Lie! Quiet on the set! Remember, speed, down production, take one! So, for those of you that follow my channel, you know that one of my favorite places to go is out in the Ozarks, and ironically enough, I recently just made this video right here. So people always ask me two questions. Where’s my favorite place in the United States to go off-roading? And if there was a calamity, where would I go as a bug out location? Well, after a lot of consideration, and after reviewing the tapes, I’d have to say my number one answer is the Ozarks.

Now, I started going down to the Ozarks about seven years ago, and I met a fella named Jason Harris, and he happened to be starting a shop called Ozark Overland Outfitters. And the shop’s been doing pretty well over the years, and I go there, it’s kind of a home base. I’ll go down to the shop, I hang out, work on the truck if need be, and then I head out, and I always let Jason know where I’m at. So, about a couple of weeks ago, I ended up at the shop, and I had to do some serious repairs, and it just took forever.

But fortunately, Jason gave me the opportunity to use the shop as usual, and whenever I needed help, Eric and Matt and Jason would kick in. You know what I mean? And we got the job done, et cetera, and we’re working on this truck for two weeks. Every time we get something done, something else needs to be done, so forth, so on, blah, blah, blah. It happens. This time around, I decided the truck was finished on Thursday, but because every time we turned around, something else was going wrong, I figured I’d hang out for Friday and head out Saturday morning, because I’m heading back north again, homeward bound.

Well, that turned out to be a great big mistake. So let me paint you a picture here. I’m going to stay Friday night and head out Saturday morning. I set my truck up right inside the shop because the weather’s already getting windy outside, and we know a storm’s coming. No big deal, right? Nothing to see here. I’m good to go. Saturday morning, I’ll roll out. No worries. But I have this problem with sleeping, so I take sleeping medication at night, over-the-counter stuff, nothing heavy duty or nothing like that. But when it kicks in, it absolutely knocks me out.

So I’m sleeping, and I mean, I’m in bed at 8 30. So I’m sleeping for about a half an hour, and all of a sudden, my phone makes that noise. And my first response is to ignore it, because I’m snoozing. And then all of a sudden, my phone rings, and I answer the phone, and I’m sleeping. And it’s my buddy Matt that works at Ozark Overland Outfitters, and he’s saying, hey, dude, there’s a tornado right outside the shop. If you open the door, you can probably see it, but you should probably hunker down.

And apparently, I told him I’m effing sleeping and hung up. Well, right after that phone call, my phone rang again. This time, it was Eric saying, dude, a tornado just ripped through my property, and it’s on its way to you. So now I’m paying attention. And then my phone rings about four more times, and it’s everybody I know in the area saying, where are you? Are you still here? Because there’s a tornado. So now I’m paying attention. I clamber out of my tent, still half asleep, and realize it’s pouring rain. I’m in a metal structure, so the rain is amplified exponentially.

I start looking outside, and all I can see is lightning, and lightning, and lightning. And all I can hear is what sounds like a train. So I’m remembering what Matt told me. He said to hunker down. Now, I’m from Boston, man. We don’t have tornadoes. We have hurricanes. But I know you need a basement or some such, and there isn’t one here. So I’m wandering around the shop half asleep, not believing that this is actually happening, and looking for a place to hunker down. So I look at the paint spray booth. You know, it seems like a good idea.

It’s kind of sturdy, I guess. And I got to tell you, I’ve been a lot of places. I’ve done a lot of things in this lifetime, and I ain’t afraid of snakes, heights, or redheaded women. But I was genuinely terrified, because I’m just looking up, wondering when this thing’s going to just rip the top of the building off and kill me. You know what I’m saying? Like, literally, because it was that close. It was so close that apparently somebody was driving around giving instructions, and I couldn’t understand them. Now, granted, I was half asleep, but the dude sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher to me.

I couldn’t understand anything, man. No habla espanol, no matter what he was saying. But fortunately, and for whatever reason, the tornado passed me by. And I’m making this video. But sadly, it did not pass by a lot of people. And Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe landed in Poplar Bluff this morning to tour the damage in Butler County. He signed an executive order on Friday declaring a state of emergency, activating the state’s emergency operation plan. The governor says that the storms that we had yesterday had a wide-ranging impact throughout the show-me state. Last night’s storms had a horrific path.

Over 27 counties were affected significantly. And at one time last night, between midnight and 4 a.m., we had 150 fires. We had over 150,000 people out of electricity, multiple tornadoes, fatalities, looting, auto accidents, just you name it, kind of an Armageddon situation for an emergency response. This is the latest video we’re getting on this Saturday morning, courtesy of Chicago and Midwest Storm Chasers. Take a look as you can see someone pointing at a tornado cell. Just tragic news we’re learning of this Saturday. At least three people are dead in Missouri following a widespread and dangerous severe weather outbreak Friday evening after numerous tornadoes were spotted traveling through the state, causing significant damage.

And that’s what you’re seeing on your screen right now is one of those tornadoes that was spotted early this Saturday morning. As I change your shot on the screen, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, they reported three deaths of a man and woman in the Bakersfield area of Ozark County. They now change that to two deaths. They say, quote, severe storms cause significant damage in Rolla, Missouri. Buildings are destroyed. Power outages continue to affect the community. Stay safe and allow force responders and utility workers to do their critical work. They say hashtag Rolla strong, hashtag storm damage.

And you can imagine as we are getting more information in Fox weather now putting this out new photos in from Rolla, Missouri showing the extent of tornado damage goodness. The entire front of this shopping plaza there, you can see windows completely gone and debris just scattered across the parking lot. It further shows what people are going to be waking up to on this Saturday morning and now giving you more video that has been shared with us here on live now from Fox. We know about 140 miles to the east and Butler County.

Another fatality was confirmed to Fox weather by Robbie Myers, the director of the Butler County Emergency Management. And again, as daylight does arrive on this Saturday, state officials anticipate to discover further damage throughout the region. So I’m making this video on Sunday and it’s taken me all day to make this video so far. But here’s the deal. At this point, 20 people have lost their lives and countless people have lost their houses, their property, their vehicles. And insurance has a really funny way of not taking care of these people and my heart goes out to them.

I have a lot of people praying for me and I believe that’s one of the reasons that I made it out of there pretty much unscathed. But here’s the deal. The kid Eric that lived there is one of the guys that called me to warn me even though the tornado already hit his house and he got hammered really, really bad. And I’d love to be able to help everybody, but I can’t. It just isn’t a possible thing to do anymore. My platform is not nearly as large as it used to be.

But here’s the deal. I’m going to set up a GoFundMe for Eric Jewell. This kid has been nothing but a sweetheart and I want to help him any way I possibly can. So I’m going to leave a link below and I’m going to show you the video from, I’m going to show you his Facebook page so you can see the damage to his house for himself. And sadly, he happened to have his little 10 year old son with him at the time. And I can’t imagine how scared this kid must have been.

I mean, look at this. This is his property and he still had the presence of mind to call me, to warn me. And when they called me, I wasn’t, it wasn’t computing what was going on. You know what I’m saying? I took a lot of video footage with my iPhone and for some reason, the audio is all audio book. I was listening to an audio book while I was sleeping. So while I was recording, it didn’t show up. So whatever. But it was brutal and it was the scariest thing I’ve ever gone through hands down ever.

And I’ve been married. Hey, Eric, what year is this truck? Uh, this is a 83. And you guys told me, Matt told me earlier, this is the last year they made the 40 series. Yep, I believe so. So this thing is mint as it was. Yep. There was a storm and a tree fell on it. That’s why it’s here. Tree fell on the hood. But you guys did the body work and fixed it all up and then painted it again. Yep. And now you’re just doing all the really, really slow, tedious stuff, right? Yep, just going back the other way.

It’s a beautiful whip, man. So if this is the last year they made it, does that make it more valuable? I would say so. I’m gonna seriously ask him. I mean, I don’t, I don’t know. It looks brand new. It’s crazy. Yep. Supposed to be one owner. Imagine that. Now, what are the odds of that? I recorded that several days ago and he was repairing a one of 300 last year FJ40 Land Cruiser. If you’re a Toyota guy, you know that it’s a big deal. But the truck had a tree fall on it from a storm.

Do you see the, do you see the irony there? But I wanted you to see that, to see how nice of a guy this kid is. And he doesn’t even know I’m doing this and the money’s going directly to his bank account. I’m simply putting the word out there. It’s going straight to him. He wouldn’t ask. So I’m doing it anyways. It is what it is. I wish I could raise enough money to save everybody, but it just isn’t possible anymore. So we do what we can when we can. At any rate, if you enjoyed this video, hit that like, share, and subscribe, and share this video around because the stuff that you see on the news actually has real consequences on the ground.

And most people just, it all goes down the memory hole the very next day because there’s always another event it seems. At any rate, hit that like, share, and subscribe. Leave a comment below. Links will be pinned in the comment section below. I am out. [tr:trw].

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