Hurricane season and a warehouse full of cardboard

Between June and November everybody on this coast has a plan for their people, their equipment and their data. Very few have one for the several thousand dollars of corrugated on the floor, and corrugated is the single most water-sensitive thing in most warehouses.

Before: the 48-hour list

1. Get everything off the floor and up. Not on a pallet — on a pallet on a rack, above the highest water line your building has ever seen, plus a margin.
2. Move stock away from dock doors. Doors are the first place water enters and the first place wind-driven rain gets in even when the building holds.
3. Move away from roof penetrations, skylights and any spot with a known drip history. Everyone knows where those are; write them down before you need the list.
4. Cap and cover. Pallet caps plus waterproof covers with an overhang, secured. Rain comes in sideways.
5. Wrap loosely, not tightly. A sealed wrap traps whatever moisture gets in and holds it against the board.
6. Photograph everything with dates. Insurance conversations go much faster with a before.
7. Knock down every standing empty. They take a fraction of the space and they are not sponges when they are flat and stacked.

During: what actually damages inventory

In our experience the ranked causes are: standing water from flooding, roof failure, wind-driven rain through doors and vents, and — the one people forget — humidity during an extended power outage. A warehouse with no air handling for five days in August is not a dry building.

After: triage in the first 48 hours

This is where the money is. The difference between a box that grades C and a box that is fiber is often about a week of standing wet. Speed matters more than technique.

1. Separate wet from dry immediately, before anybody assesses anything. Wet boxes touching dry boxes make more wet boxes.
2. Get air moving. Fans, open doors, anything. Corrugated that dries in two days can retain useful strength; corrugated that stays damp for a week grows mould and is a safety issue.
3. Look for tide lines on everything, including boxes that never got directly wet. A tide line means permanent strength loss even after drying.
4. Test-stand a sample from every pallet. If a box will not stand up empty, that pallet is fiber.
5. Segregate anything with a smell. Floodwater is not clean water, and boxes that were in it should not go near food, pharma or consumer goods regardless of appearance.

The insurance conversation

Corrugated is inventory, and it is claimable. What adjusters want is evidence: dated photographs before and after, purchase records showing quantity and grade, and a defensible basis for the value you are claiming. A published grading standard on the original invoice helps here more than people expect, because it establishes what you actually bought.

What we do for customers after a storm

• Emergency triage on site — we will come and grade so you know what is worth drying before you spend labour on it.
• Buy salvageable stock at grade, which turns a disposal cost into a credit.
• Bale and weigh what is genuinely fiber, with a certified ticket for your records and your claim.
• Replace from our own stock, which is the reason we keep the yard inventory levels we do through the summer.

We plan our own inventory around this. Deep stock through hurricane season is not a merchandising decision — it is because after a bad storm, half the metro needs boxes in the same week and the corrugator lead time is still four weeks.