Since Hurricane Helene fell to the ground on the Florida Gulf Coast on September 26, there it has affected six states and resulted in at least 230 deadmaking it the deadliest storm since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The storm swept away houses, destroyed cities and flooded a large factory that supplies hospitals with intravenous fluids. She too Spruce pine destroyeda mining town of 2,194 people in North Carolina responsible for almost all the world's supply of high-purity quartz, an essential mineral for semiconductors used in smartphones, laptops and AI chips. ^{Nvidia semiconductor chip on display. Photo Credit: I-Hwa Cheng/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

Sibelco and The Quartz Corp. own the quartz mining operations at Spruce Pine. These two companies take the high purity quartz mined in the area, process it and ship it to the producers. Quartz then becomes an important building block for technology and ends up back in our hands inside an iPhone or laptop.

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Fir Pine taken over two feet of rain from Hurricane Helene, which caused Sibelco and The Quartz Corp. to stop operations on September 26. At the time of writing, it was unclear when operations would resume.

“Initial assessment indicates that our operating facilities in the Spruce Pine region have sustained only minor damage,” Sibelco declared on October 3. “Detailed assessments are ongoing. Our dedicated teams are on site, carrying out cleanup and repair activities to resume operations as soon as we can.”

Spruce Pine is the only source of high purity quartz in the US; CITY produces 90% of mined and processed quartz used in electronics. Although Russia and Brazil have their own supplies of the mineral, “Spruce pine has by far (the largest quantity) and the highest quality,” economics expert Ed Conway. said NPR.

Most semiconductors wouldn't be functional without high-purity quartz, he said.

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Dylan Patel, principal analyst at research firm SemiAnalysis, said in a post on X that supply chain disruptions from the storm have been “exaggerated.” The companies have enough materials on hand, at least three months' worth, to see them through until mining operations resume. They also have ways of synthetically purifying minerals.

“Deposits of high-purity quartz are few and far between, but purification methods exist even if they are time and resource intensive,” Patel has written.