Off topic - Year 2000 hysteria article from NYT.
(By the way, the utility that serves our house is Florida Power & Light). (See highlighted section below).
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August 22, 1999
Doomsayer Pushes Year 2000 Panic Button With Old Data
By BARNABY J. FEDER
or months, government officials have worried that zealous pessimists
about the world's preparations for Year 2000 computer problems could
stir panic.
Thanks to a prominent doomsayer named Jim Lord, they have a fresh
example of what they fear.
Early this month, Lord passed the word that he was
about to break an "explosive" Year 2000 computer story.
And on Thursday, the former Navy officer turned Year
2000 author and lecturer appeared to deliver with an
Internet posting he called the "Pentagon Papers of Y2K."
Lord put the headline "Secret Government Study Reveals
Massive Y2K Problems in American Cities" on his report,
which he said was based on a Navy Department study
slipped to him confidentially. His account claimed that the
Navy and the Marine Corps expected more than 26
million Americans in 125 cities near their installations to
be without water, power, gas or sewer service next
January, not to mention millions of foreign citizens near
Navy bases overseas facing similar plights.
Many of the nation's largest cities, including New York,
were on the list.
It turned out that Lord had indeed received government information, but that
it was outdated.
The document, posted until recently on a public but rarely visited Navy
Internet site, reflected assessments made this spring by officials on the
vulnerability of military installations to disruptions in basic utilities.
The officials had been instructed to assume the worst -- a ranking of likely
failure -- where they had not received assurances that Year 2000 problems,
the coding glitches that threaten to make some computers and equipment
malfunction, had been addressed.
The newest version of the document, not yet posted on the Navy site but
widely circulated on the Internet in response to Lord's charges, identifies the
status of information-gathering efforts for the first time as well as the military
assessment of the likelihood of problems. In no case where the military has
actually heard from the utilities are disruptions considered likely.
"There are no indications of likely widespread failures" of water, electric, gas
or sewer systems, the Navy Department said on Friday.
By then, however, John Koskinen, chairman of the president's Council on
Year 2000 Conversion, was scrambling to shoot down rumors that Lord's
document reflected a truer version of official views.
"There are a whole set of people out there who would like their predictions of
the end of the world borne out," Koskinen said.
He said that as 2000 approaches, the risk of public panic from exaggerated
alarms about the computer glitch would grow.
Several utilities listed by Lord as having problems were swamped with
inquiries following Lord's posting, which was reported by The Associated
Press. Florida Power & Light was "astonished" to find itself listed as likely to
crash in Fort Lauderdale and other areas it serves, said Bill Swank, a
company spokesman. In fact, the power plant in Fort Lauderdale had already
had its computers rolled over to Year 2000 dates and is performing
flawlessly, he said.
For his part, Lord said he was not reassured.
In an e-mail on Friday evening, Lord said "the Navy study raises many
questions not yet addressed," including whether there were similar Army and
Air Force documents and what criteria were used to make the assessments.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company |
