IceStorm 98 Study

Debbie says that on a regular basis she looks after childcare subsidy for over 700 children. She is involved with needs assessments, two directly operated daycares. She does business with a number of agencies. There are 23 childcare centres in the community. Homemaking needs assessments are also done for the sick, frail, and elderly.

Debbie recalls that the power went out at her house on the Wednesday at around 11:00 p.m. Through the night she says she heard plenty of cracking sounds but really didn't think much more about it. In the morning she realized that her power still wasn't on and she also didn't have any phone service. She was able to get to her car to access her cell phone. She discovered that she had received numerous messages from her staff trying to find out what to do about work. She started to make some outgoing calls and discovered that everyone was pretty much "in the same boat". After retrieving numerous messages from her call answer and making several calls out, she lost power on her cell phone. She became panicky at this point.

Wires were down all over her driveway. Her car was in so far that she couldn't get out. An inspection of the downstairs revealed that she had water coming in her basement. By noon hour she went across the street and used her neighbour's telephone to call her husband who was in Toronto at the time. Debbie recalls trying to make her husband understand the severity of the ice storm. She kept saying, "You don't know what it's like. It's not an ordinary ice storm". She says that she remembers getting quite emotional with her husband. From the tone in her voice he knew she was really upset and he started for home. Debbie says that she felt isolated and as though she didn't know what was going on.

By the time her husband reached their home, the basement water was up one foot. He took over managing the "home crisis things".

On Friday, Debbie got her phone back. She learned at this time that the initial setup of a committee to get the shelters going was done. She had all of the staff lists at home of people who were available to work at the shelters. Debbie says that she "felt more connected" on Friday. She started to "put herself back into action" in terms of working outside the home.

On Saturday morning Debbie left to help out with the shelters. She was there for 36 hours. When she returned home Sunday night, a staff meeting had been organized for Monday. She primarily was doing whatever was needed at the shelters. There was a lot of scheduling that needed to be done (i.e. scheduling people (social services workers) to work in the shelters). A social services representative was to be present at all times at each of the four shelters. The shelters were at St. Martha's, Holy Cross, L.C.V.I. and Q.E.C.V.I. schools. This meant a rotation had to be set up to ensure that there was a social service rep at each of these locations 24 hours a day. It was difficult to reach people because a lot of phones were out. Debbie found that it was not possible for any one person to work at the shelters more than 12 hours at a time. They were "drained" after this period of time and they also had things going on at home that needed tending to.

Debbie and one other staff person were ultimately responsible for scheduling staff into the shelters. This was done from L.C.V.I. She says the shelter at L.C.V.I. had really strong support from the school and the school officials. This was a great assistance to Debbie. Debbie and her staff ended up doing almost anything that needed to be done at this shelter. At Q.E.C.V.I. there were more barriers put up. The office was inaccessible to her staff. Staff was forced to be spread out (physically) in this location. This caused a difficulty with communications. Unfortunately, the shelter at Q.E. had many more people than the shelter at L.C. so this had to be dealt with on top of the communications issue.

Debbie says that the Red Cross people (who were also at the shelters) brought a sense of "experience and calm" to the disaster. The Red Cross people were happy that the social services workers were at the shelters because the Red Cross people weren't that familiar with the City. Debbie says her people were the "link to who was who downtown". This proved to be difficult because there were all kinds of new people at City Hall that had taken on new roles just days before the storm. Debbie says that she felt everything happened "so incredibly quickly that it was just unbelievable".

Debbie says that social services and the Red Cross worked together at L.C. very much like a team. At Q.E. the Red Cross was definitely took the lead the way she saw it. Although some staff moved from shelter to shelter, some became tied to one particular shelter. "They became their shelters".

She says they had a lot of help at the shelters from the Salvation Army. They provided the food for all of the shelters.

Debbie says that people "just came through". She says that she learned a lot about her staff. The people that were really good at dealing with situations in the shelters sometimes surprised her. Debbie says that being adaptable was key to being able to be of real assistance in shelter. She says that when she called people to come out and help, she really got a sense of whether they could or couldn't "do it".

The most difficult part was communications, particularly in dealing with City Hall. People were always in meetings. You may not have known who you were talking to on the phone and didn't know who to send to get someone. You really had a hard time getting anything done. "This was a difficulty in terms of frustration, for sure".

Debbie has nothing but praise for the volunteers from R.M.C. (cadets). She says they are disciplined and reliable.

Debbie herself does not have any "disaster" training. Her assistant does. Debbie feels that this girl's knowledge in disaster training was one of the keys to the whole set-up of the shelters.

Debbie developed a "running commentary" on issues that happened at the shelters. This was useful for the people who came in to work the next shift. This assisted in communications. This was done more at L.C. than Q.E.

She says maybe 20% of the people in the shelters were elderly. She says a lot of older people didn't want to leave their homes. She says that she can relate to this. The first day of the storm when she was home alone--she could easily have stayed there. She was comfortable there. It would have been easy not to leave. There were some people that she worked with that wouldn't leave their own surroundings. It wasn't just older people.

Debbie feels the storm gave her insight into staff members. She says that if the person was from a close family unit, they tended not to venture out. They stayed with their family. However, if their family was not so close, it was these people that ventured out (to help out). She does realize that these people that stayed home with their families were helping out-- maybe numerous members of their own families. She recognized that there were a lot of people on staff that couldn't help. Then there were those that didn't get called and as a result, felt as though they hadn't been included. If there were another ice storm, she says there would be more of an effort to get to the bottom of the staff list when calling for assistance.

She thinks it would be beneficial for her staff to have some sort of training for perhaps working in a shelter (during times of emergency).

The shelters were eventually phased out. People were moved to Penrose (at Kingston Psychiatric Hospital). As the shelters were phased out, the food vouchers were phased in. Once the vouchers were made available all staff did was distribute them. The day-cares were minimally staffed because the staff was needed to do vouchers. Also, they weren't needed at the day-cares because the number of children was down. No other work got done for a good week and a half to two weeks. Eventually extra staff were needed, there was a demand for more service and extra people were brought in from the relief list because the day to day business of social services needed to get done. She says the whole thing was "absurd". "The whole thing was just bizarre". "It was totally consuming". Staff were exhausted. People were lined up for hours waiting for vouchers. Every time someone sat down, you would hear their story.

Debbie says she was constantly apologizing to people in the community who were seeking normal service and were having to wait because of the backlog created by the ice storm and vouchers. A database was set up to track all of the vouchers. Thousands and thousands of dollars were spent. She says that the voucher phase was almost as bizarre as the shelter phase of the storm.