IceStorm 98 Study

During the ice storm emergency, Don Buffett was in charge of the Emergency Command Centre which was located at the Gord Watts Building on North Augusta Road. This was the focus of activities during the emergency. He was also designated as the Communications Officer (both radio and telephone) for the City of Brockville in accordance with the provisions of the Emergency Plan for the city.

Just before he went to bed on the evening of Wednesday night of the 7th, DB knew that there would be a long day ahead of him the next morning. Freezing rain had been falling hard. At 3:30 on the morning of the 8th he got up and woke his wife to tell her that she had better prepare herself - "we were in for it". He had power at that time "but I could see that things were going to go from bad to worse". By the time he got to work, power was down.

DB had been assigned the task of Communications Officer according to the Emergency Plan that was to be enacted as soon as an emergency situation was declared. The Gord Watts Building was designated as the Emergency Operations Centre. It was equipped with standby emergency power which also allowed the pumps to supply fuel to city vehicles, including fire and police vehicles.

Upon arriving at the building, DB set about organizing the garage as an Emergency Operations Centre and people began to arrive aware that they had an emergency situation on their hands and that the GWB was the place to be. At this point he had not received a call informing him of an official emergency but "they already knew. Their disciplines had called them, or started to mobilize... and then the stuff started to hit the fan".

At meetings with the P.U.C and Hydro they began to get an idea of the magnitude of the storm. From what could be seen outside, it appeared that only Brockville had been hit. But after listening to reports from Ontario Hydro, the full picture began to emerge. His major task now was "to find enough generation to start powering up Thousand Islands Secondary School, the Salvation Army, the Memorial Centre as they would soon be set up as shelters. " Outside assistance and all the generators started coming in here... came from the north of the province, from M.T.O.".

His staff had to make preparations to receive the generators and "fire them up". "We didn't need them, the ones that came we didn't have a need for them we needed bigger ones.. huge ones that could run a school or a Memorial Centre." He was able to obtain two large generators from Tackaberry Construction and two more from out of town. In order to make sure that there was someone on duty to receive the generators which were arriving around the clock DB put his people on 24 hour shifts.

As the only fuel facility in the area, everyone started to arrive at the garage for refueling. O.P.P., R.C.M.P., fire units, Police, other municipality vehicles all arrived at the garage. As a result, fuel supplies became a problem. DB scrambled around until he found an area supplier who had obtained a generator to pump fuel to the vehicles. Once this had been accomplished, his fuel supply problem was eliminated. The owner was requested by DB to supply fuel to 1) Hospitals, 2) Nursing Homes and 3) homes for the aged, in that order, no private enterprise and supply the garage. The owner complied with his request.

Along the 401 highway service centres had all but shut down due to the loss of power. Several people did appear at the garage requesting fuel but were politely refused. They were directed to local shelters were they could stay until power was restored. The number of vehicles that had to refuel at the garage was staggering. In addition to the city and rural service and emergency vehicles that came by were all of the out of town emergency and service vehicles that had been contracted out by Ontario Hydro. This constant influx continued uninterrupted for two or three days.

DB estimated that the garage had pumped close to $ 18,000.00 worth of fuel in 5 or 6 days. They used up close to 6 weeks of their normal volume in those 6 days.

As far as communications were concerned, the telephones never went down. Furthermore, DB indicated, that as the communications officer who is responsible for both radio and telephone communications the system "was designed with disaster management in mind". When the system was upgraded in 1990, the emergency planner, Chief Tulk, was consulted to assist in the design of the entire communications network. The garage had been designated as the Emergency Operations Centre so " here's what we need to do, we need to look at redundancy, we need to look at emergency planning ... what if this is the E.O.C. So we tried to do all the 'what if scenarios..."., the phone system is designed like in a hub, our main buildings all have switches in them, rather than one switch with extensions and all function independently to a point ... and as long as we keep the hub running down at City Hall, which we did, we could keep it going...". As DB remarked: "that was the one... saving thing in the whole piece that the phone system stayed operational ... had it gone down it would have made life a whole bunch more difficult". Cell phones run out of battery time especially if they are in constant use, so the phone system was a life saver in that situation.

As it was, DB still had to add lines to the existing system especially when personnel from social services started to arrive at the centre. This also added to the congestion in the building. They were as DB observed "knee deep" in people. By the second day of the "occupation" 5 more lines had to be installed to accommodate the overwhelming volume of calls.

An amateur radio station was set up at the E.O.C. DB, in a very 'proactive' measure had installed an antenna on the building for their use in the event that they were required. This measure was adopted as a result of his training along with Chief Tulk and several others, at emergency planning courses at Arnprior. It "gets your head around emergency planning, what happens, what you need to do... so we knew that amateur radio groups would be required". Since amateur radio groups had been set up at the shelters, the social services department could utilize the radio at the Watts centre to keep in touch with the shelters. "They just came here and plugged in".

Radio traffic patterns of the amateur radio group were somewhat different from the pattern of the works dept. so traffic would often overlap, but as time passed the problems were overcome.

The Watts Centre was the focal point of co-ordinating activities throughout the emergency. The meetings that were held, mostly on a daily basis, contributed to an overcrowding of the building. People were encouraged to leave after meetings concluded. As the Emergency Control Centre, this was to be anticipated. Emergency Control Group meetings were held every two hours at the beginning of the emergency, then every four hours when things began to settle down.

As a result of 'round the clock' activities, sleeping quarters had to be set up. The Watts building is really not designed for this, but staff got what rest they could. DB went home to a house without heat, but some peace and quiet was essential.

Stress took its toll on a few individuals. One individual passed out from exhaustion and was taken to the hospital. "Some people can deal with it and some people can't.. and everybody reacts to stress (in different ways..)".

Power was restored to the area on Monday the 12th, in DB's case a few days later which was as a result of downed power lines.

What worked well was "the fact that everybody pulled together". Groups of people who did not know one another began to rely on each other. They all began to get along. "There was a feeling of camaraderie.. everyone rowed with the same oar.. we were all working towards the same end". Everybody did what was necessary to accomplish the task of returning to normal.

E.M.O. arranged for the delivery by transport of generators from as far away as Thunder Bay. The yard received 18 -20 generators, which was more than they needed since by that time most of their facilities had generated power. DB informed Gord Dougall (Leeds and Grenville County Engineer) that they had extra generators on hand and he could help himself.

DB readily admits that things were much too hectic to follow emergency procedure "in the plan it says that when this happens do this.. and we skated right on by some of those things...". In a future emergency, DB would make an effort to identify people as they arrived in the building "which is one of the tenents..secure your facility and identify everybody". Another issue was that people should have contacted their families to ensure that they were all right. Take the time to check in with your family to see if there was anything they needed. "These were things that we knew better but didn't do it".

The speed at which the emergency developed did not allow for distraction. "Things were thrown at us in such a way .." that they had no time to respond to their personal needs.

Since 1980-82, Brockville had developed an emergency plan and had held several mock exercises to test its reliability. This experience was fully tested by the storm. As DB stated "nobody had to look at the plan .. everybody knew what to do.. (the meetings and exercises) kept the awareness level where it belonged".

As to costs, it was not an issue. "...In that time frame you can't stop to analyze costs....when I need a generator, I need it now, send me the bill". While there were a few unscrupulous people DB didn't encounter any price gouging in his dealings with people. The last thing on his mind however was costs "you're asking the wrong guy".

In his search for generators, two generators which Brockville received were from one of the southern states. Unfortunately due to different weather conditions, they weren't supplied with winter diesel fuel. After several attempts were made to get them going they realized that the tanks were full of summer fuel. They rigged up a heating system to keep the fuel from freezing and force fed the unit with conditioner and then winter fuel to keep it going.

The Emergency Command Post was sent to North Augusta since they were in a desperate situation. DB provided his assistance to them when it was requested. His staff organized the generator inventory and provided them to North Augusta.

Of the 3 to 400 generators that went out, all were returned with the exception of 2 which had been damaged.

The fire department had experienced the same results. What was astonishing was that there seemed to be no record of who had them or where they went.