IceStorm 98 Study

Give me your recollections of the Wednesday evening of the storm. Were you at home or were you out?
My first flags for the event were the weather reports early on Wednesday morning. I saw something that might become an overwhelming event so I took my red emergency plan home with me because it has a good list of contacts, etc. I live in the west end of the new city. Wednesday evening I went out shopping. I came out of the mall about 9 o’clock and the freezing rain had started. I made contact with the duty manager at about 10 o’clock. At that time the first damages were starting to appear and he already had the one forestry crew out dealing with some fallen branches. I took a drive around to test the road conditions. I made contact with the staff at the yard in terms of our state of readiness and the deployment of our truck fleet for sanding and salting of roads. Around 10:30 the units were fully deployed on the routes. The next contact was about midnight, again with the forestry group. They were reaching the point where it was beyond their capacity to quickly respond, but they continued for some time. I went to bed and got up about 3 or 3:30 and again I made contact with the yard. Two crews were in but they had essentially been pulled from active engagement and were simply doing emergency action on emergency routes at that point. I came in about 4 o’clock, did a tour of the city to the best that I could. I got stuck on a street by branches that came down in front of me and behind me. I got out of the car, moved the branches and kept going. I tracked down the duty manager for the forestry crew who was in about 5 o’clock or so. I made contact with the mayor and tried to make contact with the acting CAO. Shortly thereafter I went to the yard to see the status of our road fleet activity which was almost disengaged because of the amount of debris on the streets. About that point people were starting to get their emergency plans out and I started keeping my daily log of activity. I started filling it out when I was at the yard, writing down calls and contacts, and actions. Some time early that morning we had our first meeting with the mayor, the CAO and others at Counter Street.

What was the atmosphere like at that meeting?
I think there was a tremendous will that existed in the meeting. Certainly there was a sense that things weren’t completely out of hand, although I do recall telling the mayor that from the transportation perspective, we were in a crisis situation because a number of roads were blocked by debris. It became just too hazardous in the early morning hours. It was like a lightning storm over the city with lines sparking and transformers blowing, etc. That is why we disengaged our forestry crew because we didn’t want people to be caught in the circumstance in the dark where they couldn’t really see what they were doing. That was also part of the reason why we disengaged our road crew. At dawn our first response was to get out and survey the state of the emergency routes — exit/entrances to fire halls, access/egress from hospitals and emergency centres and entrance/exit from 401 to get on to these primary routes.

When you were out there in the field after the meeting, given the exceptional situation, were lines of authority pretty much intact? Was the chain of command still there or was there more room for you to troubleshoot and make up your own solutions?
In our operation that is our chain of command. We deal with any major snowfall as in essence an emergency situation. Our deployment mechanisms, authorities and chain of command are in tact from typical exercises. We do that many times a year. We don’t seek many authorities for doing most things when it comes to trees or winter control. We act. That is the business we are in. This situation became of a magnitude where our closest coordination had to be in two directions: one being the utility and the other being the emergency services. And rightly, at the very first meeting of the senior staff those were determined to be the priority decisionmaking elements of the response matrix. We continued in that vein for a couple of days. All our efforts were focused on keeping emergency routes open and supporting the utilities for reinstatement of power. By Thursday afternoon the crews were plowing the debris out of the way to reopen the streets. We worked on our normal snow control priorities which are: emergency routes, primary transportation corridors, secondary roads and collectors, then local and residential. On the second day, support groups from other municipalities started showing up and they were deployed on the same principle.

Were you were involved with provincial or federal agencies?
Through the emergency committee we had continuous contact with them. We weren’t directly engaged with them to a great extent although we were to some extent.

How did you find the relationship with other municipalities? Was it generally good?
Excellent. We had forestry crews in here from several of the former municipalities in Metro Toronto, Peterborough, Guelph, and Brampton. We had two people in charge of the forestry exercise: one from Etobicoke and the other was a former employee of the city who was retired. These two fellows did a marvellous job of organizing work crews. The forestry crews worked incredibly long hours with no complaints.

Was communication between yourself and the different crews, in general, as usual or was it more informal?
I don’t know if informal would be the right word, but it certainly wasn’t as usual. Ordinarily, I would not have the contact with the crews and the utilities that I had through this event. That would not be part of my normal role. Communication was a problem not in terms of relating to one another, but in terms of technology capability which was an enormous problem. Communications was a problem within our own working group and my own department responsibility because we had just brought four organizations together and we hadn’t consolidated the radio system. I know cases of managers who would have to drive to the yard and find the right coloured vehicle to get a radio of the right frequency to get hold of the person they were trying to reach. The utility was on a different radio system as well. We knew that we needed to get a consolidated, single communication system in place before the storm but timing did not allow for that to be in place.

The fact that the new City of Kingston was only a week or so old, was that one of the problems or did it perhaps help?
I wouldn’t say that it was a problem at all and I certainly didn’t experience anything that would indicate that it was a problem. In terms of dealing with the emergency, it was a non issue. In terms of our corporation gelling into a single entity, having an emergency when we were so new was a great benefit. We learned quickly who people were and what their capacities were.

Was money a concern for you or was it on the back burner? Were you worried about costs at all?
Money is always a concern. Every decision was made in light of costs. Did we not make decisions because of costs? No. But we were conscious of the cost implications when we made decisions. Priority was given to returning the community to a state of normal.

Was the red emergency plan helpful?
Absolutely. It was helpful. It was an interim plan issued in late 1997 and it outlines the essential responsibilities of various senior staff and/or their agency roles. It includes a list of contact names including various federal and provincial agencies and all municipal officials as well. I also keep my key for the EUOC fastened inside it.

I believe there is a new emergency plan in the works at City Hall. Do you think it’s going to be a big improvement on this one or was it already good enough?
This was a really good foundation tool. There is no question about that, particularly for an individual who had not been involved in an emergency before. In terms of my agency’s responsibility, there is little change in the new version from this version. I think people have to recognize that an emergency plan is a shell of jurisdictions, primary responsibilities and predictable and likely contacts. Beyond that it lays out some methodology for how to react, behave and report as well as some protocol relative to authority and jurisdiction. All of those things change with each emergency. It’s a shell and you fill in the gaps as you go.

How about globally, what would you say could be changed in terms of the city/municipality in general? What would you do differently next time?
I really can’t think of too much that my jurisdiction would do differently.

How about interaction with City Hall proper or the Mayor’s inner circle, were there things that you thought could have been improved upon?
I think that it would be a benefit for the delineated emergency authorities to have emergency preparedness and emergency action training. I also believe that there should be an emergency control group that should have been in the emergency control centre to principally direct the exercise. We had some very meaningful, informative and interactive meetings with the large group for updates and reports and I think they were very valuable for everybody. The people who may need to be contacted, and given our communication difficulty, were then all in a room at one time and different efforts could be supported better by knowing that somebody was trying to do that. I think that would be very useful. I do believe in an emergency operations centre and the general principles for handling an emergency that apply to such a centre. That would help to sort out some confusions and allow for a different level of coordination. Both Jim Keech and I had a very new and green management group in their responsibility areas. I think it was important that both Jim and I spent considerable time in the field to assess and evaluate where we were, how we were making out and how we best proceed. In the trained and tooled organization, we would have been in the EOC and we would have stayed there.

Would it be fair to say that you would prefer a more permanent structure, one that meets more regularly?
No. I don’t think that’s necessary, but I do think that the use of a locked-down EOC is of great value. I think that within about the first 24 to 36 hours, the framework, protocols and methodology of this plan, corporately and organizationally, had been cast aside. That may be why many people have the impression that the plan was of little value.

Was stress a factor, either for yourself or for your team and if it was, how did you cope with it?
Yes it was. For the first 4 or 5 days people coped with it out of adrenalin — adrenalin and caffeine. There were points where things flared a little bit, but that was to be expected. Myself and my two lead managers were getting only 2 to 4 hours of sleep a night for the first six days.

Did the stress get resolved naturally as time went on?
I couldn’t tell the crew they were working too much because the expectation was there that they would. These were unusual circumstances. Certainly there was some behaviour and mannerism guidance extended to people. After the first 4 days, things became more routine and people were able to cross cover each other. Most people worked 18-20 hours a day. After a few days, workers who were putting in long hours realized that their own families were in crisis. There were managers here who, like everybody else, had small kids and were without power, had flooded basements and pipes busting, and had no heat or food, yet it was expected that their first priority was our commitment to the community.

You mentioned that you spent a lot of time in the field. What were the most dangerous or potentially dangerous situations you experienced? Also, were there any anecdotal or lighthearted moments that stick out in your mind?
The most dangerous point in the event was the first 8 to 10 hours. There wasn’t a community consciousness of the potential danger that existed. The most difficult thing for the community was probably about four days later when temperatures dropped and it became more difficult for people to stay warm and have food. The response of the community to our workers was simply unbelievable. I think the second most dangerous point in the event was when the decision was made that our priority for returning the municipality to a state of normality would be to get the roads open as opposed to getting the power on. This was a peak point of both stress and disillusionment. There was a sense that the storm had beat us and it was hard to keep morale up. Within the next 24 hours, Jim had great success getting power back on and we had good success in getting roads open again. Things began to get better from that point.

I got to see people I hadn’t seen for a few years — a crew that I had worked with and trained in forestry, staff from other municipalities who I had hired into the forestry crews where they were working. There was a lot of camaraderie.

Is there anything that you want to mention that I haven’t touched on?
It was just an incredible event.

Do you think the city is much the wiser for it?
I hope so.