IceStorm 98 Study

The City of Brockville has a population of 21,000. There are two fire stations with a total complement of 4 crews and numerous support and volunteer staff. Harold Tulk was previously attached to the Ontario Fire Marshall’s Office. He has also had over 20 years of experience with Emergency Measures.

In preface to his remarks concerning the storm, HT recalled that Brockville had been through a similar storm in 1987 and that the lessons learned from that experience had been put to good use. They were, to a certain extent, prepared to deal with the next storm if and when it arrived. It arrived on the evening of January 7, 1998. The Chief also pointed out that they received daily weather reports year round and that he had always been alert at this time of the year due to the unsettled weather.

The chief was aware of the weather related problems that were being experienced by Kingston and in Cornwall, especially at Akwesasne. So, in a sense he was preparing for it long before the storm hit the area. As the Emergency Planner for Leeds and Grenville, “I get notified of these things”.

At a Fire Chiefs’ meeting on January 6, HT started to hear reports coming in from the north east and south west sections of the county that ice-related emergencies were occurring. He could see the buildup and was preparing for the eventual arrival of the storm. “We knew that Kingston was really getting it bad and we were just starting to feel the edge of that.”

Momentum began to build during the day and evening of Jan 7. Stations were beginning to report substantial buildup of ice. Fire departments went to the next level of readiness. HT, who was responsible for 23 stations and over 700 firefighters, set up his emergency control centre at the central communications centre located on Laurier Blvd.

From his central location at Laurier Blvd. HT was able to acquire a ‘global view’ of the activity which was accelerating. He was in the best possible location since reports and up to date information were being directed to his office through the communications network. “It was a lot easier for a global assessment to take place here because of the central communications centre, because we get a very quick snapshot of what’s going on out there because everything’s centralized and I think that’s very important.”

From 9:30 on the evening of Jan 7, the fire station ran non-stop with 2 back-up crews to relieve one another.. At his home he informed his wife that it looked as if they were in for the long haul and that they should prepare for it. He returned to the Fire Hall that evening and spent the night at the station having no idea when he would be returning home. “At this point, I didn’t see any demonstrated need to phone the city manager and start kicking in the emergency planning process ... all the disciplines were doing things very well, things were in control, the assessments were taking place, we weren’t alarmed at this stage...”.

At 5:00 a.m. Jan 8 after reviewing the weather report HT knew that he was “in for it”. He went out to do some street assessments and spoke with the Brockville P.U.C. and after consulting with other senior people agreed that he should put the emergency plan into alert. “That means that we get all the key decision makers back into one central place and then we start doing some risk management assessment about where we are and where we’re going”. Once the plan is activated 8 key people are paged and directed to meet in one place; in this case, at the Gord Watts Centre on North Augusta Road. There are 8 key people who wear a page 24 hours a day and can be contacted anywhere in Canada and the U.S. Once they are paged with a triple code which is protected they realize that the emergency plan has been activated and they are to get to North Augusta Road as soon as possible.

At 6:30 in the morning of the 8th, Ontario Hydro killed the power to all of Leeds and Grenville. This decision was made to ensure the safety of the line workers who were attempting to repair downed lines and to save the entire system from a total collapse. This decision enabled the Chief to concentrate his efforts on other priorities.
“... we knew that in Kingston there were people losing power, power coming on, power going off, that’s devastating to an emergency service because you’ve got to treat everything as live, you’ve got to protect people, keep them back and try and maintain some level of control”. An announcement was broadcast over the emergency response system “treat everything as live but be aware that power is off and we did that in case there was any ‘back-feeding’ coming in from other districts”. This decision created, what HT refers to as a “paradigm shift” and he was then able to focus his attention on protection of property and emergency assistance rather than fighting pole fires and downed lines.

At the same time, he notified the C.A.O. of Brockville that all departments were successfully coping with the situation.
At 9:00 a.m. after an overall assessment was made of the situation, the emergency control group recommended that a State of Emergency be declared and called upon the mayor to announce this state of affairs to the general population.

At 2:00 p.m. that afternoon the authorities moved into a different mode of operation as designated by the Emergency Planning Act. At the same time an announcement was broadcast over CFJR notifying the population of the state of emergency. From that point on, public service announcements were broadcast every 2 hours, 24 hours a day during the emergency.

The core group was well informed of the situation as it was developing and “because of our emergency planning experience we wanted to make sure that our public were well informed”.

When HT heard from Ontario Hydro at 9:00 a. m., they had no idea of what they were facing. At first they suggested that power might be down for 48 hours. Later on that day they acknowledged that power might be down for up to 4 weeks. HT was now facing a “worst case scenario”.
It was at this point that HT separated himself from the fire station and delegated his authority as fire chief to his deputy fire chief, Peter Mulvihill. HT, as the emergency planner for the City of Brockville now assumed his new duties. With 20 years experience as an emergency planner, the Chief activated the plan for the City of Brockville.

“...the most interesting observation that I make as a person that’s been developing emergency plans for some 20 years... it’s been the hardest sell document in the municipal sector and you have to be diligent and tenacious in having people pay attention to the damn thing and the way I always sold it was it was a management tool as well as an emergency response tool because it gave everybody an snapshot overview of what each department does. The beauty of this one, and this is a personal observation, is that nobody had to open the binder ... and I’ll be damned if they didn’t follow the process step by step...and that confirmed one thing that all that training, all that practice all the arguments I had with them to pay attention to it paid off. The key players didn’t have to open the binder... we kept this thing simple .. we always believed that if we have a process to bring the right people together that they can evaluate the situation and make good quality decisions for the community.. that’s what that plan is premised on...”.

As resources were added to the system, the financial aspect to the operation did not pose a problem. All purchases and disbursements were accounted for.

Radio transmission was unaffected by the storm since measures had been taken from lessons learned from the storm of 1987. Communications were never a serious problem for the chief since he had ensured the design and implementation of a communications network between the emergency response agencies during the past ten years.

Individuals were assigned specific duties to co-ordinate the receipt and distribution of supplies coming into the station. In accordance with this Emergency Plan he had a communications officer, a fleet manager “ who was dealing with social services, facilities and hospitals and generators...again, not how to do it, but who was responsible, and that’s what we think is the right approach now... we’ve confirmed... the plan should never tell you how to manage anything it should make damn sure that the right person’s there to manage it”.

At the many meetings which took place the chief always made sure that there was someone from Ontario Hydro present “ so that we were getting one story”.

Generators from as far away as Thunder Bay were distributed from the station. Carbon dioxide MONITORS, not detectors, were also provided. Calls came from outside with offers of assistance. Brockville was eventually “twinned up” with the Waterloo region and calls came in from the Cambridge and Sudbury areas. Two visitors from Langley B.C. arrived to observe the emergency plan process since they had heard that the plan had been functioning smoothly. HT also had visitors from the CBC to observe the operations. ‘... what everybody was damn well scared to death of was that.. we went into this state of blackness all at once which we saw as a saving grace but we had to plan for the moment when it started to come on... as this thing went into two and three days, we really started to get a genuine concern for the security of people, hypothermia, public health... the human thing”.

Fatigue was a problem which had to be dealt with. The chief referred to the “stamina factor” as an unknown element as it became evident that the emergency might stretch out for a period of two weeks. “... how long can you prevail under these circumstances ... that was a tough one”.

HT expressed the frustration which he, and many others experienced, regarding the abandonment of his family during the performance of his duties. The chief remained at the station for 20 days despite the fact that his house was without power and the basement had flooded. While recognizing the fact that this was part of the job, it certainly weighed on him as it did to countless others in his position.

On the evening of the 9th, power was restored to the station, but the decision was made to wait until the following day before returning power to the city “ because it was safe to do so”. All of his men and other repair crews were well rested before tackling the job of restoring power to the community. As a further precaution, “ we wanted to get public service announcements out to the public on ‘how to behave’ when the power starts coming back on , so we were very specific on our instructions “. HT requested instructions from Ontario Hydro and the Fire Marshall’s office on how to deal with the sudden return to power to institutions and individual homes and broadcast these instructions to the general population. He wanted it done in a safe and controlled way.
“We went with very short ‘bullet type’ instructions and appealed to the public to follow them... and the feedback we got on that was that that was absolutely excellent, I’m happy to say that we did not have a fire occur”.
HT pointed out that for a city of it’s size, Brockville has the highest percentage (50%) industrial space of any city in eastern Ontario. He emphasized his appreciation for the professional manner in which Ontario Hydro and the Brockville P.U.C. managed to restore power to the industrial sections of the city.

HT had high praise for Ontario Hydro “... now I’ve heard the horror stories about Ontario Hydro from everybody else , I can’t say enough from an Emergency Planner’s perspective, from the Operations Control Group perspective and how terrific they were here ... absolutely superb the way it was managed... they were with us all the time, they were at the briefing meetings, they were there...”.

Radio played a crucial role during the storm. Rather than shower the city with information pamphlets, which were redundant as soon as they were distributed, announcements were made every 2 hours, day and night. People were asked to check on neighbours and inform them of the news. It was essential that CFJR stay on the air and broadcast good quality information.

This emergency was about people and the social services and Ontario Hydro were the lead agencies, not police and fire.

C.N. Rail posed a problem in that the crossing gates only had 10 hours of battery time and after that the gates came down and stayed down. Since most of the fire stations were located south of the tracks, the north side of town was vulnerable. The fact that the trains had stopped running had not been communicated to the various communities along the line. HT and his people were especially sensitive to this issue, as they were reminded of the tragic loss of several firefighters at a similar crossing in 1984 at Iroquois.

What would you have done differently?
Communications and public information is of central importance to any emergency plan as HT pointed out. “Public information is never enough and we’ve got to become more innovative”. As an example he is proposing broader partnerships with the school boards as they have access to a “phenomenal information network and that should be used by everybody”.

“The other thing is the communications between emergency responders and emergency agencies. I don’t care what jurisdiction you live in, whether it’s rural, urban or otherwise, vital to the success or failure of any operation is going to be the ability of people to get a hold of each other, to manage resources and to do that, we’ve got the technology. There’s no excuse for not having it in place or making it a priority, and you should have a plan, a basic plan”. In terms of priorities “we are going to look at the public information thing in a major way “.

“We’re taking a look at the whole emergency planning process... “. Even though the amalgamation process has reduced the number of political units, there are still 25 communities in Leeds and Grenville. “We’ve got to make sure that we have an emergency planning process that everybody can understand, both in the public and the private sector easily and they can easily be integrated...”.

“...I know one thing, that 85% of the population of Leeds and Grenville given the right information would do the right things, and they did, I’ve always believed that...”