Senator Urges Preparation for Y2K
By JIM ABRAMS
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate's leading experts on the Year 2000 computer problem discounted doomsday scenarios but said Sunday that, as before a snowstorm or a hurricane, it wouldn't hurt to put in a supply of food and water.
Sens. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who head a special Senate panel on the subject known as Y2K, said it could bring on real problems in this country, from electrical brownouts to breakdowns in medical equipment. But ''we will probably not have meltdown. This will not be the end of the world as we know it,'' Bennett said.
Bennett and Dodd, who appeared on CBS' ''Face the Nation,'' are to issue a report this week on the effects of the computer glitch arising from the many computers' inability to differentiate between the years 1900 and 2000. If unfixed, this could cause computers to malfunction or shut down.
Fears of transportation, financial services, power and nuclear systems going awry have led to a growing number of what Dodd called ''Y2K survivalists,'' are stockpiling food and energy in advance of what they fear will be social chaos.
That's highly unlikely, at least in the United States, the senators agreed. ''What you ought to do is prepare for a good storm, a hurricane, a storm where you'd like two or three days of ... water and canned goods and the like,'' Dodd said.
Bennett cautioned that no one will really know the seriousness of the problem until Jan. 1, 2000. ''Ultimately, when we get to New Year's Eve, everybody, no matter how informed we think we are, is going to be holding his breath,'' Bennett said.
A draft version of their report pointed to possible problems in the food supply system because of computer breakdowns. Dodd said another area of unease is that 90 percent of the nation's 800,000 doctors' offices have not upgraded their computers, meaning that doctors could temporarily lose access to medical records or that dialysis or heart monitoring equipment could stop working.
Affluent hospitals will be in good shape, Dodd said, but ''we are very, very worried about what happens in the rural or urban situations.''
Bennett said most power grids will be fine, and ''at worst we're going to have some brownouts'' in rural areas. He said he would be willing to fly on Jan. 1, 2000 -- on a domestic, not overseas, flight -- but he had heard that some insurance companies are refusing to insure flights without assurances that the computers were going to work.
''That becomes chicken and egg: No insurance, they don't fly; they don't fly, they can't prove,'' Bennett said. ''We'll watch that one carefully.''
Edward Yardeni, chief economist for Deutsche Bank Securities, who also appeared on CBS, said he is among a minority of economists who believe the computer problem could cause a global recession with the breakdown of inventory-control systems around the world.
Bennett said one impact on the international economy could be ''a flight to quality'' in which people remove money from countries where they feel there's going to be an ''infrastructure meltdown.''
Bennett's report and CIA testimony to Congress last week pinpointed poorer countries in general and Russia in particular as areas ill-prepared for the millennium bug.
Bennett said an accidental nuclear launch is ''very, very unlikely,'' and more likely was that ''if somebody were to press the button to cause an intercontintental missile to go off, it wouldn't work.''
Their report details possible problems with Russia's early warning system for incoming missiles. They also back a plan where experts from Russia, the United States, and possibly India and Pakistan gather in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Jan. 1 to ensure that no country is in the dark about other countries' intentions in the event of a computer failure.
Bennett's committee sent a team to Russia to evaluate its preparations. He said they returned with the conclusion: ''Yes, they are going to have real problems, and no one is going to notice because they said nothing works over there right now.''
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