“ This is pretty effed-up if true. I guess some of the people left anyway.”
Agree, but I’m suspicious it actually happened. First off, getting employees is next to impossible right now. They were working late obviously trying to keep up with demand, so firing people would be counter productive.
Secondly, would it have been better to send 100+ people out to their cars with the storm bearing down on them? Doesn’t seem like a good idea either.
It’s a huge tragedy for sure. Praying for all of those affected.
In reading the article, some of the (many) workers who got trapped in the factory when it collapsed had overheard folks asking to go home being told to get back to work, which they did, although some of them left.
I agree that going home might not have been the most advisable thing to do - it sounds like a real mess.
I was working in downtown Denver - right in the middle of Capitol Hill - when this happened in 1988: https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/colorado/denver/amazing-rare-footage-denver/ (Six tornadoes touched down)
I was working in a mental health center and - wouldn’t you know it? - my boss was worried about a client he had to see, a man who was on parole from another state, who had appeared in our MHC expressing paranoid ideation and asking to be hooked up with some resources. So my boss asked me to stick around. (Note: This same guy ended up killing a couple of people just a day or two later! My boss was right to be suspicious.)
So I was hanging out just outside my boss’s office with the doors open while he talked to this guy when the sirens started going off. Everyone started yelling and hollering. The building did have a basement but I recall that when I heard there were tornadoes visibly touching down I ran to the window - the client was standing in my boss’s office and he looked really confused, with waves of danger radiating from him. My boss was trying to get the guy out the door because (I could tell) he didn’t want him in the building’s basement.
So just about every employee there actually ran out into the parking lot to watch the tornadoes, I’m sorry to say. (Most of the clients who were on the premises went to the basement, showing more sense than the staff.)
We saw the one that messed up the EMW warehouse on the corner of Evans and Broadway and then my boss came hurrying outside and exclaimed, pointing: “That one’s over my house!” (He had a very nice house in a swank part of town.) We were all just amazed to see these multiple tornadoes all around us, but for some strange reason there was little wind, hail, rain, etc, at our location.
The one my boss said was over his house did strike his house, causing little damage to the structure but it tore a huge cypress tree that was in his front yard out by the roots. The streets were so littered with tree branches after that it took forever to clear.
(I may have told this story before on this forum; apologies if that is the case.)
As an EHS manager, there would have been an osha required shelter in place location. Would have been tornado proof, likely not. Lawsuits will be coming and trigger more regulation
These are adults that shouldn’t be told anything. Individuals have the autonomy to decide what is best for themselves not wait for someone else to tell them what that is
When a tornado is bearing down on you, the LAST place you want to be is outside.
And realistically, the chances of being hit like that are really pretty slim. A direct hit to take out the entire building is not likely. Neither was a funnel that size.
Hind sight is 20/20.
Unfortunately, that’s one of the problems with middle management. There were supply sergeants and quartermasters at Pearl Harbor that were refusing to issue weapons and ammo while the attack was underway, while the buildings they were in were being shelled or bombed. Others refused to let their troops and sailors take cover or fight back, instead demanding they continue with regular duty. Same kind of thing is likely to have happened here.
It was a PDS. The whole nation knew a wave was coming for hours even a day ahead of time.
I was up all night checking and my wife prepped the shelter for our brood.
If it had occured during working hours, there’s no doubt my workplace would have sent us home.