IceStorm 98 Study

The Brockville Psychiatric Hospital was designated by the City of Brockville as an emergency shelter for seniors in the early days of the storm. The sheer size of the facility which possessed an impressive back up power system made it ideal for this purpose .With a professionally trained staff of over 600, it represents an exceptional asset to the area. It has been scheduled for closure in March of 1999 by the provincial government.

DH prefaced his comments by pointing out that this disaster “did not fit with what we, as hospitals anticipate to be disasters”, yet “it was really insidious”.

The first indication that things were getting serious was when he received a call on Wednesday evening from a group home in Oxford Mills . The caller informed him that they were preparing to evacuate their patients, most of whom were patients of the BPH. DH dispatched the hospital bus out to Oxford Mills that evening to assist.

“...by 10 or 11 o’clock that evening a small management group in conjunction with emergency measures determined that maybe we should have one more ward available in case...” By Thursday evening there were over 200 at the hospital.

BPH was well provisioned and equipped to endure a storm of this nature. Emergency backup power was of such a magnitude that “every outlet and every piece of equipment and every light ” was kept on without interruption. The system was so effective that “ you wouldn’t know that you were on emergency power - everything works”. The Christmas tree at the front of the building remained lit throughout the storm. BPH appeared as an oasis of normalcy surrounded by devastation and darkness. It was, as DH remarked, “business as usual”. The City of Brockville designated the BPH as an emergency shelter for seniors. Within a few days when word spread, city residents began to arrive to take advantage of the facilities offered by BPH. Especially attractive were the private rooms that could accommodate, “four or five people to a room rather than lying on the floor of an auditorium”.

“The city called it right “ when it designated BPH as an emergency shelter for seniors. A very frail and dependent population began to arrive at the facility that could certainly attend to their needs. A number of seniors had been found in their apartments who had been without heat and light for a couple of days. They certainly had not had a hot meal over that period of time. There were also serious concerns about their medication, oxygen etc...

DH reported that at their peak day there were 325 “guests” at the BPH. “In total we had just over 400 people in the shelter in addition to that. We had 300 army and we fed about 50 Hydro workers and we were on standby for others. Hydro and Bell wouldn’t sleep here but they got fed”.

BPH also provided meals on wheels. On most evenings over 250 meals were prepared in addition to trays that were prepared by the staff. In total about 1200 trays were prepared.

Many of the staff members lived out of town and it was difficult, if not impossible, for them to make it to work. They also had their own emergencies to deal with. For those who were able to report for work, 16 hour days became the norm. After their shift was over “we had staff who... then had to go home to houses without heat, houses without water, start to carry wood, start to find water and try to figure out how they were going to get some food in for their family for the next day because they were going to come back in for another 16 hour shift”... those were the people who were in a really desperate situation”. “We had staff who would come in early so that they could shower ...before going to work”.

As far as costs were concerned, at this point in time DH does not have an estimate of costs although food costs “were fairly substantial” nor is he aware of how this cost will be met. When the army called requesting accommodations, they also requested that the troops be fed. which did not pose a problem to BPH. When the topic of paperwork was raised, DH suggested that he didn’t need the paperwork and that the army bureaucrats could take care of it two or three months down the road. The army was “taken aback” by this suggestion.

DH was not too impressed with the seeming lack of co-ordination among the various levels of government in coping with the emergency especially when it came to food supplies. Two and a half weeks after the ice storm, “there were still Canadians within 60 miles of the nation’s capital ... who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from”. Ten or 12 days after the storm had hit, DH had heard that an area to the east of Ottawa was in desperate need of food supplies. After confirming the story with the Red Cross, BPH prepared 80 cases of food in Belleville that would be sent out the next morning.

“We were asked if there was any way we could get them up tonight - that’s how desperate they were”. This was 12 days after the storm and they were driving past Ottawa to get to the community. BPH had no problems in getting food delivered by the truckload. The question remains - “ why couldn’t someone between the municipal reps and the provincial reps and the federal rep get their act together enough to say to food warehouses we need truckloads of stuff...” and provide it to the areas in most need.

When things started returning to normal “ we started to hear these horror stories and we checked and found that in fact there was a desperate shortage of food.”

Paradoxically, the influx of volunteers caused a certain amount of havoc at BPH. Most of them were untrained and unknown to the staff which also raised the issue of security. Although the problem was more significant for a hospital, the prospect of allowing strangers to wander through wards and restricted areas where prescription drugs might be stored, was a real threat.

What he really needed were switchboard operators and you certainly “can’t get switchboard operators trained in an hour”.

As for telephones, “communications... were a total disaster”. Pager systems that originated out of Montreal were simply not working. When phones were up, the social services had attempted to call DH and put the phone on ‘redial’ - it took an hour before he got the call. If you were able to get through and you got auto attendance, you were lucky if you were able to make it back to the main switchboard.

If a message was intercepted by voicemail, it would become locked into the system since a password was needed to access it. In many cases those with passwords were not able to make it into work. As a result, messages that may have been of a critical nature, were lost. One of the recommendations proposed by DH is to shut down the voicemail system entirely in the event of a future emergency. To make the phone system more effective, at least 5 more lines need to be installed to handle the volume of calls, “it doesn’t do any good to have extra phones in your control room” if you only have a couple lines to handle them.

Many people have cordless phones in their homes and offices. Although the lines are still intact, the phones were useless because of the power loss. Those who had the “old style” phones, as opposed to cordless and cellular, were in a much better position.

Co-ordination is a key element in any emergency situation and DH is convinced that had they treated the storm as a serious emergency from the very beginning, co-ordination of relief efforts would have been much more effective.

“...certainly getting co-ordinated right off the bat, we would do it differently If it were to happen again we would assume that we were in a full-fledged major disaster even if the first indications were not that (serious).”

The control, or senior management group, had its first meeting on Sunday. BPH was told on Thursday that the situation was expected to be over by Saturday and that they may need one more ward to handle the evacuees, “that’s not a disaster for us”.

On Thursday morning they were handling the situation quite well, but by Thursday night “it was out of control”. It got to be so busy that they were not able to get together until the following Sunday .It was imperative that they meet because “if we’re in a crisis mode completely on receiving, what are we going to do when folks start to go out”. The problem that faced them was that they were not releasing the general population; they would be releasing seniors who required special care and supervision “ we had to check to see if the cat wasn’t dead, or food wasn’t rotting and they had medication, ... it was just as hard emptying the place as it was filling it up”.

The first priority then was to establish a control group at the very beginning of an emergency and then “modify it down afterwards if necessary”.

Current and up to date addresses and phone numbers of staff and where they can be contacted in case of emergency is essential.

DH had learned 20 to 30 lessons from the storm which were incorporated into a final report.

One major problem that did not offer a simple solution was the problem of staff burnout. “One of the things that is very difficult and I don’t know how we would do it correctly next time but given that you don’t know how long these things are going to last you realize that by about day six or day seven that if this keeps lasting you’re going to have huge components of your staff burning out all at the same time.”

People needed to be sent home for a break - but when do you send them home? How can you schedule staff rotation when you have no idea how long this is going to last? At some point you have to order people home even though you desperately need them. Luckily on day seven things began to wind down, but if it had been prolonged the staff would have experienced significant burnout. BPH was aware of this threat since they had recently emerged from a five week strike “and we know what five weeks... in an emergency mode does to people...I’m not exaggerating it’s a severe form of stress reaction afterwards... we had managers not sleeping for weeks after that because they had been used to... being ready to be awake every hour for five weeks.”.

Although the natural tendency of people is to “roll up their sleeves” and help out in an emergency, it was “deadly in terms of organization”. The administrative staff “are going to have to do what’s harder - just “sit in their room and manage it”.

A problem which arose in all organizations and was readily identified by DH was that “when you go into a disaster mode, staff have to be told explicitly that we’re in a different decision making mode because staff were quite put out, offended, upset... wanting to know why hadn’t they been consulted ..they had a better idea...lots of times they did have a better idea but they would have been less offended if they had been told explicitly... this is the way it is, we’ve got 5 minutes instead of 5 days, or 5 weeks or 5 months which is the usual way of making decisions around here ... we’ll make it in 5 minutes without consulting with most of the folks we normally consult with, if it’s right off the wall let us know real fast but don’t be offended if you weren’t asked.” A number of people were annoyed, but under the circumstances a new decision making process was required.

Decisions which were viewed as “mean spirited” were made. Explanations as to why and how these decisions were made might have eliminated this assessment. One example of this was when it was determined that BPH was to be designated as a seniors only shelter. It was decided that staff could not have their children and friends fed there; this created a lot of animosity. At one point the facility fed from 7 children at one meal to 45 children at the next and they were afraid that if word got out they could end up feeding another 100 children before the emergency was over. As DH stated “it was purely a numbers thing... what could we do, you couldn’t plan for it, it was way beyond our capacity”.

At an institution the size of BPH, there is no central reporting office as such. There are a large number of departments at BPH with their own reporting facilities. As a result, there are a total of 67 perimeter doors through which staff-pass to reach their various departments. During the storm, staff would arrive at their stations without passing through a central control area and carry on with their normal duties. No one knew they were there. How can you co-ordinate staff when you have no idea of how many people you have available, or where they are located? The obvious step, soon to become policy, is to limit access to the complex to one control point.