IceStorm 98 Study

Staff Sergeant Meinen commands the Leeds area of the County of Leeds and Grenville which extends just past Westport to the north-west and Gananoque to the south-west and east to a point just 10 miles east of Brockville. The area encompasses ten municipalities. He has a total of 52 officers under his command. He reports to Superintendent Frank in Smiths Falls. He has taken the O.P.P. Incident-Level 1 course, as well as the Basic Emergency Preparedness and Emergency Site Management courses in Arnprior.

Jeroen Meinen didn't know for the first day that there was an emergency. (On January 8) it was a dark night out and the reason Jeroen Meinen woke up was that a phone call came from the school saying the kids didn't have to go to school. He asked "What time is it?" "7:30". "Oh, jeeze I have to get to work". The alarm hadn't gone off. He got to work and realized it was a bad ice storm but never expected the magnitude it was. "I thought O.K., the power failed, we'll be back to normal in a few hours. I didn't realize the extent of it. I thought it was just something local".

Jim Monaghan, a reporter from the Brockville Recorder and Times dropped by looking for stories. He was the first person to tell Meinen that this could last days.

Marc Derroch (social services administrator for Leeds and Grenville) dropped by around 9:00 a.m. He was the first to advise Meinen that North Grenville had declared an emergency and had evacuated the nursing home. At that point, Meinen didn't know of any other emergencies being declared.

The O.P.P. only received one call from a municipality regarding the declaring of an emergency. The O.P.P. was used as a conduit through Orillia to Toronto to declare the emergency.

Jeroen Meinen called a collection of municipalities to see who was declaring states of emergency and only got answering machines saying the offices were closed due to the ice storm.

Fire departments were getting calls for flooded basements but the O.P.P. were getting few calls. They weren't needed yet. Meinen says a lot of people didn't think of calling the municipalities. It is their responsibility in a civil emergency.

Some people called looking for information but the O.P.P. were as much in the dark as everybody else. Even that night Meinen didn't know much until his brother called from Virginia. They were watching CNN. He didn't know until then that the storm had hit such a large area and that hydro towers had toppled.

There was no power at the O.P.P. office. This meant they couldn't work. Computers required power. They have electric heat and the lights were out. They got the mobile command unit and used it as the detachment. They moved the office into it. It has a generator and they hooked the phones up to it. Their communications system withstood the ice storm.

Jeroen Meinen arranged for fuel for the cruisers through the City of Brockville works yard (since stations couldn't pump gas). That night he went to an emergency meeting in Brockville with the City Police and found out that they were looking at least two days, and probably longer. The City was up and running and did an excellent job during the emergency.

The O.P.P. decided to maintain all calls for service and they were doing door-to-door checks. O.P.P. Regional Headquarters directed them to do the door-to-doors. They had 12 extra O.P.P. officers for Leeds and Grenville. Over 2 weeks, JM’s won staff bagged 2600 hours in overtime. There were fewer calls for service-“Leeds and Grenville was probably safer than it had ever been”. There were actually only 8 generators thefts, 6 from Canadian National.

At home, JM was without power. The first day was like a party atmosphere, but JM had to work and almost felt like he was missing out. JM’s wife felt lonely at first but once her good friend began to visit she was fine. JM put in an extra 150 hours over 2 weeks. Things went well at home and that made it easier to go to work.

Some of JM’s Officers wanted to stay at home but he said “this is your job, these are not normal times, you’re coming in to work but this is a tough thing to do.

The extra OPP Officers were paid for by the Province. Flashlight batteries were an issue. The O.P.P. Command centre was calling around, asking what they needed. JM said he needed flashlight batteries but the next night they didn’t come. He had to go several steps up the chain of command to eventually get the batteries. The office didn’t have a generator, but they used one they had seized in a drug raid to recharge their batteries. JM feels the office should have a generator.

Meinen attended the City and the County meetings which were held each night. Once the County meetings "got up and rolling" he stopped attending the City meetings.

At first different groups were doing door-to-door checks and they weren’t being well co-ordinated. After a few days it was decided the O.P.P. would check on the high-risk places on a regular basis since they were more mobile. It was easier for the military to do “sweeps”. The O.P.P. had portable CO detectors and decided that people would be removed if CO levels were above a certain level.

They never met with any resistance when people had to be removed from their homes.

They did break into one home. The O.P.P. had been informed that there were people inside. When they knocked, nobody answered. They could see there was a generator inside the house and candles burning It ended up that an inside door was locked and it had to be broken down. There was no one home.

Regular visits were made to the shelters by the O.P.P. There was one incident where someone at one of the shelters (a legion) was intoxicated. A recommendation was made to the Warden that licensed premises, being used as shelters, ban all alcohol from Shelters.

Meinen gave regular O.P.P. updates on CFJR radio.

The O.P.P. has several emergency plans: an O.P.P. emergency plan, a ministry emergency plan, copies of municipal emergency plans but no specific detachment emergency plan. He says basically one emergency plan is the same as the next. “The police will look after safety and security.”

JM says the O.P.P. received some criticism for providing “minimal help” during the ice storm. The O.P.P. was actually providing a high level of service however JM has 10 municipalities in his jurisdiction and he couldn’t be part of 10 municipal emergency control groups, which is why he went to the County Meetings.