One person was killed, five are in critical condition and at least 100 were injured when a strong gust of wind blew over a tent outside a St. Louis bar on Saturday afternoon.
The tent was set up as a beer garden near Busch Stadium.
Saturday’s fatal tragedy reminded Battalion Chief Steve Sapp of some severe weather that collapsed a Columbia church tent in August of 2008. Twenty people were injured at the First Church of The Nazarene when strong winds caused a tent to collapse at a revival. Columbia city codes require any tent that’s twenty-feet by twenty-feet, or larger, to have structural integrity and flame retardant materials. Sapp said codes can only do so much.
Sapp said, “Whether the tent is engineered to meet codes for nominal wind speeds is really irrelevant when we are in the midst of a violent or severe thunderstorm. You need to keep your eye on the weather. Of course, there are many different ways throughout the media today that you can monitor the weather.”
Columbia firefighters said they have few problems with outdoor tents because most people in their city know to evacuate and move indoors at the first sign of weather trouble.
Sapp said, “When the weather starts to turn threatening, it’s probably time to evacuate the tent.”
The City of Columbia has a Special Events Committee that evaluates outdoor tent use and forces tent users to have a plan to deal with severe weather.
The owners of Kilroy’s Sports Bar insist their beer garden tent met city codes when it was destroyed on Saturday afternoon in St. Louis.
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