Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by dylan604 » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 11:23 AM UTC

Rebelgecko wrote: post #317

dylan604 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yeah, required might have been too strong. It is strongly frowned upon for a station with a news/weather program to not participate in a "The NWS has requested...". Not sure they'd not get their license renewed, but their audience sure wouldn't watch them for much longer. What kind of news station would NOT broadcast this info? Besides, if you're a news/weather station in Tornado Alley, you pride yourself on th…

Some of the news channels where my parents live have experimented with outsourcing and/or prerecording their weather reports. On one channel, the daily weather report talks about yesterday's weather and tomorrow's weather, but skips things like the current day's high temperature because it hasn't happened yet when that segment was recorded. Although I suppose if the anchors are live they can jump in with an emergency…

I hate everything you just said about current local station ownership. Budget cuts to the extreme to get outsourced weather. I don't know where "here" is for your parents, but I'm assuming weather doesn't get severe often there. Reminds me of LA. LA doesn't have weather. It has climate. The local programming there is beyond ridiculous. In my area, local weather people can literally save lives with their broadcasts. Yes, they get updates from NWS, but they are true meteorologists to be able to reach conclusions on their own without needing hand holding from NWS. That's my base line. Anything less than just seems like a waste.

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

#332

Post by johnsimer » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 12:37 PM UTC

Hokusai wrote: post #221

asteroidbelt wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless something changes People will be replaced by robots, this is what will change. It is already happening. McDonalds is canonical example of that.

That is there best argument to fight now for good conditions, the more robots in the future the less leverage to negotiate. On a second note, if robots replace humans. Who is going to buy products? Because humans without jobs do not have money. Why have warehouses if nobody can but anything? That hypothetical future were robots replace workers is way more complicated that many people thinks.

If robots replaced humans there’d be significant deflation and some UBI policy would be enough for people to afford said deflated goods

Maybe. Idk really though. Sure it depends on the good

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

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Post by TomSwirly » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 12:53 PM UTC

Moru wrote: post #198

romwell wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

And because we keep buying from Amazon no matter what.

Speak for yourself. I haven't done business with them in almost a decade. The last several years, since their prices went up, I've been saving money doing so.

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

#334

Post by dghughes » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

dogsgobork wrote: post #284

bob778 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hadn't really thought about it, but that makes a ton of sense. Smoke detectors typically use an alpha-emitter, smoke absorbs alpha particles, so a failure to detect is what triggers the alarm. The cost for a false-negative is much higher than a false-positive, so that's what the detector should default to.

I have a Nest smoke alarm and it was bad for going off due to the vapours from showers, boiling water when cooking.

But to the credit of Nest/Google/Alphabet they replaced it free of charge. It was just an off-the-cuff comment I made on Twitter and Nest said send it back. They sent a new one, a new model, and when it arrived I sent back the older model. The new model is much better essentially zero false positives due to water vapour.

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

#335

Post by bagacrap » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 3:19 PM UTC

jptech wrote: post #295

> It was unclear how many workers were still missing, as Amazon did not have an exact count of people working in the sorting and delivery center at the time the tornadoes hit, Whiteford said. I find this hard to accept. They keep track of workers' productivity by the second, but they don't know how many were working there at that time??

I mean the real question is how many people are in the premises. How can they know how many people stopped in the bathroom after clocking out? They don't have an exact count but I'm sure there's some estimate.

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

#336

Post by sneak » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #85

AlbertCory wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was getting "emergency alerts" for "COVID vaccine available in your area." That may be really important information, but it doesn't rise to the level of an emergency.

My area never did that, any government that used EAS for that should be voted out at the next opportunity

You can't vote out the police in the USA, generally, otherwise people would have done so long ago.

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

#337

Post by Moru » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

TomSwirly wrote: post #333

Moru wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And because we keep buying from Amazon no matter what.

Speak for yourself. I haven't done business with them in almost a decade. The last several years, since their prices went up, I've been saving money doing so.

Well, we is a figure of speech in this case, I haven't bought anything there. I'm very anti-anti unions.

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

#338

Post by johncearls » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #306

axiolite wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I know. I’m familiar with severe weather that produces tornadoes. People hiding in bathrooms or anywhere they could doesn’t sound like there were shelters appropriate for tornados or even a plan in place or if there was one it wasn’t used. It’s inexcusable for people to die on the job like this, especially on a job that doesn’t give you easy access to live information, due to the work environment, or even even the ab…

Fwiw, bathrooms are usually a good place to ride out a tornado. No windows and they are usually in a central location.

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

#339

Post by jptech » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #335

jptech wrote: post #295

> It was unclear how many workers were still missing, as Amazon did not have an exact count of people working in the sorting and delivery center at the time the tornadoes hit, Whiteford said. I find this hard to accept. They keep track of workers' productivity by the second, but they don't know how many were working there at that time??

I mean the real question is how many people are in the premises. How can they know how many people stopped in the bathroom after clocking out? They don't have an exact count but I'm sure there's some estimate.

I don't think anyone can enter the premise without swiping their badge.

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

#340

Post by syshum » Sun, Dec 12, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #336

syshum wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My area never did that, any government that used EAS for that should be voted out at the next opportunity

You can't vote out the police in the USA, generally, otherwise people would have done so long ago.

Highly unlikely that the police issued the EAS about COVID, also even if you can not vote out the police, you can vote out the head of the police (sheriff or mayor) who would have had to approve an EAS about covid

However these types of messages are often sent out by our local dept of Emergency Management, or Health Dept, both of which do have access to EAS just like the police.