http://www.msnbc.com/local/KNBC/167408.asp

Y2K drill stumps City Hall elevators

Los Angeles, May 25  A one-hour elevator blackout at City Hall during a Y2K drill Tuesday is evidence that Los Angeles isnt ready to wrestle the mellennium bug.Mayor Richard Riordan, who visited the citys emergency response center underneath City Hall for the exercise, was delayed by the elevator breakdown, and jokingly acknowledged the glitch. If we cant take care of the elevators, what can we take care of in this city? Riordan said. He said that while elevators in the 18-story building have a history of malfunctioning, he is still confident that all the citys potentially big Y2K problems have been dealt with. If there are any problems, Riordan said, we have a great team of experts that will be able to take care of them within seconds. The all-day Y2K exercise was based on a hypothetical situation in which special generators would be activated to ensure uninterrupted 911 service and other essential public safety needs in the event of a power failure on Jan. 1, 2000. Frank Martinez, who heads the citys Year 2000 Project Office, said the city has spent $110 million preparing for the Y2K problem over the past two and a half years. The Year 2000 computer bug affects some older computers that use two digits to represent the date. Some of those could confuse next years 00 designation to mean 1900 rather than 2000, causing them to shut down or perform erroneous calculations.

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Also: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-24may1999-65.htm

Fiji hit by Y2K early The Year 2000 bug has hit Fiji seven months early.

All the country's telecommunications were out of action for several hours today prompting speculation of sabotage following the Fiji election.

However, there was a more innocent explanation.

Following last week's swearing in of Fiji's first ethnic Indian Prime Minister there was a series of fire-bombings around Suva and nearby Lautoka at the weekend.

A security guard was killed at one location but none of the fires caused much property damage.

Then this morning the country's telecommunications system went silent.

However, the outage was not related to the election.

Telecom Fiji was testing out its preparedness for the Y2K bug and the whole system crashed.

As one Suva businessman said hours later after services were restored, Fiji's had a preview of what might happen at midnight on December 31.

-- jjbeck (jjbeck@recycler.com), May 26, 1999

Answers

NO,

Fiji has simply found another problem they ahve 6 months to fix. I, for one, am HAPPY to read about this and the elevators in MAY because it menas they FOUND the problems exist and now they have 6 months to fix it.

*SHEESH*

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), May 26, 1999.

BBWWWAAHHAAHAHAHAhahahahaha

oh dear. The LA 18-story non-compliant elevator building also happens to sit directly upon a major earthquake fault.

Comedy of Errors would be funny if it weren't so awful. Gotta laugh anyway. How did sucha buncha morons get to rule the planet? Wild ride with no brakes ...

Michael Taylor, have you read the above article/s? ;^)

xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), May 26, 1999.

: )

Ha Ashton and Leska!

If only elevators go dead at the turn we're in great shape. It is true that those elevators are constantly having problems too. In fact, they've been having problems for years. So, you'd think they would have fixed them BY NOW, huh?

Chick, I'm trying to remain optimistic...really...no...really.

Yep, six months to burnt toast.

In Fiji, isn't burnt toast a delicacy?

Mike (who had a fantasy bug out to Fiji but is having second thoughts) =================================================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), May 26, 1999.

Well,

My question is not will the L.A. elevators work, but will the water run?

Hard to put out burning toast without it.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), May 26, 1999.