13 ms·

Kentucky candle factory: questions arise over why staff worked during tornadoes

73 points by vanusa 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago
To burn the proverbial midnight oil?
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  Wouldn't that be a lamp factory as opposed to a candle maker?
MrStonedOne 5y ago
Because managers placed profits and money over human lives....
- khazhoux 5y ago
  It's more likely due to incompetent lack of foresight by planners, architects, and builders. I doubt that a group of bosses with tophats and thin cigars took a red pen to the tornado-shelter budget, while laughing at the pathetic worker class.
  - MrStonedOne 5y ago
    I guarantee thats what they did, but i'm not talking about there. There was no need to have your workers working during a predicted massive tornado storm.
rectang 5y ago
This is important information: > “It appears most were sheltering in the place they were told to shelter,” the governor, Andy Beshear, said. “I hope that area was as safe as it could be, but this thing got hit directly by the strongest tornado we could have possibly imagined.” You can only take so many precautions when tornadoes are in the neighborhood, because although the devastation where a large one touches down can be severe, the area is limited and the path is unpredictable. Also: > A company spokesperson said Sunday that eight of the 110 workers on the overnight shift Friday are confirmed dead and another eight are missing. For most of Sunday, the authorities had feared that more than 70 of those shift workers were missing [...] RIP for those who have passed; it's good to hear that they are fewer that we thought.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  > 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.
  - jandrewrogers 5y ago
    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.
    - imglorp 5y ago
      > 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.
      - treis 5y ago
        Why? From the images I've seen it's not like the houses survived.
        MrStonedOne 5y ago
        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.
        treis 5y ago
        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.
spamizbad 5y ago
Because the operators are cruel, stupid or both. There's no rational business reason to keep a factory operating during extreme weather. All those candles they manufactured? Destroyed by the storm. And now an entire shift of your workforce is wiped out.
- rectang 5y ago
  There are so many examples of such cruelty that we don't need to go looking for it when it's not really there.
- comeonseriously 5y ago
  Fair, but let's say they sent everyone home and 3 of the people died in their homes from the tornado. Would we be outraged that the company sent them home in such foul weather?
  - spacecadet 5y ago
    I think there is no win for the business or the families in any of the outcomes. We know so little about what the Business actually knew and what type of protection or preference these individuals had in the moment. I also think any reasoning about a solution is not making space for the individuals who lost their lives. The number of comments and how quickly this is moving off the first page of HN speaks volumes about the sentiment of the this community.
  - themaninthedark 5y ago
    Down thread someone lists the average tornado warning time as 9 minutes. With 9 minutes warning, most people would be just getting to their cars with some still on the plant floor getting their stuff to go home. They had 20 minutes per the article, in that time frame you would have a traffic jam in the parking lot as everyone tried to leave down the 2 lane road that services the factory.
    - MrStonedOne 5y ago
      Playing fast and loose here with warning definitions. They had 2 days warning. not 20 minutes.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mindslight 5y ago
What are the current building codes and operating regulations regarding tornadoes? I would think that every commercial/industrial structure in a tornado-prone area should have a shelter that is capable of holding the occupancy capacity plus some extra. When a Tornado Watch is issued there should be periodic facility announcements stating so, describing where the shelter is, and prepping everyone that if the klaxon goes off they should drop what they're doing and go to the shelter. When a Tornado Warning happens, a klaxon should go off and it should be expected that everyone drops what they are doing and heads to the shelter. How far off am I from what is mandated? (Or if I'm missing something, what is reasonable?)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  "What is reasonable" is the question. The vast majority of buildings are never in the direct path of a tornado. Is it worth the substantial costs of having a basement bunker large enough for all potential occupants, that will almost certainly never be needed in the lifetime of the building?
  - mindslight 5y ago
    The expectation seems to be that the right thing to do in a tornado is to go into a shelter, so probably? Especially if the costs of adding such shelters are much lower for new construction. I would guess that basements or office areas in large warehouses could be reinforced relatively easily to create a tornado shelter in an otherwise skin-on-structure building. I haven't done the math though, so perhaps it would be burdensome. Then again we end up doing an awful lot of security theatre for the vanishingly small risk of air travel terrorism, due to people's perceptions of not being in control. Maybe being corralled by corporate micromanagement for market-bottom wages falls in a similar place.
bastardoperator 5y ago
It's a good question. A reasonable/decent employer would have immediately sent everyone home for safety reasons alone. A factory has to be one of the least safe places to be in a natural disaster, and candles themselves can be fairly heavy and typically live in glass. I just hope these folks didn't suffer too badly, and honestly I hope the families take legal action against the business.
- Clubber 5y ago
  So the average warning time of a tornado is around 9 minutes. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/06/16/tornado-warning-system-has-come-long-way-but-could-better/5152104001/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/06/16/tor... I suspect an even worse place to be during a tornado is a car on the road, which is where the workers would probably be if the employer sent them home. Some things just aren't preventable.
- themaninthedark 5y ago
  Not necessarily...110 people in a factory, say you have 30 minutes notice(article says 20!). Stopping the line : 5~10 minutes Collect stuff : 5 minutes Get to cars: 5 minutes Get out of gate: 5~10 minutes Oh look, now the news articles would all be asking why didn't the factory make the workers shelter in place instead of sending them out into a dangerous situation. A reasonable/decent employer has emergency plans appropriate for their area and trains their staff on them.
  - bastardoperator 5y ago
    If you've worked in a production factory you know it doesn't take 5-10 minutes to shut down. Nearly all machines/facilities have emergency/instant shutdown capabilities. Looking at the size of this operation in the picture, I don't think it's 5 minutes to the parking lot or 5 minutes to get out either. A well prepared company would have already gone through a tornado evacuation scenario with staff ahead of time. I'll take my chances trying to drive away from a disaster with 15 minutes lead time versus hoping I survive the full impact of the tornado. Maybe I've watched too many stormchasers on twitter, but they're all alive and in cars/vans.
matttproud 5y ago
By liberty of contract, it's damn-well my right to work during an impending tornado strike. /s
LinuxBender 5y ago
This really doesn't feel like the right question. The only safe(ish) place in a tornado is being in a building or bunker rated for a tornado. The technology exists. I think I would ask: - Are insurance companies incentivizing building certified shelters by lowering insurance for those that get said building certifications? This question also applies to residential homes. - Are state and federal governments incentivizing building certified shelters by giving tax breaks to businesses that get said building certifications and have them inspected annually? - Are any construction companies providing services to retrofit buildings in tornado prone locations? If there is money to be made I believe this would become a thing. Whether people are working, eating or sleeping I think is not as relevant as mitigating the root cause of a well known risk and incorporating that into business cost and offsetting the retrofit with tax exemptions and write-offs. If you want your folks to keep working during a tornado, then design the building to handle one. Switzerland somehow managed to address this issue for an even less likely risk, as nearly all homes have a fallout bunker.
- ponow 5y ago
  People already have an incentive to save their lives.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Sure, and people make risk judgements every day. We get in our cars and drive. That decision assumes a risk of death or serious injury. Is it worth risking death to drive to the store for a pint of ice cream? Not in the abstract, but we all do it. Life isn't perfectly safe, and cannot be made so for anything approaching reasonable economic tradeoffs.
bigmattystyles 5y ago
They have been on my mind. As awful as the tornadoes are, that’s not why though. I know it’s a reality of the world we live in, but while most of us would have been at home warm and well fed, these poor souls were manufacturing fucking candles overnight. We can keep telling ourselves that creating tech will improve the world and maybe it will, I hope it does, but in a factory overnight making candles, what’s wrong with all of us.
- tpmx 5y ago
  Do you want to ban e.g. properly compensated work outside of normal office hours?
  - bigmattystyles 5y ago
    No, but I’m not going to pretend that people working overnight in a candle factory are doing so because they have to in order to merely survive.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      It is hard to parse what you are talking about. Banning all overnight work outside of hospitals? What does creating tech have to do with a factory that chooses to continue operating overnight? And what difference would it have made if the people were sleeping at home and a tornado rolled through their neighborhood?
      - bigmattystyles 5y ago
        I'll own up to not being the most eloquent writer - I'm not, and don't think I did, argue for banning all work outside of normal hours - I just wanted to say that it didn't sit well with me that there are people making candles in a factory overnight. If they were making vaccines and well compensated, I would understand, but candles - it just triggered a huge sense of unfairness to me and I wanted to voice it. The tech bit was just to connect it back to the HN audience where we sometimes dilute ourselves in thinking that if we just create new tech, everything in the world will improve; I was trying to argue it likely won't but I'll grant you that I didn't convey that well at all. The last thing I'll say is that a candle factory can choose to operate overnight because their employees are basically serfs, they don't have much of a choice.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bryan0 5y ago
The article answers its own question > The 110 workers on the night shift had about 20 minutes warning that a powerful tornado was bearing down.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  They had 2 days of warning that friday night was gonna bring a fuck ton of tornadoes because thats how obvious the weather pattern was. You're playing fast and loose with risk definitions, and arguing that until loss of life was guaranteed the employer had no responsibility to not force employees to risk their life. The entire region knew this was gonna be a bad storm in advance. Bosses and managers choose deadlines over human safety. They should be held criminally liable for that choice.
  - bryan0 5y ago
    > You're playing fast and loose with risk definitions, and arguing that until loss of life was guaranteed the employer had no responsibility to not force employees to risk their life. Not at all, I am just reading the article which makes no mention of this event being a serious risk more than 20 minutes in advance. Possibly you have better sources, but you should provide a link with the source.
davoneus 5y ago
I've not heard whether or not this factory had any shelter or not. If not, then IMO they should hang the owners in public and then get busy making sure nobody else has to suffer this lack of neglect. However, it's tough to have a shelter-in-place that covers every eventuality. We have a large warehouse with about 100 people, and it's in "Tornado alley". Our shelter only covers to ~175mph winds, and to go higher that that was alarmingly expensive. Whether we like it or not, there is always a cost/benefit calculation on things like this.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rectang 5y ago
  https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2021/12/11/after-a-kentucky-candle-factory-collapsed-in-the-tornado-family-and-first-responders-mount-a-desperate-rescue-effort/ https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2021/12/11/after-a-kentucky... > Charley Mcgregor, a training manager at the candle factory since August, said for a major storm their emergency plan was to shelter in place in a bathroom hallway in the back of their production floor. Mcgregor said everyone was evacuated to that hallway when the sirens went off on Friday night, and she said all employees were accounted for in the hall.
mantaraygun 5y ago
> 20 minutes warning That's why. Dumb article, do people think tornadoes are the same thing as hurricanes or something?
brandonmenc 5y ago
Everyone is citing the "2.5 hours of warning" - if I was in the middle of working a 12-hour shift, I would just stay put. Leaving the building to race home is probably the most dangerous thing you can do. Source: I grew up in a moderate tornado zone.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  They had 2 days of warning. Not 2.5 hours.
  - brandonmenc 5y ago
    2 days of what? Tornado warning, tornado watch, or just severe weather warning? Unless it’s an actual tornado warning, it’s business as usual.
    - MrStonedOne 5y ago
      > Unless it’s an actual tornado warning, it’s business as usual. Thats the problem.
      - brandonmenc 5y ago
        I meant that people, in general, continue going about their business under those conditions, particularly in places where such warnings are frequent. I didn’t mean business strictly as in Business.
_moof 5y ago
For folks saying you can't really predict tornadoes, I grew up in the Midwest so I hear what you're saying, but this was different. I look at weather every day in an operational context and I can tell you that everyone who knows anything about weather saw this coming days beforehand. The low that produced these storms was a monster--one of the biggest, if not the biggest, I've ever seen that wasn't a hurricane. The cold front stretched all the way from Canada to the southern tip of Mexico. But aside from its strength, its behavior was basically textbook, and it had been marching across the US all week. There were headlines the day before about tornadoes coming. So this wasn't a surprise.
- rectang 5y ago
  Do you support shutting down businesses for the duration of any Tornado Watch? If you only support shutting down businesses during Tornado Warnings, then what should the Candle Factory have done differently? Because they had a shelter, and the employees were in it.
  - _moof 5y ago
    I don't have an opinion on the risk management decision made here because I don't know anything about the building. Just wanted to "clear the air," if you will, on the weather because I saw a lot of comments that made it sound like people thought this was a run-of-the-mill Midwestern tornado.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    > Do you support shutting down businesses for the duration of any Tornado Watch? That depends on the risk factors for each businesses. How quickly can you get your employees to safety if a tornado warning comes? How secure is your tornado shelter? It also depends on how big the storm system was, this one was massive.
  - vanusa 5y ago
    Do you support shutting down businesses for the duration of any Tornado Watch? It would depend on the severity -- and shelter capabilities at the business site -- of course.

73 points by vanusa 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago

To burn the proverbial midnight oil?

arthurcolle 5y ago
Wouldn't that be a lamp factory as opposed to a candle maker?

MrStonedOne 5y ago

Because managers placed profits and money over human lives....

khazhoux 5y ago
It's more likely due to incompetent lack of foresight by planners, architects, and builders. I doubt that a group of bosses with tophats and thin cigars took a red pen to the tornado-shelter budget, while laughing at the pathetic worker class.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  I guarantee thats what they did, but i'm not talking about there. There was no need to have your workers working during a predicted massive tornado storm.

rectang 5y ago

This is important information: > “It appears most were sheltering in the place they were told to shelter,” the governor, Andy Beshear, said. “I hope that area was as safe as it could be, but this thing got hit directly by the strongest tornado we could have possibly imagined.” You can only take so many precautions when tornadoes are in the neighborhood, because although the devastation where a large one touches down can be severe, the area is limited and the path is unpredictable. Also: > A company spokesperson said Sunday that eight of the 110 workers on the overnight shift Friday are confirmed dead and another eight are missing. For most of Sunday, the authorities had feared that more than 70 of those shift workers were missing [...] RIP for those who have passed; it's good to hear that they are fewer that we thought.

MrStonedOne 5y ago
> 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.
- jandrewrogers 5y ago
  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.
  - imglorp 5y ago
    > 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.
    - treis 5y ago
      Why? From the images I've seen it's not like the houses survived.
      - MrStonedOne 5y ago
        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.
        treis 5y ago
        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.

spamizbad 5y ago

Because the operators are cruel, stupid or both. There's no rational business reason to keep a factory operating during extreme weather. All those candles they manufactured? Destroyed by the storm. And now an entire shift of your workforce is wiped out.

rectang 5y ago
There are so many examples of such cruelty that we don't need to go looking for it when it's not really there.
comeonseriously 5y ago
Fair, but let's say they sent everyone home and 3 of the people died in their homes from the tornado. Would we be outraged that the company sent them home in such foul weather?
- spacecadet 5y ago
  I think there is no win for the business or the families in any of the outcomes. We know so little about what the Business actually knew and what type of protection or preference these individuals had in the moment. I also think any reasoning about a solution is not making space for the individuals who lost their lives. The number of comments and how quickly this is moving off the first page of HN speaks volumes about the sentiment of the this community.
- themaninthedark 5y ago
  Down thread someone lists the average tornado warning time as 9 minutes. With 9 minutes warning, most people would be just getting to their cars with some still on the plant floor getting their stuff to go home. They had 20 minutes per the article, in that time frame you would have a traffic jam in the parking lot as everyone tried to leave down the 2 lane road that services the factory.
  - MrStonedOne 5y ago
    Playing fast and loose here with warning definitions. They had 2 days warning. not 20 minutes.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mindslight 5y ago

What are the current building codes and operating regulations regarding tornadoes? I would think that every commercial/industrial structure in a tornado-prone area should have a shelter that is capable of holding the occupancy capacity plus some extra. When a Tornado Watch is issued there should be periodic facility announcements stating so, describing where the shelter is, and prepping everyone that if the klaxon goes off they should drop what they're doing and go to the shelter. When a Tornado Warning happens, a klaxon should go off and it should be expected that everyone drops what they are doing and heads to the shelter. How far off am I from what is mandated? (Or if I'm missing something, what is reasonable?)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwawayboise 5y ago
"What is reasonable" is the question. The vast majority of buildings are never in the direct path of a tornado. Is it worth the substantial costs of having a basement bunker large enough for all potential occupants, that will almost certainly never be needed in the lifetime of the building?
- mindslight 5y ago
  The expectation seems to be that the right thing to do in a tornado is to go into a shelter, so probably? Especially if the costs of adding such shelters are much lower for new construction. I would guess that basements or office areas in large warehouses could be reinforced relatively easily to create a tornado shelter in an otherwise skin-on-structure building. I haven't done the math though, so perhaps it would be burdensome. Then again we end up doing an awful lot of security theatre for the vanishingly small risk of air travel terrorism, due to people's perceptions of not being in control. Maybe being corralled by corporate micromanagement for market-bottom wages falls in a similar place.

bastardoperator 5y ago

It's a good question. A reasonable/decent employer would have immediately sent everyone home for safety reasons alone. A factory has to be one of the least safe places to be in a natural disaster, and candles themselves can be fairly heavy and typically live in glass. I just hope these folks didn't suffer too badly, and honestly I hope the families take legal action against the business.

Clubber 5y ago
So the average warning time of a tornado is around 9 minutes. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/06/16/tornado-warning-system-has-come-long-way-but-could-better/5152104001/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/06/16/tor... I suspect an even worse place to be during a tornado is a car on the road, which is where the workers would probably be if the employer sent them home. Some things just aren't preventable.
themaninthedark 5y ago
Not necessarily...110 people in a factory, say you have 30 minutes notice(article says 20!). Stopping the line : 5~10 minutes Collect stuff : 5 minutes Get to cars: 5 minutes Get out of gate: 5~10 minutes Oh look, now the news articles would all be asking why didn't the factory make the workers shelter in place instead of sending them out into a dangerous situation. A reasonable/decent employer has emergency plans appropriate for their area and trains their staff on them.
- bastardoperator 5y ago
  If you've worked in a production factory you know it doesn't take 5-10 minutes to shut down. Nearly all machines/facilities have emergency/instant shutdown capabilities. Looking at the size of this operation in the picture, I don't think it's 5 minutes to the parking lot or 5 minutes to get out either. A well prepared company would have already gone through a tornado evacuation scenario with staff ahead of time. I'll take my chances trying to drive away from a disaster with 15 minutes lead time versus hoping I survive the full impact of the tornado. Maybe I've watched too many stormchasers on twitter, but they're all alive and in cars/vans.

matttproud 5y ago

By liberty of contract, it's damn-well my right to work during an impending tornado strike. /s

LinuxBender 5y ago

This really doesn't feel like the right question. The only safe(ish) place in a tornado is being in a building or bunker rated for a tornado. The technology exists. I think I would ask: - Are insurance companies incentivizing building certified shelters by lowering insurance for those that get said building certifications? This question also applies to residential homes. - Are state and federal governments incentivizing building certified shelters by giving tax breaks to businesses that get said building certifications and have them inspected annually? - Are any construction companies providing services to retrofit buildings in tornado prone locations? If there is money to be made I believe this would become a thing. Whether people are working, eating or sleeping I think is not as relevant as mitigating the root cause of a well known risk and incorporating that into business cost and offsetting the retrofit with tax exemptions and write-offs. If you want your folks to keep working during a tornado, then design the building to handle one. Switzerland somehow managed to address this issue for an even less likely risk, as nearly all homes have a fallout bunker.

ponow 5y ago
People already have an incentive to save their lives.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Sure, and people make risk judgements every day. We get in our cars and drive. That decision assumes a risk of death or serious injury. Is it worth risking death to drive to the store for a pint of ice cream? Not in the abstract, but we all do it. Life isn't perfectly safe, and cannot be made so for anything approaching reasonable economic tradeoffs.

bigmattystyles 5y ago

They have been on my mind. As awful as the tornadoes are, that’s not why though. I know it’s a reality of the world we live in, but while most of us would have been at home warm and well fed, these poor souls were manufacturing fucking candles overnight. We can keep telling ourselves that creating tech will improve the world and maybe it will, I hope it does, but in a factory overnight making candles, what’s wrong with all of us.

tpmx 5y ago
Do you want to ban e.g. properly compensated work outside of normal office hours?
- bigmattystyles 5y ago
  No, but I’m not going to pretend that people working overnight in a candle factory are doing so because they have to in order to merely survive.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    It is hard to parse what you are talking about. Banning all overnight work outside of hospitals? What does creating tech have to do with a factory that chooses to continue operating overnight? And what difference would it have made if the people were sleeping at home and a tornado rolled through their neighborhood?
    - bigmattystyles 5y ago
      I'll own up to not being the most eloquent writer - I'm not, and don't think I did, argue for banning all work outside of normal hours - I just wanted to say that it didn't sit well with me that there are people making candles in a factory overnight. If they were making vaccines and well compensated, I would understand, but candles - it just triggered a huge sense of unfairness to me and I wanted to voice it. The tech bit was just to connect it back to the HN audience where we sometimes dilute ourselves in thinking that if we just create new tech, everything in the world will improve; I was trying to argue it likely won't but I'll grant you that I didn't convey that well at all. The last thing I'll say is that a candle factory can choose to operate overnight because their employees are basically serfs, they don't have much of a choice.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bryan0 5y ago

The article answers its own question > The 110 workers on the night shift had about 20 minutes warning that a powerful tornado was bearing down.

MrStonedOne 5y ago
They had 2 days of warning that friday night was gonna bring a fuck ton of tornadoes because thats how obvious the weather pattern was. You're playing fast and loose with risk definitions, and arguing that until loss of life was guaranteed the employer had no responsibility to not force employees to risk their life. The entire region knew this was gonna be a bad storm in advance. Bosses and managers choose deadlines over human safety. They should be held criminally liable for that choice.
- bryan0 5y ago
  > You're playing fast and loose with risk definitions, and arguing that until loss of life was guaranteed the employer had no responsibility to not force employees to risk their life. Not at all, I am just reading the article which makes no mention of this event being a serious risk more than 20 minutes in advance. Possibly you have better sources, but you should provide a link with the source.

davoneus 5y ago

I've not heard whether or not this factory had any shelter or not. If not, then IMO they should hang the owners in public and then get busy making sure nobody else has to suffer this lack of neglect. However, it's tough to have a shelter-in-place that covers every eventuality. We have a large warehouse with about 100 people, and it's in "Tornado alley". Our shelter only covers to ~175mph winds, and to go higher that that was alarmingly expensive. Whether we like it or not, there is always a cost/benefit calculation on things like this.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rectang 5y ago
https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2021/12/11/after-a-kentucky-candle-factory-collapsed-in-the-tornado-family-and-first-responders-mount-a-desperate-rescue-effort/ https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2021/12/11/after-a-kentucky... > Charley Mcgregor, a training manager at the candle factory since August, said for a major storm their emergency plan was to shelter in place in a bathroom hallway in the back of their production floor. Mcgregor said everyone was evacuated to that hallway when the sirens went off on Friday night, and she said all employees were accounted for in the hall.

mantaraygun 5y ago

> 20 minutes warning That's why. Dumb article, do people think tornadoes are the same thing as hurricanes or something?

brandonmenc 5y ago

Everyone is citing the "2.5 hours of warning" - if I was in the middle of working a 12-hour shift, I would just stay put. Leaving the building to race home is probably the most dangerous thing you can do. Source: I grew up in a moderate tornado zone.

MrStonedOne 5y ago
They had 2 days of warning. Not 2.5 hours.
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  2 days of what? Tornado warning, tornado watch, or just severe weather warning? Unless it’s an actual tornado warning, it’s business as usual.
  - MrStonedOne 5y ago
    > Unless it’s an actual tornado warning, it’s business as usual. Thats the problem.
    - brandonmenc 5y ago
      I meant that people, in general, continue going about their business under those conditions, particularly in places where such warnings are frequent. I didn’t mean business strictly as in Business.

_moof 5y ago

For folks saying you can't really predict tornadoes, I grew up in the Midwest so I hear what you're saying, but this was different. I look at weather every day in an operational context and I can tell you that everyone who knows anything about weather saw this coming days beforehand. The low that produced these storms was a monster--one of the biggest, if not the biggest, I've ever seen that wasn't a hurricane. The cold front stretched all the way from Canada to the southern tip of Mexico. But aside from its strength, its behavior was basically textbook, and it had been marching across the US all week. There were headlines the day before about tornadoes coming. So this wasn't a surprise.

rectang 5y ago
Do you support shutting down businesses for the duration of any Tornado Watch? If you only support shutting down businesses during Tornado Warnings, then what should the Candle Factory have done differently? Because they had a shelter, and the employees were in it.
- _moof 5y ago
  I don't have an opinion on the risk management decision made here because I don't know anything about the building. Just wanted to "clear the air," if you will, on the weather because I saw a lot of comments that made it sound like people thought this was a run-of-the-mill Midwestern tornado.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  > Do you support shutting down businesses for the duration of any Tornado Watch? That depends on the risk factors for each businesses. How quickly can you get your employees to safety if a tornado warning comes? How secure is your tornado shelter? It also depends on how big the storm system was, this one was massive.
- vanusa 5y ago
  Do you support shutting down businesses for the duration of any Tornado Watch? It would depend on the severity -- and shelter capabilities at the business site -- of course.