A fire in a small but important telephone switching station caused loss situations that affected, in one way or another, much of the United States. Everything from a large number of automatic teller machines, bank and brokerages to aircraft trying to land at O'Hare International Airport were affected. The objective of this research is to track all of the losses and attendant costs that resulted from this single structure loss situation. Losses in terms of revenue, jobs, increased costs of fire and police et cetera, will be tracked through the system in order to develop an understanding of the importance of these types of situations to the nation and to the individual suppliers of goods and services. The model created can then be considered for introduction to earthquake, wind and flood economic loss models.
