IceStorm 98 Study

The area that I am responsible for is transit, the airport and parking. Parking includes the parking structures as well as the parking lots and parking meters.

What are your recollections of the night before the storm?
The forecast was calling for ice and I didn’t sleep soundly. I could hear the ice coming all night. About 3 o’clock in the morning I got up and checked out the window and saw there was a lot of ice. I got up around that time because I couldn’t sleep for thinking about the ice. I went downstairs and started working on my computer. About 4:30 my computer crashed because the power went out. Around 5 o’clock the manager of works phoned me to let me know that he had just come into work and that the roads were quite bad. He said I might just want to take a look around and see if the bus routes were passable because the roads were in pretty rough shape. About 5:30 I called in to the office here because my supervisors are usually in about 5:30 and they informed me that the roads were pretty rough but they were going to send the buses out to see what would happen. On my way in from Kingston Township it didn’t look that bad. I drove along Taylor-Kidd to Counter Street, where I could see trees hanging low and some had broken limbs. By the time I got to work around 6, some buses had been out and they were coming back because the roads were too icy, the trees were too low, and wires were down. Two supervisors and myself drove the routes in a van and had a look. By this time we had heard on the radio that Queen’s and St. Lawrence College were shutting down for the day. We went from bus stop to bus stop telling people that the buses would be a couple of hours late. As we came closer to downtown it became apparent that it was not going to be a two-hour delay, but maybe four hours. Once we started getting down to Division Street the roads were impassable. Montreal Street as well as the side streets was like driving in a maze. It took about 45 minutes to get downtown to City Hall which is normally a 10-minute drive. We came back and told everybody that until further notice, just hang tight and hopefully in the afternoon things would be better.

There was an emergency meeting called at City Hall where everybody got together to detail the severity of the storm. We realized that we were into an emergency situation. As the day progressed, we realized that it was not going to be over with in one day. A decision was made to set City Hall up as an emergency control centre and people were identified to control certain aspects of the emergency. I was assigned the transportation aspect. We were given an area in City Hall. The public was coming in wanting to volunteer their services. The Social Services groups were responsible for assigning these volunteers to different areas. My area was transit. I had the buses available to move people where they were needed. Buses were also used to pick up and deliver food. We had to be in close communication with Laidlaw buses because we didn’t want them bringing people in from Kingston Township and dropping them off at a transfer point. They volunteered to provide some smaller buses, which were quite useful. At some point the military were brought in and they were advised that if they needed transportation to contact us. I met with the police and the military a couple of times a day as time progressed. We were also dispatching for the Kingston Access buses. Some people had to be moved by ambulance but we tried to keep the ambulances free for medical emergencies. Buses were used for moving meals and also for moving work crews.

The buses were down Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday and then we went into 1-hour service, no rush hour and by Thursday we were back to full service again. The school buses also went back into operation and we didn’t have the bus availability that we had earlier. We needed cube vans for moving cots to various places and I didn’t have any available so the military and police were finding those sorts of vehicles themselves. Edwards Ford supplied Econoline types of van, which we used for moving cots and food. Taylor Chev Olds and Harbour Lincoln also provided vans and pickup trucks to move equipment. At a later stage there was a need to shuttle people who were on social assistance from their homes to the Salvation Army and the Food Bank for food. The larger buses were utilized as shelters for several nights. The military and police would identify locations where they wanted shelters. Some people did not want to leave their homes for various reasons, but the thought was to provide them with a mobile shelter where they could walk out to and get warm under blankets provided by the military, and get a hot chocolate or a coffee. So we used transit buses for this purpose. News releases were delivered on a regular basis announcing where the mobile shelters would be. We focused on areas where there was no power.

Was the question of authority always clear? Given the circumstances, was it more ad hoc?
In the transit area the authority was clear in that I was the person whom the military and the police were to deal with. The lines of authority were well drawn. Only one person from transit went to the meetings and that was myself. I would report on what we had available and how the roads were looking, etc. The military and police’s needs were constantly changing, so I was in constant contact with them.

How about the question of money? Was it of primary concern or was it put on the back burner?
We kept track of what we spent, although we didn’t spend a lot of money. The food people certainly had to keep track, even though a lot of items were donated initially. The Kingston Home and Garden Centre (Co-op) donated a bunch of flashlights. We had our own fuel tanks. When we moved over to Pittsburgh Township offices we made arrangements with a gasoline station to purchase fuel for smaller vehicles there. Another area of transportation was the volunteer drivers who were there day after day. One volunteer had a wheelchair-accessible van, which he made available virtually from day one. He was an unemployed individual so we provided him with fuel for the vehicle.

What worked well and what didn’t?
A major point of change I think would be to have the emergency control centre outside of City Hall. It was quite busy there. People who were trying to coordinate the emergency were tripping over the volunteers. The emergency control centre probably should have been in a separate area. It may have helped if some purchase orders were available right from the beginning so there would be a tracking mechanism for specifically what was being purchased. I had drivers whom I could assign to work because they weren’t running the normal buses. I probably could have utilized them better by shifting staff around a little more than I did. I would like to touch on the union staff. Our drivers were willing to do whatever, but it wasn’t clear until after the emergency as to whether or not people were going to be paid. There was some confusion as to whether some were volunteering to work overtime or paid overtime or whether you were volunteering staff to work unpaid. People just didn’t know if they were being paid or not. It would have been easier if a decision was pre-made in an emergency plan that in an emergency either volunteer staff will be paid or won’t be paid. Then you could answer questions from your staff directly.

Is there anything you would like to add?
The airport was one of my areas of responsibility. The airport being a wide-open space wasn’t hit too badly. The power was out at the airport and the generator kicked in automatically to provide power for the terminal building, but there was no power for the instrument landing system or runway lighting. Planes could come in visually without instruments and they did.

Do you think the city is much the wiser for what happened?
Everybody involved learned something. The good thing was that a lot of people didn’t know each other. They were into a new job and new responsibilities. Considering all that I think we did a great job. The firefighters task team from Toronto came down to assist and they were very impressed with how well we were responding. Because the new city is made up of three smaller municipalities, we were used to dealing with several different areas.