Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis

I slept through three tornado sirens last night. It was pretty wild. The first one, I thought it was a test. (We have tests every month on the 1st.) But it wasn&#x27;t until a few minutes in that I realized it was for real.<p>Then apparently I just... went to sleep? That wasn&#x27;t the smartest decision I&#x27;ve ever made. It went off a couple more times.<p>One strange thing was the realization that I had no idea where to turn for information. The fall of TV means that in a situation like that, there isn&#x27;t any &quot;tune to your local TV station&quot; type broadcast. All you get is a tornado siren.<p>I imagine if nuclear armageddon ever happens, it&#x27;ll be similar. Though at least with that, there&#x27;ll be some information channel to turn to.

&gt; 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.<p>I find this hard to accept. They keep track of workers&#x27; productivity by the second, but they don&#x27;t know how many were working there at that time??

I don’t understand a few things, as they aren’t covered in the article, that I saw.<p>Were there no warnings for the severe weather storm that would have prevented people coming in to work or allowed them to leave work early? When I was working in the office, we were usually forced (literally security swept the building) to leave when severe winter weather was coming in a few times.<p>Why doesn’t Amazon, in the middle of Tornado Alley, have tornado shelters for its employees? Employees should not be having to run around finding places to hide. There should be designated shelters.

The photos of the aftermath are shocking. More than half of the building is completely demolished. Exterior walls flattened. Vans are draped with 30 foot concrete panels. The roof is everywhere. A ruined skeleton of support columns and trusses towers ominously above the wreckage.<p>I can only imagine the terror of witnessing this devastation unfold around your person.<p>Aside - check out the difference in the photos from last night to today. The emergency response has cleared out an incredible amount of rubble.

I find it interesting that no one seems to be talking about the fact that we&#x27;re having deadly tornadoes in <i>December</i>. This is not normal, especially if this was a multiple tornado event, but even one really big one would be way out of the ordinary. Maybe it&#x27;s my northern Illinois upbringing, but tornadoes this time of year seems way unlikely.

No snarky comments from me. Just RIP and I hope their families are compensated. No compensation will ever bring back those people or extinguish their families anguish but something is better than nothing.

&quot;Six Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) workers were confirmed dead on Saturday after a series of tornadoes roared through a warehouse near St Louis, ripping off its roof and causing 11-inch thick concrete walls longer than football fields to collapse on themselves.&quot;<p>Horrific.<p>A wall that size cannot possibly survive a big wind.<p>Cannot.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;patch.com&#x2F;illinois&#x2F;chicago&#x2F;tornado-hits-southern-il-amazon-center-workers-trapped-reports" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;patch.com&#x2F;illinois&#x2F;chicago&#x2F;tornado-hits-southern-il-...</a><p>EF-3 tornado: 136-165 mph

When there are Tornado Warnings in the area, are there any policies at big warehouses like this one (not just Amazon&#x27;s others too) to take shelter? Is there enough time to get to a reinforced area? How long would staff have to stay in the reinforced area?<p>Low probability, high consequence events are hard to plan for.<p>Sad for all those who have died or are suffering in the wake of the storms.

Why were they forced to work during a tornado?

*&quot;reduce to rubble&quot; or &quot;destroys&quot;<p>How tragic, I feel awful for their families and so close to the holidays. :(

What’s crazy is how at least 70 people have died in other states. A bunch of tornadoes happened at around the same time. It caught everybody by surprise.

We stayed in the basement after the sirens started, and followed it on the weather radar. We got notifications on the phone, and kids were dismissed from evening activities early. Pretty rare to get this type of weather this time of year.

Who the heck schedules tornados in December ? What a disaster.

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

&gt; Amazon did not have an exact count of the number of people working in the sorting and delivery center at the time the tornadoes hit, Whiteford said.<p>WTF? Do they record attendance on paper?

Unfortunately, this will cost Amazon significantly less than if they were to... you know... have well-constructed buildings, and severe weather plans, etc.<p>Businesses are responsible for the physical welfare of their employees when they require their employees to be on the business premises. But until the cost of not ensuring their safety exceeds the cost of occasional death or injury, this will keep happening.<p>It&#x27;s not the first time severe weather has killed multiple people in a warehouse (this year, or probably even this month), and it won&#x27;t be the last until we demand change.

Unfortunate that the title got cut off: &quot;Six Amazon workers killed after tornadoes reduce warehouse near St. Louis to rubble&quot;<p>But the bigger story here is that despite multiple warnings of dangerous weather, the workers at this warehouse still ended up having to choose between risking their life or being fired&#x2F;written up for refusing to come in. They didn&#x27;t feel like they had the power to say &quot;No, I won&#x27;t work because its too dangerous&quot; and some of that paid for that with their lives. Everyone responsible for that decision should be prosecuted criminally for each of those deaths.