Contributed by Steve Davis (Columbia, MD) and Robert Althauser

We welcome your reports about incidents, disruptions, remedial or preventative measures, etc. To assist us in communicating this report to others who can learn and/or relate this to possible disruptions locally to them, please:

1. Enter your e-mail address (Ex: (steve@davislogic.com), This must be a valid e-mail address.

2. Enter your full name with your general location in parentheses.(Ex: Steve Davis (Columbia, MD))

3. Enter an appropriate and descriptive subject line. Location specific messages should include the city and state/province/country in the subject line. (Ex.: "Sewage system disrupted, Peoria, IL")

4. Select the most appropriate category for the incident (water and sewage)

5. Enter the text of the report. See below for journalistic tips. Please include links to web or other sources, whether 'hot' links or not. (It may be advisable to write the report in a word processor and paste it into this field. You can also create your report in Word, save it to html and post the html code into this space. This makes inserting hot links easy).

6. Include names, phone numbers, and/or email addresses of people who can substantiate or add to this report.

Thanks for helping us build community, not crises, around Y2K

Tips: The Five W's & the H Who?, What?, Where?, Why?, When?, and How?

Define the parameters of a Story. For every Story, it helps to take a page, jot down these 6 items, and answer as appropriate to the particular instance. The next thing journalists do is arrange them in an "inverted pyramid," of descending order of importance," starting with the most important and endling with the least.

-- Critt Jarvis (critt@critt.com), December 31, 1999

Answers

I've just been out checking on people's last minute buying...

(Just BTW, the major traffic-watching station in LA reports that all freeways are absolutely jammed/parking lots, and that there are also many accidents, because "The Southland" is having a light sprinkle.)

A major supermarket, in the barrio: The manager tells me that yesterday (Dec 30) smashed *all* records for the store...like, ever, man!....by $12,000!

Almost all shelves had big gaps...especially....paper products - towels and TP - crackers (esp Triscuits) - bottled juices - canned fruit and veg - and, because this is a big Latino area, hominy.

The guy who services the water machines in and outside this supermarket and others banks of machines elsewhere (whom I had seen manhandling one yesterday) was fixing one bank of machines. He estimates usage up by 2/3 over normal...His machines constantly shut off because demand is so brisk, they don;t have time to filter the water they sell.

At Smart & Final, a discount grocery, dealing mostly in bulk items: Manager said sales are up substantially, but he doesn;t think it will be a record. Items in short supply, judging by gaps on shelves: bagged dry beans (but not cans); juices of all kinds; soups and ramen - indeed the soup shelves were stripped; pastas; bulk rice; paper products.

FINALLY, Gasoline: I checked three discount gas stations, two of them ARCO. All said their sales were up, but would make no estimate. All had lines at the pumps...not long, not blocking traffic, but probably delaying the purchase by five-ten minutes.

Bayard

Major items in demand:

-- Bayard Stockton (drayab@silcom.com), December 31, 1999.

Written at 3.35PM, EST.....

I've been watching media activity or about five hours now. General comments.

The most stirring, measured and well-balanced, over-all, is ABC's coverage. Jennings and crew are dealing with the subject with a very personal touch, a lack of pomposity, humor, good historical background, entertainment...

CNN is doing its usual straight-news job, but cannot match the depth of ABC resources.

I get the impression that the word-media are bending over backwards to avoid rpt avoid any hint of panicky reportage...perhaps following the White House lead.

Y2K...not only the glitch-potential, but the actual rollover...is the dominant story, no question. The other two major stories, in world perspective - perhaps even in American terms, short and long term - Yeltsin's yielding to Putin, which is a major development; and the capitulation of the Kashmiri terrorists, are barely getting attention.

So far...even in some of the questionable countries, like Thailand and India and Japan...no reports of significant trouble.

But then, it's still early days.

-- Bayard Stockton (drayab@silcom.com), December 31, 1999.

Fraudulent Radio Report in Denver CO USA

Media Coverage

Before 10AM MST 12/31, our local Denver "intelligent-Person's Rock" radio station, KBPI, put forth a very authentic-sounding, but FRAUDULENT report that Australia had lost power and had had a mid-air plane crash. I will be reporting them to the FCC (888-225-5322) when they open up on Monday (it's a holiday today!) and asking that their license be revoked. My son and daughter-in-law were very upset by this report and canceled their New Year's eve dinner plans. AND it took me 30 tense minutes to find their correct number and call them to verify the story -- numbers were disconnected or not answering -- finally found correct numbers on the 'Net. It seems that the "Locker Room" crew created the fraudulent story, reported it as a "joke," had a disclaimer later in the show, then left at 10 AM, leaving the crew that arrived at 10 AM to take the many irate calls, including mine. Both managers are unavailable, leaving a few regular employees to clean up the mess. The "mob mentality" has not surfaced yet, but could be set off by fraudulent reports such as this one. -- Kenton Johnson (Littleton CO), Kenton@CompWellness.com, December 31, 1999 11:56AM Verify story at (303)713-ROCK or 713-ROLL, with my son at 888- 88ROCKY, or KUSA TV Channel 9 Newsroom at (303)871-1499 who reported the incident about 90 minutes later. You may call me at 888-4KENTON

-- Kenton Johnson (Littleton CO) (Kenton@CompWellness.com), January 01, 2000.