IceStorm 98 Study

Like so many residents of Kingston, Ontario, Graham Brown's (GB) recollections of the Ice Storm began on the night of Wednesday January 7th as the ice began to build on the trees surrounding his home. GB, at 0200 hrs (Thursday) made a call into the Central Dispatch of Queen's University to check the status of the campus. Reports were given to him that several buildings were without power. Later that morning, GB called in again and was given confirmation that 7 out of 12 residence buildings were without power. One of the three dining halls (Leonard Hall) was without power as well. The smaller dining hall located out on the West Campus was without power but was able to minimally function because of the gas cooking appliances. As GB said: "They were keeping up the valiant effort to feed the 550 folks that lived out there for breakfast and lunch on the Thursday morning."

The Queen's residences house approximately 3200 persons. About 2/3 of that group were without power.

On a normal power outage situation, Residences liaise with Physical Plant and their contact there is Ken Hancock who is in charge of electrical engineering. Hancock in turn, liaises with the PUC. Hancock's colleague, Julia McAllister is the supervisor who deals with the issues involving the trades. GB found that over the five days of the storm the information coming from the PUC was unreliable with respect to the status of the electricity.

By the Friday morning it was clear that "we were in for a long period of power outage" At that point the residences personnel were aware that there was going to be problems. The first concern was the fire safety and the second was the life of the back-up batteries. There is a smoke detector in every room and when the batteries started to go down they each began to do "funny things" such as squeak and squawk. The hall and stairways have emergency illumination which by Friday afternoon were starting to go out because of the batteries draining. The batteries have a "life" of about 24-48 hours (depending on what is being drawn from them). Concerns were beginning to be raised about mobility restrictions due to the dark buildings, fire safety, the cold and building damage through pipe/plumbing freeze-up. All the buildings are heated by the steam and hot water system that is also shared with KGH. The water that circulates through the system is driven by electric pumps. The buildings had steam but no way to get it through the system. The concern was that the water had the potential to freeze in a room if the outside temperature dropped. They had to watch both the outside and inside temperatures. The danger point would have been an inside temperature of below zero for several days before it got critical. Fortunately, the temperature in the buildings remained above freezing. GB accounts for this by explaining that the inside of the buildings are of a greater volume that the outside of the buildings unlike that of a house. GB explained that they did not drain the radiators which in the end, proved to be a positive thing. If they had drained the systems because of below zero internal temperatures, then when the power came back on they would have had a delay in restoring heat until the radiators/system was refilled.

If the buildings had sustained damage through cracked pipes it would have been a major money concern. Having to drain the pipes would have been minimal cost. GB said that over the period of the power outage, the Residences Department sustained a cost of under $30,000 which he says they were lucky to have achieved. Contained within the costs are included the call-in of staff to maintain cleaning, the call-in of the trades for maintenance of the buildings, the extra meals prepared for students living in areas outside of residences who could not cook for themselves and the cleanup costs of a small fire in Leonard Hall.

The fire started as a result of a candle catching with some toilet paper in the bathroom. The paper roll melted the plastic holder which fell onto the floor and damaged the toilet bowl by cracking it. There was some smoke and soot damage sustained in some student's rooms. Fortunately, no one was hurt and the regular patrols of Dons found the fire quickly (recall, there were no smoke detectors working) and were able to extinguish the fire using a fire extinguisher. This occurred on the Saturday afternoon. The back-up systems had depleted on the Friday night. To counter this, there were teams of student leaders, Dons and staff circulating through the buildings to check on things.

It was at this point that the residence staff began to think that the buildings were becoming unsafe to inhabit. On the Saturday afternoon, GB met with Tom Morrow (Head of Security) and Bob Crawford (Dean of Student Affairs) to discuss the closing of the residences. A decision was made to close the buildings for at least the night of January 10th. GB went around with the student teams and asked everyone to leave the buildings right away. It was suggested that the students move over to the buildings that had power. They were Waldron, Chown, Adelaide and Ban Righ. Victoria Hall had no power but had a generator (that supplied heat and some illumination) and students were asked to "camp out" in the common rooms there. The staff organised some movies and events to keep the students occupied. The staff had some snack food delivered. For those students who did not want to "camp out" in the common rooms, they were encouraged to head over to the PEC building where there was an emergency shelter set up. The PEC was being organised by security, VP Operation and Finance and the Phys. Ed. staff. The residences co-operated in the sense that they advised students that facility was available and by also providing food for the Salvation Army to assist those who were using the shelter.

On the issue of communications, the residence staff realised on the Thursday morning that they were in for a major problem. The staff held a meeting around noon in the Ban Righ building to lay down the initial action plan. They then went on to get the word out by using the Senior co-ordinators who in turn relayed the information to the Dons. The staff also met with the Dons and representatives of the student government on a daily basis to keep them informed of the situation. The residence staff met everyday at 1600 hrs. so that announcements could be made and organise the patrols and their hours. The student leaders were initially asked to stay and help out. By Saturday it was clear that many of the students were tired and cold and needed to go somewhere warm. That was another aspect in the decision to close the buildings because the staff had done as much as they could and needed to be relieved. There were some patrols in the buildings after they were closed to ensure that no one got back in. As a security precaution, the front door locks were changed. GB said that this system of daily meetings and organisational planning worked out to be the best means of communication for everyone involved.

With 3200 people living in a "dark" building issues of sanitation became a concern. The water and toilets worked up until Saturday. As a safety measure, the staff turned on all the water on the top floors in an effort to keep the water circulating. GB said he never got a straight answer as to why the water pressure remained constant during the power outages but assumes that it has something to do with the City's overall water system. Then with the buildings being closed the concern became less of an immediate problem.

When asked if the staff could have done anything different GB said that the daily meetings with staff provided a sufficient means of communicating the needs of the students and he would not have changed any of that process. He would however, have closed the buildings a day sooner. He would have also made more of a request from the University to make an earlier decision with respect to the closure of the entire University (cancelling classes). GB said that this might have assisted students in making plans to go somewhere else rather than stay in common rooms. The reason they made a choice not to close the building sooner was because of the batteries lasting longer than they anticipated.

With respect to developing an emergency plan GB said that he doesn't see that much else could be laid out other than what the staff did. He commented on how well everyone worked together during the storm and how effective each member of the staff was in their role. He commended the efforts of Security, Physical Plant and Marriot Foods to keep providing services to everyone during the storm. In that sense, GB said that there is a good emergency plan already in place. However, GB did say that there has been a suggestion that a team be put together to examine a response to an emergency situation. GB noted that there are other kinds of emergencies than just an ice storm such as a fire, food poisoning, hostage-taking situation and flooding. The residences have to work with the rest of the university so that developing a comprehensive plan would be desirable.

On the issue of communicating with the students' parents GB said that they really did not have too much of a concern because the phone system seemed to be working adequately and noted that every parent has GB's number. If there had been more phones calls from parents GB would have set something up but felt that the voice message on the main Queen's number covered most of the parents' concerns. Residence information as to which buildings were closed was also included on the voice message. There was also information being posted to the Queen's web page.

GB did not have any contact with Emergency Measures.

What could have been done to assist the residences? GB said that there could have been a few more generators. The ones Queen's have were allocated to other buildings that were prioritised higher than the residences such as the labs.

There was minimal contact with the media. There was some coverage when they finally fired up a generator at Victoria Hall (which initially had some problems with the fuel supplier but was rectified very quickly). GB said that they were extremely busy dealing with the immediate problems in the residences and dealing with the media was not a priority. Concerns were around the needs of the students and what to do with 3200 bored, cold people and keeping them out of trouble. The media was handled by the Communications Department (Anne Kershaw). The only contact GB had was with an Ottawa CTV affiliate with respect to the Leonard Hall fire. He recalls that the clip appeared on a lunch time show.

The stress levels were evident with the student leaders and GB pointed out the example of the women leaders in McNeil House who had been awake for a couple of nights because of the patrols and squawking fire alarms. Students were showing stress as a result of the lost class time and not knowing when they could return to their rooms. Morale was hard to keep up. A dark environment, lack of hot water and lack of sleep were taking its toll on the teams. However, the other residences' staff which still had power helped out by covering some of the patrols and helping to keep morale up. GB's stress level was increased by having to deal with his own home environment. GB commented that his older son had a hockey tournament in Sarnia that weekend and GB had to "ship him off in the care of another parent to one the biggest tournaments of Hockeydom". His other children were "great at going out to chop wood and take care of the family home." GB was initially concerned that with all the staff movement there might be a personal confrontation between those who had heat and those who did not. He said that in the end that was not what happened and is pleased how everyone managed.

On the subject of funny moments GB said that he remembers spending time laughing about some situations. He recalls that on the Saturday night he and the student leaders were doing a patrol and he forgot his flashlight. He explained that the hallways in the residences do not have any external windows and therefore are "pitch black". The word had gone out that there was to be an evacuation but they came across several clusters of students who were holdouts. One group had been ingenious by charging up a laptop and were using the CD-ROM as a stereo. This group was quite happy "partying" in the dark, had a good supply of vodka and tequila and were quite disappointed that they had to leave. As for any other funny stories, GB said "I'll have to get back to you on that."

On a final note, GB wanted to mention the high levels of co-operation by everyone and the long hours everyone put in. He said that overall he was pleased how everyone in all the departments worked together and put their own needs aside while they dealt with the storm.