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

Re:Luckily Amazon sells body bags...

[Chewbacon]

This AC is telling the truth: https://www.amazon.com/two-4-f...

Re:Luckily Amazon sells body bags...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

My x- wife bought one of these. Should I be concerned?

Great value and great for hauling dead bodies. No more bloody mess either. Leaving no trace of any corpse in your trunk!

Priceless.

Well shit.

[Gravis Zero]

Well that's the last time I order a "like new" warehouse support beam. ;)

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:They shouldn't have been there.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Obviously you have never had a shitty low level job before. They want you there rain or shine and there are penalties for absenteeism - in the database there are no fields for excuses. Miss work and you get written up and miss it again and you get fired. You've got to save those write-ups for the critical times, like when you're sick or your kid has a school concert. Can't waste them on a silly storm which will pass in an hour anyway.

Re:They shouldn't have been there.

[luther349]

yep they use that sorry ass point system i worked there. they dont give a shit use up all your points your gone. theirs a line of thousands waiting to replace you. in all my years i only seen my job close to weather one time. we had a freak snow storm that dropped 4 ft of snow overnight nobody was going anywhere. but you sure as hell better be ready/dug out the next day.

Re:They shouldn't have been there.

[tlhIngan]

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.

It depends on the storm. We've had bad storms, and if you stopped working every time a storm warning comes out, you might as well take the rest of the year off.

So perhaps it was a bad storm, but as far as anyone was concerned, par for the course during the stormy season. Of course, storms can kick up some wickedly local phenomena - microbursts for example that are difficult to predict, extremely local and can be damaging.

It can be a matter of just bad luck - it looks like a seasonal storm and everyone goes about their business, but then something wicked gets whipped up and a wall collapses as misfortune.

Of course, I wasn't there, but that's what I think when we got storm warnings - all it means is to be more careful when outside because winds might be strong and rain might be driving.

And of course, the wall could be defective, too - perhaps it was made incorrectly, or poorly maintained or something else that made it collapse prematurely.

Re:They shouldn't have been there.

[PeeAitchPee]

Maryland isn't Tornado Alley. Marylanders don't commonly endure the types of storms that require occupants to retreat to a hardened safe area like the Great Plains does, or the Gulf states during hurricane season.

Re:They shouldn't have been there.

[Port1080]

I was out in Baltimore city that night doing some bar hopping, less than six miles from where this tornado hit, and there was NO indication that the storm was anywhere near this bad. We had some rain and minor wind, and that was it. It was a hyper localized freak thing that came up without warning. Unless you're going to send people home every time there's a minor thunderstorm (which is what this was in about 99% of the Baltimore area), this wasn't something that was really preventable.

Re:Why is it relevant?

[jtara]

The summary makes a big point that they were contractors (working for a 3rd party) and not Amazon employees. Why does that matter?

Worker's Compensation. Or lack thereof.

Re:Luckily Amazon sells body bags...

[sentiblue]

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

Re:Why is it relevant?

[SeaFox]

The summary makes a big point that they were contractors (working for a 3rd party) and not Amazon employees. Why does that matter?

People injured in the event and next-of-kin for the fatalities can't sue Amazon over this, because they aren't technically employed by Amazon, they work for a much much smaller company that can declare bankruptcy at the drop of a hat.

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.

Re:Why is it relevant?

[SeaFox]

Bullshit.
The families of the people that died can sue anyone directly or indirectly involved in the tragedy. It's up to the court to decide who's liable and to what degree.

Yeah, but Amazon has better lawyers than those families will, and with no direct link between the victims and Amazon you're naive if you think this is going to go anywhere close to them. Most likely the actual (sub-contractor) employer, and the structure's insuring company. And this was a damaging storm that effected other buildings in the area, so the insurance company is just handling it as their normal "Act of God" procedure. The real issue is more likely to be if the contractor took steps to ensure employee safety during the storm. Were they evacuated to storm shelters, or told to just work through the event?

Baltimore has the highest murder rate of US cities

[PeeAitchPee]

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

It has way more important problems than some freak accident that is highly unlikely to happen again.

Not by Amazon

[rsilvergun]

and the smaller contractor company can just fold and re-incorporate and walk away scot-free. It's the employee equivalent of the "layering" step in money laundering. You distance yourself from the bad things your company does.

Re:One more thing to add

[dryeo]

OK, here in BC (and Canada in general I believe), compo is government based and all workers have to be covered. In the case of contractors, the contracting company or in the case of self-employed, the individual, have to cover it. It costs money but the idea is that all workers are protected.
So in this case the only difference using contractors would make is who pays for compo, or in the case of not covering the workers, who gets sued/charged by the Province.
Seems in America, the workers have shit rights compared to the employers. Here, I often hear government ads on the radio reminding workers of their rights like a safe work environment.

That murder rate keeps droping

[rsilvergun]

along with crime in general. Meanwhile fatal workplace accidents are increasing.

As long as there is murder there will be a city with the highest murder rates. The question is are we doing everything we can to stop murder? Of course not. We could legalize drugs tomorrow, treat the hard stuff as a medical problem and massively cut back on murder. But just because we're not doing everything we can to stop murder doesn't mean we should ignore or even de-prioritize workplace safety.