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Activists no longer predict disaster By JOHN DARLING For the Mail Tribune The activists who fervently sounded the Y2K alarm at the beginning of the year are personally prepared for months of disruptions. They also feel they've made a major impact by waking up governments, corporations and Rogue Valley residents to the need for readiness for any disaster. Their predictions of chaos, however, are much quieter. "No one knows what will happen," said Liza Christian, an Ashland resident and executive director of the Rogue Valley Y2K Task Force who last spring predicted gas lines, looting and emptying of supermarkets for the closing of 1999. "They've done a remarkable job, especially in the banking industry, of fixing it," she said, referring to the inability of older computer chips to recognize the year 2000 and to continue functioning. "The question is: Did they get everything? I don't think so." Helen Price, chair of the Rogue River Y2K Task Force, said because of the intensive work by governments and corporations over the last three years, "I don't think there's going to be a big disaster and pandemonium. If people keep their heads, we'll be just fine." Rogue Valley residents, she added, know a lot more about self-sufficiency than large-city dwellers. "If there's panic in the big cities, it will be people-caused, not Y2K-caused," said Price, who was spending the day canning 20 pounds of chicken. Kim Ragsdale, Y2K organizer for Shady Cove-Trail, said, "We've done everything we can to educate people. No one knows what will happen (on Jan. 1, 2000), but if there's no major problem, we'll just eat all our stored food and spend all our cash." Christian said she feels the Northwest power supply is in "pretty good shape" but that she's "not comforted" by random reports of power and phone outages around the world in the century's last week. As governments and corporations fix Y2K bugs, she said, they can recontaminate other parts of systems and create another failure. "The problem is that the Northwest doesn't operate in isolation from the rest of the country. Everything's intertwined and if one part fails, it can have a ripple effect on other parts," she said. Residents here can learn what may happen at the rollover by watching television about 9 p.m. today to see if East Coast residents have power problems at midnight their time. "If the (power) grid goes down it will start at 9 and begin a ripple effect toward the West Coast," Christian said. The government, she added, did such a good job of telling people they didn't have to worry, that, about last March, "people decided Y2K was going to be a non-event and went to sleep. There's been a huge amount of procrastination and that's human nature, so now with days to go, you see lots of people just beginning to store water." The Y2K efforts have helped people understand the need to know and cooperate with neighbors and to understand how to live with less modern technology, said Price. "We're so spoiled by technology, we can't function if we lose the remote. We'll experience far more problems than a country without all the modern stuff," she said. Price plans to spend New Year's quietly at home practicing her motto: "Prayer and preparation prevent panic." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA