Gap rerouting goods after facility fire

Gap Inc., which had a fire at its Northeastern distribution center last week, is rerouting deliveries and increasing staff at its other facilities to cope with the fallout.

The company hasn’t determined the cause of the blaze, which didn’t harm any employees, according to a statement Thursday. The fire struck the smaller building on its site in Fishkill, N.Y., on Aug. 29, sparing the larger facility, a Gap official said. The bigger building is expected to be operational again soon.

“Gap Inc. has activated extensive contingency plans designed to help mitigate the overall impact to the business,” the company said. “This includes leveraging the company’s large North American network of distribution centers, as well as ship-from-store capabilities, to fulfill demand in the [affected] Northeast region of the United States.”

The fire dealt a blow to a company struggling to pull out of a slump. The San Franciscobased chain said Thursday that same-stores at its Gap locations declined 5 percent in August, worse than the 1.5 percent drop analysts had predicted.

The Fishkill center primarily fulfills online orders in the Northeast region for Gap and Old Navy, as well as distributing products to Gap, Banana Republic and their outlet stores in the region. The location doesn’t service the Intermix or Athleta brands.

Gap should be able to weather the fire disruption, but it will put further pressure on results, said Poonam Goyal, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

“I definitely think it’s going to have an impact on sales,” she said. “There’s definitely going to be some disruption.”