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- Alberta's major power
supplier is stockpiling huge pallets
of groceries and other emergency
items should Y2K bugs turn out the lights,
The Sun has learned.
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- Two weeks after
city-owned EPCOR snapped up a backup
generator should Jan. 1, 2000,
turn into a computer-fouling disaster, TransAlta
Corp. admitted
yesterday to buying up to $15,000 in supplies, mainly canned
goods, at
a Save-On-Foods outlet.
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- The huge grocery bill - rung up last week at the
B.C.-based
chain's Sherwood Park location - is one of several being
rung up so as
many as 500 TransAlta workers can eat and see in the dark
if Y2K woes strike
any of its 250 remote switching stations. "If
nothing goes wrong,
we've got a bunch of groceries for the food
bank," said TransAlta's
Y2K project leader, Gary Steeves.
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- "We're pretty
confident things will be all right.
We just have to look at the
worst-case scenario for critical times."
Steeves didn't know how
much TransAlta will ultimately spend on emergency
foodstuffs.
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- Food and other items
will be parcelled out to rural switching
stations - all of which will
be manned when Dec. 31 ticks down to 2000
- so TransAlta crews won't go
hungry should they have to tackle a Y2K bug,
he said.
-
- Steeves calls the
grocery list prudent planning.
-
- University of Alberta computer science prof Randy Goebel
calls it a confidence-buster - one that'll only make people skeptical of
rosy predictions by electrical companies and other high-tech industries
of a no-hassles new year.
-
- "This has the potential to be very scary,"
Goebel said of TransAlta's latest addition to its $30-million Y2K price
tag.
-
- "The thing I'd worry about is a lot of the things
we've
heard about Y2K problems is (designed) to reassure people. Now, all
of
a sudden, we find this strange behaviour. It's alarming."
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- Goebel - convinced
Y2K's bark will be much, much worse
than any bite - skewered TransAlta
for not thinking about how word of their
shopping may trigger public
uneasiness.
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- "For them to go out and spend $15,000 in one day
in
September - and (media) find out about it - shows they haven't thought
of how this can be seen," said Goebel, an expert in database systems
and network information.
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- Save-On-Foods spokesman Dennis Kinsey said from company
headquarters in Langley, B.C., that TransAlta should be praised, not
condemned,
for raising awareness of possible Y2K woes in a public
that's too complacent.
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- "I think you'll see consumers, definitely, get more
prepared. The benefit of Y2K is it raises one's level of crisis
management,"
Kinsey said.
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