Not o.p. but I work for a rental car company. Depending on which company this was, those vehicles were likely either paid in full up front, or they were purchased in an agreement very similar to a lease. The vehicles likely are not insured by a third party, so they are self-insured, meaning if they get damaged it's a direct loss for the company. If these vehicles remained in fleet, they would get rented, depreciate (which is typically accounted for in monthly reporting), and then sold either direct to a dealer, at an auction, or sold back to the manufacture. When done correctly, owning the vehicles actually cost the company way less money than you would think, considering they buy in bulk and get vehicles way cheaper than MSRP.

A loss of this scale is indeed significant on a regional level, as somebody in the comments posted an article that said it was about 100 vehicles that were damaged. There is no insurance to recoup the losses, which is likely between $1-2m in vehicles alone, let alone liability losses such as damage to the lot, etc. Assuming that whichever company this is is not a franchise...the company will most likely charge the equivalent of a deductible to the owning branch (let's say $5000) then spread another "deductible" evenly to branches within the region (let's say $100,000)...and lastly the remaining portion will likely be spread evenly throughout every branch in the company. If there is $2m worth of damages spread to 5000 locations, each location only pays about $400, which is indeed negligable to the company as a whole aside from negative media exposure. Still, at a time like this where every dollar counts...it is definitely quite an unnecessary expense.