This past Friday someone set a fire in the apparel department of our local Walmart. Everyone evacuated the building and no injuries were reported. The fire was extinguished quickly and is still being investigated. Inventory in the apparel department was considered a total loss due to smoke in the area and it has been removed. This includes men’s, women’s, children’s and baby clothing. Fresh produce also had to be discarded. The store was closed for several days while the inventory was removed and the store reset. When the store re-opened, the only sections available to customers were the non-apparel areas. Fresh produce had been restocked but in greatly reduced numbers.
This video was taken by a customer in the store at the time of the fire and posted to Facebook. It has already been viewed over 400K times and shared over 1K times so it is more or less “public” now.
Here is a photo of firemen carrying the burnt shoes out of the building.
I was at Walmart yesterday to get a few items. I didn’t notice any obvious smoky smell but people with a more sensitive sense of smell may have. I took this photo which shows the huge apparel area blocked off by plastic.
Question: Have any of you had a situation where your inventory has been damaged by fire? How was the inventory handled post-fire? Was it actually discarded or did some of it find its way back into secondary markets?
All I know is that smoke permeates fabric and is very difficult to remove. Years ago I had a friend whose home was severely damaged by fire, and she was advised to get every single article of clothing in the home dry-cleaned. I imagine most homeowner’s policies will cover that (subject to coverage limits, that is).
I recognize this sort of machine that were in use in our building when a fire occurred 4 floors below us, in our same apartment line, a few years ago. They were run in our hall for weeks afterward as a big show was made of smoke/fire remediation.
About 50 NYC fire trucks and hundreds of firefighers showed up for a fire that started in one of our neighbor’s closets. Fortunately, it was largely contained ot one apartment, but I can’t forget hearing cascades of water running through the walls as we waited for the elevator to return to our apartment.
What surprised me was that the nearby fabrics department was still open and the fabrics were uncovered. Weren’t they exposed to the smoke too? Bath towels and home decor such as pillows were further away but it seems to me that they would have been exposed to smoke also.
There is at least one laundry detergent that can reduce smoky smell in fabrics. A couple of months ago, I was exposed to poison ivy while working in the yard even though my arms were covered. I learned that the urushiol in poison ivy can stay in fabrics for a long time, even years. I did a search for a detergent that can remove the urushiol and found that Tide Hygienic Clean Heavy Duty 10x will work. It’s formulated for more thorough cleaning. I tried it and it worked. I haven’t had a recurrence of poison ivy from the clothing that I wore at the time of exposure.
Which brings me back to the original subject. A Google search says that the same specially formulated Tide will also reduce smoke smell in fabrics.
It is likely that the non-produce inventory will be appearing on Amazon or Ebay in the near future.
That “total loss” will likely be sold to a liquidator who will resell it in lots to other distressed item resellers, some of whom will fail to disclose the source.
I sold inventory online which was salvaged from a retailer in the World Trade Center after 9/11. It was designer apparel and accessories and I disclosed the source.
