Audio visual reseller loses up to $50K in Sydney explosion

According to media reports, an explosion occurred at the Nandos chicken shop located in the foyer of the Quadrant apartment building in Mountain Street at 1.18am on 4 February. The ground-floor blast destroyed Nandos and an adjoining shop while offices above were severely damaged.

Glass from the businesses and surrounding apartments blew metres across the street into a church, cafe and hair care business (see picture).

Glenn Richards, NSW director of av media systems said the blast took out windows and around five or six stories of office buildings.

“One of those offices happened to be mine. The offices within the building are so severely damaged,” he said.

According to Richards, the company’s content insurance will cover his laptop and three projectors stolen by looters, however a lot of customer information, databases and other valuable information cannot be replaced.

“We are basically a distributor of high-end projectors. We are also a national reseller company that looks after the installation and servicing of high-end digital signage products,” he said. “This blast has screwed us in NSW and we have to basically start the business from scratch. That’s two and a half years of hard work that can’t be replaced,” said Richards.

He told CRN that when the bomb blast when off on Monday, the occupants of the office building weren’t allowed to return to collect their belongings until Friday.

“I couldn’t get to our database, diary and PCs. I literally had to go and buy a pen and get an exercise book to write down the details of customers that called wanting to know why we didn’t turn up for a servicing job. We had all of our calls diverted to the Melbourne office, but the postie had nowhere to put the mail because the mailbox was also destroyed,” said Richards.