If Musk, who has just been elected Time Magazine's Person of the Year, is a spring breeze, then the boss of another well-known rich Amazon, Bezos, is not in a so wonderful mood these days.
Bezos's unhappy mood stemmed from the disaster caused by a tornado storm, on the 10th local time, many states in the central United States suffered at least 30 tornadoes, where the storm went, houses were razed to the ground, cars were swept into the air, and dozens of deaths were caused. Among them, Mayfield County, Kentucky, with a population of 10,000, was almost flattened by the storm.
The tornado was so powerful that even large trailers were not spared
One of the large Amazon warehouses in Illinois, which covered an area of about 40,000 square meters and employed more than 190 workers, collapsed in the tornado disaster. On the evening of the 10th, a tornado swept through the city of Edwardsville, Illinois, overturning the roof of the warehouse, causing a concrete wall about the size of a football field and 27 centimeters thick to collapse, and 6 people failed to escape in time and unfortunately died. According to the list of victims published by the media, the age of the victims ranged from 24 to 62 years old.
The information of the six victims was exposed
Bezos has been attacked by many sides
Over the past few days, Amazon employees and families of the victims have said that the company has shortcomings in daily safety management and disaster emergency handling.
Some surviving Amazon employees said that when the tornado occurred, Amazon only temporarily built a simple shelter and did not notify all employees in time to avoid danger. Some family members of the victims revealed that before the tornado, the employees in the warehouse had received disaster warnings, but the management prohibited the employees from leaving the warehouse.
After the accident, Amazon was attacked by many parties. Some U.S. union organizations have criticized that Amazon still insists on putting employees to work despite the safety of employees despite receiving an alert. Local public opinion also questioned that Amazon's prohibition of employees from bringing mobile phones into "designated areas" in order to prevent information leakage is an important factor that causes them to lose the opportunity to be rescued. Several Amazon employees reported that they want extreme weather information through their smartphones, as well as getting in touch with their families, and Amazon should not interfere. Some Amazon employees angrily rebuked the mobile phone ban, saying that they would resign if they did not let them take it.
The voice of Amazon employees has been echoed by the US government, and on the 14th, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is launching a six-month investigation into the collapsed warehouse and Amazon to determine whether there are any structural problems in Amazon's warehouse and determine whether there are workplace safety violations when the warehouse collapses. Spokesman Scott Allen said in a statement that OSHA would issue a subpoena and recommend a fine if workplace safety and/or health regulations were found to have been violated.
In the face of outside skepticism, Amazon insisted that it was "working quickly" in dealing with the tornado and supported the investigation.
As the owner of Amazon, Bezos's long-overdue "heartbroken" has made him highly questioned by public opinion. According to a number of media exposure, Bezos was busy celebrating the success of his company, "Blue Origin", the latest manned space flight after this tragedy, not only that, Bezos also held a grand party at the mansion in Beverly Hills on the 11th, and his eulogy for the 6 victims was not long overdue until 24 hours after the tragedy. Some netizens criticized that Amazon employees were killed in a rare December tornado, and Bezos did not care about it.
Netizens criticized that besos is more concerned about his "space dream" than the lives of six employees.
There are 1,200 tornadoes in the United States a year with a false positive rate of 70% The response time is only 8 to 18 minutes
Why can't tornadoes be forecast in advance like hurricanes? This is a problem that many netizens care about.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average U.S. has nearly 1,200 tornadoes per year. April-June of most years is the peak of tornado attacks in the United States, with several tornadoes occurring several times a day. Most of them occur in the prairies of the central and eastern United States, so these areas are also called "tornado passages".
Because the storm's rapid movement makes it difficult to predict the path accurately, weather experts can only give accurate warnings within ten minutes before the incident. Rural areas of the United States and smaller towns generally do not have public warning devices in place, resulting in more severe damage from tornadoes. Although the tornado warning system has been improved in recent years, how to deal with a large-scale tornado is also an extremely difficult problem.
U.S. weather experts also point out a fact that the false alarm rate of tornado warnings is about 70%. "Although this value sounds high, out of caution, the public needs to be informed in advance." According to the U.S. weather website, according to weather forecaster observations and radar data, it is generally only possible to issue accurate warnings on average of 8 to 18 minutes before a tornado incident, which means that people are more urgent to respond.
In addition, in this tornado disaster, despite the warnings, many residents said that there was nowhere to hide, because when the storm came, it was a dark night!
What is the fate of Amazon?
Over time, six months after the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) investigation report is released, people's feelings about the tragedy of the storm will slowly fade.
Of course, Amazon will also push the responsibility to the government's imperfect forecasting mechanism, the tornado trajectory is difficult to predict and many other objective factors, but Amazon's internal management and Bezos's indifferent attitude to life will be the loss of the multinational company's reputation.
The author 丨 Yang Ying, editor-in-chief of Shenzhen Satellite TV Direct News