What the shit... that plastics factory. Ax^ - I agree with you; the company should be forced to pay the wages of the dead, but not all companies see it that way because humans have free will, even though you can be told by management "you leave, you're fired". Well, if you leave and the building is decimated, there's no job to come back to until everything is cleaned up. By that time it would be a different conversation, I'd think.
No job is worth the risk of a life. Yes, people need an income to survive and some are barely surviving on their income. However, if you can't evacuate or you get flooded, hell, even if you die, how can you recover from any of that (or your family recover from your death)? Over something as trivial as staying for the working hours? It'd be different if it was some freak storm that all of a sudden brought on 4 feet of water or more and no one got notice. But with technology these days, usually you get 12-24 hours or more of a time span to plan and do what is needed.
I understand the worry about watching the water come closer to your doors and getting flood warning alerts while being at work. I've been in that situation way too much.
There are a few people at my current place of employment who watch the weather (myself included) and in bad torrential storms, we plan our afternoon accordingly, as the area I work in can flood so bad, it gets up past the tires of the cars and roads shut down. Bridges close with wind speeds of over 40 miles an hour, and the ends of the bridges flood. Most of the people who commute to this company rely on those bridges to get home / to work. If the bridge is closed while they're at work, they can't get home. A few times my boss has taken his time to watch the radar when we've said to him "it's getting bad out; our parking lot is pooling and we are afraid of what the roads will look like. We'd like to go home, please, while we still have the ability". He says "it's not that bad out and it'll pass soon". Yea, ask the tornado that passed over the area just 5 minutes from our building last summer. Ask me how I fared when the battery light in my car kept going off because I had to drive through shin deep water a couple days; I kept telling myself "you'll make it out. You don't need a new car... you'll get through it", and I did, but there was that chance I'd need a new ride. On another day a pickup truck went so fast down a flooding street, that when he passed me, he sent a blanket of water over my car, completely enshrouding me, which caused me to veer into another lane and almost cause an accident. It was terrifying because I absolutely couldn't see, and this is a busy main road. My boss has spent his whole life here, so he thinks any storm that passes through is nothing, even a hurricane. He owns a pickup truck and a couple electric vehicles (Tesla, Mustang).
That's why I can understand people's frustration, anxiety, worry, etc. when storms roll through. I'm fortunate that I haven't been flooded out like all the other cities and states have been, and I acknowledge that. I'm lucky, but pretty soon my luck will run out. My mother has a friend who lives the next street over from the big waterway and their house got totaled during Ian. Four feet of water touched every corner of that place and they stayed in their house, watching the unit become a literal indoor swimming pool. Much like what all the reports are showing above this post, in all the other states. It's no joke, and it's disheartening to see. At the same time, there's a small voice that says "we put ourselves in this situation" and it is hard to keep still.
www.theguardian.com
