Source: https://twitter.com/AmeliaMtv/status/1469634726558412800
Here's an article with photos for anyone who doesn't want to watch the video: https://fox2now.com/news/illinois/photos-tornado-destroys-ed...
It is quite impractical to build a large building that will withstand a tornado. The fact that the building was cut in half and the contents largely removed is not terribly surprising.
Buildings like this (including big box stores, large grocery stores, office buildings, etc.) typically have designated tornado shelter areas. These should be on the lowest floor (below ground level is the best) with small rooms. The walls are generally made of cinder blocks or something sturdier. If you are in a building like this, need a tornado shelter, and don't know where it is look for the restrooms. When you get there you will likely find a sign that indicates it is the tornado shelter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZMAmxP5cgs
Cinder-block with metal reinforcement is a level beyond brick though.
Was at my friends house in texas a month ago who had a storm shelter in the garage, it's a 1/4" steel box that is anchored to the ground and has the GPS coordinates etched on the inside since if it does it's job there may not be anything around but GPS to tell you where it is.
If your plat and neighbourhood have been scrubbed by the FSM's Own Geographic Erasor Pencil, there's not going to be much by way of landmarks to guide responders. Street sights, structures, and even kerbside markings will be gone.
GPS coordinates tend not to be strongly affected by severe wind events.
Survivors or those requesting help might not be adults or residents. They might be children, visitors, or strangers seeking shelter (particularly in the case of a business or commercial address). They might be volunteers searching for survivors. Contact might be over radio if phone service is down. GPS operates directly via satellite, so is independent of and terrestrial infrastructure.
The operating assumption of a disaster is that previous assumptions of normality are violated. Responses which remove assumptions of available serivces, or restore a bare minimal functional level of service, or which protect against likely disruptions, tend to be those that are most useful.
GPS is based on
I think an address is much easier to understand for a child.
Using an uncommon for most people method of location identifier brings problems of its own. Sure Lat/Long is familiar to us, but I’d guess the average person is unfamiliar.
Like I said, I like the idea but it doesn’t come without its own problems and addresses aren’t as useless in this scenario as implied.
You'll find that this is the case for, e.g., earthquake construction codes in seismicly-active regions.
Structures can be rebuilt. Humans are a more challenging rehabilitation challenge.
Though the Joplin facility was demolished, and five patients died, those were due to loss of power, and not from tornadic winds or debris themselves.
The building performed as intended, even under a direct strike.
It's also quite obvious there's a need for a shelter in areas where tornadoes are likely to form. So obvious in fact it's impossible to plead ignorance of that need, so the only other possible reason they didn't is carelessness because they could not have cared less if employees lives were at risk.
I do not know for sure if that same procedure would have applied to DLI4. But my feeling is that unless the state of Illinois, Madison County, or the city of Edwardsville have a specific regulation requiring such buildings to have tornado shelters, then there was no such shelter at DLI4, and workers were instructed to assemble in the center of the building.
Internal office sections of large Amazon fulfillment centers are off-limits to non-managers, and unauthorized entry is prevented thru the use of door badge scanners, which will not unlock the door unless the badge owner has sufficient permissions.
I can't imagine what an awful, dehumanizing, and absolutely terrifying experience it was.
Weather forecasts can usually identify that the conditions favorable for tornados are happening. That is announced as a Tornado Watch. If someone sees a tornado, they will issue a Tornado Warning, usually for the whole county. They will sound sirens if available. People are urged to take shelter, ideally underground. Otherwise they are told to shelter in the most substantial part of a building. Many people do take shelter but others decide to tough it out.
Tornados are relatively small compared to hurricanes and earthquakes but they are very intense within a few hundred foot wide area where they tear everything apart and blow it around with 300mph winds doing more destruction with that debris. They move in erratic directions and can pickup and hop around. There can be multiple tornados at one time.
Any one person is not a great risk of harm but anyone in the path of the tornado is at great risk. People living in the area have been through tornado warnings before without harm. This can lead to people assuming that they will be fine and not taking precautions. Chances are they are right but if they are wrong… it goes very wrong.
There are occasions where tornados can be predicted accurately with radar data, yet with only about a 4 minute lead time. The hook echo has been recognized for decades with recognition and detection further refined with Next Gen Doppler radar.[1] But not all tornadic storms display a hook echo and not all hook echoes produce tornadoes.
I’ve lived in the Midwest my whole life. I’ve heard many tornado sirens, been through many watches and warnings, and never once actually been close to a tornado that did any damage.
A few months ago I was woken in the middle of the night by my wife who heard sirens. I was groggy, and before I was convinced to get out of bed, the sirens stopped. This has happened dozens of times in my life, and felt entirely routine - there was no panic. A few minutes later my phone gave an emergency alert announcing a Tornado Watch. I decided it was time to move to the basement, so I went downstairs and set up candles and blankets, and then began the process of gently waking my 3 young children in an attempt to move them without terrifying them.
As I moved the last of them, I glanced at a clock and saw it was 11:53. We moved to the basement and all was quiet. It seemed like another false alarm.
The next morning I discovered that the tornado hit two blocks away from me, and leveled entire street’s worth of houses. Radar confirmed the tornado passed through my neighborhood at 11:50. If I had been two blocks south, at least me and my son would be dead. Potentially more of us.
Alarm fatigue is real, but don’t let it happen with tornado sirens. They come quick and hit hard.
What might apply creating similar alarm fatigue effect, and this is really just me guessing based on Amazon facilities reputation, is the incentive (or its lack thereof) Amazon may provide for workers to evacuate vs continue their work.
* I have never experienced tornado alarm, but have experienced multiple rockets alarms, some of which, I've (foolishly) decided to ignore in favor of getting another hour of sleep.
Buildings in Tornado-prone areas must be built with tornado shelters. Those are rooms within the building that are designed to withstand both a hit from a tornado, and the debris.
To be clear, the entire building does not need to be a tornado shelter. Just enough space within the building to hold its occupants.
This was the wrong decision also for Amazon. Taking at least the bare minimum reasonable measures to protect their employees would have saved the company a lot of money and lawyers time. Nobody could have stopped the warehouse destruction in any case but the recovering would have been much more simple and much faster.