Zero Day Near, New York Asks, 'What If?

'
By ANDREW C. REVKIN and BARNABY J. FEDER
Publ i shed: November 27, 1999
Last month, after searching and testing hundreds of computer systems and countless electronic devices in New York City's vast inventory of
technology, city officials took one of the final steps in a four-year, $300 million effort to prevent any turmoil stemming from the Year 2000
computer problem.
They canvassed every city agency, from Corrections to Sanitation, to identify each jackhammer, bullhorn, tent, chain saw and portable toilet.
They made a list of every city employee who is a qualified nurse, elevator mechanic, electrician, cook -- even scuba diver -- so appropriate gear
and specialists can quickly be dispatched should trouble erupt after clocks in computers tick from 1999 to 2000.
The challenge is that despite spending more than any other city in the world to fight the computer glitch, New York's technology and
emergency-management experts say things may yet go wrong -- and no one can be sure which things, or how New Yorkers will react.
The Year 2000 computer problem could manifest itself almost anywhere, in ways small and large, because computers and microchips have
become enmeshed in every aspect of urban life. Or -- given how much repair work has been done -- it could cause almost no trouble at all, as
most city officials and independent experts expect.
The city's Year 2000 experts say they have checked for almost every conceivable situation:
*They worried about traffic lights all blinking yellow, or failing altogether. (The traffic-management system has since been tested four times by
rolling the date past 2000.)
*They envisioned death certificates delayed, with bodies piling up at funeral homes. (That computer system has since been updated and tested.)
*They imagined the chaos of scrambled city checks. (The system was overhauled, and as an extra precaution, the city has preprinted several
hundred thousand payroll and pension checks.)
But what is left could still add up to a host of disruptions.
The problem stems from the early days of computing. To conserve memory, years were usually indicated as just two digits. Unfortunately, 00 --
instead of being read as 2000 -- may be interpreted as 1900 or simply not compute. The result in both cases can be a frozen computer or faulty
data.
Multiplied by the number of computers and chips involved in daily living, this bit of shorthand has added up to the first potential global crisis of
the Information Age.
New York's own success or failure in preventing disruptions in services and commerce will have implications far beyond the city's five boroughs,
given its status as a hub of finance, trade and travel. And if prevention alone should not suffice, officials are determined to be ready for any
eventuality.
The city is assembling a small fleet of truck-mounted generators to deploy should some high-rise or housing project go dark. More than 50,000
self-heating boxed beef-and-mushroom dinners sit waiting to be rushed to shelters in case of evacuations.
Thousands of city employees normally on vacation over the New Year's weekend have been told to plan on working, including 4,000 additional
police officers.
''You have to balance between panicking people and having people prepared,'' Police Commissioner Howard Safir said. ''I expect things will
function as normal, but if not, we're ready to go in and help.''
On Dec. 29, the city's emergency management ''bunker'' -- a sleek $13 million room on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center -- will become the
round-the-clock home for more than 100 crisis managers from several dozen city agencies, power, banking and phone companies, and
emergency response groups ranging from the Red Cross to the Coast Guard.
Through New Year's Day, and for several weeks beyond if necessary, it will be the nerve center for the city's handling of any trouble stemming
from the Year 2000 computer problem.
In the meantime, the computer and crisis managers are still working to eliminate or anticipate any still-hidden snags before Zero Day, as they
are calling the date transition. In the hottest of many hot seats are Jerome M. Hauer, the director of the Mayor's Office of Emergency
Management -- known to some as the office of ''what if'' -- and Brian T. Cohen, executive director of the city's Year 2000 Project Office, which
has been pushing city agencies for three years, occasionally even browbeating them, to fix everything.
Mr. Cohen, who chain-smokes Marlboros and rarely tightens his tie, sat at his cluttered desk recently and said that the checking and rechecking
would continue even as the ball drops in Times Square. ''There are going to be no parties here,'' he said. ''I'm going to feel good about nothing
until long after Jan. 1.''
Government
Keeping the Pressure On City Agencies
Joseph J. Lhota, the deputy mayor for operations, recalls having his first briefing on the Year 2000 problem sometime in 1996, while he was
director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Technology
He said he did not really absorb its significance until he went home that night, booted up his desktop computer, and fiddled with the electronic
calendar to see if he could enter dates beyond 1999. He couldn't.
He reflected on the hundreds of date-related city functions that depended on computers. ''That's when I knew this was very real,'' Mr. Lhota said.
And the clock was ticking.
That year, with an initial budget of $300,000, the city, with consultants from IBM and other contractors, began the first thorough assessment of
its vulnerability -- and how much it would cost to fix things.
After sifting the technology of all its agencies, the city identified 657 computer processes that were essential for the government to fulfill its many
missions. But initial work focused on several dozen systems whose failure would have a large, immediate effect on New Yorkers or city
government itself -- things like the 911 emergency dispatch system, arrest and prison records, traffic lights and tax collection, payroll and
pensions.
City computer experts and outside consultants have since examined and re-examined the equipment and backup equipment and contingency
plans for every city agency and related institutions. More than 65 million lines of computer programming code were inspected to find spots
where the date problem might cause a crash or misinterpretation of data. The software was patched up or replaced. More than 70 obsolete or
fatally flawed computer systems were retired.
The first system deemed repaired, tested and ready -- the computer that tracks the 11 million parking citations issued each year -- was finished in
July 1998. And while the city missed its goal of full readiness by mid-1999, only one system -- a program that tracks the deployment of transit
police -- is still not ready, according to Mr. Cohen. (The information can be gathered by phone if the system is not ready as planned in mid-
December, he said.)
Even with all critical systems accounted for, the city's Year 2000 officials have plenty of reasons to remain nervous. There will invariably be
some incompatibilities with the computer systems of outside suppliers or state agencies who have made their own changes to deal with the date
confusion, and the city could be in dire straits if those connections falter.
In recent months, to keep pressure on city agencies, Mr. Cohen and several senior officials have presided over biweekly meetings in which
commissioners are grilled about every detail of their Year 2000 work and their emergency plans.
The Year 2000 team only half-jokingly refers to the meetings as a kind of quiz game called ''Stump the Commish.''
In one such meeting in October, in a conference room adorned with framed, yellowed New York City maps from the last century, Joel S. Miele,
the city commissioner of environmental protection, faced a phalanx of questioners across a conference table, who probed to see if his agency was
ready for the next century.
Water would continue to flow, he said, because 99 percent of the supply is gravity fed, requiring no pumps or computers to get water at least to
the sixth floor in most city buildings. Keeping sewage plants running was relatively easy, too, Mr. Miele said, because the city plants are mostly
so old that manual systems still exist to take over for computers should the computers fail.
For more than an hour, Mr. Miele described every detail of the agency's plans to keep things running. ''This is very satisfying,'' said Allan H.
Dobrin, the city commissioner of technology and telecommunications. As Mr. Miele headed for the door, Mr. Dobrin added: ''You guys have
really come a long way. See you next month.''
Mr. Cohen, Mr. Dobrin and the others would see three other agency heads that day, and more the next, and the next.
Vital Links
Smoothing the Way For Planes and Trains
Of course, even if the city's own computer connections work perfectly as 2000 begins, that does not ensure that all will be well. Failures of
computers or other systems at independent public agencies like the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Board of Education, at
financial or medical centers, chemical plants or a host of other enterprises could also produce turmoil in the city.
The key agencies are talking every bit as confidently as the city. Officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the
port, the airports, commuter trains to New Jersey, and the World Trade Center, say it spent more than $100 million in its own effort, testing
everything from the Trade Center elevators to the computers controlling security doors at the airports -- even the three special, computer-laden
Saab sedans that check the friction of runways at the airports. It turned out that the cars' computers could not pass muster. The cars are being
replaced.
The M.T.A., which serves six million riders a day, says repair work is finished and contingency plans are in place, including preparations for
double to triple the normal Times Square subway traffic on New Year's Eve. The authority spent $35 million but, officials say, actually had a far
easier challenge than transit agencies in cities like Washington and San Francisco with newer, much more automated systems.
Consolidated Edison says it completed Year 2000 preparations last month. Several crucial sites, like its East River steam plant, have already
switched their computers to the Year 2000 without encountering problems.
Con Ed also expects, like many utilities, to have power plants that would normally be off-line on New Year's Eve operating at low levels and
ready to swing into action if problems arise.
The power company plans to have 1,500 extra employees on hand over New Year's Eve, many of them in repair crews and trucks positioned in
neighborhoods where crowds might make it hard to move in help in the event of any power disruptions. Additional personnel will be at its
control center on the Upper West Side and other command posts.
''We know it's going to be busy,'' said Mike Spall, a Con Ed spokesman. ''People are going to assume that any problem is a Y2K problem.''
The July blackout in upper Manhattan, which showed that generators at some city hospitals were inadequate, served as an alert, administrators
at several hospitals said.
In general, public and private hospitals have been given high marks in independent reviews. They have sifted through tens of thousands of
medical devices looking for microchips that might cause malfunctions, and most have prepared elaborate contingency plans.
At New York-Presbyterian Hospital, the 400 workers in the hospital's information services department on East 38th Street will be on duty
through the holiday weekend. They are being told to treat the New Year's transition like ''a week of going to camp,'' according to Juanita
Brassard, head of the hospital's contingency planning team.
They are being instructed to bring empty gallon jugs during the last week of the year to store water in their cubicles, as well as a sleeping bag, a
pillow, three days of nonperishable ready-to-eat food, flashlights and extra batteries. Those who live farthest away are being scheduled to work
the first 12 hours so that the second shift is made up of workers more likely to reach the office if transportation problems develop.
Contingencies
An Emergency Center To Plan for the Worst
Independent experts who have analyzed the efforts of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's team say the city is in good shape. In recent weeks, the city
comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, whose office audited Year 2000 computer work by 49 city agencies over the last two years, raised most of the
grades to ''good.''
But despite the expenditure of so much time, money, and effort, no one expects every computer or hidden chip to make the transition to 2000
flawlessly and no one can be sure how the public will react -- perhaps in ways that create new problems. For example, if everyone picks up a
telephone at 12:01 a.m. New Year's Day to check for a dial tone, circuits will quickly become overloaded.
''They can say what they want, but something will happen,'' said one city official who helped investigate the readiness of many agencies.
''Everyone has to have a fallback position.'' So a separate effort has been under way for more than a year to plan for the worst.
The challenge is particularly daunting because any technical problems may coincide with an epic celebration that is expected to swell the city's
population by a million or more, and with officials on alert for possible terrorism or other millennial disorder.
The main emergency operations center at 7 World Trade Center, used most recently for Hurricane Floyd in September, will hand off problems to
clusters of experts on things like communications, power, elevators, and medical problems. Through multiple telephone and radio links, it will
serve as the hub of a network of crisis centers operated by individual city agencies, Con Edison and others.
The Police Department will have its own command center running on the eighth floor of 1 Police Plaza, focused on tracking crowds at the
millennium celebration and any attendant troubles, police officials said.
In many ways the backup plans for entering the next century involve going back to the last one. The city is planning to use dozens of old coal-
heated schools -- once seen as a sign of the school system's state of disrepair -- as shelters, because the boilers can run without electricity to
pump fuel oil.
Police officials say they are prepared to abandon temporarily their new system for digital fingerprinting and revert to the old ''ink and roll''
method used on suspects' fingers for generations.
With five weeks to go, Mr. Hauer, the city's emergency management director, is never far from a three-inch-thick binder that lays out the
overall contingency plan. In an office near the emergency operations center, there is a wall nearly filled with the each agencies' preparations.
The next-to-last step will come on Dec. 8, when the city's computer crisis team meets in the emergency center at 9 p.m. for a full dress rehearsal,
with the clock running forward as if it is New Year's Eve -- and with an assortment of imaginary crises coming at them from every phone and
computer.
The scripts that will control the mayhem facing them during the drill are being written now by Mr. Hauer's staff.
''We expect this real-time drill to be far more stressful than New Year's Eve,'' Mr. Hauer said. 'It's going to have a lot of scenarios we don't think
will happen.''
But no matter what imaginary scenarios unfold during the drill, the Year 2000 team, and the city, will still confront the unknowable as Zero
Day arrives.
Officials Offer Advice for Coping at Home
How should New Yorkers get ready for possible disruptions from the Year 2000 problem? The city is distributing 2.5 million brochures
suggesting steps that would help in coping with any emergency, like a storm or a blackout.
Basic items to have on hand include nonperishable food, baby food, diapers, water, battery-operated radios or televisions, spare batteries, a
nonelectric can opener, flashlights, extra blankets and a first aid kit.
The city does not advise taking extra money out of the bank but suggests that anyone who wants extra cash for the holiday weekend should
make their withdrawal before Dec. 31. It also recommends keeping paper copies of financial records, developing plans that allow family
members to stay in touch with each other, and having plans for alternate shelter should a home become uninhabitable.
If heat is lost, New Yorkers should allow water to trickle from faucets to prevent pipes from freezing but refrain from using any heating or
cooking devices not designed for indoor use. If possible, home heating fuel tanks should be topped off before Jan. 1.
The city provides links to organizations with more extensive advice, including the Red Cross, on its Year 2000 Internet site:
www.ci.nyc.ny.us/y2kinfo. The city has also set up what it calls a Year 2000 hot line, with recorded information, at (888) 469-2925 (that is, 4-
Home Times topics Member Center
Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy Help Contact Us Work f or Us Site Map Index by Keyword
NYC-Y2K).
Counting to 2000
Articles under this heading throughout 1999 are examining efforts worldwide to prepare computer systems for the year 2000.