Y2K - NEW YORK TIMES: "Expecting a Whimper, but Preparing for a Bang"

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NEW YORK TIMES
December 30, 1999

Expecting a Whimper, but Preparing for a Bang

By MATT RICHTEL
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 29 -- Charlotte White knows something about surviving the end of the world. As a girl living in England during World War II, she weathered the German Air Force's constant barrage. Sixty years later, she is not taking any chances a computer glitch will accomplish what the Luftwaffe could not.

Already stocked up on apples, crackers, bottled water and cheese, Mrs. White, 69, and her husband, Hugh, 80, shopped this week at a San Francisco camping store for a propane stove to use in the event of a millennium catastrophe caused by any year 2000 computer glitch.

"If something goes wrong, at least my husband will have hot soup," Mrs. White said.

Across the country, people are approaching the computer scare not with panic but with pragmatism and precaution. Rather than witnessing hoarding, stores report measured buying, in particular of two basics: water and light (as in batteries and flashlights).

The buying patterns suggest a populace preparing for a hurricane whose force is dwindling, with many sensing that this computer-generated disaster will pass or never materialize at all. Yet, they are stocking up on a few necessities, just in case.

Some consumers say they have been comforted by assurances from government and corporations, banks in particular, that their computer systems are ready for the rollover to the new millennium.

The potential problem is that some computers read dates in only two digits -- 99 rather than 1999 -- so that at midnight on New Year's Eve, the computers may process information as if the year is 1900 rather than 2000. Computers and networks that have not been prepared for the changeover may crash, lose their data or garble it to the point of incomprehension.

More dire prophecies warn of widespread power and computer failures.

Most retailers still are unable to quantify the buying patterns of emergency-related items, but some national chains that use computer tracking systems validate the anecdotal claims. At 300 7-Eleven stores in Texas and Florida, sales were up 60 percent for bottled water and 30 percent for batteries from Dec. 20 to Dec. 27, compared with the same period a year ago.

Some other items were in unusual demand. Compared with a week in early October, 7-Eleven said sales across the United States were up 52 percent for can openers and 64 percent for candles, presumably not because people were planning romantic evenings.

"We really do think the incremental increases are because people are getting prepared," said Jim Keyes, chief operating officer of 7-Eleven Inc., which has 5,800 stores in this country and is based in Dallas.

Jim Sinegal, president and chief executive of Costco Wholesale Inc., which operates 220 stores in the United States and is based in Issaquah, Wash., said water sales had increased 150 percent over the last four weeks while battery sales had edged up slightly. But canned goods and other emergency supplies, he said, had been selling at normal levels. The buying "hasn't hit anything like the panic stage," he added.

Even so, some people are practicing a higher level of caution. In Athens, Ga., John Myers, 46, a computer animation designer at the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education, shopped today for bottled water at Harris Teeter, a neighborhood grocery store, and said he had also bought a water purifier and duct tape.

He said he planned to use the tape to put over the doorways in his home "for security reasons" and said if things went awry, he planned to "live off the land."

Sales of guns appear to have risen in some regions. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has performed 6,000 more background checks during December than it did in December 1998, 17,704 compared with 10,997.

Dave Anver, owner of Dave's Guns in Denver, said his business had been booming in the past six weeks. One man, he added, bought a gun and asked if he could return it after Jan. 1. "He said, 'What if I fire it off a couple times, and then bring it back?' " Mr. Anver said. "Only chap I've ever met who wanted to lease a firearm."

The official position of the American Red Cross is that people should stock two to three days of emergency supplies, including a gallon of water per person per day, canned food, food for infants and the elderly, first-aid kits, flashlights with extra batteries, matches kept in waterproof containers and money.

In a study released this month, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that consumers would spend $14 billion stocking up for possible problems. Indeed, some retailers say they have been surprised by heavy sales.

In Albany County in New York, Phillips Ace Hardware Stores reported unusually strong demand for kerosene lamps, lamp oil, batteries and flashlights. At B. J.'s Wholesale Club in Colonie, an Albany suburb, the emphasis has been on water.

Damon Korszun, a forklift operator, pointed out Tuesday evening that 23 pallets of bottled water had dwindled down to three in a single afternoon. "If you go down our cereal aisle, it's beat up bad," Mr. Korszun said. "Empty, empty, empty. It's unbelievable."

At Home Depot in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, workers reported brisk sales of flashlights, lanterns and Y2K Emergency Kits, $16.88 packages that include lanterns, flashlights, radios and Red Cross checklists of what to do in case of emergency. One Brooklyn resident, Maryse Pearra, 37, of Brooklyn, said that in addition to buying "everything -- water, juice and canned food," she knew precisely how she would handle New Year's.

"I'll be home that night hiding under the blanket," she said.

But those experiences are not universal, either for businesses or consumers. Some business owners around the country said they had increased inventories to cater to demand but were disappointed with the returns. And the reason may be that many consumers say that while they want to be minimally prepared for a millennium bug they think it will come with a whimper, not a bang.

Craig Bode, a student at Northwood University in West Palm Beach, Fla., spent the day after Christmas looking at Zip disks and rewritable CD's at CompUSA in Deerfield Beach, a few miles south. He bought his computer three years ago but now he wants to be sure it is protected against any year 2000 problems.

"You never know what to believe," he said. "You don't know if it's the latest media craze or what. I hope it's just hype, but if I hear the phrase Y2K one more time I just might lose it."

[ENDS]

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), December 31, 1999


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