The Halifax Y2K Community Action Group held its first public meeting
on Thursday, April 29th 1999 at the North Branch Library. Formed to promote
community preparedness for Y2K-related interruptions to essential
services, we wanted to first get an idea of what sort of a scenario we
might be trying to prepare for.
We invited speakers from Nova Scotia Power Inc., the Halifax Regional
Water Commission, and Halifax Regional Municipality's Year 2000 Project
Office to give presentations on HRM's essential services. NS Power
initially accepted, but then declined because Leo MacDougall
was also invited to speak. Leo is president of CIC Ltd., a company that
provides project management software. He has worked on helping companies
to become Y2K-ready, and has been following the Y2K issue since 1996. He
falls into what some describe as the "Doomsday scenario" camp, or
TEOTWAWKI: The End Of The World As We Know It. Leo has had conversations
and correspondence with NS Power regarding Y2K, and NS Power felt it would not be
able to get across its message if Leo was speaking in the same forum. NS Power
did, however, provide literature on its Y2K preparedness. This was not as
satisfactory as making a presentation, as it did not allow the audience to
ask questions, but Stacey Lewis from NS Power sent her business card and said
she would be happy to talk to anyone who has concerns (428-6578).
Dan Gautreau is manager of HRM's Year 2000 Project Office. He
described HRM's process for dealing with Y2K-related problems, and
quantified their preparedness on critical systems: 65%. Critical systems
are 911/Dispatch, Emergency Measures Organization, Police, Fire, Solid
Waste, Waste Water, Storm Water, Traffic (including flow control and snow
& ice control), and Aerotech water (HRM is responsible for water supply at the
airport and aerotech industrial park, whereas the Regional Water
Commission is responsible for water supply everywhere else in HRM). These
systems are scheduled to be completely Y2K-ready by the end of July. Carl
Yates, General Manager of the Halifax Regional Water Commission, was
similarly reassuring about the Y2K-readiness of the water supply.
So do we need to prepare for power outages, no water, failure of
911, not being able to flush our toilets, and other disaster scenarios, or
can we rest assured that these systems have been "fixed"? Well, two
points: no corporate or government body is willing to guarantee that
there will not be Y2K-related interruptions to essential services (such
guarantees could leave them legally liable); and all of HRM's essential
services are to some extent dependent on factors outside their control,
and so every critical service is making contingency plans for
interruptions in other critical services. For example, almost every
service depends on electrical power, and all of them: the Water
Commission, the phone company, the sewage system, have back-up plans for
generating their own power. NS Power (indeed, the whole
North American power grid) tested backup communication systems in case
normal communications fail. The Water Commission is stockpiling extra
water purification chemicals in the event of disruptions in production or
distribution systems. Making such contingency plans is not a sign of
panic that these things will happen, but merely a measure of prudence in
case they do. And we believe that individuals, households, and
neighbourhoods, should make similar contingency plans for the possible
interruption of essential services or supplies.
So then the question becomes, for how long? Leo MacDougall believes
that systems are so interdependent and that so much of the world has not
fixed its Y2K problems, that disruptions will be prolonged: lasting months
or even years. He's not the only one who believes this: check out
Gary North's web site at
http://www.garynorth.com, for example.
Maclean's (and Andrew Wright, in his April 1999
Beacon article) advise us to prepare as if
for a winter storm. But what winter storm: the ice storm of '98, which
caused power to be out for weeks, or a more run-of-the-mill winter storm
of a few days duration? Peter de Jager, who has recently announced that
things will not be as bad as he'd previously predicted, suggests that 2-3
weeks would be a prudent length of time to prepare for (see his April 14
article, "How bad, how long, how likely? Y2K personal preparation" at
http://www.year2000.com/archive/y2khowbad.html).
We think each individual and family and neighbourhood needs to
analyze risk and prepare to its own comfort level. Our first meeting was
an attempt to provide people with some information to enable them to
assess risk and decide what scenario they were preparing for. At our next
meeting we hope to have discussion about ways of preparing. HRM's
Emergency Measures Office and Y2K Project Office are implementing a
programme called SPAN: Strengthening Preparedness Among Neighbours.
Murielle Provost from HRM Emergency Measures Organization will describe
how your neighbourhood can organize to be more prepared for any emergency,
not just Y2K. This meeting will be at the North Branch Library,
2285 Gottingen St. on Thursday May 20th 1999 at 7 PM.
Tell your friends and neighbours.
For further information, contact:
Audrey Samson, aa133@chebucto.ns.ca
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