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- NEW YORK (Reuters)
- Fear of flying, fear of terrorism, fear of the Apocalypse or just plain
fear of the unknown gripped many Americans in the waning days of 1999.
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- After celebrating their caviar hopes and champagne dreams
on New Year's Eve, thousands of people expect to dine well into the new
year on Spam, soup, dehydrated fruit and bottled water, perhaps huddled
in dim light around heat generators.
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- Despite assurances by President Clinton's chief adviser
on year-2000 issues that Americans were not gripped by a siege mentality
or hoarding food and supplies, many were stocking up anyway, just in case.
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- Some fear that outdated software will prevent computers
from distinguishing between the years 2000 and 1900, resulting in widespread
malfunctioning of systems that control important functions such as air
traffic control, defense, banking, utilities and government administration.
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- Lou Marcoccio of GartnerGroup Inc., a business technology
adviser, cited a survey showing 70 percent of Americans planned to buy
emergency items in anticipation of possible power cuts or food shortages.
Sixty percent said they would draw money from the bank before Jan. 1, 15
percent said they would get alternative power sources, and 50 percent said
they would fill car fuel tanks.
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- Emergency Survival Food Service (<http://www.Survivaly2k.comhttp://www.Survivaly2k.com)
was doing a roaring online trade in dehydrated meats, fruit and vegetables,
not just to hard-core survivalists, who predict a Y2K breakdown of law
and order, but also to ordinary families who just want to make sure they
have two weeks' worth of food.
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- ``The year 2000 computer bug is a major threat to our
way of life,'' the Evanston, Ill.-based company said on its Web site. ''Computers
can render our country vulnerable to an electronic Pearl Harbor, a surprise
attack launched in cyberspace by an enemy state of terrorists. Food will
become scarce and it will become a form of currency more powerful than
money itself.''
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- Chief Executive Officer Steve Bernard, however, was a
little less alarmist in a telephone interview with Reuters. ``What's the
worst thing that can happen? Nothing. And then you can still eat the food,''
he said, adding that his company had shipped a $250,000 food package to
a church group and a year's supply to two couples in Britain.
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- Millions of Americans were also stocking up the old-fashioned
way, even if they were not suffering from what Long Island psychologist
Leon Zacharowicz labeled ``millennial delusion'' -- a fear that something
catastrophic or apocalyptic will happen as the year changes to 2000.
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- ``We're selling every flashlight and every two-burner
(propane) stove,'' said Mike Damico, manager of a Kmart store in Manhattan.
At a nearby hardware store, Weinstein & Holtzman, New Yorkers were
snapping up flashlights, batteries and propane stoves. Owner Jeffrey Hymowitz
said he had sold more than 600 flashlights this month, compared with 75
normally.
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- The New York City Housing Authority sent letters to its
600,000 tenants urging them to stock up on food, water and batteries and
develop an ``emergency plan'' to deal with potential blackouts or banking
problems. Meals on Wheels, which distributes hot food to the elderly, has
sent 45-pound care packages to 16,000 New Yorkers.
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- ``I'm waiting for disaster,'' one shopper, Jay Wishner,
told the New York Daily News. ``Do I have cases of food! Cases of rice,
containers of water, canned ham and vegetables!''
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- Across the Hudson River in New Jersey, it was the same
story. ``If nothing happens, I'm going to have a generator,'' said Frank
Seidl, a Trenton fireman buying the emergency power equipment in West Windsor
on a frigid day. ``If something does (happen), I'll have heat for my family.''
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- U-Haul International Inc., which operates a network of
960 propane stations across North America, reported a steady increase in
propane sales in recent weeks and said sales were up 30 percent this week
compared with the same week last year.
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- ``It appears that people are concerned about the upcoming
Y2K weekend and want to have their propane tanks topped off for their grills
and heaters, just in case,'' said Richard Herrera, U-Haul's vice president
for retail sales.
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- Several makers of processed food that stores easily said
sales were up in the last months of 1999. Hormel Foods Corp., which makes
Spam luncheon meats and canned Dinty Moore stews, said it was seeing signs
of ``Y2K-related pantry inventory build-up'' which helped boost the company's
fiscal fourth-quarter profits.
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- Fruit and vegetable canner Del Monte Foods Co. said it
expected sales in the December quarter to be 1 million to 2 million cases
higher than normal due to buying ahead of Y2K.
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- Spokesman John Faulkner of Campbell's Soup Co. said the
company's soup shipments increased 2-3 percent at the end of Campbell's
first fiscal quarter in December. He said Campbell had received requests
from large-volume club stores for more 12-packs of soup, a request attributed
to Y2K-related buying.
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- U.S. banks are packing their vaults with spare cash.
Currency in circulation, at a record $589 billion on Dec. 8, has set new
highs every week this quarter.
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- A spokesman for the Brink's security company, part of
Pittston Co., said it had been working with the Federal Reserve and banks
for over a year to handle the extra volume of money shipments. He declined
to give details.
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- Fear of terrorism prompted the city of Seattle to cancel
its New Year's party, and in New York, where some 8,000 police officers
will be patrolling Times Square Friday night, officials denied rumors that
they had bought 250,000 body bags and planned to use the ice rink at Madison
Square Garden as a temporary morgue in the event of a terrorist attack.
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- Even as he announced a New Year's contingency plan for
New Jersey's largest city, Newark, Mayor Sharpe James acknowledged the
danger of scaring the public. ``The worst thing we can do is to make people
think the sky is falling,'' he said.
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- Federal Aviation Administration head Jane Garvey took
James' words to heart and will fly from Dallas to San Francisco on New
Year's Eve -- to show there is nothing to worry about.
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- Airline ticket sales are way down due to public fears
that air traffic control will be disrupted. In addition, airlines are taking
a cautious approach. As a result, airlines have cancelled most of their
flights over the Friday-Saturday year change. There will be only 45 airliners
in U.S. skies at the stroke of midnight (EST), compared with an average
of 5,500 to 6,000 military and civilian planes aloft on any given afternoon
in the United States, the FAA said.
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- Psychologist Zacharowicz said it may be irrational, but
fear of the millennium can be real to those he is treating. ``As you get
closer and closer to New Year's Eve, people are talking more and more about
their anxieties.
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- ``But it's the extreme action -- that person building
a bomb shelter -- that we have to be careful of,'' he told the New York
Post.
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