Text of TheStreet.com
By Cory Johnson
West Coast Bureau Chief
4/10/98 9:36 AM ET
SMYRNA, Ga. -- Irony abounds.
There I was Thursday at the Brainstorm Year 2000
National Symposium, mapping out the coming Y2K
disaster, but the real storm was taking place right outside
my hotel window. Just as I left the hotel bar with William
Ulrich, a Y2K analyst with Triaxsys Research, a wicked
fierce storm blew through just before 1 a.m., and, though I
couldn't see it through the rain, a tornado touched down just
two miles away. At least five people were killed in Georgia,
and police crews are still searching through the rubble of
wrecked homes for more victims. The same storm marched
through other parts of the South, killing at least 33 others in
Alabama and Mississippi.
I went to check out the damage Thursday morning and it
was as awesome and weird as everything you might have
heard about tornadoes. The Cobb County police had the
area sealed off, and though they were less than impressed
by my credentials ("Street dot wha?") they were kind enough
to let me though. Police and fire trucks were parked in the
middle of Cobb Highway. Crews from Georgia Power were
taking down torn power lines. Every once in a while cops on
bicycles took off in packs as they got periodic reports of
looting (unfounded reports, it would turn out). Helicopters
from the local news affiliates circled overhead with the sky
disarmingly clear and sunny.
The tornado looked like it had hit the runway of Dobbins Air
Force Base, run south up a hill and through a Volvo
dealership, then zigzagged east, down the
unfortunately-named Windy Hill Road. "This is one of the
highest points in Cobb County," said Gene Santiago, a
sales representative at Chris Volvo. "The wind usually
whips right through here, in the summer it's nice and cool.
But this ... this ain't so cool." All around him was wreckage.
A green 1998 Volvo 960 was impaled on a short post. A
white Volvo 570 had been thrown up in the air, hit a lamp
pole, slid down the pole and landed on the dealership's
doormat, which had been picked up and blown to the top of
the hill. "We're probably looking at well over $250,000 in
damage," said Santiago.
Across the street, at the intersection of Windy Hill Road and
Cobb Highway, a Chevron station had been reduced to a pile
of twisted metal. The sign was torn from the top of the
station, flew about 500 yards over some trees, down a hill
and into the front window of Haverty's Fine Furniture,
where it was sucked through the back of the store until it
blew out the rear cinderblock wall. A giant letter "e" sat in a
love seat next the big busted lamp and three throw pillows,
which were unmoved.
Next door, Ted Negis, the vice president of Ed Voyles
Honda and Hyundai, was standing in the parking lot trying
to make a decision. A 50-foot-long, pretzelized piece of
white metal siding was dangling on a drooping power line,
twisting in the wind with ominous creaks and groans. Parked
just underneath it were three shiny new Honda Accords. "I
don't know if we should try to run those cars out of there," he
said, "or wait for Georgia Power to come get it down.
"You hate to see have this kind of disruption in your
business," says Negis. "It breaks your stride. We were
having one of our best years ever, and to interrupt this, well, I
don't know how or when we'll get back on track."
Funny. That's just the kind of talk that was coming out of the
Year 2000 conference the day before. Talk of how a
one-week or one-month disruption in business could wreak
longtime havoc. Kevin Schick, currently of AnswerThink
Consulting and a former Gartner analyst who wrote some
early seminal research on Y2K, was lamenting that people
don't seem to feel the urgency of the coming Y2K problem,
but pay loads of attention to the possibility of an asteroid
hitting the earth. "There's no cool graphic illustration of your
computer shutting off," he said. "Hollywood isn't making
movies about it. But this asteroid thing may never happen --
and the Year 2000 will."
Even before the tornado hit late Wednesday night, I had a
scare early in the day listening to Jay Amin, the supervisor
of computer systems for Texas Utilities. His topic: Nuclear
Utility Industry Y2K Issues, Impacts and Readiness Plans.
"If you asked me a few months ago if we were looking at the
Year 2000 issue, I would have been hesitant," he said. "But
now I can say that we are fully looking at it." Then he went
on to say that his utility was finding all sorts of problems,
including problems with embedded control devices deep
within the nuclear power plants. Amin said that he was
having trouble getting information from other utilities,
because everyone was afraid of creating a paper trail that
could lead to lawsuits. "People are shying away from
sharing information, and I think that is bad," he said. "But I
think that eventually people are going to share information."
Eventually. The turn of the century is just 90 weekends away
-- 632 days -- and these guys are talking about eventually.
Imagine if 90% of the Year 2000 projects get completed, but
the power goes out. Then what? If only a few plants go
down, will that create a brownout across the Eastern
Seaboard? What kind of unique power demands might be in
place then? What if there's a cold spell putting already
putting a drain on the power supply? "Texas Utilities just
started six months ago," said one analyst, who asked not to
be named. "I think the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is
going to have to shut down a few power plants. Let's just
hope for good weather on December 31, 1999."
Indeed, because I've already seen the havoc that chaos and
bad weather can wreak. And I wouldn't bet that this market
can handle such a disruption. |
