IceStorm 98 Study

Dunne says it was about 11 p.m. on Wednesday night when her power went out, however, it wasn't until Thursday that she realized that there was a major problem. By Thursday afternoon she says elderly spouses of residents of St. Mary's were coming in to visit their partners and they were very cold. She says the staff put them right into beds that were available. They didn't admit them or anything else--they were fed and put in bed because they were cold. These people kept coming in on Thursday and Friday. Staff were really concerned about these people.

Graham notes that "the power was out almost continually from 11 p.m. Wednesday night until Saturday evening at supper time (at St. Mary's)." She says St. Mary's is on a generator and fortunately while it functioned very well, it doesn't have the same capacity to light the hospital as does the generator at the K.G.H. She says the generator at the K.G.H. gives that hospital almost full power. The lights at St. Mary's are dim and the kitchen equipment is hooked to the generator so that hot food can be provided. She calls it "camping out conditions" for the period of the storm.

Graham says the shelter operation at St. Mary's didn't get well under way until late Saturday and by supper time the power was back on. She says it was Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights that St. Mary's had most of the very frail and elderly from the community. She says they became a secondary shelter to Hotel Dieu as of Saturday. This was decided via a telephone conference that took place Saturday morning. This involved the "players" in the organizing of the shelters (i.e. City of Kingston's emergency room squad, Community Care Access Centre). The conference was to determine what would be the most efficient way to use the resources that they had. Hotel Dieu had the largest capacity so they became a general shelter. They hoped to attract the elderly and the frail. This is exactly what they did. The elderly that required care or assistance of some kind were sent to St. Mary's. Graham says they took in so many extra people that even uncomfortable or inappropriate beds had to be used. She thinks that on their "peak" night St. Mary's had 60 additional people.

Dunne says the hospital had about 85 individuals in total who came through. She says some stayed several nights and some stayed one. They kept moving through as power came on in their homes or their relatives homes, they left.

Graham says they had enough beds in the hospital to accommodate these people. They did get some army cots from the military but does not think that these were ever used. Dunne says they did have to use a couple. They were not suitable for very elderly people. They were too close to the floor.

Graham says on Saturday Hotel Dieu became the general intake for the frail. K.G.H. restricted their spaces for people who needed continuous power supplies for certain kinds of aids and seriously ill people. The K.P.H. wound up having the greatest capacity because they ended up opening Penrose. They took a certain number of frail/elderly. They took people from group homes with any type of mental illness and they also took a ton of people just from the community. A kitchen was provided for use at any time throughout.

Graham says there was no "master plan" that directed them to set up the shelters in this way. It just happened. However, she says there is a "master plan" but it did not envision a disaster that would knock out everybody "including neighbours to the Atlantic Ocean". The Plan was already under revision at the time the ice storm hit. It was geared towards a train accident, a plane accident.

Sue Graham and her staff went right through St. Mary's to determine what beds were in storage that could be used; what vacancies were available in the normal units that could be used; which rooms were large enough to convert from single to double, etc.

Dunne says they discovered that treatment tables could be used as beds but had to have at least one extra mattress. There were lots of mattresses available so this was done. This made the tables at a reasonable level so that people could utilize them.

Dunne says the hospital's biggest restriction was that they didn't have full power. They tried to place people where there was lots of light. The gym was used because of the windows. The hospital has other rooms that have no windows and no auxiliary light that couldn't be used.

Graham says the other limitation was staff--the ability for people to get in to work. St. Mary's has staff from Wolfe Island and out in the country. People were afraid to leave their own homes because they had a tree on the roof, no power, potential for flooding and so on. Some staff stayed past their shifts.

Dunne says on the weekend a handful of volunteers came to help and stayed from 8 o'clock in the morning until midnight. She says they had enough staff. It got worse on Monday when people came back to work because then there were more people than were needed. It was really confusing. Everybody wanted to help.

As the number of people dwindled, Graham says St. Mary's and the General came off shelter first. The Hotel Dieu was next and the K.P.H. was last.

S.G. says another problem that was encountered was having to admit people at night. She says St. Mary's is not set up to admit people at night. Their admitting department is only open during the day, the pharmacy is only open during the day etc. The K.G.H. had to get rid of some of their people because they had stopped doing elective surgery during the storm. This had to be started up again. As a result, St. Mary's admitted 8 people from K.G.H. in one evening. She notes that it takes at least 3 hours to admit one person.

S.G. and C.D. say they didn't get home much during the storm--maybe for a few hours during the night. It was a long 5 or 6 days.

Graham says there is a need for a "community plan that is much broader than institutional focuses in the future."

Dunne says during the storm people from the regional community brain injury program were brought in to St. Mary's with their own staff. St. Mary's also has people in an outreach program. They too were brought to the hospital with their own staff to care for them. St. Mary's ran into a problem when they tried to get the people who received major support from the C.C.A.C. to come to the hospital. She says these people wouldn't leave their homes without the permission of the C.C.A.C. who couldn't be reached (for a day) to have this co-ordinated.

St. Mary's received some people that shouldn't have been sent there. This was a result of volunteers who may not have fully understood the peoples requirements. This would have to be fine tuned in a Plan. It's really important to know what questions to ask. Nurses or doctors are needed.

Lots of people showed up without their medications. Relatives had to be found to go and get the medications. There were a couple of pharmacies that were really super about filling drug orders. The Medical Arts Pharmacy was one of these.

Dunne says people were really, really hungry, especially on the weekend. The kitchen at St. Mary's was going all day until about 10 at night. After 10 o'clock, food was left out for people (mostly staff). People were bedded down no later than midnight.

Dunne says the Ministry of Health was in touch with the hospitals literally within days of the ice storm wanting an estimate. The Ministry had to go to their management board with a request for extra assistance for the hospitals. She says hospitals like the Hotel Dieu would have enormous costs relative to the costs of St. Mary's. She says the storm had extra costs of about $50,000 and most of this was for extra staff. This is relatively small.

Graham says St. Mary's did a lot of things very well. People who just showed up at their door that were known were just taken in. They weren't forced to go through the Dieu to get to St. Mary's.

Dunne says she doesn't know if one can plan for all of the kinds of disasters that might happen in a community. An ice storm had never occurred before and it is highly unlikely to occur again in the same form. You can't just keep dozens and dozens of extra beds on hand in case of another storm. You are paying for storage and this is very expensive. It is her opinion that the military be used again for extra beds if needed.

The military were really wonderful. They just showed up and moved things and people where they were asked. Penrose is not wheelchair accessible. The military actually picked people up in their wheelchairs and moved them into Penrose.

St. Mary's only experienced problems with the telephones during the switch to obtaining power from the generator. This wasn't a big period of time.

Stress was a problem for the people received at St. Mary's. It took a while to get them settled down. Staff didn't notice any extra stress until it was all over. This was exhibited as nothing more than fatigue. Nothing was happening at a really fast pace. It just "plodded" along.

St. Mary's had no contact with the media. The other hospitals did. St. Mary's doesn't have the same kind of P.R. machine as the other hospitals.

Both Dunne and Graham agree that it would be helpful for the future to have a kind of "generic form" anywhere where people are congregating for shelter. These forms can be initiated by wherever the person starts out. The forms should include name, address, next of kin, the bare necessities of information, etc. This form should move with the person. These forms were being produced by hand at St. Mary's.

Dunne says the switchboard at St. Mary's was supplied with a list of who was staying there. Each hospital had their own list but these couldn't be compiled because there were no computers.

Graham says they used the volunteers to call family members and tried to get people to call their families to tell them where they were and if they were being moved.

Another problem St. Mary's encountered was getting their laundry done. The military brought blankets. Graham says they would have been in trouble if they hadn't had the blankets.

Dunne says maybe emergency planning is in the hands of the people who work in the sector. If you have some planning for some sorts of emergencies, you can apply it to others. She says sometimes this is the best that you can do.