IceStorm 98 Study

Mrs. VandenAkker says her service has been in operation in Frontenac County for over 10 years. It is a volunteer organization with anywhere from 80 to 90 volunteers at any given time. The volunteers go out in teams of two and respond to criminal circumstantial acts or disasters at the request of police, fire, and ambulance in Frontenac County.

She says the program works very well as a volunteer program because these are just your "neighbour's neighbour" going out to assist other people in need. They are not in uniform, not with a briefcase, not in a suit--they are just out there to lend emotional support, practical assistance, and referral to other agencies that can help over a long period of time.

Mrs. VandenAkker says she "lucked out" personally as far as the ice storm was concerned. She was without power for only one night and one afternoon at the most. What caused the most problems for her was that she had to take other family members into her home because their power was out for longer periods of time.

She had phone service at her home for most of the time, however, the phones at her office were out as well as the power. She was trying to communicate with volunteers from her phone at home. Getting to the volunteers was another story because they were spread all over Frontenac County and phone lines were down all over. She says that it was very stressful. Mrs. VandenAkker has five volunteer relief supervisors who cover off for her on weekends, etc. There were complications in communicating with them because some of them were blocked in on their streets, their phones weren't working, etc.

Over the initial first couple of days, Mrs. VandenAkker and her assistant used their phones and pagers when they could and simply went down the volunteer list. Each volunteer that they were able to reach was asked to report to either City Hall or one of the shelters to help after they had taken care of their own home situation. They were asked to stay in contact with her. This is all that they could do at the time.

She says her organization didn't receive a formal request for assistance right at the beginning. It was more just realizing what was going on and getting people mobilized and doing whatever they could do. "Organized chaos". She says that she had sat on disaster teams in the City and recognized at the time that one of these days they would be caught with "their Plan down" so to speak because it didn't seem to be coming together in any real organized fashion. She says that a couple of the City's disaster plans that she saw weren't really detailed. There always was that fear--"what's going to happen if?" She doesn't think that anybody anticipated anything on that large a scale.

She says that the volunteers were great. They had other calls to answer in the meantime aside from the ice storm call. There was a fire call right at the very beginning. There was a sudden death call during the storm. One of her volunteers that had been working down at City Hall along with a city employee became in charge of transportation for people, food, etc. She says that he did a great job. She says that there were probably a lot of things done that you wouldn't normally do because of the possibility of liability but they had to be done.

She kept track of the name of all of the volunteers that were involved. Normally they work on a first name basis only. In this situation they kept a record of first and last names. If these names are provided to the City, and this was done, they are covered under WCB should anything happen.

As far as a formal request, on January 13th they received a request through the Kingston District Community Information Centre from City Hall that they get directly involved in answering crisis calls at the emergency centre. They already had some of their volunteers down there so it was just a matter of organizing it into shifts. It was decided that they would cover the crisis lines in 8-hour shifts over the next few days, or for however long they were needed. They used anywhere from 4 to 8 people covering off the phones through the process. These questions ranged from questions about where to obtain food, transportation, hydro, generators, shelter, etc. She says the volunteers were very tactful and helpful.

She feels that the people that hadn't lost their power "weren't really connected" to how severe the situation was. Some calls came in about people who wanted their rose bushes replaced. Others asked to have their fire wood restocked for next year! The calls became bizarre at times. What complicated things further was after everything was underway they were advised that the emergency centre was moving out to Pittsburgh Township. This was a concern because there would be a different phone number. The first day working out there was freezing because there wasn't any heat on. The phones were in the process of being installed. It was pretty cramped. There was a snow storm the morning they moved out there. Transportation had to be arranged for some of the volunteers to get them out to Pittsburgh Township.

In addition to the VCARS volunteers, Ccares volunteers were used (Community Crisis Assistance Referral and Emergency Support). They are based in Belleville. Their co-ordinator phoned Mrs. VandenAkker and offered her assistance if it was needed. They came and did some shifts at City Hall and Pittsburgh Township municipal offices at the emergency centre on the phones. All of the volunteers were well fed and taken care of.
Time got long for some of the volunteers. The man at City Hall who was assisting with the transportation sometimes didn't get home for 24 hours.

Since the ice storm Mrs. VandenAkker has attended a steering committee meeting for psycho-social response for health issues. They are looking at hiring a person to pull things together in a more organized fashion as to who exactly would request the psycho-social response if it was needed. This would be wonderful. This is what they have been trying to do over the last few years at the emergency planning meetings and it always seemed to fall apart. With this group coming together, she feels that "it would be worth its weight in gold". Hopefully, this group can be attached to the City's emergency plan and then everybody will know exactly what should be occurring.

Mrs. VandenAkker tells a story about a particular volunteer "Bill" who is a senior. Bill was asked to deliver some food to a person in need. He went to the address. He had to go up several flights of stairs in the dark and cold. When he reached the address a lady answered the door. He asked for identification which she provided. She then said, "Those bags of food can't be all for me". He said that they were. At this time the woman's little boy ran up beside her and took her hand. He said to Bill, "Thank you sir. I was very hungry". Bill left feeling like a million bucks. He felt renewed and went out to do more deliveries.

Another call was received from an elderly lady who had knit several scarves for the hydro workers. VandenAkker remembers saying, "find a driver because this woman has probably been sitting for several days wondering what she could do and this is what she has done and we need to get those scarves out to the P.U.C. workers. This is really important. These sorts of things lifted people's spirits.

The cost consequences to her organization were minimal. She didn't ask for any overtime. It was impossible to calculate the overtime. The volunteers didn't record mileage for the most part. She knows that some of the volunteers did some things out of their own pocket. People were fed through various restaurants that donated food. The Salvation Army also fed people. There was great interaction between the services that were helping. There was all kinds of knowledge there. As much as it was disorganized, people were looked after very well. There really hasn't been a need for any critical incident response since the ice storm with the exception of the farmers in the area. Financial costs create stress. There wasn't a great loss of life. People were very fortunate compared to other disasters in the world (i.e. tornadoes, floods).

Mrs. VandenAkker says that she did have contact with the media. Normally she doesn't speak with the media about anything. It's a very confidential service. She got approached by a woman from CBC while she was working at Pittsburgh Township. She doesn't recall what she said.

She says that the ice storm was a "neat experience" although she doesn't know if she would like to have it again on that large of a scale.