IceStorm 98 Study

On the Thursday morning, Robert Crawford (RC) was working at home and the effects of the Ice Storm were not evident to him at that time. RC said that their home had power and although he tried to listen to the radio found that most of the stations were not coming in clear or were not coming in at all. It wasn’t until the Friday morning that RC realised just how bad the storm had been when he attempted to drive down to the University. He needed to check on the status of the residences and students. RC lives approximately 5 miles west of the campus and remarked how different the scenery was in his residential area compared to that of the downtown core and campus. His family had been out for a few hours on the Thursday but had stayed mostly in the area of the Kingston Township. With most of the Township still with power, it was not as noticeable to what extent the storm had left the rest of the city.

RC commented that on his street, there are not a lot of mature trees and recalls looking down the street and noticing “…how beautiful the trees were with all the ice on them.” In contrast he said, “When I approached the main campus and saw the effects of the ice on the trees, it was like entering a war zone. This is serious, this is not going to be cleaned up in a couple of days.”

When RC arrived at Queen’s campus he found that the parking lots were “habitable” and his office had power as well as the rest of the administration buildings. The reason for the Mac/Corry building still having power was that it was being fed from the Clergy Street transformer station. When RC spoke with the Director of Residences, Dr. Graham Brown, he was soon apprised of the critical situation of the residences being without power. Both Apartments and Housing and the Residences had units that were without power but had been responding to the situation since the Thursday morning. Principal Leggett was in Vancouver until the Sunday morning. RC made contact with VP Turpin on the Saturday morning regarding early discussions as to when the university was to re-open. RC’s authority to act flowed from VP Turpin which flowed from the Principal’s Office which flowed from the Senate. It wasn’t until the Sunday morning that there was a meeting involving the whole university’s management. Until then, each department was acting as the need arose on their own level. The Monday morning meeting was called to discuss an action plan of getting the university opened. It was decided then, that classes would resume on the Thursday. RC said, “Not knowing when the university was going to be re-opened was causing tremendous stress for people. The students especially wanted to know when they could return for classes.” RC told as many students on the weekend to go home if they could. “The feeling was that they had to start classes as soon as possible but we knew we couldn’t start before Thursday and we knew we couldn’t go beyond that.” In the end, RC said that deciding to re-open the university on the Thursday “was a good decision.” Monetary concerns were dealt with by the request to keep track of all expenses incurred during the emergency. The deductible for the university is enormous and there would have had to have been a huge amount of damage before they put in a claim. RC believes that the deductible figure is somewhere close to 400,000.

The level of communication was dealt with by the use of RC’s personal cell phone and the land-lines available throughout the university. The key people that RC was in contact with were David Wright from Apartment and Housing, Graham Brown from Residences and Bruce Griffiths from Food Services. RC said that “ …these are good people who knew their jobs and didn’t need me to tell them that there was an emergency to do their jobs.” Food Services was especially impacted as the kitchen on West Campus was without power and the concern was how to feed the students who lived out there.

It was decided on the Saturday to use the voice-mail as a means to communicate the university’s information about the closure and re-opening. On the Sunday, a designated line was created to give out specific information about the university. There was a certain period of time when the cell phones didn’t work on campus but it worked off campus.

RC worked closely with residences and the Salvation Army with respect to the shelter in the PE Centre. It was also decided to offer students who lived in private residences that were without power a meal service in the dining halls. RC recalls the price was about 3.00 a meal. The shelter was moved over to the JDUC on the Thursday because it was still being used by people.

On the question of what worked well, RC said that it was the overall response from the staff and management. He noted that no one panicked. RC said that the meal plan was probably the most successful reaction to the storm and noted that it was used by a “fair amount of students”.

What didn’t work well was the slowness of announcing the closure of the university. RC said that it would have better if the decision to cancel classes had come sooner than the Saturday.

The biggest problem was the residences being without power. RC said, “it was a problem of some magnitude in dealing with students and the need for them to be housed and fed.”

RC said that if he could do anything differently he would have come down to the university sooner than the Friday. He said, “ I would not have been so insular with only looking at that my house is okay, so everything else must be okay as well.” RC did not have any contact with either the federal or provincial governments.

RC said that his contact with the media was limited to one interview with a media station from Ottawa. Most of the communication with the media was handled by the Communication Department.

On the subject of “Hotel Bob”, RC said that initially he had offered his home to any students that needed a place to go and get warm. In the end however, none of the students took up his offer. The Crawfords did have several house guests amongst their friends and family including some high school students whose parents were away. What RC was given credit for was offering his home to any student that didn’t have a warm place to go. When he was over at the AMS office, RC put his name and number up on the board. He said, “I’d be talking to students and when they said how cold they were, I’d tell them that my home is open to them and I would be leaving at 5 o’clock if they wanted a ride. In the end, they would go to friend’s place that had power.”

Stress was noticed mostly in the students who were anxious to know when classes were to resume. There were two factors in the increased stress level, the first being the students who were living in cold residences and were getting tired and the second was the unknown of when classes were to start again. He noticed that some student were lodging some irrational complaints like the one from the dining hall when a student asked a food services staff member when classes would resume and when the staff member couldn’t tell them, the student complained. He also noticed that some students were not thinking clearly about the effect of the ice storm would have on assignments and tests. RC said, “That some students, especially the first years, would asked whether they would be expected to write their test on the day that the syllabus said they were scheduled for. I suggested to them that the professors would probably delay the due dates of assignments and re-schedule the tests.” Grad students were impacted by having their defence of their theses re-scheduled. He did hear a rumour that several grad students defended during the storm.

The stress of lost class time was dealt with by cutting the study period between end of classes and the beginning of exams by a few days. It was considered whether the university should cancel Reading Week or extend the class time into May. Neither of these options were used and RC said “ …in the end, cutting a few days off between the end of classes and exam was the best option.”

RC put in an incredible amount of time during the storm. He explained that earlier in the week, he had decided to start cutting back some of his hours so on the Monday through to the Thursday he was leaving the campus by dinner time. When he returned to the campus on the Friday (Jan. 9th) he was there for 12-14 hours at a time. He said that he still has not got back on schedule as a result of the aftermath of the storm. He has been playing catch-up since then.

RC recalls that during a meeting with the Principal it was commented on that the meetings they had been attending had been the most productive times at Queen’s. RC said, “It was wonderful to be able to get a job done without all the bureaucracy one normally experiences at these kinds of meetings.”

When asked if there was one moment during the storm that he wished to “snap-shot” RC replied that it was when he saw an older home near Queen’s being surrounded by yellow tape because the street in front of it was impassable.

On the subject of total costs, RC said the majority of expense stemmed from residences and the houses and the damages sustained by them. (Please see report from Apartment and Housing and Residences).

Finally, RC recalls that during a meeting someone mentioned that there were places on campus that were still open for students to purchase food items but the students were experiencing problems with the ATMs and therefore could not access their money. A request was made to place a call to the Toronto Dominion Bank to have someone check on these machines. RC found it quite perplexing that in light of everything else that was happening on campus, that this was a concern. He said, “People could hardly get to campus let alone being able to use the bank machines and I found this quite strange in light of the events that were happening around us.”