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Comment by noodlenotes | Hacker News Reader

When you hear a tornado warning, the advice is to shelter in place in the most structurally sound part of the building. Given that half of the building collapsed, there may not have been a safe place. Running away from tornadoes is not recommended, and you can't evacuate in advance of a storm because the region that tornados may hit is too large. Do you think there was a problem with how the building was built?

Here's an article with photos for anyone who doesn't want to watch the video: https://fox2now.com/news/illinois/photos-tornado-destroys-ed...

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> Do you think there was a problem with how the building was built?

It is quite impractical to build a large building that will withstand a tornado. The fact that the building was cut in half and the contents largely removed is not terribly surprising.

Buildings like this (including big box stores, large grocery stores, office buildings, etc.) typically have designated tornado shelter areas. These should be on the lowest floor (below ground level is the best) with small rooms. The walls are generally made of cinder blocks or something sturdier. If you are in a building like this, need a tornado shelter, and don't know where it is look for the restrooms. When you get there you will likely find a sign that indicates it is the tornado shelter.

That defintely seems best, especially if underground any, but the footage shows a lot of shredded solid brick walls (footage from the Kentucky one, not the Illinois):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZMAmxP5cgs

Cinder-block with metal reinforcement is a level beyond brick though.

It's hard to build most buildings to handle a big tornado. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Hospital_Joplin is a concrete hospital that took a direct hit, the building is standing but it took very large amounts of damage and that's a beefy expensive building.

Was at my friends house in texas a month ago who had a storm shelter in the garage, it's a 1/4" steel box that is anchored to the ground and has the GPS coordinates etched on the inside since if it does it's job there may not be anything around but GPS to tell you where it is.

Wait, I'm not sure how having the GPS coordinates etched helps anything. What do they get used for?

I would guess if you call for help you can tell potential rescuers those coordinates.

Calling for help.

If your plat and neighbourhood have been scrubbed by the FSM's Own Geographic Erasor Pencil, there's not going to be much by way of landmarks to guide responders. Street sights, structures, and even kerbside markings will be gone.

GPS coordinates tend not to be strongly affected by severe wind events.

This is probably a good idea, though navigation like Google Maps would still work without streets or signs and bring you to the address.

This presumes that the occupants of the shelter know the address, that rescuers have cellular access (towers and other infrastructure may be down), or that the person(s) calling for help are the residents or usual occupants of the structure.

Survivors or those requesting help might not be adults or residents. They might be children, visitors, or strangers seeking shelter (particularly in the case of a business or commercial address). They might be volunteers searching for survivors. Contact might be over radio if phone service is down. GPS operates directly via satellite, so is independent of and terrestrial infrastructure.

The operating assumption of a disaster is that previous assumptions of normality are violated. Responses which remove assumptions of available serivces, or restore a bare minimal functional level of service, or which protect against likely disruptions, tend to be those that are most useful.

GPS is based on

Navigation using an address also works without cellular otherwise Garmin and TomTom devices wouldn’t exist.

I think an address is much easier to understand for a child.

Using an uncommon for most people method of location identifier brings problems of its own. Sure Lat/Long is familiar to us, but I’d guess the average person is unfamiliar.

Like I said, I like the idea but it doesn’t come without its own problems and addresses aren’t as useless in this scenario as implied.

Fair points. I'd still register GPS as more generally useful and usable.

your assuming they dont have both. people dont memorize their gps coords and theyre not easily findable with a phone. redundancy, defense in depth.

If the box flies away, you know where to bring it back to. And if it stays put, you can use it to calibrate gps satellites. Lol.

If you read the whole article, the building was demolished afterwards due to be structurally unsound.

Adverse-event construction codes are generally intended to provide survivability for occupants, not continued use of the structure itself.

You'll find that this is the case for, e.g., earthquake construction codes in seismicly-active regions.

Structures can be rebuilt. Humans are a more challenging rehabilitation challenge.

Though the Joplin facility was demolished, and five patients died, those were due to loss of power, and not from tornadic winds or debris themselves.

The building performed as intended, even under a direct strike.

"It is quite impractical to build a large building that will withstand a tornado"

It's also quite obvious there's a need for a shelter in areas where tornadoes are likely to form. So obvious in fact it's impossible to plead ignorance of that need, so the only other possible reason they didn't is carelessness because they could not have cared less if employees lives were at risk.

A large warehouse is pretty much built as a thin steel shell that would be expected to fail in more or less this manner in a tornado. However, there is usually an interior building within the warehouse that is built much more strongly (probably cinder-block masonry) that should withstand a tornado strike much more securely. That interior building would contain the warehouse offices, the bathrooms, etc., and it doesn't appear to be in the collapsed portion of the warehouse.

At least for Amazon warehouses that are not in tornado areas, warehouse workers are instructed by the managers to go to the center of the warehouse building during extreme weather events.

I do not know for sure if that same procedure would have applied to DLI4. But my feeling is that unless the state of Illinois, Madison County, or the city of Edwardsville have a specific regulation requiring such buildings to have tornado shelters, then there was no such shelter at DLI4, and workers were instructed to assemble in the center of the building.

Internal office sections of large Amazon fulfillment centers are off-limits to non-managers, and unauthorized entry is prevented thru the use of door badge scanners, which will not unlock the door unless the badge owner has sufficient permissions.

I can't imagine what an awful, dehumanizing, and absolutely terrifying experience it was.

Warehouses (any big-box building really) are among the worst places to be in a tornado. Maybe such buildings in tornado-prone areas should have storm cellars or reinforced "safe rooms" for shelter.

The time to ensure a structure has a safe shelter, or shelters, is before the wind-storm appears.

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