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Comment by blondin | Hacker News Reader

several people on this thread are asking for "evidence" for claims. but here's the more interesting question: why is an amazon warehouse open when a tornado warning was in effect? was it to shelter people? and if not, why was it open?

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Tornado warnings are sudden, the last thing you want to do is put everyone in their car and on the road during a tornado warning. A tornado watch is not reason enough to shut down. A tornado watch means “keep an eye on the weather”. There’s a lot of room between watch and warning (there’s also “tornado emergency” in extreme scenarios) and deciding when things are bad enough to close but not bad enough to shelter in place is more of an art than science. I’m sure whoever was in charge of keeping the warehouse open or closing it down isn’t exactly sleeping well.

I can’t answer your question exactly but I have been in a warehouse when a tornado warning was issued and the warehouse in the path of the storm. They got everyone together and put us all against the strongest wall furthest from the approaching tornado. (It lifted before reaching us)

Because tornado warnings and watches happen many times a year in tornado alley. Amazon is far from exceptional in having its warehouse open during these weather conditions.

Amazon is far from exceptional in having its warehouse open during these weather conditions.

And you know that how precisely?

Because people live here and are telling you that a tornado watch can sometimes be a weekly occurrence in the summer. Tornado warnings are far more rare, but even then, it generally takes tornado sirens/phone alerts to adjust people's behavior.

OK I get the message. Do we know when these alerts start appearing in the Edwardsville area?

As far as yesterday was concerned, Edwardsville (and neighboring areas) knew they were in the line of fire by 8PM local time. The tornado hit the facility at ~8:40.

Source: my phone blew up with 3+ emergency alerts starting at around 8. (here's a NWS tweet from 7:45 -- you can see what we were dealing with: https://twitter.com/NWSStLouis/status/1469483383994691586)

Things can get out of control quicker (15-20 minutes warning is usually as close as it gets), but I think it's definitely reasonable to suspect negligence in this instance. There are two possibilities, imo:

1. They had enough time to get people to shelter, and chose not to 2. The facility wasn't up to par

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