If you read this and are like “why didn’t they X” or “I’d have done Y” you might consider joining your local volunteer fire company (if you have one). There’s actually a huge need in most of the US for volunteer emergency response. There’s generally no fitness requirements other than a doctor’s note saying you are fit for duty. I know some really out of shape firefighters who bring a lot of technical skill to the scene and pull more weight with their minds than with their bodies.
You’ll get tons of free training on all kinds of basic rescue. You’ll then be able to take training on things like the big hydraulic cutters and spreaders. There’s certs for high angle rope, vehicle, trench, confined space, wilderness, hazmat, and water. It’s like being in the scouts, but for adults.
I became a firefighter and am big into the rescue stuff. I can’t imagine being helpless just watching something like that happen. I’d want to grab a halligan and cut the power or at least try to break the door down.
If you are thinking about it and are on the fence or want someone to ask questions hit me up. I got into it later in life and don’t regret it a bit
This sounds fascinating. Do larger cities have volunteer firefighters too or is this mostly the smaller towns that rely on this?
It really depends on the state. I think Delaware is all paid, but Pennsylvania is mostly volunteer with only a few cities having full time staff like Philly, Chester, Harrisburg, etc.
But like even west Philly in the Drexel Hill area there’s a big volunteer company. West Chester does have a fully staffed volunteer ambulance company called Good Fellowship.
You’d have to look into your local to see. Also lots of volunteer places will let you join even if you are far away as long as you get enough credits each year (say by coming and working from the station and going on calls during the day or going to weekly trainings).
Excellent information, thanks!
How does one design an oven that cannot be opened?
I would assume that you can’t, for safety regulations designed for pretty much this exact scenario.
There … essentially must have been an emergency shut off and unlock system outside of the oven, if not inside the oven as well.
Either the emergency system borked out and failed due to some kind of hardware/maintenance failure or software bug…
…Or the employees were so poorly trained they could not figure out how to use it.
Given some quotes from the police calls I’ve been able to find… it seems like somehow the entire staff of this Walmart had no clue how to engage an emergency shutdown.
I also wonder why they didn’t try to break the glass??
Yeah … I … as far as I can see, no good explanation for that either.
If you’re too incompetent to hit the big red EMERGENCY STOP button, or said button is broken or hidden behind a series of button presses but oops we forgot the override code…
Get a goddamned fireaxe and start wailing away at the glass.
I really don’t get it.
I would have also added:
Surely someone else can throw every breaker in the god-damned building to cut off the power source to the oven if you’ve determined that somehow all the emergency halt inputs don’t work…
…but they are apparently all collectively too incompetent to have that thought occur to them if they really did just stand around the door and cry.
Its fucking bonkers.
I’m not super familiar with Canadian Law, but if this happened in the states… I really do not see how at least one person is not going to jail for negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter.
It essentially has to be the case that either:
Someone on shift should have known what to in this situation and did not do it,
Or, the system borked out due to neglected or improperly done maintenance, or non conducted regular testing of the emergency stop system, which again has someone responsible for this.
Honestly, knowing the people I work with, I wouldn’t put it past any of the to simply not be willing to pull harder. They got into a panic and gave up.
This was at a Walmart. Hate to say it, but maybe fear of corporate played a part?
I don’t know what protocols the bakery staff would follow for emergencies, but given all the stories about employees facing liability for interacting with shoplifters, I wonder how much fear of liability lead to inaction here.
Really tragic shit all around.
As much as I understand and hate corporate bullshit…
I… really struggle to see how that would make sense in this scenario.
Unless they got a memo from corporate that was like Fallout universe levels of maliciously evil, like oh actually just uh yeah its now corporate policy to manually deactivate all emergency stop functionality for the oven, because too many people keep hitting the button accidentally…
If that was the case, then corporate, the people who issued that directive, are now directly liable for this, like, criminally.
Usually corporate isn’t that fucking stupid, they just imprecisely pressure the local management to ‘solve the accidental baking stoppage problem’ and then its up to the manager to, you know do the sane thing and retrain the bakery people, or hire more competent ones…
…or do something insane like ‘just fucking disable the emergency stop button’, and then the manager takes the blame because well corporate did not and would never direct an employee to violate critical safety standards.
Start flipping breakers, damn.
I just read 5 different articles on this story after googling it. None of them mentioned anything about employees being aware of her being in there by the time they discovered her dead in the oven. There was a mention on a call that they were trying to figure out how to turn it off or something, but no detail about her screaming in there. She was out of the oven by the time first responders arrived. Is there a different article somewhere that mentions these supposed other horrible details?
I had read an article earlier saying that the details were not yet going to be provided…
I imagine that locals to the area could be talking about this informally and that it has made its way to the internet, and so I thought that these details could theoretically be verified and emerge… But I am completely open to the idea that this is just a fabrication from some guy on the internet.
So, I filed it in ‘random shit.’
If it turns out to be true, you can thank the internet for the inside details before the media. If it turns out to be false, you can thank the internet for a horrifying & thrilling read.
Why does Walmart need walk in ovens?
It was for their bakery
Holy fucking shit
The police still have not released any confirmation of whether or not they consider the death suspicious. The woman was originally from India.
If you’re reading this and you’re not from Canada you may or may not be aware that in Canada we have an ongoing campaign of assassinations conducted by agents of the Modi government against Indian nationals in Canada. Now I’m not saying that we should put these facts together and conclude that this woman was assassinated using a walk-in oven but the mere possibility absolutely horrifies me.
