Busch Stadium press box damaged in nasty T-storm, injuries

It was not a fun night to be covering the Cardinals.

The press box at Busch Stadium had its windows blown out tonight by a nasty thunderstorm, according to the AP. A piece of Plexiglas flew into the stands, but apparently didn't hit anyone. Tarp was damaged too.

According to R.B. Fallstrom's writethru, "Reporters huddled for safety in a stairwell behind the press box, where there was standing water in the front row."

That would suck. Hopefully no one's laptop bit the dust. Though the mental picture of reporters scrambling to unplug their laptops and bolt O.J. Simpson-through-the-airport-Hertz Commercial-style is humorous in a twisted way to me.

I covered a game at Western Kentucky where it was raining in the press box, the Louisville C-J's reporter was fucked, his seat was drenched. He watched the game from a plastic chair in the donor's box.

Check out Fallstrom's account on the wire. Apparently, it was kind of harrowing.

 

Re: So whose laptop got damaged in the St. Louis T-storm tonight?

EDIT! This was no laughing matter. Latest writethru says 30 people were injured, five taken to hospitals.

Damn.

 

Re: So whose laptop got damaged in the St. Louis T-storm tonight?

Check out the radar images of the storm. It was a bow echo, and the nasty north-moving-south kind like what tore threw Evansville here last summer, complete with 80+ mph winds.

 

Re: So whose laptop got damaged in the St. Louis T-storm tonight?

I live in St. Louis. This storm was no joke tonight, but somehow, my office didn't lose power.

Winds downtown topped out around 84 according to KMOV. The Millenium hotel was evacuated and two windows in its revolving rooftop restaurant were blown out. How about that for scary?

The craziest part: After nearly 2 1/2 hours, they're playing ball.

Tomorrow could be really ugly. There are a lot of folks without power and the high tomorrow is forecast at 103 according to weather.com. Glad to hear no reports of any deaths tonight in the area.

 

Re: So whose laptop got damaged in the St. Louis T-storm tonight?

I was driving through St. Louis one day in June 2003 when the hardest, most intense rain caused me to pull off the road for 30 minutes. I never knew it could rain that hard that fast. When it quasi-cleared up, I drove through East St. Louis for fun.

 

Re: So whose laptop got damaged in the St. Louis T-storm tonight?

I lived in St. Louis for about a year, and rarely have I seen rainfall that major. It didn't rain often, but when it did, I would always have to pull off the road. The general dryness made the roads pretty slick, with the oil and whatever not washing off. Plus, no matter how quickly your wipers wiped, you still couldn't see squat.

 

St. Louis storms

Apologies for any irreverance earlier, the reports I read did not indicate it was this serious until the most recent writethru came over the wire.

I've driven through some of those storms here in the Midwest. Nasty stuff.

 

Living in (roughly) the same area as Bubbler and OTR, I can concur about the fierceness of the storms around here. Springtime is not a great time to be here.

That said, I can only imagine what storms are like in the plains, like Oklahoma. At least here, the hills and knobs can deflect/lessen some storms' intensity.

Thoughts and prayers to those in STL.

 

KMOV.com and STLToday.com had pretty decent coverage of what was going on.

 

if that had happened in old Busch, that space is even more wide-open.

 

It was harrowing -- at least for a few minutes as the storm intensified. But understand that the windows were more like hard-plastic covers. The Cardinals built this cheap pressbox without real windows and then added transparent, roll-down shades later ... which obviously were too flimsy to withstand bad weather. Still, it wasn't as if flying glass or sharp-edged, jagged sheets of plexiglass were sailing through the pressbox. It was a little unnerving when the window covers became unhinged and crashed down, opening up the way for driving rain and howling wind to saturate the pressbox. I retreated to a work room behind the main box, and it was safe. I felt secure there. It was crazier outside, with mobile concession stands getting air lifted and tossed about. And some mobile stands injured spectators when the wind caused them to slide out of control. The amazing thing is, after this frightening weather and chaos and reports of massive power outages and fallen trees ripping up neighborhoods around town, there must have been 30,000 to 35,000 fans in the stands when the game got underway.  It's as if nothing ever happened.

 

I second that.

We had a storm come through here today with vicious lightning and thunder, but nothing more. At around 3 this afternoon I heard what sounded like a huge explosion in my apartment (and this wasn't just thunder...it was in my fucking apartment). I think one of our outlets got struck by lightning, but I'm not sure. Both computers are fine.