IceStorm 98 Study

Dave Morris and Joseph Lee are two Municipal Utility workers, from Orillia, sent to Perth, Smith Falls, Renfrew, Merrickville, Ottawa, and Pembroke. They work with Crews from Sudbury, Lambton, Nepean, Ottawa and Ontario Hydro. Dave Morris led most of the answers in this interview.

Question:
How did you get involved?
“Well the radio told us everything we needed to know”. Dave took it upon himself to contact their Union reps. to find out if there were any of the “locals” in that area in need of assistance. Perth was the first to ask for assistance. We are in the same union as Ottawa Hydro, Nepean Hydro, Kingston Hydro.

Dave went to Toronto on Tuesday to head office of the Municipal Electrical Association. Head Office in Toronto placed a call to the General Manager’s office in Ottawa. Their response was; that they had a disaster coordinator and they should call them and make themselves available to them. “Didn’t seem to be getting anywhere but at the same time there was still a public appeal on radio, T.V., newspapers for any line people available to help out. We finally found out that the coordinator for the Municipal Utilities Association had retired a couple of years ago and hadn’t been replaced. So there was mass confusion for a while.

Finally, our employers took it upon themselves, once we determined that yes they needed help, and we had the manpower. They spoke of it being a disaster. Our employers started calling around. They have a coordinating book that allows you to call any utility in Ontario. These utilities can automatically call other utilities because they have disaster coordinating plans. Ottawa did this, they got a hold of all their people on Tuesday. Our people called Perth, Smiths Falls, Carleton Place, the places that requested our assistance. So that’s how we ended up in Perth. We left here Friday morning. We were the first people out of here.

“All volunteers to the last man.” We couldn’t decimate our own crews here so they took half the group. They sent four men down at a time, so that left five of us here at a time. At the same time we were having the ice storm here. It wasn’t too bad here Monday or Tuesday. Most of Orillia’s storm hit Thursday and Friday. A couple of guys were up all Friday night. Worked in coordination with Ontario Hydro if they needed help because their entire crew was shipped down east.

Question:
How many trucks were sent?
We had two. For the first response to Perth they took two single buckets out, that’s all they asked for. We also had a half ton 4x4.

They stayed in Perth until the assistance back up was able to handle the problems. They stayed at the utility until released by the people in charge of that Utility. Finished Monday afternoon in Perth and Lanark. Went to Ottawa Hydro Utility until Thursday. Then there was some confusion. “We were supposed to go to Kingston. Kingston requested us and Ottawa somehow didn’t get the message.” They released us, we came back to Orillia the next day. So Kingston said, “where are ya?” “Well then we gotta get our crew going again.” But Kingston had made other arrangements. “The coordination was a massive job. So Kingston said “O.K. we are O.K.”, but the rural areas were still decimated. No hope to get their power back for whatever length of time. “I believe it was a Parliamentary Act that had us go into Ontario Hydro’s area, they didn’t really want municipal utilities in their area.” Didn’t know who got a hold of who, but they ended up back in Perth. Started working the rural area. Worked in Lanark, Smiths Falls, Merrickville, Carley’s Corners, up through cottages in that area. “It was amazing!”

Question:
Same crew both times?
We rotated our crews. We sent four at a time for four days. Would come home for two or three days. When they went back to Perth they took an off road vehicle with a boom on it. It came from the Orillia generating stations. Used it to remove trees from buildings and main arteries. They took one bucket, bigger truck and the off road vehicle. They were there for about nine days, at least until they released every one.

At that time they worked with everyone, people from other municipal utilities, people from Midland Ontario, Markham, Guelph and Ontario Hydro Employees, also Bracebridge.

Question:
Who paid for your accommodations?
In Ottawa the Utility arranged for their rooms. They paid for them out of their slush fund. In Smiths Falls they had a slush fund with them for expenses. Then they realized pretty much into repair work that they were working for the Utility and were supposed to be covered. “So we sent them a little love letter with a dollar sign on it.” Ontario Hydro covered that. Basically every where they went they ate with the crew at the site where they were working. There was one chap in Perth, at the office, who was the coordinator. He was responsible for us being looked after. In Ottawa we paid for our own meals. Ontario Hydro paid for it all. It was part of the disaster Relief Fund. In Ottawa there was an entire hotel out by the airport, on Bank Street, booked for the Hydro crews. There were a lot of people there from Toronto Hydro.

Question:
How are they going to pay you for all this overtime?
Orillia Hydro paid them. The hours put in were faxed back to Orillia. Ontario Hydro coordinated the whole event. When the workers went to wherever they were going, they were required to sign a contract for Ontario Hydro as outside contractors. The Ontario Hydro coordinator arranged for all of the overtime pay.

“The appreciation of the people in the actual area was a reward in itself.” “They were really glad to see us.”

“When I first seen it on the news and I came into work, I said to the foreman, I don’t think people realize the scope of the disaster we were in. Ontario Hydro is an example of how little the disaster was understood at that time.” They had a recorded message from their super center telling people they would have their power back on in two days, but the problem was the lines kept going down. Dave and Joe talked about the fact that they are trained to work in the time of natural disaster. They had worked in the Barrie Tornado for nine days non-stop, they compared themselves to a doctor, that is they are trained in certain techniques and should use it. They talked about how frustrating it was in the storm because they would no sooner get a line up and another one would go down. They got tired and cranky after being up two days, and were glad to see their relief come so they could tell them to look after the poles that would go down.

Question:
How did it work, working with the others?
“That’s a tough question, especially with Ontario Hydro.” In Ottawa it was different because they divided all the crews up and sent them to the areas without power, guided by someone who knew the city. In their case it was a meter man. He would take them to the area requiring their services and when the work was done, he would take them to the next area they were needed.

With Ontario Hydro it was really different and a lot more confusing. It wasn’t as organized as Ottawa. “They had so many bosses overlapping each other. “They didn’t really argue, but the crews were sent to places where people were not involved. For days they drove by dairy farms without electricity near Smiths Falls. At one point they saw a dairy farmer shooting his cattle. Finally, nine days after they came, Ontario Hydro said they were now going to pay them to restore electricity to all the farmers in that area. They felt confused because they were driving by areas that seemed more pressing than where they were sent. “Ontario Hydro didn’t realize the scope of the amount of damage that had been done. Ontario Hydro worked from maps. Ottawa was divided into zones. At six o’clock a.m. all of the crews met and were given their zones. That way the bosses knew where we were and we knew what to do. It was easy to get help, we could call the coordinators in Ottawa and help would be sent to the zone they were in. In the coordinating center in Perth there was mass confusion and Ontario Hydro was “Freaked out”. Every one was screaming for help. There were army vehicles (20 or 30), all colors of Ontario Hydro vehicles from Sudbury to Windsor and all points in between, waiting for fuel and materials to go out again. At that point we were being told “just go in help and yourself”. “I couldn’t say enough good things about those army people. They didn’t know what they were supposed to do but they could do all the labor stuff. They did a lot of “go’fer” work, they lugged stuff, helped put up the poles. So much! They were always really high spirited and that really helped us.” There was one Master Corporal who had been an electrician before he entered the forces and he helped them tremendously. Another army guy was a master mechanic and he kept their vehicles “purring” and often used their big army truck to pull the utility trucks out when they got stuck. They got stuck often because of the ice and snow. There were also a couple of young people, eighteen or nineteen, who worked along with them and ate with them. There was also a mix up between the army and Ontario Hydro. The soldiers couldn’t move unless, they were assigned by the Ontario Hydro coordinator, who in turn had to be told by the military leaders, to go ahead. The crews did not know this, so often the military people sat in their trucks and awaited further orders. The guys from Orillia were told this by one of the corporals so they went each day to the coordinator and asked for the same military crew and therefore were able to work with the same guys for six days.

Joe was working north of Smiths Falls and Dave worked south most of the time. Dave also worked with an Ontario Hydro crew from Lambton, which is near Sarnia. The other Ontario Hydro guys were from the area in which they were working. These guys were not cooperative, they thought the Orillia crew were there to take their jobs. Finally Dave said “We are not here to take your jobs, we’re here to help the people.” They then decided to work separate from the Orillia crew but realized Orillia was getting ahead of them so they joined them. Dave said, “It was all politics and basically it was two crews of front line people who were afraid and didn’t have any control over the situation”.

They had difficulty also because they came into an area where the maps were not up to date. All hydro crews have basically the same training all over Ontario but Dave and Joe felt the situation was not safe. Safety is of the utmost importance and having untrained people, the army, helping the hydro crews made it very dangerous. The Orillia crew were responsible. They worried about someone untrained holding up a wire that they would energize and cause a serious or fatal injury. It was easier in Ottawa because the maps were good, so the Orillia crew knew where all the substations were situated and could contact the crews working on the lines to the next substation, thus they would know when it was safe to energize the lines they had fixed. The Ontario Hydro maps were outdated and no one really knew what they were doing or what was happening making the work extremely dangerous. If Ontario Hydro had taken a station or zone and “blitzed” it like Ottawa did, it would have gone better.

Question:
Have you seen the power workers video?
They had been sent a bunch of literature, but had not really looked at it. To Dave “the politics should have been separate from the problem. It was the people, that’s what we were there for.”

Dave said, “it was a power struggle right of the bat.” S.F. “they,(Ontario Hydro) had some of their own problems didn’t they? They had laid off about four hundred of their people just before the storm and had to bring them back.” Dave said, what happened was, Ontario Hydro wanted to send them all home the first weekend after the storm. But the way the Orillia crew understood it was, that the Power Workers Union said, that if recalled staff were sent home the union would send them all home, leaving Ontario Hydro with a decimated staff. The Power Worker’s Union than said all the workers were to remain until the crisis situation was resolved.

There were two thousand poles down in Van Kleek Hill, it was “clobbered”. Wolfe Island just off of Kingston had most of their poles down . They had talked to a “chopper pilot” who told them about this devastation and also about the transformer station near Cornwall that was destroyed. Everything was totally crumpled. Joe believes that’s when it finally occurred to Ontario Hydro the damage that had been done.

They talked about the total devastation in Pembroke where it was impossible to get their vehicles through the streets littered with downed trees limbs, and branches. They didn’t feel safe because of the downed lines interspersed through the debris. They were astounded at the destruction in Merrickville. They couldn’t believe the thickness of the ice on the lines, (4 to 6 inches). At one point a power line was energized and because of the weight of the ice it sank to about ten feet above the ground. A crew had to be left, to stop people from going near the low laying line.

Question:
What would you do differently, another time?
Dave said, ”We would do the same, give our all”. Joe said, “The key to the game is just pace yourself and watch your surroundings”. They felt that everyone should be aware that people from every facility do things a little bit differently, and you have to be careful when lines are energized that everyone down the line knows what is happening. That is ten miles, thirty miles, and forty miles or just around the corner, because that particular hydro system is not known. The Orillia crew said that it was a little hard also because they were not familiar with crews they were working with and that made it dangerous. They also commented that “It was a lot warmer working in a tornado than an ice storm. They wore chain saw pants because they were kept warm.

The worst part was just the cold water. They worked eighteen- hour days. Usually four to five hours at a time working in buckets. Come down get a coffee, take it with them back up in the bucket and just keep going from pole to pole.

Question:
Can you travel in a bucket?
Joe, “yes, you can go from pole to pole. You get really chilled doing this”. They started at six a.m. and usually didn’t eat again until two or three o’clock in the afternoon. They would put in a line of twenty poles and put on the conductors until they ran out of material or could energize the lines. If anyone could heat water or give them a pop they did. At Carley’s Corner a ninety year old women gave them a pot of coffee, there were ten or fourteen men. She only had two cups in the house, so the men drank out of the two cups because they were so grateful for the hot coffee. They just kept going. People driving by gave the high sign or honked their horn. This made them feel good. They talked about the clean up and how the “trouble crew” will have problems because of the weakened system and that there is about a year’s worth of work left to do.

Question:
Is there a difference in style between you and hydro?
Dave- “Yeh, I found they do a lot of stuff differently. We are very conscience of wearing our high voltage gloves and they aren’t. We have a rule called, ground to ground rubber gloves rule. That’s the mainstay, nine out of ten times, your hands are what’s going to get you killed. I don’t know whats with Ontario Hydro, but they’ll go up and just before they go to touch the line they put the rubber gloves on, you could be dead by that time!”

SF “But, you being municipal, work with more line power than they do.” Dave, That’s true, we can’t get our lines out like they can. Hydro can just say they are going to fix something and turn off the power. This can’t be done in a municipality. They had a policy at one time where they would not work with any live wires. The municipal workers work with live wires all the time. Essentially all men who work with electricity are trained the same way. SF- They are also a big bureaucracy and have their own way of organizing. Dave-“A huge bureaucracy.” SF “Your manager is pretty sharp.” Joe and Dave both said they definitely know who their boss is. Both agreed that even though they have some problems, on the whole their municipality is well managed and they know what is expected of them.