Amazon Tornado in Edwardsville: Deaths, OSHA Findings, and Illinois Law

An EF-3 tornado with 150-mph winds struck the Amazon delivery station known as DLI4 in Edwardsville, Illinois on the evening of December 10, 2021, collapsing the building’s concrete walls and killing six workers who had sheltered in a restroom at the wrong end of the warehouse. The Amazon tornado in Edwardsville ended with no OSHA fines against the company, multiple wrongful death lawsuits still working through Madison County court, and a new Illinois warehouse safety law signed by Governor JB Pritzker in August 2025.¹

What Happened That Night

The 1.1-million-square-foot facility sat in a commerce district near the St. Louis metro area. It had been built by Contegra Construction Co. and completed in 2018.²

The warning window was short. Electronic tornado alerts reached the site between 8:06 and 8:16 p.m. through a web-based application, and managers began directing workers toward a designated shelter area at the northern end of the building. Edwardsville’s tornado sirens sounded at 8:18 p.m. Nine minutes later, at 8:27 p.m., the tornado touched down directly in front of the facility.³

The storm moved west to east. It lifted the roof, pushed the southwest wall inward, and blew the southeast wall outward. Ten workers had taken shelter in a restroom at the southern end of the building rather than the designated northern shelter. The collapsing southwest wall crushed that restroom.³

Who Died

All six fatalities came from the group in the southern restroom. All died from crushing and blunt force trauma.⁴

Austin J. McEwen, 26, of Edwardsville, a delivery driver
DeAndre S. Morrow, 28, of St. Louis, a delivery driver
Clayton Lynn Cope, 29, of Alton, a maintenance mechanic
Etheria S. Hebb, 34, of St. Louis
Larry E. Virden, 46, of Collinsville, a delivery driver and U.S. Army veteran
Kevin D. Dickey, 62, of Carlyle, a dispatcher

A seventh worker, Craig Yost, was trapped under concrete and airlifted to a hospital with a fractured pelvis, fractured hip, and concussion. Three others were rescued with minor injuries.⁵

Five of the six people killed were independent contracted delivery drivers working through Amazon’s Delivery Service Partner program rather than direct Amazon employees.⁶ That distinction shaped the lawsuits that followed and became central to criticism of Amazon’s staffing model at the site.

The Text Message From Inside the Warehouse

At roughly 8:23 p.m., minutes before the collapse, Larry Virden texted his girlfriend of thirteen years, Cherie Jones: “Amazon won’t let me leave until after the storm blows over.”⁷ Jones told reporters the couple’s Collinsville home was about a 13-minute drive from the facility, and Virden could have made it back in the time he had left. Asked whether she blamed Amazon, she said: “Not really. But it’s that what-if situation: What if they would have let him leave? He could have made it home.”⁸

Amazon said its site leaders followed standard OSHA guidance to shelter in place once warnings arrived and moved people to designated areas quickly.⁸

Why OSHA Issued No Fines

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration opened its investigation within days of the collapse and closed it on April 26, 2022 without a single citation or fine. OSHA assistant secretary of labor Doug Parker said: “Under our standards, there’s not a specific citation we can issue in light of the actions at Amazon.”⁹

Investigators concluded Amazon’s severe weather procedures met minimal federal guidelines for storm sheltering. They still identified serious problems. A megaphone meant to initiate shelter-in-place procedures was locked in a cage and could not be reached, so managers resorted to shouting.¹⁰ The written Emergency Action Plan was not customized for Edwardsville, included irrelevant hurricane guidance, and did not clearly specify where in the building the designated tornado shelter was located. Some workers did not recall where the shelter was or remember participating in drills. The contracted drivers, including five of the six killed, had not been told which shelter area to use.⁶

Instead of penalties, OSHA issued a Hazard Alert Letter recommending that Amazon train all employees in emergency procedures, include site-specific information in weather plans, and clearly identify audible warning devices. Similar letters went to three independent delivery service providers whose workers were killed or injured: AB&C D.A.D Inc., Boxify Logistics, and XSeed Delivery.¹¹ Amazon was not legally required to respond.

The structural reason for the empty docket: OSHA has no federal standard requiring severe weather emergency plans. It can only recommend them under the General Duty Clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which requires workplaces free from recognized hazards but lacks specific enforcement teeth for tornado preparedness.¹¹

The Fight Over How the Building Was Built

OSHA focused on emergency procedures and did not challenge the building’s design, but a separate dispute opened almost immediately about whether DLI4 was structurally sound.

Dan Bruno, a fire marshal with the West County EMS and Fire Protection District, a FEMA-trained structures specialist, and a licensed professional engineer in Missouri since 2001, spent roughly six hours at the site the night of the collapse. His report described “significant structural issues.”¹² Bruno’s central finding: the steel columns appeared not to have been anchored to the foundation. Downed columns had been “lifted out of the floor” like “a peg coming out of a hole” rather than torn at the base, he wrote, and he found no weld or bolted connection at the base of any column, only “a bead of what appeared to be some sort of caulk.”² If accurate, that would violate the International Building Code, which requires structural members to be secured against uplift from wind loads.¹³

Contegra Construction called Bruno’s report “misleading and irresponsible” and “unsound.” The company said the building’s design used metal sleeves anchored to the foundation beneath the floor slab, with columns placed inside and secured by perimeter welds at the top of the sleeve. What Bruno took for caulk, Contegra said, was finishing work covering the weld line. The tornado’s forces ripped columns from the sleeves with such violence that welded connections sheared and column bases bent, the company argued, evidence that the connections existed and failed only because wind loads far exceeded the 90-mph design standard the building code required. Contegra retained Wiss, Janney & Elstner Associates to evaluate the site and said a proper forensic investigation by “qualified structural engineers, not emergency responders” would determine the true cause of the collapse.¹²

A 2024 First Alert 4 investigation surfaced one more wrinkle. During the rebuild, inspectors documented a code violation involving nearly a dozen structural columns with loose or missing anchor bolts, issues reported as repaired within a month. The original 2018 construction inspection reports, by contrast, had been brief one-page checklists on which the building passed every item; the rebuild inspections ran multiple pages with notes and photos. Amazon conducted an internal independent investigation but declined to release the findings, saying the document was for internal training.¹⁴

The Lawsuits

Victims’ families and survivors filed multiple suits, eventually consolidated into eight cases before Judge Sarah Smith in Madison County Circuit Court.¹⁵

The first wrongful death suit was filed January 17, 2022 on behalf of Austin McEwen’s family. It named Amazon, the construction company, and the project’s developer, alleging Amazon failed to warn workers, failed to provide an adequate emergency plan, “carelessly required” workers to continue until moments before the tornado, and directed them to shelter in a restroom the company knew or should have known was unsafe.¹⁶

Attorneys Ben Crump and Bob Hilliard then filed a 14-count wrongful death suit for the estate of DeAndre Morrow, plus a separate emotional distress suit for four surviving drivers: Jamarco Hickman, Evan Jensen, Jada Williams, and Deontae Yancey. The complaints alleged Amazon received weather warnings up to 36 hours before the tornado but did not adjust schedules, and that some drivers were threatened with termination when they tried to leave.¹⁷ The Morrow complaint alleged Amazon designed its Delivery Service Partner program to “shift cost and liabilities” while maintaining control over drivers’ daily operations, effectively evading employment and safety laws.¹⁸

Plaintiffs initially named architecture and engineering firms Stock & Associates Consulting Engineers and Gray Design Group but voluntarily dismissed those claims. Amazon and Contegra remain as defendants. Contegra has called the lawsuit “without merit,” with its attorney stating: “We stand behind our company’s record of quality construction. We are not aware of any code violations at the Amazon fulfillment center.”¹⁹ Plaintiffs were continuing their investigation and expected to file amended complaints as of the most recent reporting.¹⁵

The Illinois Law That Followed

Illinois lawmakers created a Warehouse Safety Standards Task Force, led by State Representative Katie Stuart, that met from July 2023 through December 2024 and delivered its final report to Governor Pritzker and the General Assembly that December.²⁰

The task force recommended amending the International Building Code to require tornado shelters in warehouses based on size and occupancy; requiring site-specific emergency plans shared with local responders and updated when conditions change; mandating safety drills in every language spoken by employees; establishing statewide certification requirements for building code inspectors through the community college system; and increasing appropriations for the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System proportional to tornado risk and warehouse density. Those recommendations formed the basis for the Warehouse Safety Tornado Preparedness Act, which Pritzker signed in August 2025.²¹¹

The Rebuilt Facility

DLI4 reopened for business on September 4, 2024, exactly 1,000 days after the tornado. The rebuilt walls are rated to withstand 114-mph winds for three seconds, up from the previous 90-mph rating, in accordance with updated Edwardsville building codes.²² It does not include a storm shelter. Amazon told lawmakers in 2023 that it would not build dedicated shelters or safe rooms in its warehouses, noting that no U.S. jurisdiction requires them for these facilities.²³ The building is owned by a San Diego-based real estate company, and Amazon has said decisions about added construction features are at the landlord’s discretion.

Other Amazon Sites, Before and After

Edwardsville was not isolated. In November 2018, a tornado caused a partial collapse at an Amazon fulfillment center in Baltimore, killing two third-party contractors when a 50-by-50-foot wall fell and the roof caved in.²⁴

Two March 2026 incidents tested whether post-Edwardsville reforms had reached the warehouse floor. On March 6, 2026, Amazon Flex drivers at a warehouse near I-35 and I-240 in Oklahoma City recorded staff shutting doors and forcing drivers back to their vehicles while tornado sirens sounded. Amazon fired the responsible employees and apologized. Four days later, a driver near St. Louis reported being forced out of an Amazon warehouse during a tornado outbreak despite a shelter-in-place announcement inside the building. Amazon confirmed it found evidence supporting the claim and suspended the employees involved.²⁵ An Amazon spokesperson called both incidents “unacceptable” and mandated an additional shelter-in-place drill at all sites by the end of March 2026.²⁶

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St. Louis Public Radio. Warehouse Safety Bill Signed Into Law
2
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OSHA. Accident Detail Report 141824.015
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Belleville News-Democrat. Six Victims of Amazon Warehouse Collapse Identified
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First Alert 4. Questions Persist in Deadly Amazon Warehouse Tornado Investigation
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Engineering News-Record. Suit Dropped Against A/E Firms in Amazon Warehouse Collapse
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PBS NewsHour. Tornado Victim’s Family Sues Amazon Over Warehouse Collapse
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Ben Crump Law. Attorneys File Lawsuits on Behalf of Amazon Workers
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KFOR. Video Shows Amazon Workers Forced Outside Oklahoma City Warehouse