Dallas Outages not Y2K

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Maybe we should create a DENIAL FILE for reports like this one?

http://dallasnews.com/metro/12920_Y2KLOCAL01.html

It appeared that the outages - centered in North Dallas for as long as 12 minutes - were not Y2K-related, officials said. More than 10,000 customers lost power.

"If it were related to Y2K, I would fully expect it to happen at midnight rather than a few minutes after. There is absolutely no reason to believe it is Y2K-related at this time," said Chris Schein, a TXU spokesman.

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Lights flicker, phones go out briefly, but no Y2K bugs in area

01/01/2000

By Terri Langford / The Dallas Morning News

Flickering lights and brief telephone outages peppered the Dallas area shortly after midnight, but most power and computer systems failed to flinch at the start of the new millennium.

It appeared that the outages - centered in North Dallas for as long as 12 minutes - were not Y2K-related, officials said. More than 10,000 customers lost power.

"If it were related to Y2K, I would fully expect it to happen at midnight rather than a few minutes after. There is absolutely no reason to believe it is Y2K-related at this time," said Chris Schein, a TXU spokesman.

For the most part, long-awaited 2000 woes turned out to be a New Year's no-show.

"Electricity is working. Water is running," Dallas Assistant City Manager Charles Daniels said.

At the Dallas City Hall command center, it was quiet as computer systems stayed up and running.

"I'll be celebrating tonight about 2 o'clock, when everything dies down and there's no glitches," said Raymond Sweeney, manager of the city of Dallas 911 and 311 communications center.

Billions were spent around the world updating computers that might read the year 2000 incorrectly as 1900. Such a disruption was thought to have been powerful enough to spark errors and crashes when the highly ordered data systems of computers stopped to ponder the incongruity.

But Dallas computer systems generally functioned trouble-free Friday afternoon and even foiled an attempt by some California-based hackers to penetrate the city's data network.

"They couldn't get in," city spokesman Daniel McFarland said. "This will hopefully be a very noneventful night."

"Nothing's changed," said Capt. Harland Westmoreland of the Euless Police Department, who spent the evening watching for any Y2K-related problems. "We're sitting here watching the Stars game."

While some flocked to the bottled water aisles at grocery stores, just in case a few non-Y2K-compliant computers shut down utility systems, most area residents experienced a problem-free New Year's Eve.

"I'm not bothered by the millennium," a relaxed Linda Williams said as she stopped at Bank of the Southwest on Westmoreland Road to withdraw money. "I'm getting cash because I need to pay my rent."

As usual for a Dec. 31, a rush of Happy New Year's calls clogged telephone lines right after midnight in countries around the world, keeping some calls from going through. In most cases, the congestion dissipated within a half hour, said Gene Talley, GTE Corp.'s vice president for Y2K.

One utility glitch that did surface Friday came not from cyberspace but from the animal kingdom, when two squirrels knocked out electricity briefly for Richardson and Fort Worth customers.

About 1 p.m., a squirrel on a Fort Worth power line learned the hard way that it could conduct electricity. The line burned and dropped to the ground, TXU spokeswoman Carol Peters said.

About 30 minutes later, another squirrel visited a transformer in Richardson for its own physics lesson. The ensuing outage lasted less than 40 minutes.

Neither squirrel was around to celebrate the arrival of 2000.

"Squirrels are very brave," Ms. Peters said, "and very toasted when they're through."

More than 1,900 Dallas police officers were on hand for midnight duty, Chief Terrell Bolton said. Police expected a crush of emergency calls around midnight, a time when many local residents fire guns in the air.

At a largely empty Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, the wary worried as the clock ticked toward midnight.

"My stomach is aching," said Eunice Nyagaka of Dallas, who was traveling with her 6-year-old son to Nairobi, Kenya, to visit her ill father. "I am so scared."

Ms. Nyagaka was waiting Friday to board her American Airlines flight. By the time she boarded, she was one of only six passengers.

"I will just be praying to God to help us get there," she said.

Alarms did go off at the airport at 12:21 a.m. Saturday in a building containing flight simulators, officials said.

"Our fire rescue units went there, and it was considered a malfunction," said Tara Baten-McDaniel, a D/FW spokeswoman.

Gabriela Villasuerte de Esquinca of Mexico City boarded a 7:35 p.m. Aeromexico flight to return home with her husband and son.

"We are concerned," she said. "I hope to be in my country before midnight."

Texas Department of Transportation workers stood ready to help cities keep traffic moving in case signal lights failed or other problems surfaced.

"And our workers will be driving by and checking out signal lights and railroad crossings right after midnight," said Mark Ball, a department spokesman.

Many cities were gearing up to open emergency operations centers, just in case.

"So far, everything is going wonderfully," said Deborah Stone, a city of Plano spokeswoman. "So far, everything is business as usual."

A few pharmacies were low on supplies, the result of a run on prescriptions. Whitten's Country Day Pharmacy in southwest Fort Worth had enough medicine but reported a few overly anxious customers.

"We had one lady who stocked up for six months," said Clyde Lohn, a pharmacy technician. "Some have asked for an extra month or so."

One Fort Worth man made it clear that he wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary.

"I ain't doing nothing and I ain't afraid of nothing," said Elwin Moore, 88, as he climbed into his red pickup Friday afternoon. "I think it's all a bunch of hulabaloo."

-- Adrian David Heath (Montgomery County, TX) (adheath@swbell.net), January 08, 2000

Answers

The response that "If this was a Y2K problem, it would have happened at midnight rather than a few minutes after" is nonsense. The Real TIme Clocks that feed date information to the software applications and other hardware are not synchronized. Check out the one in your PC. I'll bet it is at least a few minutes off from the "real time". I would expect each microprocessor would provide a bad date at a different time and very few would react exactly at local midnight. Unless the "City Officials" have a different explanation, I would consider these brief outages as Y2K-related.

-- Dave hall (dhall@enteract.com), January 08, 2000.

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