Forensic analysis of the scene on Buenaventura concluded that the tornado’s wind speed was somewhere between 140 and 165 miles per hour, and that “peak gas temperatures likely exceeded 2,700°F”—the melting point of steel. In other words, Bustillos had endured the equivalent of an EF-3 tornado, combined with a blast furnace. He and the dozer operator had been inside the same thing that the Australian Tom Bates had filmed from the Kambah Park rugby pitch in Canberra.
