Store Security Video Goes Viral After Earthquake

 

A few days after Anchorage True Value shared security camera footage of the store’s aisles collapsing during a magnitude-7.1 earthquake on its Facebook page, the video had gone viral and people from around the world were checking in on the home improvement store.

In Anchorage, Alaska, earthquakes are an expected inconvenience on a semifrequent basis. However, the Iniskin Earthquake, as it’s been named, was much stronger than the average magnitude-3 to 4 earthquakes people are accustomed to.

According to Adam Craig, owner and manager of Anchorage True Value, the earthquake hit Jan. 24 at 1:30 a.m. While he was still up, he explains that most people in the community were woken up to the shakes, which he says went on for a couple of minutes.

“When the earthquake was going on, my mind was focused on whether or not I should go outside,” Craig says. “After it was over, I thought there could’ve potentially been an issue at the shop, but I didn’t expect an entire aisle to fall over.”

The next day, it was business as usual for Craig, who got into the store and started working before walking by the nuts and bolts aisles in a corner of the store. What he came across was any retailer’s nightmare: collapsed aisles and nuts, bolts and more strewn all over.

While there were other items that fell off shelves around the store, the nuts and bolts aisles were where the majority of damage occurred, as everything unstable or top heavy fell. When staff came in that day, they immediately got to work, Craig says.

“Most everything got cleaned up within a couple hours of the staff getting in,” he says. “We had to bolt everything back down to the gondolas and re-anchor the bins to the gondolas as well.”

Later that day, Craig realized he could probably see the damage as it occurred by replaying his security camera footage. When he saw it, he says he thought it might be a cool thing to share with the store’s Facebook fans. What happened next was a case of a viral post to shake up more than just Alaskans.

“I put the video up on Facebook first, and then the local news asked me for the video to share on their website,” Craig says. “Then, four or five hours after I posted it, I started getting calls from other media outlets as well. I didn’t realize the video had made that big of an impression.”

To date, the video, which had the simple caption “The hardware aisle had a little too much fun dancing last night,” grabbed nearly 500,000 views, almost 3,000 likes, 500 pages worth of comments and over 10,000 shares.

“At the store, we’ve been talking about it,” Craig says. “It’s just crazy to see how many views are on our Facebook page.”

Since the viral video has captured the online world’s attention, Craig says his team has come together to face the fun in the aftermath of the earthquake—sorting through all the nuts and bolts and putting the store back together again.

“We were out maybe $800 total in product loss from the earthquake,” Craig says. “We have plenty of manpower that is working to put it all away. I have an organized team of people who actually enjoy sorting through all the pieces.”

Craig says they were happy that the quake hit outside of business hours, and the response from the community has been overwhelming.

“I’ve had a lot of people ask if we needed any help sorting out the nuts and bolts,” he says. “I have even had a couple of teachers call to help us with their classrooms of kids.”

In addition to a helping hand from those in the community, Craig says his fellow hardware retailers from Alaska have even extended calls to check in on him and the store.

Above, Craig shared this 15-second video with Hardware Retailing, or you can go to the Anchorage True Value Facebook page to see the video as well.