Man who survived Edwardsville tornado was pinned under concrete for three hours
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More coverage of the Amazon warehouse disaster
Read more of the BND’s stories following a tornado that killed six at an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville on Dec. 10, 2021.
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Craig Yost was taking shelter with six others in a bathroom when an EF-3 tornado struck an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville on Friday night, but he’s the only one to survive as the walls crashed down, Yost told reporters this week.
Six people were killed in the tornado. Yost was pinned under a concrete wall for three hours after the tornado hit the south end of the building on Gateway Commerce Drive.
“Those that weren’t as lucky as me, I was as close to them as we are to one another in here now at that moment and that’s been a lot to take in,” Yost told KSDK-Channel 5 while recovering in his room at St. Louis University Hospital.
“A couple of them I worked very closely with. A couple of them I didn’t know well, but if they were in that building and working there, they were good people.”
Yost, 39, told reporters he had multiple injuries, including a fractured pelvic bone and a fractured thigh bone near his hip. He was discharged from the hospital on Tuesday, a hospital spokeswoman said.
KTVI-Channel 2 reported that Yost was pinned under a concrete wall for three hours before he was rescued and airlifted to St. Louis.
Yost has worked as a contract driver delivering Amazon packages for about two months, according to KMOV-Channel 4. He had just finished his route and returned to the warehouse shortly before the tornado struck about 8:30 p.m.
“They’re telling people just park your van and go to the shelter,” Yost told Channel 4. “Where’s the shelter? The bathrooms? OK, so I parked the van and go to the bathroom. They had people directing others to the bathroom, and that’s where we sat and waited.”
A GoFundMe account has been established for Yost.
An Amazon executive said 46 people were inside the warehouse when the tornado hit. Thirty-nine of them had gathered in the designated shelter-in-place space on the north side of the building while Yost and the six victims were on the south side where the tornado struck the 1.1 million-square-foot building located near the intersection of Illinois 255/Interstate 255 and Interstate 270 in Madison County.
This story was originally published December 14, 2021 at 11:47 AM.
