I know a couple of those guys. Hope you didn't have to do burn barrels.
A story from Chrysler, when they had a tech center, they had all their tape all in a row in front of the windows and had a cabinet underneath to store the reel to reel. Once a week they would bring in a floor polisher and polish the floor up all nice for execs that would occasionally drop by.
Then one day they needed to restore from backup and they learned the mistake of storing the tapes near the floor, the floor which they would weekly charge with static electricity.