual.
One man working as drag queen, Shirley, tells Chris: “I grew up in the mid-west, tornados
come in 15 minutes, you have no warning. At least here you know what’s going on and you’re
either brave or not, and I’m brave.”
Chris waits for the hurricane to hit but at the last minute it changes course. To find out where
it is heading next he takes a flight with the US Air Force to get above the hurricane and peer
into the eye of the storm. Radar reveal it fills the whole of the Gulf of Mexico, measuring 2000
miles in circumference and 600 miles in diameter.
In hot pursuit of Ike, Chris heads to the Texan town of Galveston where serious warnings are
being issued telling people that if they stay on the coast they will face death. Eight thousand
people were killed at the coastal spit in 1900 by a hurricane which saw 15ft storm tides
swamp the town in what is still America’s most deadliest ever natural disaster.
Nine out of ten fatalities in a hurricane are caused by drowning and as Chris nears Galveston
he passes through a town submerged in water from the storm surge which is coming inland
fast and furiously.
One of the storm chasers, Stuart, tells the film: “The wording from the National Weather
Service is stark. Basically they are saying if you are down on the coast, you will die, you will
face certain death. Now, I’m used to stern words from the National Weather Service, it doesn’t
put me off as a storm chaser, but that’s really focused my mind today.”
There is extraordinary footage of the storm which precedes Ike’s arrival – 17ft waves rage at
the sea wall completely engulfing the beach where people would normally be sunbathing.
Twenty thousand people opted out of evacuating the town and Chris meets a policeman on
patrol offering to take anyone who doesn’t feel safe to the official ‘shelter of last resort’.
Stuart says: “The situation is that the eye is now approaching us, it’s less than an hour off
shore…you’ll hear a lot of debris flying through the air: shards of wood, bits of glass, broken
bricks and they’re literally lethal. They’ll cut you in half if they hit you. The next hour and a half
is going to be very, very hairy, it’ll be lethal out on those streets, absolutely lethal.”
But Chris decides to take his camera and take to the streets, reasoning that he hasn’t come
all this way to shelter in a car park. The film features incredible footage as Chris heads into
the hurricane as it crashes into Galveston at night fall, flooding the streets and bringing
deafening 100mph winds and lashing rain which almost knock him off his feet and into the
ocean.
Chris ventures out again to capture the calm of the eye of the storm and the second phase as
it hits again sending waves crashing into the sea front and everything that stands in their path.
There is dramatic before and after footage of a historic nightclub where Frank Sinatra once
played – before the storm it stood proudly on a 600ft pier where it had been since 1920, but
after the storm it was reduced to a huge pile of timber on the road.
The scenes of devastation are astonishing – boats lie embedded in the side of houses, cars
have landed in trees, streets and homes are flooded and fallen telegraph poles have caused
fires.
Chris says: “The incredible experience of meeting Ike face to face couldn’t have prepared me
for what I found the next morning. Ike’s huge storm surge and screaming winds have left
virtually nothing untouched or intact. His impact was felt right across Texas.”
The hurricane was the third most costly hurricane ever, causing 13 billion dollars worth of
damage. Twelve people were killed in Galveston and 103 people were killed in total.
Firestorm
In the final part of the series, Chris heads to Southern California at the height of the fire
season and witnesses a 100 foot tornado of flames, a searing blaze threatening homes and
firefighters desperately racing to cut down vegetation to starve the raging fires of fuel.
Chris meets the firemen who are dispatched to the front line to battle the blazes and stop the
fires from spreading and destroying everything in their path. He films alongside the crew, feet
away from the scorching heat, as they attempt to bring the infernos under control.
To capture the firestorms on film, Chris heads to Southern California’s wildfire country where
densely forested mountains are intersected by heavily populated valleys that act as funnels
for strong, hot desert winds that return every autumn.
The long hot summer has turned the area into a powder keg, the atmosphere is extremely
unstable and wild fires are raging across the region. As Chris captures images of the dry
scrubland his car suddenly bursts into flames and he is forced to call for urgent help.
Firefighters are quickly on the scene and explain that many blazes are caused by heat
generated by cars parked near to dry grassland which put not only vehicles, but also their
owners, at risk of being engulfed by flames.
In this case the fire was started by the catalytic converter on Chris’s car – an eye-opening
experience which will provide him with cause for reflection later in the film.
There are dramatic scenes as Chris encounters a 1500 acre firestorm raging amidst 70mph
winds in the middle of the night. A sea of ash from the blaze resembles a snowstorm and
proves to be an added complication for the fire crews when they spark many other fires,
resulting in 20,000 people being evacuated from their homes.
The emergency services valiantly battle to quell the flames but not all buildings can be saved.
As red hot embers drift on to a shop roof, Chris captures the moment it bursts into flames and
the roof dramatically collapses.
The next day Chris joins Crew Seven, a group of convicted prisoners who are serving their
sentences as firefighters, living in a institution instead of in jail. They have committed a range
of offences such as drug dealing, armed robberies and burglaries but are now helping the fire
service as part of a scheme run by the firefighting agency and the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Chris joins the team as they head to a nearby town where a fire is already raging. The
ferocious flames have quickly taken hold and as they approach the town they drive past
houses that are already ablaze. Chris follows the crew as they chop back trees and dig up
grass as the fire creeps ever closer – their goal is to starve the fire of fuel and stop it
spreading.
Kerry Smith, the fire captain on the scene tells Chris about one of the houses they couldn’t
save. He says: “It’s a big tragedy. The house is a house that can be replaced but the
belongings on the inside can’t, the memories, that’s what’s the hard part about this.”
The fire has become so immense that it is creating its own winds and fanning itself, hurling
scorching embers into the air. Chris films the scenes from a nearby hillside capturing a 100ft
high spinning tornado of fire.
As the flames lick at the nearby houses the crew and Chris watch to see if their efforts have
been in vain. The flames leap at a fence and try to jump the path into the garden of a house,
but because the vegetation has been removed, the fire has nowhere to go.
Fourteen fire-fighters were injured in the fire and 30,000 acres of land was destroyed, but
luckily no lives were lost.
Chris says: “It was sobering to me to learn that the cause of this fire was the catalytic
converter of a car.”
Chris is with the crew as they meet a grateful woman whose house they saved.
She tells Chris: “I keep thinking, ‘What am I going to say to these young men who have saved
my house?’ Thank you doesn’t seem to be enough, but I think it says it all.”
Chris says: “The men of Crew Seven, in fighting one of nature’s most deadly furies, have
touched a community and have themselves been touched in return. What happens to these
prisoners on release is very much up to them, it maybe a difficult path but maybe fighting fire
has provided a glimpse of life as it could have been and still could be. Nature and its furies
affect people in different ways.”
Interview with filmmaker, Chris Terrill.
What is it that fascinates you about extreme weather and made you want to make this
series?
As an adventurer I am forever seduced by the challenge presented by extreme and wild
weather. The very fact that it seems so unforgiving and perilous at the same time as being so
epic in scale and so awesomely beautiful is too irresistible. Wild weather draws me in. Also,
as a filmmaker, I am doubly attracted as I always want to find new and better ways to get my
camera to the heart of the action – right into the eye of a hurricane, directly into the core of a
lightning storm, within touching distance of a tornado or as close as possible to the raging
centre of firestorm – hell on earth in all its magnificent and terrible glory. So, I want to
experience nature’s furies, but I also want to film them.
No one can outgun a storm but capturing it on film makes you feel that you have in some way
got the better of it, outwitted it. Momentarily.
Nature is a seductress – beautiful, dangerous, capricious, and alluring.
irresistible.
Like I said,
So, it is first and foremost an adventure series?
The series is very exciting and full of my own adventures and not a few misadventures. But,
exhilaration and thrill seeking apart, I had a deeper motive in making this series.
The action is a springboard to even more compelling stories about how people are impacted
by storms. A tornado that erupts in the wilderness or a hurricane that blows itself out in the
middle of the Atlantic Ocean is merely a natural event and goes pretty much unheeded –
who’s there to see it? But a tornado that devastates a town or a hurricane that impacts a
densely inhabited coastline suddenly becomes a natural hazard. It is only when humans are
involved that a storm becomes ‘calamitous’, ‘disastrous’, ‘catastrophic’ or ‘devastating’ and
that is either because of widespread destruction of property or multiple casualties or, more
likely, both.
Although a filmmaker, I am trained primarily as a geographer and anthropologist so I am
fascinated by the relationship between man and the natural environment – specifically wild
weather because it has such an incredible influence on the way we live, the way we think and
even the way we believe. When I was doing doctoral research back in the seventies I lived
for a year with the Acholi tribe of Southern Sudan and saw for myself how extreme weather in
the form of pervasive storms influenced nearly every aspect of the tribal culture from work
practices to their religion. Storms might bring life giving rains, like the annual monsoon to the
Indian subcontinent, but they can also be extremely destructive and frequently fatal so it is
little wonder that many cultures perceive storms as supernatural – the spectacular and often
merciless weapons of a vengeful or angry god.
In Nature’s Fury all the stories relate to people and communities. One of the central
questions I set myself to try to answer was, ‘Why do people continue to live and work in areas
prone to killer storms?’ For example, I spent weeks trying to intercept Hurricane Ike as it
rampaged across the Caribbean and then the southern states of the USA, eventually
intercepting him in Galveston, Texas. So the story of Hurricane, the second in the series, is
as much about the people of Galveston as they waited for the inevitable impact of one of the
biggest hurricanes ever to be recorded, as it is about the hurricane itself. I was in Galveston
12 hours before the hurricane struck, I was there throughout the extraordinary impact of the
storm and I was there afterwards to witness the unbelievable destruction.
Why do you chose to work alone and not with a film crew?
I have not used a conventional film crew my last fifteen years of filmmaking. As an
observational filmmaker I think it is much easier to operate alone. With a crew there is a
danger of coming to a place a bit mob handed, which runs the risk of creating a ‘them and us’
situation that can be quite alienating for all concerned. I find that people relax with me much
quicker as a lone operator and learn to trust me more easily. It is as if my camera all but
disappears in their minds. This very low impact filming, I believe, delivers more authentic
insights into people’s lives – their hopes and their fears.
So, working alone is always my preferred way but when it came to Nature’s Fury this method
of ‘one man and his camera’ came into its own. Not only did I still have the advantage of
being able to embed into communities quickly, I also only had myself to worry about when the
going got rough, as it invariably did when storms struck. By myself I was able to take risks
that I would never have taken if I had a team to be responsible for. I would never want to put
anyone else in danger but what I do with myself is my business.
Finally, and very importantly, I believe that by working alone, I am concealing none of the film
making practice from the viewer. All you see is all that happened. There is no one except
myself behind the camera. There is no hidden cameraman or sound recordist, there is no
assistant logging shots on a clipboard and no director calling the shots in the first place. What
I deliver is 360 degree filming – the purest way of documenting adventure and as pure a form
of storytelling as I think is possible. Essentially, I just follow my nose and see what happens.
In this series I present as well so occasionally turn the camera on myself. If I ever feel I need
a wide shot of myself in action to help in the edit I will simply pass my camera to someone
around me, anyone, and ask them to grab a shot. Other than it is all my own handiwork.
How did you find out the best place to capture the storms? And did you have to be
prepared to leave at short notice?
Storms are a natural manifestation of weather and to a certain extent follow a pattern –
seasonal and geographical – so it is possible, up to a point, to second guess the timing and
location of their occurrence. This is not an exact science of course and lady luck has a big
part to play. For Tornado, the first in the series, I knew I had to be in the mid west of the USA
during the tornado season – roughly April to July – but that was a wide window of opportunity
and also the mid west is a huge place. Even though the season I was there proved to be the
most active in 50 years, killing over 90 people, I still had to drive over 30,000 miles in eight
weeks across eight states to get as close as possible to these terrifying twisters. Actually, in
the end I did not so much catch a tornado as get caught by one – either way it ended up on
film even if it was a closer perspective than even I expected to get.
Same with hurricanes – there is a hurricane season so I knew when to expect there might be
a filming opportunity but, again, it is a wide time window (June to November) and, of course a
hurricane can strike just about anywhere across the Caribbean and along the US east or
southern coastline so I had to observe the satellite imagery closely and keep in close contact
with the weather authorities in the states as well as the storm chasers who constantly keep a
watch on things. I always had a bag packed and was ready to move at a moment’s notice.
With Firestorm (the third in the series) I had to make a choice of where to place myself. I
could have gone to South America, Spain, Greece, Australia – many places – to track down
wildfires and the firestorms they can generate. In the end I chose California because the
conditions in the late summer and autumn seemed the most likely to lead to forest fires. I
spent seven weeks in California training alongside the firefighters and it was not till the
seventh week that my waiting was rewarded: California was suddenly ablaze. All around me
there was fire. Whole forests were ablaze – indeed, whole towns. Quite extraordinary.
How did you protect yourself and your cameras against the weather?
To be honest there is no easy way of protecting yourself against a hurricane or wild tornado. I
came up against giant hailstones as big as your fist, 100mph winds, multiple lightning strikes,
swollen seas and crashing waves, not to mention crashing masonry and falling trees. I did, of
course, wear protective clothing but it was all very Heath Robinson. I wore a ski helmet and
goggles to protect my eyes and head, steel-toed boots for the feet and I wore protective
American Football shoulder pads to help protect my upper body. I looked ridiculous. A cross
between Robo-Cop and Benny Hill but it was effective. This much I do know – without them I
would probably not be here now.
As far as the cameras were concerned I had all manner of waterproofing for them but in the
end I found the most effective protection against wind and water was a black bin bag.
Were there moments when you feared for your life during filming? Please can you
describe them?
Yes, whilst I often felt frightened as well as invigorated there were at least three occasions
when I genuinely felt I might not survive or that I might suffer serious injury. The first time was
in Nebraska when I was chasing a tornado. I was with a group of storm chasers and we had
just pulled out of a petrol station where we had filled up our tanks when day suddenly turned
to ‘night’ and a gigantic storm descended on us from nowhere. It was an exhilarating moment
and my instinct as a filmmaker was to open the door of the van to get a better shot. Big
mistake. I did not realize it at the time but we were in the grip of the outer fringes of a
massive circulating tornado. The winds were so powerful that they were lifting the entire
vehicle off the ground but also causing an immense vacuum in the van itself. This meant that
I was being sucked out of the van as if out of a jet at high altitude. I just hung on for dear life.
Luckily, I kept the camera going so it is all captured on film and you can see the fear in my
face.
Another time I felt like it was final curtains was when I decided to try and film in the middle of
a hurricane right at its most destructive core. I managed to fight through the 100mph winds
and made my way to the coastal wall which was withstanding a gigantic storm surge.
Suddenly, I found I was unable to get back as the wind strength was increasing and I felt
myself being pulled inexorably towards the crashing waves. Someone was looking down on
me that night because I still don’t know how I got away with that one.
When I was caught in the middle of a raging firestorm in southern California I was again
threatened with a very real and sudden danger when the winds changed and blew the fire
across my escape path. I was surrounded by fire on all sides but worst of all I was engulfed
by smoke and could hardly breathe. It was a combination of good luck and the excellent
training I had received from the firefighters of the Californian fire authority CalFire that saved
my bacon that time.
Which of the extremes of weather did you find the most fascinating? And why?
Tornados, hurricanes or firestorms? All these furies of nature were truly astonishing to behold
but I really cannot choose between them. Each was exhilarating and terrifying in equal
amount. Also, each storm experience took me to some extraordinary places and allowed me
to meet some amazing people – and it is these people, in the end, that make the experiences
for me the most memorable. It was unforgettable to be in the grip of a tornado, in the path of
a massive hurricane and in the burning centre of a firestorm but what is etched onto my
memory are the survivors as well as the victims of these storms. I also recall the men and
women of the emergency services who risked their lives as these storms struck. Nature, as I
have said, is brought into the sharpest of all perspectives by the people she impacts.
What did you learn about the people who live in the path of extreme weather?
I learned that people are incredibly robust (or sometimes just plain stubborn) and nearly
always take the view that, ‘It won’t happen to me’. Tornados occur every year in the mid west
of the USA and invariably they destroy hundreds of homes and kill dozens of people, but still
people continue to live in their path. That is what is fascinating – individual perceptions of a
hazard. People have to weigh up the relative risks of living in a place against the benefits.
More often than not the benefits nearly always sway the decision. That is why, afterall,
people still choose to live on river flood plains or on top of the San Andreas faultline.
California is a good example of this attitude. For many it is a paradise on earth but once a
year when the wild fires erupt it can turn into a living hell.
It would seem most Californians will put up with a few months of potential hell for the rest of
the year in heaven.
Also, of course, storms attract many people who, in awe of them, actually want to get close to
them. These are the storm chasers and for them storms have become a way of life.
Please can you tell us a little about the storm chasers you met?
I met many storm chasers both in my quest to seek out tornados as well as to intercept
hurricanes. Some of these chasers are, it has to be said, ill equipped and ill informed and are
a danger to themselves and others, but there are other chasers who are nothing less than
supreme weather experts who know exactly what they are doing. I met many of these expert
chasers and often travelled with them. They tend to be larger than life characters and are as
turned on by the thrill of the chase as the interception itself. Also, they are often gathering
vital scientific information about the storms themselves that are fed back into the
meteorological services and early warning systems.
Please can you tell us a little about Crew Seven?
Crew Seven was an extraordinary collection of firefighters who I trained and lived with in
southern California – but they were not just ordinary fire fighters. Every one of these men
was a convicted prisoner serving his time as a front line firefighter instead of being behind
prison bars. Gangsters, drug dealers, armed robbers and burglars – the 14 members of Crew
Seven were all trying to turn themselves round and pay back their debt to the community.
Rough diamonds they may have been but I have never met men more committed to their
task. They welcomed me and fully accepted me as one of their own. I spent seven weeks
training with them and then went with them into the heart of raging wildfires. Nicknamed the
‘Good/Bad Guys’ they risked life and limb saving houses in the path of forest fires that
previously they may well have burgled. It was an astonishing human story set against the
most dramatic backdrop you can imagine: 1,000 foot flames being fanned by 100mph winds,
mountains of billowing black smoke and air attack helicopters dropping flame retardant and
water.
What do you think viewers will get from Nature’s Fury that they have not got from other
weather related series or programmes.
I think I have captured some pretty unique footage both of the storms themselves but also the
human stories that I discovered in the midst of these storms. I want the viewer to share my
excitement of all that I found as well as feel something of my fears. I freely admit that part of
what I was doing was to exercise my rather strange preoccupation with danger and addiction
to adrenalin. It’s not about courage or bravery – it is more about some deep psychological
urge I have to step near the edge of the abyss. It always terrifies me but, if I get away with it,
it charges me like nothing else and fills me with an unbelievable surge of inner energy. As I
work alone my only companion is my camera which, by extension, is the viewer himself or
herself. In watching these films I want the viewer to feel, as far as possibly, that they were
right alongside me all the time – through thick and thin.