This is from todays Seattle Times.

Posted at 01:09 p.m. PDT; Thursday, September 9, 1999

Prank phone call, not 9-9-99, disrupts power system

by Patrick Harrington Seattle Times business reporter VANCOUVER, Wash. - An effort by the U.S. Department of Energy to demonstrate the Year 2000 readiness of the nation's electric utilities took an embarrassing twist last night when, in a prank, someone disrupted the power flow at Puget Sound Energy with a simple telephone call.

The disruption became evident as Energy Secretary Bill Richardson toured the control room of the Bonneville Power Administration in Vancouver, the largest electric utility in the United States under DOE control. Richardson was on hand to observe the rollover from 9-8-99 to 9-9-99.

Bill Comish, the Y2K coordinator for the Western Systems Coordinating Council, said the disruption occurred at a substation operated by Puget Sound Energy, which serves large areas of Western Washington.

According to Comish, someone called the substation - its location not specified - and directed the operator to open three specific circuits, shutting down the power. The operator complied. No residents experienced a power outage, said Comish, because the station has a backup system in place.

Puget Sound Energy officials said the call was made by an employee. "What I do know is that this was not a Y2K-related problem," said Dorothy Bracken, a Puget Energy spokeswoman. "It was an employee problem, a prank, and there was no disruption of service. We are currently dealing with the employee problem." The coordinating council, one of 10 regulatory bodies in North America that regulates the nation's power grid, had issued a memo to utility employees along the West Coast warning of sabotage.

Word of the disruption came as Richardson strolled through BPA's computer-packed control room with Judi Johansen, BPA's administrator. An employee approached to inform them that BPA's computer system had detected a security breach somewhere in the state.

Johansen would not say where or when the event took place, offering only that someone had "called in under the guise of a dispatcher" and asked for breakers at a utility to be opened, cutting the flow of power. She said the site involved was a "non-federal" facility not under DOE control.

Richardson was quick to put a positive spin on the event.

"What I saw was very quick action," he said, referring to BPA's ability to spot the problem and then call the utility and ask if they had meant to open the breakers that cut off power.

Other than the unexpected glitch, Richardson's visit, which was meant to conclude a Y2K-readiness test conducted for the nation's electric utilities by the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), was uneventful. The council is an industry group for electric utilities that monitors the interconnected systems between power grids across North America.

The test was timed to coincide with the fears among some that the rollover into 9-9-99 would cause computers to malfunction. Decades ago, programmers used four nines - 9999 - to signal the end of a job or program.

With the media observing the test, Johansen explained the workings of the BPA facility to Richardson, who expressed his confidence in the site's Y2K readiness.

"So this is the nerve center?" asked Richardson, as he walked between two walls lined with lights, showing a graphical representation of BPA's power grid. A few moments later, with a digital clock counting down to midnight in red digital numbers, Richardson and Johansen held a white banner bearing the numbers 9-9-99. As the clocked rolled over to all zeros and the lights didn't go out, Richardson clapped and said, "Good work guys. The system worked."

A few moments later, in a small room denoted the "Y2K Command Post" came the report that across the nation there were "no Y2K issues, no problems and no customers affected."

After his briefing, Richardson issued a statement. "I can report today that Bonneville is Y2K ready." He did, however, caution that in the United States there were still eight major electricity providers - none in Washington - not yet Y2K ready.

NERC was by no means alone in capitalizing on the attention being paid to 9-9-99. The International Y2K Cooperation Center, a U.N.-backed global collector of Y2K data, used the rollover to rehearse its plan for tracking problems around the world as the date rolls over to 1-1-2000.

In all, 15 countries are expected to participate, including Britain, Bulgaria, Chile, Gambia, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, the Philippines, South Korea and the United States. The White House will begin to use its $40 million Information Coordination Center to monitor Year 2000 problems. Most financial institutions and the phone companies are in on it as well.

Yesterday, as part of the NERC test, Seattle City Light began its own testing, which consisted of presenting outage scenarios to employees and monitoring how they reacted.

"It's just like the April 9 drill," said Ralph Underwood, City Light's Y2K coordinator. As in the case with 9-9-99, many feared computer foul-ups on 4-9-99, the 99th day of the year, which, in an extremely unlikely case, could have been programmed as 9999.

"For some reason that ended up being on the list of terrible dates, and we breezed through that one with no trouble," he said.

At BPA, the significance of the 9-9-99 date also seemed to baffle the technically inclined. Asked why he thought the date was used for the test, Brian Furumasu, Y2K program manager for transmission systems at BPA said, "I'm not sure. I think it was symbolic. It was really NERC driven."

Unlike with the change into 2000, the belief that the change from 9-8-99 to 9-9-99 would cause snarls and snafus was considered unlikely by many within the computer industry.

The potential problems related to the Y2K rollover result from efforts by programmers to save time and computer memory.

Instead of using four digits to designate the year in dates, they used two. A non-Y2K-compliant computer recognizing only the last two digits of a year could read 00 as either 1900 or 2000, causing a program or an entire system to malfunction at the turn of the year.

-- Martin Thompson (Martin@aol.com), September 10, 1999

Answers

OH BOY there were no y2k problems related to a non y2k problem. Goody I feel much better now. That means that the power will be on tomorrow on 91099 or 91199. What about 1-1-00??

The disturbing part is that one joker shut down the power with one phone call. If any one else figures this out (pissed of ex-employee) there could be real problems

-- dragoneyez (dragoneyez@mindspring.com), September 10, 1999.

See this thread for a picture of the banner. <:)=

Attention all you "9999" media idiots out there

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 10, 1999.

Yet another indication that a "system" (hardware/software/human) is only as strong as its weakest link. Either there was no adequate "controls" to verify a command order to flip a power switch, or it was a trainee sitting at the console.

You call any data center, sound real panicked and tell them to "Bring down production CICS right NOW...we gotta restore from backups!" You'd be amazed how many folks respond to the tone, not the content.

-- JCL Jockey (WeThrive@OnStress.com), September 10, 1999.