City Computers Pass ‘Quadruple Nine’ Test

The so-called “quadruple nine” date of 9/9/99 didn’t cause any problems Thursday in the city’s computer programs, officials said.

Computer experts and city managers who have been toiling for months to make the city Y2K compliant said it was a good indication that their advance work to ward off a millennium computer bug will pay off.

“So far I’m happy to report that we have not had any 9/9/99 incidents,” said Frank Martinez, executive director of the city of Los Angeles Year 2000 Project.

There was, however, little rest for those who may be Y2K weary.

Teams of about 20 representatives--from the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Fire Department and other key city departments--met Wednesday and Thursday at the Emergency Operations Center for updates on Dec. 31 plans and to simulate “tabletop” scenarios, Martinez said.

“We did some tabletop role-playing and discussions on scenarios like if there was a power outage in Asia, 20 hours ahead of us,” Martinez said. “How we would assess the validity of that information and how would we deal with it?”

On Wednesday, the training session was headed by LAPD Deputy Chief David Gascon and on Thursday by LAPD Deputy Chief Martin Pomeroy.

The city is coordinating with the state Office of Emergency Services and federal government agencies on potential Y2K problems, Martinez said.

“Our biggest concern is how the public will react. We don’t want the public to overreact,” said Bob Canfield, the city’s emergency preparedness coordinator. “Our message is consistent. You live in Southern California with 10 presidential disaster declarations in the last 7 1/2 years, so forget Y2K--you need to be prepared for emergencies that can occur at any time, whether it’s an earthquake, a fire, a flood. “

While the city seemed to ease past Thursday’s ‘quadruple 9’ test, Martinez cautioned that a problem could still surface, even though experts had reviewed about 4 million lines of code in 147 mainframe business applications.

In some older computer programs, 9/9/99 was used to mark the end of a computer file. Some older applications programmed with that date are used to process large batches of records at the end of a week or month, when a potential problem could arise, he said.