Apr 29 - One minute its a normal sleepy night in Taoyuan City, Taiwan trying to chill until your next shift at Chin Poon Industries, one of the numerous printed circuit board manufacturers in the district (this one exclusive to the automobile industry), next you are cleaning up dead fish because a five-alarm fire (the most alarms a fire can have, i think) broke out in your factory and you no longer have a job. Its a rough life working the PCB and semi-conductor manufacturer life in Asia; first, you work ridiculous hours day or night, then you pretty much have to live in your factory because you can’t afford to stay anywhere else (and yes you pay to live in your factory), by the way you are not even in your home country, probably coming from some smaller south Asian country like Vietnam or Laos, and then it could be a major accident happens and your home and livelihood go up in flames, oh and you could die from all that like the two Thai workers trapped in their flat when the process coating the unstamped PCBs went up in flames.Â
Like big time, so much that five fire fighters died fighting a fire that lasted almost 40 hours when heavy debris impaled them. If that hadn’t done it, the acidic brew might have which leaked into the local Nankan River; the same river that makes its way out to that big Ocean to the north fouling the waterway and making ceviche out of the local fauna.
After all that catastrophe, on top of all that, the company shares halved almost over night from skittish investors who thought it might not look good for them but the insurance is good and CP Industries is spread throughout China so shares rebounded. Not sure we can say that about our migrant workers and local fire fighters.
