IceStorm 98 Study

I started working at the Utilities building on January 1st. I went home on the night of the 8th knowing that we were going to have a bad storm. We have a huge birch tree beside the driveway. My husband said he was going to put the cover on the windshield and pull the van back away from the tree. I told him I didn’t think it was necessary but he did anyway. It got really loud during the night. You could hear branches cracking. We could hear the branches of our neighbours’ tree hitting the roof. I got up and looked out the window and the branches of the birch tree were right where the van would have been had my husband not moved it. When I got up in the morning, I could see broken branches but it didn’t look too bad. So I got in the van and drove to work. As I drove up Day’s Road I saw a big tree down in the parking lot of Our Lady of Lourdes church. I realized it must have been bad for this to happen. I drove down Counter Street and when I got to work there was nobody there. The phones were ringing. I had only been in this job for four working days so I didn’t really know anybody and I didn’t know how to use the phone system. The comical part was that I didn’t realize you could push “pickup” on the old phone system and pick up any line. So I had all four phones strung over the walls and just as close to my desk as I could get them.

An emergency meeting of all senior managers was called. I was the only support person to come to work. I phoned around to different places like Fairmount Homes to see if their generator was going to be able to hold them if the power went down for any length of time. We basically stayed there for the day answering phones and just kept things going. At the end of the meeting, they decided to move headquarters down to City Hall and my boss offered to help in any way she could. She was asked to take care of communications and get some cell phones. I helped her with that. They also asked her to take care of food for this building. I volunteered to deliver the phones to City Hall. I talked to Cynthia about the possibility of my spending the night at the Utilities Building. I live in the city west. We lost our hydro Wednesday night and my son was at home with pneumonia. I tried to get home from City Hall and that’s when I got caught up in the melee of trees, cords and wires that were down near City Park. That was the first time I became scared. As I drove along Front Road I could see the hydro wires flashing. I packed up my husband and son and we came back to the Utilities Building. I realized we needed food for breakfast for the linesmen. Bob McConnachie, who was the treasurer here, had brought his family here as well. His daughter worked at McDonalds so she made some calls and they agreed to send over some hash browns and egg Mcmuffins, etc. This was fine for the morning, but we had to provide more meals throughout the day. The next day was when we realized this was going to go on for awhile. Whereas in the beginning we were feeding 100 men, by the end we were feeding over 800 people. In the beginning we tried to rely on City Hall but the communications were very bad. The lines seemed to always be busy and when we did get through they didn’t know who you should be talking to. It was very frustrating. So we decided to take care of things ourselves. Chez Piggy provided us with food for breakfast on the first day. With the help of a volunteer cook and RMC cadets, we were able to provide breakfast on the following days. We had unbelievable support from Gord and Kim’s No Frills in City West, National Grocers, Molson’s Breweries to name a few. There was unbelievable support from the community as well. Sear’s loaned us ten refrigerators and the military loaned us two large heating units to keep food warm. As time went on we began feeding the roads crews and parks crews as well, so we had to set up rotating meal times. The military were called in to remove brush and we had to feed them as well. One day we fed lunch to over 800 people.

I thought it would be a good idea if we could get Ontario Hydro people to work together with the PUC, so I arranged with the military for a helicopter carrying eight people to fly over the area. Officials from Ontario Hydro, the city as well as the PUC.flew over the city. The Ontario Hydro people came back to the PUC building and talked and it was at this point that things started to change and they started working together. A few days later I had to arrange with the military for another helicopter. An Emergency Response group was being formed in Toronto and people were coming with film crews. This was going to help us with getting funding to help with the ice storm.

Laurel McConnachie was here for the week as well and she was a great help. At one point I had to threaten City Hall that I was going to go home and not come back unless they brought some beds for us to sleep on. From the 8th to the 19th I slept only 11 hours. It was the adrenalin that kept you going. Sears donated 200 pairs of underwear, socks and t-shirts. We had food coming all the time. We kept lists of who donated what.

Around the end of the second week, the crews were starting to leave. We wanted to do something to show them our appreciation and they wanted to do something for the community. So Saturday night we were trying to make sure everybody had power before we let the crews go home and at the same time we were trying to arrange a parade. At 5 o’clock we announced on the radio that there would be a parade at 7. It was amazing the number of people who came out to show their appreciation. Our last dinner was Saturday night and we arranged to have a Christmas dinner.

We wanted to give something back to the community so I arranged with Screencraft to print ice storm T-shirts. The T-shirts sold for $10 and the entire $10 went to Martha’s Table. The T-shirts sold like wild fire. On Sunday, when we closed down and the last crews went home, we took all the food that was left to Martha’s Table. There was about four truck loads. The weakest part of the whole operation was the connection to City Hall. The phones were a problem. A lot of people were feeling like we weren’t part of the city.