Amazon Warehouse Collapse in Baltimore Leaves Two Dead (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: Amazon is grappling with tragedy at one of its warehouses this weekend. A 50-foot wall at the company's southeast Baltimore fulfillment center collapsed on the night of November 2nd in the midst of a large storm, killing two people. They worked for an external company, an Amazon official told the Baltimore Sun... The storm was a particularly violent one that had torn roofs off apartment buildings and collapsed a ceiling at a TJ Maxx store, injuring three people. Amazon was caught up in extreme weather that unfortunately led to fatalities.

Comments

They shouldn't have been there.

[Mal-2]

I don't mean this was the fault of the workers. Quite the contrary. If conditions outside are such that it's barely safe for emergency crews, then an employer who is not involved directly in health and safety has no business calling its employees in to work. Now two people are dead because the warehouse couldn't deal with hunkering down for a storm.

I could see keeping a Wal-Mart open under such conditions. People may need things desperately, and people might need a place to shelter if things get really bad. But there is nothing that warehouse could do to help the situation right that moment, and it should have been left to a skeleton crew of security guards who can hunker down wherever they feel safe -- NOT try to work through the storm.

Re:They shouldn't have been there.

[ShanghaiBill]

Statistically, it is safer to stay in a building than to try to drive home in a storm. Amazon made the correct call to keep people at work. They had no reason to believe that the wall was going to collapse.

Re:They shouldn't have been there.

[Mal-2]

If the storm kicked up after the people were already there, then those people should have been pulled into the most reinforced areas of the building (typically the office) until it passed, because walls do collapse. This is not an unforeseeable event. Get the people away from the most hazardous conditions and ride it out. Don't just keep working.

I suppose you'd argue against evacuating the entire building when there's a fire, too. Only move the people that will be in the way of the fire department. No. Overreaction for the sake of caution is tolerable when the events are infrequent enough.

Re:Luckily Amazon sells body bags...

[sentiblue]

Two persons tragically killed at work... are you people actually joking about this?

This.

[rsilvergun]

Companies hire contractors specifically for cases like this. It's why it's cheaper to hire a contractor even when you're paying a contractor agency for the privilege. The lack of these kinds of benefits is why workers needed Unions. If the employees had families they're probably not only grieving but trying to figure out what they're gonna do with one less breadwinner. A worker's comp payout would at least delay that, maybe long enough to figure out what to do next.