The Y2K Neighborhood

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O'Riley explained the helplessness she felt. She couldn't have reached her son, nor even have gone for her rifle, in time to do any good. But the boy simply froze in his steps, just as his mother had taught him to do if he ever heard a strange sound. After a moment, the bear dropped to all fours, turned and vanished.

That moment, explained O'Riley, epitomizes the spirit of her Cassandra Project Web page (millennia-bcs.com/casframe.htm). This prize-winning site has become a national clearinghouse for personal and community Y2K preparedness efforts, offering exhaustive detail about how and why to get ready for possible service interruptions. Just as Alaska is bear country, she reasons, the world--at least for the moment--has become Y2K country. Living in it unprepared makes no sense, she says, because in a climate of disrupted infrastructure, relatively minor mishaps could produce a domino effect of needless emergencies unless contingency plans are in place.

At the same time, O'Riley considers individual survival efforts worse than foolish. They would be impractical if some of Y2K's more serious disruptions came to pass, because of the risk of civil disorder if a critical mass of society were caught off guard.

'The best security you have is a prepared neighbor,' she told Boulder audiences. Even in the event of truly worst-case scenarios, she said, 'If we pull together we'll come through this with flying colors.' That is the point Dr. Hoffman emphasizes in explaining the idea behind the Y2K Neighborhood. While the Millennium Bug may be a new kind of challenge, it has an old-fashioned solution, he says. It reminds him of Garrison Keillor's story about 'storm families.'

'Each child in Lake Wobegon has a family, other than her or his own, to go to in a time of emergency,' explains Hoffman. 'The heart of the story is that we all need a 'storm family' in difficult times. That's what Y2K Neighborhood is setting out to do--create storm families, like miniature villages, among every five or six houses on every block in the county. It's a way in which we can come together, plan together, look out for each other during this time of uncertainty. Who in each storm family has special medical needs? Who has special skills, and how can our talents be pooled for the mutual benefit of these small units? How can we make certain that each household is safe, whether the hardship lasts for days, weeks or even months?'

The point, says Hoffman, is to help citizens take initiative in advance in order to deal with uncertainties and to keep pressure off emergency services. That will let them be held in reserve for the most critical situations. He acknowledges that while it may at first seem intimidating to plan for such possibilities, it needn't be. 'All we're really talking about is polishing up our neighboring skills,' he says. 'If they're needed, we'll be ready. If not, we will have created goodwill and community enrichment on an unprecedented level all around us. What do we have to lose?'

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