Millennium Disconnects: Seattle Calls Off Gala and U.S. Is Told Not to Dial

Seattle canceled its New Year’s festivities Tuesday, while federal officials and telephone executives urged Americans not to check for a dial tone in the first moments of the new century to avoid overloading the phone system.

Seattle Mayor Paul Schell said that he was not aware of any specific threat targeting his city. But after conferring with the FBI, the mayor decided to call off Seattle’s scheduled New Year’s celebration, which had been expected to draw 50,000 people.

Schell’s decision came two weeks after Algerian-born Ahmed Ressam was arrested at a Washington state border crossing for allegedly attempting to smuggle bomb-making materials from Canada.

“We are comfortable that Seattle is not a target,” Schell said at a Seattle news conference, according to a Reuters news report. “That is the advice we have received from the FBI. 1/8But 3/8 they can’t at the same time assure us that there is no risk.”

A Clinton administration official echoed Schell’s remarks, saying that U.S. officials are primarily concerned about the possibility of overseas terrorism and are aware of no specific targets within the United States.

With the 2000 rollover only days away, meanwhile, officials involved in the Y2K preparation effort said there is no sign of hoarding of prescription drugs as some had feared might happen just before January. It was the latest in a series of reports suggesting that there will be few significant Y2K-related problems in this country.

But officials said that one domestic concern remains: the nation’s phone system.

That’s because the Y2K bug will hit during what is traditionally one of the heaviest calling periods of the year. Officials noted that the nation’s telephone system is more than 99% reliable and its newer rival, the Internet, is built to withstand even the most calamitous disruptions. Even so, they said, a public stampede to reach out and touch someone could overload the networks and create the mistaken impression of Y2K-related communications outages.

“We caution the public: Don’t pick up the phone just to see if it works,” said Michael K. Powell, a member of the Federal Communications Commission who heads the agency’s Y2K monitoring effort.

Citing the resource-straining calling volumes many telephone carriers experience every Mother’s Day, Powell predicted that this New Year’s could eclipse even those numbers if callers do not show restraint.

“This is Mother’s Day on Viagra . . . ,” Powell said. “Because of the historical importance of this event . . . the telecommunications system will be stressed.”

The Y2K problem is caused by the shorthand most computers use to express the month, day and year of an event. By using only the last two digits to express the year, 2000 may be indistinguishable from 1900, and systems could fail if not fixed in advance.

Garry Roth, vice president of technology programs for GTE Corp., said that many telephone switches and several underlying support systems for the telephone network rely on date-sensitive computer operations.

Customer bills, for instance, are based on calls placed during specific dates and times. Phone network maintenance is done at specific intervals. And even the provisioning of phone service to new customers is based on dates stored in computers.

Along with gas and electric utilities, the nation’s telecommunications industry is being closely watched as a key barometer of the nation’s ability to cope with the threat of Year 2000-related computer crashes.

The telephone industry has spent $3.6 billion over the last four years to update its infrastructure. Meanwhile, the nation’s more than 4,000 Internet service providers have overhauled tens of thousands of computers that connect more than 110 million Americans to the Internet.

Because these communication networks are interdependent, however, no one knows how successful the effort ultimately will be until weeks, if not months or years, pass by.

The FCC’s Powell said that the federal government continues to be concerned with the Y2K readiness of some telephone carriers overseas. Powell said that preventive measures overseas “did not go as quickly or as effectively as we would have liked.”

In recognition of that fact, the government’s Y2K command center is scheduled to remain in operation until at least March to make sure there are no late-occurring Y2K problems. And John Koskinen, the administration’s top Y2K readiness official, said that the government must keep up its vigilance throughout the year.

The Gartner Group, a consulting firm based in Stamford, Conn., forecasts that just 10% of Year 2000 computer failures will occur during the first two weeks of January. Most will come much later, the firm says.

One key problem date after Jan. 1 may be Feb. 29, 2000, because many computer programs do not recognize it as a leap year. Experts say that could make them vulnerable to attacks by hackers or disrupt their computer-file maintenance routines.

Reports of such vulnerabilities have fueled fears that computers of all kinds may come under attack from hackers.

Anti-virus software companies say that nearly a dozen Y2K-related computer viruses have emerged since September, although new activity has abated this month.

Nevertheless, the Air Force acknowledged Tuesday that it has given its 900 public Web site managers permission to shut down the sites around the New Year to guard against hackers. None of the sites contains classified information.

“There is no specific threat. It’s simply heightened security. If you’re not up on the 31st, there is nothing they 1/8hackers 3/8 can do about it,” said Maj. Andree Swanson, an Air Force spokesman.

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Times staff writer Art Pine contributed to this story.