This past weekend saw a 4 state tornadic event. Many people died. A candle company in Kentucky lost dozens. An Amazon warehouse in Illinois lost people. The sad part? These companies were open in the middle of the night, making holiday income for their owners.
The candle company apparently had a 20 minute notice of the impending tornado. They were told to shelter in place. At least SEVENTY people didn’t make it. Did the company have proper precaution and shelters? I don’t think we know all the details yet.
The Amazon warehouse? Most were contractors. Industry consultants say the use of contractors lets the company avoid liability for accidents and other risks. In Edwardsville, local officials said the fact that so many of the workers at the facility were temporary made it difficult to account for all those who could be missing in the wake of the tornado, complicating initial rescue efforts. But at least 8 people lost their lives.
According to a girlfriend of one the deceased,
“An Amazon worker who was killed in the Edwardsville, Illinois, warehouse collapse wasn’t allowed to leave as a tornado was approaching, his girlfriend told the New York Post.
Larry Virden, who started working for Amazon five months ago, was among the six employees who died in the destruction, which saw a giant wall and the roof above it collapse.
His girlfriend, Cherie Jones, told the Post in an article published Sunday that she was texting him shortly before the incident.
“He always tells me when he is filling up the Amazon truck when he is getting ready to go back … I was like ‘ OK, I love you.’ He’s like, ‘well Amazon won’t let me leave until after the storm blows over,'” she told the Post.
Jones told the Post that Virden had texted her 16 minutes before the tornado was said to have touched down, leaving him enough time to have gone back to their house in nearby Collinsville, which she said was a 13-minute drive away.
“We heard the tornado didn’t touch down until 8:39 p.m. so he had 20 minutes to get home,” she said.
After the tornado hit the Amazon warehouse, nothing was heard from Jeff Bezos until AFTER another one of his space launches.
That is so sad. I have been there, done that. Working for companies who put the almighty dollar above employee safety.
I was working for a company about 45 minutes away on a good day, when a huge snowstorm hit. The news was telling everyone to go home early to make it safely. My boss was a narcistic asshole who didn’t care about his employees. By the time he let everybody go, it was dusk, and about zero visibility, and the roads were most impassable. Everybody lived close by but me. But I sat there at my desk, because you did not DARE defy him. It took me almost 3 hours to make it home, driving blindly and so scared I had to pry my fingers off the steering wheel. I was the only one on the road. I could not tell where the road was. When I finally got home I thanked the Lord and my Ford Explorer for keeping me safe.
Another time I was working for a very large company that prided itself on never closing down one day in its 200 year history. We had massive flooding, which closed roads for many days, and making it near impossible to get to work without driving an extra hour or two north or south to bypass the river. This extended my work day from its usual 10 hours a day to 12-14 hours a day. The company gave no one a pass for being late. You had to leave your house at least 2 hours earlier etc.
I got sooooo tired of working for people who did not care about the welfare of their people. It seemed the same whether they were big or small. NO ONE should have to wait until they are given PERMISSION to leave for their own personal safety. Especially not a salaried employee who usually gave their fair share of overtime for the company.
One good thing about the pandemic is that it lets more and more people work from home, where they are accountable for their own time. Back at the peak of my working career, it was almost entirely unheard of
.My heart just sank over this loss of life and destruction for so many. December tornados are NOT the norm. Please believe in climate change. There are too many signs to ignore.
Put yourself first. Nobody else is going to.
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