Here's Wed's Toronto Globe & Mail FRONT PG: WAKE UP, American Goldbugs!
GLOBE AND MAIL, Toronto
ARMY FEARS CIVIL CHAOS FROM MILLENIUM BUG
Huge deployment would deal with fallout from
computer failures
Tuesday, October 27, 1998
Ottawa and Toronto -- JEFF SALLOT in Ottawa
JOHN SAUNDERS in Toronto
The Canadian Armed Forces have been ordered to spend
the next 14 months preparing for what could be their biggest
peacetime deployment -- tens of thousands of troops spread
across the country and frigates standing by in major ports --
in case computer problems in 2000 bring civil chaos.
The army is studying everything from the number of flashlights
and batteries it will need if power is out for weeks to whether
military air-traffic-control field equipment should be set up at
civilian airports.
Logistics officers are plotting where to position vehicles, fuel,
tents, cots, ration packs and other supplies. Signals officers
are trying to figure out how to keep high government officials
in communication if commercial systems fail.
Rules for the use of force are being drafted should soldiers
have to make arrests or back up police dealing with riots
and looting.
As police, fire and other civilian emergency services make
their own plans, military commanders have been told that
meeting the threat of the Year 2000 bug is their highest
priority and will be the focus of all training from January on.
Equipment purchases that do not contribute to the effort
are to be postponed.
No one knows whether a common programming flaw -- a
seemingly small matter of dealing with dates beyond 1999
-- will cause cascading failure in the world's computer
systems,knocking out in the dead of a Canadian winter
machines that run everything from traffic lights to nuclear
reactors. It could turn out to be one of history's great
anticlimaxes, but the armed forces are taking no chances.
The effort is called Operation Abacus, after an ancient
Chinese bead-and-string calculator that needs no power
and is not susceptible to glitches. A 24-page "warning
order" was sent to military commanders, regional
headquarters and reserve units across the country
nearly two months ago.
"There is a potential for disruption of major infrastructure
systems . . . that may require Canadian Forces support
to civil authorities," the order begins. The commanders
have been given until mid-November to come up with first
drafts of plans that will be refined right up to Jan. 1, 2000.
The success of the operation depends on "public confidence
in the government's ability to manage and provide leadership
in dealing with the year 2000 problem," the order says.
Navy captains have been told their ships may have to be
docked to serve as garrisons, power plants, field hospitals
and soup kitchens.
On land, the official worst-case scenario would have
32,000 soldiers, including volunteer reservists, living
and working in the field.
So far, the army says it has sought no cabinet order
pressing weekend warriors into service. Rumours in
reserve circles suggest the field force could reach more
than 60,000, including many non-volunteers, if such an
order were issued.
Such talk was not diminished by an article this month
on the Year 2000 effort in the Maple Leaf, an official
army magazine. Lieutenant-General Ray Crabbe, a
just-retired deputy chief of defence staff, said soldiers
need not worry about missing their 1999 Christmas
holidays.
"As far as Christmas goes, I don't think you could
deploy 60,000 troops away from their homes at Christmas,
especially from a morale point of view," he was quoted
as saying. "I'm not sure you can say the same thing for
New Year's Eve." Almost everyone knows about the
problem by now.
Traditionally, most computers recorded years in two digits:
"98" for 1998, "99" for 1999 and so on. When "00" arrives,
some computers may think it is 1900 or some other base
year.
Some may be uncertain of the year or even the day of
the week. (Dec. 31, 1999, is a Friday; Jan. 1, 1900,
was a Monday. That does not compute.) They may act
strangely or shut down, paralyzing complex systems.
Or maybe not. The Year 2000 problem (Y2K for short)
has been called both a death sentence for industrial
civilization and a fraud perpetrated by computer types.
Whatever it is, billions of dollars and millions of hours
of work will have been lavished on it before the end of
next year. Greying, out-of-fashion mainframe programmers
have found themselves commanding wages as high as
$1,000 a day, at least temporarily, in the rush to fix
countless lines of code. If the troops are out in the cold,
they will have plenty of company. Police forces have
begun warning their staffs not to plan vacations around
the turn of the year.
The RCMP's 16,000 officers have been told to book no
time off from Dec. 27, 1999, to March 15, 2000, at least
until the scope of the Y2K problem becomes clearer.
Toronto's 5,000 police officers have been given no-go
dates of Dec. 27, 1999, to Jan. 9, 2000, and Vancouver's
1,150 officers have been given Dec. 29, 1999, to Jan. 14,
2000. Calgary police are considering the same dates as
the RCMP, although no order has gone out.
Montreal's fire department says there will be a Y2K
vacation ban but has announced no dates. The Toronto
department has no special ban but says December and
January have customarily been no-leave months because
of extra fires associated with candles, fireplaces and
space heaters, among other things.
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