IceStorm 98 Study

Gerry Mulder is the MNR Area Supervisor for the Kingston Management Team. He manages the field operations dealing with natural resource issues including water, trees, gravel, fish and wildlife. The majority of the work is public related in the issuance of licenses and enforcement of regulations. He supervises the staff working out of the Kingston office. During the response to the ice storm, Mulder was assigned the role of MNR/community liaison, first to the Akwasasne First Nation near Cornwall and later, to the Township of Front of Leeds and Lansdowne.

Terry Eccles, before the ice storm, was the Senior Resource Technician on the Kingston Management Team, specializing in public lands and waters. As such, he issued tenure documents: rentals, easements and various licenses for crown land. Regarding boundary issues on dry land, wetlands or water lots, he defends the crown’s right on its own land and defines the public’s right on Crown land. He advises on such matters as the issuance of work permits for shoreline work. During the response to the ice storm, Eccles was initially appointed Acting Area Supervisor while Gerry Mulder was assigned elsewhere but then, and for the mostpart, Eccles was Coordinator of Support Services to the MNR crews who worked on Howe and Wolfe Islands.

Significant event
Mulder: recalled that it was the evening of January 7th when the ice storm arrived in the Kingston area. He recalled that the amount of tree limbs falling around his house indicated to him that something significant was happening. The radio had reported warnings of a serious storm. He did not receive a specific warning from the MNR. The following morning he recognized the severity of this storm. He had experienced ice storms before in Ontario but this was way beyond anything he had experienced before. After making sure that home was OK, he traveled into the office to check its condition. The drive in and the damage on the KPH grounds, including the number of downed trees, exploding transformers, arcing hydro wires and smoldering trees confirmed that “We are into something major here!” Phone calls were made to senior managers in Peterborough, advising them of the conditions and recommending that the office be closed that day and on Friday.

Eccles: lives west of Napanee, which he recognized as the westerly edge of the ice storm. He contacted Gerry and was told not to come in because of conditions at work but was given names of other staff to call to tell them not to come in to work. He observed that later the Ministry took the position that if the employees are dealing with the storm on a personal level or if they were volunteering in relief of the storm, they should do so and not come in to work. In fact, the Kingston office did not function for the rest of that week. His job seemed limited to staying home, keeping in touch with employees and keeping them updated as to whether they should come to work.

Things changed when Mulder was assigned to a role east of Kingston and Eccles was to fill-in as the acting area supervisor. Sometime during the first weekend, January 10th and 11th, Eccles found out that MNR was to give assistance to Howe and Wolfe Islands. With Mulder heading east, Eccles was asked by the District Manager in Peterborough to take over the role of coordinator of support services for the MNR emergency response crews who were being sent down from Sault Ste. Marie.

Mulder: There was much activity at both the MNR’s Emergency Response Centre and at Emergency Measures Ontario’s (EMO) centre. MNR was also represented at the EMO centre. As a result of the close cooperation between the EMO and MNR and the MNR’s experience in emergency response, it was decided that a community sponsorship arrangement would be beneficial for the communities and would allow the more efficient use of resources. So EMO assigned MNR to focus on four main areas - Akwasane First Nation, Howe and Wolfe Islands, Lanark County and one more area (Lansdowne). MNR became dedicated to those four areas and worked directly with the municipal leaders for whatever their needs were. (This meant that instead of looking to EMO for help, the four communities looked to MNR.)

Late on the afternoon of Friday January 9th, electrical power was restored to the MNR offices along with that sector of Kingston. (It was not until February or March that 51 Heakes was connected to the KPH back-up generator.) The conventional telephone system went out with the power and the back-up system did not work. The phones came back on late Friday also.

Eccles: Aside from reports of the ice storm damage, his firsthand awareness came from the damage he noticed while driving east from Napanee on Hwy. 2. He felt that the trees and mess in Odessa were striking. The park-like KPH campus was amazing, incredible, shocking to see the damage to trees and power lines.

He came into the office once power had been restored to make phone calls to find accommodation for the 26 member crew flying in from Sault Ste. Marie to Trenton. Also to arrange initial meetings of MNR crews with the municipal officials of the newly installed municipality of Frontenac Islands, comprising Wolfe and Howe Islands.

Mulder: has seen hail storms, ice storms and a lot of heavy snow damage… but the sheer amount of ice, 1-1.25 inches and the weight that the ice represented, had an “awesome impact” on him. He was also impressed by the kind and size of the trees that were affected. But damage to trees was secondary to the stunning interaction between hydro and the trees nearby, where the arcing current of wires and transformers through trees left the trees smoldering, even in the cold and wet. He noted that “King Street from Portsmouth to bottom of the hill was closed-off because of damage. But somehow Tim Horton’s Donuts were able to stay open”. He was aware that the Mayor of Kingston was asking people to stay at home and businesses to close or remain closed.

Role of MNR
Eccles: spent Sunday arranging for the MNR crews: finding out what they needed right away and what they would be doing. The plan was that they would report to and be at the disposal of municipal officials for whatever needed to be done. The crew members were individually equipped with chainsaw kits but were prepared to do whatever was needed. He met the crews in Kingston after they had traveled from Trenton in rented vans. They brought some generators and pumps. Accommodation was arranged on one floor of the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital’s Penrose building, which had been “mothballed” and which KPH had re-opened as a public shelter from the ice storm. Penrose is also very close to the MNR office, which made it logistically convenient. They were equipped to go anywhere but it was comfortable and convenient for them to stay at Penrose for the first two nights (Monday and Tuesday January 12 and 13). Monday afternoon (January 12th) was too late to send the crews to the islands as light would be lost by 4:30 p.m. So just the crew bosses went over to meet with municipal officials at the Wolfe Island firehall, which had been designated as the coordinating centre. It was quickly decided that a chainsaw crew was needed on Howe Island to clear the roads so that Ontario Hydro crews could come in to replace poles and lines. The crew of six men were experienced firefighters from Northern Ontario.

It became clear that the Municipality was asking for a little bit more by way of organization experience. The MNR crew from N. Ont. then reacted just as they would respond to a fire emergency. “They set up their communication in that fashion and they set up their organization in that fashion.” In terms of support services, they needed an “intelligence” person to watch weather reports and look after logistics. Service boss kits for ordering food and equipment were used, just as they would for a fire. They set up emergency communications on the island: antennae and base radios were quickly put up on both islands. The base radio at the MNR office was not reliable because it was tied into the phone lines, which were sporadic. So an emergency base and antenna was installed at 51 Heakes. Eccles’ job became support services coordinator. Other Kingston staff followed-up the requests from the emergency crews e.g. gas and oil for chain saws, food, pumps, tow ropes… anything that the crews needed. “MNR became a main organizational influence on both islands. Just because of their fire training and they are used to that kind of emergency response. Their comparing it to a fire emergency worked very well.” Twice daily meetings, each morning and night with OPP, Ontario Hydro (Hydro), municipal officials and MNR crew bosses determined priorities for the day and in the evening, reviewed what had been accomplished and what was missed to be prioritized for the next day. MNR and OPP coordinated the checking of people in their homes and the safety of elderly people. MNR brought in pumps and generators for the Municipalities who were then responsible for distribution. MNR crews checked on pumps and generators; bringing gas and oil as needed. They came back to the mainland each night.

After the second night, they moved to a local hotel, which was a quieter location than the busy shelter. The crews needed to debrief and to get to sleep early as they were up at 5:00 o’clock each morning. KPH kitchen staff came in specially to prepare early breakfasts so the crews could eat by 6:00 a.m. and make it to the ferries. The KPH kitchen also prepared lunches for the crews. KPH was great.

Thursday winds blew-up, snow and drifting became a problem. The Howe Island ferry was closed, except to transport the MNR crews. Attempts were made to rent four-wheel drive vehicles so that crews could make it down the long lanes to check on residents, generators and pumps. In the end, MNR staff used OPP four-wheel drives. MNR local staff got supplies: food, groceries, gas cans, tow ropes, shovels, rental cell phones, rental trucks, staffed the base radio and kept track of the ferry schedule so things would get to the Islands as quickly as possible.

The crews initially came to cut wood but stayed to organize the response to the emergency. “Their (the MNR crews’) experience with fire fighting was a tremendous help here for the municipalities. They just set up their organization the same way they would move into a fire situation and it worked extremely well. I think you can adapt that to any type of emergency."

Cooperation with other groups involved in the emergency
The municipality had just amalgamated the Townships of Wolfe Island and Howe Island into the Municipality of Frontenac Islands on January 1st and on January 9th had to respond to an unprecedented ice storm. They had new municipal leaders and “a whole dog’s breakfast” of army officials, Hydro, MNR and OPP coming in and no plan to coordinate them all. The municipal officials were appreciative of the MNR offering to organize the event. It started off simply with saying: We’ll have a meeting each morning at 9:00 o’clock. Each evening before we leave we’ll have another meeting with all the groups represented so things are clarified: priorities are set, all know what each other are doing, nothing is overlooked, keep the local residents advised…

The MNR has communication technicians who came to Kingston to set-up communication devices like base stations and transmitters and receivers. They traveled all over the affected area helping re-establish communications.

Mulder: told his superiors to send him wherever he was needed as he was confident that Eccles would be capable of running things at the area office.

Mulder’s former role was that of Native Liaison Specialist. He worked with first nation (F.N.) communities for 4 or 5 years on various things: issue management, conflict and partnership projects. The fellow in Cornwall had retired the previous September and his replacement was hired on January 5th, the Monday before the ice storm. He was brand new and hadn’t met anybody in Akwasasne F.N. EMO called and asked Mulder if he would go to Cornwall and team up with the new liaison specialist and work with the officials of Akwasasne F. N. (Mulder already knew some of the people at Akwasasne.) On Sunday, he drove to Akwasasne and met the MNR crew from NW Ontario that had also flown in to Trenton and traveled to Cornwall by motor coach. “You have to understand the climate of Akwasane,” said Mulder. “For years, there has been a lot of enforcement challenges. There have been a lot of smuggling and contraband and different things happening. So all of a sudden, when a huge convoy of officials showed up: in fact it was an OPP motor coach that our crew traveled in, you can imagine how that went over. There were MNR vehicles with insignia on it. All the things that normally we wouldn’t do when we go and talk to a first nations people, we had to do out of simple logistics and need. We got an escort onto the first nation.”

“You have to also remember that Akwasasne is basically straddling two provinces and a state of the U.S. So you have the Province of Ontario, the Province of Quebec and New York State. You’ve got Canadian Federal. You’ve got U.S. Federal jurisdiction. You’ve got three different community councils in three communities (Ontario, Quebec and U.S.). Plus, you’ve got a traditional council… I believe that there are nine different government levels or organizations that somehow had to come together to say, ‘We’ve got a problem!’ Now, to their credit, about two-and-a-half to three years ago, because of the location of the First Nation with the flooding potential and everything else and a lot of big industries in the area, they put together an emergency measures coordinator… So they had a lot of stuff already on paper, ready to go, in the case of anything happening. They probably declared an emergency at least a day and a half, if not two days before anyone else. And I think part of that was because they were so prepared, they knew where they basically said ‘We can’t handle this anymore.’ As soon as they did that, a lot of the support equipment to the large generators to keep schools running to set them up as shelters and things like that, very quickly, was mobilized and brought to them through Health Canada and other places. So, really, they got the jump on a lot of different communities because they were prepared to say ‘We can’t handle this! We need help.’ So when we got there, a lot of that was already in place… Remember they got hit Tuesday night. And I’m talking Sunday coming in now.”

The role of Mulder and Scott Lee, the other liaison specialist, was to go to the community leaders and say “How do you want to use us? How do you need us? One of the F.N. community leaders became MNR’s direct link. Utilities had a lot of lines down and inaccessible because of downed trees, brush and power line debris. The MNR crew was assigned to clear the debris so the utility crews could get in and install new equipment.

How Akwasasne community came together was phenomenal given its multiple levels. The NY, Quebec and Ontario utilities did not get as organized as well. The main lodge for the emergency workers was in an elementary school in the St Regis, Quebec portion of the Akwasasne F.N. territory. The New York utilities expressed interest in getting the help of the MNR crew. Next day, Mulder explained to EMO that the MNR crew was working in Ontario, Quebec and New York. Was there insurance, WCB coverage? Yes, there is an international agreement for firefighters and Mulder understood that something similar had been worked out for the ice storm situation. There was 26 MNR staff in Akwasasne.

Mulder considered it “an interesting and phenomenal learning experience that… MNR fire crews, who are used to going into a chunk of Crown land and saying, ‘Step aside! We’re here! Let us do our job!’ (were) force-fit into a community, which already had its leadership structure, infrastructure and logistics in place. That took a couple of hours to figure out… but MNR crew had to back-off from asserting their own leadership to getting their direction from another leadership, that being the community. It was almost like the top end of our organization was chopped off because we were now reporting to a different structure.” Once the MNR staff came to grips with the community leadership of the response, things went smoothly. The community leaders were there as support.

On site were RCMP, Ontario Hydro, the three local utilities and the MNR. Mulder was very impressed by the process that saw the various authorities working under the leadership of the First Nation in response to this emergency. They were fed at the various community shelters that were set up. “The community couldn’t do enough for us. It was a phenomenal learning experience for a lot of guys from northern Ontario who never worked in this kind of a first nation environment before. In addition, the first nation people were really receptive and appreciative of the help.”

As well as the expertise brought by the MNR crew, Akwasasne also benefited from the communications equipment and operations that the MNR crew brought with them including cellular phones. Vehicles were also something that was very useful for MNR to supply.

Mulder worked at Akwasasne from Sunday January 10th to Tuesday January 13th. He worked along with Scott Lee and saw that Lee, although new to the job, was “very capable and doing a great job”. Mulder informed MNR and EMO that there was no need to have two liaison specialists in Akwasasne. He was then assigned to Lansdowne.

On Tuesday afternoon, Mulder left Cornwall and traveled to Lansdowne. By the time the MNR were called to Lansdowne, they already had some experience working with municipalities responding to the ice storm. With that experience, the crew of 30 arrived at Lansdowne asking “What do you want us to do?” The local volunteers and volunteer fire fighters were exhausted and needing of help. Mulder’s role was that of community liaison. Six to eight crewmembers began taking over where the local volunteers were running out of steam: generator sign-out (70-80 generators). The rest (22) went with the roads superintendent: clearing roads for utility crew access and roadway safety (overhanging limbs). A week later, a new crew with chainsaws was assigned from Sudbury as relief for some of those who had been sawing for over a week.
MNR staff was located at the Glen House Resort in Gananoque. It had partial power from a generator that was brought in. Communications remained a problem so MNR set up a satellite telephone. About a week later, MNR also set up radio communication throughout the area.

Municipal staff did their jobs. MNR were there to help and relieve. Canadian Forces were also present with 100-150 people providing 24-hour back up, a medical corps, and check-ins to houses to assure safety of residents. This was done three times during the emergency period.

Lansdowne had 80 generators and offers of others from all over Canada, as far away as Vancouver. People from all over Eastern Ontario were calling for generators. Local staff were getting burned-out and having difficulty distributing the generators. “They knew too many people. They knew individual situations.” The local people had developed an information sheet: name, address, how many in the house, ages, medical conditions, how long without power. The intent was that requests would be assessed with priority given to many people in the house and medical conditions and elderly, but after a couple of days, they all remained top priority (because the local person was unable to make a dispassionate decision). MNR supplied the dispassionate third party to apply a triage system, determine the priority and get the generators out.

Mulder found it interesting that people, homeowners and farmers, who were capable of doing specific things that would help themselves out, refused to do so when it came to hooking up generators. MNR staff delivered generators but they are not electricians. Therefore, they would not hook the generators up to the household box, even though they knew what to do. They would, however, tell or show the householder what needed to be done. Yet homeowners would rather wait (and remain cold) until an electrician could make the connections.

Some hooked up generators to fuse box or breaker box. That way they could choose to direct the limited power to specific functions by activating the desired circuit and closing all others. For example: turn off the cook stove and turn on the furnace.

The reaction to the delivery of the generators was often very emotional.

Eccles: MNR crews on Wolfe and Howe Islands were from Northern Ontario and mostly from very rural areas where they do not call in an electrician or plumber for things they can do. But they also knew that if they followed the rules, they would not do unqualified electrical repairs or hook-ups. However, they did make judgments that sometimes went against the rules. For example, the furnace of an elderly couple on Howe Island was not working. They knew that it had something to do with the switch. An electrician had been called but was busy and didn’t know when he would be able to make the ferry. The MNR staffer knew that the temperature was getting critically cold and had to make a decision as to whether he should offer to check the switch for them. He decided to make the offer. He informed then that he thought that he could help but that he was not a qualified electrician. The elderly couple was happy to have him take a look at the switch. He was able to repair it in ten minutes. The furnace came on. And he got hugs for his effort. Was it the right decision? Eccles assured him that it was.

Mulder: on compassion - On a humorous note, a crew noticed that there was an older couple following them with a 4x4 ATV and trailer picking up wood that the crew had cut. The crew, knowing what the couple was doing, checked with them that they were cutting the wood to the right length for their stove.

On a more serious note, some tragedies happened. In one, in the Lansdowne area, a member of a family died and two others were very seriously injured in an ice storm related home accident. The next day, MNR crews went by the house. Knowing about the tragedy and the location, instead of sticking to the roadway which was their task, they wandered onto the property and cleared up a lot of the brush around the house so that there was one less thing that the family had to worry about in their grief.

In many instances, the MNR crews were the first officials that a lot of people came in contact with. People wanted to let them know about what they had done to cope in the emergency. The crews became “listening posts” for many citizens.

Eccles: On Thursday January 15th, the weather became very windy and cold, especially on the Island, which he was able to see from his office. This was the day that the Howe Island ferry was closed except to get the MNR crew on and off the Island. Eccles was sure that the crews would be returning early and kept expecting radio calls to confirm this. The crews returned after dark as they had before. When he expressed his surprise that they had worked as usual, their response was that it was nothing compared to the heat, the bugs, the sweat and the filth of working on a fireline. This was like a vacation to them.

Mulder: People were extremely appreciative of the help.

Eccles: noted that one of the tough decisions that had to be made after the first week was when things were getting to the point that people were safe, major chainsaw work had been done, people were secure and generators were on. While the crews enjoyed helping people, in their words, they needed to know “when the fire was out” and when they needed to pull out. The decision was made with the local municipal people in a debriefing situation. Do you feel safe with us pulling out now? The answer was yes. It was an easier decision, as they knew that there were places to the east that needed their help.

In addition to chainsaws, generators and pumps, communications was paramount. MNR supplied LANSAT telephones to Kingston City Hall. MNR also has aircraft. Two MNR helicopters and one OPP helicopter which is maintained by MNR were assigned to ice storm duty. One thing that was neglected in the Lansdowne area was the Thousand Islands. MNR brought in a helicopter to survey the islands for damage and signs of people who may have been stranded by the storm. Damage was less than feared and no one was stranded. Mulder noted that the Canadian Forces also sent a helicopter. Both landed and took on some local officials for observation flights. He described the finely detailed protocol that was observed for the Canadian Forces helicopter compared to the minimum of the same for the MNR procedure.

About the emergency plan:
Mulder: MNR dramatically reorganized in May 1996. A lot of the planning that had occurred up to that point, was redundant, in the sense that it might take three plans to cover same (single) land base today. The plan that existed pertained to flooding. The former Napanee District had very little Crown Land to worry about from a fire standpoint. And there are agreements with municipalities that they are first response on Crown land in Southern Ontario. So any emergency plan that had been done in Southern Ontario was basically flood.

“What we were dealing with in the ice storm was something completely different. No one had anticipated this. It had elements of a flood. It had elements of a fire. The response capability by the Ministry was similar to any one of those two things. However, the type of things we had to do i.e. a lot of chainsaw work rather than manning dams to make sure that the water is maintained, we didn’t have any handle on.

Because of the reorganization of 1996, our emergency planning, even for floods, was outdated.” With attention given to dealing with the reduction in staff and trying to get their feet back on the ground as a result of the downsizing, the emergency plan didn’t get the attention that it should have. As recently as last week, three staff attended a training session in Orillia where the development of emergency planning for respective offices has been made a priority and we have to deliver within a certain number of months.

Regardless of what an up-to-date emergency plan might have said, “my most powerful tool was having all the staff home phone numbers.” This enabled the collection of information about who was doing what, which was crucial to planning the response to the crisis. It allowed a reporting structure for things to happen efficiently while allowing for staff to respond to their personal and community emergencies. He doubted that anything that he knew in a traditional emergency plan would have helped in the ice storm situation. They did learn a lot from the ice storm that may find its way into the emergency plan either general or specific to an ice storm.

Eccles: The importance of having an emergency plan hit home to the municipalities who either didn’t have one or who hadn’t updated it for a while. EMO were handing out pamphlets and guidelines which now municipalities will take very seriously. (The head of council is the authority regarding declaring and leading the response to a local emergency.) The response of the MNR fire crews is so practiced that it is automatic. Their organizational skills were a great benefit to the municipalities they were here to help.

Decisions & Authority:
Eccles: didn’t have the problem of exercising authority. “The fire supervisor, who was the leader of the fire crew, was the authority. My job was to give him everything that he needed.” The focus of the rest of the Kingston staff was clear and uncomplicated by bureaucracy: keep the crews supplied. Eccles only had to brief the district manager in Peterborough periodically. There was no interference.

Mulder: “I may have had a bit of an advantage as I was already a manager.” Upon being assigned to Akwasasne, he went to his manager and said: “We’re going to need some finances for this. I don’t know what we are going to walk into. (We are issued government VISA and American Express cards.) I said ‘I’m sorry but these things are going to be used to whatever limit that I need them, for whatever we need’. He said, ‘I fully expect you to do that. Run with it!” At the emergency site the priority was clearly to do whatever the community needed. Purchases were made to support the effort. Work was accepted based on need and not cost or regard to international or provincial borders.

However, safety was one factor that was not overlooked in favour of following the municipality’s wishes. For example, through EMO, two chippers were sent down from Parry Sound to Lansdowne. One was “a relic from 1970’s”. After spending “quite a lot of money to get it working”, it was found to have no safety equipment on it. Nor did it have a reverse, in case something got caught in it. MNR made the decision to scrap it. The municipality pressured the MNR to let them use it. MNR refused on the grounds of the safety risk and ended up disabling the machine by removing the battery and switch.

Eccles: “If we needed major items like more generators and pumps, the call would first go out to Trenton.” Very early on, MNR set up a receiving depot at Canadian Forces Base – Trenton. MNR equipment, normally stored at Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie and Dryden, was flown to Trenton for redistribution during the ice storm response. At the end of each day, an order would be faxed to Trenton. Trenton would reply as to whether they had the item or how long it would take to get it. The fire boss would make the decision as to whether he had the time to wait for it.

For miscellaneous supplies such things as shovels, axes, gas cans, gasoline, oil, screw-in cleats for boots and groceries, the Kingston staff would get what was needed and charge it to the Ministry. When the bills came in, the purchases would be coded to a provincial ice storm account. He did not feel at all constrained because the expenses were reasonable, required expenses including the leasing of phones or trucks.

Mulder: “As long as we could justify the expense, there was no one breathing down our backs.”

Challenges:
Eccles: His main challenge was the first weekend, providing support services to the crews when he didn’t have any previous experience doing that kind of job.

Mulder: In a fire situation, there is usually a couple of days preparation during which settling home matters can be done before heading off to the fire site. This situation found Mulder conflicted in that he was being called to go off to work while his home front, with occasional power losses, wasn’t as secure as he would it have liked it. Once into the emergency response, you are running on adrenaline, eating poorly, sleeping poorly… You can maintain that for a time then suddenly it gets to you. Once the crisis was over, Mulder was off sick for almost a week. The challenge is to know how to pace yourself.

Eccles: Fire crews were conscious of the need to prevent burnout. The fire boss asked that newspapers and magazines be available each evening for his crew, that they had fresh fruit and bottled water in their rooms. Things that would help them to relax.

Mulder: He said that he returned home on Monday afternoon and came in to work, first thing Tuesday morning, ready to start work, everything normal again. Should have taken a couple of days to slow down and catch his breath.

The recently retired, previous, MNR Native Liaison Specialist at Akwasasne had spent four or five years working to establish a rapport with the community. His legacy of goodwill and trust made it so much easier for MNR to go in and offer their services. Since the ice storm, the Ministry has been hearing across the province that Akwasasne F.N. has been talking to other F.N.s, congratulating and lauding the work of MNR with Akwasasne during the ice storm. Mulder is glad that they worked with Akwasasne “because it got rid of a lot of awkward feelings and opened up a lot of doors for interaction, trust, understanding, working together and cooperation. To some degree, they sought us (MNR) out and we were able to deliver. I think there was a lot gained, on both sides.”

Dealing with stress (in addition to the process of the fire crews…)
Eccles: Kingston staff was on duty from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. for a week. When the crews from Northern Ontario left, Eccles felt relief but wondered how he would relax. “Had it gone on longer, we would have required people to take some time off.”

Mulder: In Lansdowne, local public health officials distributed stress care information. “The shelter volunteers, in the same building, made us sit down, have a good meal and take a few minutes to relax. It was really appreciated.” After a week or ten days of “going full out” Mulder was told by the senior manager in Kemptville (Marie-France Bernier) that he needed a break. Her area staff are now ready, having dealt with their own personal ice storm emergencies. They were going to replace him with one of their own staff.

MNR has keen critical incident stress counselling though trained peer counsellors. Mulder said the he did not know if the peer counselling was used.

Other comments:
Mulder: We as a Ministry know each other and work well together, but need to develop an identity. Fire crews did not have their regular blaze orange coveralls with “fire service” identification printed on them. “We were all over the place, doing everything and everybody appreciated it but didn’t have a clue who we were.” MNR missed an opportunity to let people know who it is and the magnitude of what it does.

Getting back to normal took too many weeks. There was no closure for staff so they could move on to the next [thing] until the reception last week. To help the people and the organization, it should have been a lot closer to the event.

Eccles: “Our Ministry and other government ministries have been going through a lot of changes: changing offices and boundaries, changing in mandate – what we are supposed to be doing. Internally, just as a result of all those changes and changes in our organization, we kind of lost or weren’t sure of what we are required to do as a ministry… But all of a sudden we were focussed, out of necessity… All of a sudden we knew who we were and what our job was and it happened just like that. We were an organization. We knew what our responsibility was and we worked toward that and there was no question about who we were and what we were doing. That was kind of refreshing… We were all focussed doing the same thing and we think we did a good job. So, as a result, we had a renewed sense of pride in our organization. It’s unfortunate those things take some form of tragedy or people suffering or something to bring that together… I think we did get a renewed sense of pride in our organization.

Suggested contacts:
Trevor Woods (Sault Ste. Marie) 705-945-5790 re: daily situation reports
Ben Leewenstein (Sault Ste. Marie) 705-945-5760 re: flood emergency coord.
Ron Evers (Kemptville) re: bulletins
Rick Carbonneau 705-272- 8656 re: fire crews