Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
I was not at the event but I was in contact with several friends and family there and monitored the weather when I did find out what was happening. Quickly moving from the floor to safety is relatively easy because there is plenty of room and not a lot of people. The stands is a completely different scenario because there is tons of people and limited space/walking area. Leaving a crowded stadium at the end of a game is extremely crowded and chaotic add to that chaos, panic, and disorder and you have yourselves a death trap for smaller people. Looking back to events like hurricane Katrina the main shelter was the dome in a catagory 5 storm.
The best thing to do was let people know of the serious weather outside/keep people indoors which they did and not create undue panic/hysteria. Yes there are events where we ask, "Why wasn't a warning given/more action taken?" and other times wonder why chaos was created over nothing and someone got hurt. I'm not advocating that the weather wasn't serious, but it wasn't serious enough to evacuate the building and create a panic.
I'm sure FIRST has an evacuation plan considering tornadoes tragically ripped through St. Louis the week before the Championship last year. Some might say they felt in serious danger from where they were on the floor, others in the nose bleeds say they thought the hail sounded cool and felt not danger.
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I'm not sure how many people are aware of this, but
FIRST was in contact with the NWS in St. Louis. It's probably about the most responsible thing they could have done in this type of situation -- going to the people who know about the storm.