Amazon closes down a warehouse in Texas due to bugs

Amazon has temporarily closed a fulfillment center in Amarillo, TX for unique circumstances not often seen. Usually, you might find closures as part of a cutback made by the company, a worker walkout due to treatment concerns, weather troubles, or because of major bugs in the system. But this time it’s a little different.

Although this time it does have something to do with bugs, it may not be the kind of bugs you’d expect. This location was brought down due to an infestation of actual creepy crawlers (bed bugs) that were discovered. The company temporarily closed the location down as it works to resolve the situation.

Thankfully, no packages will be sent to customers from this location due to this. Instead, other nearby fulfillment centers will pick up the slack so that customers aren’t getting any nasty surprises in the mail. In the meantime, employees will be compensated for lost time, and inventory at that location will be inspected and returned to suppliers or destroyed.

Amazon hasn’t shared any suspicions of the source of said infestation. There is no telling if it was brought in by someone working there, if it has to do with the nearby environment, or if came in from one of the suppliers. Either way, you may want to closely inspect packages coming to your home just in case as the idea of getting bed bugs in the mail sends the bad kind of chills down your spine (it does mine, at least).

Update: It appears that this is a returns center, therefore no items are being shipped to customers. The company has reached out to certain local news sources to share this information, assuring that this wouldn’t affect anything arriving at your door. Except for when Amazon ships out used/returned products as new to customers in rare situations (assumedly, by accident). Although there is no telling where those products are directly coming from when that happens.

The facility has also since reopened and operations have fully resumed after determining that they were unable to conclude that an infestation actually occurred. Kind of making you wonder how the panic broke out in the first place. It must have been something notable to trigger a complete shutdown of operations. I guess we may never know.