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Tornado Preparation and You(r Workplace)
zagdrob
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Registered User regular
On 12/10/2021, a tornado outbreak struck six states across the Midwest and South. Confirmed deaths have continued to rise and at this point are approaching 100 across the region.
Of special note and the topic of substantial discussion have been six workers killed at an Amazon warehouse / fulfillment center in Madison County, Illinois by an EF3 tornado. During this outbreak there were also at least eight deaths in a Mayfield, Kentucky candle factor where approximately 110 employees were working when the EF3+ tornado struck there.
There have been reports that at both the Amazon warehouse and the Mayfield candle factory workers were told to continue working or not informed of Tornado Warnings that were issued for there areas and there have been statements made that the facilities did not have adequate designated shelter areas and evidence that employees were not properly trained on disaster preparation procedures.
As a starting point for the discussion and to be sure people have facts and not gut feelings, below are links to OSHA FEMA and National Weather Service pages on tornado prepardness planning and guidelines.
https://www.osha.gov/tornado/preparedness#planning
https://www.ready.gov/tornadoes
https://www.weather.gov/safety/tornado-during
Of note from the OSHA site, to clear up some points of contention in the Labor thread:
There were questions / debate about what action the employers should have taken and when. Should the workers have been sent home, altered their behavior, and when should they have taken shelter. OSHA guidelines don't advise taking shelter during a Tornado Watch and only being prepared to quickly take shelter.
There was also discussion around reports that employees wanted to leave once the Tornado Warnings were issued and were told they weren't allowed to leave and in some reports employees were told they would be fired if they did so. One very clear guideline is that if a tornado warning is issued, people should immediately take shelter indoors if at all possible. People should not seek shelter in a car or be outdoors if they are able to get indoors or to a safe building; the only time people should go outdoors during a tornado warning is if the building they are in is unsafe and they have time to get to a safer building / storm shelter.
There has also been discussion around the Amazon warehouse in particular being an unsafe building and lacking designated storm shelters due to corner cutting by Amazon. Per the Ars Technical article below Il. Gov Pritzker did confirm there was no underground shelter as the area the warehouse was built is prone to flooding. With respect to the warehouse itself, though OSHA does have this guideline that would likely apply to the interior space of the warehouse:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/12/osha-investigates-amazon-after-6-die-in-warehouse-struck-by-tornado/
Amazon does claim the facility was built to code, which is likely true. This isn't a defense of Amazon, and is more a condemnation of America's insistence on code being a patchwork of state or local laws with inconsistent enforcement and basically no minimum standards. While it makes sense different regions would have different requirements (Hawaii has different code needs than Miami or New York City or Omaha).
There is also reports in the Ars Technica article that Amazon didn't move workers into the shelters until the second tornado warning at 8:16, ten minutes after the first tornado warning. There is no explanation given for the delay. There are also conflicting claims from Amazon that workers are given disaster preparedness training / regular drills and claims from employees that they weren't given this training or drills. If the training and drills took place Amazon should be able to provide the investigation with documentation that they are fulfilling those responsibilities, but so far that has just been competing claims.
Anyway, hopefully this clears up some misconceptions and the tornado and resulting loss of life can be discussed here instead of in the Labor thread.
Of special note and the topic of substantial discussion have been six workers killed at an Amazon warehouse / fulfillment center in Madison County, Illinois by an EF3 tornado. During this outbreak there were also at least eight deaths in a Mayfield, Kentucky candle factor where approximately 110 employees were working when the EF3+ tornado struck there.
There have been reports that at both the Amazon warehouse and the Mayfield candle factory workers were told to continue working or not informed of Tornado Warnings that were issued for there areas and there have been statements made that the facilities did not have adequate designated shelter areas and evidence that employees were not properly trained on disaster preparation procedures.
As a starting point for the discussion and to be sure people have facts and not gut feelings, below are links to OSHA FEMA and National Weather Service pages on tornado prepardness planning and guidelines.
https://www.osha.gov/tornado/preparedness#planning
https://www.ready.gov/tornadoes
https://www.weather.gov/safety/tornado-during
Of note from the OSHA site, to clear up some points of contention in the Labor thread:
There were questions / debate about what action the employers should have taken and when. Should the workers have been sent home, altered their behavior, and when should they have taken shelter. OSHA guidelines don't advise taking shelter during a Tornado Watch and only being prepared to quickly take shelter.
Warning Systems
Tornado Watch - Tornadoes are likely to occur in the watch area. Be ready to act quickly and take shelter, and check supply kits. Monitor radio and television stations for more information.
Tornado Warning - Imminent threat - A tornado has been sighted in the area or has been indicated by radar. Take shelter immediately.
There was also discussion around reports that employees wanted to leave once the Tornado Warnings were issued and were told they weren't allowed to leave and in some reports employees were told they would be fired if they did so. One very clear guideline is that if a tornado warning is issued, people should immediately take shelter indoors if at all possible. People should not seek shelter in a car or be outdoors if they are able to get indoors or to a safe building; the only time people should go outdoors during a tornado warning is if the building they are in is unsafe and they have time to get to a safer building / storm shelter.
Outside: Seek shelter inside a sturdy building immediately if a tornado is approaching. Sheds and storage facilities are not safe. Neither is a mobile home or tent. If you have time, get to a safe building.
In a vehicle: Being in a vehicle during a tornado is not safe. The best course of action is to drive to the closest shelter.
There has also been discussion around the Amazon warehouse in particular being an unsafe building and lacking designated storm shelters due to corner cutting by Amazon. Per the Ars Technical article below Il. Gov Pritzker did confirm there was no underground shelter as the area the warehouse was built is prone to flooding. With respect to the warehouse itself, though OSHA does have this guideline that would likely apply to the interior space of the warehouse:
Avoid auditoriums, cafeterias and gymnasiums that have flat, wide-span roofs.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/12/osha-investigates-amazon-after-6-die-in-warehouse-struck-by-tornado/
Amazon does claim the facility was built to code, which is likely true. This isn't a defense of Amazon, and is more a condemnation of America's insistence on code being a patchwork of state or local laws with inconsistent enforcement and basically no minimum standards. While it makes sense different regions would have different requirements (Hawaii has different code needs than Miami or New York City or Omaha).
There is also reports in the Ars Technica article that Amazon didn't move workers into the shelters until the second tornado warning at 8:16, ten minutes after the first tornado warning. There is no explanation given for the delay. There are also conflicting claims from Amazon that workers are given disaster preparedness training / regular drills and claims from employees that they weren't given this training or drills. If the training and drills took place Amazon should be able to provide the investigation with documentation that they are fulfilling those responsibilities, but so far that has just been competing claims.
Anyway, hopefully this clears up some misconceptions and the tornado and resulting loss of life can be discussed here instead of in the Labor thread.
zagdrob on
+7
Posts
The DC was engineered to hypothetically stand up to an F5, to the extent anything can. It's basically just a 1 story concrete bunker. No windows,etc.
* Apparently a tornado shelter is not required, but Illinois is tornado country, and their code should require something. Sure, you can't have an underground space because of flooding, but above-ground shelters exist, (steel walls bolted to the foundation) or maybe require extra reinforcement around the bathrooms, or something. It is completely foreseeable for this warehouse to get hit by a tornado.
* If there is no tornado shelter on-site, then the OSHA rule that you can force employees to work during a tornado watch is suspect. By the time it turns into a tornado warning, there's not enough time to drive to a safe location. This might be the best place to push for change. Changing the rule to require a nearby tornado shelter doesn't require pushing legislation through, and anyplace that has common tornadoes should also require shelters anyway, so it won't hit that many businesses.
Agreed, the code absolutely should have required something more than (what sounds like) cinderblock walls with at most light steel reinforcement around the bathroom areas. If that were the case, along with likely guidelines for a reasonable number per square foot / distance from any work areas and clear signage and regular tornado drills it seems pretty likely the six deaths could have been prevented.
If they actually had reinforced storm shelters and this was a direct hit by an EF5 or there had been no warning / time to react it might be a different story, but a EF3 with 10+ minutes warning simply should not have resulted in deaths even in a freak circumstance. This wasn't a mobile home park without shelters or a family that slept through the warning, this was a commercial building with people who were aware of the weather conditions and in an area that somewhat regularly has severe weather and tornadoes.
Right, because that is not how the math on these kinds of things works. Its not the cost of doing something at the one place you identified after the event happened. You have to do it at every similar place.
So not just the 110 amazon warehouses, but at the 5000 walmart stores, the 4000 targets, the 2300 home depots...etc etc. Or how about the 100k public school buildings? A basic home tornado shelter is 5-10k, I don't do construction, but I've got to imagine say a 20x20 bunker would cost many times that though you probably get some area vs surface maxima.
As a sort of napkin math figuring, say it costs $500 per occupant to build a shelter, and everyone should have access to a shelter at their place of work or school. There are 275m Americans under 65. That is 138b dollars to build shelters to partially prevent (since most tornado deaths are at home) ~80 deaths a year. The NSC puts the odds of dying in a Cataclysmic Storm-which includes things like Hurricanes and as well as 1:58,669; Bee Stings are 1:59,507
You only need shelters in tornadoes prone areas, just like you only need heating suitable for-30 degrees weather in places where -30 degrees weather is a thing.
In both case, Amazon can afford it easily, and has therefore no excuses.
And many places in tornado prone areas already have tornado shelters or places that can safely function as such. We don't need to upgrade literally every Walmart and public school because not everybody has fucked it up as badly as Amazon did. And if you're building a new giant warehouse from scratch, those considerations should be baked in from the start. A school building erected in the 60s has different circumstances than a building that isn't even old enough to vote.
Here's a map where you can see the tracks of what looks like every tornado in the US since 1950.
https://mrcc.purdue.edu/gismaps/cntytorn.htm#
You're basically looking at all of the US east of the Rocky Mountains as places that have a decent chance of a tornado.
If you're just talking Tornado Alley for mandatory storm shelters, it wouldn't have made a difference in this outbreak because it didn't happen there.
Nah, tornado frequency is significantly higher in Tornado Alley, even if they pop up further east (with a caveat that there's that whole blotch of tornadoes in the southeastern states as well). And just because the tornado was an EF3 doesn't mean the building would have been safe in an EF2.
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When building new construction it’s surprisingly cheap to change the building materials to make an area a storm shelter if done before the building was built. Afterwards it is very expensive. Which is why code changes often on effect new buildings.
For a counterpoint to my own argument, someone elsewhere brought up a good point that tornadoes tend to cut a very narrow path of destruction. It is both possible and likely for a location in tornado country to never get hit by a tornado. With that in mind, a tornado shelter in every building doesn't make sense. It's an expensive addition with a very low chance of actually saving lives.
But then this comes back to my other point. If a location doesn't have a tornado shelter, and there's a tornado watch in effect, forcing people to keep working is a problem. Once the tornado warning starts, it's already too late for anything other than sheltering in place in a building that won't keep you safe.
Like, Texas has more tornadoes annually than Virginia has had from 1950 to 2020.
How frequently are Tornado Watches sent out would be a consideration there.
If the business doesn't like it they can provide shelter. But tornado watches are less than a day in duration and generalized localized even within a state. Texas has the highest tornados/year count after a cursory check, but I would expect that impacts maybe 10-15 days a year for any given location on average, and even then you probably only lose one shift each of those days to it.
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We are on Tornado Watch 563 of the year. The thing with watches is they tend to be huge. Just eyeballing it, the current one is larger than Iowa.
As for the narrowness of them. In the most tornado heavy part of the country-central Oklahoma - the yearly odds of a tornado hitting a spot are 0.06% So even in the absolute heart of the most active tornado zone, a shelter in a building that lasts 100 years(which basically nothing we build now will reach) before being rebuilt won't be hit 95% of the time.
It seems like requiring buildings to either have an underground designated shelter, or have an indoor shelter built to some designated standard that can withstand most tornadoes (shelters that can stand up to an EF5 aren't exactly realistic) seems like a reasonable expectation for new construction in tornado alley and other states where tornadoes are relatively common. I'm kind of surprised that's not a requirement because it feels like cinderblock walls should be sufficiently strong to resist at least an EF3 and probably EF4 tornado even if the roof and outer shell of the building might be destroyed.
A big point of failure in tornadoes is just a structure where the walls come down if it loses the roof. Which, you know, should be easy to reinforce for if you're just doing the bathrooms or something.
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Pretty simple rule would be "If a tornado watch is issued, and you don't have sufficient shelter, you must stop operations to allow employees to reach shelter."
If you do, you can keep going with someone monitoring the weather until someone hits the Oh Shit button.
And of course if it's not already a thing that a business can't require people to work in a tornado warning A. why not B. fix that!
Thats what they said. Keep going in a watch, if the building has shelter, until and unless it escalates.
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I think by 'monitoring the weather' that means radio / TV for a warning to be issued not just watching outside to actually see the twister or hear sirens.
Basically the assumption is that if a warning is issued for your area it should be assumed a tornado is coming and you should be sheltered in place - radar and NWS warnings are pretty timely and accurate in most cases.
I misread it as warning, my bad. Redacted
107 mph gust reported in Colorado which is basically exactly the right timing and distance for our next 3 hours of "devastating winds" warning.
My co-worker's had his power blip like 7 times and I was fine until having lost it twice in 20 minutes.
See, how can you be "ready to take shelter" if you remain inside a building that would not withstand a tornado? You are explicitly far enough away from a shelter that if an actual tornado warning occurs you can't reach safety.
Here's the inherent problem with human reaction to these things
I lived in OK for quite some time and the whole idea of a Tornado Warning lost any and all threat after the (guesstimating) 20th one happened the first year and no tornadoes touched down. Hell, I remember three separate tornado warnings being issued for the same storm on the same day.
So what happens is is people start catching the news and watching the actual tornado live tracking instead of heeding the warnings because they come so frequently that they end up losing all impact, whereas when someone in Connecticut or New York gets a tornado warning they're already holed up before finishing reading it.
The problem with live tracking is it's often confirmed satellite data that's 5 minutes behind.
Yup shits coming up on us just south of her in Lincoln.
I'm in a really squat brick and reinforced concrete commercial building downtown so I should be fine.
The big thing is that in the vast majority of buildings in the vast majority of tornadoes the occupants are going to be safe and sheltered if they go to interior spaces without windows (typically the discussed bathroom / office areas that are designated as storm shelter areas). Same thing with the hallways in schools or even ground floor bathrooms in residences without basements.
Tornadoes just aren't that deadly except for the exceedingly rare exception that is very deadly.
In most years, unless there is a tornado like the Joplin one that was an EF5 right through a city, deaths are low double digits, sometimes even single digits. And even then those deaths typically come from people asleep at home or people in cars not people in schools or businesses / workplaces. I'm all for looking at the standards of interior construction and possibly ways that codes could be revised to strengthen interior spaces when there aren't below-grade shelters, but from a construction standpoint I'm not sure it's a problem that needs large changes.
Without more information on the Amazon facility and where / what happened with those six employees, it really seems like it's quite possibly either a training problem (if they weren't in a designated shelter). I'm very curious to see what the investigation determines was the cause and if it was a catastrophic building failure of the designated spaces, employees having insufficient warning (or not taking the opportunity) to go to the designated interior spaces to shelter, or something else.
Fuck this shit. Stay safe!
It'll never happen because people who have their entire state covered by a "watches" for several weeks of the year that mostly come to naught, probably don't actually want to have random lock down days where everything has to close.
This also has a pretty dubious baked in assumption that people being at work is what is preventing them from being at a shelter.
Like in Oklahoma less the 4% of private homes have basements, and less the 1/5th of residents have any sort of tornado shelter at home.
Yes there are public shelters, but if you think most people are relocating themselves from their homes to the local school or w/e for entire days, a dozen times a year....no.
Also this isn't sourced beyond this news report but:
Not sure what that figure means but 98% is good, no?
https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-08/fema342_bpat_report_midwest_tornadoes_1999.pdf
A pretty good(220 page, lots of pictures) report by FEMA on building construction and tornados. CMU(cinderblock) is kinda shit unless it is heavily reinforced and filled, and at that point you are probably better off just using cast concrete.
The really insane thing about these storms is its fucking December. It should be freezing and snow being the concern not 55 and tornados like its May.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/amazon-worker-deaths-tornados-raise-questions-tornado-training-cellpho-rcna8570
So, some problems with Amazon, as opposed to government regulations: it appears Amazon may have been not doing safety drills. In addition:
"Two employees who work at nearby facilities said they had been given very little tornado-specific training and were expected to work through tornado warnings."
Most of the people who died were not in the "proper" sheltering location, which could easily be due to not being properly trained, and the lateness of the shelter order could easily be due to managers waiting until the last moment to actually issue the shelter order, because that's lost productivity.