Cindy MacDougall
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 05/00) - People working New Year's Eve for Yellowknife's essential services breathed a sigh of relief as the Y2K bug was squashed around the world.

"Absolutely nothing happened," said Al Mueller of Northland Utilities. "There wasn't even a blip."

Mueller said the utility company was confident everything would work once Jan. 1, 2000 hit, but he said Northland had plenty of staff on call just in case the power shut down.

"All our guys were on standby and the supervisors were in the office all evening, just in case someone called," he said. "But the only call we received was a wrong number."

The city's water and sewer lines also worked just fine after midnight, according to Gary Craig of the city's public works department.

Phone lines around the North had no problems, except for high traffic on long-distance caused by people wishing friends and family happy millennium, said NorthwesTel spokesperson Mark Needham.

"It slowed down once people realized the world wasn't ending," he said.

And deputy fire chief Mike Lowing said it was a quiet weekend, with no Y2K-related problems and few emergencies.

All the city's firefighters were on call, as were Yellowknife's RCMP officers. However, Lowing said Yellowknife streets were fairly quiet.

"In fact, it was a quieter night than usual," he said.

The essential services staff weren't the only ones twiddling thumbs Friday night.

"It was a non-event," said Col. Pierre LeBlanc, commander of the Canadian Forces Northern Area headquarters. "That is great from a strategic point of view, of course."

Northern headquarters was heavily involved in Operation Abacus, the Canadian military's Y2K preparedness plan. Over 100 extra staff were brought from southern Canada in case of an emergency or communications breakdown.

The operations centre at Northern Area headquarters was very quiet Friday night, with soldiers doing routine tasks and watching the world millennium celebrations on television.

LeBlanc said being prepared for the worst was important, and many of the extra staff didn't mind working the holiday.

"I don't think it's a problem," he said. "When people ask what they did when the millennium turned, they can say, 'I was in the Arctic.' And we were prepared, just in case."

Being prepared for a non-event was expensive. The total Northern operation cost the military $871,000.

The fire department, phone company, utility service and city used their own staff to test their equipment and work New Year's Eve, which cost time and some overtime pay.

But Mueller said the extra cost and trouble was probably worth it.

"Right now, the verdict is out on that," he said. "I think it's always good to be prepared for any emergency. This was just another situation we needed to plan for."