IceStorm 98 Study

John Finlay’s normal responsibility is to manage the programs and staff of OMAFRA in the five county area, from Frontenac through Northumberland Counties. The services include extension with agricultural producers on new technology, business consulting and rural development.

Significant event:
On Thursday January 8th, Finlay tried to telephone the Kingston office a little after 8:00 a.m. There was no answer at all. Shortly thereafter, he received a call from his director in Guelph who wanted to know the status of all Finlay’s offices (Brighton, Belleville and Kingston) and who said that there were no communications from anyone from Kingston and east. He immediately started phoning his staff at their homes “and that’s when the real news came out.” They were unable to travel and were without power. (Guelph is where the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs is headquartered and is the name used to refer to the Ministry’s corporate centre.)

Nature and scale:
It was overwhelming. Normally ice storms last twelve hours or so and the temperature moderates and alleviates the problem. Also, they are usually more localized. This was something different.

Something that the Ministry learned was that so few farmers had back-up generators. Prior to the ice storm, they would have guessed that at least 50 percent of farmers would have generators. It was much lower than that, probably 20 percent at the most. Many who did have generators, out of the goodness of their hearts, were lending them to their neighbours and as a result of the high use, many of the generators blew-up. So even the 20 percent were not covered after a couple of days.

Finlay kept in touch with his staff. One staff member, who lives in Kingston and whose home did not lose power, visited the office site and found it unlocked. The security system failed because it is electronic and there was no backup power. The staff person helped to secure the building by chaining the doors. (There is a back-up generator on the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital site and they had discussed hooking up to it a couple of weeks before the ice storm and had not decided yet.)

On Sunday January 10th, when it was known how bad things were, Finlay started calling staff to assign them to various sites in eastern Ontario to start setting up the generator depots. Getting and distributing generators became their sole focus.

Electrical power loss was general throughout eastern Ontario. What varied was the length of time without power. Power was restored to the Kingston office after three working days. The last two OMAFRA offices took ten working days to reopen.

Farmers in Frontenac County were just on the western edge of the affected area. Many were able to borrow generators from farmers in the next county, which was not affected by the storm. They fared much better than the farmers farther east and on Wolfe Island.

In Guelph on Monday January 12th, the enormity of the disaster became evident to the Ministry staff and senior management. They were busy setting-up the command centre, the “800” line was functioning and they were receiving hundreds of calls. There were 15 to 20 people taking calls and the “ice storm calls” were receiving clear priority.

On Tuesday January 13th, Finlay traveled to Kingston to see what could be done to get the Kingston office up and running. By Tuesday afternoon, he moved on to Ottawa-Carleton where the need continued to be greater than Kingston. He joined about ten Ministry managers from Guelph and western Ontario. On Wednesday, staff from western Ontario moved in to help run the depots and the interim local offices.

Farmers were contacting Guelph using the “800” number. Guelph prepared lists of the farmers and their needs and faxed them to the depots. The depots checked the Guelph list with their list of locally generated names. The depot staff determined the priority for generator distribution.

As time progressed, normal electricity was restored like a wave from Kingston-east and Ottawa-south. Prescott-Russell suffered the most. Generators were still being distributed in that area ten days after the ice storm started.

Emergency preparedness had been discussed, worked on and planned. “But you don’t realize what you need until something happens.” With staff working by candlelight, fax machines and e-mail were out of the question. Direct communication between the depots and Guelph sometimes was limited to battery operated cellular phones. Even that wasn’t available between the depots and individual farmers whose phones were out.

Radio stations transmitted regular announcements about Ministry services. The rural culture, where neighbours looked out for neighbours, was an important communication link. The well organized work of the Army in visiting the back roads, transporting people and supplies, delivering generators and passing along information, was critical.

The ministry’s emergency plan, like that of other ministries, anticipated a sudden, relatively localized catastrophe like a tire fire or nuclear accident. It did not anticipate an event that, over several days, would jeopardize everyone in a huge area, including the very staff who might be expected to respond to the emergency. However, the ministry reacted well and is reviewing its emergency plan so that it might be better prepared. About halfway through the ice storm response, the Ministry transferred the central organizing operations from Guelph to eastern Ontario but that was after there were enough offices going and staff back to work.

“The other side of this catastrophe was that there wasn’t any toxicity around it or any nuclear fallout or anything like that, that’s long term. At least when the hydro infra-structure was fixed, there is no long-term affects, physically, that can’t be fixed. Where psychologically there may be… About a month later, the hydro went out in a couple of areas. We were handing out emergency cheques here when it happened and people panicked even though there wasn’t a big ice storm… a very fragile population from the (ice storm) experience.”

The command centre in Guelph was headed by Don Taylor who was the Director of eastern Ontario at the time. He is now the chair of the Farm Products Marketing Commission. Other directors took the lead on specific issues like human resources.

A whole division was formed to address generators. OMAFRA has well qualified engineering staff who knew all the technicalities about generators. They helped in the negotiations with suppliers in Pennsylvania, California and Texas. “Some generators came up here and wouldn’t work in the cold weather. They just had diesel fuel in them that just wouldn’t function at cold temperatures.” They checked that the connections were right and brought in extra people to hook them up safely. The wind-down was also a long task: collecting, checking and shipping 800 or 900 generators that the ministry was responsible for plus many more that were arranged by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the Dairy Farmers of Ontario.

The ministry is in the business of technology transfer. After the hydro was back on, there were still issues that needed to be addressed like the load capacity of barn roofs with eight or nine inches of ice on them or health problems and lower production that developed in some animals. A plus which might have a connection with the ice storm is that the alfalfa has survived in the best condition that it has ever been in.

Authority to act:
It did not arise. Communication and cooperation was the key to getting things done. Smaller rural municipalities were less prepared for the organization and the finding of resources to get things like shelters up and running.

Decisions:
Aside from staffing and resource decisions, Finlay had to decide on things like how much time to spend on trying to locate a client or how to decide competing priorities. An important lesson is that “you can’t go into an area that you don’t know and be very effective. You just don’t know the roads. You don’t know the people.”

The big decisions were made in Guelph. For example, with a shipment of generators arriving, the depots would send in their needs. Guelph would have to decide how many to send where.

It sounds like the emergency brought out the best in people:
Yes. Finlay was not aware of anyone price gouging. If there were rentals, suppliers said they would worry about payment later. “The farmer to farmer exchange was all done with no rental or anything. ‘Here it is. Bring it back when it’s all over.’”

Role of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture
They were providing support within counties and, through their head office, they were arranging help from across the Province. They were totally supportive of the work of the Ministry. And they also worked with Dairy Farmers of Ontario which was critical in getting the milk plant going and helping in accomplishing the unprecedented agreement for Canadian milk to be shipped across the border to be processed in Michigan rather than be dumped because it could not be stored. The Minister was the key to getting this exemption. (The Minister is Hon. Nobel Villeneuve from Maxville, which is right in the middle of the affected area.)

The OFA joined the Canadian Foundation for Rural Living in collecting money from farmers and farm organizations and they are putting their money into a help-line for at least a year.

Communication with Guelph:
During the crisis response, at least telephone communication was maintained at all times with Guelph. In addition, each evening there was a one to one-and-a-half hour conference call with all the managers and directors at the command centre and the eight or ten managers that were distributed in the east. We were updating them and they were telling us what support we could expect. It was important to have a pool of people off-site.

Biggest challenge
Getting generators was the prime activity but “the challenge was often just keeping spirits up. Motivating people when they are so tired and so discouraged. We have an amazing culture in our Ministry: a real loyalty to our clients.” This translated into a commitment that saw these civil servants working in cold, dark conditions for the well-being of their clients, when they could have been elsewhere looking after themselves. “One of the challenges for managers was, in some cases, telling people to go home and rest because some of them just wouldn’t leave. They were fixed on their mission.” The transfer of responsibility from Guelph to the local offices resulted in some short-term confusion as to which office to call.

What worked well?
Communication, both interagency and internal. They didn’t bother Ontario Hydro because they realized that they were extremely busy. They did communicate with the Army and local emergency committees. Cooperation was the big success story.

Having their Minister on television at a farm with the Premier and other high-ranking ministers was a boost and got the message through outside the area.

What didn’t work well?
The review will be studied. One of the things will likely be for staff to know local resources better. Rural areas will be better prepared if it happens again. “I think we actually reacted as well as we possibly could have given the circumstances.”

The media focussed on dairy farms. Were there other producers who were affected?
The dairy industry involves a large number of farmers with varying sizes of herds: some large, many small. Poultry and pork producers are relatively few but they run large operations, dependant on powered ventilation. So most of them would have back-up power. The staff of the ministry was aware of these producers and made them a high priority. Other producers who sustained losses included those who raise horses and ratites (flightless birds like emus). But the biggest losses are to the maple producers. Reports are that harvests are zero to 54 percent of last year.

Interprovincial Cooperation:
There was cooperation, producer to producer and government to government between Ontario and Quebec.

What was learned?
With the current stresses in government services, the staff pulled together in a common cause. A staff appreciation day was held in Maxville where the Minister, the Deputy Minister and the Assistant Deputy Minister all participated for the whole day. “I’ve never seen that before.” And the leaders of the three main farm organizations came and praised the ministry and said ‘we have to work together better and not be confrontational.’

“But unless we have exactly the same situation again, we can maybe do things quicker and with more confidence, but some other disaster comes along, we’ll probably have to think and act and learn our way through it, the same as this one.”

Stress on your staff:
Many were on a high for three or four days, then began to come down. Managers were wary and saw to it that staff were relieved before crashing. Also, recognizing the stress on the farmers, the Ministry altered many of their usual programs and focussed many on stress relief and ice storm recovery and individual counselling.

The ministry is also taking the initiative in a few cases to provide more timely relief to farmers in dire straights and who cannot wait for the normal disaster relief program.

Other memories:
There were some tragic events. The barn that collapsed near Kemptville killing a number of cows. The pig barn that burned. These are real tragedies for the farmers involved.

Debriefings have taken place and a report will be produced a copy can be forwarded to the Ice Storm Study.