I just picked up a copy of a brochure being distributed by our county's y2k task force. (To request a copy, contact the Siskiyou County Office of Emergency Services at sisqoes@snowcrest.net.) This is an official task force headed by the county administrator and office of emergency services. The brochure is called "y2k Personal preparedness for the New Millennium". I will quote from it:

From the section entitled "What is the y2k problem?"

"The potential impacts of the y2k problem presents serious challenges to the nation's emergency management organizations. Worldwide failures are anticipated in industry, government and health care. Critical infrastructure systems such as power, water, sewer, communications and transportation could experience outages and failures. The failure of any of these systems could create a disaster situation as well as hinder the response capability of emergency response organizations."

From the section entitled "Impacts to Emergency Response Infrastructure"

"The failure of systems used by public safety organizations may compromise the response capabilities. Examples include: * 911, Police, Fire and medical dispatch systems; * emergency vehicles - maintenance systems; * communication switch failures; * traffic systems; * EMT and other computerized systems."

From the section entitled "Consequences of potential y2k related failures"

"Y2k-related failures can disrupt critical infrastructure services and systems in both public and private sectors, resulting in emergency situations such as: * power disruptions and outages; * transporation accidents; * loss of communications systems; * delays in food, material and product distribution; * loss of drinking water supply; * sewage treatment failures and resulting releases; * hazardous material releases and other emergency incidents; * reduced cash flow; * medical device failures - pacemakers, defibrillators"

From the section entitled "Emergency Preparedness Supplies Checklist":

"Stocking up on emergency supplies can add to your safety and comfort during the Year 200 rollover. Store enough supplies for two months."

**************************** The point of my posting is to say that if, after reading this, one is STILL a DGI in this county , they must be either be acutely dense or living with their heads buried in the sand. How much clearer can the county get? THEY ARE TELLING US TO PREPARE FOR TWO MONTHS !!!!!!!!

-- marsh (armstrng@sisqtel.net), July 17, 1999

Answers

Which state is it???

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ait'sALL going away in January.com), July 17, 1999.

There is no question that this is a county recommendation. It is rare that such common sense will be encountered on the state or federal level.

-- smfdoc (smfdoc@aol.com), July 17, 1999.

As far as I know, this is a first

Siskiyou County is in Northern California

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), July 17, 1999.

Thanks for the info about it being in Northern California. While it is rural compared to Maricopa County here in Arizona, as least there is some leadership there. I'm grateful for the TWO MONTH recommendation. Here, it is just politics as usual, even as Phoenix, a desert community is ON SCHEDULE to finist Water and sewer by DEC 31. Sen. Dodd said recently that anyone tring to do that is living in Fantasyland!!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@It's ALL going away in January.com), July 17, 1999.

Thanks for the info about it being in Northern California. While it is rural compared to Maricopa County here in Arizona, as least there is some leadership there. I'm grateful for the TWO MONTH recommendation. Here, it is just politics as usual, even as Phoenix, a desert community is ON SCHEDULE to finish Water and sewer by DEC 31. Sen. Dodd said recently that anyone trying to do that is living in Fantasyland!!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@It's ALL going away in January.com), July 17, 1999.

My local utility just sent out an info-chure insert with this months bill (Dayton OH). The had miraculously finished their repairs on JUNE 30! The VERY DAY that NERC commanded that all EUtil's prep Shall be completed. The VERY DAY?!?!

Heh, two months indeed...

-Draco

-- Draco42 (Not@all.happy), July 17, 1999.

Sorry I didn't monitor the forum sooner to reply to your question. Yes, Siskiyou is in far northern California by the Oregon border. Thanks to those who clarified in my stead.

-- marsh (armstrng@sisqtel.net), July 17, 1999.

Absolutely amazing. And congratulatios for picking such a good county to live in. My county (WI)had an article in the papers about March saying Y2K is a non-issue --- they examined all equipment one afternoon (seriously), are now 100% compliant, and everything else will be fine too.

If you get a chance, you might try to encourage that administrator --- I would think he would come in for a lot of critizism from other Govt. circles.

-- Jon Johnson (narnia4@usa.net), July 17, 1999.

My small town in the Silicon Valley area, sent out an Emergency Preparedness brochure, last month, (no mention of Y2K) to all residents. In it, they marked all the streets on a town map and illustrated the emergency evacuation routes... in case of an "earthquake or other diaster."

They'd never done that before.

Fun, huh? (Now "where" did I put that thing?)

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), July 17, 1999.

I love these time frames for preparation.

If anyone stops and contemplates for 30 seconds an interruption in fuel,food,water,etc. for even a week they would come to the horrific conclusion that that means a big fat "10".

We do love to spout off in our culture without regard for the ramifications of what we are saying.

Can anyone honestly disagree with the lack of prep. from the masses and the potential panic involved that if it is even a three day snow storm--we are in serious trouble. Prep. time speculations are Horsedung!!

-- David Butts (dciinc@aol.com), July 17, 1999.

Sorry David - I strongly disagree - if it is the only thing available to introduce the "idea" of preparing to an untrained audience, then "failure times" are the only thing that can be used. Simply discussing them introduces the subject - which is often the first thing to do. Let aomebody get more Campbell's soup later. If they start with two candles and four cans, they have at least started.

If you and I disagree on the length of time, but still agree to prepare, isn't that progress? Not all failures will be long-lasting, and there is no assurance that such a conclusion is inevitable.

If a person prepares for one week, they are ready for a three day failure. If a person perpares for three days interruption - if after two days there is no service, they can begin stetching things.

But they will not have panicked at the first two hours of failure! Take any steps available now, even if they appear smaller than what you or I would take.

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), July 17, 1999.

Siskiyou County???

We're practically neighbors!!! I can tell you that my rural Northern Cal county has its head up its bureaucratic rear. We were assured a few months ago that the phone system in the courthouse is compliant. Well NOW I can sleep at night. When I talked to the IT head for county services about power outages he said not to worry about it. That PG&E has it all under control. (Anyone who knows about PG&E can relate to how funny THAT statement is.)

We get power outages routinely in the winter anyway. So I asked him what contingency plans they had in case our normal winter storms complicated remediation and FOF efforts. He said there were NO contingency plans. NONE. They are still giving us the "prepare for 3 days" run-around. I am so excited that Siskiyou has done this. Now we can put pressure on our local yokels.

Thanks so much Marsh! Go on the river much?

-- R (riversoma@aol.com), July 17, 1999.

Mr. Cook,

Thank you for your rebuttal--- I will be the first to admit that my contemplations are steeped in simplicity. That simplicity directs me to the food supply. Since I am currently living in the suburbs with millions of others who will not prepare for any interruptions I conclude that the majority have approximately 1weeks worth of food they could utilize. If the stores are cleaned out and are not being resupplied the only conclusion I can imagine is total and profound panic due to the FACT no one in this country has ever experienced food shortages. I can assume that if people our hungry they will resort to extremely negative behaviour . This negative behaviour is whatleads me to assume that a domino effect will be amplified because of the technical impact and the psychological impact of being without. Not a pretty picture. An entire society without anything be it food,water,oil,power for even a Day come Jan. 1 will create in my humble opinion a domino effect from Hades. We are after all the most caudled society in the history of the planet.

-- David Butts (dciinc@aol.com), July 17, 1999.

I also live in No. Calif. Nether Glenn County or the City of Orland has done anything about Y2K. I had to twist the head of City Services to find out we have 2 generators for our warer wells. They don't know how long they can keep the generators running. If we have a fire in town we could lose all our water. The only good thing is that our city sewers are all downhill and we wont have any backup. We will have to haul water from the creek to flush the toilets with, but they will work.

-- Homeschooling Grandma (mlaymon@glenn-co.k12.ca.us), July 17, 1999.

Wow, "~R" and "Homeschooling Grandma," we could have a Yourdonite get together - lol.

The Siskiyou Daily News is begining to publish status and prep. advice on y2k again. (The other local weekly did their's in Dec, - Jan.) Guess if power goes down, Yreka has some problems with back-ups for piping water the 25 miles from Jenny Creek. Last time it went out, they drained half their entire reserves in one day. We have PacifiCorp, but it just divested us to a local group formed under a JPA of Yreka amd Del Norte County. That means we are served by a rural distributor, instead of a company that actually generates power. If they island, we are up a creek.

We have a damned good bunch of County Supervisors, as far as y2k goes. They have been working on the county systems for quite a while. (One told me personally that they intend to treat y2k very seriously as a potential major disaster in their emergency planning efforts. That same Supervisor is our rep. to NACO and was suposedly instrumental in lighting a fire under them earlier this year.)

Siskiyou is well-known already for it's "community conversations." We pack that Board room on a semi-regular basis on a variety of issues. ~R, which River? - lol

-- marsh (armstrng@sisqtel.net), July 18, 1999.

Marsh

Have kayak will travel. We could have the only whitewater Yourdonite gathering in history. Maybe we could plan a river trip during the GPS roll-over.

- R

-- R (riversoma@aol.com), July 18, 1999.