FIGHTING FIRES AND BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

15 years on, Orcus Fire & Risk’s Marcelo D’Amico speaks to Tank Storage Magazine about his journey to setting up a successful fire protection company. 'Orcus was started in 2008 at an interesting junction in my life,’ muses owner Marcelo D’Amico. ‘I had just left a stable partnership in a similar company, and decided it was time to spread my wings and start my own. At the time I had a six-month old daughter, no paycheck, no health insurance, and another child on the way. Needless to say, it was stressful.’ ‘The business was really started in my head in the year 2000,’ he continues. ‘This is where I was put in a lucky position as a young fire protection engineer to audit 13 refineries in Brazil for the company I was working for.’ D’Amico’s lucky break was thanks to his language skills. ‘I was the only fire protection engineer in the US that spoke fluent Portuguese.’ After completing the refinery audits, D’Amico was excited to share his new knowledge with company executives and do more for the business. ‘As a young engineer they kept telling me ‘no’, which is a word I have never liked,’ he says. ‘So I used the next years to build...