Around 2:00 PM EDT on Monday, Apple's Maiden, NC, data center suffered a chlorine leak that injured five people. It remains unclear whether the injured were Apple data center employees or construction workers.
Last week, a fire broke out among the solar panels atop the Mesa, AZ, sapphire manufacturing facility that Apple recently bought from GT Advanced. No injuries were reported.
The two events do not seem to be linked, except that Apple is having a bad run of luck with site safety.
El Reg reports
Emergency crews received a call [June 1] about 2pm local time from the Apple facility on Startown Road, in Maiden, North Carolina. Local news helicopters captured footage of people being given medical attention and oxygen masks outside the facility.
The Catawba emergency services said initially two unknown chemicals were involved in the alert, later stating that it was a chlorine gas leak.
[...] It is speculated that the chlorine was a key component in the facility's water-cleaning facility, perhaps for its water-cooled components.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday June 02 2015, @06:38PM
You've got to love how Intel's biggest-ever acquisition is still at five comments, while the last two "Meh" stories were way past that mark in a few minutes.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 02 2015, @08:41PM
Chipmaker buys chipmaker, eh. Like thats never happened before.
Chlorine leak in a data center? That doesn't happen every day, or ... ever. WTF are they doing with chlorine in a data center? The data centers, COs, transmitter sites, microwave relay sites, telecom rooms, repeater sites I've been in never had anything like a chlorination plant, and I've seen a lot. Then again I've never been in a data center larger than maybe 400 feet on a side, and now a days thats "small" for a data center. That makes it an interesting story. Maybe giant data centers a mile on a side or whatever size they are, have hot tubs in there or saunas or nuclear reactors for backup power. That sounds cool. Its gonna get interest.