Two other 911 glitches surfaced just after New Year's Eve, but the Council said neither one was traced to Y2K, but had simply been spotted during the Council's extraordinary scrutiny of the nation's telecommunications system. Joint Russian-American command center in Colorado reports no nuclear weapons problems anywhere in the former Soviet Republic. Military command center on the island reports no Y2K effects were noticed. Fire officials say shocks from drilling at a nearby construction site broke the connection. For about seven hours, dispatchers had to take calls down by hand and use hardcopy maps to find locations, instead of pin-pointing them on a computer.
All operations are now back to normal.
You'll recall we talked about in the telecommunications briefing how the public access points work, if there is an enhanced system, and their enhanced system is having some difficulties. It presents no operating problem to people in the Charlotte area because their manual backup for running the 911 system is up and running and, while they are fixing that last glitch in the 911 system, calls will be continued to be processed. We don't have any indication that there were any delays in that system, although, as a general matter, the reason you enhance a system with computer-related dispatch systems is to increase the time of response. But there is no evidence or no recorded incidents of people getting delayed emergency services as a result. Most of us don' t know what that telephone number is.