Update: The Mercury News posted more information under the headline “Wine Country inferno singes Keysight Technologies Santa Rosa HQ, but complex still viable, employee spirits strong” Thursday afternoon.
The San Francisco Chronicle has an article on Keysight Technologies’ CEO Ron Nersesian as he contends with the Santa Rosa headquarters besieged by wildfires. The company issued a press release Monday apparently responding to incorrect reports that the facility had been destroyed. Keysight said at the time that the four main buildings were intact, although with minor damage, while some modular structures and automobiles suffered more extensive damage. The Chronicle reports that Keysight owns about 200 mostly wooded acres in Santa Rosa, but the main buildings occupy only 95 acres and are surrounded by surface parking lots, which provided a buffer from the fires.
The Chronicle further reports that Nersesian cut short a business trip to Germany to fly back to address the situation. Keysight has established a command center at a business part in San Rafael, with the first priority to account for the headquarters’ 1,500 employees. The Chronicle says that of Wednesday morning, Keysight had reached all but 200 of its employees, that one employee was in critical condition with severe burns, and that 33 employees’ homes had been destroyed. “The company will pay out $10,000 to employees who lost homes and provide $1,000 to each worker forced to evacuate,” the paper adds.
The Santa Rosa site that would ultimately become Keysight’s headquarters opened in 1975 under the Hewlett-Packard banner. During a 2015 visit to the site, I learned that the company had since 2008 invested $100 million in site renovation, an IC fabrication facility, and an environmental test facility, as well as a stakeholder center, heritage gallery, and executive offices. Products developed in Santa Rosa include network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, signal generators, wireless communications test sets, and software and modular products. Components (including III-V semiconductors), subassemblies, and instruments are manufactured at the site.
The Chronicle reports that Keysight has an emergency stockpile of parts necessary to build its products in Colorado Springs. Nersesian told the Chronicle that the company does not plan to issue any new financial forecasts to Wall Street and that he doesn’t expect much impact to operations, depending on further evaluation of the headquarters buildings.
