Southern Nevada banks, utilities deliver on Y2K promises of no glitches

Monday, Jan. 3, 2000 | 10:25 a.m.

New Year's came and went in Las Vegas with the city's utilities and banks delivering on their Y2K promises.

Banks didn't run out of money and ATM machines worked. Utilities provided uninterrupted electricity, natural gas, phone and water service.

All the utilities had extra staff on duty to deal with possible New Year's Eve problems.

"I have no particular anxieties. This is an opportunity to be at a special place at a special time," said Larry Eden. He's a Nevada Power training administrator who was staffing the Winterwood substation at Sahara Avenue and Sloan Lane on Friday night.

There was a localized power outage Saturday morning caused not by the Y2K bug but by a balloon drifting into a substation.

And few people went to local bank branches and ATMs on Thursday and Friday to try and beat the millennium clock.

"Our branches reported a slow day on Friday," First Security Bank spokesman Jeff Bargerhuff said. "That could have been because a lot of people thought the banks were closed, but there was certainly no rush to get cash at the last minute."

"We've renamed our event command center as the 'nonevent' center," said Laura Schulte, president of Wells Fargo's Nevada operations. "This was exactly what we wanted to see happen. We've run checks at all 114 branches throughout the state, and there are no problems reported anywhere."

George Smith, Bank of America's Nevada president, spent New Year's morning enjoying football on television.

"This truly was a huge non-event," he said.

Smith said vacant Las Vegas ATMs on New Year's Eve reflected Bank of America's customer activity tracking records.

"People took out significantly less money than we anticipated they would," he said. "We expect there will be a lot of that (money) deposited back into the bank over the next week or so."

On Saturday, one of the few banks open in Las Vegas found the number of customers almost equaled staff members.

"There's 10 people on staff today, and (as of mid-day) we have had 18 customers," said Darlene Morales, manager of the California Federal branch at Tropicana Avenue and Pecos Road.

Nevada banks will remain Y2K vigilant for several weeks.

"As statement cycles begin, we will continue to keep an eye on our systems, although we don't expect to find any problems," Wells' Schulte said. "We'll also continue to staff our Y2K event center for the next few weeks."