Crisis at the Warehouse

At 2 a.m., the night-shift supervisor called: a sprinkler in Aisle 14 had burst, soaking three pallet of inventory. Each pallet was worth nearly a hundred thousand dollars.

By 3 a.m., I was on-site with the claims adjuster and a restoration crew. The damage assessment would not be finalized for days, but the immediate priority was containment. We moved dry inventory out, blocked the aisle, and filed an incident report.

When the CEO arrived at dawn, his first question was not about cost, but about people. "Was anyone hurt?" he asked. Nobody was. Everything else, he said, is recoverable.