TAIPEI, Taiwan (BRAIN)—Initial reports from Taiwan indicate that the island’s bicycle industry escaped relatively unscathed as Typhoon Morakot swept over the island this weekend.
Stan Day, SRAM’s chief executive officer, said that all of SRAM’s employees and facilities were safe with the southern and eastern parts of the island getting hit the hardest. The mountains east of Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second biggest city, recorded more than 56 inches of rainfall (4.6 feet) in a single day. It was the worst flooding in half a century.
Matt Van Enkevort, FSA’s general manager in the U.S., said the typhoon shut production down at the company’s new factory. “The good news for us is that Taichung seemed to have escaped the worst of it,” he said. FSA management told staff to stay home during the typhoon, he said.
“One of our European staff was in his hotel room listening to the screaming wind and watching the rain fly by horizontally,” Van Enkevort added.
—Marc Sani
