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Monday, December 27, 1999
Federal officials confident that country is prepared for year 2000
By Jonathan D. Salant
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Eat, drink and be merry on New Year's Eve, because the advent of the year 2000 should cause few, if any, problems, a bevy of federal officials said Sunday.
Hospitals, power plants, air traffic control systems and prisons are all Y2K ready, they said. The top aviation official will be in the air as the new year begins, and military personnel will be monitoring missiles with the Russians.
Officials said Americans should make no more preparations for New Year's this year than they would do for any long winter weekend.
"Our goal has been to avoid overreaction," President Clinton's top Y2K adviser, John Koskinen, said on ABC's "This Week." "We would like people to be prepared for a long midwinter weekend but we think that's all that's necessary."
The Y2K problem arises out of the fear that older computers programmed to read just the last two digits of a year will read "00" as "1900" rather than "2000." Billions of dollars have been spent to correct the problem.
An Associated Press poll taken earlier this month found only 5 percent of respondents expecting major Y2K problems, down from 11 percent in July. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Even if some of the Y2K scenarios of computer failures do come true, officials said they were prepared to handle any emergencies.
"Hospitals are in the business of preparing for the unexpected," American Hospital Association chairman Fred Brown said on ABC. "I don't think there really will be an inconvenience. The American public can feel very confident if they have go to hospitals."
Koskinen said prisons and power plants had been tested and found to be Y2K compliant.
"The power plants we think have done their Y2K work," Koskinen said. "We do not expect there is any risk."
Most emergency 911 call centers also are prepared. A December survey from the National Emergency Number Association found 98.5 percent saying their equipment was Y2K ready, and others may have been fixed since then.
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