The Y2K Neighborhood

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A Briefing

Begin with a sweltering Monday afternoon on August 31, 1998. The date is noteworthy only because this story orbits the calendar, giving each moment a stature it wouldn't otherwise have.

Hope Findley is briefing the City Council on efforts to prepare Spokane for possible trouble from the year 2000 computer problem. Findley is Mayor John Talbott's assistant, and this is the mayor's regular council briefing prior to the evening session.

'We're approaching community awareness as though something will happen come January 1, 2000,' says Findley. 'There will be some disruption. We just don't know what it will be.'

Talbott echoes her remarks: 'We want to be sure people can react calmly.'

When the mayor and his assistant ask for comments from council members, only Roberta Greene speaks. She urges Findley and Talbott not to scare people. The council promptly turns to other business.

Known variously as the millennium bug, the millennium bomb, and Y2K--for year 2000--this programming flaw is widely expected to cause some computer malfunctions. The difficulty, as Findley says, is that it's impossible to know just how big a threat Y2K really is.

The millennium bug, or bomb, is nothing if not unnervingly ambiguous. Some experts dismiss it--David Starr, former chief information officer of Reader's Digest Association, has called Y2K a fraud. Many close observers, however, don't take it lightly, especially decision makers who must put their money where their beliefs are. Many insurers offering business interruption policies now exclude Y2K because of the perceived risks. The few companies offering Y2K policies levy a $330,000 annual premium for $1 million of coverage. Lloyds of London, the company that enabled international shipping by insuring boats and cargoes, has announced that it won't insure any vessel without certification of Y2K compliance. Dr. Edward Yardeni, one of Wall Street's most respected economists, says Y2K could cause food shortages in the U.S. because of the dangers it poses to the nation's highly computerized agricultural industry. On August 2, 1998, The New York Times editorialized: 'It makes sense to prepare for the worst.'

The exchange at the Spokane City Council meeting epitomizes the discussion of Y2K in America. At a national conference on the subject held in Boulder, Colorado, just a week before Findley's presentation, I heard Jim Lord describe this situation as one of the most baffling climates of opinion in U.S. history. 'There are two kinds of people,' said Lord, 'those who don't think Y2K is a problem, and those who work on Y2K and are terrified.' A retired U.S. Navy officer and electronics specialist, Lord has become one of the country's leading advocates of grassroots preparedness on the chance that some Y2K worries are valid. He thinks The New York Times is right, and that any individual or community failing to make provisions for possible interruptions of electricity, food, water, emergency services, life-supporting prescription drugs, and other services, is taking a needless and potentially ominous risk.

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