IceStorm 98 Study

Const. Al Melvin [AM] spent 10 years in the Canadian Air Forces with the Military Police, from 1985 to 1995. In ‘95 he became a constable with the Kingston Police Force. Later in 1996 he went back to the reserves of the Canadian Forces (the security branch) where has been working for almost 2 years now as a reserve officer. This is in addition to his regular job with the city police. AM’s duties as a reserve officer consist primarily of security and administrative functions within division headquarters.

AM was called in to work at about 11 p.m. on the evening the state of emergency was declared (January 8). His primary task was to start a Police operations command post to coordinate door to door searches to ensure the safety and welfare of all the residents of Kingston. Given the magnitude of the storm, AM remembers that there was a lot of concern about how to check on residents and how to get information out to the public.

AM mentions that he, like all officers, is usually doing shift work and had actually been off duty at the time the ice storm happened. He was sleeping when the phone call came asking him to return to work. He consequently had not realized the magnitude of the situation, especially since he himself had lost power for only a couple of hours. It was only when he got into his vehicle and drove into the city (to the police station) that he realized the full magnitude of the storm. AM recalled the scene: “[I] had to do detours all the way down to find roads that were passable from electrical wires and downed trees. It was just unbelievable. An eerie silence and right off the bat it looked like a war zone. It really did, it looked like the city was taken out by some heavy, heavy attack from the military.”

As he was driving down to the city, AM began to get quite concerned about the fact that he had not realized the severity of the storm. He felt a need to act and try to get things back to normal. Every street he turned on in the hopes of finding a clear road was eventually blocked. He said it was just amazing how the city was laden by the storm; he had never seen anything like it.

Once AM arrived at the station, he and his co-workers were briefed on the situation and told what was required of them. Besides maintaining the safety and welfare of Kingston residents, a key duty was to disseminate information to citizens. AM said he believes that one of the most difficult aspects of any emergency is dealing with a lack of information. When the power fails or the phone system shuts down, people expect them to come back on within a relatively short time frame. In some areas, however, the power was lost 3 to 4 weeks, but generally, the prime parts of the city were back in 7 to 10 days.

AM noted that many residents were reluctant to leave their homes, and said this was a serious safety and health concern. People (including senior citizens) kept on waiting at home, hoping the power would come back on soon. With each day, however, welfare concerns increased. AM found the fact that people were reluctant to leave their homes very hard to understand. In his opinion, the term ‘shelter’ contributed to this reluctance as people did not want to think of themselves as depending on handouts like a welfare case. AM himself had relatives in Kingston who refused to leave their houses for close to 10 days although they had the option of staying in AM’s home which had not lost power.

AM explains that, unless there is a mental health issue, the police don’t have the authority to remove people from their homes against their will. All they can do is to disseminate information and let people know when power can be expected back (so that residents can make informed decisions), talk to residents about safety concerns within the house (candles and fire places etc.), and let people know where they can receive supplies (water, firewood and so on).

In terms of the organization and coordination of tasks, AM explains that the police created a link with the Canadian Armed Forces through Emergency Measures Ontario. That is to say, an official request was forwarded to Emergency Measures, which then arranged for military assistance. The request to, and approval by, Emergency Measures was done by phone. According to AM, a member from City Hall was quite involved in this process. Thus, politicians were requesting military assistance. City councillor Randy Reid, who also works for Emergency Measures, was involved in establishing some of the contact with the official channels to do the request. And although “things would be going up through the chain of command” for formality’s sake, “phone calls were already being made” to the base by local officials by the time Emergency Measures got officially involved in brokering the requests. Thus the need for formality was maintained, but the urgency of the situation meant that things weren’t always being done in the usual order.

AM notes that “the military was exceptionally forthcoming towards the city of Kingston. Over the course of the 10 days, the military provided 1,000 soldiers, which does not include the 1,000 cadets provided by Royal Military College. The RMC provided 500 cadets the first day and 500 cadets the second day. The military provided between 100 and 200 soldiers per day just to deal with operations. This number does not include their assistance in other operations going on with regards to the ice storm. One hundred soldiers assisted the police in search parties, and they and the police would also do coordination for Ontario Hydro, for roads and grounds. Hydro needed assistance. They were asking for help to do line hook ups and also to clear lines. And you had roads and grounds that had to be cleared from major debris away from the areas where Hydro had to do their work.”

AM states that what he and his colleague(s) in the command post were doing, and very effectively, “was having a central link to ... arrange whatever you need; the logistics of it. So, you’ve got Brian Sheridan, you’ve got Joe Davis. You’ve got all the people working roads and grounds, Ontario Hydro, coming to us and saying ‘we need 50 soldiers for tomorrow...’ So, at the end of every day ... I would make a phone call to base operations and say here is what we require for tomorrow, for soldiers. Randy Reid has already done the official link up [with Emergency Measures], confirming that the soldiers are available, and all we were doing, basically, is [saying] ‘here is what we need.’”

AM was aware of the fact that CFB Kingston was tasked to take care of all of Eastern Ontario as well as Montreal, and tried to keep his requests for help to a bare minimum: “We are trying to make sure we are taking or are asking for the assistance of so many, absolutely what we require, basically, no more. We were trying to do a proper juggling to say ... If it was just Kingston then we would say we need everybody. But knowing that everybody was in dire straits, and for the most part, we probably fared a lot better than a lot of cities going further east. So, I would do the arrangements at the end of the day with Staff Sergeant Bob Napier here to acquire the assistance of the military. And as well we asked for equipment from the military, generators, lots and lots of generators.”

To speed up operations, AM explains that he and Staff Sergeant Napier also went over to City Hall and set up another police operations office: “So we had a communications site with the police department here (at Police Headquarters). We had one of our radios over there set up with all the lengths. Full lines were installed, especially for us to do the police operations portions, cell phones were provided by one of the cell companies, it was Clear Net”.

AM explains that he thinks the other cellular phone companies had problems because they lost some towers because of the ice, and the system was overloaded with calls. This would also explain why Clear Net did not have any problems; it did not have as wide a distribution in the area as other companies. AM says he had never even heard of Clear Net prior to the ice storm, although they had been around for a while.

Once they were set up in City Hall, the radios and telephones were not just used by the police but also by the military. A Sergeant Major from The Princess of Wales’ Own Regiment [possibly Peter Finn?] was attached directly to the police command centre. He is second from the top of the non-commission ranked level.

Asked to explain the difference between non-commissioned and commissioned rank levels AM explains: “The highest ranking in the non-commissioned rank level is Chief Royal Officer. In the Queens commission we officers are the basic management of the Canadian forces if you want to look at the two perspectives. You’ve got the non-commissioned rank levels, the soldiers, and you’ve got the officers in the management. Not to say that the senior NCO’s or senior non-commissioned members aren’t in the management level, but just [that] the two are the structure of the military organization as far as the leadership. Basically officers implement policy, and the policy comes down as dictated by the government. Officers incorporate that, and the non-commissioned rank levels are usually the ones who allocate tasks to make it happen. Sergeant Major is actually rank level’s last officer, but Sergeant Major is an appointment, like he is the Sergeant Major in charge of a unit. He has got a rank level but he has got a specific appointment.”

Coming back to the set up of an additional police operations office, AM explains that he began the set up of the office the very first evening the state of emergency was declared: “That evening we went in for 11 PM, worked straight through the night and the following day, making sure that our office was set up. A big portion of the whole operation was this planning process.”

AM explains that he was working out of City Hall before it was officially designated as additional police operations office the next day: “We were working out of here [police headquarters] and we were also down there [at City Hall] too. That morning, during the early part of the morning, we started moving down there. Everybody had gathered the people who were basically all called in ... People were being contacted right through the night to come in and start doing the planning process and decision making. So, there were a lot of people that were around at City Hall.”

According to AM, the reason for wanting to set up a command post at City Hall instead of another location was because it was so central. He had some difficulty remembering exactly how or when the City Hall command post came together, and said the hours and days tended to blur into each other as they worked very long hours. “I’m just trying to think if we moved down that night or if we moved down in the day time ... During that period of time, the 13, 14 days, I saw Staff Sergeant Napier working 16-20 hour days, right through, just going home basically to change, and then a couple of hours, and come right back. And after, the later part of it, day one was no different than day 14. I am just trying to remember how exactly it started off. I believe it was during the evening or the early morning hours when actually we were setting up there. There wasn’t an actual official designation right away.”

As the next step, AM explained that in speaking with Emergency Measures Ontario and [city CAO] Gardner Church, it was decided that military help was needed to carry out the searches and make sure the citizens were safe: “After we had coordinated and arranged for the military to assist us, we did a planning process where we broke the city down into different areas. We received intelligence reports from all of our officers on the road on a regular basis telling us which areas were the worst off. So we prioritized the areas in the City based on the devastation that those areas were struck by.”

“The central core of the City was hit ... hard, and that was probably the most fragile portion of the concentration. And as well we wanted to ensure that when we started the operation, our designations were evaluated based on what we were hearing. We were much in the dark initially, from a command post perspective. You are inside, inside of a cubicle, if you want to call it that, and we’re receiving information from all of our sources to tell us these are the worst areas, based on visual [evidence]. And also getting the information from Hydro to find out what areas were completely crippled. Some places had intermittent power, but the areas that were deemed to be the critical ones would certainly be the ones with the concentration of elderly people. Trying to identify that, and I’m actually planning on doing an interview with an individual who is going to be doing a focus on how to deal with that in the future. Certainly the nicest thing, if there is a nice thing about something of this nature, is that lessons learned help us plan better, so things never happen again.”

When asked about how Ontario Hydro performed during the crisis, AM said he felt Hydro was weak during the first three or four days, but added that they did not actually need the utility until the fourth or fifth day: “Initially we just put a plan together and had people going out into areas that we received information from. The first couple of days, I would say that that would be an accuracy [that Hydro’s involvement left something to be desired] as far as information received. Because the first couple of days everything happened so rapidly that we were just putting people out to the areas that were hardest hit. The information I would be getting from members of the City Hall, be it Ontario Hydro, certainly day three and day four were critical days for us. Because of the fact that during the first few days we had 100 to 150 soldiers from the base task with us, plus I know that there were other soldiers working in support of the recovery operations, that day three, day four, we had arranged the assistance of RMC cadets. And we had like a 1,000 during the weekend. Now, I’ve got a mass number of individuals to assist in going door to door. Knowing the numbers, I knew it would be all to cover the entire new City of Kingston in those days. So, having said that, we wanted to do our double checks on the following day. To go back and re-do houses, and that’s when we were trying to find out from Ontario Hydro when and what areas still were without power.”

AM is not quite sure, but thinks that the first time he had contact with Ontario Hydro was around day four or day five of the emergency. However, he had not tried to reach them before then, as he and his colleagues were “dealing with everybody as people were congregating together from the City. We were tapping the resources that were already within the City limits as far as City Hall goes. We were collecting information from everybody. All the players who were within City Hall.”

AM explained how he and Staff Sgt. Napier developed their plans: “Basically after [we had our] intelligence, and knowing what areas were the hardest hit, [and] knowing how many people we had to do the searches, we broke the city down into a number of areas. We figured out approximately the size of these areas, and then, with the people we had, broke down those individuals to go in different areas ... [During] the first two days, when we were doing our plans up, we had 120 to 150 soldiers. Which is not a lot of people when you are [talking about] the whole new City of Kingston. How many houses can 120 people cover? And we can only have them out during the daylight hours for safety reasons. Because if they start walking ... if they start seeking people out in the dark, there will be a hazard to them. So, it was primarily during the daylight hours. You are looking at first thing in the morning till 5:30, 6 PM.”

Aside from knocking on doors, the soldiers distributed flyers. The flyers explained where all the shelters were and what they offered, and talked about where residents could get supplies, such as generators, batteries, and candles. The flyers were made by the communications people and the media relations people from City Hall.

Parts of Kingston could not be serviced because Ontario Hydro has the exclusive ability to correct problems of downed electricity in certain areas of the City. But AM said this did not result in a significant problem: “Clearly, for the most part the devastation was in the core area. So, utilities, public utilities [Utilities Kingston workers] were present right from day one.” AM and Staff Sgt. Napier also worked with OPP representatives to address issues in the former Kingston Township, but the devastation was generally worse in the old city core.

Police relied heavily on maps of the City to help them put together effective plans for the door-to-door checks: “As a matter of fact, we had, or we still have, maps, ‘war maps’ set up for the whole city. That was one of the first things we did. And to this day, we still have a command post that’s ready to operate, if anything ever happened to this city. Sgt. Major Finn, from the military, was keeping the maps up to date. As well, whenever we received information, we would always get together to review the information and to update the maps. So, if one of us was gone for whatever reason, doing another task, then whoever was present would just update the map on the actual war maps, drawing on them because every day was a new map. And every day was a virtually new area too. We were having these areas to be searched. We were identifying priority areas initially, and we would actually photocopy portions of a map. What areas and what streets. If the streets were large enough, we would break down the police members who were present into teams, and give them a map with a planning order. These are the areas that need to be done. Your area to look at and check is here. Here are a bundle of flyers. We had arranged transportation for them. We had arranged food for them. We had to have everything set up, so they knew where to go and what they were doing. They are out all day but they come back at lunch time. They tell me or Staff Sergeant Napier they have accomplished the area. We checked it off the board. We had a visual record of every area that’s been searched.”

“We knew the areas that were still without power. So, the first couple of days were the critical days where [we were] just getting going. We had about 150 soldiers per day. Day three and day four were the days that we knew we’d be all set. We had a system in place. We had a lot of people from the military. Those two days, [we had] 500 and 400 [soldiers] on the Saturday and Sunday, with the cadets. We used transit buses. We had the whole fleet of transit buses at our disposal.”

AM is not sure whose idea it was to use the transit buses to move military personnel through the City, but recalls that John Giles [Manager of Mobility, Kingston Transit] was taking care of this at some point. “The moment I said, ‘I got a 1,000 soldiers, and I need transportation,’ they knew they had to [use the buses]. John Giles ... was taking care of [this]. I would go to him, and he had the allocation and the resources for transport, whether it be buses or just cars.”

Summarizing the logistics of the search efforts, AM explains that: “On day one, we arranged for 150 soldiers to assist the search efforts. We do the plan up during the night. We have the areas researched. Every person gets the map and the plan. Here is what we are going to do, and [here are] the areas [to be] searched. I arranged for transport at a certain time. Go to McNaughton base, pick them up. They are going in different vehicles, so we might have 20 per vehicle. So we got 7 vehicles, small buses for 20 people. So, I arranged pick up times again for food, transport back out, completion times, somebody in charge of the group. That’s one of the nicest things about the military structure. It has planning control, it has somebody in charge all the time. Their structure is ah ... I mean, it never fails. You know, the command structure, somebody is in charge, and that is very important for the operation. It is clearly very important to know who is in charge and who you have to disseminate information to.”

Explaining the specifics of the types of groups he had to organize and how the leadership within and among these groups was conducted, AM said: “What would happen is, the groups that I was getting were different units on base or different organizations and they would all come down. And I would, say, out of the 150, I might get 45 soldiers from the Canadian Forces School of Communication and Electronics. And maybe 40 from 79 regiment. Another 40 from the First Canadian Division Headquarters and Signals Regiment. And when they are sending 40 people down, they are sending people from different rank structures. So that somebody is in charge of about 38 people. There would always be a leader in the group, an officer, or a senior NCO who clearly says ‘I’m in charge of this group, what do you want us to do?’ From a police perspective, or my perspective, there were no glitches that I saw, other than ones that would be expected. Like transportation being late. That’s gonna happen. Things like that. But as far the work relationship goes, the military were fantastic. Clearly, it was a unique situation within the City, where we had the ability to do the planning and did it. For a lot of the cities throughout Eastern Ontario, the Canadian Forces virtually took over. They (the military) went out, they didn’t do searches door to door in areas as determined by the city. Although, I am sure, they were in constant consultation with the city officials. But they went out as a group, and checked whole areas out as they determined themselves. We had the ability, I think, from the City perspective, to do the planning so that all that had to be done was a level of cooperation between the agencies and the organizations. And, we would be responsible for the efforts that were undertaken.”

AM sees amalgamation as having had a largely positive impact on the way the ice storm was handled: “With the amalgamation, I think, we put a lot of people together from all the areas, and in doing so, I think we brought not just one level of expertise in a certain area. We brought a whole bunch of people together very rapidly and it was basically utilizing everyone’s experience that one can conglomerate to get the job done. And I think that the level of teamwork and cooperation ....” (end of side 1 of tape)

Asked whether there were any problems with the response, AM said the biggest setback he experienced was “not having a place set up, a place ready to have an immediate response. For example, we had to set up an area [to] work [in]. We had to move equipment in there. There is nothing more important, after seeing what has happened, than to have a proper command post, emergency operation center. Anything, any building that’s ready to go. Basically, virtually a plug in the wall outlet is a start. And it’s probably the most important aspect for success when it comes to responding to emergencies.”

Asked why he thinks the Correctional Staff College was not used as the emergency operation center, AM said he’s not sure but believes it may have had something to do with confusion over the draft emergency plan. Regardless of that, he said he thinks City Hall worked “exceptionally well.” The only problem was that City Hall had to [go] back to business, and this meant moving out to another location while the emergency was still underway.“The key thing of course, and probably the biggest problem of that work area is that City Hall shuts down and that’s why you have to detach and go to a separate building. So, you know, whether or not the current office location is the future EOC or whether or not there needs to be another site selected, that will be up to the powers that be to decide that. Although, I certainly would suggest that the site be ready to go at a moment’s notice, wherever it be.”

Asked whether the Staff College or Gore Road would be a better site for the EOC, AM said it depends on the nature of the emergency. “Basically, if you are looking at the Pittsburgh Township offices -- the Gore Road site -- it’s in an area where if something would happen in the City, you are actually far enough away to not actually be in the middle of it all. So, I think there are pros and cons, whereas the current site down at the Correctional College is right within the City limits. But if you had a crisis, and that particular area is too close, the crisis is of such a nature that you are right there, you are right in the middle of it too. I think it has to be remote yet proximal ... You need a major artery for replenishment of supplies. So, clearly with any type of operation, you want to be close to be able to have transport. I mean, you have lost everything else. You have lost communication. You have lost everything, and what is left is your ability to travel and transport. You have to be somewhere [close] to a main artery. So, that would be one of the key things I would carry on from that question.”

Another thing that could be improved on is training: “Having people in all aspects maybe collectively trained [would help]. For example, we’ve got key players from different organizations within the City for everybody to be trained together as a team in crisis management, emergency operations. Practical training was obviously second to theory. Theory is theory, but reality is a lot harder, is very much different. But certainly, you know, key players in any type of emergency [should] train collectively, so the left hand knows what the right hand is doing without being asked, and responds with professionalism and ability greatly increased. Any type of courses where you actually have key people who are designated. You know, who you call. Like, the recall list. In a state of emergency, you’ve got a recall list. Let’s say from each different department that you see there, these are the people, for the new City of Kingston, who are the primary contacts. And those are the ones who have been collectively trained. Because I think training is very important.”

AM explains that the police did not use the emergency plan and were going on their own because no plan existed for a situation like the ice storm: “We were on our own, and clearly we didn’t have a very difficult mandate anyway. What we had to do was make sure that our plan was such that we had the primary target areas first. The areas that were hardest hit, we had to cover them as fast as we possibly could, given the limitations that we had. Following the emergency [plan] wasn’t required. It was a very unique type of situation. In my estimation, this was such a unique situation that you wouldn’t go page by page [in an emergency plan] and say, ‘okay, next we do this, next we do this.’ This was one of those ones where we’re going to start doing certain things very rapidly and very quickly. If you look at a train derailment, a plain crash, or an evacuation, you are talking about a specific area. Here we are talking about the entire new City of Kingston, give or take a bit. How do you cordon off the whole City of Kingston? How do you evacuate the entire City? Clearly, there is no plan that I think we would have had written for this type of situation. Is there probably going to be a new plan with this in it? I think probably there will be. I think there are so many lessons learned that we are going to be able to have something in place with all of our experiences from this particular incident.”
A problem mentioned by AM was the fact that people had to work together without knowing each other at all: “I think what was also unique in this problem is the fact that you have got a bunch of people that are not at all familiar with each other; that have never worked with each other because of the amalgamation. I would say what better way to bring people together, although [it was under] unfortunate circumstances. But, overall, I think the response was very effective. Do I wish I had a 1,000 people on day one? I wish I did. I wish I had 10, 000 people to help me out, and to help the police respond to needs, but the reality is that this wasn’t possible because we weren’t the only place hit. And we, in a lot of ways, weren’t the most severely hit either.”

When asked how many soldiers there were in total AM responded that: “I’d be giving you a rough estimation in saying there was probably 4,000 or 5,000, though I was using that number as far as the 1,000... Insofar as day one, we had 150 soldiers, day two we had a hundred ... A lot of days they were the same soldiers but ... Over the whole period of time within the base we had a 1,000 plus. On the third and fourth day, I had 500 cadets and 500 cadets. So like a 1,000 on that weekend together. For the whole weekend ... You break them down into 20 transit buses. You split them up into sectors. You do all the planning for them and say this is your area of responsibility. Here is the time line. Here is your transport, your food. Any special equipment that may be necessary. Blankets. Water. Things for the people we were given. Once you have all of that and break it up, then the military goes out and does it. It’s just that simple. They are experts in this.”

Food preparation for the military was taken care of inside City Hall: “There were areas that had power, and there was a lot of fast food, let me tell you. A lot of fast food. We had donations and orders, a bit of both. For example, the submarines, from one of the sub jobs came in boxes. You name it. I believe there were some donations too, but I wasn’t involved in the financial aspect.”

With regards to costs, AM explains that they did not have to spend money because they used resources that were already set up.

In terms of decision making, AM explains that in this instance, decisions were often made independently, and it was only after the fact that superiors were informed: “It’s funny, I think in a lot of cases, we made decisions and did things, and then told our chain [of command] after the fact. I think we responded to the needs and requirements immediately. We passed information up as fast we could as well. But we actually had a very, very good link to our management, to our chief and the staff inspectors ... Basically we gave them situation reports and updates as far as what we were doing. We received direction from our chief, as well as from Gardner Church and from the politicians ... It was one of the rare times where you know what you have to do. You do it. The red tape isn’t there. The job gets done.”

Asked what he would do differently next time, AM said he would get the portable transit shelters going sooner: “We identified right from the onset the requirement for shelters, and they were set up. That requirement was identified by other people, not from the police operations portion. Then the idea came up, ‘well, we are having people reluctant to leave their house. So, we brought out [City] buses [and parked them on the streets and served soup and coffee] from them. We parked them in areas that were still without power and encouraged the public through media and flyers to utilize the shelters. Again if you are in a cold house and you are staying warm by blanket, then you put a bus in a central area that’s very, very close to an essential mass. People can come out and get a hot coffee. And the bus doesn’t look like a shelter. You know, a bus isn’t ... you are not thrown in with tons of people. You walk in, get what you want, and warm up. And it was used, but by the time that idea was incorporated, clearly the first four or five days had gone by. And it should have been used right from the very beginning. And as well, I think, it’s a great [place to hand out information]. You put the flyers on the bus, people get them from the buses. I would say, that the next time I would do that basically within the first 24 hours.”

AM said he has had emergency training as a police officer, but does not have formal accreditation. That’s why he stressed the need for people to get formal, collective training. The police and the military are usually in a leadership role, but collective training could make their jobs easier because each person or section will understand what everybody else does, and this will prevent duplication of efforts: “When you break down the emergency operations center, you have got your logistical support staff, your media relations, communications; you have got people who are taking care of generators, supplies, break all that down onto a chart to show exactly who is where, who is doing what and who is responsible, and have them train collectively in that format. We never really saw, until the first week, an actual break down. When we moved over to the Pittsburgh Gore Road office, that’s when the actual structure came up on a board. We said, ‘okay, here is the actual structure, here is the EOC manager,’ so we knew where we were on what we call the food chain. But I think it is very important that you have that flow chart, that chain of command, if you will, that structure before the start of it.”

As an example of concrete difficulties resulting from not having such a flow chart before going into the Gore Road office, AM names the search for a powerful generator for the water purification plant. Fearing that the water purification plant would go down, everybody was making calls in the search for a generator. AM himself even called the U.S. military.

Having quite a bit of contact with the media, AM remembers “how important a role the media played in this. We couldn’t give them enough information because the information that they did get they were giving out to whoever could receive it. The hardest thing to understand about the whole ice storm is how dependent we really are on communications. I think that was the biggest eye opener that I saw. We were giving the media as much as we can, hoping that they were giving it to the public. But of course we were sitting in a cubicle saying, well, how much of the public can actually get it. So we were trying to do a twofold thing. We were giving as much to the media as we could, to give it to people who can receive it, and hoping that they are going to pass it along to neighbors and friends who can’t. So we’ve got people telling people what’s happening, and we’ve got the search teams doing the same thing by [handing out] flyers.”

The media’s role was extensive and greatly appreciated, AM added. “I think that the rapport between the media and the police was exceptional; it really was. I know that I enjoyed working with the media. They were fantastic. So much to the point where I suggested with our move to the Gore Road office that the portion of the building where we were going to have our police operations cell, right up beside us are the communicators and media. Because, for the most part, as the organization and the EOC center is developed, information is disseminated to the media, through your media relations and communicators. Police play a vital role in information, be it input or export. Therefore, it’s only logical to have your media relations people located, and that’s actually what happened when we moved over to Gore Road. Right on the same wing where we are, the office beside us, is the media relations. So, we were right there.”

In terms of stress, AM explains that he is used to a fair deal of stress in his occupation but that, nevertheless, near the end, he started to feel really exhausted and continued working anyway. He explained that it’s a normal effect of stress to develop strong determination and a kind of tunnel vision: “You know, if you gotta do something and if anybody gets in your way, you say ‘no, this has to be done,’ and you do it. You get tunnel vision ... I think the biggest stress for a lot of us is probably not on you, but on the family.”

For AM, who is not married, coping with stress worked out well because he had power at home. “So there wasn’t as much of a crisis. For the ones who came to work over and over and over again whose families didn’t have power, those were the ones where we got detailed information with regards to family stress. But still there was that level of stress where there is power at home but there is still no telephone, there is still no cable. So, there is still that lack of communication for the first four days with regards to what’s going on. And of course, a lack of being together. The first three days, Staff sergeant Napier and myself, and Sergeant Finn, we were up until probably about 2 in the morning the following morning, and back in at 6 in the morning. Our day searches would go from 7 o’ clock to 6 PM, and from 6:30 PM until 1, 2, 3 in the morning we were doing the plan up for the following day. So, the first three hours you are making sure you’ve got what you need. You need transport, you need food, you need the communications, you need to make sure you’ve got the people. Plus the flyers have got to be printed. So, you make sure you have all of that. So, you have the planning process. You can’t do anything without a plan.”

Reasserting and elaborating the importance of a plan or solid structure as a base, AM said: “A vision without a plan is a waste of time, that’s a philosophy of mine. So, we were fortunate, we worked fantastic together as a team within the command post being the OPP, the City, and the military. You have the OPP, the Kingston police with their different territory. That is hard. That is hard because of their boundaries. Although we are working together, I can’t tap them, nor do I have any access to their resources; and conversely, nor do they to us. So, we are planning the searches for the Township, yet we are trying to figure out their resources, our resources. I thought that that was a bit challenging. My primary focus has to be the new City of Kingston. But my boundaries for policing are actually Pittsburgh Township and Kingston central. You’ve got Kingston west which is still [under the jurisdiction of the] OPP, and you’ve got areas out there where we are talking back and forth trying to work together, and expecting an area to either be fine, because that’s the intelligence we were getting from their people, or to have been told that an area has been searched, when somewhere in the latter part, either day five or six, an area of the old Kingston Township hadn’t been checked. The Reddendale area had not been searched. It was OPP territory. You know, the left hand thought the right hand had taken care of it, and the right hand hadn’t. And again, that goes to further my belief in the structure. It’s so important to have a very solid structure and base for command.”

As a solution to problems such as those caused by the division of labor between the OPP and the Kingston Police, AM suggests: “One department is the solution. It is so important. You can’t have one city and two [police] departments trying to do the same job because in Kingston west, Kingston central, and Kingston east you are dealing with the same group of people. That’s a very important issue. Being at the bottom of the specter, you know, a front line officer, I have to, and I always like to, work hand in hand with any police officer. But as you get up the line, there are issues that come up that even I am not aware of. And I think those are the big ones. I think we have to work together to fight crime and to accomplish our job.”