L’Observateur / August 11, 1999

Southeast Louisiana got a taste of the Y2K Bug fears Tuesday morning after the 504 area code went weird. Not only regular phones but also cellphones and beepers suddenly became useless for hours on end.

The situation was a dangerous one, as people in medical emergencies were stranded, as were crime victims and fire victims.

On a lower-priority scale, even newspapers dependent on the internet to download cartoons, columns and to upload pages to a distant printer were hampered. Fax machines were silent, and reporters were at a loss to findhow to determine what happened to the phones when the phones themselves didn’t work.

An inquiry to BellSouth’s repair service number ended up in Birmingham, Ala. A kind lady attempted to re-route the call back to Louisiana’s billingoffice, but that was difficult to achieve and finally ended in failure. Theimagination can only picture the worst was possibly happening, with no lines of communication available.

To their credit, law enforcement agencies worked hard to share communications between agencies and help keep an eye on communities.

Computers have such a hold on our daily lives, especially those dependent on telephones to work, that any serious disruption is felt immediately.

One can certainly hope that with the turn of the year, slightly more than four months from now, that we will be better prepared than we were Tuesday morning.

L’Observateur

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