Saturday, January 1, 2000
Y2K? Pass the pizza
No problems reported in Tristate
BY TOM O'NEILL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Holly Havard of Walton yells at midnight while on the job at the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
(Ernest Coleman photo)
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Lights didn't flicker and computers didn't crash. The Y2K Millennium Bug, which took years to evolve and $500 billion to solve, died a slow and global death on New Year's Eve.
There were no mourners.
“It certainly looks like we'll have an uneventful evening and an uneventful transition into the new year,” Ohio Gov. Bob Taft said in a news conference at an underground concrete-lined bunker near Columbus.
Just before midnight, the only Y2K-related glitch state officials reported had more to do with gamblers' superstitions.
Lt. Gov. Maureen O'Connor said the number 2000 — and any combination of the numbers 2, 0, 0 and 0 — were sold out for today's Pick 4 Lottery game. So many gamblers apparently chose that number that it triggered an automatic cutoff in lottery computers. It was not Y2K-related.
Y2K watchdogs in the Cinergy control room are Terry Bearden, Matt Panaro and Steve Vallanding.
(Tony Jones photo)
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As the hours passed and no signs of cyber chaos surfaced, concerns at Cinergy and Cincinnati Bell shifted from computer failure to outages resulting from revelers crashing into utility poles.
“My main concern is that a car will take out a pole, knocking out power, and people will assume it's Y2K-related,” said John Procario, Cinergy's vice president of electric operations.
Likewise, said Libby Korosec, spokeswoman for Cincinnati Bell, “our guys are more concerned about people going out at midnight and shooting out a telephone line” than heavy New Year's Eve volume clogging the phone network.
At the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, spokesman Joe Feiertag reported no problems.
General Electric Aircraft Engines had about a dozen employees operating from a command center in the basement of Building 800 at the Evendale plant receiving telephone calls from the more than 20 General Electric facilities around the globe. No problems were reported.
“We started working on this three years ago, looking at all the potential problems,” said GE spokesman Rick Kennedy. “We've been saying the most important person tonight is the person in charge of the pizza.”
In the suburban Columbus state bunker, boredom prevailed among those gathered in the state's $12.9 million command center.
Members of 13 state agencies waited for calls from county command centers and monitored power, gas, telephone, water, transit, financial and public safety systems, looking for potential trouble.
None came. But that doesn't mean they won't, Mr. Taft warned. State officials won't consider all systems completely safe until a week or two have passed.
Kentucky, state government and National Guard officials hoped for “a major non-event” as they settled into a command bunker in the Frankfort area.
Mike Boyer, Amy Higgins, Janet Wetzel and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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