General Bearing Service's President Pierre Bouchard received an unfortunate phone call at 5:45 on Monday morning of May 19th which was 'Victoria Day" a Canadian holiday, confirming that an electrical fire took place at his Gatineau location at 445 Boulevard Maloney. On his arrival he noticed eight large fire trucks and with about 30 firefighter on site battling the blaze and heavy smoke.

After the fire was contained the building remained under investigation for most of the morning and released to Bouchard around 11:00 am. Most of general bearings' employees had passed by the location during the day and discussed solutions on how they would be able to continue serving customers for the days to come. Pierre called his Vice President of operations, Ken Yamasaki to come and help get a computer system in place. With the help of generators and cell phones to create a hotspot, they got a system up and running enabling them to access stock information, take orders and create receipts.

The next day business took place with almost no sign that this Gatineau location lost all of their onsite stock. GBS trucks were scheduled to travel from their Ottawa location a couple of times a day and the Montreal offices would send stock overnight on parts that couldn't be provided from the local stockrooms. One client said "I can't believe the level of commitment this company and it's employees have towards it's customers. They've always had my full support."

This new temporary location which is part of the same building was not affected by the flames or smoke and has a 1,500 sq/ft of space. The stock and contents of this area which was also occupied by GBS inventory was cleared out and stored inside a large shipment container on the premises. The store which used to be a 3,500 sq/ft area will now operate from this new space for the time being, until insurance settlements and the damaged location are renovated and restored.