IceStorm 98 Study

John Trudgen says that it was really bad getting into work on Wednesday morning, the school bus lines were concerned about driving, and John Trudgen was elevating it in importance level hour by hour. The next morning his car was really hard to chip out, no one else came to work, there was more rain, the power was out and John Trudgen was working on daylight only until the room heat dissipated. John Trudgen phoned his head of council and told him he was heading to London (home) but got thinking about road conditions and by Friday afternoon he was on the road looking for generators and ended up in London -- Thursday night-Friday -- and finally got some generators from a battlefield group and rented everything he could pull or carry in his truck. He then phoned the Deputy Clerk and they declared an emergency -- mid-Saturday -- at which time John Trudgen began to realize the extent of the emergency. John Trudgen was struck by the wave of generator rentals that preceded him across the province toward London, "that's when I knew this was big."

John Trudgen says the municipal building is large and had been set up as a shelter, but the generator was small and only good enough for the lights and one phone. Saturday evening the shelter is up and fire department knows that John Trudgen is arriving with generators. His cell phone kept him in touch with the township. They were able to use one half of the building, the washrooms and the office. An emergency operations group was struck from the core of the municipal staff -- following the emergency plan -- and the township had been visited by health and social services and they had advised on how to run the shelter and delivered blankets and cots.

John Trudgen says that in his memory they worked around the clock for the first two or three days before anyone got any sleep. The door-to-door searches began to locate people who needed help. The first door to door was by volunteers from Kingston's Ministry of Transportation on either Monday or Tuesday. Later the army appeared with a huge generator to do the dairy people -- one person coordinated -- and they did the milking routine for 6 or 8 days, then later the police showed up. The power went out on the Thursday morning.

John Trudgen says that he "loved it. You were doing something very important" -- it's a survival thing. The office stayed open for two weeks round the clock and by the end of the first week people were starting to wear out. The shelter served over 1000 meals, the staff did a tremendous job, housing up to 50-57 people and accommodated over 120 soldiers in the gym. John Trudgen says that "he was having a blast."

John Trudgen says he was on the phone to his head of council often before making decisions and he told him "go for it" so he did not agonize over authority. Money was not a concern because there was nothing he could do without power, "you had to do it."

"Money wasn't really talked about to any degree." John Trudgen says that the township was twinned -- on Monday or Tuesday -- and they announced that they were sending personnel and materials for which John Trudgen et al. waited all day but they went to the Rear of the township, so John Trudgen's township was twinned with the Ministry of Natural Resources and at that point they started getting supplies and people. John Trudgen says that they got more and more generators through the Ministry of Natural Resources (John Trudgen says he had over 87 at one time) and they delegated one guy to the generators (fueling and servicing). They kept a paper trail and monitored the movement of each. All generators were returned. Some of the generators wore out or blew up -- but John Trudgen says they knew where they all were.

John Trudgen says he prioritized on the basis of "logic" -- on what his eyes and ears told him. John Trudgen had been through one prior emergency so he had some idea of what to expect. Most of the decisions, he says, "are obvious" -- so he was able to gather the relevant people, draw advice from them, and then make a decision. The township had regular meetings.

John Trudgen says the first meeting was Saturday and there on at 1:00pm every day. John Trudgen says that chaos is easily gained unless someone takes charge for organizing meetings and setting priorities.

John Trudgen says that the challenge was to coordinate resources with needs. He recalls one lady who was hysterical from listening to her trees come down, the old couple who refused to leave their house. John Trudgen says that from now on his own house is going to have CO detectors -- particularly when people are burning firewood. John Trudgen says people don't realize how dangerous CO is, and one couple had to be escorted out of their own home.

John Trudgen says that the phones went down "pretty quick" but that his cell phone stayed up. He has praise for the local phone company (The Lansdowne Rural Telephone Company). The phone company needed generators to make the junctions work, they were only down for a day. John Trudgen says that there were only a couple of people with cell phones. The land lines came up around Tuesday, most of the general phone service came back quickly. When the land lines came up the township started making daily calls to the Kingston and Brockville radio and television stations.

John Trudgen says a big problem was the chasm of non-information because Ontario Hydro was not able to give them information on the progress of the recovery. Information was erratic and predictions were meaningless. John Trudgen says the biggest problem with news releases was getting the right information to people so that they could plan their lives around it. John Trudgen says that it was important to get information out to people about the existence of the shelter, about access to firewood.

John Trudgen says that most the township councilors were making it into the meetings most of the time, and they were excellent communicators for the township.

John Trudgen says that what really impressed him "all to hell" was the volunteerism, including the fire men. No one ever complained and there was no shortage of people who wanted to help. The Ice Storm was a common enemy and everyone agreed on the need to overcome it.

John Trudgen says that the experience of neighbors helping neighbors really impressed him.

John Trudgen says that Ontario Hydro "produced really bad information right off the bat -- couldn't trust it, caused a lot of confusion." Their communications centre was based in Markham and the woman working that end was under-qualified for her job, so that the township was embarrassed to repeat information coming from Ontario Hydro in Toronto. Later Ontario Hydro wised up and started reporting from an office closer to the event itself: John Trudgen says that some of the information from Ontario Hydro was either over-generalized and some was unbelievable.

Later Ontario Hydro got their act together and the information became much more reliable. Toward the end of the emergency Ontario Hydro was providing hard and accurate information anytime the township wanted it. John Trudgen says that Ontario Hydro did not really appreciate the scale of the event -- and the first couple of days were really bad. To have a centralized information centre in Markham was just a bad idea.

The county should have fired up sooner, the township was completely alone. John Trudgen says that he drove to Mallorytown at one point to see how they were doing and whether he could do anything for them.

John Trudgen says that the event just overwhelmed the emergency plan, the plan was only minimally effective, that external resources were needed. John Trudgen says that it was not possible to isolate the emergency region because everything was out -- it was a "universal emergency mode from Kingston to Pembroke to Quebec City." John Trudgen says that the volunteers -- "the shoulder to shoulder stuff was just fabulous."

John Trudgen says that several ideas have come out of their debriefing: that they did the best they could, that the big thing was generators -- even the big generator that John Trudgen brought back from London could only fire up half the building. John Trudgen says they have learned about which half of the building is more useful, that John Trudgen has learned about the design differences between men's and ladies washrooms. But the most important thing is access to a generator large enough to fire up their command centre. Such a unit is extremely expensive for a small township, but there is agreement on the need to be able to power up a command centre that provides all the services needed to operate in an emergency.

John Trudgen says that the cell phones really helped out, but that because of the local phone company there was never really a problem with local communications. There was a problem with communications with Ontario Hydro and the county. The county moved around eventually landing in St. Lawrence Centre and John Trudgen had trouble making contact with them.

John Trudgen says that urbanites are totally dependent on a source of power, whereas rural people feel a greater need to look after each other because they are more dispersed. The emergency plan was "the backbone" -- the plan is "common sense written down" which provided a summarized statement of logic and that made things much easier in a highly charged emotional environment. John Trudgen says that a decision-maker is needed in an emergency, John Trudgen was glad to fill the role, that it was a matter of gathering the relevant people around him and simply telling them "go do it."

John Trudgen has previous emergency experience in Chatham on the Thames River (flooding) when the dikes failed (in the mid-80s) and one third of the municipality was under water. John Trudgen says that it was "on the job" training -- and he has training as well from the Arnprior crew in Stratford. The course covered emergency training and how to handle it: it was a classroom training session.

John Trudgen says that even though he was "having a hoot" for the first week, by the second week he was not having fun anymore. He went home the second weekend and slept for the entire time (two or three days). He did not feel stress at the time, just irritation. His family took it well because they were in London and unaffected by the Ice Storm. John Trudgen had to learn how to sleep underneath blankets which is part of the reason he preferred to stay in the command centre.

John Trudgen says that he recalls the old couple who refused to leave their home until he went down and stood in their doorway -- he realized then that this was a life and death scenario. John Trudgen got some laughs from the army people, including the crew who did the milking routine. Some of them had never seen farms up close before. John Trudgen has praise for the army personnel.