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Friday, December 31, 1999
Area utilities ready to face midnight
By Tara Copp
Caller-Times
If the city's phone, water and electric services experience problems tonight or New Year's Day, they won't necessarily be caused by a millennium bug.
Southwestern Bell is advising customers not to pick up their phones at midnight because a simultaneous jump in use could tie up the lines.
"Congestion is an important concern," said Jason Hillery, a spokesman for Southwestern Bell. "This issue really tied back to curiosity about 2000. If people pick up the phone right at 12 o'clock, the very second people pick up the phone they are dedicating a circuit from their phone to Southwestern Bell's central office, whether or not they make a call. So the concern is if everyone picks up the phone at the same time, the potential is that some people will get a fast busy signal, or that all circuits are busy, and that people who are actually trying to make a call could be delayed."
Hillery said the busy signal should only be short term.
The city's water and electric services don't share the same problem, but are both taking a cautious approach to New Year's Eve. And all have increased security to address possible vandalism.
"We've locked down both dams, and we have people at both because of vandalism concerns," water superintendent Eduardo Garana said. "We're restricting access to both, and taking every precaution."
Millennium-inspired vandalism "certainly is a more sensitive issue, and we have heightened our security measures," Central Power and Light spokeswoman Sharon Trott said.
In contrast to the phone system, if 80,000 Corpus Christi water customers decided to ring in the New Year by simultaneously flushing out the old, the city's water department wouldn't be affected, Garana said. "Let's say they are using the old style toilets that used 5 gallons of water per flush - that's 400,000 gallons of water demand. During colder times, we process 60 million gallons a day. If you translate that to gallons per minute, we wouldn't even see it."
Likewise, the city's electrical power service would not be vulnerable if thousands of people turn on an appliance because electric customers tend to have appliances such as refrigerators that run constantly and thus keep the electrical connections dedicated.
"It would be hard to create a localized outage," Trott said.
However, outside elements could create an outage. Weather, such as high winds or rains, can knock out power. So can car accidents when vehicles knock down power lines.
"That's a real important point for New Year's Eve," Trott said. "Outages do occur on any given day. New Year's Eve is no different. They could occur and not necessarily be Y2K-related."
To report service problems
Water: 857-1888
Phone: (800) 246-8464 (home), (800) 464-7928 (business), or: www.sbc.com/year2000cq
Electricity: (888) 218-3919, (888) 218-3924 (Spanish version)
Business writer Tara Copp can be reached at 886-4316 or by e-mail at coppt@caller.com
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