I have a livestream scheduled for December 31-January 1 for the 25th anniversary of the Y2K celebrations…
(Jennicam)
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I will try to attend for at least a few hours but will get sleepy at some point lol. So what news channel or outlet will we being watching during the livestream?
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Peter Jennings’ coverage on ABC.
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Is my PC 25 compliant?
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Reading Eagle (December 26, 1999)
Cautious confidence
As New Year’s nears, experts predict few technical problems
By Tracy Rasmussen, Eagle/Times
Those monitoring the Y2K situation say things should be fine, as long as the public cooperates.
When the ball drops in Times Square, it will become painfully obvious if someone has dropped the ball on the Y2K problem.
Don’t bet on that happening, though. According to most computer experts and officials, Y2K will be Y20K.
Lights will be on, phones will work, money will be available Saturday.
Unless…
Dr. Frederick D. Loomis, executive director of the statewide Pa2K outreach program, said the biggest potential problem of the new millennium is not the Y2K bug but irrational consumer behavior.
“My overall conclusion is that there will be minimal problems on that day, except for how the public may react,” he said.
It is a theme that is repeated throughout the utility and banking industries: consumers will be the wild card.
“We suggest that customers leave their testing until later in the day,” said Sharon Shaffer, spokesperson for Bell Atlantic. “If you want to make a call at midnight, of course go right ahead, but don’t pick up the phone at 12:01 for testing.”
She also suggested consumers not test the 9-1-1 system unless there is an emergency.
“You can imagine that the volume of those calls could be a problem,” she said.
Shaffer added, however, that test calls such as these would probably not crash the phone system, but would cause problems.
“You’d probably get a recording that says all circuits are busy,” she said, adding that is not the same thing as a Y2K problem.
“The same thing happens when there is an ice storm. If people are on the phone at peak periods canceling appointments or working from home, it’s going to cause some problems.”
Shaffer suggests reasonable behavior.
“Because of the special significance of this holiday, we’re expecting it to be busy,” she said. “But we’re issuing a note of caution about the use of the phone for testing.”
But, with several years, and $400 million invested, Shaffer said she is satisfied the phone system is Y2K compliant.
The same is true for power companies Pennsylvania Power & Light and GPU Energy, where extra staff will be available through the New Year’s holiday to fix any problems that occur.
“We don’t expect the lights to go out,” said George Biechler, spokesman for PP&L. “There may be local, scattered outages caused by wind, ice or New Year’s Eve revelers who get into accidents with power poles. But we’ve been ready since July 1.”
He added that the PP&L work force will be staffed at four to five times what it normally would be for a weekend night, with 550 people ready to deal with any problems.
“PP&L operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said. “We’re accustomed to responding to events as part of our daily routine. We’ve been working on Y2K for a long time and have spent about 140,000 hours and $13 million to make necessary changes.”
Kerry McGuinness, spokeswoman for GPU, said virtually the same thing.
“We will be staffed up just in case,” she said. “But we don’t really expect any problems. It’s all part of the Y2K plan we have.”
She said 600 employees will be on site and another 300 will be on call. Normally 70 employees work holidays.
“We’re ready,” she said, adding that there may be small outages due to the weather and accidents. “We have the staff ready to take care of them quickly. Just like in a storm situation.”
As for the financial sector, banks say they were among the first to be prepared for the rollover and they have every expectation money will be available and ATM cards will work.
As a bonus, the Federal Reserve Bank has ordered $50 billion of new currency put into circulation to cover a spate of potential cash withdrawals around the new year, as well as requiring rigorous testing procedures.
The financial industry is very ready, according to a Fed spokeswoman, who added there could be problems like there are every day, but people shouldn’t assume glitches are caused by Y2K. They probably aren’t.
Local bankers said not to worry. Money will be there when people need it. Sovereign Bank, the largest holder of deposits among Berks County banks, will have staff available to correct any problems that might occur.
“If the individual is in a critical position, we’ve asked him not to take vacation around the holidays,” said Domingo Martinez, Sovereign 2000 program manager.
But as sure as these experts are that there will be no cataclysmic Y2K event, they are equally sure some minor glitches will occur.
According to computer expert Polly Mathys of Alvernia College, even Windows 98 has required updating to make it Y2K compliant.
In addition, it’s expected many small businesses and home computers may not be prepared for the year 2000 rollover, making the assumption that new equipment and programs are automatically compliant.
“I’ve been getting patches and updates for everything,” Mathys said. “And every time they tell me that it’s the last one, and then the next week there’s a new one.”
Little talk of apocalypse heard
Religion experts say even fringe groups aren’t talking about the dawn of 2000 ushering in the end of the world
BOSTON (AP) – As frenzied revelers flock to Pacific islands or Times Square on New Year’s Eve, certain religious believers will be contemplating the end of the world. But experts on millenarian religion say they know of no sects that expect the apocalypse to actually occur in coming days.
Faiths that formerly talked that way are hedging. For example, the dwindling Chen-Tao, or “True Way,” sect of Lockport, N.Y., forecast nuclear catastrophe and rescue by heavenly spaceships at the end of 1999.
Now, spokesman Richard Liu says the 30 members believe the end will come “in the next year. We have no specific date.”
Israel expelled several end-times groups this year, and police are on the alert. But in any nation, it’s impossible to predict events within small apocalyptic sects. What outsider could have anticipated the Solar Temple, Heaven’s Gate or Branch Davidian tragedies of the 1990s?
Some authorities had speculated the close of the millennium might produce end-times eruptions. However, during panels on millennialism at a recent convention of the American Academy of Religion, an association for scholars in various religious fields, they shared no such expectations.
“In the mid-‘90s we were looking for a big wave, and it just seems to have fizzled,” said Richard Landes, director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University.
If New Year’s is no big deal for religious millennialists, there are good reasons. January 1 is not a religious date for anyone, and 2000 has no significance outside Christianity.
Christian chronologists say Jesus was born before 1 A.D. (the calendar is off due to ancient errors), and so the third millennium is already under way.
Literal-minded Christians draw many ideas from the biblical Book of Revelation, where chapter 20 depicts Jesus’ Second Coming and 1,000-year reign.
But, as Robert Royalty of Indiana’s Wabash College notes, Revelation “says nothing about years ending in a thousand.”
“Dates are set right and left, but 2000 is more of a secular apocalypse,” said Royalty, whose office is festooned with failed prophecies of the end from the tabloid Weekly World News, the latest doomsday having passed in November. “It’s not the date a prophet might choose.”
Of course, Royalty adds, if Y2K computer problems cause chaos early in the new year, as hard-right Christians such as economics guru Gary North have taught the past two years, this “could fit into an apocalyptic scheme, just like a war or an earthquake.”
Rather like believers who keep postponing dates for the end, specialists anticipate an upsurge in apocalyptic activity during the years ahead, perhaps among Jews and Christians, and more likely among the sort of New Age believers who follow the sensationalist tabloids, books, talk radio and Web sites.
Boston University’s Landes and Richard Abanes, author of “End-Time Visions,” noted upcoming dates that could have more apocalyptic potential than January 1:
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May 2000: The late Edgar Cayce, a prominent New Age psychic, forecast that earth’s axis would shift in 2000 or 2001, causing massive destruction. Some expect this on May 5 (5-5-2000) or May 17, when the moon, sun, and five planets will be in close alignment for the first time since 1962.
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2007: Some Bible prophecy buffs consider this year a candidate because it concludes the generation (40 years) after Jews reunified Jerusalem.
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2012: Other New Agers think the earth will be destroyed just before Christmas because the ancient Mayan calendar will run out of dates. (Historians say it won’t.)
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2033: This is a big one for some Christians: the estimated 2000th anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
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Beyond that lie 2076, which is 1500 in the Muslim calendar and could energize Sufi mystics and New Agers, and 2240, the start of humanity’s seventh millennium by traditional Jewish reckoning.
Christianity teaches Jesus will literally come again to reign.
But most churches have followed theologians like St. Augustine, spurning literal interpretations of Revelation and discouraging apocalyptic speculations.
Nonetheless, end-times thinking has continually captured the popular imagination.
In America, the biggest upsurge was led by self-taught preacher William Miller.
The last of his several dates for the end became the “Great Disappointment” of October 22, 1844.
A remnant persisted, though without date-setting, and became the Seventh-day Adventists. Miller’s Bible interpretation influenced many subsequent end-timers.
As their name indicates, the Latter-day Saints (Mormons) also started with a strong millennial bent, and founder Joseph Smith expected the end around 1890. Since then, the faith has played down predictions.
The most ardent apocalyptic group, Jehovah’s Witnesses, fixed in turn upon 1881, 1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, the 1940s and 1975.
Among Catholics, popular millennialism is bound up with European apparitions of the Virgin Mary that began in 1830 and currently finds expression in Bud Macfarlane Jr.’s novels.
Depictions of the last days inspire even faster sales for the “Left Behind” novels by Protestants Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye.
In response to the wide variety of end-time beliefs he has heard, the Rev. Billy Graham noted, “Jesus warned us not to speculate about dates.”
Graham thinks the signs of the end that Jesus gave in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 – false messiahs, wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution of believers, sacrilege – “indicate we are moving toward some sort of climax.”
He has no idea how soon.
Untold millions of evangelicals are looking for the end, and fairly soon.
If we see major economic or social collapse, or some apocalyptic occurrence in Jerusalem, “people will come out of the woodwork,” said another expert, James Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
But “it takes a lot to get the apocalypse going,” he observed, and “these are the most normal of normal times.”
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– Emergency tips –
From our news staff
The following are steps people can take to prepare for a Y2K emergency:
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Gather canned, dried and non-perishable food that doesn’t take much preparation.
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Think and plan of alternative methods to heat and prepare foods if utilities are off. Some examples: candle warmers, fondue pots, Sterno fuel cans or propane stoves. Gas or charcoal grills can be used, but only outside. Have a good supply of matches handy.
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Think and plan how to stay warm. Insulated sleeping bags, extra blankets and down quilts can keep your family comfortable. Some alternative heat sources are fireplaces, wood-burning stoves and kerosene heaters. Kerosene heaters and electricity generators emit poisonous gases. Use cautiously.
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Store extra water, about two gallons a day per-person.
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Think of ways to save water. Buy paper plates and plastic utensils.
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Have flashlights or battery-operated lamps. Candles and oil lamps are less expensive, but use with caution.
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Every house should have a first-aid kit. Remember to keep a two-week supply of any medicine.
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Keep personal hygiene and cleaning supplies on hand.
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Have an adequate supply of batteries in various sizes for all essential equipment.
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Have a battery-operated radio with good reception.
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Make sure to have a fire extinguisher and battery-operated smoke detectors.
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Keep some cash on hand in case MAC machines or credit cards don’t work.
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Plan for life without television for a few days. Keep books, games and crafts available.
Checking your PC
Here’s how to verify that your computer running Microsoft Windows 95 or 98 will work properly when 2000 arrives.
From the Windows desktop, choose Start, Settings and Control Panel.
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Click Date and Time. The Date/Time Properties screen will appear.
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Change the Date to December 31, 1999, and the Time to 11:59:00 p.m.
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Click Apply and click OK.
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Shut down your PC.
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Wait approximately 3 minutes. Turn your PC back on.
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After Windows has restarted, choose Start, Settings and Control Panel.
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Click Date and Time. The year should be 2000 and the time should be just after midnight.
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Follow steps 1-6 to change the time back.
(SOURCE: Hewlett Packard)
For more on Y2K preparations and tips, visit https://www.readingeagle.com on the World Wide Web.
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H O T S P O T S
Check out these Web sites:
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Y2K.com: The online news site CNet snagged this Web address and has used it to post a useful resource. http://www.y2k.com
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American Red Cross: A basic readiness checklist includes keeping some money and supplies on hand, and at least half a tank of gas in the car. http://www.redcross.org/disaster/safety/y2k.html
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Y2K Gateway: This site is a gateway into the government bureaucracy that has grown up to address the Y2K crisis. http://www.itpolicy.gsa.gov/mks/yr2000/y2khome.htm
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Federal view on Y2K: This site is run by the President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion: http://www.y2k.gov
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Y2K For Kids: The government that once taught us to put our heads under the school desk in case of an atomic bomb blast says of the Y2K bug, “You might not notice it, but little things may happen.” http://www.itpolicy.gsa.gov/mks/yr2000/kidsy2k.htm
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Microsoft Year 2000 Portal Page: “Windows 95 and Windows 98 are compliant,” states a page at this site. But click on the phrase, and learn it is compliant “assuming all recommended actions specified in the respective compliance documents have been taken.” Good luck finding those documents and taking the actions specified. http://www.microsoft.com/y2k/
Fantastic thanks! I loved to be part of Y2K
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What are your memories of Y2K, Chewie?
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The New York Times (December 27, 1999)
Y2K/PULSE: For worriers, winding down on Year 2000
By Barnaby J. Feder
They have devoted months and sometimes years to raising consciousness about potential Year 2000 computer disruptions. Now, many of the most prominent worriers are folding their tents.
Jay Golter and his fellow advocates at the Northern Virginia Year 2000 Community Action Group wrapped up their group efforts with a “New Year’s Eve” party on December 18.
Peter de Jager, the Canadian programmer who became a Year 2000 Paul Revere in 1993, said he would be on the interview circuit through next weekend. But Year2000.com, the popular Internet site he set up with the Tenagra Corporation, is already on the auction block at eBay.com.
“The crusade part of this is just about over,” said Edward Yardeni, a Wall Street economist who still believes there is a 70 percent chance that Year 2000 breakdowns will usher in a worldwide recession. “Now it’s just a matter of what happens. There’s no point in being alarmist anymore.”
Apparently, though, it is time to send in the clowns. As the rollover approaches, enough people are paying attention for comedians to shift into full gear. Mr. de Jager can hope the rising urge to laugh at Year 2000 may help sales of one of his sideline ventures, a Year 2000 cartoon book called “The Bug Stops Here.”
But the field is getting crowded, mostly with survival tips that run the gamut from wry to lewd.
The Onion, a Madison, Wis., satirical newspaper, suggested, among other things, in its December 15 issue: “Develop the ability to convert sunlight into energy using the chlorophyll in your body.” The paper, viewable at www.theonion.com, also advises: “If disaster strikes, it’s God’s wrath – quote the Old Testament. But if nothing happens, God is merciful – quote the New Testament.”
Euro RSCG/DSW Partners, a Salt Lake City-based advertising firm that is a unit of Havas Advertising, has been distributing “31 Ways to Prepare for Y2K”, a December calendar pamphlet with one suggestion a day. For December 11, the suggestion was “Have plenty of clean towels. It’s not specific to any millennial disaster but when have you ever not needed clean towels?”
A week later, DSW suggested collecting spoons because, “Right now spoons are everywhere but after January 1, who knows?”
‘Y2K’ stands for the Year 2000. Now that wasn’t really difficult, was it?
By Tina Kelley
“Ka-blam!” Edyth Florio, a third grader at Public School 234 in Greenwich Village, responded assuredly. “Because the whole world is going to go bonkers.”
“The 2 is 2000, the K is for knockout, and Y? I have no idea,” said 28-year-old Anthony Reiss, hanging out with a friend selling Christmas trees on Seventh Avenue.
“K is obviously a Roman numeral,” said 45-year-old Joe Grahek. “It’s a quick way of saying 2000. Y, I’m not sure.” But then Mr. Grahek, who works for a government agency he did not want to specify, ventured a guess. Borrowing from algebra, he ventured: “It’s a missing piece. In other words, you have X and you try to determine Y.”
So went the answers to the question: What, exactly, does Y2K stand for? And fair enough, many of those informally polled responded with the impossibly simple yet correct: Year 2000. But for millennial initials spoken so often by so many, a surprising number of people were in league with Edyth, Anthony and Joe.
Let’s clear up the specifics straight away. The abbreviation is a combination of Greek and geek, with Y standing for year, and 2K short for 2000. The K comes from the Greek prefix, kilo-, which was brought into more common usage in 1795, when the French instituted the metric system, according to Elizabeth Jewell, managing editor and acting director of United States dictionaries for Oxford University Press. The abbreviation became popular in computer circles, as programmers began trying to solve the glitches expected on January 1.
At least little Edyth was on the right track, sort of. She actually got the Y and 2 right; but that darn K. But she was a lot closer than a classmate, Noemi Bilger, who chimed in with a “Katalog?” Edyth and a couple other girls in Pat Sanabria’s class then went on with claims that Y1K was when Jesus was alive. (His birth date, perhaps, would have been Y0K.)
Sabrina Wolf, another third grader, guessed that the K stood for the Kind of year coming up.
Older New Yorkers also have trouble explaining why “Y2K” is used to express the year 2000 and the meltdowns that some fear may occur when computers that are used to years beginning with 19 have to operate in years beginning with 20.
At the Rite Aid drugstore at Eighth Avenue and West 50th Street, Ray Morales and John Katritos were questioned as they restocked the store’s soda supplies.
“I don’t know, would the K be for thousand?” Mr. Katritos said.
“For crash; I think it’s Year 2000 Krash,” said Mr. Morales, noting that he and some friends had recently been talking about the phrase.
At a Midtown office of the Department of Motor Vehicles, on 34th Street, Thomas Jacobsen, 19, a retail worker from the Bronx, said he had never really thought about what the characters meant.
“It’s because of the media,” he said. “The media hyped it up and got everyone excited about it. It’s not even the millennium. The real millennium isn’t until 2001.” Asked to guess what Y2K stood for, he quickly succeeded, despite or perhaps because of the media. “Year. . . oh, Year 2000 – obviously.”
John Cardona, 39, who makes sample dresses, was sitting in the sun in Bryant Park one recent lunch hour.
“It’s for Year 2000, but I don’t know the K,” said Mr. Cardona, who lives in Islip Terrace. “Is it like a key?”
Nearby, Connie Marhefka, an administrative assistant in charge of millennial preparations for her office, had heard others suggest that the K was for Katastrophe.
John Monahan, 45, who works with rigging for theatrical delivery, treated it more as an existential question.
“It doesn’t matter; we’ll all be dead by the 1st,” he said, standing at the back of a truck outside the Helen Hayes Theater. “Y2? ‘Cause one time ain’t enough.”
Reading Eagle (December 27, 1999)
Four people arrested at U.S.-Canada border
A report links one of the group to a terrorist organization, but U.S. officials say it involves only routine smuggling
SEATTLE (AP) – Four people were arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol and a busy U.S.-Canada border crossing was shut for 2½ hours Sunday. But U.S. officials denied a report that one of those arrested was connected to a terrorist group.
The three men and a woman were arrested by U.S. officials Sunday afternoon at the Blaine, Wash., checkpoint. The woman had parked her car at a duty-free shop on the Canadian side of the border and walked across to join the three, Canadian officials said.
Their identities and citizenships were not known, but the men were in the United States illegally and had driven to the crossing from Pennsylvania in a rental car, said Constable Archie Alafriz of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
He said the three men had been under surveillance by U.S. authorities, and at least one of them had an affiliation with a known terrorist group. A search by officers of the mounted police and a bomb-sniffing dog found no explosives or suspicious materials in the woman’s car, he said.
But Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman Eileen Schmidt said today the arrests appeared to be routine and unrelated to terrorist threats.
“There is no indication that this is anything other than routine alien smuggling that we see each day at the border,” Schmidt said. “At this point, there is no indication that (terrorism) could be the case.”
Alafriz was not on duty this morning, but RCMP Sgt Peter Fischer said the log for Sunday made no reference to a terrorist connection.
Y2K bug bites truck driver
TAVARES, Florida – The Y2K bug has already bitten one Florida resident, right in the wallet.
According to a recent bill, truck driver John E. Campbell is 100 years overdue in paying the registration fee on his big rig.
“If payment is not received before February 1, 1900,” a $300 penalty would be tacked on, the bill threatened.
“How can I pay a penalty when I wasn’t even born yet?” Campbell asked.
About 50 other Florida truckers have received bills saying they are 100 years late in payment, said Tom Joyce, the assistant director of the Division of Motor Vehicles.
Joyce said they caught the error and will notify truckers to ease their worries about having to pay a late fee. All will be OK as long as the payments are received by due dates in 2000.
Terrorist inferno planned for Calif. prevented by FBI
Authorities say militiamen planned to detonate two large propane tanks near Sacramento at the start of the new year
(San Francisco Examiner) – The militiamen called them the twin sisters – giant steel tanks in rural Sacramento County, Calif., that hold enough liquid propane to immolate every living thing for miles if they somehow were to explode.
For more than a year, a loose-knit band of survivalists, illegal firearms traders and right-wing revolutionaries allegedly plotted to detonate the tanks, perhaps with the same sort of fertilizer bomb used in the 1995 attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City.
But one of the conspirators turned out to be an informant whom the FBI had recruited with money and the hope of leniency on a weapons charge.
And in the end, a series of FBI raids allegedly thwarted a San Joaquin County, Calif., militia’s plan for a Y2K holocaust near the Sacramento suburb of Elk Grove.
On December 3, agents arrested Kevin Patterson, 42, of Camino, Calif., an alleged bomb-maker and methamphetamine “cook” with ties to paramilitary groups in other states; and Charles Dennis Kiles, 49, of Placerville, Calif., a suspected militia commander who had been convicted on an illegal firearms charge.
They also seized a trove of bomb-making chemicals and weapons parts from Patterson’s house, court records show.
Both were part of a self-styled militia that hoped the new millennium would bring the breakdown of vital public services throughout the nation, according to a court affidavit filed by the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
They planned to lead an armed overthrow of the U.S. government in the chaos and civil unrest they believed would follow Y2K, said FBI agent Michael LeMieux and ATF agent R. Graham Barlowe.
The two men have been indicted on federal firearms charges. At least three other people who discussed the abortive attack on the propane tanks, including the informant, have not been charged with any crime, records in U.S. District Court in Sacramento show.
The agents’ affidavit reports connections between Patterson and such right-wing groups as the Montana Freemen, who faced down hundreds of FBI agents in an armed siege near Billings in 1996; and the Republic of Texas, a group which confronted the Texas Rangers in a 1997 standoff.
The document indicates that since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, the militia movement’s stridently anti-government ideology has become infused with apocalyptic predictions about the collapse of American society with the advent of Y2K.
In the affidavit, federal agents go to great lengths to protect the identity of their informant, but according to the document, he is a San Joaquin County militiaman.
Agents encountered him in 1998 during an illegal weapons probe. Facing a federal weapons charge, he agreed to help the FBI, the affidavit says. In the year that followed, the agents also paid him undisclosed sums, it says.
The informant said the militia hoped to goad the government into declaring martial law through a series of provocations like the fiery demolition of the propane tanks.
Once military rule was established, the militiamen believed the American people would rise up in protest, the informant said, and look to the militia movement to overthrow the government.
By the informant’s account, the militiamen had been mulling an attack on Elk Grove’s Suburban Propane storage facility since about June 1998, court files show.
Meanwhile, to two undercover FBI men who befriended him at gun shows, to the informant, and in wiretapped phone calls to friends, Patterson increasingly shared his notions about Y2K.
According to the affidavit, Patterson had stockpiled a four-month supply of food and water to tide him over during the disruptions he was certain would follow the dawn of the new century.
He planned to go camping in late December and stay in the woods until mid-January, he said. Some of his friends were building bunkers on remote desert property, burying seagoing shipping containers there, electrifying them with a generator and stockpiling guns and ammunition there.
Patterson assumed that the government would be forced to ration food and gasoline because of breakdowns in the distribution net and that mass arrests would result.
In August, agents inspected Suburban Propane’s sprawling Elk Grove storage yard and made a sobering discovery: security was minimal at best around the two big tanks, which contained more than 24 million gallons of pressurized liquefied propane.
The agents saw that it would be easy for the militiamen to enter the unfenced yard and overpower or slip by security guards.
Concerns increased after the FBI commissioned a threat assessment study by scientists at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. They concluded that a small explosive device could set off a holocaust at the propane yard.
An explosion near either of the twin sisters likely would cause a sympathetic reaction that would blow up the other tower, along with all the propane-laden trucks and rail cars parked nearby, the scientists concluded.
The results would be catastrophic: a firestorm that would arc as far as eight miles across farmlands and suburban subdivisions, killing 50 percent of all living things five miles from ground zero.
Officials ready for crises in Times Square
New York authorities will put an elaborate security plan into effect New Year’s Eve to foil millennium troublemakers
NEW YORK (AP) – The manhole covers will be welded shut, six police helicopters will hover overhead and 8,000 officers, some with bomb-detection dogs, will be on duty New Year’s Eve in and around Times Square.
While publicly downplaying what they called terrorist hype, New York City officials have made Times Square the focus of an elaborate security plan that puts the nation’s biggest metropolis on a virtual war footing for the millennium celebration.
In Times Square alone, as many as 2 million revelers are expected for a 25-hour celebration of lights, lasers and noisemakers.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir said they knew of no specific threats against the city, but the recent arrests of people suspected of extremist connections at U.S.-Canada border crossings in Washington and Vermont have heightened fears of terrorist acts timed to the millennium.
“There are no guarantees, but we can take every precaution that’s humanly possible,” Safir said in Sunday’s edition of The New York Times. “I think the public should come to Times Square, and I think they should not be deterred by all this terrorist hype that is going on.”
He earlier called last week’s comments by former New York FBI chief James Kallstrom, who urged avoiding Times Square, as “caving in to terrorism.” Kallstrom later insisted he wasn’t referring to terrorism.
Nevertheless, many of the precautions outlined in “Archangel” – the intricate security plan that has been three years in the making – are designed specifically to thwart terrorists.
An area 24 blocks long and three blocks wide will become a pedestrians-only zone, with the manhole covers sealed, garbage cans removed and mailboxes locked to remove possible hiding places for explosives.
Parking will be banned, beginning at midnight December 30, and private vehicles left there will be towed and impounded.
In the hours before the giant lighted ball descends to mark the start of the new year, the century and the millennium, twice the normal New Year’s Eve complement of police officers will deploy in the Times Square area.
Officers will be watching from helicopters and rooftops while 300 plainclothes officers teams with bomb-detection dogs mingle with the revelers and watch for suspicious people, Safir said.
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That’s too funny.
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