Preparing for disaster
Military performs final Y2K training exercises

Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 27/99) - A 747 crashes on Banks Island and 160 of its 300 passengers die.

Fortunately the crash occurred only in the imaginations of military personnel preparing for potential problems associated with the year 2000.

Canadian Forces in Yellowknife received the call of the crash and reported it to national headquarters in Ottawa. Ottawa called Trenton, Ont. to send up three Hercules aircraft and the planes dropped off search and rescue technicians, medics and survival supplies.

Several helicopters were sent from Cold Lake, Alta. to Sachs Harbour, ferrying crash victims into Inuvik where they would be transferred to larger planes and flown south for hospital care.

Training such as the situation above is part of a program called Abacus, which is essentially a national training program to solve any problems associated with the year 2000.

"On Jan. 1 at midnight it won't be the case that all the lights are going to go out all at once. It won't happen like that," said 2nd Lt. Mark Gough.

"It will be a bit here and a bit there and slowly there could be social unrest."

Gough said 62 extra troops are set to be deployed to the North before Dec. 27 from Shilo, Man. to help out with the year 2000 transition.

If needed, a total of 201 people may be relocated temporarily.

"There may be a problem in Victoria and we won't need them here, so it makes sense for some to stay in Shilo and go where needed."

The final five-day training exercise session took place Sept. 13 through 17 in Yellowknife and communications with both Ottawa and the rest of the North was stressed.

Six Northern centres were assigned as node-centres, or places where there is radio communication with Rangers in more remote locations.

Inuvik, Cambridge Bay, Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Yellowknife and Whitehorse are the six Northern node-centres.

Tests were carried out with radio communication to ensure that there would be a way to communicate if phone lines were down or if there were glitches using e-mail, fax and phone communication.

Other objectives of the exercises include practising and confirming plans to ensure the continued operation of Canadian Forces infrastructure, exercising the decision-making process required to assign Canadian Forces resources and to confirm standard operating procedures for staff.