IP: Fears of Y2K looting spurs UK to ready secret disaster unit

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>

[You can find the story in the "UK News" section of
http://www.independent.co.uk/ --Declan]

===

From: "Alan Docherty" <freenet@globalnet.co.uk> 
To: "Declan McCullagh"
<declan@well.com> 
Subject: Disaster unit for Y2K in UK 
Date: Sun, 8 Nov
1998 12:52:49 -0000 

>From today's Independent

Disaster alert for 2000 bug

By Marie Woolf, Political Correspondent

A secret Cabinet disaster unit, only activated in times of dire civil
emergencies such as nuclear leaks, hostage situations or foreign invasion,
is to be mobilised on 31 December 1999 to cope with the fall-out from the
millennium bug.

The Home Secretary, Jack Straw, also will be put on alert to co-ordinate a
strategy to cope with chaos on Britain's roads, airports and hospitals.

The Government fears that the ordinary emergency services will be unable to
deal with the mayhem caused by the possible national shutdown of lifts, air
traffic control systems and hospital equipment.

It plans to put the Civil Contingency Unit, run by a secretive cabinet group
known as Cobra, on alert to deal with the situation. The unit, which has the
power to assemble the heads of the Army, Navy, Royal Air Force, security
services and SAS - for emergency strategy meetings - was last mobilised in
1994 during a training exercise to prepare for a possible nuclear attack by
terrorists.

[...]

http://www.independent.co.uk/

_____________________________________________________________________
David Farber         
The Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems
University of Pennsylvania 
Home Page: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~farber