frequent use. Over the years city planners had had ample opportunity to refine procedures for controlling riots and demonstrations. In a more sinister vein, the city was quite accomplished at preparing plans for dealing with terrorists, and for this received assistance from numerous federal agencies. On paper, chemical and biological terrorism posed the greatest perceived threat and thus received the most attention.
As the century drew to a close, the city was among the first municipalities to recognize the most imminent threat, the millennium bug, and in 1996 Mayor Giuliani established an office to deal with the problem. A preliminary assessment of municipal computers revealed 687 critical systems infected with Y2K glitches. Two years and $300 million dollars later, 453 systems still had problems. By the summer of 1999 the city began to realize that all the money in the treasury wasnât sufficient to correct the glitch. Many systems were junked and replaced, but expensive, complex new systems took a long time to install and brought new problems. Old data still had to be converted to Y2K compliance, a process full of pitfalls. New York was the most diligent city in the world in attacking the problem, but âfixingâ the myriad systems wasnât good enough. It was impossible to find every line of infected code, and as always with software debugging, every four defects found and corrected by programmers resulted in a new flaw injected into the code. Among millions of lines of binary machine code, one incidence of corrupted code could kill an entire system, and in tests thatâs exactly what happened. The Department of Environmental Protection smugly declared it had no problems, but a preliminary test in 1999 shut down the water system in thirty seconds when embedded chips in the servo controllers froze the valves in the main Croton reservoir. The pumps were replaced and the system failed again. Twelve of the cityâs fourteen sewage treatment plants failed their tests. Supposedly compliant systems in accounting departments failed constantly.
No one knew what was going to happen at midnight, and if all the cityâs systems miraculously survived, theyâd still be at the mercy of Con Edisonâs ability to maintain power. New York had experienced major blackouts in 1965 and 1977, but this time the giant utility company had time to prepare and write press releases full of reassurance. On New Yearâs Eve morning, business people and community groups who had little faith in the city or ConEdâs PR department began making final arrangements to protect their businesses and neighborhoods. Flyers were posted and handed out. Portable radios were tested and deployed and weapons cleaned and loaded.
Reacting to a flood of Y2K news and the August 22 GPS debacle, the city grudgingly had drawn up a plan for total breakdown, fetching bits and pieces from older plans for blackouts and civil unrest. Given a priority considerably below the New Yearâs Eve fireworks and traditional celebration in Times Square, the plan was never completed, approved, or implemented, but the public relations department was authorized to say a plan existed. There were rumors that the mayor had built a secret bunker in the World Trade Center to serve as a command post if the city became a battleground. Its exact nature was a secret. The city fathers didnât want to induce panic.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
They might get wholesale panic anyway, thought Captain Ed Garcia as he walked along Broadway toward his daily breakfast date with Donald Copeland and the boys. He wished the planners and commissioners would spend an hour in his precinct so he could point out the lack of stockpiled food, water, and fuel, and ask where the city planned to erect emergency shelters. If the subways went down, the city would be overrun with stranded citizens, and if Con Edison collapsed ⦠what the hell. Nothing was in readiness
As the century drew to a close, the city was among the first municipalities to recognize the most imminent threat, the millennium bug, and in 1996 Mayor Giuliani established an office to deal with the problem. A preliminary assessment of municipal computers revealed 687 critical systems infected with Y2K glitches. Two years and $300 million dollars later, 453 systems still had problems. By the summer of 1999 the city began to realize that all the money in the treasury wasnât sufficient to correct the glitch. Many systems were junked and replaced, but expensive, complex new systems took a long time to install and brought new problems. Old data still had to be converted to Y2K compliance, a process full of pitfalls. New York was the most diligent city in the world in attacking the problem, but âfixingâ the myriad systems wasnât good enough. It was impossible to find every line of infected code, and as always with software debugging, every four defects found and corrected by programmers resulted in a new flaw injected into the code. Among millions of lines of binary machine code, one incidence of corrupted code could kill an entire system, and in tests thatâs exactly what happened. The Department of Environmental Protection smugly declared it had no problems, but a preliminary test in 1999 shut down the water system in thirty seconds when embedded chips in the servo controllers froze the valves in the main Croton reservoir. The pumps were replaced and the system failed again. Twelve of the cityâs fourteen sewage treatment plants failed their tests. Supposedly compliant systems in accounting departments failed constantly.
No one knew what was going to happen at midnight, and if all the cityâs systems miraculously survived, theyâd still be at the mercy of Con Edisonâs ability to maintain power. New York had experienced major blackouts in 1965 and 1977, but this time the giant utility company had time to prepare and write press releases full of reassurance. On New Yearâs Eve morning, business people and community groups who had little faith in the city or ConEdâs PR department began making final arrangements to protect their businesses and neighborhoods. Flyers were posted and handed out. Portable radios were tested and deployed and weapons cleaned and loaded.
Reacting to a flood of Y2K news and the August 22 GPS debacle, the city grudgingly had drawn up a plan for total breakdown, fetching bits and pieces from older plans for blackouts and civil unrest. Given a priority considerably below the New Yearâs Eve fireworks and traditional celebration in Times Square, the plan was never completed, approved, or implemented, but the public relations department was authorized to say a plan existed. There were rumors that the mayor had built a secret bunker in the World Trade Center to serve as a command post if the city became a battleground. Its exact nature was a secret. The city fathers didnât want to induce panic.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
They might get wholesale panic anyway, thought Captain Ed Garcia as he walked along Broadway toward his daily breakfast date with Donald Copeland and the boys. He wished the planners and commissioners would spend an hour in his precinct so he could point out the lack of stockpiled food, water, and fuel, and ask where the city planned to erect emergency shelters. If the subways went down, the city would be overrun with stranded citizens, and if Con Edison collapsed ⦠what the hell. Nothing was in readiness
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