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Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

reuters.com

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Re: Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

#201

Post by unpolloloco »

enragedcacti wrote: post #100
JCM9 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn’t support what you are saying. Do you have evidence to support these theories? What happened is terrible and is part of a much broader natural disaster. Trying to turn this into some shallow Amazon shaming is unfortunate.

The facts we have are: Amazon kept a warehouse open and operational, including bringing a new shift in, during a Tornado watch for the area. (this is in the article) edit r.e. this point: other commenters have noted that while the circumstances for a tornado arising are known in advance, the tornado appears quickly enough that realistically the only option if workers are in the building at that point is to move them…

Does anyone close down operations for a tornado watch? Maybe they should, but I've never heard of anyone doing that anywhere...

The bigger issue imho is that these employees don't seem to have been in a tornado shelter during a tornado warning?

Re: Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

#202

Post by benttoothpaste »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #186
baybal2 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Horrific. > A wall that size cannot possibly survive a big wind. > Cannot. A reinforced concrete should've been easily capable of withstanding a hurricane. First thing I see is that roof was not attached to anything reinforcing in the wall, or columns. It seems it solely relied on its weight, which was easily overwhelmed by wind, to keep it in place.

Hurricanes and tornados are two different phenomena, entirely. A Category 5 hurricane generally has wind speeds less than 200 mph. EF5 tornadoes start at 200 mph, and can be well over 300 mph. Could you design a warehouse (note: not a small storm shelter, but a warehouse, which by definition needs to have very large interior open spaces) that would withstand a 300 mph wind? Maybe. The budget would be well beyond the…

To be fair hurricanes and tornadoes are not completely separate phenomena. Hurricanes are know to spawn tornadoes within them and these tornadoes can substantially add to the destruction.

Re: Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

#203

Post by barbazoo »

SECProto wrote: post #114
dylan604 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fall of TV You mean in your daily in-take of media? Local TV stations are required to broadcast weather. It's actually part of their licensing. So if you're not in the habit of turning on the local station because of crappy programming (like me), then you should at least be willing to find a local station during weather. Even if regular programming is on, they will break in when requested by the NWS. Local radio…

> So if you're not in the habit of turning on the local station because of crappy programming (like me), then you should at least be willing to find a local station during weather. How would I even go about doing that? The only display devices I have are monitors. Even for radio, I would have to go to my car to listen.

Get a radio and batteries. It's part of being prepared for an emergency.

Re: Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

#204

Post by authed »

pacerwpg wrote: post #176
bmitc wrote: post #161

I don’t understand a few things, as they aren’t covered in the article, that I saw. Were there no warnings for the severe weather storm that would have prevented people coming in to work or allowed them to leave work early? When I was working in the office, we were usually forced (literally security swept the building) to leave when severe winter weather was coming in a few times. Why doesn’t Amazon, in the middle of…

Those things all sound like they might decrease profits.

6 deaths will reduce profits and something else.

Re: Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

#205

Post by camhart »

romwell wrote: post #185
bmitc wrote: post #161

I don’t understand a few things, as they aren’t covered in the article, that I saw. Were there no warnings for the severe weather storm that would have prevented people coming in to work or allowed them to leave work early? When I was working in the office, we were usually forced (literally security swept the building) to leave when severe winter weather was coming in a few times. Why doesn’t Amazon, in the middle of…

>Were there no warnings for the severe weather storm that would have prevented people coming in to work or allowed them to leave work early? There were warnings. Warnings that skipping work would get one fired[1]. And since the warehouse was not closed that day, the warning was: clock in on time, or else, weather be damned. >When I was working in the office... Well there's a difference between how office employees ar…

Your article is over a month old...

Re: Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

#206

Post by bob778 »

mjevans wrote: post #110
rossnordby wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One day, fully alert and sober at something like 5 PM with no excuses, during a thunderstorm, I heard tornado sirens go off. I thought to myself, "sheesh they are only supposed to run tests at noon once a month, and not during sto- oh"

That is also my response to fire alarms so sensitive that they'll start to chirp when I can't even recognize the smell of a neighbor 50+ ft away smoking outside. It'd be really nice if no one smoked and if these alarms reserved the shrill noises for real emergencies and user initiated tests only.

FYI, fire alarms are designed to become more sensitive as they age/die so if yours is picking up false positives, it’s a good indicator you need to replace it. That, or it really is poor ventilation.

Re: Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

#207

Post by jagged-chisel »

cesarb wrote: post #187
w0mbat wrote: post #57

Mods - this truncated headline makes no sense, which is awful with such a serious story. It should be rephrased to: "6 Amazon workers killed after tornadoes destroy warehouse near St. Louis".

For future reference, the current headline is "Six Amazon workers killed after tornadoes reduce warehouse near St. Louis", which makes one wonder whether it was a tornado or some sort of shrink ray.

"Reduced to rubble" is familiar enough to me to get the gist. I did think it an odd choice, but had no problem understanding.

I mean, I'm not aware of any current shrink ray technology...

Re: Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

#208

Post by axiolite »

bmitc wrote: post #161

I don’t understand a few things, as they aren’t covered in the article, that I saw. Were there no warnings for the severe weather storm that would have prevented people coming in to work or allowed them to leave work early? When I was working in the office, we were usually forced (literally security swept the building) to leave when severe winter weather was coming in a few times. Why doesn’t Amazon, in the middle of…

Tornadoes aren't hurricanes... There aren't hours and days of advanced notice. Only a few minutes. You can't shut down for every thunder storm on the astronomical chance it'll turn into a tornado and head in your direction.

The article did somewhat address your questions:

"Amazon said all employees were normally notified and directed to move to a designated, marked shelter-in-place location when a site was made aware of a tornado warning in the area.

Emergency response training is provided to new employees and reinforced throughout the year, the company said."

I hope they find out why their systems were inadequate and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Re: Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

#209

Post by tzs »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #3

I slept through three tornado sirens last night. It was pretty wild. The first one, I thought it was a test. (We have tests every month on the 1st.) But it wasn't until a few minutes in that I realized it was for real. Then apparently I just... went to sleep? That wasn't the smartest decision I've ever made. It went off a couple more times. One strange thing was the realization that I had no idea where to turn for in…

As far as I know we don't have tornado sirens here (Western Washington across Puget Sound from Seattle), but we got a tornado warning here a month ago and officials issued some kind of alert by smart phone.

It was amazingly loud on my iPhone. I don't think I've ever been so tired that I would have been able to sleep through it if it had happened when I was asleep.

Tornadoes are rare here--before that one the last had been in 2018, and the last before that was 1991, and I don't think there are any on record before that in this county.

I Googled for something like "active tornado warnings" and found this site: https://www.tornadohq.com/

The warning for my area was on the list on the front page, had a link to show the full alert from the National Weather Service, and had a link to show a map of the boundary of the area covered by the warning.

I had no plan for what to do. There is a place in my house where I can stand and have walls or closed doors between me and all windows to provide some shelter from flying debris, so that was one idea. The other idea was to hop in my car and drive to a place nearby that is up on top of a hill and has roads in perpendicular directions and good visibility. From there the hope would be to be able to see if it was coming my way, and then flee by whichever road is most perpendicular to the direction it was moving.

Re: Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

#210

Post by fraXis »

w0mbat wrote: post #57

Mods - this truncated headline makes no sense, which is awful with such a serious story. It should be rephrased to: "6 Amazon workers killed after tornadoes destroy warehouse near St. Louis".

When is the character limit on HN going to be increased so we can create longer subjects/headlines?
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