Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

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This headline literally makes no sense this entire article is written by someone that has absolutely zero knowledge on the subject. I'm flagging it because it is incredibly foolish and will get someone killed.

First, You can't "flee a tornado" like you can a hurricane or a tidal wave. As a matter of fact this is one of the most incredibly dangerous things you can do. Your car is the most unsafe place as you're completely exposed to flying debris (the killer in tornados), and if you get in a traffic jam (which a lot of people 'fleeing' would cause), you _will_ die. Golfball to softball sized hail will destroy your car and render it immovable. You'll be stuck in the open and you will be injured. This happens _literally_ every time there is a severe weather event: someone tries to flee, and they die.

Second, tornadoes have a relatively narrow damage path and tend to travel in straight-ish paths. What's unpredictable about them is when they are actually "touching down" and that's what makes then dangerous. A formation can drop to the ground unpredictably and suddenly, then lift again. this can take place in under 15s and it can cycle several times every few minutes. This is what makes them dangerous and it is irresponsible, ill-advised, against recommendations from experts, and incredibly foolish for this news paper to be promoting this sort of content.

Source: I've been outdoors in tornados, in high school I've worked with trained weather spotters with the National Weather Service, and this is general knowledge for anyone that grew up in Kansas.

Multiple employees of the Mayfield Consumer Products factory told NBC News that they took shelter in bathrooms and hallways when they first heard tornado warning sirens, then supervisors ordered them back to work when they mistakenly assumed the danger had passed.

“I asked to leave and they told me I’d be fired,” Elijah Johnson, 20, told NBC, claiming that he was among a group of about 15 concerned colleagues who were refused permission to evacuate.

“‘Even with the weather like this, you’re still going to fire me?’” he said he asked his manager.

The manager replied, “Yes.”

From TFA.

To underline that: managers threatened retaliatory firing of workers taking shelter within the factory itself.

When a corporation feels it has this much power over its employees, it is time for that corporation to end.

The bigger point is: the company clearly is no position to threaten to fire people for making their own decisions about personal safety in situations like this. If anything, that simply adds to the anxiety, and amplifies risk.

And unfortunately the situation appears to have been far worse than that: it wasn't simply that they were told they couldn't "flee" the premises -- they were expressly forbidden from taking at least some form of shelter, despite these supervisors almost certainly (I'd say 99 percent likely) had no training whatsover in directing these employees to safety in any way:

Multiple employees of the Mayfield Consumer Products factory told NBC News that they took shelter in bathrooms and hallways when they first heard tornado warning sirens, then supervisors ordered them back to work when they mistakenly assumed the danger had passed.

Covid mandates are embolding employers to lord over their employees. One of the side effects, of giving up bodly autonomy as to what goes in your body to your employers. Aside the huge wealth transfer away from the working class in the last two years.

The safest thing to do is stay where you are, but seek available shelter. It doesn't take much.

I'm not saying what the manager did is correct. Being out in the candle assembly floor is probably the worst place as the main killer in tornados is flying debris.

But an interior office, a restroom, a cooler, a safe, a kitchen pantry, under a desk, any enclosed space, or even a low lying trench is sufficient to save your life.

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