IceStorm 98 Study

The Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority (CRCA) owns and maintains over 3600 hectares of land for resource management, environmental protection and recreation purposes. The CRCA also has a primary responsibility to control the flow of surface waters, within the area of a defined watershed, in order to prevent floods or minimize their adverse impact.

Bill Warwick [B.W.] noted that by Wednesday January 7 they had received a lot of rain and the recording gauges that the CRCA operates on various streams were beginning to indicate that conditions “were getting up to a situation where flooding was possible.” Ice had also started to build up and things got serious when the power went out on Thursday morning.

The CRCA has a primary responsibility for flood control in the region and the stream level gauges were showing that the situation was becoming critical -and there were forecasts of additional rain.

Although they knew they had ice damage, and did inspections of their local properties, the CRCA staff weren’t in a position to deal with tree ice damage until they knew the danger of flooding had passed. B.W. noted that his “instructions to staff were to ‘stand pat’ and not go off in different directions -we wanted to have vehicles ready to go, check safety equipment, that type of thing.” “Our focus was really on the watercourses and on whether we would have to manipulate dams and give out flood advisories.”

An example of BW’s notes from the period are as follows: “By the end of the day [8th January] operations were at a standstill, work force was put on standby, water management supervisor was tracking flow conditions, storm generated flooding was the major concern. Our main Kingston properties were inspected, and there was heavy damage.”

B.W. went to Lemoine Point Thursday night and decided there was more danger in closing the gates and risking someone driving into them (since they are normally open at night) than there was of someone getting hurt by falling trees or ice. The media had been full of advisories about the storm hazards. By the following morning they had signs made up indicating which areas were closed due to hazardous conditions and the staff barricaded the entrance to the Lemoine Point and some other public use properties.

On Friday the office was operating with one telephone line, no computers, no heat. One secretary was on hand to answer phone calls and inquiries. “The balance of the staff, because we wanted to keep them close to hand, just started to clean up ice damage here. Worked on cleaning up brush all day Friday and Saturday.” B.W. told everybody to stay home Sunday because they had quite a job coming up in the week ahead.

A tour was made of the different dams’ CRCA controls and trees were often found blocking the approach roads. But the flood didn’t materialize. By Sunday they knew they were unlikely to have much of a flood problem. The forest properties are scattered and, for the most part, are not public use areas so they weren’t concerned with that.

Concerns in order of priority were, first, the dams and gauging stations and, second, the major conservation areas. They did a walking tour and took photographs. “After we got out of there we basically just said we’ll have to let this sit for a couple of weeks. Since the damage was so extensive there really wasn’t much we could do at that point.” But they wanted to get some property areas open quickly, especially the Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area, which is heavily used by people for cross-country skiing and skating, and is a revenue generating centre.

Lemoine Point was the other priority area since “once the storm was over, we knew that the sight- seers would be out and it was an extremely dangerous piece of property to be on after the storm.”

They started to add to their staff on Monday by contacting previous staff members who had been laid-off due to downsizing a couple of years earlier. They hired two previous employees with chainsaw certification. They also received and accepted an offer from the adjacent conservation authority to send four people with equipment -two of them were chainsaw instructors, three were chainsaw certified. At one point they had a work force of 19 people working in the field operation, which normally would only employ about four. They were divided into crews, with foremen and someone was authorized to buy whatever safety equipment was required. “We didn’t go out and buy any large equipment but we spent several thousand on safety equipment, chainsaws, chainsaw equipment and that sort of thing.”

At one point a meeting of a number of executive members of the CRCA was called and B.W. informally asked them about priorities and whether to offer help to the municipalities. They all said “in times like this you do what you can.” So assistance was offered.

With regard to communications, the CRCA normally has one computer that is battery powered and used for monitoring the flood control system -when the power goes down it automatically switches to battery power. Unfortunately, sometime prior to the storm, the relay mechanism which switches over to battery power when the power goes down had malfunctioned and the unit was still in the shop for repairs. Consequently, they had no computer monitoring capacity. They contacted the adjacent conservation authority in Napanee, which had escaped the storm, and arranged to have the computer programs run through their equipment.

“We were fortunate that it didn’t hit Napanee. If it had been a hurricane on an east to west track then maybe we wouldn’t have had any adjacent organisations to contact to get back up help with the computer programs that we run.”

B.W recalls only one stream gauge station being out of operation due to a tree which had brought down the telephone line.

Contact with the media was through press releases which they sent out about closed properties and hazardous conditions.

The CRCA had no emergency plan for dealing with anything like an ice storm. There is a system for analysing rain fall events and a procedure for alerting municipalities and for reporting at certain stages of a flood. However, “this particular event was without precedent. In future we might consider an extensive emergency response plan. But the circumstance will always be somewhat different.” B.W. wasn’t sure how practical a formal emergency plan would be for an organisation of their small size. He also noted that since the next major incident isn’t likely to happen for quite a number of years, “we write the thing [emergency plan] and people will still be looking for it after the storm is over.”

As long as all the employees report to one office you can afford to “go with the events as they occur” But you have to have competent staff.

In retrospect, B.W. felt that the CRCA should perhaps have had a generator to back up their operation. He has a commitment from the board to look at this.

With regard to staff communications, B.W. felt that the cell phones they use were only of limited practicality in an emergency situation. The CRCA used to have a vhf/radio communications system and, although it too has drawbacks, the vhf system means all the units are receiving the same message. Consequently, if one person doesn’t receive their message someone else who hears it can try to pass it along. You can also hopscotch or relay messages across your system. With cellular phones it only rings at one location, so it’s not as useful a system in an emergency.

In one instance B.W. had a staff member with a chipper on the other side of Gananoque who had a cell phone. It was the end of the day and B.W. was trying to reach him before heading home, in case there was a problem. They didn’t connect until the chipper operator was almost in Kingston -and he was in the vehicle the whole time.

Every morning B.W. was in contact with the Watershed Management Supervisor, Stephen Knechtal. A problem with tree debris in the streams in Brockville was arising so they had to organize crews quickly.

If flooding had occurred, there would have been a serious issue for the CRCA to deal with. Since the flooding didn’t happen, the staff resources were directed towards making sure that the CRCA properties were marked for danger. Crews were organized to deal with the most serious problems first.

They dealt with the Brockville stream debris problem first by putting as many people there as could efficiently be used. The military helped briefly with clean up and the city had people in for a while. The Ministry of Natural Resources had a crew there for a half day.

The concern in Brockville related to tree debris in the water courses. This was a potential flood problem if the debris jammed up somewhere. B.W. thinks it was the EMO who arranged for the Coastguard to take representatives of the Authority up to look around the eastern part of their jurisdiction. The military requisitioned flood plain maps so they would know precisely where the flood plains were. This allowed them to see how much tree material was down and if any emergency cleanup action was needed to clear the water courses.

“Potentially, the biggest problem was debris jamming [under or into] culverts and bridges. It wouldn’t have taken much of a rainfall to sweep that stuff down a lot of culverts with limited size.” This was a priority. In the meantime, “we could keep the people out of the conservation areas if we had to.”

As time went on Brockville resolved itself and the next biggest concern became sightseers, particularly at Lemoine Point. In one incident, “three crews were working away in the bush, chainsaws were running and chippers howling. Everybody was working with hard-hats and visors and safety equipment when all of a sudden along came a family with the kids and the dog walking right through the middle of it. You wondered what they were thinking about -It was all signed.”

When asked about things that might have been done differently B.W. replied that “when we knew we had a widespread ice storm there were a number of people who thought we should make offers of assistance to the municipalities. We did that.” Faxes were sent to all of the municipal offices that had power. “But I wouldn’t do it again. My perception was that they were reserving every offer that came in.” For example, the city of Kingston was offered a big diesel chipper which CRCA had on loan from the Hamilton conservation authority. There was a long delay before it was actually used. This meant a piece of equipment was held up which B.W. felt CRCA could have used much more productively. “They didn’t know where they were going to use it or when, [and] when they used it, was used inefficiently.”

Similarly, in Front of Leeds and Lansdowne, B.W. sent a truck with chipper but when they got to the place the township asked them to report, they were told to go to a second place. When they got there no-one knew they were coming. The operator ran the chipper for 3-4 hours but it needed more people to be used efficiently. “So, I don’t think I would offer in the future.”

“We had all sorts of offers from other conservation authorities for help.” Some phoned directly to the CRCA, others contacted their central association, Conservation Ontario, which in turn sent a fax to each of the member conservation authorities that they could reach [some had no lines of communication in or out]. In the fax they were asked to identify what was required in assistance. With the information of what was needed, Conservation Ontario then canvassed the other conservation authorities to locate the resources.

One of the first calls B.W. received was from someone he knew quite well in Hamilton [because B.W. used to work in that area]. “Once we had their big chipper and they sent additional chainsaws, and we had 4 people from the Quinte Alliance [the conservation authority immediate to the west of CRCA] with trucks, chainsaws, and safety equipment, we really didn’t need much more.”

The only “aggravation” was the equipment commitments to the municipalities. “You hold equipment back for them because they say they need it Monday morning, and then Monday afternoon you still hadn’t heard from them. It just held you up. I don’t think I’d make the offer again.”

“The observation was that they had too many people in charge in some of the municipalities. You would be dealing with emergency command centres staffed by municipal councillors and they would tell you that they needed something. They would refer you to a special co-ordinator for the emergency, and they would say ‘no we don’t need that, talk to so-and-so in another department’. It went around and around.”

In terms of stress, B.W. thought that people’s concern about their homes [like basements flooding] added a level of stress when they had to come in and work on the effects of the ice storm on authority property. If the power had been out for a longer period of time [it was out for 5 days at the office] it would have become a major factor.

“We were quite fortunate that the power came back on -at least for most people. There’s only so many romantic evenings that you can spend with the power out before it becomes a bit much.”

B.W. felt that they were also fortunate regarding the excellent weather conditions following the storm for cleaning up. “Lucky we didn’t have the usual severe temperature drop and blowing snow that often follows.”

In a general observation, B.W. noted that the CRCA had been suffering as a result of government cutbacks. There was a shortage of equipment and too few people to operate in the field. Suddenly, “within the space of a few days we went from a workforce of four or five to nineteen and suddenly there were vehicles and people coming and going and an air of excitement. I think that’s carrying over right to now since we still have clean up crews going. “ The storm also brought a break from their routine so it added an element of interest to the work.”

In conclusion, B.W. reported that no-one had criticized their actions and everybody was supportive. They also did not experience any personnel problems. “Overall it was a positive experience.”

Rob Gerritson [R.G.]:

R.G. was working in land use planning and regulations enforcement when the storm hit. He was seconded from that position and put in the field to help out with the ice storm clean-up. His first recollection of the storm was: “Indeed the adrenaline was flowing. Here you were in the middle of an event that was unprecedented.”

Regarding his involvement in the Brockville cleanup, R.G. notes that “conditions were ok at the start but then became extremely cold with additional snowfall. But there was a job which had to be done there to insure that structures within the city, adjacent to the creek, were not going to be susceptible to increased damages.”

“From a forestry management perspective and harvesting operations, I don’t think we were that seriously affected.” RGs assessment was that most of the managed forest properties, with some selective clearing and pruning weren’t damaged to the point of losing value in terms of potential lumber. “Some of them were due for some type of clearing soon anyhow.”

B.W. added, “a lot of the plantations that we have are conifers and they tended to accept the ice a little bit easier than the deciduous trees did. Most were planted almost twenty years ago and so were in need of thinning. So God just did a little bit of our work for us.”