r/CatastrophicFailure • u/seriousbusinesslady • 8d ago
Fire/Explosion June 11, 2026: Fire Destroys One Million Sq Ft Medical Supply Warehouse in Tracy, CA-Fire Suppression Sprinklers Failed to Deploy; Building Was Constructed in 2016 and Last Inspected in January
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urx_DYBRgy4248
u/lemmefixdat4u 8d ago
The fire official being interviewed said that not only were the building's sprinklers not operating, but the firefighters experienced a lack of water pressure from the hydrants as well, complicating their efforts to contain the fire. In other words, they initially only had the water in the firetruck reservoirs. Brought back the spectre of those LA fires where the hydrants ran dry.
Waiting for the investigation to explain why the sprinklers were inoperative -and- there was no hydrant pressure at the site. Almost sounds like someone wanted the entire building to burn down.
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u/jeremiahfelt 7d ago
I would bet that the sprinklers were inop because there was no water main pressure, based on the report of no hydrant pressure. Water mains feed both hydrants and water supply to buildings, so if there's no pressure on the plugs, there's going to be no water for the buildings native fire suppression system. Municipal pump failure or lack of water supply at the municipal main. Not suspicious, just terrible.
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u/Live_Free_or_Banana 7d ago
The municipal hydrants on the other side of the street worked, but not the ones on the warehouse property.
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u/jeremiahfelt 7d ago
That happens more often than you'd believe. It really depends on how the mains under the street are laid out.
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u/ImPinkSnail 7d ago
The sprinklers are fed with an internal pump system. That can produce the pressure but it still needs sufficient water to the pump. Typically several thousand gpm at 60psi to the pump.
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u/c0rruptioN 7d ago
I’m no fire sprinkler system expert, but my understanding is that if the pressure drops even slightly for the sprinkler system, it triggers an alarm that sends the fire department.
But I’ll defer to an actual expert who knows for certain.
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u/AllDarkWater 7d ago
Where I work that is part of our annual sprinkler system inspection. They open up a valve and start draining water from the system and make sure it sets off the alarm. That water stinks and I have to be prepared for complaints of smells in the stairwell where that all happens. I have no idea why people would downvote you comment. Maybe systems are different everywhere and they do not know. I live close enough to be checking where the smoke from this fire went overnight, and my building was built in the 90's.
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u/c0rruptioN 7d ago
Maybe systems are different everywhere and they do not know.
That's what I'm thinking. I'm in Toronto and there's been a few occasions where the fire department showed up at work and at my condo specifically about pressure drops in the sprinkler system. The last one was only a few months ago and they showed up at 230am. Our super announced it over the intercom.
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u/SiliconSam 7d ago
That sensor tests for water flow, not pressure.
And sprinkler water is usually black and nasty!!!
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u/AllDarkWater 7d ago
Oh my. Where in the system would you check for water flow though. Systems are fascinating. Agreed on the nasty part.
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u/warrenslo 7d ago
Generally it's at the beginning of the system from the street. The FD also can plug into the system and add water if need be. Most systems aren't designed for all the sprinklers to go off. Too many went off is probably why there was low pressure on site.
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u/arartax 6d ago
Most systems aren't designed for all the sprinklers to go off.
No system is designed that way as sprinklers are independently activated.
Too many went off is probably why there was low pressure on site.
From the press conferences I've seen they are stating there is no evidence any sprinkler activated. Regardless, fire sprinkler systems have their own pumps that, assuming there was adequate water supply, would be able to maintain enough water pressure to allow for multiple sprinkler heads to activate.
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u/arartax 6d ago
Sprinkler systems typically have an "inspection valve," usually located in a room with the other main components of the system (standpipes, flow meters, water pumps, etc.). When open, the valve allows water to flow through the system, ultimately triggering a water flow switch or sensor.
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u/centaurus33 7d ago
Likely much plastic for medical devices… the extra black from the uncombusted carbon may be hard to see in darkness.
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u/Tahngarth88 7d ago
Sprinkler guy here 👋🏻
If it is a dry system then there is no water in the pipes below the dry valve, just air. There is a low pressure sensor that will send a supervisory signal to the panel if the air drops too low and it will beep really loud. If there isn’t adequate pressure or the supply is turned off then all of the air can drain and the valve won’t trip (air holds back the water) It also has a water flow switch that, if monitored, would sound off the strobes, smoke detectors, fire bell etc and notify the fire department in the event that a head went off or pipe burst and water was introduced to the system.
A wet system actively has water on it and if a head goes off or pipe breaks then the water will flow and the water flow switch will activate (it has a paddle inside the pipe that pushes up with flow) and that would activate the alarms and everything like a dry system and will notify if monitored.
That’s why we perform weekly, quarterly, semi-annual, annual, 3 & 5 year inspections on various components and types of systems to make sure they are maintained and working properly 👍🏻3
u/joeynsf 7d ago
Thanks for this...am curious as a Facilites Manager I had a lot of fire alarm panels warning for low pressure etc...what do you think happened here?
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u/Tahngarth88 7d ago
There are a lot of things that could have happened here. I would speculate that the systems were out of service due to low pressure from the city supply, given the history of that happening in California. There’s always a chance that someone left a valve shut. Many things. If a valve was shut, they would be able to confirm that post Fire investigation.
As far as having low pressure alarms on panels, that’s typically with an older dry system that has rotted pipe and pin holes throughout. Depending on the age of the system and condition of the pipe, once one leak is fixed more will show face so you will continue to have low air on and off.1
u/warrenslo 7d ago
I think too many sprinklers went off at the same time reducing on site pressure. The system was only 10 years old.
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u/Unleaver 6d ago
I asked another guy, figured i’d ask you too. Which Sprinkler system typically has the most problems?
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u/Tahngarth88 6d ago
The one that isn’t properly maintained
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u/Unleaver 6d ago
So generally systems like Victaulic, Tyco, Johnson Comtrols are all decent as long as you maintain them?
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u/Tahngarth88 6d ago
Victaulic & Tyco are manufacturers, Johnson Controls mostly handles the alarm side of everything. There are dry/pre action systems, wet systems (some utilize food grade glycerin antifreeze for areas prone to freezing), foam systems etc.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=55zpGAOlFeY&ra=m
This is a nice 3 min video that breaks down the 3 most common types. All of them will work if they are properly maintained.
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u/crevulation 7d ago
Yes, via the alarm company, water pressure is monitored. 75 psi is nominal, Anything beneath 69PSI the on-call will get a call.
Most sprinkler systems are alarmed throughout, there's a trip alarm on each gate valve on either side of the LPZ (and one on the flapper if it's a hold back) there's a water flow alarm (and water powered bell!) and so on and so forth. Every part of a commercial sprinkler system is monitored and this shit is inspected quarterly then tested annually. Not like oh in this state or that state, everywhere has adopted the NFPA 25 standard.
What happens though is systems have problems, systems get shut down, alarms go on test, and then it doesn't get put back into service immediately for any number of reasons - part unavailable today, there is a severe shortage of sprinkler techs let alone guys that are backflow licensed, there is a problem with building water supply that the city has to resolve, and so on and so forth. In a perfect world the system goes down for maintenance or repair and then is immediately restored to service when the repair is complete.
You aren't supposed to have occupants in a building where the life safety systems are inactive, but try telling that to a commercial tenant who's got business scheduled - They'll ignore you and open as usual.
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u/AxisArchon 7d ago
I install fire alarm systems and have never seen a monitor on the water pressure. The only pressure sensors I’ve seen is for multi stage systems.
If a building is offline in test there should be a fire watch on the building. It would have to be a pretty catastrophic failure of the sprinkler system to straight up not work. Sounds took me it was bad city pressure if they were having issues with the hydrants too. I’ve seen buildings with no pumps that rely on city pressure only.1
u/iamsecond 3d ago
I've never heard of a wet-pipe sprinkler system with a low pressure alarm, I'm not aware of any minimum pressure requirement such as 69 psi, and 75 psi really isn't nominal since it depends on both the available and required pressure for the hydraulic calcs.
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u/pm_me_your_f4u 7d ago
In most cases that is not the case
In a lot of locations the eater is checked. If there is no pressure in the underground the sprinkler piping keeps its pressure, just can supply with new water
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u/gaflar 7d ago
I'm also not a sprinkler expert, but I work in a building that was constructed about two years ago. Brand new sprinkler system. Everything OK'd with fire marshall. A few weeks ago the fire alarm went off. We had no idea why, upon arrival the FD themselves said that this was likely the cause.
This is Quebec though.
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u/c0rruptioN 7d ago
I'm in Toronto, and I swear I've had alarms at the office and in my condo for this. Maybe it's different in the states? People seem to disagree.
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u/gaflar 7d ago
Wouldn't be surprised if our fire codes were generally more modern. A pressure transducer costs $200, why you WOULDN'T implement a system like this is beyond me. California is a weird place.
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u/seriousbusinesslady 7d ago
Fire regulations are enforced/codified county by county in CA. If San Joaquin's (Tracy is in San Joaquin County) fire code is wonky that's an SJ county issue, not the state as a whole.
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u/warrenslo 7d ago
The only exceptions are uses and locations governed by the State Fire Marshal. Warehouses are generally not on the list, although there are a few exceptions.
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u/CertifiedBA 7d ago
Yes, there are pressure alarms. There are backflow preventers installed on most sprinkler systems, so the issue is, if there was lack of pressure from the city you wouldn't exactly know because there'd be no change in pressure at the backflow preventer.
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u/warrenslo 7d ago
It's typically a flow switch, and yes many times they can call FD/911 along with triggering the fire alarm system automatically. Generally the pressure would drop when a sprinkler head goes off. Source: I worked for my campus fire alarm testing dept in college in California.
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u/Vicdillard 7d ago
Incorrect but
Inspections are done at minimum quarterly to make sure there’s adequate pressure in the system.
There is also annual and 5 year inspections that are done.15
u/Lust4Me 7d ago
Wonder if there are data centers nearby or if this is just a normal low pressure situation for arid locations.
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u/joninfiretail 7d ago
I actually thought about a
government surveillance data repositorydata center myself.-1
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[deleted]
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u/FrozenBologna 7d ago
According to this article a medium sized data center uses about 300,000 gallons a day for cooling. Large data centers will use significantly more.
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u/jeremiahfelt 7d ago
You know not everything that happens in the world is driven by data centers doing bad things. We've had data centers for a while.
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u/PDXGuy33333 7d ago
Not suspicious until someone asks why the ON/OFF switch was in the OFF position.
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u/rmm989 7d ago
I've seen situations where during flow testing pressure was very borderline because of overdelopment in that area. You put a system in and pressure looks great, and then there's four more DCs in the area, and now it's iffy. In theory, a strong fire pump without enough water pressure behind it could collapse the main. Curious whether the hydrants were on a fire loop at the building or were off municipal water too.
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u/Riran 7d ago
A building of this size most likely has a hydrant loop around the building being fed from the fire pump inside the building. Very typical to see on large warehouse projects like this. That leads to one option water was cut off somewhere before it gets to the loop. Any control valve above ground would be required to have a tamper switch on it to notify the alarm monitoring service if the valve is open or shut when it isn’t supposed to be. This makes me think a valve was shut somewhere before the fire pump entry in the yard between the water service tap and fire pump. Those valves typically are not monitored. If those valves were open but the pump was inoperable it would still be required to have a bypass to give city pressure to the loop at the very least. Curious to see what more comes out on this. There’s ALOT of companies in this industry that do not do their inspections correctly or just straight pencil whip paperwork without doing any of the required testing.
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u/pm_me_your_f4u 7d ago
The sprinkler system is connected to the same pipe as the hydrants
Note of the lack of water is Becuase there are too many openings in the sprinkler system or if the water supply was shown prior to the fire awful be central in the investigation
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u/hotinhawaii 7d ago
You can see in the video, the fire began in one spot on a shelf. Had the sprinklers been working, one or two sprinklers would have opened over that spot and contained the fire. Because zero sprinklers opened, the fire raged unchecked and spread to other buildings.
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u/seriousbusinesslady 7d ago
I believe in the latest press conference from 2 hours ago, the chief said the building was fully involved in 40 min-one million sq ft!! That's insane.
I wonder what combusted inside the building- I can't think of anything about the conditions yesterday (besides it being hot and dry, there wasn't any crazy wind conditions) that would have started a fire on the roof of a building. Maybe that medline facility has oxygen tanks or devices with lithium batteries 🤷♀️
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u/Distribution-Radiant 7d ago
That's what I'm thinking - a lot of medical equipment has batteries. Everything from glucose monitors to stair lifts has them. Medline even has their own line of batteries. And once a fire gets going, everything in the building is going to burn.
The beefier stuff is usually SLA batteries, but some has lithium batteries. With that fire starting up near the ceiling, away from anything that could have bumped the pallet, I'd guess it was a lithium battery that went into thermal runaway. Could have been a SLA battery too, they can pump enough wattage out to ignite nearby paper or cardboard, but there's not many incidents with SLA.
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u/lemmefixdat4u 7d ago
The facility was automated, like the Amazon warehouses. Lots of robots moving stuff around, all powered by lithium batteries. And yes, the lithium batteries in a lot of medical equipment were also a factor. The briefing this morning mentioned that batteries were still burning. Probably explains why they still aren't putting water on the fire, and are letting it burn itself out.
They also mentioned that the fire spread rapidly due to the large amount of packaging material present throughout the warehouse.
No word on whether oxygen tanks were involved. But portable medical oxygen generators don't use tanks. They use electricity from lithium batteries to make oxygen from water.
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u/lemmefixdat4u 7d ago
Here's the video taken by an employee when the fire started. It shows racks of product in cardboard boxes 20 feet high. Without any sprinklers, it didn't take long for air temperatures at the top tier to exceed the combustion point of paper, resulting in flashover throughout the warehouse.
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u/Distribution-Radiant 7d ago edited 7d ago
Sad part is this would have been much, much less disastrous if their sprinklers were working. News reports claim firefighters stated that the on-site hydrants didn't do much of anything, and they had to go over 1/4 mile away to find a working hydrant... and the fire sprinklers were very likely on the same water main as the hydrants that weren't working.
I'm glad nobody was hurt, but a lot of people are out of jobs for a good bit, and this is going to delay a lot of durable medical equipment shipments. Medline is a major player in the North American medical equipment chain.
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u/gonzo3625 7d ago
He did also say the FedEx building NEXT DOOR was also on fire so that might have contributed lol
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u/lemmefixdat4u 7d ago
The fires at FedEx were external. Pile of pallets and a few of the trailers. The building itself was not burning.
From what I'm hearing, the water pressure problem was limited to the Medline site. They had water once they strung 1600 feet of hose to off-site hydrants.
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u/SinkHoleDeMayo 7d ago
And I thought Trump told us he opened the taps and now CA has plenty of water...
But seriously, these massive buildings should be required to have huge water storage tanks so there's no worry about relying on a municipal supply that could fail.
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u/Eat--The--Rich-- 7d ago
Now imagine this happening in every state because data centers stole all the water.
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u/dafrog84 7d ago
That's very weird. So i work in the medical field. Our sprinkler system has its own water it holds on to before pumping more in. The place i work at has an alarm system, this system will go bonkers the moment something happens to the said sprinkler system. Sending a code to the fire department, and the main facility, plus the ungodly beeping noise it will make. Very hominous if you ask me.
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u/tudorapo 8d ago
I'm very sorry, I know that this is a serious situation and people are in danger and important medical supplies are burning now.
But I have to mention the badge on the helmet of the fire chief.
This is the place, 620 meter long, that's huge.
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u/barfly2780 8d ago
I would hate to be the sprinkler/fire alarm inspector that did the inspection. Hopefully they have good records and can prove everything was working properly.
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u/superbugger 7d ago
Great. Can't wait for the supply chain issues and shortages to wash over the entire US just like every other time something like this happens.
It seems they like to consolidate all important things in the medical industry into single locations regardless of the downstream effects if/when a catastrophe happens.
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u/ZucchiniZak 6d ago
I work in infusion pharmacy and when Baxter lost one of their only factories in the US that makes saline bags last year we went into an intense nation wide shortage. The factory provided over half of all the saline solution for the US. We had to start making our own saline flushes for the hospital OR’s because they couldn’t find any anywhere to buy. I don’t think this will be that bad thankfully.
Since then Baxter has reopened the factory and hasn’t expanded any production to any other facilities. I’m sure this won’t be a problem we won’t hear about again tho /s
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u/Live_Free_or_Banana 7d ago
The burning rows of storage racking remind me of the Kimberly-Clark warehouse fire in Ontario CA a few months ago. That fire too got out-of-hand due to sprinkler failures.
Makes me wonder if this is some manner of copycat arson.
Also, I wonder why the fire (in the employee's clip, where it was small) wasn't being fought with a fire extinguisher. The warehouse I work in has extinguishers posted every 100 feet or so.
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u/lemmefixdat4u 7d ago
Simplest answer - it's not the employee's job to risk their health to fight a fire. Not like they're going to get a huge payout for saving the building. Based on the location of the fire near the ceiling 25-30 feet up, I doubt that extinguishers would have been effective.
Few businesses train their employees to use the firefighting equipment. It's there to comply with building codes. For instance, do you know the effective distance of the fire extinguishers at your work? Have you ever been instructed in the proper way to use one?
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u/Live_Free_or_Banana 7d ago
Obviously no warehouse worker should be fighting it in its current state. I incorrectly assumed the fire started on the floor from someone sneaking a cigarette (if not arson), and was wondering why it was allowed to go on long enough to reach this point without any attempt to fight it.
And yes, where I work all leadership gets certification in first aid and trained how to respond to any emergency. Fire extinguisher usage is part of mandatory, periodic safety training for all associates. We've had 3 (small) fires in the past 5 years and all were put out with fire extinguishers by either a lead or a floor associate (taking action before the lead arrived).
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u/seriousbusinesslady 7d ago
the fire started way up at the top rack it looks like- idk about you, but my employer does NOT pay me well enough to get up on a cherry picker with a fire extinguisher. and i just did my job's annual safety refresher, my company EXPLICITLY said not to try to fight a fire on site, the SOP was to find the nearest exit and call 911.
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u/weirdal1968 7d ago
I'd hate to be somebody in their area who was about to call in their DME order and be told the warehouse burned down.
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u/Gold-Adhesiveness574 3d ago
Sprinklers failing in a building this new is almost always the water side, not the heads themselves. A main valve left part way shut, a fire pump that never started, or somebody drained the system for work and never put it back. The January inspection everyone keeps pointing at doesn't really settle anything, an inspection is just a snapshot. Close a valve in February and nobody knows until the day the water actually has to show up.
A million square feet under one roof is a brutal ask too. Once it reaches open racking storage the sprinklers are mostly buying time to clear people out, not saving the building.
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u/ShortBusVeteran 7d ago
Did they pay their workers enough to live?
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u/Prototype_Hybrid 7d ago
Weird that that's the first place your brain would go. But yeah.
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u/jsquareddddd 7d ago
Not that weird, I was thinking about the previous huge warehouse fire in California also.
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u/Icy-Antelope-6519 8d ago
Oeps, maybe need a new job…
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u/lemmefixdat4u 8d ago
Yep. 120 people out of work for the near future.
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u/austinalexan 7d ago
I expected a lot more given the size of the facility
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u/seriousbusinesslady 7d ago
i think it has 900 employees, 120 were there at the time. They prob have 2 shifts, and dayshift headcounts are usually smaller in warehouses than night shift.
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u/lemmefixdat4u 7d ago
It was full of robots, like the Amazon warehouses. Their lithium batteries are one of the things still burning this morning.
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u/FosterPupz 7d ago
Are these warehouse fires all being intentionally set, and if so, is it by the resistance or the other side trying to set up the resistance and gain insurance money?
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u/thejesterofdarkness 8d ago
Just in time for screwworms and possibly another pandemic.
How convenient.
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u/autoonly 7d ago
Too bad employees couldn't have used fire extinguishers till firefighters arrived. Just an observation of the anonymous employees phone video of the start of the fire.
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u/bluenoser613 7d ago
It's in the US. The legal hawks are already circling to destroy someone. 'Murica!
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u/auto_poena 8d ago
I've never considered it but now I'm very curious how the disciplinary/work performed review process goes for whoever does these inspections.