The Associated Press

A world remade by technology today began the rollover to the year 2000 with no early signs of cyber-chaos, after years of preparation and billions of dollars spent to fix a simple but widespread computer bug.

Friday, December 31, 1999

A world remade by technology today began the rollover to the year 2000 with no early signs of cyber-chaos, after years of preparation and billions of dollars spent to fix a simple but widespread computer bug.

The millennium began at the stroke of midnight on a tiny, normally uninhabited island in the South Pacific – the renamed Millennium Island in Kiribati. An hour later, New Zealand entered the year with no reported problems other than congestion on busy phone lines.

”The lights are still on. The situation is normal,” said Basil Logan, chairman of New Zealand’s Y2K readiness commission.

From airlines to electricity, few, if any, problems were immediately reported in New Zealand and other nations first in the path of Y2K worry.

There was nothing out of the ordinary in Sydney, Australia, one of the first major cities, Russia’s early time zones or on Guam, the first civilian piece of American soil to greet the new year.

”This is so exciting. I think everyone was getting too paranoid,” said Miss Guam 1999 Lourdes Rivera, 18, dancing with friends in the island’s tourism center, Tumon Bay.

The mood also grew lighter through the night in a civil defense compound in Guam. ”I think there’s probably a lot of people working on New Year’s Eve who shouldn’t have had to work,” said Maj. Gen. Benny Paulino, commander of the National Guard on Guam.

The U.S. military in Guam reported no anomalies.

The potential problem? Some computers might misread the year 2000 as 1900, causing systems to shut down. Despite all the preparations, experts warned that some failures are inevitable on Jan. 1 and the weeks or months after, given the hundreds of millions of computers worldwide.

Other officials warned not to let the guard down.

”It may take two or three days for degradation of service to become apparent in power and telecommunications systems in developing countries, so we’ve got a little ways to go before we can declare victory,” U.S. Y2K czar John Koskinen told CNN today.

He said U.S. officials would be watching China, Russia and eastern Europe especially for problems.

Officials took plenty of precautions. Seaports closed and jets were grounded around the world. ATM machines in Beijing were closed. Even Disneyland’s Matterhorn rollercoaster was set to shut down to avoid the dangers of Y2K.

Cautiously optimistic, federal emergency managers in New England gathered in a Cold War-era bomb shelter in Maynard, Mass., to announce detailed preparations in front of a screen that read: ”We do not expect a cataclysmic event.”

Though most people remained calm, there were sporadic reports of last-minute shopping clearing shelves in Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, and Egypt. Some were preparing for potential Y2K problems; others for holiday parties.

China hurriedly rechecked its banking systems after a Y2K glitch frazzled thousands of British credit-card swipe machines. In Louisville, Ky., some cable TV subscribers received invoices for bills due in the year 100 – almost 19 centuries ago.

A vital U.S. air safety system got a last-minute Y2K repair Thursday, while 352 nonessential U.S. diplomats and their families left Russia and three former Soviet republics deemed at high risk of Y2K-induced power and telecommunications outages.

Central banks across the globe have printed tens of billions of dollars worth of currency – from 10 to 40 percent more than normal – to hedge against possible bank runs, though experts are fairly confident the financial sector is in good shape.

An early prophet of the Y2K bug, Capers Jones, chief scientist at Artemis Management Systems, estimated more than $1 trillion will be spent overall on Y2K fixes.

, and more than twice as much on cleaning up – everything from computer damage to lawsuits filed against those responsible.

In Glasgow, Ky., Fire Chief James Wingfield hoped he had done enough: Fire trucks were stationed strategically around town and emergency generators were on hand.

”We just hope it’s an overkill,” he said, ”and everyone can sit around and eat ham and biscuits on New Year’s Eve.”