Canadian firemen were cursing the Millennium bug after it burnt down one of their shiny fire stations.

The IT menace did its worst on a Montreal station after firemen were called away to a fire at a nearby building. One of the firemen had been frying a hearty meal of chips on the station cooker, and left the food cooking when the alarm sounded. The stove’s power would normally be cut off automatically via a breaker switch following such an emergency. But unbeknown to the firefighters, city officials had been testing the city’s computers for the Y2K bug and disabled the switch.

So the station had its chips. The blaze caused around £225,000 of damage and the building, or what's left of it, is closed indefinitely, today’s Daily Telegraph reports.

In August, thousands of Londoners were left without electricity (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/6163.html) due to a botched attempt by London Electricity to fix the Millennium bug. ®

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