It seems almost comical now. However if you remember Y2K – and if you are reading this print newspaper I suspect you do – you know the calamity some said would result when the tick of the clock sent the world from the 20th into the 21st century.
January 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the first major non-event of the 21st century.
As the end of the 20th century approached panic set it. At least among some people. There was fear computer programs, many which had been created in the 1960s and 70s, might be unable the make the switch to the new century – Year 2000 – without crashing and causing widespread outages.
There were predictions of planes falling from the skies, mass communication failures, dogs and cats living together, and other catastrophes that could occur with anything that relied on computer based programs.
As December 31, 1999, grew closer plans and protocols were put in place to hopefully handle whatever was to happen, or did not happen. That included those of us in the newspaper business, which is where my career had landed me writing my “Knee Deep in the Hoopla” column for The Californian newspaper here in Southwest Riverside County.
“Here at the newspaper we are prepared for anything and everything,” I wrote in the Dec. 31, 1999, column headlined “Y2K … Bah Humbug.” “Extra crews will be working into the early morning hours covering Southwest County and the region. If nothing happens, you’ll read about it here first.”
The internet was still relatively new and people, at least of a certain age, still relied on television and newspapers for their information.
I had somehow been selected to lead our reporting team in the coverage in the Temecula newsroom. We assembled a small cadre of seasoned journalist to cover what could be the biggest, or at least the first, major event of the new century. As darkness fell our crew began making calls and driving around Southwest County to see what, if any news, was taking place.
My first stop was the Temecula Command Center in one of the city’s fire stations, this one located high on a hill overlooking a wide swarth of the city. City staff and emergency personal sat in a small room, eating chips and crackers and watching the same scenes we’d been viewing on television in our newsroom. They saw the same nothing we had witnessed. As midnight approached, and rain began to fall, I drove to Old Town Temecula, parked and stood in the street listening to music from several bars that were holding parties.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a watch that had belonged to my great-grandfather. He was born in 1838, fought for the Union in the Civil War, and was still alive when 1899 become 1900.
I wound the watch, which still worked, and as the final seconds counted down to midnight, witnessed time pass the same way my great-grandfather had seen the 19th century become the 20th.
Across the region it was lightning strikes, not Y2K computer glitches, that caused scattered power outages. Snow fell in the mountains, and a waterspout was reported off the coast of Oceanside. About one-third of an inch of rain fell on the region that night.
There was a sense of hope then the world would be changing for the better in the new century. I’ll let you decide how that has played out so far.
We are now a quarter of the way through the 21st century. Y2K has been largely relegated to history’s dust bin. What will the next quarter century bring? Someone recently told me optimism is a choice. It truly is.
