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History - Australia's worst infrastructure failures

Longford Gas Crisis - 1998

When fire broke out at the Longford gas plant in Victoria, over 90% of the State was left without gas for almost two weeks.

This failure in an essential service left many households dependent on piped gas without heating, hot water, and cooking facilities.

The estimated cost of the Victorian emergency was $200 million for each week that the crisis continued.

Business was also hard hit with the number of workers stood down or on forced leave during this time estimated at between 100,000 and 150,000.

Clearly, the failure of an essential service can have widespread impacts on the community and business

The Year 2000 (Y2K) Problem

The Year 2000 (Y2K) problem or millennium bug was regarded as a potential threat to technology dependent services.

The problem occured in electronic equipment, embedded systems, and computerised systems that use dates to perform certain functions but failed to recognise or process certain dates properly.

Much work was carried out in both government and private enterprise to fix the millennium bug, through testing and remediation programs.

More information about the Y2K problem, and what was done to fix it can be found at The Office of Government Online.