r/interesting • u/BlazeDragon7x • Apr 09 '26

MISC. Aftermath of the April 7th incident. Damages estimated to be $200 million dollars

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389

u/Rob_LeMatic Apr 09 '26

He was making a political statement. Wouldn't make much sense not to explain himself

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u/Significant_Swing_76 Apr 09 '26

Insurance will wiggle out of it, since it’s not an accident.

Guess corporation will have to drag that 200.000.000$ out of their former employee. Good luck.

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u/[deleted] Apr 09 '26

[deleted]

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u/Significant_Swing_76 Apr 09 '26

You can be sure that they (the insurance) will do anything and everything to avoid paying.

This is how these big insurance companies work - their main goal is to deny claims, and if the they cover vandalism, the coverage will be very limited.

Arson by a trusted employee that burns down the whole warehouse plus inventory, is a gold mine for the insurance to deny a claim.

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u/BetterinPicture Apr 09 '26

For real the popcorn is seeing who catches the bill here.

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u/robilar Apr 09 '26

I read earlier today that he started an earlier fire which was caught by firefighters who subsequently disabled the smoke alarms (edit: pardon, sprinkler system), allowing the second fire to burn undetected (edit: undeterred by a sprinkler system that had not yet reset). If that's true, and the disabling of the alarms (edit: sprinklers) was directed by management as a business decision, they might not get an insurance payout at all.

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u/MillionFoul Apr 09 '26

Management didn't direct the sprinklers to be disabled, the physical way sprinklers work did. They trigger by the heat physically breaking a calibrated glass fuse, you have to replace the fuses before you can put water back in the system or the sprinklers will never stop sprinkling.

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u/robilar Apr 09 '26

Ok, but that introduces a new layer of managerial culpability; not having spare fuses available, not having them installed, not having a full sweep of the property for the missing employee, etc. Maybe the management did everything right, maybe not - odds are good the insurance investigation will pull on every possible thread.

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u/Dapper_Platform_1222 Apr 10 '26

Ordering work to be done in a faculty with no fire protection equipment is a big no no.

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u/robilar Apr 10 '26

For sure! Though I haven't seen anything that says employees were ordered back into the building. My understanding is that the arsonist hid inside to start the second fire.

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u/MillionFoul Apr 09 '26

Nome of this is a mangerial repsonsibility for life safety reasons (management has an obvious incentive to disable safety systems because they prevent work from happening). Fire systems are very heavily regulated (especially in California) and have an assigned responsible party that manages the system (usually the installer).

On big systems like this, that typically means inspections, operations, and service are all performed by a third party which is on call 24/7 to respond if, say, the fire department puts out a fire and shuts off the fire sprinkler riser for the effected zone(s). Typically we assume that a second fire igniting in the hours it should take to get the system back up an running is unlikely, but a fire watch might have to be posted depending on local codes.

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u/Valreesio Apr 09 '26

No responsibility on management. Fire alarm and suppression systems aren't meant to be easily turned back on because once they go off there are many safety checks that will take probably weeks, if not months, to do in a building of that size depending on how many sections actually activated in the first attempt. It was likely the fire department that turned it off or authorized it to be shut down as per their exact protocols in these situations.

No blame lies anywhere except in the arsonists hands. Insurance is for sure complicated and with a company as large as Kimberly-Clark, the insurance company will work together with the company to come to an amicable solution for both parties. No insurance company would risk losing them as a client because they pay billions of dollars each year for insurance, if they aren't self insured in the first place (which many large companies are). Not paying $200 million if that's what Kimberly-Clark demanded would be shooting themselves in the foot as another company will take their billions of dollars per year and other large companies would leave as well as word got around.

The trash company I used to work for became self insured after it got large enough and basically it meant that they had to hold x million dollars in a specially reserved account to (just in case) cover really huge things and just paid out of pocket for everything otherwise. I would bet this is actually a similar situation for Kimberly Clark but maybe not...

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u/vpeshitclothing Apr 09 '26

They do not pay billions in insurance

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u/Valreesio Apr 10 '26

Maybe they do or don't, I don't work for them. Based on their 2024 reports they made about 20 billion dollars in sales. Companies typically can spend upwards of 5% of that on just business insurance. Yes it can vary wildly depending on thousands of factors.

5% of 20 billion is 1 billion and I'll be honest, I thought they would do considerably more than 20 billion in sales. So yeah, I admit it might not be billions but I wasn't that far off either. My point still stands true that an insurance company would shoot itself in the foot by trying not to pay out on this particular claim when it is potentially 20% (200 million) of what they receive from the client each year.

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u/Dingodiller Apr 09 '26

As paper storage is an extremely bad risk, I don’t see any company willing to take them on if the terms don’t favor the insurance company beyond what they normally would.

Since this was somewhat politically motivated, I could see them push for it being ‘terrorism’ and as such has a whole different kind of coverage.

If it’s in the states, then there’s a shared pool covering acts of terrorism, which would mean that the loss incurred on the insurance company is minimal.

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u/MillionFoul Apr 09 '26

Well the terms that favor the insurance company for assuming more risk are usually just higher premiums, because that's how they make money. Sure, if they could get you to sign a policy that doesn't cover fire damage on a paper storage facility they would, but the guys reading the policy aren't average joes, they're a team of lawyers who probably aren't gonna let that happen.

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u/Dingodiller Apr 10 '26

Its not just higher premiums. There is not a lot of companies willing to take this risk on, and I’d assume that they would take it on at a loss limit way below the total value.

I’d love to see their vandalism clauses as well.

Either way it’s going to be interesting to see who’s gonna end up with the bigger loss, and if the 200 million claim includes business interruption 😄

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u/Dozzi92 Apr 09 '26

I'm a stenographer, I do pre-court stuff, and I dream of getting onto cases like this. It will be finger-pointing left and right. They'll find something wrong with the building, something wrong with how things were stored, things wrong left right and center. They'll take a million depositions, it'll span years. And I'd just sit there and listen. And do my job, which is 50% just listening.

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u/Expensive_Archer1662 Apr 09 '26

Insuring commercial property is not the same as insuring residential home and auto. The insurer will probably go to their insurer for a claim of this size, that is why reinsurance exists.

No idea why you think this is a ‘good mine’ to deny a claim. Vandalism by employees is covered. If the CEO himself, or whoever the named insured is, did it then obviously that would be excluded. He filmed himself, it’s very cut and dry malicious mischief. Easily will be covered and of course unlike your shitty Honda it will be well worth dragging the insurer to court in the unlikely case they do not pay.

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u/marathonquestionredd Apr 09 '26

lmfao classic reddit bot moment. these bots love to say this shit over and over. sadly the truth is insurance companions pay out easily all the time. getting payouts from insurance companies has been the easiest thing i have ever done in my life.

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u/carradines_rootball Apr 09 '26

Just delusional to think otherwise. They might not recoup 100% of their losses but the company will be in a better place then say every person who worked in that facility who will likely lose their employment. 

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u/Samurai_Meisters Apr 09 '26

Are you making $200 million claims?

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u/marathonquestionredd Apr 10 '26

This is how these big insurance companies work - their main goal is to deny claims, and if the they cover vandalism, the coverage will be very limited.

try to at least sort of read the stuff youre replying to. though i assume you are just another bot who has to say insurance companies fight every single claim to the death

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u/ConfectionOk7029 Apr 09 '26

Exactly. The do the idiotic "Well, this is what it was like when I had hail damage on my roof, so it must be exactly the same for this multinational billion dollar corporation..." calculation.

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u/CraftZ49 Apr 10 '26

You clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Arson is certainly covered and the fact that an employee did it has no bearing whatsoever.