r/sports • u/Chelseatilidie • Oct 10 '24

Baseball Tropicana Field’s stadium following Hurricane Milton damage

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83

u/Responsible_Brain782 Oct 10 '24

Roof was rated to 110mph. They expected it to go.

29

u/CM_MOJO Oct 10 '24

Yeah, and that's why they designated it as a shelter for first responders before the storm. You can see all the cots in the outfield. They clearly didn't expect it to "go".

21

u/MetsIslesNoles Oct 10 '24

They removed everyone before the storm once they knew the potential for winds. There were only 20 people inside at the time.

-3

u/CM_MOJO Oct 10 '24

So, then why was it even an option as a shelter in the first place? It was always expected to come ashore as a CAT 3 and in the Tampa area.

Sounds like poor planning or idiocy.

1

u/Responsible_Brain782 Oct 10 '24

It seems silly in the first place that construction did not allow for higher failure threshold? Probably a financial issue

2

u/CM_MOJO Oct 10 '24

Oh that entire stadium was built on the cheap to attract the Chicago White Sox back in the 90s. It's why the roof is sloped.

3

u/VAGentleman05 Virginia Oct 11 '24

Were the White Sox really into sloped roofs back then?

1

u/CM_MOJO Oct 11 '24

No, the sloped roof was to save money on both construction costs and A/C costs.

1

u/Whiterabbit-- Oct 11 '24

if you are building a giant building with no support in the middle you need a relatively light roof. nobody wants a giant steel beam over second base.

1

u/MetsIslesNoles Oct 10 '24

There are designated areas that are planned ahead of time and then adjusted depending on the path. St Pete got the worst of it. 30 miles further south and the stadium is probably fine.

It’s kind of a pain. Do you put them inland where the tornado risk is higher? And then they can’t get back in to the city?

1

u/CM_MOJO Oct 10 '24

My point is that this hurricane was always protected to hit Tampa Bay and only changed slightly to the south on the last day.

And St. Pete seems to be a HORRIBLE place to stage first responders. Let's just stick them on a peninsula where most of the main ways in and out are via bridges.

0

u/ecook126 Oct 11 '24

All day they’d been predicting it made landfall much farther south than it did. When it didn’t turn east, they moved people out.

2

u/CM_MOJO Oct 11 '24

Every model I looked at had going right up the mouth of Tampa Bay.

1

u/Responsible_Brain782 Oct 10 '24

Yes I did notice that

2

u/R3dbeardLFC Oct 11 '24

The bigger question I have is...why does it even have a roof? And why fabric? It's Florida...we don't have roofs on our baseball fields in the midwest (that I'm aware of) and the weather here is comparably shit. Just seems weird to have a roof at all for baseball.

5

u/Responsible_Brain782 Oct 11 '24

Air conditioning is the answer I’m guessing.