Equipment Catches Fire At Amazon Warehouse, Your Stuff Is Fine

(Alan Rappa)

In the early hours of Saturday morning, there was a fire at the Amazon.com fulfillment center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Warehouse workers and the local fire department were able to contain the fire, no one was injured, and none of your stuff that you haven’t ordered yet was damaged.

The equipment that caught fire was a cardboard compactor, a piece of machinery that compresses cardboard into bales for recycling. All employees were evacuated from the building for their own safety, then allowed to wait in the break room until the rest of the building was declared safe two and a half hours after the fire.

Employees at the warehouse worked to put out the fire with water and fire extinguishers until the local fire department arrived.

What about the stuff in the warehouse, though? Was any of the merchandise damaged by smoke? ECommerceBytes editor Ina Steiner contacted Amazon to find out, on behalf of readers who sell on the Amazon Marketplace and use Amazon’s fulfillment services. Their stuff is in this warehouse, and a lot of items would be unsellable if contaminated with smoke.

“Our fulfillment center in Murfreesboro is fully operational and there is no impact to customer orders,” an Amazon representative told the site, which simultaneously does and doesn’t answer the question. It’s unlikely that the cardboard baler was near the warehouse space, though, and the fulfillment center is a massive space.

Fire temporarily halts production at Murfreesboro Amazon plant [WKRN]

How will Amazon FBA Warehouse Fire Impact Sellers? [EcommerceBytes]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist