IceStorm 98 Study

Gary Bullock has been the Fire Chief for PittsburghTownship for a number of years. This municipality is now referred to as City of Kingston East.

Chief Bullock was out in Red Deer, Alberta when the ice storm hit Kingston and area. He was out there inspecting a couple of fire trucks that the City had recently purchased. When he heard about the storm, he called home to see what was going on. He had been on the last plane to leave Ottawa before the storm hit. The plane was de-iced twice Wednesday afternoon and the flight was delayed about 3 1/2 hours. The plane was supposed to leave around 3:30 in the afternoon and didn't get away until about 8:30 at night.

After talking to the folks back at home on both Thursday and Friday, Gary managed to get a flight out of Red Deer back to Ottawa and arrived back in Ottawa in the early hours of Saturday morning.

On the drive back from Ottawa, he says he couldn't believe what he saw as they drove down the 401 and then Highway #15. He says all of the lights were off in the business park. There was no power in the fire hall. There was a house fire happening at this same time down on Highway #2 where a fireplace had set fire to the house. Gary stayed at Fire Station #3(Gore Road) while the house fire was contained and then someone went and picked him up to bring him to the home so he could see the damage. The drive down Highway #2 was pitch black.

He says the trees "looked like something you would see in a picture book". This was Saturday. He says maybe some of it had started to get better by then. He couldn't tell because he had missed the first couple of days. "It was unbelievable".

Chief Bullock says his fire-fighters responded to a total of 88 calls during a 10 day period. These included responding to fire alarms going off (because batteries were wearing down), chimney fires, ambulance calls, hydro wires, mutual aid calls, order investigations calls, public assist calls, tree fires, vehicle accidents, etc. He says it would normally take about 4 months to have this number of calls. They had all of these calls in 10 days. "It was a busy spell for them". These were all emergency calls. In addition to these calls, the fire-fighters received calls from people concerned about family members. Fire-fighters were dispatched to go and physically check and see if these people were O.K. There were 28 calls for flooded basements, too. There were calls about power lines, Bell lines. There were calls about portable heaters. Two people had to be transported to the hospital because of carbon monoxide poisoning from using a kerosene heater inside.

People called for firewood. They wanted generators. Farmers wanted water for their cattle. They also did some sanding of private driveways. Tours of roads were done. Distribution centres were set up in 2 of the 3 firehalls and were manned by the fire department. Things like candles and blankets were distributed. The fire halls were getting their power from portable generators. It was enough to get them by. These generators were borrowed because Gary would not permit the generators on the fire trucks to be removed. He was afraid they might not be returned. He says that this issue of generators will be one his recommendations for the future. Fire service cannot be without power. There has to be emergency power for the fire halls throughout the greater Kingston area. He says the fire departments have to get together to get some generators in the halls so that all you have to do is push a button and turn a switch if this ever happens again. Bullock says even if this happened in the summertime with a major electrical storm, who knows. With all of the unsettled weather around the world, anything is possible.

Gary says that they had emergency back up for their radios. There was a problem with the pagers because there was no way to recharge them. After 24 hours their batteries go dead. Fire-fighters were moved into the halls and were put on standby because there was no way to reach them if they were at home. There were always firemen at all three halls. Cell phones were used. Once the generators got hooked up, charging stations were set up where the fire-fighters could charge their pagers right in the firehall. They picked up a fresh battery (Gary had gotten some extra batteries from Alliance) and left their old batteries behind to be recharged. He says that it took a few days to get this set up but this is what they eventually did. Cots were brought in from the Armed Forces and the fire-fighters slept in the halls.

Gary says the first fire call came in late Wednesday night according to the fire reports. From Wednesday night into Thursday morning, they never stopped. It was all night long. This didn't create any problems until about 24 hours later. Then all of a sudden "everybody was getting just about whooped". It was about this time when the Deputy-Fire Chief divided the men up into shifts. Two shifts were set up.

Gary says his own basement was flooded. He had no heat so the fireplace was used around the clock for days. As a result, the walls and ceilings were covered in black smoke.

Gary says three of the structure fires that they responded to were caused by people using their fireplaces as permanent sources of heat. He says they are not designed or intended to do this. The fourth house fire was from a man using a Coleman camp stove in the house. When he went to light it, the gas was leaking and started a fire.

He says money never entered the picture. The volunteers couldn't be made to stay home and rest. They always wanted to help and get involved. From what he's heard, most of the employers of the volunteer fire-fighters were willing to release them during the storm. Some of them still had to report to work. After working a 12 hour shift, instead of going home and getting rest they would come to the firehall.

Some of the fire-fighters brought their children to the firehall because respective spouses had to report to work. Gary's own daughter had some kids with her in her residence at Queen's.

He says the storm placed many extra demands on the wives and families of the fire-fighters at home. He says that he can't say enough good things about them. He sent letters to each of the fire-fighter's wives thanking them for their support. He recognized them for their hard work and for taking care of things at home.

Gary says the staff worked well. The phones were manned 24 hours a day for 10 days by two people. He knows there were several hundred phone calls. The volunteers did a great job.

The biggest problem faced was the "well being of the people (the fire-fighters)". It was a concern that they got proper food and nourishment, rest. Wives and people in the community went around to the fire halls with food. "This was well appreciated many times".

Gary says one of the concerns was the overhead doors in the fire halls because they are all electrically operated. They had to be manually opened.

Chief Bullock says Pittsburgh Township has an emergency plan but the Fire Department only has a "mental" emergency plan. This is something that needs to be looked at for the future.

Generators are the number one priority recommendation for the future. He says this was the first time on any major scale that people had to be set up in the fire hall and divided into shifts, just setting up this whole system and improving on it needs to be done.

Chief Bullock has been to a 3 day course hosted by Pittsburgh Township and put on by the Ministry of the Solicitor and Emergency Planning Canada. He has an application in to take the course on emergency planning offered by Arnprior. He believes that the Deputy-Chief has taken some courses in emergency planning.

Gary had no contact with the media. He says that most of this was done through City Hall. There was a control booth at City Hall. There were regular press releases which the fire department contributed to.

He says that he was not in direct contact with the Office of the Fire Marshal or Emergency Measures Ontario but he did attend the regular debriefing sessions at City Hall. At that time there was someone there from Emergency Planning Ontario. He doesn't think that the Fire Marshal's Office attended any of these meetings but they did donate some smoke alarms to the fire services in the area for any people needing them. Gary thinks that people should have two smoke detectors--one hard wired and one battery operated.

Gary has not yet made a formal report to the Office of the Fire Marshal. He has had conversations with the co-ordinating Chief. He has just kept notes for his own department.

Chief Bullock says in his opinion, the storm couldn't have happened at a better time (if it had to happen). The storm just happened to occur following the amalgamation of the Townships with the City of Kingston and he feels that it made the transition easier and "took down some of the walls" that may have remained up for months. Everyone worked together. "It didn't matter if you were a manager or a worker". "To see everyone pull together the way they did" very much impressed him.