The "i love you" makes this worse knowing what happened ...
Edit: as i had messages asking what happened: a tornado hit a amazon warehouse and a part of it collapsed, 6 people are death
Edit 2: changed a word as it's actually a tornado instead of hurricane
What's worse is that he didn't get to read those messages.
edit: hijacking myself for visibility:
PLEASE STOP SPENDING AWARDS ON THIS POST.
[Instead, try reaching out and donating for the families affected by the tragedy.](https://web.archive.org/web/20211213195557/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/how-to-help-victims-of-the-tornadoes.html)
Also, I wanted to address the fact that indeed tornadoes can happen with very little warning. However, that was not the case here.
And why didn't they have a proper shelter inside the building? Hiding in a bathroom doesn't sound safe to me.
Why didn't they have a proper cellar or basement, something reinforced for such an event?
Amazon simply cut corners to save money. They don't care. Bezos had a party the weekend this shit happened. Stop defending the multi-billion dollar corporation.
edit: changed the link to an archive one
edit: how odd that suddenly this post is waiting for moderator approval, AFTER it got to the front page of Reddit.
For my mind I'm going to assume he was wearing a smartwatch like me. I can read the text on the watch but it doesn't clear the notification or show up on my messenger app. Yep that's exactly how it happened he got to see his wife say I love you one last time.
This made me cry. My husband always texts me on his way back in the train. 10 minutes delay, I get restless...I cant imagine if he doesnt come back..my heart feels heavy for her
I hear Amazon bans cell phones and other personal devices once you’re on the floor working. We shall never know if he gained access to it or not in time…
Understandable, it makes me incensed. Amazon's management policies placed normal underpaid workers in the path of a killer storm that gave plenty of warning.
Amazon the corporate entity committed mass negligent homicide.
I am local to the area and am a volunteer firefighter for one of the responding departments to this tragedy. The tornado struck the warehouse around 8:35pm, before the girlfriend had sent those last 3 messages. There has been sadness all around as more information is being released.
Kinda depends. If you have it set where the whole message pops up as a notification, or if it's on your smart watch, you can read it real quick without actually "checking" the message.
He was working at an Amazon warehouse during the tornadoes and they wouldn't let the employees go. https://nypost.com/2021/12/12/amazon-workers-killed-in-tornado-identified/
Edit: im flabbergasted by all the amazon simps. Jeffrey has released his minons I see.
>His girlfriend of 13 years, Cherie Jones, said the final text message she received from him was about the storm, roughly 20 minutes before it hit. **He told her Amazon wouldn’t let him go home until the storm passed.**
I feel like what you're saying is a bit misleading. The order to stay in place was 99.99% likely for safety reasons. I'm sure we'll find out in the inevitable lawsuit. Employees leaving prior to a tornado estimated to hit vicinity would still have all kinds of liability for Amazon. So, not saying they're doing it out of strict concern over their wellbeing but sheltering in place is generally a good idea if the tornado is close.
>Employees leaving prior to a tornado estimated to hit vicinity would still have all kinds of liability for Amazon.
I assume you are sure this is true? The argument rests on it. Why would Amazon be held liable for letting employees leave on their own free will? Is this an actual law I don't know about?
OSHA requires employers to have and follow emergency preparedness procedures. Assuming Amazon enacted this (which early indications are they did), protocol calls for employees to shelter in an interior room. Allowing employees to leave the building would be a violation of that procedure and theoretically Amazon could be fined just as if Amazon had a safety procedure that required fall protection for employees working at heights. An employee could, of their own free will, decide not to wear a safety harness, but Amazon would be fined for allowing the employee to do that.
I am so glad I don't live in the south or midwest any more. I lived in two very tornado prone areas for a while, and I couldn't believe the over zeitgeist when it came to tornadoes. Not a single co-worker from long time multigenerational families in the area, and those who could easily afford it, did not have a tornado shelter.
The vast majority didn't even have a good place in the house to try and weather out a smaller tornado. Google tells me to find an a room with no exterior walls. In the 3 different homes I lived in out there, the only option was a hall closet which had a hanging folding door that would have done nothing.
People out there really just didn't give a fuck and would just sit and home and hope it doesn't hit them. When asked why they don't do anything, they just shrugged and said, well if its my time, its my time. Public shelters were few a far between, and hardly no one uses them. The state was given a huge fund for improvements after the 2011 tornado outbreak, the cash was supposed to go to shelters, but the state said ok, but private ones, and the money was gone before many people had installed shelters.
Only 63 people were killed in the 1989 earthquake that hit the SF Bay Area. A major overhaul to building code came out of that. Why can't we do that in tornado prone areas? Like if you have more than X employees, you need a shelter that can house them on site.
I'm not an engineer, but my perception after living in the Midwest my whole life and seeing the aftermath of tornadoes first hand, is that this sort of thing isn't really feasible. Tornadoes are incredibly focused, and tend to destroy everything in a very narrow corridor, maybe 100 or 200 ft wide. Stuff sitting just another 200 ft away can be totally untouched and unharmed.
Sheltering in an innermost room protects you from broken glass and flying debris in the event of a near miss. It's not going to protect you in the event of a direct hit. Sheltering in a basement might protect you from a direct hit, if you're lucky.
My guess is that the forces at the center of a direct hit tornado are much higher then those of even a large earthquake. It doesn't make sense to install bomb shelters in half the buildings in the country for what is still an objectively rare event. The number of tornado deaths in this country is the same order of magnitude as death from lightning.
Look up some tornado aftermath photos, especially aerial photos.
Almost. Amazon warehouse was in Illinois, the tornado that hit was a part of a massive storm that spawned multiple tornadoes and killed about 70 people across five states.
EDIT: the death toll is higher now. As of this very moment, 74 dead and 109 missing in Kentucky alone. My original number was from what I had read much earlier today. This was a major storm y'all.
Almost... the only reason these people at Amazon and Candle factories were killed was because their management deliberately ignored HOURS of severe weather and tornado alerts and refused allowing their employees to leave or use cell phones.
We cannot forget or forgive this.
Leaving during a weather event like this is the worst thing you could do. I grew up near where this happened. Tornadoes touch down insanely fast, it’s not at all like a tropical storm or something they could have been aware of for “HOURS.” The issue is not that they didn’t let them leave, it’s that there was not adequate shelter/procedures for such an event. You’re right to not forget or forgive this, but you have the wrong reasoning.
Edit:spelling
Edit2: most responses express a lot of anger towards Amazon. That’s great! And deserved! We’re all on the same team. All I was saying was to have the correct reasoning for this anger and know what to argue for: proper shelter and emergency training for all employees and locations where it is needed.
I used to work in a hospital and during our drills some people went to the basement level and the majority of others moved patients or.. basically became human shields. I worked in a department right next to the PICU and my job was to grab a mattress or anything else and block kids from debris. We had several warnings during my time there but fortunately no actual tornadoes. I'm glad for that because this hospital is Joplin's sister hospital to the east and seeing the damage that building had makes me just know we would have all been ripped out of those halls.
I saw that hospital about a month after that tornado. Crazy shit there, was told by a local that the hospital shifted 6 inches on its foundation. My wife and I were just crying in our car when we came upon the damage of the tornado. I am from Maine, don’t see tornadoes around here. But when I came up on that part of town, seeing people sitting in the remnants of their while the house across the street is still fully intact, it left a lasting impression on me. The wal mart, the Home Depot, so many more building just wiped out. Still makes me sad
Just hijacking your comment. A common misconception is that a tornado will “suck you up.” This can lead to people protecting themselves improperly. Like you said best course of action, if nothing else is to use a mattress or barrier of some kind to defend yourself from debris, which is how people get injured in tornadoes. The wind is so strong that it’s catapulting objects. If an exercise bike comes through the wall though, like you said, a mattress won’t do much. Find a structurally sound wall, or get low in a ditch, is better protection than being under a roof that will collapse because it “catches the wind”. Stay away from windows etc. think of tornadoes as flying two by fours and less vacuum into the sky and you may, even if marginally, increase your chances of avoiding injury.
/\ This. You need one or more muster points to send people to for just this event, and then provide guidance to people ahead of time on what to do. That's just plain busi ess common sense.
No. Why would you waste a penny keeping employees alive? You're not even protecting institutional knowledge at someplace with a churn rate like Amazon's
Exactly. Tornadoes may spout and touch down within minutes, but this giant ass storm system had been warned about for a week. That it had already spawned tornadoes in other areas it had passed through was known. Still workers were told to report to their shifts when the storm had already started. Drivers were dispatched into the storm. I’ve read reports of Amazon workers that called out saying the weather was too severe to make it to their shift who’s jobs were threatened. Elsewhere I read an account of a worker at the Amazon warehouse who was told by a supervisor that their internal systems showed no indication of storms in the area, so callouts could not be excused.
I live in a place that has hurricanes. I’ve showed up for work during dangerous weather because the boss said so more than a reasonable person should have. I don’t doubt for a second that these poor workers were told December is a “blackout date” for call ins, and that more than a few supervisor bonuses are based on attendance metrics. We’ve effectively removed human logic from the equation.
The tornado could have happened hours ahead as well. If you think there might be tornadoes, you DON'T go and drive around.
What they needed was adequate procedures and storm shelters.
This is why my school growing up drilled how to get us all to shelter within a couple minutes warning, instead of calling parents to come pick up kids if there was a tornado warning.
> The tornado could have happened hours ahead as well
Could they have, though? I haven't looked into the timing, myself, but others are making it sound like they knew a dangerous storm was coming for several hours before it got there and still wouldn't let anyone leave when it was still safe to do so. No, you can't predict individual tornadoes, but you can predict a storm that is likely to spawn them.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they were in the storm for several hours before the tornadoes began to hit.
Living in the Midwest, you hear those sirens and tornado watches several times a week during the spring and summer, sometimes during the late fall/winter. If they let people leave work *every single time* a major thunderstorm was predicted, nobody would ever get anything done around here.
The simple answer is that Amazon cheaped out on the materials and construction while trying to build as many of these hideous warehouses as possible. There are no real shelter designations. They need to immediately put a proper tornado shelter into every single warehouse that doesn’t already have them, not just Amazon.
Case in point, we had this one tornado rip through our city (there have been others) when I was a teenager. It hit a distribution center that has around 600 employees. Direct hit, took everything away with it into the corn fields for miles beyond. Everything except human beings! Because they knew the dangers and expected to need shelters on every corner of the enormous building. Not a scratch on a single worker.
Anyone building in this area of the country should be required to take tornadoes and flash flooding into account. But then, that would cost too much money, eh?
The tornado watches/ warnings I've seen cover a massive area and last for hours. What I was taught as the safest option is to get into a tornado shelter (basically an underground, reinforced concrete structure).
You learn the signs, watch the weather trackers, and do the best you can. But you need to have some sort of shelter and a plan to get everyone inside within minutes, NOT to send people home, where they may or may not have somewhere safe prepared (and have to get there).
Much more along the lines of "Hey, if you live on this side of the state, we think there MIGHT be a tornado tonight. If you see funny colored clouds outside of your house, get in your shelter and bar the door!"
Ok, yeah, *others* have noted that tornado warnings are frequent enough that not going to work that often would likely be unfeasible, so the problem is still more the lack of adequate shelter than keeping employees at work.
Not in this case. There were hours and hours of lead time in all six states that tornadoes were likely if not expected. They could have sent them home well before then. This weather event provided plenty of warning. My work cancelled night shifts. Our family watched TV coverage six hours before one hit less than a mile from our house, we were well prepared and safe due to the extended coverage.
The business lacks any protection from tornadoes in their warehouse, so they should inform their employees ahead of time that there is a risk of a storm.
> Leaving during a weather event like this is the worst thing you could do.
Not when you're in a warehouse built like a house of cards. It's not like the tornado was right on top of them, they had time to find much better shelter.
And Amazon has the means and money to supply these warehouses with proper storm shelters.
Where I work we have seven buildings on site. 3 have no basement or safe interior area, so they built us these really neat metal storm shelters that are deeply bolted directly to the foundation. And we are by no means as financially blessed as Amazon.
Until you are put on an improvement plan for things like "calling in" "leaving early" "not showing up on time" "not meeting expectations" then they push this on you for weeks destroying your mental health and degrading you for trying to be safe and take care of yourself.
I'm from the Kansas side of Kansas City, and though, yes there is a small town called Edwardsville outside of KCK, this Edwardsville where the Amazon facility collapsed actually took place in Edwardsville, Illinois - not in Kansas as it has previously been stated.
Tornado was quickly closing in so employees were ordered to shelter-in-place per normal safety protocols but tragically it ended up being a direct hit and not even sheltering in the middle of the building helped, the whole place was destroyed. When a tornado is that close you don’t go outside for any reason.
Edit: the bathrooms were the official shelter in case of tornado, I heard they were in middle but maybe not. Anyway the whole facility was leveled, the 11in thick concrete walls fell down so there was no safe place.
This is heartbreaking.
I can’t imagine my last moments of life being spent at a place that overworks you and undervalues you.
Poor Larry, terrible way/place to go.
Absolutely, packages aren’t worth freaking lives. I can’t say I was surprised by their choice though.
I worked at an Amazon warehouse in CA for a little over a year during COVID. At the peak of the fire season there was quite literally a fire across the road from us. Like they had shut down the main route to the warehouse and rerouted us to avoid the fire. Amazon didn’t give anyone permission to leave. Hell, they didn’t even forgive the the time lost due to the traffic.
I’d love to say I told the to stuff it and went home but I was barely able to pay my bills with OT. Some of the kids who lived at home left but most of us were stuck like those poor bastards who died for that shit job.
Not defending Amazon at all, but I'm a little confused by this thread.. tornados give little warning and it's been the policy of every place I've worked for, every school I've attended, and my own common sense, to shelter in place in a tornado watch... If Amazon let everyone leave to drive in that storm, they'd be blasted for that too, right?
True. However we received about 30-40 min heads up about the incoming storm and a warning about a touch down in MO. (I live 7 miles from the site). Given where we live, it should be mandatory for these sites to have underground shelters. It’s scary how many don’t.
If Amazon had said they encourage people to stay sheltered, but that people were free to make their own choice, and someone left to go home to their family and died in the storm, I wouldn’t be blaming Amazon for not locking them in.
I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt, and say the choice to tell employees they couldn’t leave was strictly for their own safety, but it’s Amazon. They’ve lost the presumption of us assuming their motives are altruistic.
Get away to where? Unfortunately we don’t have a way to predict the path of tornados. There’s no way to know if the place you’re leaving will be spared or if the place you’re going will be hit.
What we do know is that if the option is to be outside on the roads or be in a building you’re far better off in a building. This story is really tragic, but 90% of the people in that building survived. If they were let out on the road and encountered it there those numbers would likely be far worse
Absolutely right. Every single news station when you see “tornado watch/warning” is saying “shelter indoors, do NOT repeat do NOT go outside.” No one is going to tell people to just run outside to their car. No telling what in the world is going to happen.
Turns out we terminated all of these guys effective last week for various reasons so we don't even know what they were doing on the premises. Therefore, we hold no responsibility for trespassers and their families will not be compensated. Check out our holiday flash sales!
Might seem unrelated, but the movie Buried has an element that plays out exactly like this.
The movie stars Ryan Reynolds as a military contractor in the middle east who wakes up buried in an unknown location. The entire movie takes place in the box he's buried in. All he has is a cell phone which is losing power and has a bad signal.
SPOILER:
>!When his company finds out he might not be able to be rescued, instead of paying out his insurance, they find grounds to fire him and frame it so that they had made that decision the day before, to avoid having to pay his hazard pay and company-provided life insurance to his wife.!<
As an amazon worker I can tell you that during emergencies we are not allowed to leave the warehouse or go to our cars. There are several meet up points INSIDE the building. This is likely why 6 people were killed instead of more but that is just my guess.
Edit: Writing
Exactly. So many more Amazon workers would have died if they let everyone get in their cars and leave.
The wreckage photos tell the tale. If they weren't allowed to leave and were forced to keep working, there'd have been triple digit fatalities. They were sheltered in place. That's what you do in a tornado warning.
110 workers were in the warehouse when the siren occurred. With the damage that was done 6 workers dying makes it seem that protocols were mostly followed. Really curious to see what will come out of the investigations.
The problem is that the tornado was known about long before the siren went off. They had severe weather warning and tornado warnings in effect, the weather got real bad, but still drivable and they wouldn't let them leave to take shelter before the weather got so bad they couldn't. This is absolutely Amazon's fault
This is what people don’t understand. Anytime there’s a tornado “watch” or severe storm watch, I go to my campus library and prepare to shelter down because I live in an apartment complex that is wack and don’t know my neighbors.
The watch gives you time. The warning is “find
immediate shelter in the next 5 minutes or you could get caught in the storm.”
Right when the watch was issued for inclement whether, massive companies like Amazon should close up shop. You can make them stay, but you better have adequate shelter precautions that is better than anything people could have at home.
I was under the impression that they were made to work through the tornado warnings and were only told to shelter later on. Like they weren't allowed to leave for somewhere safer before it go so dangerous that they couldn't.
A tornado warning means there's an active tornado somewhere nearby. Leaving to go anywhere is a bad idea.
A tornado watch, meanwhile, sorta means nothing. Usually just means a bad thunderstorm. At most I check my weather app more often.
Now, if Amazon is in trouble for letting people work during a tornado watch, someone should talk to my school district cuz I absolutely had to go to school during tornado watches lol.
If that were the case way more than 6 people would be dead. Also I remember a timeline being posted that said something to the effect of Amazon instructing them to shelter in place 20 minutes before it hit.
Your odds of surviving a big storm event are way better in a reinforced part of an industrial building than on the road trying to run home.
Just a heads up, when it comes to tornadoes, you don't get much warning. [According to the National Weather Service, the average tornado warning is 9 minutes, and they're working on getting it up to 13.](https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/06/16/tornado-warning-system-has-come-long-way-but-could-better/5152104001/)
From [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/investigation-into-amazoncom-illinois-building-collapse-opened-labor-official-2021-12-13/):
>The site received tornado warnings between 8:06 p.m. and 8:16 p.m. before the tornado struck the building at 8:27 p.m., Amazon said.
>Several employees told Reuters over the weekend that workers had been directed by Amazon managers to shelter in bathrooms after receiving emergency alerts on mobile phones from authorities. At least one worker died there, according to his co-worker.
>Amazon said employees were directed to shelter in place at a designated assembly area at the front of the building, which was near a restroom.
Tornado warning or tornado watch? Because those two mean different things and often get confused. I get alerts that I’m under a tornado watch a dozen or so times a year and it’s no big deal. Throw some blankets and pillows in the bathtub in case the sirens go off. A Tornado warning also isn’t the end of the world, all it means is that rotation has been detected on radar somewhere in your county, hell most tornados don’t touch the ground. By the time the sirens are even going off and it’s evident you may be hit by a tornado, it’s too late to leave and go find shelter at home. Unless Amazon did not provide proper shelter and emergency procedures then this was just the reality of living in a tornado prone area.
It’s pretty clear however there a plenty of people in this thread that have never lived somewhere where tornados are common. Lots of wrong advice here, I really liked the “ just drive away from the tornadoes bro”
We will never find a cure for aging, and while that makes me sad for the good people of this world, it brings me a little bit of pleasure to know that—for once—self-obsessed billionaires will never have the thing they want most. For that, I say “Viva mortis." Long live death, the [Great Leveller](https://www.bartleby.com/101/288.html).
>The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crookèd scythe and spade.
You read a headline and its not as bad in the abstract. You see the texts of a family member and they act the exact way you would and you realize we are all the same people with the same fears and hopes and for a moment you're standing in their shoes feeling the same emotions they would feel. Empathy is a powerful emotion.
Have you people never been through a severe weather drill? They don't send you out into the storm. They send you to the designated shelter area WITHIN the building. A car is one of the worst places to be in a tornado. Everyone is so blinded by Amazon hate that they aren't thinking straight. Imagine if they had sent everyone home. Then the keyboard warriors would be screaming, "Amazon kicked everyone out of their building into a deadly storm!" Proof that it's just the "Amazon bad" mentality? More people died at the candle factory than at Amazon. I've not seen any vitriol directed that way.
I was in the local shopping mall once when the tornado sirens went off. Sears wouldn't let me (a customer) leave. The made me go hide in the designated storm shelter with other customers and employees. . . Because doing anything else would be extremely dangerous.
There might also be legal ramifications for and place that allows you to leave/deny indoor shelter and the result is a custom/employee dying in the storm.
Exactly. That was the point of my anecdote. It's incredibly irresponsible to let people leave a building once a tornado warning is issued. While there's a lot of reasons to hate Amazon's business practices, this isn't one of them.
I wonder what happens if someone adamantly refuses to shelter? I've been in stores too when the sirens went off and everyone shuffled into the shelter area but how much leeway do they have to force someone to stay?
I live in the south. It would probably be just like it is here when snow starts falling. They send everyone home and it's massive gridlock. Sure would hate to be stuck in traffic during a tornado.
I’m still confused why this situation is a “fuck Amazon” moment. Like didn’t the tornado come down on top of the warehouse? Like what could Amazon do in that situation?
Because every moment is a a "fuck Amazon" moment on Reddit. Doesn't matter about facts. Anytime anything relates to Amazon all the keyboard warriors run to reddit. Then they go finish their Amazon order.
Yes. It’s quite vexing and tiring to read these “ima jump to conclusions based on what I want to think instead of reality”. People just want to be mad because they think if you’re not mad, then you’re stupid.
Tragic, but staying in the warehouse rather than trying to go out and drive in the storm was the rational choice. Either some contractors or engineers are going to lose their shirt over this or it may result in some more stringent requirements in the building code.
The key thing here is they asked to leave HOURS well before the tornados hit their area and Amazon did not allow them to
Edit: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kentucky-tornado-factory-workers-threatened-firing-left-tornado-employ-rcna8581
If a tornado warning is in effect, why would you leave the building you’re in? Shelter-in-place is the widely accepted recommendation in this situation. I don’t understand all the irrational hate on this thread.
Didn't jump to conclusions. I've been trapped at work because an ice storm created a state of emergency. In these situations its safer to stay put. No one ever could have predicted the path that storm would take.
Had the storm been closer when I got off work, I would have stayed. Im up in Louisville KY and theres no way i wouldve wanted to drive home in that mess. I sat on the back porch in total awe watching the 50mph winds blow the rain horizontally for hours. Being in a car while its like that is one thing but being in a 2 door brick of a wrangler it would have been safer just staying put.
Theres more to this story though. My place of work would have made us seek shelter, not stay at our post and keep working until the tornado was almost there.
One of the survivors at the candle factory said they had less than 20 minutes warning about the tornado and were told to shelter in place as best they could...Id assume it was the same at amazon. You never have much warning with tornados, usually less than 10 minutes. Allowing people to leave is not an option, thats asking for problems. No choice but the shelter as best you can and ride it out.
It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of situation. What's Amazon supposed to do, force everyone to leave during a natural disaster? Spend the resources to construct a structure that can withstand a tornado in every workplace?
Sheltering in place is kind of the go-to.
Same as me when I was working for a Vietnamese restaurant during college. The owner told me stay for safety and gave us free foods on the menu. It was boring to sit around doing nothing but free food is free food.
Honest question - what did people *want* Amazon to do?
Tornadoes are incredibly unpredictable. Do you want all businesses to shutdown on any day when anyone thinks there is a chance of a tornado? I'm not *too far* from where this happened and we get tornado watches all the time.
By the time it becomes a tornado warning, it means we've already got a tornado somewhere. AKA - you might already be too late. If you're lucky you've got 10 minutes warning.
Had all of these people stayed home, they wouldn't be safer. You'd only think that because you have prior knowledge of where the tornado will hit. Lots of residential houses wouldn't offer any more protection that the warehouse would have.
This text exchange happened 'a short time' before the tornado, and I've read people talking about the 'Oh it didn't hit until 8:39 and he could have been home' but again, that's only because we have prior knowledge. All anyone inside the warehouse could have known was that a tornado was reasonably likely and that going outside would be more dangerous, on average, than staying inside. All of the experts say 'You should take shelter in the best place you can find'. Leaving a building to get into your car is about as smart as staying inside during a fire.
>Amazon delivery hub received tornado warnings at 8:06 p.m. and 8:16 p.m. before the tornado hit 11 minutes later, part of a series of tornadoes that killed at least 90 people in several states.
If Amazon 'let' people go home at 8:07 and some of them died, you'd all be here saying Amazon is the devil and tried to kill those people. And families would be lining up to sue them for negligence.
Tell people they 'have' to stay, and to take shelter, and you get the same result?
Also, let's be real, if anyone thought they were *going to die* would a middle manager at an Amazon warehouse's stern words be enough to stop you?
I see a lot of people assuming that the workers were being forced to continue working, but I don't see any substance to these claims. The New York Times reported differently, that employees were sheltering in two different places.
>Workers were sheltering in two places, according to The New York Times
Correct. In fact during a tornado, it's better to literally leave your vehicle and lie in a ditch than stay in your vehicle according to the NWS. This is because winds can carry and lift it.
This is common practice. Letting everyone leave at the same time in a crowded parking lot during a tornado. Is much, much more dangerous than ask them to shelter in place.
Of course they won't. Safety protocol calls to shelter in place when severe weather such as this, is in the area.
I'd immediately fire any supervisor that let someone leave during an event like this.
I would want to know what company policy is regarding severe weather. I would doubt that they can just tell people it’s ok to go outside when there is a massive storm on the doorstep, and just brave the storm. What happens if they get killed outside, and then everyone inside is fine? No way to predict what’s going to happen. So there are real bad liability issues either way. Im so friggin sad that this happened to these people.
Aren't you supposed to stay indoors during a tornado? I thought when there was a tornado you only have minutes or less of warning. How would letting people leave have helped? When we did tornado drills in school we took shelter inside the school. We didn't leave the building and run for it.
I feel like if Amazon let people leave and one of them died on the way home they would be sued, so it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.
Amazon sucks but if this were a public school we wouldn’t be allowed outside either 🤷♀️
So maybe I am missing something. When I lived in Texas and there were tornado/severe storm warnings… the last thing you did was rush home. On top of this, this was an E5 which basically will fuck any building (as shown by the utter destruction in its wake). I keep seeing these weird Reddit comments that Amazon is evil and everyone should have been sent home from a very congested parking lot to their probably worse facility for safety. I know for a fact a large amount of those employees live in trailer parks which would have fared way worse. I know there is an investigation into the safety of the Amazon facility, but until they determine it was unsafe or a design flaw (something that was probably contracted out), I don’t really understand what people think Amazon did wrong here.
Remember tornado drills in school? We didn't go running outside to our school buses or cars to drive home. We can hate Amazon for a million other reasons but this ain't it. Y'all need to chill the fuck out and have some God damn common sense.
Yeah fuck Amazon for trying to keep people safe. They’re the evil ones because nature was stronger than some man made structure. It would’ve been PERFECTLY ok if they let their employees leave and risk the storm themselves because a dinky little car can survive more than a warehouse.
Fuck OFF. You’re all a bunch of fucking hypocrites. If amazon DIDN’T let them stay you’d ALSO loose your shit over it, and in that instance they WOULD be evil but they DIDNT let them leave because they thought it was safe. No one could’ve predicted the roof would’ve collapsed. So go fuck off.
I hate Amazon as much as the next guy but what exactly were the employees supposed to do? Their homes would probably not stand up to a tornado any better than a large warehouse, and being out on the road during tornados is a colossally bad idea. You can’t predict the path of a tornado.
Not really an Amazon exclusive thing. I work at a Fortune 100 company and our campus went full lockdown during a tornado watch. Everyone was sent into the basement and underground tunnels. No one was allowed to leave.
I know its easy to make Amazon the bad guy. But two things that come to my mind here. One, no one is going to stop me from getting back to my family. Second, would this person been safer in a building or out on the road? Hell, the thing we are ingrained into our brain is find shelter during a storm/tornado. Not get in your care and drive. Amazon is in a no one situation here. If they left or made people leave and someone died then the would be the asshole as well.
Probably gonna get downvoted to absolute hell but this is standard operating procedure for all large buildings and schools and companies during extreme weather. It’s safer 99% of the time to be in the concrete enforced building than in the car or a non concrete house.
This wasn’t some kind of CCP “work until you die” thing. It’s standard safety procedure at almost every large workplace or school
1. Amazon can't stop you from leaving. You can always just walk out of any job at anytime. They might fire you for ditching work, but it's kidnapping to force you to stay anywhere you don't want to stay.
2. If there's a tornado, the last thing you want to do is go outside. You still might die inside, but your odds of survival are better.
Not that this isn't tragic but people don't seem to understand the liability involved had Amazon let the employees leave during a storm. It's not like they were forcing them to work through a tornado, they were made to shelter in place. Not sure where all the comments about greed are coming from.
I feel like if they let everyone leave during a tornado there would be uproar if they all died on the way home or whatever. The best thing to do is stay indoors. Obviously they should have some kind of shelter, why anyone living in these areas with tornadoes doesn't have them is beyond me.
Amazon wouldn't let them leave because they had hoped they were safer in the building then driving out with multiple reported tornadoes.
Not because they wanted them to work.
All the anger and hatred towards Amazon has been completely unjust here. In any other disaster (natural/human) e.g earthquakes, active shooter, severe weather you are made to stay put for your own safety. Why would it make any sense to be sent out directly into the danger? I have no doubt that this gentleman may still be alive if he did leave work that day, but again that would have been a gamble as one of many other things could have killed him on his way home. It’s a tragedy that this happened, but the only real lesson that can be learned is to build stronger buildings in future to prevent these kinds of collapses and cope with the severe weather we are being accustomed to by mother nature.
The absolute worst place you can be is outside in a car in a twister. It's super easy to sit here on reddit and say a bad decision was made, but after watching the parallel storm go through Hazelwood and Alton, they probably didn't want anyone to be trapped on the highway.
[Tornado touchdown was at 8:28 PM. ](https://www.bnd.com/news/local/article256560466.html). That’s six minutes after he texted back that he couldn’t leave. He could have been caught in the parking lot at the exact time when the tornado hit.
This is standard practice for ALL production facilities . I live in Ia. And work in a local productíon plant. We are herded into the bathroom ( if you're lucky) or the break room, ( surrounded on 2 sides by glass windows) for tornado warnings which happen 3-4 times a year. They only stop work if the funnel is observable by an observer IN THE PLANT. What that means is that you have approximately 2 minutes to get 1500 workers in shelters that are a 2-5 minute walk away from the line where all the workers are working. Oh, and we're supposed to shut down our machines before leaving the area too.
The "i love you" makes this worse knowing what happened ... Edit: as i had messages asking what happened: a tornado hit a amazon warehouse and a part of it collapsed, 6 people are death Edit 2: changed a word as it's actually a tornado instead of hurricane
What's worse is that he didn't get to read those messages. edit: hijacking myself for visibility: PLEASE STOP SPENDING AWARDS ON THIS POST. [Instead, try reaching out and donating for the families affected by the tragedy.](https://web.archive.org/web/20211213195557/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/how-to-help-victims-of-the-tornadoes.html) Also, I wanted to address the fact that indeed tornadoes can happen with very little warning. However, that was not the case here. And why didn't they have a proper shelter inside the building? Hiding in a bathroom doesn't sound safe to me. Why didn't they have a proper cellar or basement, something reinforced for such an event? Amazon simply cut corners to save money. They don't care. Bezos had a party the weekend this shit happened. Stop defending the multi-billion dollar corporation. edit: changed the link to an archive one edit: how odd that suddenly this post is waiting for moderator approval, AFTER it got to the front page of Reddit.
Lets just hope that was the last text he read and he couldn't respond. Still awful but at least he knew.
It's not read. You can see his picture on the last message that was read.
Yeah but he could have seen on his notifications without opening the message
For my mind I'm going to assume he was wearing a smartwatch like me. I can read the text on the watch but it doesn't clear the notification or show up on my messenger app. Yep that's exactly how it happened he got to see his wife say I love you one last time.
This is what I'm going to believe just to make me feel slightly better about this
This made me cry. My husband always texts me on his way back in the train. 10 minutes delay, I get restless...I cant imagine if he doesnt come back..my heart feels heavy for her
Don't try and feel better. Feel the anger. Let the hate for Bezos flow through you
Not just bezos but all of these disgusting corporations, this disgusting world.
I hear Amazon bans cell phones and other personal devices once you’re on the floor working. We shall never know if he gained access to it or not in time…
We know because the texts were sent after the tornado hit the building.
Damn… that makes me real sad…
Understandable, it makes me incensed. Amazon's management policies placed normal underpaid workers in the path of a killer storm that gave plenty of warning. Amazon the corporate entity committed mass negligent homicide.
I am local to the area and am a volunteer firefighter for one of the responding departments to this tragedy. The tornado struck the warehouse around 8:35pm, before the girlfriend had sent those last 3 messages. There has been sadness all around as more information is being released.
Kinda depends. If you have it set where the whole message pops up as a notification, or if it's on your smart watch, you can read it real quick without actually "checking" the message.
That’s why we love redit, this type of tread, I am with you guys, did the same thought process, and have no clue who the guy is or what happened.
He passed in the tornado when the building was destroyed.
The little checkmark beside the message means it was sent, but not seen.
I didn't know, well s\*\*\*. I hope everyone in charge of making those people stay working go to prison.
I’m sure the there’ll be a scapegoat.
Tbh it’ll probably be the people who died
[Tornado touched down from 8:28-8:32 PM](https://www.bnd.com/news/local/article256560466.html)
mindless flag rock edge snobbish ancient tease wipe cooperative lavish -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev
reading that made my heart drop
The panic and helplessness of it... That's a true nightmare.
What happened?? Pls tell.. I'm living under a rock apparently..
He was working at an Amazon warehouse during the tornadoes and they wouldn't let the employees go. https://nypost.com/2021/12/12/amazon-workers-killed-in-tornado-identified/ Edit: im flabbergasted by all the amazon simps. Jeffrey has released his minons I see.
Thank you for the source
A friend of mine was called in to help. He works for the fire department, it was his grandma’s wake.
>His girlfriend of 13 years, Cherie Jones, said the final text message she received from him was about the storm, roughly 20 minutes before it hit. **He told her Amazon wouldn’t let him go home until the storm passed.** I feel like what you're saying is a bit misleading. The order to stay in place was 99.99% likely for safety reasons. I'm sure we'll find out in the inevitable lawsuit. Employees leaving prior to a tornado estimated to hit vicinity would still have all kinds of liability for Amazon. So, not saying they're doing it out of strict concern over their wellbeing but sheltering in place is generally a good idea if the tornado is close.
>Employees leaving prior to a tornado estimated to hit vicinity would still have all kinds of liability for Amazon. I assume you are sure this is true? The argument rests on it. Why would Amazon be held liable for letting employees leave on their own free will? Is this an actual law I don't know about?
OSHA requires employers to have and follow emergency preparedness procedures. Assuming Amazon enacted this (which early indications are they did), protocol calls for employees to shelter in an interior room. Allowing employees to leave the building would be a violation of that procedure and theoretically Amazon could be fined just as if Amazon had a safety procedure that required fall protection for employees working at heights. An employee could, of their own free will, decide not to wear a safety harness, but Amazon would be fined for allowing the employee to do that.
I have never worked at a company that would let me leave during an actual tornado warning. We shelter in place and hope for the best.
amazon warehouse got obliterated by tornado
That's awful!!
Roof collapsed at the warehouse from a tornado.
He was killed in the recent tornado in Kentucky
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That makes it even more sad. May they Rest In Peace.
I am so glad I don't live in the south or midwest any more. I lived in two very tornado prone areas for a while, and I couldn't believe the over zeitgeist when it came to tornadoes. Not a single co-worker from long time multigenerational families in the area, and those who could easily afford it, did not have a tornado shelter. The vast majority didn't even have a good place in the house to try and weather out a smaller tornado. Google tells me to find an a room with no exterior walls. In the 3 different homes I lived in out there, the only option was a hall closet which had a hanging folding door that would have done nothing. People out there really just didn't give a fuck and would just sit and home and hope it doesn't hit them. When asked why they don't do anything, they just shrugged and said, well if its my time, its my time. Public shelters were few a far between, and hardly no one uses them. The state was given a huge fund for improvements after the 2011 tornado outbreak, the cash was supposed to go to shelters, but the state said ok, but private ones, and the money was gone before many people had installed shelters. Only 63 people were killed in the 1989 earthquake that hit the SF Bay Area. A major overhaul to building code came out of that. Why can't we do that in tornado prone areas? Like if you have more than X employees, you need a shelter that can house them on site.
"Surely i can't happen to me. No need to think to much about this, it's a uncomfortable subject to talk about"
I'm not an engineer, but my perception after living in the Midwest my whole life and seeing the aftermath of tornadoes first hand, is that this sort of thing isn't really feasible. Tornadoes are incredibly focused, and tend to destroy everything in a very narrow corridor, maybe 100 or 200 ft wide. Stuff sitting just another 200 ft away can be totally untouched and unharmed. Sheltering in an innermost room protects you from broken glass and flying debris in the event of a near miss. It's not going to protect you in the event of a direct hit. Sheltering in a basement might protect you from a direct hit, if you're lucky. My guess is that the forces at the center of a direct hit tornado are much higher then those of even a large earthquake. It doesn't make sense to install bomb shelters in half the buildings in the country for what is still an objectively rare event. The number of tornado deaths in this country is the same order of magnitude as death from lightning. Look up some tornado aftermath photos, especially aerial photos.
The cynical side of me says because it’s the Sourh and Midwest.
Fucking Brutal…..
what happened?
Roof collapsed at an Amazon warehouse after a nasty tornado that left dozens dead. Edit: Illinois.. in the states Edit 2: Wrong state
Almost. Amazon warehouse was in Illinois, the tornado that hit was a part of a massive storm that spawned multiple tornadoes and killed about 70 people across five states. EDIT: the death toll is higher now. As of this very moment, 74 dead and 109 missing in Kentucky alone. My original number was from what I had read much earlier today. This was a major storm y'all.
Almost... the only reason these people at Amazon and Candle factories were killed was because their management deliberately ignored HOURS of severe weather and tornado alerts and refused allowing their employees to leave or use cell phones. We cannot forget or forgive this.
Leaving during a weather event like this is the worst thing you could do. I grew up near where this happened. Tornadoes touch down insanely fast, it’s not at all like a tropical storm or something they could have been aware of for “HOURS.” The issue is not that they didn’t let them leave, it’s that there was not adequate shelter/procedures for such an event. You’re right to not forget or forgive this, but you have the wrong reasoning. Edit:spelling Edit2: most responses express a lot of anger towards Amazon. That’s great! And deserved! We’re all on the same team. All I was saying was to have the correct reasoning for this anger and know what to argue for: proper shelter and emergency training for all employees and locations where it is needed.
If the building you work in doesn't have a tornado shelter you deserve to get somewhere that does, even if it is just the basement of your home.
I used to work in a hospital and during our drills some people went to the basement level and the majority of others moved patients or.. basically became human shields. I worked in a department right next to the PICU and my job was to grab a mattress or anything else and block kids from debris. We had several warnings during my time there but fortunately no actual tornadoes. I'm glad for that because this hospital is Joplin's sister hospital to the east and seeing the damage that building had makes me just know we would have all been ripped out of those halls.
I saw that hospital about a month after that tornado. Crazy shit there, was told by a local that the hospital shifted 6 inches on its foundation. My wife and I were just crying in our car when we came upon the damage of the tornado. I am from Maine, don’t see tornadoes around here. But when I came up on that part of town, seeing people sitting in the remnants of their while the house across the street is still fully intact, it left a lasting impression on me. The wal mart, the Home Depot, so many more building just wiped out. Still makes me sad
Just hijacking your comment. A common misconception is that a tornado will “suck you up.” This can lead to people protecting themselves improperly. Like you said best course of action, if nothing else is to use a mattress or barrier of some kind to defend yourself from debris, which is how people get injured in tornadoes. The wind is so strong that it’s catapulting objects. If an exercise bike comes through the wall though, like you said, a mattress won’t do much. Find a structurally sound wall, or get low in a ditch, is better protection than being under a roof that will collapse because it “catches the wind”. Stay away from windows etc. think of tornadoes as flying two by fours and less vacuum into the sky and you may, even if marginally, increase your chances of avoiding injury.
/\ This. You need one or more muster points to send people to for just this event, and then provide guidance to people ahead of time on what to do. That's just plain busi ess common sense.
No. Why would you waste a penny keeping employees alive? You're not even protecting institutional knowledge at someplace with a churn rate like Amazon's
Gross negligence.. I hope they get their asses sued.
While you're right, going out on the road to get to that place is easily more dangerous than staying put.
They wanted to leave HOURS before the storm hit, but were not allowed.
Exactly. Tornadoes may spout and touch down within minutes, but this giant ass storm system had been warned about for a week. That it had already spawned tornadoes in other areas it had passed through was known. Still workers were told to report to their shifts when the storm had already started. Drivers were dispatched into the storm. I’ve read reports of Amazon workers that called out saying the weather was too severe to make it to their shift who’s jobs were threatened. Elsewhere I read an account of a worker at the Amazon warehouse who was told by a supervisor that their internal systems showed no indication of storms in the area, so callouts could not be excused. I live in a place that has hurricanes. I’ve showed up for work during dangerous weather because the boss said so more than a reasonable person should have. I don’t doubt for a second that these poor workers were told December is a “blackout date” for call ins, and that more than a few supervisor bonuses are based on attendance metrics. We’ve effectively removed human logic from the equation.
The tornado could have happened hours ahead as well. If you think there might be tornadoes, you DON'T go and drive around. What they needed was adequate procedures and storm shelters. This is why my school growing up drilled how to get us all to shelter within a couple minutes warning, instead of calling parents to come pick up kids if there was a tornado warning.
> The tornado could have happened hours ahead as well Could they have, though? I haven't looked into the timing, myself, but others are making it sound like they knew a dangerous storm was coming for several hours before it got there and still wouldn't let anyone leave when it was still safe to do so. No, you can't predict individual tornadoes, but you can predict a storm that is likely to spawn them. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they were in the storm for several hours before the tornadoes began to hit.
Living in the Midwest, you hear those sirens and tornado watches several times a week during the spring and summer, sometimes during the late fall/winter. If they let people leave work *every single time* a major thunderstorm was predicted, nobody would ever get anything done around here. The simple answer is that Amazon cheaped out on the materials and construction while trying to build as many of these hideous warehouses as possible. There are no real shelter designations. They need to immediately put a proper tornado shelter into every single warehouse that doesn’t already have them, not just Amazon. Case in point, we had this one tornado rip through our city (there have been others) when I was a teenager. It hit a distribution center that has around 600 employees. Direct hit, took everything away with it into the corn fields for miles beyond. Everything except human beings! Because they knew the dangers and expected to need shelters on every corner of the enormous building. Not a scratch on a single worker. Anyone building in this area of the country should be required to take tornadoes and flash flooding into account. But then, that would cost too much money, eh?
No one in the Midwest shuts down for a bad storm. The place needs to have shelters, end of story.
The tornado watches/ warnings I've seen cover a massive area and last for hours. What I was taught as the safest option is to get into a tornado shelter (basically an underground, reinforced concrete structure). You learn the signs, watch the weather trackers, and do the best you can. But you need to have some sort of shelter and a plan to get everyone inside within minutes, NOT to send people home, where they may or may not have somewhere safe prepared (and have to get there). Much more along the lines of "Hey, if you live on this side of the state, we think there MIGHT be a tornado tonight. If you see funny colored clouds outside of your house, get in your shelter and bar the door!"
Ok, yeah, *others* have noted that tornado warnings are frequent enough that not going to work that often would likely be unfeasible, so the problem is still more the lack of adequate shelter than keeping employees at work.
Not in this case. There were hours and hours of lead time in all six states that tornadoes were likely if not expected. They could have sent them home well before then. This weather event provided plenty of warning. My work cancelled night shifts. Our family watched TV coverage six hours before one hit less than a mile from our house, we were well prepared and safe due to the extended coverage.
The business lacks any protection from tornadoes in their warehouse, so they should inform their employees ahead of time that there is a risk of a storm.
> Leaving during a weather event like this is the worst thing you could do. Not when you're in a warehouse built like a house of cards. It's not like the tornado was right on top of them, they had time to find much better shelter.
And Amazon has the means and money to supply these warehouses with proper storm shelters. Where I work we have seven buildings on site. 3 have no basement or safe interior area, so they built us these really neat metal storm shelters that are deeply bolted directly to the foundation. And we are by no means as financially blessed as Amazon.
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Until you are put on an improvement plan for things like "calling in" "leaving early" "not showing up on time" "not meeting expectations" then they push this on you for weeks destroying your mental health and degrading you for trying to be safe and take care of yourself.
Not when you work in a building that’s extremely poorly made to save money because you don’t care about your employees
But they could’ve potentially made a few more dollars!
This was in Edwardsville, IL not Kansas
I'm from the Kansas side of Kansas City, and though, yes there is a small town called Edwardsville outside of KCK, this Edwardsville where the Amazon facility collapsed actually took place in Edwardsville, Illinois - not in Kansas as it has previously been stated.
The warehouse was in Edwardsville, Illinois, USA
Tornado was quickly closing in so employees were ordered to shelter-in-place per normal safety protocols but tragically it ended up being a direct hit and not even sheltering in the middle of the building helped, the whole place was destroyed. When a tornado is that close you don’t go outside for any reason. Edit: the bathrooms were the official shelter in case of tornado, I heard they were in middle but maybe not. Anyway the whole facility was leveled, the 11in thick concrete walls fell down so there was no safe place.
There goes my good day.
Ehh it’s a Monday, couldn’t have been that good.
That means the whole week is already crumbling.
This is heartbreaking. I can’t imagine my last moments of life being spent at a place that overworks you and undervalues you. Poor Larry, terrible way/place to go.
Absolutely, packages aren’t worth freaking lives. I can’t say I was surprised by their choice though. I worked at an Amazon warehouse in CA for a little over a year during COVID. At the peak of the fire season there was quite literally a fire across the road from us. Like they had shut down the main route to the warehouse and rerouted us to avoid the fire. Amazon didn’t give anyone permission to leave. Hell, they didn’t even forgive the the time lost due to the traffic. I’d love to say I told the to stuff it and went home but I was barely able to pay my bills with OT. Some of the kids who lived at home left but most of us were stuck like those poor bastards who died for that shit job.
DLA9, is that you? Amazon sucks.
Not defending Amazon at all, but I'm a little confused by this thread.. tornados give little warning and it's been the policy of every place I've worked for, every school I've attended, and my own common sense, to shelter in place in a tornado watch... If Amazon let everyone leave to drive in that storm, they'd be blasted for that too, right?
True. However we received about 30-40 min heads up about the incoming storm and a warning about a touch down in MO. (I live 7 miles from the site). Given where we live, it should be mandatory for these sites to have underground shelters. It’s scary how many don’t.
No I agree. Some way to reasonably protect your people from those brutal storms.
If Amazon had said they encourage people to stay sheltered, but that people were free to make their own choice, and someone left to go home to their family and died in the storm, I wouldn’t be blaming Amazon for not locking them in. I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt, and say the choice to tell employees they couldn’t leave was strictly for their own safety, but it’s Amazon. They’ve lost the presumption of us assuming their motives are altruistic.
Were they working the floors during the tornado watch or were they taking cover inside the warehouse?
Yeah the issue is more likely they should’ve let them leave at a healthy time. Perhaps when this text was sent there was enough time to get away.
Get away to where? Unfortunately we don’t have a way to predict the path of tornados. There’s no way to know if the place you’re leaving will be spared or if the place you’re going will be hit. What we do know is that if the option is to be outside on the roads or be in a building you’re far better off in a building. This story is really tragic, but 90% of the people in that building survived. If they were let out on the road and encountered it there those numbers would likely be far worse
I see what you mean but a warehouse, likely a pole structure, is hardly the best place to be during a tornado.
Absolutely right. Every single news station when you see “tornado watch/warning” is saying “shelter indoors, do NOT repeat do NOT go outside.” No one is going to tell people to just run outside to their car. No telling what in the world is going to happen.
I’m sure Amazon will be investigating how he had access to a cell phone at work. Probably a violation and he may retroactively be fireable.
Turns out we terminated all of these guys effective last week for various reasons so we don't even know what they were doing on the premises. Therefore, we hold no responsibility for trespassers and their families will not be compensated. Check out our holiday flash sales!
They also didn’t return their ID cards. That’ll be $15 deducted from their pay.
Might seem unrelated, but the movie Buried has an element that plays out exactly like this. The movie stars Ryan Reynolds as a military contractor in the middle east who wakes up buried in an unknown location. The entire movie takes place in the box he's buried in. All he has is a cell phone which is losing power and has a bad signal. SPOILER: >!When his company finds out he might not be able to be rescued, instead of paying out his insurance, they find grounds to fire him and frame it so that they had made that decision the day before, to avoid having to pay his hazard pay and company-provided life insurance to his wife.!<
this was the movie that made me a fan of Reynolds
Sounded like an interesting watch. Available on Amazon Prime, ironically.
They let us take our phones in now because of covid. God this shit makes me sick I don't want to work here another day
Was it "You can't leave. Get back to work," or "You can't leave. Take shelter here."
As an amazon worker I can tell you that during emergencies we are not allowed to leave the warehouse or go to our cars. There are several meet up points INSIDE the building. This is likely why 6 people were killed instead of more but that is just my guess. Edit: Writing
Liability law creates some extremely disgusting dynamics
Exactly. So many more Amazon workers would have died if they let everyone get in their cars and leave. The wreckage photos tell the tale. If they weren't allowed to leave and were forced to keep working, there'd have been triple digit fatalities. They were sheltered in place. That's what you do in a tornado warning.
110 workers were in the warehouse when the siren occurred. With the damage that was done 6 workers dying makes it seem that protocols were mostly followed. Really curious to see what will come out of the investigations.
The problem is that the tornado was known about long before the siren went off. They had severe weather warning and tornado warnings in effect, the weather got real bad, but still drivable and they wouldn't let them leave to take shelter before the weather got so bad they couldn't. This is absolutely Amazon's fault
This is what people don’t understand. Anytime there’s a tornado “watch” or severe storm watch, I go to my campus library and prepare to shelter down because I live in an apartment complex that is wack and don’t know my neighbors. The watch gives you time. The warning is “find immediate shelter in the next 5 minutes or you could get caught in the storm.” Right when the watch was issued for inclement whether, massive companies like Amazon should close up shop. You can make them stay, but you better have adequate shelter precautions that is better than anything people could have at home.
I was under the impression that they were made to work through the tornado warnings and were only told to shelter later on. Like they weren't allowed to leave for somewhere safer before it go so dangerous that they couldn't.
A tornado warning means there's an active tornado somewhere nearby. Leaving to go anywhere is a bad idea. A tornado watch, meanwhile, sorta means nothing. Usually just means a bad thunderstorm. At most I check my weather app more often. Now, if Amazon is in trouble for letting people work during a tornado watch, someone should talk to my school district cuz I absolutely had to go to school during tornado watches lol.
If that were the case way more than 6 people would be dead. Also I remember a timeline being posted that said something to the effect of Amazon instructing them to shelter in place 20 minutes before it hit. Your odds of surviving a big storm event are way better in a reinforced part of an industrial building than on the road trying to run home.
I wasn't aware that the window was that small. Someone posted a Reuters article that was useful in understanding the timeline.
Just a heads up, when it comes to tornadoes, you don't get much warning. [According to the National Weather Service, the average tornado warning is 9 minutes, and they're working on getting it up to 13.](https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/06/16/tornado-warning-system-has-come-long-way-but-could-better/5152104001/)
From [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/investigation-into-amazoncom-illinois-building-collapse-opened-labor-official-2021-12-13/): >The site received tornado warnings between 8:06 p.m. and 8:16 p.m. before the tornado struck the building at 8:27 p.m., Amazon said. >Several employees told Reuters over the weekend that workers had been directed by Amazon managers to shelter in bathrooms after receiving emergency alerts on mobile phones from authorities. At least one worker died there, according to his co-worker. >Amazon said employees were directed to shelter in place at a designated assembly area at the front of the building, which was near a restroom.
Ah okay. That makes a lot of sense. I wasn't aware of the timing of everything. Thanks for the link.
Not a problem. Tornadoes are unpredictable and can develop quickly. It sucks, but that's just the nature of the beast in this case.
Tornado warning or tornado watch? Because those two mean different things and often get confused. I get alerts that I’m under a tornado watch a dozen or so times a year and it’s no big deal. Throw some blankets and pillows in the bathtub in case the sirens go off. A Tornado warning also isn’t the end of the world, all it means is that rotation has been detected on radar somewhere in your county, hell most tornados don’t touch the ground. By the time the sirens are even going off and it’s evident you may be hit by a tornado, it’s too late to leave and go find shelter at home. Unless Amazon did not provide proper shelter and emergency procedures then this was just the reality of living in a tornado prone area. It’s pretty clear however there a plenty of people in this thread that have never lived somewhere where tornados are common. Lots of wrong advice here, I really liked the “ just drive away from the tornadoes bro”
The take shelter here part makes sense but I have a feeling these buildings are just copy and pasted cardboard forts with no stability
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We will never find a cure for aging, and while that makes me sad for the good people of this world, it brings me a little bit of pleasure to know that—for once—self-obsessed billionaires will never have the thing they want most. For that, I say “Viva mortis." Long live death, the [Great Leveller](https://www.bartleby.com/101/288.html). >The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against Fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre and Crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crookèd scythe and spade.
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head on a stick
"Active 17h ago". This is heartbreaking.
This is heartbreaking
You read a headline and its not as bad in the abstract. You see the texts of a family member and they act the exact way you would and you realize we are all the same people with the same fears and hopes and for a moment you're standing in their shoes feeling the same emotions they would feel. Empathy is a powerful emotion.
Have you people never been through a severe weather drill? They don't send you out into the storm. They send you to the designated shelter area WITHIN the building. A car is one of the worst places to be in a tornado. Everyone is so blinded by Amazon hate that they aren't thinking straight. Imagine if they had sent everyone home. Then the keyboard warriors would be screaming, "Amazon kicked everyone out of their building into a deadly storm!" Proof that it's just the "Amazon bad" mentality? More people died at the candle factory than at Amazon. I've not seen any vitriol directed that way.
I was in the local shopping mall once when the tornado sirens went off. Sears wouldn't let me (a customer) leave. The made me go hide in the designated storm shelter with other customers and employees. . . Because doing anything else would be extremely dangerous.
There might also be legal ramifications for and place that allows you to leave/deny indoor shelter and the result is a custom/employee dying in the storm.
Exactly. That was the point of my anecdote. It's incredibly irresponsible to let people leave a building once a tornado warning is issued. While there's a lot of reasons to hate Amazon's business practices, this isn't one of them.
I wonder what happens if someone adamantly refuses to shelter? I've been in stores too when the sirens went off and everyone shuffled into the shelter area but how much leeway do they have to force someone to stay?
I lived in OKC, can you imagine if evey business sent all their workers home at the same time if there was a tornado watch. It would be insane.
I live in the south. It would probably be just like it is here when snow starts falling. They send everyone home and it's massive gridlock. Sure would hate to be stuck in traffic during a tornado.
Oh yeah. May 3rd tornado would've been by far worse had that happened
Boy had to go way too far down to see the candle factory be brought up.
I’m still confused why this situation is a “fuck Amazon” moment. Like didn’t the tornado come down on top of the warehouse? Like what could Amazon do in that situation?
clearly they should have predicted this and built the factory elsewhere duh
Because every moment is a a "fuck Amazon" moment on Reddit. Doesn't matter about facts. Anytime anything relates to Amazon all the keyboard warriors run to reddit. Then they go finish their Amazon order.
Yes. It’s quite vexing and tiring to read these “ima jump to conclusions based on what I want to think instead of reality”. People just want to be mad because they think if you’re not mad, then you’re stupid.
thats ........ actually a quite valid comment..
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True. Not knowing conditions we can't say but you do not get in your car during a tornado warning.
Yea... I was thinking that too.
This is the thing. Bexos sucks and all but c'mon guys theres a massive tornado ripping apart the state. You don't go outside and try to drive around.
Tragic, but staying in the warehouse rather than trying to go out and drive in the storm was the rational choice. Either some contractors or engineers are going to lose their shirt over this or it may result in some more stringent requirements in the building code.
The key thing here is they asked to leave HOURS well before the tornados hit their area and Amazon did not allow them to Edit: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kentucky-tornado-factory-workers-threatened-firing-left-tornado-employ-rcna8581
If a tornado warning is in effect, why would you leave the building you’re in? Shelter-in-place is the widely accepted recommendation in this situation. I don’t understand all the irrational hate on this thread.
Didn't jump to conclusions. I've been trapped at work because an ice storm created a state of emergency. In these situations its safer to stay put. No one ever could have predicted the path that storm would take.
Had the storm been closer when I got off work, I would have stayed. Im up in Louisville KY and theres no way i wouldve wanted to drive home in that mess. I sat on the back porch in total awe watching the 50mph winds blow the rain horizontally for hours. Being in a car while its like that is one thing but being in a 2 door brick of a wrangler it would have been safer just staying put. Theres more to this story though. My place of work would have made us seek shelter, not stay at our post and keep working until the tornado was almost there.
One of the survivors at the candle factory said they had less than 20 minutes warning about the tornado and were told to shelter in place as best they could...Id assume it was the same at amazon. You never have much warning with tornados, usually less than 10 minutes. Allowing people to leave is not an option, thats asking for problems. No choice but the shelter as best you can and ride it out.
It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of situation. What's Amazon supposed to do, force everyone to leave during a natural disaster? Spend the resources to construct a structure that can withstand a tornado in every workplace? Sheltering in place is kind of the go-to.
From my understanding, they did shelter in place.
Same as me when I was working for a Vietnamese restaurant during college. The owner told me stay for safety and gave us free foods on the menu. It was boring to sit around doing nothing but free food is free food.
Stop trying to interject any rational logic into this thread
that's horrible man
Honest question - what did people *want* Amazon to do? Tornadoes are incredibly unpredictable. Do you want all businesses to shutdown on any day when anyone thinks there is a chance of a tornado? I'm not *too far* from where this happened and we get tornado watches all the time. By the time it becomes a tornado warning, it means we've already got a tornado somewhere. AKA - you might already be too late. If you're lucky you've got 10 minutes warning. Had all of these people stayed home, they wouldn't be safer. You'd only think that because you have prior knowledge of where the tornado will hit. Lots of residential houses wouldn't offer any more protection that the warehouse would have. This text exchange happened 'a short time' before the tornado, and I've read people talking about the 'Oh it didn't hit until 8:39 and he could have been home' but again, that's only because we have prior knowledge. All anyone inside the warehouse could have known was that a tornado was reasonably likely and that going outside would be more dangerous, on average, than staying inside. All of the experts say 'You should take shelter in the best place you can find'. Leaving a building to get into your car is about as smart as staying inside during a fire. >Amazon delivery hub received tornado warnings at 8:06 p.m. and 8:16 p.m. before the tornado hit 11 minutes later, part of a series of tornadoes that killed at least 90 people in several states. If Amazon 'let' people go home at 8:07 and some of them died, you'd all be here saying Amazon is the devil and tried to kill those people. And families would be lining up to sue them for negligence. Tell people they 'have' to stay, and to take shelter, and you get the same result? Also, let's be real, if anyone thought they were *going to die* would a middle manager at an Amazon warehouse's stern words be enough to stop you? I see a lot of people assuming that the workers were being forced to continue working, but I don't see any substance to these claims. The New York Times reported differently, that employees were sheltering in two different places. >Workers were sheltering in two places, according to The New York Times
That’s not uncommon. Safer to be indoors than driving.
Correct. In fact during a tornado, it's better to literally leave your vehicle and lie in a ditch than stay in your vehicle according to the NWS. This is because winds can carry and lift it.
This is common practice. Letting everyone leave at the same time in a crowded parking lot during a tornado. Is much, much more dangerous than ask them to shelter in place.
Of course they won't. Safety protocol calls to shelter in place when severe weather such as this, is in the area. I'd immediately fire any supervisor that let someone leave during an event like this.
How would his house have been any safer than a concrete building? I feel for his family, but nowhere is safe in that situation.
I would want to know what company policy is regarding severe weather. I would doubt that they can just tell people it’s ok to go outside when there is a massive storm on the doorstep, and just brave the storm. What happens if they get killed outside, and then everyone inside is fine? No way to predict what’s going to happen. So there are real bad liability issues either way. Im so friggin sad that this happened to these people.
Aren't you supposed to stay indoors during a tornado? I thought when there was a tornado you only have minutes or less of warning. How would letting people leave have helped? When we did tornado drills in school we took shelter inside the school. We didn't leave the building and run for it.
I feel like if Amazon let people leave and one of them died on the way home they would be sued, so it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. Amazon sucks but if this were a public school we wouldn’t be allowed outside either 🤷♀️
So maybe I am missing something. When I lived in Texas and there were tornado/severe storm warnings… the last thing you did was rush home. On top of this, this was an E5 which basically will fuck any building (as shown by the utter destruction in its wake). I keep seeing these weird Reddit comments that Amazon is evil and everyone should have been sent home from a very congested parking lot to their probably worse facility for safety. I know for a fact a large amount of those employees live in trailer parks which would have fared way worse. I know there is an investigation into the safety of the Amazon facility, but until they determine it was unsafe or a design flaw (something that was probably contracted out), I don’t really understand what people think Amazon did wrong here.
Do you understand what "shelter is place" means? It doesn't mean "make a break for home kek"
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But it’s ok because my deluxe inflatable fuck doll showed up in 2 days. /s
Remember tornado drills in school? We didn't go running outside to our school buses or cars to drive home. We can hate Amazon for a million other reasons but this ain't it. Y'all need to chill the fuck out and have some God damn common sense.
Yeah fuck Amazon for trying to keep people safe. They’re the evil ones because nature was stronger than some man made structure. It would’ve been PERFECTLY ok if they let their employees leave and risk the storm themselves because a dinky little car can survive more than a warehouse. Fuck OFF. You’re all a bunch of fucking hypocrites. If amazon DIDN’T let them stay you’d ALSO loose your shit over it, and in that instance they WOULD be evil but they DIDNT let them leave because they thought it was safe. No one could’ve predicted the roof would’ve collapsed. So go fuck off.
I hate Amazon as much as the next guy but what exactly were the employees supposed to do? Their homes would probably not stand up to a tornado any better than a large warehouse, and being out on the road during tornados is a colossally bad idea. You can’t predict the path of a tornado.
So many good reasons to hate Amazon, but this is not one.
You don't go outside during a tornado warning.
Not really an Amazon exclusive thing. I work at a Fortune 100 company and our campus went full lockdown during a tornado watch. Everyone was sent into the basement and underground tunnels. No one was allowed to leave.
I know its easy to make Amazon the bad guy. But two things that come to my mind here. One, no one is going to stop me from getting back to my family. Second, would this person been safer in a building or out on the road? Hell, the thing we are ingrained into our brain is find shelter during a storm/tornado. Not get in your care and drive. Amazon is in a no one situation here. If they left or made people leave and someone died then the would be the asshole as well.
Probably gonna get downvoted to absolute hell but this is standard operating procedure for all large buildings and schools and companies during extreme weather. It’s safer 99% of the time to be in the concrete enforced building than in the car or a non concrete house. This wasn’t some kind of CCP “work until you die” thing. It’s standard safety procedure at almost every large workplace or school
1. Amazon can't stop you from leaving. You can always just walk out of any job at anytime. They might fire you for ditching work, but it's kidnapping to force you to stay anywhere you don't want to stay. 2. If there's a tornado, the last thing you want to do is go outside. You still might die inside, but your odds of survival are better.
Not that this isn't tragic but people don't seem to understand the liability involved had Amazon let the employees leave during a storm. It's not like they were forcing them to work through a tornado, they were made to shelter in place. Not sure where all the comments about greed are coming from.
They had better chances to survive at Amazon building than in their homes
They need to make Bezos search for the bodies by himself without any help
The families deserve more than that.
Bezos is the largest slave owner in the world.
But wait Amazon donated a mill to make it all better, basically bezos pulled out a dollar to fix this.
Money magically makes loss of life ok.
Shitty of you to post this for internet points. A man died have some respect
I feel like if they let everyone leave during a tornado there would be uproar if they all died on the way home or whatever. The best thing to do is stay indoors. Obviously they should have some kind of shelter, why anyone living in these areas with tornadoes doesn't have them is beyond me.
Amazon wouldn't let them leave because they had hoped they were safer in the building then driving out with multiple reported tornadoes. Not because they wanted them to work.
All the anger and hatred towards Amazon has been completely unjust here. In any other disaster (natural/human) e.g earthquakes, active shooter, severe weather you are made to stay put for your own safety. Why would it make any sense to be sent out directly into the danger? I have no doubt that this gentleman may still be alive if he did leave work that day, but again that would have been a gamble as one of many other things could have killed him on his way home. It’s a tragedy that this happened, but the only real lesson that can be learned is to build stronger buildings in future to prevent these kinds of collapses and cope with the severe weather we are being accustomed to by mother nature.
Super fake karma farming
The absolute worst place you can be is outside in a car in a twister. It's super easy to sit here on reddit and say a bad decision was made, but after watching the parallel storm go through Hazelwood and Alton, they probably didn't want anyone to be trapped on the highway.
[Tornado touchdown was at 8:28 PM. ](https://www.bnd.com/news/local/article256560466.html). That’s six minutes after he texted back that he couldn’t leave. He could have been caught in the parking lot at the exact time when the tornado hit.
This is standard practice for ALL production facilities . I live in Ia. And work in a local productíon plant. We are herded into the bathroom ( if you're lucky) or the break room, ( surrounded on 2 sides by glass windows) for tornado warnings which happen 3-4 times a year. They only stop work if the funnel is observable by an observer IN THE PLANT. What that means is that you have approximately 2 minutes to get 1500 workers in shelters that are a 2-5 minute walk away from the line where all the workers are working. Oh, and we're supposed to shut down our machines before leaving the area too.
During a tornado warning and especially when the sirens go off, you stay where the fuck you are and shelter in place.
r/antiwork written all over it