Exchanges' Fire Exposes Computer Ills
NEW YORK -- An electrical fire that shut down the New York and American stock exchanges for an hour Friday has exposed deficiencies in the exchanges' emergency procedures and their jointly run computer systems.</br></br>Exchange officials acknowledge the deficiencies but say they're being corrected.</br></br>The early morning fire broke out in a lower Manhattan building that houses the huge Securities Industry Automation Corp., jointly owned by the Big Board and Amex. SIAC, a two-acre collection of computers run by 1,300 employees, is the nerve center of the U.S. stock market. Among other things, SIAC processes the stock quotations from all of the nation's major exchanges and puts out the consolidated tape of prices.</br></br>No computers were damaged in the fire, but the lack of an off-site backup computer facility caused delays when officials decided to switch to emergency power as a precaution.</br></br>The delay -- to nearly 2 1/2 hours after the fire was detected at 8:05 a.m. -- raises questions because most modern computer systems can almost instantaneously switch to emergency power and restart.