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.
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.
Footage from storm chasers is absolutely not representative of what you will almost certainly experience if you try to outrun a tornado in a car. If you're very, very lucky you might be in an area with no trees, a clear and obvious tornado with obvious apparent motion, and knowledge of the local roads which would allow you to quickly pick a single direction to drive in. More likely, though, you (a) won't know where the tornado is in relation to you, (b) won't be able to see it because it's rain-wrapped, and (c) won't be in a place where you can obviously drive quickly in a single, straight line to avoid its path. This doesn't even include other risks like intense winds reasonably far from the tornadic circulation which could roll your vehicle, debris, lightning, hail (especially if you wind up on the wrong side of the storm and core punch), etc.
It isn't often that stormchasers perish in tornadoes, but it can and does happen, even to the best of them [1]. Storm chasers generally go to great lengths using significant knowledge, past experience, and real-time data to carefully position themselves in relation to not only the storm they are targeting, but other storms in the area in order to control their risk and overall safety.
I'm a meteorologist and I grew up in the midwest, and while were absolutely drilled on tornado safety, "evacuations" were never part of that preparation.
Again, I sincerely hope you never have to call upon the information from this post.
The point is that the stormchasers are biased towards chasing in environments where all of these antecedents are there. You don't see much chaser videography from, say, the Ozarks or into the SE because the terrain is far more difficult and less amenable to good footage. These things also make it more dangerous. SW Kentucky would be a terrible place to chase.
Jill driving the forklift in shipping and receiving will probably notice the alarms and stop quickly but she might not be able to just walk away, she might have to reposition so she is not trapping someone else.
James doing candle wick QC with his headphones on might not notice as fast.
People will often ignore alarms if they don't see others around them acting. >Another reason that people do not respond to disaster signs is that they do not want to deviate from what others are doing. Humans are very social creatures and we tend to take our lead from other people. If the majority of people are not responding to warning signs then we will tend to conform to that behavior and follow their lead - no matter how dangerous it is. For example during a fire at a restaurant diners continue with their meal as if nothing was wrong. One diner even commented that “it was a bit uncomfortable really. The smoke and the sirens of fire engines.” http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/9573/1/Human%20Behaviour%20Paper%202...
Factories are all about routine and repetition, this can lead to a failure to act.
There's no such thing as "tornado evacuation". You take cover immediately. If you're already in a building, you absolutely do not leave.
In this particular case it seems they maybe had 10-15 minutes of warning. Usually it is less than that. And, in the moment no one would have known how much warning they had. The only rational response is to find the sturdiest place in the building you're already occupying and get there. Every commercial building I've ever been in has these places designated - they're usually the bathrooms, stairwells, and interior hallways.
You'll never, ever see NWS or anyone else official recommend that you go get in a car and drive somewhere in the case of a tornado. The only thing they ever say is "take shelter now", "move to an interior room", "get underground", etc. If you were in a mobile home or some other obviously-unsafe place, then maybe you'd leave to find something better but even then the recommendation would be to lay in a ditch or something, not to get in your car and drive around. A car is one of the worst possible places to be in a tornado.
https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/tornadoes/during.html
"If you’re in a vehicle, Do NOT try to outrun a tornado
* Don’t try to outrun a tornado. Drive to the closest shelter. The least desirable place to be during a tornado is in a motor vehicle. Cars, buses, and trucks are easily tossed by tornado winds.
* If you’re unable to make it to a safe shelter, either get down in your vehicle and cover your head and neck or leave your vehicle and seek shelter in a low-lying area such as a ditch or ravine.
* Stay away from highway overpasses and bridges."
None of the other scenarios, such as being in a mobile home, mention anything about getting in a car.
0 minutes - No one should even think about shutting down gracefully in an emergency. GO. NOW. Your facility should have an emergency shutdown procedure. We do and it's called hit the emergency stop buttons and GTFO.
> Collect stuff : 5 minutes
0 minutes. Leave it. EMERGENCY.
> Get to cars: 5 minutes
How far is your car and how big is this building? Granted my shop is small but I can get to my car in 30 seconds from my office at top speed. Your shop should have implemented and tested an evacuation procedure and designated safe meeting spot (If you can safely stand outside). We did, and actually simulated an emergency, found issues with the routes, iterated and retested. We are in fact prepared. Are you?
> Get out of gate: 5~10 minutes
This is the hard part. Not only do you have to fight your fellow employees but also hoards of other cars especially if you work in an industrial park. If you have a 4x4 use it and let the landscapers worry about the shrubbery and grass you tore up getting the fuck outta dodge. Drive through chain link fences if you have to. Just GO. NOW!
During the 11th September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center people took the time to shut down their computers before exiting.
This is why every time you fly, they tell you during an emergency situation to leave your belongings on the plane. They are priming you so that if an event occurs you do not go into normal "leave plane mode".
Here are two great resources to learn about people: https://www.fastcompany.com/90390969/human-behavior-in-crisi... http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/9573/1/Human%20Behaviour%20Paper%202...
> This is why every time you fly, they tell you during an emergency situation to leave your belongings on the plane. They are priming you so that if an event occurs you do not go into normal "leave plane mode".
How is this different than my point of "Your shop should have implemented and tested an evacuation procedure and designated safe meeting spot ..." ?
>A reasonable/decent employer would have immediately sent everyone home for safety reasons alone.
I detailed a believable timeline to how long it would take to do that and what would likely happen.
>"Your shop should have implemented and tested an evacuation procedure and designated safe meeting spot ..."
Completely agree and from comments in other parts of the thread, it seems like the company did in fact have a procedure that they did follow but it still lead to tragedy.
Your previous comment indicates you would try and leave, which is ultimately your choice but also goes against all the expert advice of what to do in a tornado.
I like to play a little game with myself whenever I enter a new building to determine what evac routes/shelter locations are available for different scenarios when ever I enter a new building. I think it is a good thing to think about/practice but other people have other things on their mind.
The factory where I work has actually been hit by a tornado before I came to work here. One of the stories that they talk about is how they had to pull the VP of Sales or Finance back into the shelter(a stairwell) because he was trying to go into the lobby and secure the front doors that were being blown open by the wind.
I was not specifically speaking about a tornado but emergencies in general where evacuation is necessary (such as a fire).
I strongly agree there needs to be institutional concern paid to tornadoes, but I don't think planning for workers to bug out in their cars is the right approach.
Indeed this is just your opinion. And the whole individualist hero do anything quip is unnecessary reactionary nonsense. This is about being prepared for an emergency in your facility which entails quickly and safely getting to an exit.
> For example people are going to take some time to realize they need to take an alarm seriously, take a few minutes to collect their effects, shuffle to their cars, say goodbye to their coworkers, they will wait in traffic lines, etc.
Are they doing this during a fire? They most certainly should not be.
> ... but I don't think planning for workers to bug out in their cars is the right approach.
This isn't about going George Castanza and pushing old ladies to the floor to get to a fire exit. This is about knowing or having a plan in place and taking it seriously. Maybe your company provides it, maybe you have to figure it out yourself. Point is, always be prepared.
I've been in a few situations where a fire alarm is going off in a large building, and it created no sense of urgency. One was a shopping mall, with people milling about, half-wondering what the noise was, thinking as long as they could see an exit and didn't see a fire it was fine. Even being one who generally doesn't follow herds, I stayed in that state longer than I should have in retrospect. That's human nature, and a major reason of why companies do fire drills.
> Maybe your company provides it, maybe you have to figure it out yourself. Point is, always be prepared.
Yes, of course. Ultimately you are responsible for your own safety. Always be prepared. The problem arises if you take this philosophy as a given and assert that a large group of people will be individually prepared, as a license to avoid figuring out the institutional-scale problem. That is what I'm taking issue with here.
Based on what I've read about the timeframe of tornadoes, I think a corporate policy of having people leave the building and go to their cars is a recipe for a mass casualty event in the parking lot. Given how heavily corporate micromanagement directs people at such jobs (security checkpoints, timeclocks, timing bathroom breaks, prohibiting cell phones, etc), I think the scalable way to handle tornadoes is for the same management structure to direct people into designated shelters within the building.
And sure if I were in such a position, I certainly wouldn't want to just trust management to take care of me in a top-down way. But I also wouldn't want management to use my option to individually prepare as an excuse to slack off on their facility preparation.
I was originally talking about emergencies in general. Not to specifically evacuate during a tornado.