Thursday, December 9, 1999 headline news story at the 6pm and
 10pm news on the local NBC affiliate, KPRC Channel 2 News in
 Houston, Texas, shows actual footage from the City of Houston's
 911 Fire and Ambulance Command and Dispatch Center, which
 unexpectedly and completely failed a "final, redundant" Y2k test
 today. Previously assured by everyone from the Mayor of the City of
 Houston, Lee Brown, down to the 911 Department's executives and
 MIS people that everything had been tested multiple times, all was
 well, and all necessary systems in the City's Departments had
 passed muster, the entire 911 "Unit Response Coordinating
 Computer System" went off-line--totally down--with blank
 screens when the Y2k test was run. The City of Houston's
 Emergency Response System was Out of Business, black;
 gone--until the systems were hard reset and the dates returned to
 current. Havoc and outrage ensued from the Fire Department, the
 City Council, the Mayor's Office, and the Mayor himself has called
 the responsible officials onto the carpet tonight. Current story is
 that the vendor assured City officials that the system was Y2k
 compliant and updated okay, now says that it is not, and they
 "cannot" or "will not" make it okay by Y2k. Mayor says on TV that
 if they don't get it okay "soon", he'll get another company to do it.
 Fire Dept and MIS folks say that they're now preparing an
 emergency backup procedure using laptops, (shown in the segment
 with MIS techies at the laptops looking particularly remorse), and a
 manual backup Dispatch system. City Council members on TV
 saying "This is Not Acceptable, How Come We Only Found Out
 About This Now, Etc.).
  
 Obvious pressure being put on station to minimize panic response to
 this announcement and its implications for the same reason that the
 same thing is being done at every government level from the local
 cities to the federal level--avoid panic at all costs.
  
 The above incident is fact, shown on Thursday's TV. Call the
 station, confirm,
 or ask for the video.
  
 Regards to the Group,
  
  
 (Morning of Dec. 7, 1941, overheard inside the U.S. Army's
 Consolidated Communications
 Center, Hawaii--"You want confirmation. Captain" There's Your
 Confirmation"! 
  
 jj in Houston.