Y'all probably saw this, but just in case...

Dec 30, 1999 - 03:45 PM

FAA Make Last-Minute Repairs to Air Safety Computers By Brigitte Greenberg Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal aviation officials made last-minute Y2K repairs today to one of their most important air safety systems while 352 U.S. employees and family members left Russia and three other countries as a precaution against any New Year's problems. Also, transportation officials said today that some U.S. and foreign sea ports will remain closed during parts of the weekend. They described it as a precaution against possible Y2K problems but also the result of light traffic expected during the holidays.

West Coast ports will suspend operations from midnight Friday until midnight Saturday. Ports from Portland, Maine, to Baltimore, Md., will close from 3 p.m. Friday until Sunday, and ports further down the Eastern seaboard from Norfolk, Va., to Miami will close from 6 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Sunday.

Dozens of ports overseas, including some oil terminals, also will close during the weekend, from Angola to the United Arab Emirates. China, for example, banned all foreign shipping from today until Saturday.

Meanwhile, FAA Administrator Jane Garvey said a late software patch was applied to her agency's critical "HOCSR" computers, which process flight plan and radar data and send it to controllers. The repair was completed early today.

Garvey said the problem, which she described as minor, turned up during continued testing of the agency's systems.

"We're continuing to test right up to the last moment. We erred on the side of caution," she said. "The patch is in, it's been fixed. It's a very, very minor issue."

But the union representing FAA employees, the Professional Airways Systems Specialists, charged that the bug could have caused air traffic controllers to lose data from their screens and endanger passenger lives. The union, which is in negotiations, first disclosed the repairs.

"Once again, the FAA took shortcuts and nearly put passenger safety in jeopardy," said Tom Demske, a regional vice president for the union. "After bragging about compliance, the agency has to scramble at the last minute to meet its responsibilities. The FAA's primary responsibility is to ensure the safety of the flying public and it is failing."

FAA spokesman William Shumann said the agency determined that, under unusual circumstances, a storage drive in the computers could have failed at 7 p.m. EST - when the FAA's computers will roll over into 2000 - and caused technicians to restart the system, which takes seven minutes.

Each of the affected computers is equipped with a redundant backup, Shumann said. He blamed the mistake on problems in 10 lines of software code.

Also today, the Coast Guard disclosed that about two-dozen of the world's 16,000 cargo ships have been "red-flagged" and will not be allowed to enter American ports during the New Year's weekend because they were unable to convince officials they could operate safely.

"They will not be allowed to enter our ports," Coast Guard Rear Admiral George Naccara said. He declined to identify the ships or the countries where they were based.

Among the 352 U.S. employees who left Russia and the other countries, 95 are nonessential U.S. employees and 257 are dependents. All were free to go home with U.S.-paid transportation.

In the United States, hundreds of federal emergency officials have fanned out across the country and will await the stroke of midnight in each U.S. time zone Friday with an eye toward Y2K disaster.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has established 10 regional centers to monitor potential catastrophes in the United States and its territories.

Beginning today, FEMA is putting its emergency support team in full gear around the clock through Sunday. More than 800 personnel will be working through the weekend.

In Moscow, 1,155 embassy employees and dependents were eligible to take the offer to leave, and 254 did, 74 of them employees at the U.S. Embassy and 180 dependents, said State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker.

The offer was made by the State Department on Oct. 29 and has no connection to concern about terrorism, Reeker said. It is a precaution in the highly unlikely event heat and other services fail in the onset of the new millennium, he said.

Besides Russia, and the U.S. Embassy and consulates, nonessential employees and dependents were eligible to leave at government expense in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.

In Washington, the Federal Emergency Management Agency can draw on resources from as many as 26 federal agencies and the Red Cross if Y2K emergencies arise.

FEMA officials said they will constantly gather information from state and local governments throughout the weekend, monitoring them with an automated system that assigns a green light to communities that are OK, a yellow light to those where an emergency is suspected but information is incomplete, and a red light for a confirmed disaster.

FEMA would be called in only after a state's governor asked President Clinton to declare a federal disaster area.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), December 30, 1999