Chapter 808 The Impact of 921
The two of them exercised on the bed for a while. They both felt a little tired, so they hugged each other and fell asleep. In the middle of the night, Fan Wubing's phone began to ring.
Fan Wubing hung up casually, and then not long after, Shen Ying's phone also rang.
"Who is it, disturbing my spring dream so late at night--" Fan Wubing muttered and turned over and sat up, then looked at the caller ID, but it was an unfamiliar number, so he pulled Shen Ying and asked her to get up to answer the phone.
"You answered it, I'm sleeping well--" Shen Ying couldn't open her eyes.
Fan Wubing rubbed his eyes and pressed the answer button, "Hello, where? What? Oh--"
After he answered the phone, he lay down again. Shen Ying was a little sober and asked him, "Who's calling, why didn't you tell me?"
"Well, the headquarters called me. Seeing that my phone was turned off, they called your phone." Fan Wubing answered with his eyes closed.
"What's the matter? They know what you are doing--" Shen Ying asked curiously.
Fan Wubing replied, "Just now, there was an earthquake in Taiwan."
"Oh, there was an earthquake in Taiwan--" Shen Ying repeated unconsciously, and then sat up in surprise, "What, there was an earthquake in Taiwan?! What magnitude?!"
"It just happened. Although there is no news from Taiwan to confirm the magnitude, the monitoring from the mainland shows that it is at least a magnitude 7 earthquake." Fan Wubing replied.
"Then you really became a crow's mouth?!" Shen Ying looked at Fan Wubing with surprise.
Before, Fan Wubing had predicted at the wedding that there would be a major earthquake in Taiwan within the month. Many people treated it with an attitude of watching a joke, although there were also media gossipers who were opening the market, waiting for September to pass. If there was no major earthquake in Taiwan, they could laugh at Fan Wubing in a few articles. But now it seems that not only can they not laugh at Fan Wubing, but they are also expected to put the halo of a prophet on Fan Wubing's head.
Fan Wubing shrugged and turned on his cell phone. But within a few minutes, the phone rang again.
"What happened?" Fan Wubing said strangely, but he still answered the phone.
"Mr. Fan, this is Wang Rongchang——" The person on the phone was Wang Rongchang, who had served as the deputy secretary-general of the Straits Exchange Foundation and was also an important partner of Fan Investment Group.
"There was an earthquake in Taiwan!"
"Oh, I just found out too. I was just about to ask where you were?" Fan Wubing replied.
"You mentioned the earthquake at the wedding, and you mentioned it to us uncle and nephew before, so I was touched and didn't go back to Taipei. I'm in Shanghai now, but Shihan went to Taipei for something, and now the communication is interrupted. I don't know what's going on? I'm really worried!" Wang Rongchang said anxiously.
"Don't worry, Prince Wang. The problem in Taipei is not expected to be serious. I think Tainan will be much more serious." Fan Wubing comforted, "During an earthquake, communications will definitely be temporarily interrupted. This is common sense. It will probably be fine after a while."
While talking, Shen Ying's phone rang again. It was the headquarters reporting to Fan Wubing. Just now, Taiwan had a second earthquake, and the magnitude was over 6.
"Uh--" Fan Wubing scratched his head, thinking that he only knew that the 921 earthquake was quite strong, but he didn't know the specific process. But he didn't expect that there would be two earthquakes of more than 6 magnitude in such a short period of time.
Soon, Fan Wubing and Shen Ying couldn't sleep anymore. They turned on the TV and connected to the satellite network of the laptop. At the same time, they searched for news about the Taiwan earthquake. They saw that CCTV's news column temporarily inserted news about the Taiwan earthquake.
After dawn, the situation became clearer.
According to comprehensive media reports, at 1:47:12:6 on September 21, 1999, the magnitude of the earthquake was 7.3. The epicenter was located on the Chelungpu fault in Jiji Town, Nantou County, Taiwan, about 12.5 kilometers west and south of Sun Moon Lake. The focal depth was about 7 kilometers, and the main shock lasted 102 seconds.
On the day of the earthquake, aftershocks were frequent. The most influential one occurred at 2:16 in the morning, less than an hour after the main earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.8. This aftershock was the main cause of the damage to houses.
Taichung and Nantou counties in Taiwan were the hardest hit areas of the earthquake, with serious house collapses. Although the casualties have not been clearly confirmed, it is obvious that there will be no few. The earthquake also caused all trains on the island of Taiwan to stop running, the first and second nuclear power plants tripped and lost power, high-voltage transmission towers were damaged, and the entire island of Taiwan was out of power.
The earthquake also affected parts of Fujian, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangxi in the motherland, causing varying degrees of impact. Cities such as Fuzhou, Quanzhou, and Ningde in Fujian felt strong tremors, while Guangzhou to Shantou in Guangdong, Wenzhou in Zhejiang, and Nanchang and Jiujiang in Jiangxi all felt tremors to varying degrees.
Experts have already pointed out that the earthquake was caused by the displacement of the Chelungpu Fault. After the earthquake, a surface rupture zone about 100 kilometers long was generated on the surface, and the displacement between the upper and lower plates of the fault could reach up to seven or eight meters.
Residents of Nantou who lived near the epicenter at the time recalled that shortly before the earthquake, the ground rumbled loudly, and before they had time to react, the ground began to shake. Residents fled their houses in a panic, only to see buildings on the roadside. They collapsed one after another like dominoes, and the scene was shocking.
A resident living in Taipei City said that shortly before the earthquake, there was a short power outage for about half a minute, and then the power was restored immediately, but then the power went out again, followed by a period of shaking, and then aftershocks continued. The China Broadcasting Corporation reported that the Taipei Dongxing Building caught fire shortly after the earthquake.
At that time, people in the north had not yet understood the disaster in the central part, and only guessed that the earthquake was serious.
A designer living in the central district of Taichung City said that he was playing video games on the computer that night, and suddenly all the lights in the rooms flashed, and the screen in front of him instantly turned into a restart state. Just when he was confused about the situation, a sound came first, and then the earth began to shake. He lived on the top floor, so he and his mother and brother quickly staggered downstairs and hid with other family members next to the largest beam in the house.
All of Taiwan has announced that work and classes will be suspended. About two hours after the earthquake, the military received an order and was in place at six in the morning. The authorities used emergency reserves. Provided each township and village head with 2 million yuan for disaster relief.
Fan Wubing and Shen Ying ate breakfast while sitting in the room watching TV news. This earth-shaking earthquake not only destroyed countless families, but also changed the topography of the fault.
The Shigang Dam intercepts Dajia Creek and is one of the main drinking water sources in Taichung County. It is 700 meters long and was built 20 years ago. In this earthquake, the three-span spillway in the northern section collapsed due to the action of the fault. The south side of the fracture arched about 10 meters and the north side arched about 2 meters, and the water storage function was completely lost. The bottom bed of the upstream reservoir was exposed to the surface.
The earthquake also caused countless houses to collapse. Some houses were pushed together like sardines, some were like stacking blocks, some were like pushing dominoes, and some collapsed on the street. Zhushan Yanping Gas Station was shaken to the point of tilting and the ground was broken. Local residents were worried about their homes and the gas station becoming a time bomb.
Finally, at around ten o'clock in the morning, Wang Rongchang contacted Wang Shihan, and also got the news that his family was safe and sound. Only then did he feel relieved. However, he soon contacted Fan Wubing again, "Mr. Fan, I always feel that you are the kind of god who can predict the future."
"What do you mean by that--" Fan Wubing replied a little embarrassedly.
"Earlier, everyone said that the price of memory chips would continue to fall, but only Mr. Fan insisted on expanding production, reducing sales, and storing as much as possible. Now it seems that since the memory chip factories on the island have been seriously affected, the price of memory chips has risen sharply. It is inevitable, so the memory chips we have saved can be sold at a good price." Wang Rongchang said to Fan Wubing.
This major earthquake in Taiwan has had a certain impact on the global semiconductor market. The biggest impact is that it has caused the price of the world's memory chip dRam spot market to soar. In the US dRam spot market today, the high price of .65 US dollars appeared. This price is 5 times the spot price of 4 US dollars per unit in early June this year, which is the highest price of dRam in the past two years.
In the Zhongguancun Electronic Market prices provided in the Huafeng.com forum, the price of a 64-megabit memory stick consisting of 8 dRam chips has risen rapidly to 500 yuan, while the previous lowest price was only 70 yuan.
Currently, all 26 semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan are concentrated in the Hsinchu Industrial Park in northern Taiwan. Centralized production is convenient for solving the supply of water and electricity and the supply of industrial gases required for various semiconductors. In addition, it is also convenient to deal with problems encountered in production and facilitate the exchange of professional talents. It is precisely because of this scale effect that Taiwan's semiconductor industry has achieved great development in recent years and is now ranked fourth in the world.
This Taiwan earthquake caused three major hazards to the semiconductor industry in the Hsinchu Industrial Park: power outages, misalignment of stepper lithography machines, and rupture of quartz tubes used in silicon wafer processing procedures.
Since the Hsinchu Industrial Park occupies an important position in Taiwan's economy, emergency repairs were carried out immediately after the earthquake, sacrificing some civilian electricity, and giving priority to restoring all its power supply. Each semiconductor manufacturer also showed its ability and tried its best to restore power supply. On the day after the earthquake, many companies used their own power equipment, and the Hsinchu Park had restored a quarter of its power supply. TSMC, the largest semiconductor manufacturer in Taiwan, has an emergency power supply. Less than fifteen minutes after the earthquake, it began 24-hour continuous repair work under the leadership of senior managers. UMC, Winbond and Macronix have installed large-capacity uninterruptible power supplies. This can avoid the losses caused by power outages. The only company in Hsinchu that was not affected by the earthquake power outage was Powerchip, which has a cogeneration contract with Xinyu.
Among semiconductor production equipment, the most sophisticated is the stepper lithography machine.
After the earthquake, its position was dislocated and urgently needed to be readjusted. Nikon, a Japanese company that produces lithography machines, immediately sent more than 60 technicians to Taipei and quickly joined the repair teams of various factories in Hsinchu. However, the workload was too large, and the remaining lithography machines in the park could not be debugged after half a month of continuous hard work. Nikon has postponed the delivery schedule of newly ordered lithography machines in the next two months.
During the earthquake, some quartz tubes in the processing furnaces of UMC and other manufacturers were broken. Taiwan Yuanyi Quartz Co., Ltd., which produces quartz tubes, has received special attention in terms of power supply, and its operating rate has increased rapidly from before the earthquake to 2019. With the assistance of Toshiba and Fujitsu of Japan, they are replacing damaged quartz tubes as soon as possible.
Since the Hsinchu Industrial Park is relatively stable in terms of geological structure and is far away from the earthquake source area in central Taiwan, major earthquakes will cause less harm to the factories and production equipment in the park. TSMC's plants and equipment were basically undamaged. Quartz tubes in processing furnaces at some of UMC's workshops ruptured.
The one most affected is Taiwan's third-ranked semiconductor manufacturer Winbond Electronics. In addition to the rupture of quartz tubes, some of its water and gas supply pipelines have leaks.
According to the news announced by TSMC, due to tight efforts in emergency repairs, full production capacity can be restored in about a week after the earthquake, which will not have a big impact on production capacity. It is expected that by early October, manufacturers such as Lianhua Electronics Group will also resume normal production.
In short, officials claim that all semiconductor manufacturers will be able to resume full production capacity in about two weeks, which will not have a big impact on the market.
However, after the earthquake in Taiwan, the media and the industry expected a greater impact from this earthquake. In addition, driven by profits, global semiconductor prices increased significantly. Semiconductor manufacturers that had recovered from the impact of the earthquake were working at full capacity and overtime. Production.
Wang Rongchang suggested to Fan Wubing, "The current spot market has immediately surged. Our inventory shipping prices have increased five times, and the memory prices in the domestic electronics market are still skyrocketing. It is very likely that the market price will exceed Thousand yuan! Should we keep inventory now or try our best to ship it?”
Fan Wubing had already had dinner with Shen Ying. After hearing Wang Rongchang's words, he was not too surprised. He thought for a while and said, "It will take a month to return to normal, but the market impact will be delayed." A lot. You can wait a week or so before shipping in large quantities. The price of memory is always more than one thousand yuan, probably more than fifteen hundred yuan. You can take care of it. However, there is one thing. I need to emphasize that I plan to use half of the extra profit this time to provide disaster relief in Taiwan. You wouldn’t disagree, right?”
"Agree, why don't you agree?!" Wang Rongchang shouted immediately.