US Tornados, massive damage and deaths ..

[weltweit]

Kentucky tornadoes: Desperate search for survivors as death toll rises

At least 94 people are dead, many more are missing and entire towns have been destroyed.

www.bbc.co.uk

Pretty awful damage to property and a high death toll.

 

[petee]

The weather in the USA...

Lake Tahoe Suffocates With Smoke NYTimes. August 27, 2021 Outline - Read & annotate without distractions Amid the exodus, which has become a way of life in parts of the West this disaster-filled summer, there has been a creeping concern that the notion of a safe haven is gone, that there soon...

www.urban75.net

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

This is almost unheard of damage and loss of life. I've seen entire towns blown off the map, but not this many in one go. From the description it sounds like several F5 tornados that scoured the earth for miles. And the time of year is completely wrong. I hope they find the missing soon and they're ok. We can only hope that the cell towers being down is keeping people from contacting one another, but it doesn't sound good.

 

[NoXion]

And the time of year is completely wrong.

I've been meaning to say this, I thought tornado season was at a different time of year.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I've been meaning to say this, I thought tornado season was at a different time of year.

Tornados are usually a spring to summer thing, but its been really warm this December. We
are expecting temps in the mid-50s to low-70s this week. It should be 30 degrees cooler by this time.

 

[extra dry]

Its awful.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

The other thing with tornados is that you usually don't get a large loss of life if early warning systems are in place and taken seriously. I wonder how much warning some of the people got before the tornados hit. Or, if there's good tornado shelters in the buildings there.

<edited to add>
This explains a lot:

The sister of a Navy veteran who was killed alongside five colleagues after a tornado destroyed an Amazon warehouse in Illinois is slamming the online retail giant for choosing company productivity over employee safety.

Rachel Cope - whose older brother, Clayton Cope, 29, was among those killed when a series of twisters roared through the warehouse near St. Louis - said she's angry that Amazon didn't allow its workers to go to an emergency shelter after the first siren sounded.

Six Amazon workers killed after Illinois tornado destroyed warehouse

Rachel Cope (inset), is blasting Amazon for 'choosing the productivity of their company over their employees'. Her brother, Clayton Cope (right) was killed when a tornado (left) struck the warehouse.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Sorry for the Fail link.

 

[campanula]

FFS, I can't help noticing that much of the buildings were little more than clapboard sheds. I had always imagined that, given the harsh winters of the northern states, that housing would be sturdy, warm, well insulated and generally robust but these flimsy timber houses are not built to stand up to much. Is this an actual strategy - to assemble modular homes without footings or long-term footprints, so that the inevitable tornado damage is easily rebuilt/replaced? I have a few friends who have done building work in the US and generally have been pretty scathing about the prefabricated building and love of nail guns. It's depressingly shit, tbh, and I feel desperately bad for people who have lost loved ones as well as homes.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

FFS, I can't help noticing that much of the buildings were little more than clapboard sheds. I had always imagined that, given the harsh winters of the northern states, that housing would be sturdy, warm, well insulated and generally robust but these flimsy timber houses are not built to stand up to much. Is this an actual strategy - to assemble modular homes without footings or long-term footprints, so that the inevitable tornado damage is easily rebuilt/replaced? I have a few friends who have done building work in the US and generally have been pretty scathing about the prefabricated building and love of nail guns. It's depressingly shit, tbh, and I feel desperately bad for people who have lost loved ones as well as homes.

In some areas they don't put basements under buildings so shelter might have been limited to interior bathrooms.

 

[weltweit]

I did wonder about building regulations, or perhaps the lack of them, the houses simply disintegrated.

Mind you I also saw bits of bricks that had been blown about like confetti ..

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I did wonder about building regulations, or perhaps the lack of them, the houses simply disintegrated.

Mind you I also saw bits of bricks that had been blown about like confetti ..

There's video of entire brick buildings being tossed like Legos on Youtube. You really need underground shelter in a tornado. So often regulations require building community shelters when basements can't be built. I wouldn't bet on it in the south. They aren't keen on government telling them what to do.

 

[petee]

I did wonder about building regulations, or perhaps the lack of them, the houses simply disintegrated.

Mind you I also saw bits of bricks that had been blown about like confetti ..

safe-rooms have been around a long time

Safe Rooms

FEMA's info on safe rooms.

www.fema.gov

but i don't know if they're required by code in any locations.

order yours today

Ground Zero Storm Shelters - Storm Shelters & Tornado Shelters in the US

Ground Zero Storm Shelters are the most innovative storm shelter systems on the market today. We deliver and install shelters wherever tornadoes happen in the US.

www.groundzeroshelters.com

 

[weltweit]

I've some friends who live in a wooden house they built themselves in Kentucky.
Hope they are ok.

 

[stdP]

The other thing with tornados is that you usually don't get a large loss of life if early warning systems are in place and taken seriously. I wonder how much warning some of the people got before the tornados hit. Or, if there's good tornado shelters in the buildings there.

<edited to add>
This explains a lot:

Rachel Cope - whose older brother, Clayton Cope, 29, was among those killed when a series of twisters roared through the warehouse near St. Louis - said she's angry that Amazon didn't allow its workers to go to an emergency shelter after the first siren sounded.

If true, isn't that at the very least a charge of corporate manslaughter...?

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

If true, isn't that at the very least a charge of corporate manslaughter...?

Yep. Unless it's in a civil court for financial damages, it'll never see the inside of a courtroom.

 

[Yossarian]

At the candle factory, workers who wanted to go home after they heard the warning sirens were told they'd be fired if they left.

Factory workers threatened with firing if they left before tornado, employees say

Exclusive: At least eight people died in the Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory. Its destruction has become a symbol of the tornado's ruinous power.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[spring-peeper]

fyi

A swarm of tornadoes that ripped across at least six U.S. states has killed more than 70 people in Kentucky and destroyed homes and businesses, officials said.

The devastation was the latest of numerous destructive tornadoes that have struck the United States, where twisters are more common than in any other country in the world. The following are five of the deadliest:

Factbox: Five of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history

A swarm of tornadoes that ripped across at least six U.S. states has killed more than 70 people in Kentucky and destroyed homes and businesses, officials said.

www.reuters.com

 

[hitmouse]

Woman claims Amazon told boyfriend to stay for tornado that took his life

Victim’s girlfriend says death is ‘not really’ Amazon’s fault, adding that this was a ‘what-if situation’

www.independent.co.uk

 

[hitmouse]

At the candle factory, workers who wanted to go home after they heard the warning sirens were told they'd be fired if they left.

Factory workers threatened with firing if they left before tornado, employees say

Exclusive: At least eight people died in the Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory. Its destruction has become a symbol of the tornado's ruinous power.

www.nbcnews.com

Posted this on the USA weather thread, but:

https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article256531471.html

Also this year, Mayfield Consumer Products convinced an appellate court to uphold the dismissal of a civil rights lawsuit filed by Armando Rivera Hernandez, a laborer whom the company recruited in Puerto Rico. Hernandez said he was fired for being overweight after the company’s chief financial officer sent out a text message stating: “We are working diligently to clean up the epileptic, obese, pregnant, and special needs issues[.]”

The courts ruled that Hernandez, having signed a labor agreement with the company and having later been returned to Puerto Rico, should not have access to Kentucky courts. Instead, the courts said, he should have pursued his grievance through an employment service office, as his labor agreement required.

We are working diligently to clean up the epileptic, obese, pregnant, and special needs issues

 

[extra dry]

similar situation at that candle factory - 6-8 dead/missing out of 110 people, who were told to stay and work. Don't know if they had a staff tornado shelter underground?
With a destabilising climate, these storms will become bigger and more frequent and in more areas and cities.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

similar situation at that candle factory - 6-8 dead/missing out of 110 people, who were told to stay and work. Don't know if they had a staff tornado shelter underground?
With a destabilising climate, these storms will become bigger and more frequent and in more areas and cities.

From this video it doesn't look like there was anything underground, but there's so much destruction its difficult to tell:



From other video it looks like there weren't any basements under the houses either. Some of the people who survived report taking shelter in bathrooms and closets.

 

[Dogsauce]

Woman claims Amazon told boyfriend to stay for tornado that took his life

Victim’s girlfriend says death is ‘not really’ Amazon’s fault, adding that this was a ‘what-if situation’

www.independent.co.uk

View attachment 300744

Tbh you could read that as them not letting them leave because it wasn’t safe to go outside, although being Amazon I doubt that was the case.

 

[hitmouse]

Tbh you could read that as them not letting them leave because it wasn’t safe to go outside, although being Amazon I doubt that was the case.

From the article, though:

Cherie Jones, Virden’s girlfriend of 13 years, told the New York Post on Sunday that her boyfriend’s last text to her was almost 16 minutes before the tornado hit the facility.

“I got text messages from him. He always tells me when he is filling up the Amazon truck when he is getting ready to go back… I was like ‘ OK, I love you.’ He’s like, ‘well Amazon won’t let me leave until after the storm blows over’,” Ms Jones recalled.

She said Virden had “20 minutes to get home” because the tornado did not touch down until 8.39pm that night. She added that the couple lived in Collinsville, which was about 13 minutes away from the warehouse.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

It looks like OSHA is going to investigate the Amazon warehouse:

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration confirmed Monday that compliance officers have been at the building collapse since this weekend. It has six months to conduct the investigation, it said in a statement. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

The 1.1-million-square-foot Amazon facility was severely damaged Friday when a tornado ripped through the area. Six people died in the building, and a seventh was injured, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at a news conference Monday.

An investigation to look at potential structural issues and ensure that the building is up to code is ongoing, officials said at the news conference. Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said at the conference that the Amazon facility was “constructed consistent with code.”

OSHA investigating Amazon warehouse collapse in Illinois

This makes the lack of basements make sense:

He added that the Amazon facility does not have a basement because the industrial area is prone to flooding and builders cannot dig far down.

Some places have such high water tables that you can't put a basement under a building. It sounds like this was one area where that was the case. That would have left the only places to take shelter would be the bathrooms and we know how Amazon feels about workers going to the bathroom.

 

[spring-peeper]

more bad news

Tornadoes and 100 mph winds hit Central US; region braces for severe thunderstorms and wildfires

Wild weather slammed across\u00a0the Central United States on Wednesday, with howling winds,\u00a0severe storms, tornadoes and wildfires slamming the region.

www.usatoday.com

Damaging winds have brought down trees and power lines, making widespread power outages possible, the National Weather Service warned. The winds will also be strong enough to kick up dust and raise the risk of wildfire ignition and rapid spread in some areas, AccuWeather said.

Portions of Oklahoma's panhandle were evacuated Wednesday afternoon and all lanes of U.S. Highway 287 closed down due to extreme winds as crews battled wildfires, and parts of Texas' panhandle saw at least four active wildfires accelerated by the strong winds.

The Weather Service has issued a high wind warning along a swath stretching from New Mexico to upper Michigan – including Wisconsin and Illinois – with sustained winds between 25 mph and 40 mph expected.It also issued severe thunderstorm warnings for parts of Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

We had some tornados here, but they didn't do any damage. We had some random damage from straight-line winds like downed electrical lines, trucks blown off the interstate, and trees falling on buildings. In Oklahoma a train was blown off the tracks. To add insult to injury the western part of the state is getting a snowstorm. It's still nowhere near the damage in KY.

Dust storm moving at 90mph winds blanket HALF of Kansas

A blinding dust storm moving at hurricane-force winds of 90mph tore through Kansas and Colorado on Wednesday, causing fires in Oklahoma and tornadoes in Iowa and Nebraska,

www.dailymail.co.uk

<edited to add>
The news is reporting that there's 5 dead from the storms. Three were car accidents in Kansas due to low visibility, another was a truck driver who got flipped by the wind, and the last was a man who had a tree fall on him.

 

[petee]

At the candle factory, workers who wanted to go home after they heard the warning sirens were told they'd be fired if they left.

Factory workers threatened with firing if they left before tornado, employees say

Exclusive: At least eight people died in the Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory. Its destruction has become a symbol of the tornado's ruinous power.

www.nbcnews.com

amazon:

a powerful tornado ripped through an Amazon delivery station in Edwardsville, Illinois, killing six people — Deandre Morrow, 28; Kevin Dickey, 62; Clayton Cope, 29; Etheria Hebb, 24; and Larry E. Virden, 46. They died after portions of the building collapsed on top of them.

These workers could not afford to buy a space flight but had families that loved them and dreams for the future. Hebb, for example, was "a single mother to a 1-year-old son, Malik." Cope was a Navy veteran who tried to help his co-workers find safety as the tornado approached.

...

The sequence of events illustrates a larger problem with Amazon's business culture, which subordinates worker safety to ruthless efficiency. The top priority is profit and wealth creation for investors — even when it puts workers in harm's way.

When Tropical Depression Ida brought deadly floods to New York City in September, "workers were expected to make their shifts at Amazon." When a heat wave struck the Pacific Northwest in June, Amazon "pushed employees to work at maximum speed" as indoor temperatures approached 90 degrees.

Amazon's moral collapse

On Saturday morning, Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos had something on his mind that he needed to share with the world. He was extremely excited to send several very wealthy people into space for 10 minutes. Bezos reported that everyone was "happy." Though he was not flying into...

popular.info

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

An Amazon driver was told by her supervisor that she would lose her job if she stopped delivering packages, despite warnings of tornadoes in the area, according to a Bloomberg report.

The delivery driver told Bloomberg that her base was located in Edwardsville, Illinois — the same location where six Amazon employees died after a tornado struck a warehouse last week.

Around 80 minutes before the tornado struck the warehouse, the driver sent a message — seen and screenshot by Bloomberg — to the supervisor saying, "radio's been going off."

The supervisor told her to "just keep delivering," adding that "we can't just call people back for a warning unless Amazon tells us to," according to the text messages cited by Bloomberg. A person with knowledge of the situation confirmed to Bloomberg the authenticity of the messages between the driver and the supervisor.

When the driver sent another message to her supervisor, around 30 minutes later, saying that she could hear tornado alarms, the supervisor replied to say she should continue with her deliveries, per the texts reported by Bloomberg.

The supervisor then sent another message, telling the driver to "shelter in place for now, I just got word from Amazon", per the texts seen by Bloomberg, before adding, "give it about 15-20 minutes and then continue as normal."

The driver then told her supervisor in a subsequent message that she was going to return to base in Edwardsville for her own personal safety, adding that there was no place to shelter near her and the storm would be on top of her in 30 minutes, Bloomberg reported.

"If you decided to come back, that choice is yours. But I can tell you it won't be viewed as for your own safety. The safest practice is to stay exactly where you are. If you decide to return with your packages, it will be viewed as you refusing your route, which will ultimately end with you not having a job come tomorrow morning," the supervisor then wrote in the text to the driver, per Bloomberg.

After a few more text messages, the supervisor told the driver to stop and find shelter in place because a tornado had hit the warehouse and she wouldn't be able to access it, Bloomberg reported.

Amazon didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment about the incident.

A company spokesperson told Bloomberg in a statement that the supervisor didn't follow the standard safety protocols. They should have told the driver to find shelter if the driver could hear tornado sirens, the spokesperson said.

An Amazon driver was told she would be fired if she stopped delivering packages during tornado warnings: report

This driver survived, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't have a job now that she's gone public with this.

Totals deaths now number 90 with another child added to the list.

 

[petee]

three confirmed touchdowns, three more warnings, ongoign in IN and KY