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Subscribe to RSSSt. Louis Cardinals fans took a moment to reflect after a night of violent weather, one that left a party tent hanging mangled from railroad tracks. NBC's Katy Tur reports.
ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- A storm blasting through the city blew away a tent outside a downtown bar, leaving one man dead Saturday afternoon, NBC station KSDK reported.
Twenty others -- three in critical condition -- were taken to a hospital after the incident at Kilroy’s Sports Bar on South Seventh Street, a couple of blocks south of Busch Stadium, KSDK reported. A total of 100 people received medical treatment, KSDK said. Photos showed the tent impaled on a nearby railroad trestle.
KSDK via NBC News
A beer garden tent at Kilroy's Sports Bar near Busch Stadium in St. Louis is shown impaled on a train trestle Saturday after winds blew it away, killing one man and injuring about 100 other people.
It was not clear whether the man who died was struck during the incident or went into cardiac arrest because of shock, officials said.
St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson told KSDK that a few hundred people were celebrating in the tent after the Cardinals' 7-3 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers when the storm hit.
"We've got severe injuries to quite a few people," Jenkerson said, noting live wires were left on the ground after the tarp tied to galvanized pipes blew away. "We don't like this type of building. It gives us nightmares, and as you can see, it caused one."
The pipes "beat up" many of the people in the tent, Jenkerson said.
The tent was set up as a beer garden next to Kilroy's, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Eddie Roth, director of the St. Louis Department of Public Safety, said the tent had passed inspection and it didn't appear there would be any violation, although an investigation would continue, The Associated Press reported.
"I thought a train fell off the track," Art Randall, Kilroy's owner, told the Post-Dispatch. "We all ducked for cover. Everything was going sideways. I had metal chairs ripping across the beer garden."
"People were pushing and shoving," said Christy Eilermann, 42, of St. Louis, the Post-Dispatch reported. "The wind just picked up and they started dragging people inside."
Storms packing hail up to baseball-size hail slammed eastern Missouri and western Illinois on Saturday.
Weather spotters in O’Fallen, Baden and Lebanon, Ill., reported baseball-size hail, 2.75 inches, smashing car windshields and home windows at 4:22 CDT.
The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for parts of Daviess, Knox and Martin counties in southwest Indiana and severe thunderstorm warnings for east-central Missouri and south-central Illinois.
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Lame story, I could care less. Anyone that got hurt absolutely deserves it and has no one to blame but themselves.
My condolences to the family of the deceased. May the injured heal quickly. Simple fact of the matter; whoever put the tents up, gave permission, is responsible. When you put on an event the safety of the public and staff are supposed to be paramount.
Anyone who is either too dumb or too drunk or too addicted to nicotine to leave a tent with a storm approaching, and take cover inside the bar or even in a car, has no one else to blame for his or her injuries. (Some commenter blamed this debacle on the fact that they wouldn't allow smoking in the bar; I can only assume he was attempting a sick joke.) Whether from being struck by the galvanized tent poles that "beat up" some of the people, or from cardiac arrest, this is an ignominious death for the one fatality so far. I believe some call it "thinning the gene pool."
Storms approach fast. Stop being a I know it all bigot! I don't know what is more sad, this even, or your willingness to show how stupid and hateful you are!
I live in St. Louis, and these tents are for the overflow of fans from the game that bars put up. In all my 23+ years of living in this "have to blame someone" earth, this has never happened before. The only thing that comes close is when a tornadoe hit on the fourth of July and killed a fair goer downtown. The only way to avoid things like this is to stay your whole life in a big package of bubble wrap don't leave your house. Excuse me, but I am going to go out and about. You can't prepare for everything like this.
No, one can't live in a bubble nor prepare for everything - like a runaway car mowing people or a sniper senselessly shooting into a crowd, for example. One can, however, exercise some common sense in many instances, such as forsaking a tent in a severe storm when sirens are going off to warn everyone a storm is approaching - a storm that had been previously forecast I might add.
I suppose tents will be out lawed now.
Is it too much to expect the tent owner to check the forecast?