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Friday December 31 8:07 AM ET

World Braces for Bite of Y2K Bug

By ROBERT TANNER Associated Press Writer

A world remade by technology today began the rollover to the year 2000, jittery but hopeful that years of preparations and billions of dollars spent to fix a simple but widespread computer bug would avert cyber-chaos.

Seaports closed out of caution around the world. Jets were grounded. Even Disneyland's Matterhorn rollercoaster planned to shut down to avoid the dangers of Y2K.

Officials urged calm in the well-prepared United States, while analysts watched vulnerable regions including eastern Europe, Latin America and parts of Asia.

The potential problem? Some computers might misread the year 2000 as 1900, causing systems to shut down. Despite all the preparations, experts warned that some failures are inevitable on Jan. 1 and the weeks or months after, given the hundreds of millions of computers worldwide.

``It's like trying to find 10,000 needles in a massive haystack,'' said Sen. Ian Campbell, Australia's Y2k spokesman. ``But I'm quite confident we've found 9,999 and we hope the other needle isn't going to cause any damage to people.''

``I'm not worried,'' said Harumi Sugano, a 31-year-old office worker who withdrew about 20,000 yen (dlrs 190) from an automatic teller machine in Tokyo. ``I just came here because I needed some cash to go out.''

The millennium began today at the stroke of midnight on a tiny, normally uninhabited island in the South Pacific - the renamed Millennium Island in Kiribati. An hour later, New Zealand reported no problems other than congestion on busy phone lines.

``The lights are still on. The situation is normal,'' said Basil Logan, chairman of New Zealand's Y2K readiness commission.

But as the celebrations swept west with the new day, so did worries.

Cautiously optimistic, federal emergency managers in New England gathered in a Cold War-era bomb shelter in Maynard, Mass., to announce detailed preparations in front of a screen that read: ``We do not expect a cataclysmic event.''

Throughout the world, there were night-before worries: A provincial court in South Korea ordered 170 plaintiffs and defendants to appear for trial on Jan. 4, 1900. China hurriedly rechecked its banking systems after a Y2K glitch frazzled thousands of British credit-card swipe machines. ATM machines in Beijing were closed as a precaution. In Louisville, Ky., some cable TV subscribers received invoices for bills due in the year 100 - almost 19 centuries ago.

Though most people remained calm, there were sporadic reports of last- minute shopping clearing shelves in Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, the Philippines and Egypt. Some were preparing for potential Y2K problems; others for holiday parties.

A vital U.S. air safety system got a last-minute Y2K repair Thursday, while 352 nonessential U.S. diplomats and their families left Russia and three former Soviet republics deemed at high risk of Y2K-induced power and telecommunications outages.

The Coast Guard disclosed Thursday that about two dozen of the world's 16,000 cargo ships have been ``red-flagged'' and will be barred from American ports during the New Year's weekend because officials were not convinced they could operate safely. Neither the ships nor their countries of origin were identified.

U.S. ports on the West Coast will suspend operations voluntarily from midnight tonight until midnight Saturday, the Transportation Department said. Ports from Portland, Maine, to Baltimore will close or restrict operations, as will ports farther down the East Coast from Norfolk, Va., to Miami.

Central banks across the globe have printed tens of billions of dollars worth of currency - from 10 to 40 percent more than normal - to hedge against possible bank runs, though experts are fairly confident the financial sector is in good shape.

South Korean banks, which were closed for a four-day New Year's holiday beginning today, reported sharp increases in cash withdrawals this week by people fearful of computer glitches. One bank official reported withdrawals up 20 percent.

An early prophet of the Y2K bug, Capers Jones, chief scientist at Artemis Management Systems, estimated more than $1 trillion will be spent overall on Y2K fixes, and more than twice as much on cleaning up - everything from computer damage to lawsuits filed against those responsible.

Trying to avoid potential problems, hundreds of airline flights were canceled. Airlines cited low demand and also concern that air traffic control systems in regions such as the Asian subcontinent and Latin America may not be ready.

Airports in Denmark and Bolivia also be closed for the rollover. So will Korean and Polish steel mills, Israel's nuclear power plant, and ports from Australia to Holland. Sri Lanka postponed surgeries in hospitals.

In Glasgow, Ky., Fire Chief James Wingfield hoped he had done enough: Fire trucks were stationed strategically around town and emergency generators were on hand.

``We just hope it's an overkill,'' he said, ``and everyone can sit around and eat ham and biscuits on New Year's Eve.''

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-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), December 31, 1999.