Between champagne toasts and choruses of "Auld Lang Syne," tip your party hat to a few hundred UC Davis employees who have special plans of another type for New Year's. Employees with responsibilities in critical areas-from the police and fire departments to computing and facilities-will be working or on call at the stroke of midnight when the Year 2000 computer bug threatens to disrupt essential computing systems and services around the world. They'll be monitoring Y2K-related events in earlier time zones; checking on buildings, utilities, mission-critical computer systems and medical equipment; and being ready to respond to any problems that develop on the main campus or at the medical center in Sacramento. For more than two years, the university has been analyzing millennium-bug risks, testing critical systems and remedying problems. Now a seven-member team is in place to track the related activities of key departments-police, fire, Facilities Services and Information Technology-and triage requests for service on the main campus. Campus Emergency Planner Ev Profita will be at the Sacramento area's emergency operations center at La Sierra Community Center in Carmichael. There, she will have access to information from a worldwide network reporting any Y2K-related problems as midnight moves across the time zones. The campus emergency operations center, which serves to coordinate campus resources to respond to and recover from a major emergency, will be set up in the Fire and Police Building and minimally staffed. Should problems arise, others with key assignments during an emergency will be quickly summoned. Police to boost on-duty force The UC Davis Police Department will significantly increase the number of police and unarmed protective-services officers on duty on the main campus and at the medical center Dec. 31 and Jan. 1. Capt. Michael Corkery says the department expects the medical center in its urban setting to feel the effects of Y2K more than the main campus. He says large gatherings are anticipated in the capital, and the hospital may have to treat those who have had too much to drink or have been in accidents. Medical center spokesman David Ong says the emergency department will be staffed at its normal level, but all five of the department's administrators will be on call. There, Plant Operations and Maintenance will have additional staff at the central plant, which generates electricity for the medical center, and others will check equipment identified as potential Y2K risks: elevator controls, heating and air-conditioning systems, freezers, refrigerators and fire-alarm systems. UCDMC Information Services will augment its crew by about 35. Before midnight, employees will be backing up data and computer programs and, after midnight, will be checking critical equipment. Immediately after midnight, the Clinical Engineering staff, also increased for Y2K, will manually reset the clocks for about 20 pieces of medical equipment. Others will respond to any reports of equipment problems. Back on the Davis campus, Information Technology will have two or three employees monitoring the campus World Wide Web site and its infrastructure, including the network, e-mail and phones. They will be searching for dangerous viruses or signs of hackers trying to invade the network. Plumbers, custodians at work Facilities Services will have additional personnel working and on call, including plumbers, custodial supervisors, and specialists in heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Two dispatchers will be staffing the department's service-request center while three systems operators will move among campus buildings checking power supplies and climate-control systems. "We're taking a little extra precaution," says Louie Slayton, assistant director of plant operations-structural. "It's not that we're expecting problems, but we're doing it just to make everyone feel a little more comfortable." The Fire Department will increase its regular staffing from five firefighters to 11. Also working that night will be the campus's own duty chief, usually an on-call assignment that ro-tates among assistant fire chiefs for the campus and city of Davis. Fire Chief Mike Chandler will be at an emergency operations center in Woodland. As fire rescue coordinator for Yolo County, he will coordinate the response of crews and equipment from up to 18 departments to major incidents in the county or to requests for assistance beyond. What can other departments and individual researchers do? Profita encourages them to identify their critical resources and develop a recovery plan in the event of problems. She is available to assist departments or individuals, and a template for recovery planning is available on the Emergency Services Web page . She also recommends that departments update their internal communications plans and contact lists for the holiday period.