CITY HALL WILL DRILL FOR Y2K; SHORT POWER OUTAGE TO TEST GENERATORS.

Byline: Beth Barrett Daily News Staff Writer

City Hall East, Los Angeles' interim City Hall, on Thursday will experience the absence of power.

The idea of being without electricity, even for a few seconds, is sending shudders through the temporary seat of government.

Department of General Services general manager Randall Bacon said the test of new, state-of-the-art $3 million generators is necessary under actual workday conditions to see if they can keep the municipal government running in a real energy outage caused by an earthquake, Y2K or some other crisis.

The switch to the generators is scheduled between 9 and 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

Most public generators are set up to provide just enough power to get people out of buildings, but the new city system - built in response to the 1994 Northridge Earthquake - would allow the more than 2,000 people in City Hall East to keep working, officials said.

Bacon said departments were notified that the lights could go out, the air conditioner might stop and the elevators might not work briefly, while computer programs also could be affected.

Several officials, including some in the Mayor's Office, who are preparing for Y2K simulated exercises today said they weren't aware of or prepared for the additional test Thursday and expressed concern city business could be disrupted.

Department of Water and Power officials will be standing by to turn the electricity back on if the generators fail, Bacon said.

Today's citywide exercises will involve departments in a number of simulations of possible problems that might result after New Year's Day 2000 should some computers fail to recognize the new millennium date.

Bob Canfield, with the City Administrative Officer's emergency preparedness division, said scenarios likely will include sending law enforcement personnel and others to simulated crowd scenes, among other exercises.

The exercises will be the most extensive citywide Y2K dress rehearsal to date, said Frank Martinez, executive director of the city's Year 2000 project, which is estimated to ultimately cost about $110 million.