LIHU’E — It was a boring New Year’s Eve in the county’s Emergency Operating Center. As each part of the world turned the clock, three TVs and several computers linked to the Internet brought the same news to Civil Defense
LIHU’E — It was a boring New Year’s Eve in the county’s Emergency Operating
Center.
As each part of the world turned the clock, three TVs and several
computers linked to the Internet brought the same news to Civil Defense
Administrator Clifford Ikeda and his team: No Y2K-related problems
reported.
At the dawn of the new millennium, the world’s computers hummed
along as if it were just another day.
“We literally are unable to find any
significant Y2K-related incident as the world has gone into the year 2000,”
said John Koskinen, head of the President’s Council on Y2K
Conversion.
James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, called it a “non-event” and the Bangkok Post headlined it “The Mouse
That Didn’t Roar.”
“The hardest part is staying alert when there is
absolutely nothing happening,” said an Army National guardsmen who had been at
the county EOC since 4 a.m.
Every two hours Army National guardsmen would
E-mail the same report back to headquarters in Honolulu: No change.
At
midnight, they sent a final message, “Happy New Year.”
Through the long
vigil, some members of the team slept in bunks provided in a side room, others
surfed the Web.
Some played the trivia game, You Don’t Know Jack.
“It
was pretty interesting to watch the TV for awhile, but then we hit a lull after
we hit the West Coast, even the TV was pretty boring,” said Beth Tokioka,
public information officer for the county.
“So we were surfing the
Internet, checking out the CNN Web site, looking for Y2K glitches but no one is
reporting any.”
The EOC, which is in the basement of the Old County
Building, sprung to life for a brief time at around 12 a.m.
But that was
because of a report that a car carrying a woman in labor on her way to Wilcox
Hospital had blown a tire near the Wailua Golf Course.
The 911 dispatcher
talked the woman through the initial stages of delivery while the ambulance
came to take her to pediatrics.
“They made it in time, just through the
doors and the baby popped out,” an observer said. The baby, born at 12:22 a.m.,
was the first baby of the new year, proving that life does goes on after
Y2K.
When police came by the underground EOC to give a tally of what was
happening above ground, it was happily unimpressive.
A brush fire near
Wilcox Hospital, another at Kalaheo, and a car fire at Anini were the extent of
fireworks- related damage.
A couple of fire alarms went off without there
being fires, prompting some Y2K speculation.
“We don’t know if it’s Y2K
and the alarms are not programmed or what, because there was no evidence of
anything,” said one officer.
There were no reports of anybody with
breathing difficulties.
And no accidents.
Ikeda added that New Year’s
Eve aside, a bigger test might be on Monday morning when employees go to work
and switch on their work station computers.
“Perhaps more will be revealed
then than now — perhaps,” he cautioned.
Ikeda added that the county
mainframe rolled over without a hitch.
“We don’t know about any hidden
problems — of course, we wouldn’t know if it’s hidden, would we?”
Near
the end, the weary staff said that it was better to be safe than
sorry.
“Everybody took great care and did the best they could to see that
things didn’t fail, so it’s really not a farce,” said Ikeda.
But one member
of the team was not so enthusiastic.
“I don’t want to hear anything about
Y2K, let’s talk about life,” he said.
