Systems hold up despite Y2K bug worries

By STAFF REPORTERS

Thousands of Central Otago farmers were plunged into darkness early today, but crisis managers reported a trouble-free transition to the new millennium elsewhere.

In most of 21st century New Zealand, the lights stayed on after midnight, revellers were able to draw money out of ATM machines to keep on partying, and it seemed likely they would get hot showers this morning to ease hangovers.

The Y2K Readiness Commission declared at 2 am that none of its 12 monitored sectors, including power and water supply, had reported falling prey to any failures by computers to switch over to the new century date.

Russia reported about the same time that its first nuclear power reactor, in its eastern territory of Kamchatka, had survived the millennium changeover.

But the readiness commission did not mention until asked about an hour-long power failure which had thousands of people in Alexandra, Roxburgh and surrounding districts breaking into their Y2K Readiness packs.

Transpower said the cause was a suspected "line problem," although it was still investigating.

Police officers patrolling boisterous millennium celebrations had a brief scare when their central computer was taken down for 15 minutes after midnight, not having been forewarned of a "planned outage."

In Auckland, regional council critical services director Dr Ewen Hutchinson said: "Nothing has happened - sorry, the world has not ended."

Auckland city spokeswoman Helen Cook said: "We have no apparent Y2K bugs in the city."

Watercare communications manager Owen Cook said everything went smoothly in Auckland's bulk water and wastewater systems.

"It clicked over like any other night."

Mr Cook, whose utility supplies a million Aucklanders with water, said there was a certain amount of apprehension as the changeover approached but he was not surprised that everything held together after two years of testing. There was heavy overloading on mobile phone network, although Vodafone spokesman Mark Champion said it was no heavier than on a normal New Year's Eve.

Fears of computer viruses and hackers attacking Websites did not eventuate, but Auckland University expert John Holley warned that the all-clear could not be given until businesses began opening e-mail from Monday. Aviation operators, the main ports, the Marsden Pt refinery, the Comalco aluminium smelter, New Zealand Steel and Lion Breweries also reported no difficulties.

With a twitchy globe watching to see how New Zealand coped as the first industrialised country to meet the millennium and possible computer failures, crisis management centres around the country were preparing for the worst. Expecting massive international traffic on its Website, the readiness commission had extra security measures in places for its site, mirroring it in Washington to cope up to 700,000 "hits" at once.

The commission was confident most essential services would hold together, after the country spent up to $1 billion future-proofing its computer systems against any failure to recognise the century date change.

Australia also appeared to tick past the millennium hour without major trauma, having taken heart from New Zealand's almost seamless transition.