'Stock up' advice for Y2K

By Mathew Dearnaley

Householders will be urged to batten down for the new millennium with at least three days' supplies of bottled water, candles, torch batteries and tinned food.

Civil defence chiefs say communities should plan for up to two days of cuts to essential services from potential year 2000 computer failures, with just a remote possibility of longer-term disruption.

The Government's Y2K Readiness Commission intends distributing advice to householders from July on how to survive power cuts or other failures such as to water or sewage systems.

This follows a Local Government NZ survey which found that few territorial authorities had yet done enough contingency planning to cope with disruption to water supplies and sewage disposal caused by the millennium bug.

A British taskforce has told every household in its country to stockpile two weeks' food, but civil defence experts here predict less disruption given NZ's warmer weather and hydro-power resources.

The readiness commission's special adviser, John Good, said yesterday that people should prepare to hold out for three days by stocking emergency supplies in the same way as for any natural disaster such as an earthquake.

His agency believed reality lay somewhere between the survivalist gloom merchants and those who suspected that the Y2K issue was a "jack-up" by computer companies wanting to sell more goods.