IceStorm 98 Study

The Economic Development Corporation was incorporated by the City of Kingston on January 1st of this year to provide economic development services to the City, but we are a joint venture with other community groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Association and so on. We have a small staff of 11 and we are physically located outside of City Hall at the moment.

What is the relationship between yourself and City Hall?

I am a senior manager designated and I sit on the City's senior management team and am an advisor to Council on economic development. I am also the president of the corporation which is primarily a service delivery mechanism. We also run the Tourist Information Centre located across from City Hall, which was part of the Ice Storm set-up.

How did this normal setup with respect to City Hall translate during the Ice Storm under exceptional circumstances?

I received a call from the acting Chief Administrative Officer, Gardner Church, on the Thursday evening indicating that the control group had decided to contact all the major employers in the area immediately and ask them if they could voluntarily reduce operations or possibly even close on the Friday during the storm to reduce the number of people out on the streets. I was selected to come in and coordinate that exercise because of my involvement with the employers in the Kingston area. I rounded up a group of volunteers that night including some of my staff and managers of the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Business Association and so on, who came in and proceeded to call people in the middle of night. We needed to know who to call. We rounded up some directories and data-bases. A big part of the calling also involved accepting offers of assistance from companies and/or I would receive requests. That night the ice storm control group indicated that they needed hard hats and work boots for volunteers to go out and help clear brush. Some of the big companies agreed to help out. So about 5 in the morning I was getting deliveries of hard hats, work boots, gloves, etc. and had offers of assistance from some of the City's large employers.

On Friday I attended the meeting of the control group and reported back on this project and then got assigned another task at the morning meeting which was to assist in the food supply situation. Because it was anticipated that power might be out for a fairly long period, there was concern about whether the supermarkets and wholesalers would have enough food in storage. I was asked to do an assessment and report back in the afternoon. So my staff and I contacted supermarkets to determine when they received their last delivery that week and when they were expecting their next delivery and were they getting any runs on any particular food or item. We learned that people were starting to come in to get water in some areas. Some of the supermarkets didn't have any power, so we wanted to determine which ones had backup generators. A lot of the wholesalers had just received deliveries on the Thursday and were expecting other deliveries on the Monday. A food crisis didn't materialize. I went home and slept for a few hours.

Because of my involvement with the business community and knowing people, the tasks assigned to me were related to that. The next issue was getting cots and hygiene products for the shelters because a decision had been made to expand their numbers. There was some confusion - I found that other people had been tasked with similar requests. There was a lack of coordination, but as time went on, things got straightened out. On Saturday the control group gave me a new task. There was an issue of brush cleanup on the rights of way. Myself and a couple of others formed a team and coincidental with that was a lot of offers from the business community again - the construction industry in particular - to volunteer crews to help. Again there was some confusion as to why the city didn't take up their offer. City employees may have felt that they should be given a chance to deal with the crisis and that if outside workers were brought in it would seem like a sign of weakness. There were also issues around supervision of these people with chainsaws and safety issues, etc. We did put together a team which coordinated a lot of the volunteers. We agreed with members of the construction association to use some of their volunteers and after we got past the initial clearing, the city would be charged a consistent rate. Then there was the question of where we were going to put all the brush - about 10 municipally owned sites were identified. The brush clearing had to be coordinated with the public works crews and the utility crews. We also had to coordinate food for these crews. So another group of volunteers came together in the food area. The army offered many military people to help with the brush clearing. It was a big task getting all the volunteers coordinated. By Tuesday things became more systematic and routine and Wednesday was my last day over at the control centre. Another issue was hypothermia. I arranged for work crews to use the city buses to get warm and have a cup of coffee. I then thought it might be a good idea for city buses to travel through neighbourhoods to allow people who didn't want to leave their homes to have a place to get warmed up. I feel these mobile shelters were helpful.

How did the business community assess City Hall's performance? Was it generally positive?

I think they were very positive about it. Some of them when asked to close or reduce their operations, they were very understanding as to why we were asking them but not a lot of them could, especially some of the larger employers. Some volunteers from the business community became frustrated with their offers to help and the length of time it took to actually engage them.

Give me your recollections of any anecdotes, lighter moments, things that stand out that you saw or heard.

I was in charge of getting personal hygiene products for the shelters - toothpaste and toothbrushes were easy but some of the other items were a bit of a challenge.

It seemed that there were more people willing to help than there were people who could coordinate these efforts. I think the Mayor and Gardner performed exceptionally well. Their strong, calm leadership was important. A lot of us had only worked together for a short time and this brought us together in terms of a close working relationship. The military were a very valuable asset.