Taiwan's renowned software park was hit hard by last week's Typhoon Nari, which cut off power and communications to the high-tech facility for eight days.
That shutdown idled offices and halted operations for the 88 high-tech firms that call the Nankang Software Park (
Located in the east Taipei suburb of Nankang, the park was without water or electricity from Sept. 17 until Tuesday.
PHOTO: LIAO RAY-SHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
Air conditioning is not expected to be fully restored until Monday.
The park is expected to report typhoon-related losses of less than NT$200 million, a park administration official said yesterday.
"Though it's too early to tell exactly how much the losses are, the figure is definitely not going to exceed NT$200 million, based on our preliminary assessments," Jack Yu (游文杰), general manager of the Nankang Software Park Service and Management Co (捷正管理公司), told the Taipei Times yesterday.
"The electronic and mechanical equipment are in underground levels of the park, which was completely inundated by the massive flood waters brought about by Typhoon Nari last week," Yu said.
Many park firms have also complained about being isolated from the outside world due to communications disruptions, Yu said. "With the assistance of Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), we expect all T1 lines to resume operations [this morning] while ADSL lines will return to normal service on Sept. 28."
However, with one of Chung-hwa's transmission stations in Nankang still down -- and not expected to be operational until Sept. 30 -- there will be some communication bottlenecks and congestion, Yu indicated.
"Some companies have told me that connection time to reach people outside the park doubled or tripled," Yu said. The software park is expected to have normal communications by tomorrow evening.
This is the second time the Nankang Software Park has suffered floods and power outages due to a typhoon. "The park was last hit by a typhoon in November of last year but the damage at that time was much less significant than this time," Yu recalled.
While the park administration has been discussing how to improve the park's infrastructure development with government agencies, Yu said his top concern is company confidence in the industrial park.
"If the government does not work hard enough in terms of flood-prevention measures, some may consider moving out of the park," Yu warned.
Jointly created by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the non-profit Institute for Information Industry and the local software industry, the park was funded with an initial investment of NT$900 million (US$29 million) in 1999.
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