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Comment by MrStonedOne | Hacker News Reader

> You can only take so many precautions when tornadoes are in the neighborhood, because although the devastation where one touches down is severe, the area is limited and the path is unpredictable.

One of those precautions is to not make your employees come in to work.

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Evidence you have never lived in the midwest. When I lived there, the tornado sirens would sometimes give you up to 15 minutes of warning that they one was likely in your area. This is not hurricanes where you have a weeks notice.

This was so obviously going to be a troublesome weather day that the local tv stations had canceled previously scheduled scheduling for the day after and replaced it with news.

Everybody knew some shit was gonna go down.

At the very least giving your employees the option of staying home without fear of reprisal is minimum necessary for a clear conscience.

I saw amazon was hit in this storm, knowing somebody who got fired for calling out because a tree blocked the only road out of their area, I guarantee there were people who only showed up because they feared being fired and they wanted to stay home during this but couldn't.

Companies need to answer for those lives.

While that can still be true, lead times have gotten much better in general, and Mayfield actually had over 2.5 hours of warning from KPAH[0], which is remarkable. But 45 mins or more seems to be the norm these days, at least in my general observations. Local authorities choosing to sound the alarms as soon as the warnings are issued is perhaps another matter.

Edit: Someone else commented elsewhere that the current average lead time on TOR warnings is 9 minutes, so I stand corrected. Some of this probably depends on the storm mode associated with the tornado.

For a supercell, the radar signatures are pretty clear and distinct, so it’s easier to provide earlier warnings. A tornado embedded in a QLCS is more difficult to detect, so I’d expect advanced notification to be more difficult.

[0] See, e.g., https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-critical-gap-in-tor...

Tornado sirens are generally triggered by tornado warnings, which require confirmation of a tornado (either by visual confirmation of tornado, or more frequently, the telltale signs on radar). The blog post you cite talks about sufficient evidence to drive severe storm warnings or tornado watches, which are events that can happen close to weekly for some locations--too frequent to be used for tornado sirens.

It should be obvious that the text from the KPAH tweet at 7:03 is not your run-of-the-mill SVR warning or TOR watch (which aren’t issued by tweet, anyway). It was a very clear alert that a storm that had already produced a visibly-confirmed and dangerous tornado was heading toward that location. NWS offices don’t tweet out that kind of language that far in advance unless they are certain about it. They weren’t going to trigger an actual warning at that point, as there was still time for the storm to lift or dissipate, but when they finally did trigger the PDS warning for Mayfield[0] at 9:05, it had been clearly signaled beforehand that that storm was on the way and that it was serious.

So, no, local authorities aren’t going to sound the sirens based on a tweet over two hours in advance of an event (nor was anyone suggesting they should have done), but emergency managers should have been well aware in advance of the first warning issuance that a very dangerous tornado was on its way.

[0] https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/vtec/#2021-O-NEW-KPAH-TO-W...

It was pointed out to me above that the 2.5 hour figure is spurious. (Cliff Mass apparently didn’t account for the fact that time stamps on tweets display the time of the tweet in the reader’s local time zone, not in the OP’s—or OT’s in this case.) So, NWS Paducah tweeted that alert at 9:03 CST, effectively contemporaneous with their issuance of the PDS warning. Still a pretty good lead time for a TOR warning, but nothing like hours of notice. In any case, I stand corrected on that.

That much warning time is an eternity and people who may be in the target zone may end up getting nothing.

When the Joplin tornado hit, we lived "in the path" of where it was expected to go (tracking WSW)/ We hunkered down... but the storm ended up going 15 miles south of us. This was just in a short period of time (maybe 20 minutes).

A lot can change in hours. Storms can dissipate or strengthen with frightening speed. Directions can change.

Right, which is why KPAH didn’t issue an actual warning until 9:05. Giving people a strongly-worded heads-up a couple of hours in advance via tweet gets the word out to emergency managers and other interested parties who can then disseminate that information as the situation develops. Once it becomes clear the tornadic cell hasn’t weakened or deviated, then you can trigger the actual alert systems. But I don’t think anyone can argue that no one had any idea what was coming until minutes in advance.

They had 2 days of warning, not 2.5 hours.

I'm visiting family right now about 70 miles north of the Mayfield tornado touchdown and we had severe weather warnings a couple of days before the storm.

That morning the TV news had a map over the local "heartland" area (Southern Illinois, Southeast Missouri, Northern Kentucky and Southwest Indiana) showing likely severe impacts with likely tornadoes.

So, they knew the risk was there. That said, nobody that grows up here expected that big of a storm in December. It isn't "tornado season" so a lot of folks didn't take it seriously. I know didn't take it too seriously and I've been through an F4 tornado as a kid that did a lot of damage to my town (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion,_Illinois_tornado_outbr...).

Yes, they knew the risk was there, but when these warnings are hundreds of miles across and tornadoes are essentially razor blades going across this warning zone, are you supposed to just stop everything?

The people who died in their homes: what if they had gone to work and been spared? We only hear about the deaths, but people working or going to school during storms (anyone remember Moore, OK?) happen.

Yes, everyone remembers Moore where a school was hit sometime in the 2000's with fatalities because there was no tornado shelter, and the good citizens of Moore voted against tornado shelters, consequently there were more fatalities when another tornado hit in 2013. It shows that proper building codes and proper code enforcement is needed.

>Yes, they knew the risk was there, but when these warnings are hundreds of miles across and tornadoes are essentially razor blades going across this warning zone, are you supposed to just stop everything?

Yes.

OR! at the least! not force your employees to come in at the threat of firing if they don't.

Let them have the freedom to choose their own personal risk factor.

> are you supposed to just stop everything?

Well, it would be a different matter if these factories and warehouses had tornado shelters that were fit for purpose.

After all, it would be pretty absurd to believe that extreme weather is so common that factories and warehouses need to keep working through it; and yet at the same time so uncommon that factories and warehouses don't need adequate shelters.

> extreme weather is so common

Threats of extreme weather are common, but the number of storms that are truly deadly or cause destruction of this magnitude can be a bit over-hyped.

The truth is most people get notifications about warnings and then nothing happens and over time they shrug it off or don't take it seriously.

The employees are no safer at home than at work.

Tornados like this one are a statistical risk you take by living in that part of the planet. We can't engineer practical structures that can survive them. The only mitigation is to live somewhere that doesn't have severe tornados.

We can engineer bunkers and safe houses though, right?

There's a question of whether or not its worth it, especially the maintenance costs. But if tornadoes in the region only give 15 minutes of warning, then a very strong "safehouse" of some kind is probably the best option.

Maybe the group would get trapped in the safehouse and be nearly starving after 2 or 3 days. But the rescuers might find them in time?

-------

I'm not necessarily saying that its easy to build a 110-person bunker. But if you have 110 workers, then surely that's something you need to consider as a preventative / safety measure?

They had a tornado shelter, as would any significantly sized workplace in the midwest. We will find out if it was as good as it was supposed to be in the investigation.

With over 100 found alive, it sounds like they did the right thing here.

The devastation is awful but at least they got out with their lives. They can rebuild.

You wouldn't want a 110 bunker, you want 4 or 5 30 person bunkers.

The building was roughly 340'x300', if the shelter was in the center the longest inside distance would be 200' but they also had material storage outside, up to 380' away as the crow flies(aka. gonna be longer).

They will be literally running for their lives but Bob is 45 and has been smoking since he was 15. Jim is in a wheelchair.

> The employees are no safer at home than at work.

Yes but if they're at work, the employer is responsible for their basic safety. Asking them to sit in a sheet-metal-on-slab building during an EF3 storm is neglectful.

Sending them home to shelter with their families, whatever they do there, would maybe have been the better plan.

Why? From the images I've seen it's not like the houses survived.

The houses have basements, the factory floors do not.

The house does not need to survive for the humans in it to be safer then if they were in a sheet metal box with no basement.

A basement isn't tornado proof when the house above it is collapsing. It looks like ~90% of the workers survived which doesn't strike me as much different than those in homes that took a direct hit.

>The employees are no safer at home than at work.

I think that should be up to the employees to decide, not their manager, and sure as hell not you.

Tornados come and go quickly. Storms capable of producing tornados don't always do so, and those that do produce them only in small areas compared to where they are actually capable of producing them.

Having your employees stay home doesn't help at all. Many of them will be living in the same danger zone, and in fact many will be living in buildings that are less capable of withstanding a tornado.

But they are not all in the same building which reduces the risk collectively.

Yes, but if the tornado had missed the factory building, being concentrated there could have been a benefit.

Not even close. Tornados hitting trailer parks typically come with much higher death tolls than the 8-16 from hitting this building.

Probably should not have "trailer parks" in a tornado zone - in any event a trailer park could have tornado shelters.

>Having your employees stay home doesn't help at all. Many of them will be living in the same danger zone, and in fact many will be living in buildings that are less capable of withstanding a tornado.

Single floor factory building built on a concrete slab vs house with a basement.

You really think the factory will win in terms of human safety?

Oh, but of course, thats the whole point of weaseling around the term 'withstanding a tornado'.

I'm sure the factory building will withstand it better, in terms of how much of it will be remaining in the after math, but I'm also sure that the house with a basement is gonna be safer for the humans.

How do you know they have a house with a basement? Many houses in the Midwest are single-story ranches on a slab. Many people live in manufactured homes, mobile homes, or trailers, especially in places like rural Illinois and Kentucky.

It sounds like of 110 employees, 8 are dead and 8 are missing. That so many survived a direct hit by a massive and powerful tornado is a miracle.

Hitting any nearby trailer parks or houses on slabs would have seen a significantly higher death toll in comparison.

I live in the midwest and dont have a basement- geography and money dictates whether you do or whether you just have a surface level concrete slab.

When the tornado sirens go off, you have at most a half-hour of warning of an approaching tornado, and generally fewer than 10 minutes. With that level of warning, you don't have time to tell your employees not to come in--they're either already there or are on the way. (And if they're on the way, then they probably need to execute the "get out of the car and hide in the ditch" phase of tornado preparedness anyways).

Do you really think this was unknown until the tornado sirens sounded?

Every news station in the region was warning of this storm, but i guess if you look it from a capitalist prospective why take the risk that you accidentally needlessly save a human life at the expense of some profits by canceling the unneeded 3 AM FUCKING MIDNIGHT SHIFT, when you can count on people on hacker news to justify the human cost of your business.

You are willfully ignoring the reality of living in a tornado-prone region. Tornado watches are issued when conditions are favorable for tornados to form. These watches cover hundreds and hundreds of miles (a large part of a state or sometimes even multiple states). They last for many hours. They happen a few dozen times a year for any given location. Tornado watches simply mean "conditions are favorable, keep an eye on the weather" but do not otherwise really impact people's planning or behavior. Do you really expect every business to shut down for 6+ hours each time a tornado watch is issued, dozens of times a year? People who live here and deal with tornados know how they work and none of them would expect their place of business to close just due to a tornado watch.

Tornado warnings are acute, cover a very small area (by weather standards), and come with only minutes notice (and usually only last for 10-30 minutes). Tornado warnings just mean "shelter in place now". There is not time from a warning to do things like drive home from work or cancel a shift. If someone gets a warning as they are about to leave for work, they usually would just shelter without needing to be contacted by work. Due to the size of tornado warning areas, it's likely that a warning at your house may not cover your place of employment or vice-versa. If an employer penalizes an employee for being late because they were sheltering due to a tornado warning, then that is something that they deserve to be criticized for.

You're willfully ignoring this particular weather system, and just talking about tornadoes and tornado warnings in general. People knew this system was going to be exceptionally, maybe historically bad, and they knew it well (meaning days) in advance.

If it was truly so obvious, the government should have issued evacuation orders days in advance.

They didn't because that isn't the case.

So what exactly do you think should have been done instead? Do you think people across a half dozen states should have been told to stay home all day Friday/Saturday?

> They happen a few dozen times a year for any given location.

Not really, no: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/2021_torww_to_date.png

The map is a little difficult to read, but I don’t believe “any given location” has reached even 10 watches in 2021. 171 total have been issued, which seems like a lot at first, but generally multiple watches are going to be issued on one day, so there are relatively few days a year on which TOR watches are being issued, even in areas where they are likelier to be issued.

Life shouldn’t shut down because of a TOR watch, but some people around here are acting like they’re a very common occurrence when they absolutely are not.

That's an interesting map. What does "Initial WOU only" mean? According to NWS, "WOU" is Watch Outline Update. Does that mean that as storms track east and they expand the watch, they don't include those updated regions?

I live in an area shown on that map as having only been under 2 tornado watches in 2021, and I know with certainty that my area has been under more than 2 tornado watches this year. Frequently the watches are issued further west and expanded to cover my area, though.

(edit) This map seems to be more what I would expect: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/20ytora.png My estimate of a few dozen was a bit high, but still this graph shows a large part of the country that averages around 10 or more watches per year. I think my point still stands, though, that people aren't going to put life on hold and take shelter every time there's a tornado watch issued.

A tornado, as someone else put it, is a razor blade cutting across the landscape. The best predictor of whether or not you'll survive a tornado is if you're in that very thin path of destruction. And that path is not known until very, very short time horizons before the event.

As far as a manager knows, the factory is as risky a place to be in a tornado as wherever the workers' homes are. Actually, you can make some cases for the factory being less risky than homes: if the home is a trailer park, well, that is almost certainly toast in a tornado; additionally, workers are going to be awake at the factory versus at home, and are therefore more able to respond to a tornado siren going off.

(This does make some assumptions about the factory having appropriate tornado shelter, and having reasonable policies around what to do in event of tornado warning. I don't have enough information to know if those assumptions hold, but if they don't hold, I would ABSOLUTELY castigate the company for failing those assumptions.)

"We can't save human lives by not forcing them to come into work at the threat of firing and loss of livelihood because we might accidentally save a life that wasn't in danger if we let employees make that risk assessment for themselves by giving them the option to choose."

As far as the manager knows its none of their fucking business because the employee should be the one who makes that call about their personal safety, not their manager, and said employee can't freely make that call if they face reprisal or loss of promotion for doing so.

You're clearly trying to use this tragedy to push some sort of anti-capitalist mission, so I know you will not be willing to see anyone else's point of view. For the benefit of others, though, here is the map the NWS issued showing areas of concern:

https://twitter.com/NWSSPC/status/1469445198501408774

Note that tornados occurred that night in areas well beyond just the red zone. So, to be "safe" (though being home is not necessarily safer - not everyone has basements and many people live on 2nd-floor apartments, etc.), should we have told everyone at least in the "ENH" area (covering major portions of 6 states) to stay home and in their basement for the whole night?

>should we have told everyone at least in the "ENH" area (covering major portions of 6 states) to stay home and in their basement for the whole night?

Yes.

As someone else said, "evidence you have never lived in the midwest."

That enhanced area covers St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, and Memphis. Millions and millions of people that you expect to spend the night in their basements (many of which don't even have a basement), on the still-very-remote chance they may get hit by a tornado. Even in this abnormally bad outbreak, we're talking about just 100s of people impacted. The risk is just not high enough for that kind of response.

Stay home, yes. The point of staying at home is to be near your basement if you have one, so the part about staying in your basement all night is silly.

We've had people telling us to stay home for two years to dodge a particularly dangerous cold, so if the idea that not having a single night shift during such a rare and predictable weather situation is supposed to be shocking on its face, I'm not feeling it.

Is it obvious that home was safer than work?

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