Hong Kong Port To Stop For Y2K Bug Inspections

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-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), November 06, 1999

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Friday November 5 3:06 AM ET

Hong Kong Port To Stop For Y2K Bug Inspections

By Tan Ee Lyn

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong will halt operations at its container terminals and check whether ships calling at its port are ready for the Y2K computer bug in the hours straddling the New Year, a top port official said Friday.

Hong Kong terminals will stop working on container ships for about four hours starting at 10 p.m. on December 31 and for an hour from 8 a.m. on January 1, when the year 2000 begins on Greenwich Mean Time.

``At that time, they don't want to be working on ships, they want to go around checking on all the equipment and systems that they've got to make sure nothing's gone wrong,'' Roger Tupper, deputy secretary of the Hong Kong Port and Maritime Board, said.

Port masters would redirect incoming vessels to anchorages if their Y2K status was doubtful, starting from the late afternoon of December 31, ``effectively making sure that channels are kept clear,'' Tupper told Reuters in an interview.

The Y2K stems from an early programming practice of using only two digits to denote the year. If left unremedied, computers could mistake 2000 for 1900 and crash at the start of the year.

The Y2K issue is particularly crucial for Hong Kong's port.

One of the world's busiest shipping centers, some 1,300 ships ply Hong Kong's port on an average day. In 1998, it handled 14.6 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers.

All its eight container terminals and other infrastructure were Y2K ready by June this year and contingency tests were conducted with no major problems in August and September.

Tupper said the port's four private terminal operators had arranged to take on additional container loads if problems, such as congestions, should happen with any of them.

In case of major breakdowns, for example due to power failure, operators will revert to manual systems and rely on diesel-run machines.

``I reckon they could operate about 25 percent of capacity in the event of a major problem,'' he said.

Container vessels could also be diverted to the ''midstream,'' where offshore barges fitted with cranes would help with loading. ``Of course the midstream is not Y2K sensitive,'' Tupper said.

Hong Kong's midstream operations handle three million TEU containers each year, 18 percent of total container throughput.

Tupper did not expect major problems at ports such as Yantian, Chiwan and Shekou in southern China because they are handled by the same league of terminal operators as in Hong Kong.

``We know basically what their (Y2K) statuses are...even if there were difficulties, the ships will just come to Hong Kong and do their transfers here,'' Tupper said.

Should that happen, containers and other cargo would be transferred later to the mainland by barge or by land, he said.

Ships on international routes have to pass Hong Kong before going to the Chinese ports of Shekou and Yantian.

Diversion of container ships from mainland China to Hong Kong was not expected to cause problems for the territory, as some handling capacity would be freed up in Hong Kong due to seasonal slowdown in year-end shipping movements.

In December 1998, Hong Kong terminals handled 795,OOO TEUs of containers, down from 870,000 TEUs in August that year.

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-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), November 06, 1999.


Humm.

``I reckon they could operate about 25 percent of capacity in the event of a major problem...''

Global economic impact anyone?

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), November 06, 1999.


Diane,

Global impact? Definitely.

Hong Kong's six million people rely on imports for fuel, food, water, and just about everything else. Much of it moves through the container facilities mentioned in the story, as does a subtstantial portion of the freight between China and Taiwan. These ports are also a major transhipment point for freight moving in and out of Asia.

The screw-ups that occurred when the new airport opened here a while back offer a chilling reminder of both the potential impact of failures at the port, and the reliability of the officials involved in managing these facilites.

Got rice?

-- Midas (midas_mulligan_2000@yahoo.com), November 07, 1999.


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