It was New Year’s Eve, 1999, and anxiety over potential Y2K doomsday scenarios about to be unleashed in the new year was real.
Anything relying on automation — from the electrical grid to traffic lights, even your VCR — was at risk of failing, warned some experts. Banking systems could go haywire. And planes could fall from the sky, predicted others.
In fact, a member of British Columbia’s Action 2000 squad, charged with troubleshooting the problem at the provincial level, gave this dire warning in a 1999 CBC interview.
WATCH | From the archives — Millennium bug explained: Computer programmers saving memory space didn’t anticipate what might happen when the year needed to be exressed in four digits.
“If you’re going to take air travel, then I would get on a plane at least a week or two before the change in the millennium, and I’d schedule my return date at least a week or two past the change …