IceStorm 98 Study

Chris's car got stuck on Thursday and the Base started experiencing power problems on Friday. Chris shut down his "unit" because it was too difficult for people to go to work on the day that the ice storm hit. He did go into the unit to look around and to see what the effect was. His unit has many alarms on it--an intrusion alarm, many locks, etc. so when the power goes these need to be checked.

Because the power was out, a 24 hour schedule was set up in the unit to ensure that the building was secure at all times. The unit fixes and repairs cryptographic equipment for the Department of National Defence so it's a top secret building.

One of the first things that Grandy did was check on his own people. At this point he was not involved in anything to do with the ice storm. He was just trying "to get a grip with what's going on with his own folks". Who's got power, who doesn't have power. The building's looked after now. Then he just started calling around. Most of the people out in Kingston Township where Grandy lives were O.K. There was very little loss of power in that area. He may have lost a couple of cable T.V. channels. The phones were up.

Some of the people down on the Base that lived in the married quarters (the PMQ's) did not have power. Some of the people out around in Pittsburgh Township didn't have it either. Grandy tried to get people to work together who were close by. He called people who were close to him and said, "have you got something to eat and things like that". Most people in his end of town were O.K. but down around the Base there were some people pairing up with others, particularly if they had small kids.

"We would go to each other's house and make sure they had a hot meal, give them a place to stay, if you want a shower come over here". There was a lot of that going on in Grandy's own unit.

Our first priority was to make sure that we were O.K. In retrospect, Grandy thinks that this was a very good move. His unit is not a large unit--only 28 people so it's not difficult to sort everybody out and get them all underway. By Friday or Saturday they had a good schedule going looking after the unit and most everybody had some arrangements to be taken care of.

Grandy and his Deputy-Commanding Officer were watching T.V. On Sunday they were talking back and forth about the mess around the PMQ's on the Base. There were trees down everywhere. Trees bent over. Huge trees across roads that were ready to snap on top of cars and pedestrians. Grandy's Deputy Commanding Officer suggested to Grandy that they get involved and help out in some way. Grandy agreed. He recognized that the Base must be swamped. Grandy's unit is not really part of the Base. He explains that C.F.B. Kingston is just a support establishment for other units on the Base. There are about 14 units there.

Grandy thought that it might be a good gesture to speak to the Base Commanding Officer or one of his representatives and say listen, "we're coming in on Monday and we would be willing to help out if you've got some problems here." Grandy called the Base Operations Centre, which is normally the "nerve centre" for any kind of a crisis. It was manned. They had been tasked by Land Forces Central Area to take care of Sector South and provide emergency services. Grandy offered his help. He was told that someone was really needed in Mallorytown. Grandy was asked to send some men to Mallorytown to help out by doing door- to- door checks. Grandy agreed.

Grandy dropped in on the Base Operations Centre on Monday to receive his briefing. He was sent to Mallorytown to make contact with the Reeve and do some door- to- doors. It was expected that this would only take a couple of days at the most. He and some other people in his unit drove to Mallorytown in a 12 passenger van. Upon their arrival in Mallorytown, they met up with a representative from Brockville Rifles at the legion hall. It was then that Grandy met the Reeve and Deputy Reeve from Front of Yonge Township. They assigned Grandy and his crew to do door- to- door checks. There are 2,400 people in the Township, which is principally rural and someone needed to see how they were doing. A lot of people had not been checked since the storm hit.

The people there were very well organised. Grandy was extremely impressed with how the community came together. The volunteers were paired up with a local resident, were given a map of the Township, and were assigned to a particular area of the Township to do door- to- door checks. They were told certain things to look for, i.e. health concerns and under what circumstances you could force a person to leave their home. The rest of the day was spent on going around and checking on people.

People were informed that there was power at the legion and they were invited to come and have a hot meal. They had meals going all of the time. You could go to the legion and sleep. There were cots laid out. The cots were provided by Emergency Services Canada.

Grandy relayed a story about one of his crew finding an elderly lady in her home who had fallen and broken her hip. She had no phone and no electricity. A tree was blocking her driveway. At the time she was found, she had been alone for several days. She was rescued and received emergency service. "It's a sad story and sad circumstances but it has a happy ending and it's nice to be a part of something like that".

The next priority was road clearance. Later on another unit from the Base (the Reserve EW Squadron), totally separate from Grandy's unit, led by a warrant officer, arrived to help. Grandy informed these men that they would be working for him as he was the only commissioned officer on site and that he would be the liaison with the Reeve. Grandy did this to eliminate people answering to two or three different people. Then a busload of people from the Canadian Forces School of Communications and Electronics showed up, also with no officer. Grandy assigned them work. They were mainly clearing roads. There was also pumping of basements. There was a concern about loss of livestock at the local farms. The owner of a slaughterhouse needed power.

During the storm one of the big commodities was the generator. There were some secondary problems with having generators because they were such a valuable asset. There were people trying to steal them. Grandy said they had generators stolen. The telephone system out there required generator backup. People "guarded the generators" but "if a truckload of guys comes up and they want the generator and there's only one or two of you there, give them the generator". This was usually enough to discourage people.

About the second day the Reeve and his people were able to find a 10K generator in Emergency Services Canada up in Ottawa. The problem was it wasn't on a trailer. Grandy called the Signals Regiment and asked them if they had a 2 1/2 ton truck that could go to Ottawa with a trailer, pick this thing up, and bring it back down. It was needed right away. Grandy was still totally working without any formal authority or direction, just the tacit approval of his supervisors. Basically all of the "tasking" that Grandy was getting for local work were coming from the civilians. This is fine by Grandy because it's their township. They know the people, they know the priorities. "It's cool. We're helping out. We're not there to run the place. We're there to be of assistance to them". That's the way it was done and in Grandy's perspective it worked well this way. Grandy did encounter some problems such as the necessity for excessive reporting (situation reports) within the hierarchy of the military.

Other townships that weren't as well organized. They didn't have the same support and "they were hurting". There were people dying out there. One family had a barbeque going in their house. Another man brought his generator in the house and shut the door and he gassed himself to death. That's not uncommon. Generators are life and death. "You've got gangs coming in from Eastern Quebec stealing generators. You lose your generator and you could freeze to death. That's reality". People were scared. They were taking risks. People were tired and cold. They were not thinking clearly. If you don't have a lot of experience with things like this, you can make some pretty dumb decisions.

Good work was being done on the road clearing. Some of the roads had never been as clear in 10 years.

The work was starting to shrink down a bit and they had a good routine going, the workers that Grandy gave up were those from other units. His objective was to just have a few guys that were down from his unit who were working for him. This permitted those that were no longer needed to go back to their units and families. Those left were put on a rotation.

Grandy did not experience many problems working with the employees of the Township. Maybe just some confusion on the part of civilians with respect to rank. Grandy said that they agreed on first priorities--at least the first priority--being the safety of the people. Where they didn't agree may have been what was considered the next priority. Grandy was not interested in the military's time being taken up with lower priorities, such as widening of rural roads and cleaning fallen trees from private property. As the storm was coming under control, Grandy wanted to extricate himself.

Grandy would not do a lot of things differently in the event of another ice storm. "Quickly get ourselves straightened out. Then identify right away how may people I can commit for a period of time--a week, 2 weeks. Then you set up a schedule right from the beginning". For the first couple of days private vehicles were being used. Then out of his own operating budget, Grandy rented the vehicles he needed. Next time he would choose not to use other unit's resources.

The military's hierarchy is set up to deal with emergencies. There are definite ranks, it's not a “majority rules” approach. Highest rank is the boss. Command and control structure. Everyone has first aid training. It just so happened that a lot of the men in Grandy's crew were familiar with power tools and generators. Grandy has never been "sent on course for emergency training". The same problems that an ice storm could create a tornado could do. You are never going to know how bad it's going to be or how many casualties there will be. The mind set says "We have got to organize quickly. We have got to have a central command post. We have to have someone who is dealing with section heads in each area and someone who's carrying the ball the ball. People who know where everybody is and a basic set of orders. These are the quintessential items of running an emergency. So from that point of view I could say "Yeah", I've got training in how to deal with emergency situations".

Communications for Grandy were not a problem. People were out on the road. Grandy would receive a briefing at sometime in the morning. People were told to check in with him when they came back in for lunch. They were told that things would probably wrap up at around 6 in the evening. Each section had someone of sufficient rank that could take charge. Grandy's units had a lot of cell phones. They worked well. The Township's own phone system was under a lot of stress. It had to be continually recharged.

The storm was a good exercise for Grandy and his crew. He says it made them realize how fragile some of our infrastructure is here in Canada even though we may enjoy one of the finest standards of living anywhere in the world. It was a message to us and to the Canadian public at large that "yes, there is a great deal of fragility in our society and that it is worthwhile to have people who can be deployed and be used at relatively short notice to handle things that would normally fall in the cracks", It was a good lesson.

Expenses ran to vehicle rentals, gas, mileage was paid to those who used their own vehicles. Cell phone costs were incurred. Grandy's alone was between $400 and $450. To run his unit for one day it costs approximately $6,500. Grandy used one third of his unit which works out to approximately $2,200 per day. The storm was an 8 day commitment.

Grandy has nothing but praise for the municipal employees in the Front of Yonge. He says there was a lot of sharing amongst the people. "People who were hurting themselves went out to help other people". An electrician appeared out of nowhere to volunteer his services. People cooked meals.

Grandy had little contact with the media. A reporter dropped by from the Toronto Sun. He wanted to take photos of Grandy's crew. Grandy never set anything up because his men were tired and he didn't want to "stage" anything. A couple of pictures of the legion were taken and then the reporter left.