Bug Watchers Scan Globe, Report All Systems Go

As the midnight hour moved westward across the globe, the monitors at the government’s $50-million nerve center for the Y2K rollover glowed green: all systems normal.

After all the months of warning about power outages and system failures, and to the surprise of officials monitoring the worldwide scene, no nation--not China, not Indonesia, not India--drew a cautionary yellow or red alert.

It’s “just a sea of green,” the official said.

Green was also the color at INTELSAT, the international satellite consortium, where a video map showed dozens of glowing green dots as Earth stations reported that transmissions were A-OK.

If any nerves were on edge, it was because the assigned workers, accompanied by dozens of reporters, realized they were trapped in a nondescript office building, missing out on the some of the biggest New Year’s Eve celebrations ever.

The Y2K command center represented a nearly unprecedented gathering of hundreds of government officials, watching over a far-flung and extraordinarily complex network with the ability to instantly monitor the entire globe for signs of trouble.

John Koskinen, chairman of the President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion, appeared every few hours to announce that all systems were “functioning normally.”

Washington spent more than $8 billion to combat the Y2K bug, Koskinen announced.