Working at home as storms batter Silicon Valley

Electronic News, Feb 9, 1998

San Jose, Calif.--Companies in the Silicon Valley area of Northern California were still mopping up late last week even as they awaited another series of storms. The storms had caused an estimated $8 million in damages by mid-week and California state officials said they expect the total to be much higher as the El Nino-generated storms continued to come onshore from the Pacific ocean.

Although there was mud damage, roads closed, high employee absentee rates and even some closings of company headquarters, shipments were generally not disrupted and no serious injuries were initially reported by the companies contacted by Electronic News. Most companies reported that many employees decided to work from their homes instead of fighting massive traffic jams. Only Hyundai reported being forced to close.

Electroglas, however, reported that one of its buildings in San Jose, Calif., was closed for a full day due to flooding. A number of Electroglas employees have been working from home. As of Friday morning, some of the damage caused by the floods had been repaired and it was business as usual at the process materials company, according to Andy Kirkpatrick, director of marketing.

Lisa Garber, VP of corporate communications for Lam Research, said the extent to which Lam was affected was limited to a flooded parking lot and a number of employees working from their homes. According to Ms. Garber, a nearby levee overran its banks and flooded one of the Fremont, Calif.-based company's parking lots. No facilities were damaged and production was not halted.

Intel spokesman Howard High said while several employees had trouble getting into work because of road difficulties, the company experienced no losses due to power outages or facility damage. "You always lose a certain amount of productivity anytime a large number of employees can't make it in to work or make it late," Mr. High said. "But we didn't experience anything major."

However, the winter storms left Hyundai Electronics America's San Jose headquarters facility closed for an entire day. Several of the main access roads around the building were flooded and closed, and the remaining roads were clogged with traffic for almost the entire day. Some people traveled less than a mile an hour, only to find their way blocked by submerged streets. And anybody who finally made it to the campus found the parking lot flooded as well.

Gary Hines, director of marketing communications, said the building was closed for an entire day, and out of a staff of about 100 people, only some 10 employees reported for work. "And those were people who went around city roadblocks in four-wheel-drive cars," he noted. A company-wide voice mail was sent around noon, advising all employees that the building would be closed for the day. However, Mr. Hines noted that no shipments were missed because of the flooding, including one crucial order that managed to get sent out the door on Tuesday afternoon despite the missing staff.

Alan Bernheimer, corporate spokesman for National Semiconductor, said the company needed to be especially sensitive to the need to work at home for employees who would have difficult commutes. For the most part, it was business as usual at National though.

"Most of our manufacturing facilities are not here in this area," he said, adding "Probably 10 percent of the people came in late."

An Integrated Device Technology spokeswoman said that some IDT employees had been stuck for two to three hours in traffic trying to get to work. "One gentleman, a financial officer who lives in Daly City (about 20 miles from San Jose), took more than four hours to get to work. He left after 7 a.m. and got in around noon.

Programmable logic heavyweight Altera said that approximately 20 percent of its workforce was either absent or working from home. However, the company itself suffered no damage whatsoever and there weren't any power outages during the storms either--although it was difficult getting to work and into the Altera driveway with neighboring streets flooded.

Cirrus Logic found its buildings intact but a small creek had overflowed bridges that connect two of the buildings, making it difficult for company employees to get from one to the other. Cirrus also had numerous employees late or stuck at home because of the traffic and flooding on the freeways.

"We have not had any problems to date but the freeways have not been a lot of fun. We are keeping our fingers crossed that this is all that will happen to the company during the storms," said Tom Rigoli, marketing and communications manager at Cirrus.

Atmel had limited flooding in its parking lot due to some of the landscape around the company grounds falling but besides having some employees stuck at home using their personal home computers, the company suffered no damage. S3 and LSI Logic were also victims of local freeway traffic and minor flooding but were spared damage in their facilities.