I posted yesterday, asking for the top ten questions to ask my city managers regarding Y2K. I received many excellent responses, and I went to the City Y2K meeting that evening prepared to grill. We moved to this area earlier this year, in large part because of Y2K possibilities.

There were reps from the power company, hospital, fire and police departments, water utility, as well as the usual crowd of bureaucrats.

This City is in a small county about a 3 hour drive from where SYSOPS tracks my ISP. I use a local computer that connects me to where SYSOPS assumed I was posting from. I quit posting on my private computer months ago. SYSOPS can only track me to this domain which has roughly 2,000 plus computers. Anyway, off subject...

Thank God I got it (GI) way back in February and began stockpiling food, water, and provisions all the while with my wife kicking and screaming for the first six months. She finally GI too, and we got our debts paid off, with the exception of our house payment, which is manageable, even if we didn't have income the first six months of the year 2000, maybe longer.

The reason I say this is because the great minds that run our city and county have a (not plural, but singular), a diesel generator on order that is supposed to arrive in mid-December, and be hooked up and ready to go by the 15th of December. While the town is small, (just over 1840 citizens) our town has a small hospital, a nursing home, and assisted living for the elderly. We have a small community food bank, but I was told that it is nearly empty, but that it usually gets plenty of donations during the holiday season.

I have my garage equipped with a wood burning stove, and have finished the garage. We dry walled the ceiling and walls, insulated the same, and have ran a phone line and cable t.v. connection to the garage. There is over 700 square feet of living space there. The plan is to move to the garage if things get bad, as the house has over 2100 sq feet of living space. I just thought it would be more economical to heat a smaller space than the bigger one. The phone line and cable t.v. lines are in case things don't get that bad. The garage is the mans domain afterall, and I do all types of woodworking as a hobby. AARRRGGGGGG!!!!!. (Tim Allen would be pleased)

Anyway, we are ready with plenty of propane for cooking and lighting and have a bathroom rigged.

Hopefully, non of these things will be required, and we will be able to stay in our comfortable home, but if not, we won't have to move into the high school gym.

It seems the City council members have been aware of Y2K, but only passively. They are just now attempting to come up with legitimate contingency plans, just in case the assurances from the Power Company turn out to be wrong.

On the plus side, I think most people here (Citizens, not City managers)have a little common sense. While the same company provides both electric and gas, dozens of homes in this small town have fireplaces and or wood burning stoves, and in nearly every back yard you see 2 cords of wood or more. The surrounding area is agriculture based with potatos and beets, wheat and barley being the main crops, so there shouldn't be any real food crisis locally, hopefully.

-- Jack (S**t_out@of.luck), October 28, 1999

Answers

It sure would be wonderful Jack if every-body in this great country of ours, had the Y2K prep additude you have. Ah, but alas that not be the case. Allot of us are only telling the non-prepper were to go to get warm and fed. Double check your security issues, hide your quality preps for you and yours, and when they come have a good cover story as to why you think rice is all you need. Buy extra rice for them. Good luck from a fellow prepper...---...

-- Les (yoyo@tolate.com), October 28, 1999.

So what questions did you get to ask, and what was the response to each? Were you allowed to grill? And what was the reaction of the experts and the crowd? And... how did your questions stack up among all the others?

-- (normally@ease.notnow), October 29, 1999.