There were several tornado touchdowns today in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. The small town of Brookside, Il. was devastated. In Chicago, the Bear's game was postponed, forcing fans to crowd inside the arena. CNN.com has some reports of damage.

The football game was just delayed mid-game for a little over an hour while a supercell passed over the area.

Can you imagine the fear they endured? Maybe the architects should think about these acts of nature when they are designing arenas.

Yes, let's put the blame on the architects for something that almost never happens.

Stress figures are integral to the calculations all architects perform when deciding the proper materials to incorporate in their buildings. Most large public structures are required by zoning laws to be capable of acting as shelters in adverse conditions (a holdover from the 50s cold war shelter mentality). Remember where the people gathered for weather safety for Hurricane Katrina: the Super Dome. If only the humanity was as safe as the inanimate objects, there would have been less tragedy associated with that building use.
The folks at Soldier Field were completely safe inside the structure. It is one of the few American stadiums built extensively out of granite and not entirely reinforced concrete which can twist and sway in high winds. It was just gutted and the interiors rebuilt in 2004, so there should have been little worry about being inside an "old" facility. Chicago is called the Windy City and its buildings have done quite well with these supercells coming through several times each year, just usually not when the game is on.

I was not blaming the architects. I know that some people were not sheltered from this occurrence that hardly ever happens due to crowding. It may well have been a secure structure but due to the fact that some fans had to stay out in the elements, makes me think that there should have been better playing for this kind of occurrence. Have you no compassion for what they went through? Elsewhere six innocent people lost their lives in this devastation. I feel sorry for all those who lost loved ones. They can never be replaced.

One: A lot of idiotic drunks probably wanted to stay outside in the weather. Even after last spring's death of storm chasers by a tornado, today's Weather Channel showed footage from some ninnies who were racing to get as close as they could to a vortex that was clearly in the phase when some of the vortices drop/lower to the ground and swell to miles wide phenomena.
Two: Countering your claim that the stadium was not a safe place to be as your earlier post intimated does not mean that I am cold to the fears experienced by some of those people, just that I feel most of those fears were unwarranted. There had been no sightings of funnel clouds in the Chicago area and the game delay was out of exercising a safety factor for the fans you mentioned. People acting in fear in those situations cause panic and panic is the enemy during stressful situations.
Three: People losing their lives hundreds of miles away had nothing to do with Soldier Field.
Four: I think we all feel sorrow (not sorry) for the loss of lives, what animal wouldn't? My newscasts listening (three sources) indicated that the fatalities numbered 4 not 6, but that is hardly consoling to effected families.
Five: The storm front producing the devastating weather is moving all through the night with no let up and will threaten the East Coast from Philadelphia north to Boston by morning today. The weather has passed you but it has not ended.

I bet there are millions of people in the Philippines that wish they had structures as strong as Soldier Field to shelter in. Please don't begin a discussion about a specific incident then throw in extraneous aspects to diss someone giving a contrary opinion. And my post was not really contrary to begin. It merely expounded a different side than your fear mongering post was alluding to. Quote: "Can you imagine the fear they endured?"

By this morning the fatalities caused by the storms were reported to be up to 6. With hundreds of funnel clouds and over 40 69 tornadoes reported, that is a low death toll especially when seen in the light of stop signs that were twice wrapped around street light poles. There was a funnel shaped cloud reported in the Chicago area but it never touched down to the ground. I tried following the on scene reports and reports by those newscasters of distant devastated communities and it seems the near total destruction of wooden constructions on a wide scale occurred in 6 scattered towns. The chain of supercells that caused this began across from St. Louis in southern Illinois and ran north to the Wisconsin border. That chain then moved generally eastward at 40 mph through the afternoon and nighttime until it reached the east coast and effected the morning commutes for the whole northeast.

Edit" The number of twisters was 69 not 40 as I had just posted.

Please can we keep this civil.

I don't think playing Disaster Top Trumps is a particularly useful occupation.
We had an interesting debate last time we discussed tornadoes, where the difference between British and American responses to the possibility of a disaster were discussed politely and were illuminating for me at least.
I think it focused on why the states in tornado areas don't have tornado shelters, and the idea of the odds being a significant factor in the decision.
I've been caught in a couple of significant events in my lifetime, I wouldn't compare them to someone else's experiences, but for myself they were definitely terrifying.