IceStorm 98 Study

Does Kingston Transit have an emergency plan per se? If so, was it at all effective?

Until 20 minutes before we got into work on Thursday morning there was no such thing as an emergency plan. Everything just happened. Now with the new city being formed, there is an emergency plan being set up and we will be involved with that.

What about the stress factor? How did you handle it? Did the crew handle it well?

I think it was handled very well. There was a lot of stress, especially when you are driving a bus with 30 to 70 people on board and you are trying to pick your way through power lines, live lines and so on and so forth. That is a lot of responsibility. As time went on and workers were putting in more hours it got more stressful, but our biggest concern was could we fulfil the requirements of a transit system to move people from point A to point B and do it safely? All in all, they held up really well. A few of them did relax for a couple of days after because they had time coming to them.

The fact that there was a team, did that help with the stress factor?

A lot of times, there would be 25 to 30 people sitting around. Tim Horton’s would deliver coffee or someone else would drop some food off and they would get a chance to play some shuffleboard. There were people available to talk to them if someone did get too stressed out. Fortunately, we didn’t have to call in any outside help. We were able to handle everything ourselves. When one of the leaders did realize that one of our drivers was getting too tired, he would say, “Go in and sit in such and such a room and talk to this person. Have a coffee and come back out in an hour.”

How about your family life? How did you manage that?

I left the house on Thursday morning to get in here for 8 o’clock. From then until the following Tuesday night I probably slept for only 4 hours. I would go home and try to sleep. The phone would start ringing, so I figured I might as well be back at headquarters so that’s what I did. My wife was at home. Our power was on so we had the neighbours at our place. My daughter was also involved with the headquarters and she probably put in as much time as I did.

Were there any particularly funny moments that you can remember?

There were lots of moments when things started to quiet down, for example, between 12 at night and 4:30 or 5 in the morning, things got kind of boring. We can sit back now and laugh at some of the calls we got. We had a lot of entertainment. My daughter is in the science and chemistry field and she did many science projects while standing up on the table just to make people laugh. People would tell stories and jokes just to keep each other awake.

Do you recall any scary or close calls from the drivers?

In some areas of Calvin Park the lines were down probably about 6 inches above the buses and one of our drivers thought he had hit a wire. That was scary for him because the bus was loaded with people. However, it was just a tree limb.

Is there anything you want to add that I didn’t ask about?

The important thing is that everybody worked together. The armed forces, the police, the fire departments, everybody worked together. People from different areas came into town to help and everything went over very well. It makes you feel good when you ask for help on a volunteer basis and all of a sudden there are 25 to 30 drivers waiting to go to work -- not only drivers but also maintenance staff, because without them we couldn’t keep using the buses. It made things easier knowing that we had the drivers and the maintenance staff to keep operating the buses. We couldn’t have done it without the complete support from everyone. There are some things that we would do in future that we didn’t do last time. We could schedule our drivers better. I just got back this week from a trip to St. John, New Brunswick. I went down by train because I wanted to see the devastation through the different areas. It was amazing to see how some areas were flattened down. There was one area about 7 miles long where there was nothing left. It was like a guy went in with a chain saw.