The State - News from March 22, 1988

More than 900 workers were evacuated or prevented from going to work at three Silicon Valley sites where officials found cylinders of the same type of toxic gas that exploded and killed three people in New Jersey. The evacuated sites included Liquid Carbonics in San Carlos, where the batch of silane gas was processed; Advanced Micro Devices Inc., in Santa Clara; and Teledyne Semiconductor in Mountain View. Officials at Liquid Carbonics’ headquarters in Chicago would not comment and it was not known how many of the containers had been distributed throughout the country. Silane gas is widely used for semiconductor processing. There were no injuries. The cylinders all are believed to be from the same batch, made in Liquid Carbonics’ San Carlos facility, that included the cylinder that blew up Thursday at a Berkeley Heights, N.J., chemical plant, killing three workers.