IceStorm 98 Study

Captain Weigand is the regular force Operations Officer for the Princess of Wales Own Regiment.

For Captain Harold (Rock) Weigand (RW) his recollections of the beginning of the Ice Storm and the regiment’s involvement began with his experience in his own home where his family had seen some power outages and a heavy build-up of ice. RW said that driving into work on Thursday morning was quite treacherous. At the Armoury, there was no power and he had to arrange for a security picket to guard the weapons storage. The unit was stood down on Thursday night. He was called in on Friday January 9th with an initial warning order from 33 Brigade that the regiment was on stand-by to assist civilian authorities. RW said that the regiment’s involvement was sketchy in those first hours. RW personally believes that the “system” and those people involved did not know the scope of the emergency as they were focused inwards.
The regiment had at any given moment approximately 80 personnel in the Armoury and the number increased as civilians arrived from the Red Cross. As the emergency progressed, the Armouries were being used as a depot for supplies. The City of Kingston started directing volunteers to the area of the Armoury because the unit did not have enough personnel, to off-load the supplies coming in from out-of-town, the City kept sending people over to assist. The Red Cross was involved with taking the inventory of the supplies arriving. There were also representatives from the City of Kingston, not officially, but because of the need for hands to deal with the inventory.

RW explains that the inventory included, “all sorts of stuff”. In that “stuff” was cots, bottled water, fuel, sleeping bags, batteries, chainsaws, cords of wood, diapers (8 cases of them), flashlights. They didn’t know what was going to come in but if they could, they would keep pushing the inventory out to places where it was needed.
It was the initial task of PWOR to deal with the areas north of the City as far as the North and South Frontenac Townships. The unit was told to go out and check on these areas and take care of any persons who needed assistance. They were to report back to CFB Kingston. The unit was also given the task to determine what was the scope of the emergency in these areas and second, to determine the extent of the power outages. The regiment did this by continuing to patrol the areas assigned.
The chain of command according to RW was first from Land Force to Land Force Central (out of Toronto and controls all of southern Ontario) to 33 Brigade in Ottawa to CFB Kingston Sector South. The regiment was placed under command of the Base Commander (Col. Aitken) at CFB Kingston. CFB Petawawa was responsible for Sector North. As the map indicates, Sector South went from Highway 401 (near Belleville) east to Cornwall and north to Highways 43 and 7 (Smith Falls). They took a line basically from Smith Falls and ran it east and west. Everything below that belonged to the Base Commander at CFB Kingston and everything north of that belonged under the command of Petawawa. Our unit was placed under command to the Base Commander at CFB Kingston.
On the issue of monetary concerns, RW explained that the move towards the Class C pay for the reservist was a matter of legality. When a reservist is called to assist in the aid to civil powers they are for all intents and purposes treated as if they were regular force personnel. As for other costs, the unit had expenses for transportation, fuel, and vehicles. The main problem was that the regiment did not have adequate transportation and had to borrow military patterned vehicles from CFB Kingston. CFB Kingston in turn had to rent vehicles which were panel vans. According to RW, these vehicles were great while the weather remained good but when the weather turned bad the regiment could have used 4x4 vehicles. Some of the other expenses was fuel and the rental of generator. The overall costs were incurred by the military.
On the topic of communications, RW said that the land lines were adequate for the local communication and that they ran the whole time. The problems were in the rural areas where they did not have stable telephone lines. The radios that the regiment used had a distance capacity of approximately 10 miles and the regiment was often way out of that range. The regiment relied on cell phones and what was a great help were the two Griffin helicopters which were able to patch in calls. For the most part, the regiment relied on their personal cell phones. The personnel used the locations with generators to charge up their batteries. RW also mentioned the company that lent them digital phones which helped in keeping up the communications. The problem with these units was their limited range and since the regiment was patrolling areas north up to a hundred km away, they were ineffective. RW mentioned that since none of these areas were more than an hour driving time that often the regiment would wait until they got back to Kingston to report. The regiment in checking with the Ops Centres would also use their phones to check in.
RW said that what worked well was being in the situation for about four days and finding that everything began to click and became routine. A lot of what the regiment had to do was work with the civilian Emergency Centres. The problem that faced the regiment was that the civilians did not know who to contact or what area they were responsible for. RW attributes this initial confusion to the recent boundary changes that had only come into effect on January 1, 1998.
RW noted that a lot of the civil authorities did not know that they were supposed to contact Emergency Measures Ontario first. They didn’t know who to contact or what the phone numbers were for these agencies. The regiment assisted by supplying the contact numbers. RW said that in the beginning there was a huge amount of misunderstanding as to what the role of the military was to be. He explained that the military is there to assist the provincial government who does all their stuff through the EMO. In the end, the regiment had started contacting the civil authorities directly. The biggest failing in this operation was a lot of the civilian agencies did not know where they were supposed to go, how the system worked. The civilians would get frustrated with the EMO and couldn’t understand why they weren’t getting their power back on immediately. The regiment made it a point of walking these agencies through the process. Another problem was the amount of stores in the armoury. The civilians couldn’t identify the need to have these supplies sent out. As RW states:

I had my own guys identify the need. Ideally I should have had only three counties to deal with. I should have only had to talk to three people at any given time. These people did not always know what was going on and it took four days for them to get organised.

On the issue of what the regiment could have done differently, RW says that there would have been many things changed. He gave the example that in the beginning, he would have dispatched personnel straight into the EOCs to help set them up. RW said that because of the military training, the regiment is quite used to setting up EOCs in any given situation. What this would have done would assist in the information flow. He would have also let the civilians know exactly what the role of the military was in a situation like this. RW said that in the after action report the regiment has recommended that there should be a combined effort on the part of the civilians, police and military to set out a plan to deal with these kind of disasters. RW said that he himself had trouble at the beginning of the operation knowing where some of these new counties were let alone who to contact there. He cited South Frontenac as an example.
As far as the internal problems with the regiment’s personnel, RW said that the majority of the unit are very young and therefore did not have the same concerns with respect to family crisis as perhaps the base did. He did note that a fair amount of the base’s personnel who had just joined their new regiments (post Christmas) had difficulty getting their bearings on where all the new counties were.
Initially, RW found that most people were focused internally to the problems facing them. The City of Kingston was a good example of this. There was severe problems with people outside of the City of Kingston. RW said they really had it worse than the city people. The only difference was that most of the people in the rural areas had things like fireplaces, wood stoves and a generator or two and they were used to a more rugged existence. They were also used to power outages.
On the topic of future changes to the military for dealing with situations like this, RW said that he didn’t think it would be necessary and explained that because of their training and command structure they are quite capable to deal with a situation once it has been assessed. However, he pointed out that the majority of problems stemmed from the lack of a command structure within the civilian authorities. He said it was probably from the fact they don’t normally deal with situations like the Ice Storm on a regular basis. He had dealings with the Emergency Centre and when they moved the centre up to Pittsburgh Township, they finally got organised to the point of assigning one person to deal with one thing. It took about four days before this happened.
RW recalls that in the Armoury the stores were originally stacked near the door for easy loading onto transport vehicles. After about three days, he had to start moving the supplies to the back of the Armoury to make room for the incoming stores. The problem with the aid was that they received a lot of supplies that were not needed or useful. Among the incoming supplies were items such as electric heaters, electric chainsaws and electric generators. The Red Cross workers told RW that this was typical of disaster responses in that people send what they think is needed rather than asking what is necessary. RW said that they received water in excess and at one point the Armoury was storing 500 sleeping bags. At that time, they didn’t need sleeping bags and felt they were needed more in areas like Montreal. RW spent an enormous amount of time attempting to contact authorities further east to try and move the supplies to areas that required them. He was minimally successful because of the lack of civil authorities decision making process. He found it quite frustrating not having adequate information of where the need was. He often instructed truck drivers to continue on eastward with their loads in an effort to spread the aid out. But said that this became problematic as the influx of supplies to an area that did not need them only backlogged the aid. RW recalls that one delivery came in that consisted of eight skids of Pampers diapers. He said that diapers were not really needed in this area because of the amount of stores being open. They should have been sent to Montreal because of the city’s lack of facilities. The diapers are now sitting in a warehouse in Kingston that belongs to the City. RW emphasised the importance of aid being organised to meet the needs of the community for which it is intended. He cites another example of “overkill” with respect to supplies. Howe Island had reached a critical need for water. The regiment responded by ensuring that water supplies were sent over in the morning. By late afternoon, the media reported the water emergency on Howe Island and the next day two tractor-trailer loads of bottled water arrived from Toronto. RW said two lessons were learned from this incident, the need for current information and the need to be in contact with the providers of emergency aid.
Another problem that was facing the regiment was the interprovincial protocol with respect to the Emergency Measures. In order for RW to send any supplies across the Quebec border, he needed permission from EM Ontario. At one point he had two 60 kWh generators which were not needed here and it took him eight hours to find someone to take them. In the end, the regiment took it upon themselves to fill in the gaps in personnel with Emergency Measures Ontario. EMO simply did not have enough personnel to go out and assess the areas.
The media spent a lot of time at the PWOR Armoury and the regiment took them with when they went out in the helicopter. The media was really helpful with covering the work of the RMC cadets and the regiment’s personnel. The northern sectors were lacking in information so the regiment utilised the general stores in the villages. They found that by posting information in these places, a lot of people were able to get access to current news and information. RW would have liked to have seen the media acting more in the role of public service announcements rather than strictly news gathering and reporting. RW reiterated the need to combine efforts with both civil and military agencies so that everyone knows who to speak to.
The stress levels were minimised by having the unit go home at night. Most of their patrols were out during the day. The unit found that most communities shut down at night and the efforts would resume in the morning. The regiment looked on the operation as a “bit of excitement” because most of the personnel were not working in their day jobs. The regiment’s last day of participation was January 24th, 1998.
With regards to the aid supplies, RW said that the surplus is still being warehoused on Montreal Street. He said that the surplus belongs to the City of Kingston and how and when it will be disposed of is unknown. RW has advocated that the eight skids of diapers be sent to the local shelters. The City is undecided as to what to do with the surplus, it’s unknown whether they will keep the surplus for the next disaster. RW in conversation with the Red Cross learned that normally surplus is not kept and it is better to just buy what they need on the next occasion. He emphasised the importance of cash donations in order to assist in supplying aid to disaster areas.
On the humour side, RW asked to be given a few weeks to think about it. He said he recalls that some humorous events occurred but couldn’t think of any offhand.
The final costs to the regiment RW assured the writer that nothing is going to come out of the annual operating budget. Because the personnel were placed on a Class C pay scale, DND assumes the responsibility of the costs. RW said that “The Ice Storm actually saved us some money with respect to the personnel’s pay.” All costs related to Operation Recuperation was covered by the military.
When asked about the level of skill displayed by the regiment RW responded that as in all military operations some of the personnel really shine in their skills and abilities while others demonstrate a lack of ability. All of his unit performed very well and RW considers this operation to be a success as far as his unit is concerned. On the other hand, RW commented on the shear number of people who didn’t know how to operate a chainsaw and that was a concern for him as well as the safety of his personnel. He admits that a number of his personnel didn’t know how to use a chainsaw either. His other concern was the lack of knowledge in the general use of generators. He attributes this lack of knowledge to simply not ever having to use them in their general duties. It’s hard to prepare the personnel for the use of this type of equipment as it is difficult to foresee what kind of duties the next disaster is going to require.
One of RW’s biggest concerns was the inexperience of civilians south of the 401 with the use of items such as Coleman lanterns, camp stoves and other camping equipment. He did note, that the further into the rural areas one went the more experience was displayed with the use of such items by civilians. He recounted reports from the Fire Department that people were using decorative fireplaces as wood stoves and resulted in burning the back of the fireplace. RW recounted his experiences of growing up in a rural area where if the power went out, they wouldn’t even start up the generator until the next day.
He also noted the numbers of people who wouldn’t leave their homes to go to the shelter. He commented how some people would wait until they were five to six days into the power outage before they would finally evacuate to a shelter. RW said that these people didn’t realise how much of an extra burden they were becoming on the resources because it meant that they had to be revisited to check their condition. RW said fortunately in his area there were no fatalities but in other areas there was. In an outside area the military found a woman with a broken ankle that had been in her house for a couple of days without anyone having checked on her. On his commendation of his unit, RW said that they had sent their personnel out with a basic direction and allowed them to make decisions as the situation arose. He is pleased with their performance.
RW’s own experiences with his home environment were minimal as the area he lives in was only without power for a couple of days. He is aware that there was a number of military personnel who got involved with their communities simply because they were the only military personnel on the scene. He said that it took 6 or 7 days before the City of Kingston started looking outside its boundaries. As RW said, “It was a bit too late by then, there’s a big difference between the guy who can’t watch TV and the guy who can’t milk his herd.” His final comments were a reiteration of the need to combine agencies in an effort to be better informed. He also said that a good emergency plan is needed. As far as the military is concerned, they are getting used to assisting civil powers in emergencies. He reminds the writer of the number of emergencies that the military have been involved with in the last few years. He hopes that the civil authorities will respond by getting a good emergency plan together before everyone forgets who are the contact people. He’d like to see civil authorities being able to contact him in the event of another emergency before the situation gets critical so that he can start preparing his unit as well as giving out needed advice.

Additional Interview with Captain Wiegand,
Princess Of Wales Own Regiment.
Conducted by Stewart Fyfe, November 19, 1998 by phone.

Captain Wiegand was at the armouries when the storm started on Thursday. People started coming in , it got a bit panicky and he sent everyone home.

They then got a call from the Department of National Defense to go on standby and that they would be under command of Base Kingston rather than Ottawa.

Friday - told to bring in all the unit and then would be given a task.

Called Base and they had no duties.

Common sense began to prevail, and waited until Friday afternoon to notify unit to come in.

Saturday-iven the task of the house to house survey.