Officials and Expert Zero in on Amazon Warehouse Construction
Date Posted: December 16, 2021
Posted In: Discussion, News,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Even as workers continued to clean up an Amazon warehouse torn in two by a tornado days earlier, attention began to shift Monday to the construction of the facility that collapsed, killing six.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it had opened an investigation into the deaths. Illinois officials, including local leaders, said they had begun to inquire about the condition of the warehouse before it collapsed. And some worried that construction methods for such facilities were no longer appropriate for a climate expected to see more frequent tornadoes.
“Already there has been an effort to determine some of the challenges, if there were any structural issues, what exactly the storm’s trajectory was coming in and affecting the various pieces of the building,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at a press conference on Monday in neighboring Pontoon Beach.
The Seattle-based e-commerce giant has 5 million square feet of warehouse space across about a dozen facilities in the St. Louis metro area. And nearly all are constructed like the building that collapsed after the tornado bulldozed through the Edwardsville structure, killing six workers, injuring dozens and ripping off roofs, leveling barns and crushing cars along its almost 4-mile path.
The warehouse was built by what’s known in the industry as “tilt-up” construction, where steel-reinforced concrete walls are poured flat and raised into position. But such walls, if not connected strongly to the roofs, can fall in, dropping tens of thousands of pounds on occupants inside, said Grace Yan, a structural engineering professor at Missouri University of Science & Technology, at Rolla. And while they can be strengthened to better withstand tornadoes, it’s not required in building codes.
“Tilt-up buildings were not invented for resisting tornadoes,” Yan said.
Yan said the 2011 tornado that hit Joplin, in southwest Missouri, killed seven in a Home Depot when the 100,000-pound panel walls collapsed.
Amazon leases the warehouse at 3077 Gateway Commerce Center Drive South, developed in 2018 by Creve Coeur-based TriStar Properties and built by Contegra Construction Co. of Edwardsville. It was expanded to 1.1 million square feet in July 2020. San Diego-based Realty Income Corp. has owned it since late 2020, when it paid $41.5 million for it, according to Madison County records.
Realty Income did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for TriStar referred questions to Contegra, which referred questions to Amazon. Contegra founder and managing member Eric Gowin said in a statement that the company was “deeply saddened” by Friday’s events.