I was working in a Semiconductor Fab in Taiwan during a big earthquake (and during a typhoon as well but I'll tell that story when someone starts a thread about typhoons). When the earthquake happened, the building swayed like a tree in the wind (at least it seemed that way to me). Some girl came on the intercom and started rattling stuff off in rapid-fire Chinese. I have "get around town" Chinese skills but I couldn't understand a word that girl was saying because she was talking so dang fast. A bunch of people started running hither and thither but the engineers I was with just acted like it was no big deal (they did tell me to move away from the window).
It turns out that the "hither and thither" people were running to make sure equipment calibrations hadn't changed and to make sure there were no toxic gas or acid leaks. Everyone else was business as normal. I'm assuming someone would have told us to evacuate had there been a serious toxic leak (semiconductor manufacturing can involve some seriously toxic chemicals).
|