Deaths Confirmed After Tornado Hits Amazon Warehouse in Illinois

At least six people were killed in an Amazon warehouse in Illinois after a direct hit from a tornado collapsed much of the building Friday night, officials said.

It has been confirmed that 45 people have left the building, James Whiteford, the Edwardsville, Illinois fire department chief, said at a news conference on Saturday.

Edwardsville is about 25 miles east of St. Louis, and the Amazon building is in a distribution center to the west of the city that has about 20 warehouses ranging in size from about 100,000 to 1.4 million square feet, said Mark Mayfield, captain of the Edwardsville Fire Department. The tornado caused a wall the size of a soccer field in the warehouse to collapse, along with the roof over it, according to The Associated Press.

“About halfway missing, it’s gone,” said Captain Mayfield of the building, which is about 400,000 square feet. The other half of the building stopped on Saturday morning, he said. A bus carried several workers to meet with families in nearby Pontoon Beach, said Michael Fillback, the Edwardsville police chief.

“There’s a lot of rubble from the concrete; It’s mostly a concrete and steel structure, “said Chief Fillback on Saturday morning, adding,” It’s windy outside, so things are unstable. ”

Rescue workers received the first call at 8:38 p.m. and arrived a few minutes later, Captain Mayfield said, with about 100 emergency responders on site shortly after the building collapsed. More than a dozen police, fire and rescue services were on duty.

Alonzo Harris, an Amazon delivery driver, finished his route on Friday night and was driving into the warehouse when an alarm began to sound on his work phone. A colleague was running around yelling at the drivers that this wasn’t an exercise, he said. They had to get out of their vehicles and take shelter, he remembered their screams.

“She put herself at risk,” said Mr. Harris, a 44-year-old St. Louis resident who joined Amazon in September. “She saved my life.”

Moments after Mr. Harris entered the shelter, “there was a loud roar; the building started shaking, ”he said. “I had the feeling that the floor was peeling off the floor. I felt the wind blowing and saw debris flying everywhere, and people started screaming and yelling and the lights went out. ”

Harris compared the sensation to an earthquake in California, where he grew up. “This is what it felt like when the ground shook,” he said on Saturday afternoon when he returned to the construction site to pick up his car. “I’m not afraid of anything, but that was scary.”

On Saturday morning, workers appeared to be using a crane to remove wreckage from the site. The wind continued to blow at over 20 mph, causing the cars to shake.

Heavy machinery was used to move the collapsed walls to make sure no other people were missing, and rescue teams checked the interiors of vehicles that had been crushed by the collapsed walls.

“We are deeply saddened to hear that members of our Amazon family have died as a result of the storm in Edwardsville, Illinois,” said Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, in a statement on Saturday. “Our thoughts and prayers go with the victims, their families and everyone affected by the tornado.”

Amazon opened two warehouses in Edwardsville in 2016 and has approximately 2,200 employees, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in 2017.

When Amazon first opened the facility, “it put us on the map,” said Walter Williams, the economic development coordinator for Madison County, which includes Edwardsville. “When more and more people saw Amazon here, they said, ‘We have to look there.'”