Let's see. That would require 4.2 40 hour weeks with no vacation time. So assume 4.5 people to handle it. Given union pay scales I'd say that fully funded that would cost about $100,000 per person. (Don't forget benefits and overhead.) So we're looking at about $450,000 per year in payroll costs. Plus facility upgrades that might be needed. Even if I'm a bit high that's a cool $1,000,000 for each year for every 3 COs and other facilities.
You can buy a LOT of insurance for that money. Way more than is needed to cover the costs of a repair.
It's not the costs of staffing the facility that had the fire. Since you do not know which facility will have such a fire, you get to staff them all. And that costs real money.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What you say is true if a firm was only concerned about the almighty dollar rather than some modicum of continuity of service to subscribers, which is where things are at with the telcos these days. But one thing you overlooked in your equations above was that the persons employed for this task could be assigned other duties as well, and that pro-rated portion of their salaries could be charged to those other tasks. For example, one person whose work was normally data entry could be assigned to work 'the midnight shift' or weekends for example, and while there would have to be some pay differential the entire cost could not in fairness be charged off entirely to security. So, assuming your figures are more or less accurate, probably half or three-quarters of it could be assigned to the department where the person was usually working anyway. I am saying you do not hire extra people for this job, you re-arrange the working hours of people you have already. PAT]