No OSHA penalties after fatal Amazon warehouse collapse caused by tornado
Amazon will face no penalties but was ordered to review its severe weather protocols after an investigation into a warehouse collapse that killed six.
The Department of Labor investigation began after the ceiling and walls of an Amazon warehouse Edwardsville, Ill. collapsed during a tornado in December 2021. The wreckage left six workers, including several contracted delivery drivers, dead.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration found a number of safety risks at the site but concluded the company’s severe weather policies “met minimal safety guidelines for storm sheltering.”
In a letter outlining its findings, OSHA found that megaphones which could have been used to alert employees of the tornado were inaccessible and not used. Not all of the employees were aware of the location within the warehouse of the storm shelter. The six workers who died were sheltering in a bathroom in an area of the warehouse that was directly hit by the tornado, but not near the storm shelter.
“Six workers died in this event, so that by itself should be a wake-up call for employers,” Doug Parker, OSHA’s assistant secretary of labor, said in a news conference. “We’re making recommendations because under our standards, there’s not a specific citation we can issue in light of the actions at Amazon. But much like other agencies within the government that make similar recommendations, many employers take them seriously.”
While Amazon has managed to avoid a harsh response from the Labor Department, the company is not in the clear just yet. At the start of April, the House Oversight Committee started a probe of Amazon’s labor practices, including how the company responds to severe weather events.
