The day Corporate Greed, Climate Change Converged into Catastrophe

Mayfield Candle Factory destruction

The following passage is from People’s World:

“Amazon won’t let us leave.” That was the last message 46-year-old Larry Virden sent his girlfriend on the evening of Dec. 10. A short time later, a tornado blasted through Edwardsville, Illinois, and shredded the Amazon fulfillment center warehouse where Virden worked. When the roof of the massive facility came crashing down, he and five co-workers were left dead. Cherie Jones, his partner of 13 years, is now in mourning and explaining to their four children why dad is never coming home.

According to Jones, Virden could have gotten back in time to shelter with his family—if only his employer hadn’t ordered workers to stay at the facility. Amazon claims supervisors moved to get as many workers as possible to designated safe spots in the warehouse, but Virden’s final text is a rallying cry against the willful anti-worker negligence of the retail behemoth.

Amazon wasn’t the only corporation implicated in tornado-linked worker deaths that night, though. Eight more were killed at the Mayfield Consumer Products Company’s candle factory in Mayfield, Ky. There, too, workers wanted to flee an approaching twister, but bosses reportedly told them they’d be fired if they left the plant. The damage in Mayfield was even more devastating than that in Edwardsville; all that’s left of the candle factory is a pile of rubble.

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It is rare but not uncommon for tornadoes to form in December. Meteorologically tornadoes mostly occur in the Central and Southeastern United States from early March through May. And there are times when supercell thunderstorms that produce violent twisters occur in seasonal transition periods like autumn. I recall an EF3 tornado striking the northwestern part of my hometown of Raleigh, NC in November 1988 killing four people and demolishing the K-Mart off Glenwood Avenue. These storms form when cold, dry air from the Rockies clashes with warm, humid air streaming northward from the Gulf of Mexico. The cold air forces the warm/moist air upward – the lift necessary to form thunderstorms. If enough sheer – speed and changes in wind direction take place as the warm air is lifted, you can get supercell thunderstorms – and the probability that one or two may drop a tornado.

What makes this event on the evening of December 10 unusual is the severity and duration of the storm. Some meteorologists are suggesting that the twister that ravaged Mayfield, KY was the same tornado that destroyed a nursing home in Arkansas and that it traveled 220 miles to Ohio before finally dissipating. Long track tornadoes this late in the year during early winter are extremely rare. This event some experts say might end up being in the top 10 of most destructive tornado outbreaks in US history. I’m of the belief that climate change is responsible – not of the storm system itself, but how violent and destructive it was – the same way many scientists believe warming temperatures are turning Cat 1 and 2 hurricanes into Cat 4 and fives.

Climate change as suggested by some experts is causing fluctuations in the Jet Stream. The area described as Tornado Alley may also be shifting eastward. This is not encouraging – rather than tornadoes frequently occurring in sparsely populated states like Kansas and Nebraska where there is not as much tree cover and twisters are highly visible on the plains, you now have the prospect of more events taking place in more densely populated areas east of the Mississippi, with more trees & vegetation obscuring views and these storm being “rain-wrapped”. It also makes the need for warning systems and shelters that much greater.

But what if warning systems are in place but not heeded? What if you are a non-unionized worker in a warehouse or candle factory – already receiving substandard wages and benefits – and you are threatened with termination if you attempt to leave your shift to seek shelter? From the article I posted above and from many other sources there are reports that workers on the night of December 10 feared losing their jobs if they sought to leave – even as weather reports hours earlier warned of the severity of the storms developing and as sirens blared. What if you are in a factory or a warehouse that hasn’t been outfitted with adequate shelter from severe storms? What are you to do – put your life at the altar of capitalism? Sacrifice your life and the support/love you provide to your children, spouse or partner to keep those production numbers up? To meet the demands of the holiday season? There is someone expecting those scented candles, those new shoes from an East Asia sweatshop, or sexy lingerie for the wife or girlfriend that the consumer hasn’t hardly paid attention to most of the year.

These thoughts are why I woke up in disgust last Saturday morning – as I’m sipping my morning coffee – the corporate media channel my TV was tuned in on celebrating the space launch of a billionaire owner of one of these warehouses. His ride into sub-orbit for 10 minutes with a TV personality and former professional football player along with other wealthy friends and associates. As six of his employees laid dead in the collapsed section of his warehouse in southern Illinois. Thinking about the expense for this vanity rocket ride – was there any investment in storm shelters for a facility sitting in the new Tornado Alley?