Mellow crowd bulges to 60,000 at last minute in Reno

Sheriff's deputies on horses shouted "Happy New Year" as they cleared the downtown streets with no resistance within 90 minutes after the new century arrived.

Roger and Crystal Lund got married at midnight and still made it into the streets to see the $100,000 fireworks extravaganza. And Joey Mazzone didn't get arrested.

"Last year I was in South Lake Tahoe and I woke up in jail," said Mazzone of Tahoe City, Calif. "The Reno cops are more lenient."

All in all, it was a relatively quiet night in Reno as a crowd estimated as large as 60,000 swarmed the downtown casino district to whoop it up and mark the passing from one century to another.

Police estimated the crowd at about 25,000 at 11:30 p.m. Friday, but it more than doubled by midnight as thousands swarmed out of the casinos the last 30 minutes, filling five blocks of Virginia Street stretching underneath the Reno arch.

They counted the seconds down on an outdoor sign at the Club Cal-Neva, blew horns, hollered and kissed under the skies bursting with fireworks.

A half-dozen young men with no shirts climbed on top of a newspaper vending machines and several people threw drinks in the air, but there were few fights.

The Washoe County sheriff's office reported 50 people were booked into the county jail between 3 p.m. and 11 p.m. Friday, but only about a dozen of those arrests were made downtown at the New Year's Eve celebration.

"That's not even a busy Wednesday night in the summer," Reno Police Chief Jerry Hoover said.

"The last 5 minutes, the casinos emptied, but it was still a mellow crowd," he said.

"This has been basically a media event. There was a lot of emphasis on terrorism and potential problems and people said, 'The heck with it, I'm staying home.' People decided it was not worth the hassle."

Hoover put the last-minute crowd estimate at 59,900, although Washoe County Sheriff Richard Kirkland said he didn't believe it was that large.

"Obviously the clubs charged too much for hotel rooms and people got scared of Y2K," Kirkland said.

Five minutes after the magic moment, many people returned to the casinos and the streets began to clear.

Eben Bartow of Truckee, Calif., said the fear of violence had been exaggerated.

"It's all peace, it's all good. I haven't seen any violence," he said as four policemen on horses and six on motorcycles led street cleaners down Virginia Street beginning at 1:11 a.m.

Roger Lund, 33, and Crystal Lund, 30, of Contra Costa County, Calif., planned their wedding five months in advance to be the first in 2000 at the Heart of Reno chapel.

"We wanted to be the first Millennium wedding," Mrs. Lund said in her white wedding dress. "We got married right at 12 o'clock and then ran outside to see the fireworks."

In Carson City, a power outage moments after midnight left about 12,000 people on the west side of the city in temporary darkness.

Sierra Pacific Power Co. said the outage was caused when a Mylar balloon got tangled in a power line and tripped a breaker.

In Elko, about 3,500 people braved frosty temperatures in the teens to watch a fireworks display and join the rest of the world in celebrating the new year.

"We all survived. We're all intact," said Lori Gilbert of KELK radio. Many local officials, including the sheriff, fire chief and city council members, spent the evening at an emergency command post playing Monopoly.

In Ely, money literally fell from the sky and hundreds gathered outside for a chance to scoop up a portion of $1,500 dropped off the roof of the Nevada Hotel.

All night, few people expressed any concerns about the Y2K computer bug.

"It's all hype," said Terri Potter of Reno, who came downtown to see the fireworks with her 13-year-old son.

"There's no such thing as Y2K," said Kirk Pierce, 37, San Mateo, Calif. "I want to be out in the middle of the street with everybody else."

In Reno, rookie gamblers and vets alike plugged the slot machines with quarters and nickels and hundreds of people lined up for special New Year's Eve buffets.

"We came here to eat," said Tara Taylor, 7, Incline Village, Nev.

Actually, her father said, they came to Reno to see the fireworks - a $100,000 extravaganza that exploded off the roofs of a half-dozen hotel-casinos. It lasted about 12 minutes.

"We wanted to bring the kids to show them the Millennium so they'll remember it when they're grown up," said Tate Taylor, accompanied by wife, Sandy, and Tex, 5, and Terry, 1, soaking up the atmosphere near the midway at Circus Circus.

Barbara Kaiser of Reno was watching the excitement through a special pair of glittery eyeglasses shaped like "2000."

"We could have gone to parties but chose to be here with our children. It's not often you can bring in the Year 2000 with your 15-year-old and he actually wants to be with you," she said.

An interagency task force greeted the New Year from the basement of a reinforced armory in Carson City, prepared for any eventuality. But the trays of cold cuts and bottles of sparkling grape juice was about all the excitement the evening had to offer.

"This is the biggest training mission ever," said Frank Siracusa, chief of the state Division of Emergency Management, as the countdown to 2000 approached.

All was calm at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport, where airlines canceled an additional 12 flights scheduled Friday night due to a lack of travelers.

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