A comprehensive Y2K contingency plan has been prepared by the city of Peachtree City in the hopes of being ready for anything that might happen when the clock strikes midnight at the end of this year.

A draft of the plan, a copy of which is available at City Hall for interested citizens to read, addresses in detail how the city's various departments are to operate in case of a Y2K-related emergency. It was presented to the City Council at its May 20 meeting.

While the city is not expecting a catastrophe in any particular area, the possibility of technological interruptions is a real one, and city staff are preparing for any potential problem.

Beginning Dec. 31 at 7 p.m. and continuing into the year 2000, “Failure of information technology and embedded chip equipment and systems may disrupt normal activities, operations and services,” according to the plan. “Potential systemic failures include electrical power, communications, water supplies, sewage treatment, transportation, commerce, and financial transactions. A failure of either electrical power or communications will have cascade impact on other systems and services.”

Informing the general public is acknowledged as vitally important, and the plan states that individual preparation also is necessary to a certain extent.

The possibility of disruptions occurring more than once, lasting from hours to weeks, has been recognized, although sporadic disruptions of a day are most likely.

Many networks will have the potential for trouble beginning at 7 p.m. local time Dec. 31 because of their operation on Universal Coordinated Time (Greenwich Mean Time), which will then be at midnight.

A study by the GartnerGroup reports that “leading” industries and large enterprises, with more than 20,000 employees, have a mission-critical failure probability rate of less than 15 percent. That percentage goes up as businesses get smaller, with small enterprises of fewer than 2,000 employees having an 80-percent probability of a mission-critical failure.

The GartnerGroup also projects an 80-percent probability of at least one Y2K-induced systems failure in half of the nation's electrical utilities. The Peachtree City plan acknowledges that disruptions of electrical power and/or communications will cause the greatest disruptions to normal activities and services.

The city's general contingency plan directs each department and authority to inventory any Y2K-susceptible equipment and systems, along with a determination of whether each piece of equipment is Y2K-compliant. Departments and authorities also are instructed to list necessary action to correct Y2K problems and prioritize mission-critical functions, as well as preparing a contingency plan to be reviewed by the city management team.

Under the plan, the city would operate an emergency operations center from noon Dec. 31 until 6 p.m. Jan. 7. All city personnel designated as necessary for emergency or mission-critical functions will be either on duty or readily available for duty during that time.

Instructions for management of emergency situations, direction of the emergency operating center, and continuity of government in case of an emergency are spelled out in the plan.

The fire chief/director of Civil Defense, under the direction of the mayor and city manager, is designated as manager of the EOC on a day-to-day basis, and would coordinate with various city departments involved in emergency operations as well as outside emergency management agencies and other Y2K-related duties.

The plan also details the responsibilities of each department and authority head assigned primary emergency functions.

“Priority for distribution of supplies and equipment will be given to emergency power, emergency communications, emergency medications and medical services, heat and/or air conditioning, water, and food,” according to the plan.

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