IceStorm 98 Study

Major MacDonald began his interview by showing the writer the map of the area that covered Task Force South Sector. The area was from Trenton to Cornwall and north to Hwy. 7 and 43. Major MacDonald is the Base Operations Officer which is part of the G3 Group at Base Head Quarters.

KM received a call at his home at 0445 on the morning of January 8th to inform him that the power was off at the Base and there was a concern for the intrusional arms and weapons storage areas had no security. KM was asked to come into the Base and look at the Sit Rep (Situation Report) from the Military Police. KM said that, “I knew there was a real problem when I went outside and saw four trees covering my van.” KM had to squeeze his way into the van and try and back his vehicle out of the driveway. KM describes that the property surrounding his has about 10 very mature oak trees and the branches were everywhere. KM said, “The wide spread devastation around the Base was really bad but I had no idea how bad it was outside the Kingston area.” KM recalls that he didn’t know the extent of the storm until around 2 or 3 o’clock that afternoon when he received a call from the Land Forces in Toronto.
The first thing KM had to do with respect to the Base was secure the Base’s instrusional arms and weapons. He said that approximately 20 sensitive areas needed to be secured. The next function that had to they had to get going was food services. They set up a kitchen in Vimy Barracks. They chose that kitchen as a central focus area because most of the Base’s activities are on the Vimy side of the Base. (PMQs, Schools etc.) To get the kitchen open the Base had to bring in a generator from the Signals Regiment (60 kWh generator). The problem was that the Regiment was on warning to be deployed to Montreal and in order to keep the generator it would mean that the Regiment might have not been able to do their job once deployed. The Base had loaned out 5 generators to the City. KM said that some generators were brought in from other Bases. The Regiment eventually was deployed and ended up leaving 6-8 generators behind.
The authority to act comes from the Base Commander, he has the ultimate authority to act in any response to a disaster and that chain of command flows to the Deputy Base Commander to Major MacDonald. KM’s terms of reference is to co-ordinate support for the Base and any support outside the Base with the concurrence of the Base Commander.
Once the Base got the kitchen up and running and the sensitive areas secured, they still had the problem of movement around the Base. KM said, “There was a lot of downed power lines all over the Base. We used the military police to assess the situation and every time they found a downed line they would report it to the Engineering Services.” The other problem was a lot of the telephone lines were down. KM had to request that a series of repeater towers be set up between Kingston and Cornwall in order to provide radio linkage to those areas. The unit that set them up managed to do so in less than 48 hours.
KM spoke about some of the perceptions that the civilians had with respect to the involvement of the military. What was apparent was the lack of knowledge by the civil authorities as to what the military could do. Most of the civil authorities were asking for line crews and expecting them to be made available. What they failed to realise was the Base needed to become operational before it could assist the civil authorities. KM said,

“Any local plan, whether it be a military, city or municipal plan must not be based on calling in the military from the outset in any disaster. The town, city or municipality must have an effective emergency plan that must be practised on a yearly basis to ensure that it is still effective. Let’s face it, the Base was shut down for almost 2 days, it was a mess.”

Pointing to a rather large red candle that was almost burnt down, KM continued, “When I left the house at 5 o’clock in the morning, I stopped and grabbed this candle. I told Mother that I was probably going to need it. I operated the office under this candle.” KM said that the Base HQ had only a few candles and a flashlight with no batteries. He said,

“The lesson learned for me was to equip the HQ with an auxiliary power source.” KM said that, “The Base had to identify the critical areas (5 in total) that would need generators so that we would not have to rely on operational units for their generators in the event of another power outage.”

KM worked mostly with the operations officers of the PWOR, Brockville Rifles, and Cornwall’s S,D&G Highlanders as well as the Base operations unit. He kept in touch with these people by hand-held radios until the telephone lines were restored. KM said that twice daily they had Commander’s Updates. The “to do” lists were done in the time period between meetings. The meetings were structured not to last more than 30 minutes. Each working group was given a specific amount of time to report their progress. The first group to report was the Intelligence people. The reported on the power situation in the sector. JM said the power outage was the enemy and it was critical to know where the outages were. They also reported on criminal activities reported to them by local police. The next group to report was KM. He would report the Base’s situation. After KM the Base Operations would report and then the Public Affairs. The last to speak at these meetings was the Base Commander/ Task Force Commander, Col. Aitken. He would issue his guidance and directions.
On the subject of what worked well was,

“Everybody knew what was going on and where we had to go. What was missing was the vital component of the civilians. It is vital for any disaster if the military is involved that the set up of a HQ must be a joint HQ. Everyone who has a task must have a seat at that HQ. Let’s look at the City of Kingston, I must have tried to contact the City’s Emergency Officer for at least 2 days to see where they were going to set up their EOC. The original emergency plan stated that the EOC would be located at the CSC Staff College and it ended up at City Hall.” Because the CSC Staff College requires a 24 hour notice before it could be used, KM finds this unacceptable. He said, “You cannot wait for 24 hours before setting up an EOC. What was also missing was the Liaison Officer that was present at the EOC on an ongoing basis so that any requests for military participation could be relayed to the Operations Officer on the Base for deployment.”

KM emphasised that the role of the LO has to be diplomatic as the military is not there to take over the operation only to assist. The Base’s LO was Lt. Col. Thornton and he was present for the 2 o’clock meetings only.
KM said that the Ontario Provincial Police had their division in Long Sault (40 KM west of Cornwall) assigned the task of the police response for the eastern province during the ice storm. The Base had a Liaison Officer in that detachment (Military police from CFB Kingston). That LO was in contact with the OPP detachments in Belleville and Kingston. KM said the OPP had a definite role to play in this operation and should have been present at the EOC. The City of Kingston was using the local police more because for the first few days they were inwardly focused to just the problems in the City.
KM said that he was receiving between 10-15 phone calls a day from the PUC asking for military resources. KM said that all the emergency services should have been present so that the problems and solutions could have been dealt with as a group and not as individual organisations.
One of the problems that keep occurring was the theft of generators throughout the region. The OPP reported that over 160 generators had been stolen. KM said that was the kind of data that was presented at the Base’s morning meetings.
KM said that the Base’s meeting did not have any civil authorities at their meetings. Their contact was solely through Lt. Col. Thornton. What the EOC needed “…was a warm body in a military uniform sitting there all day helping to provide solutions.” KM recalls that on the first day, the City had made a request for the Base to supply 900 blankets. KM questioned that request and asked the City if they did not have an emergency plan or know where their resources were. He also asked whether the City had contacted the EMO. The EMO can tap into a number of resources besides the military. A number of towns, cities and villages were calling KM and he said, “It was getting pretty ugly at some points.” KM said one of his biggest dilemmas was when a dairy farmer would call asking for a generator to milk his cows. KM said,

“That was a tough call to make because we only had 6 generators and the majority of them were already placed in Nursing Homes and shelters. If you were in the nursing home, you’d understand why the generator was there but to the farmer, it wasn’t their concern - his cows were. I ended up being dubbed the bad guy and so was the military at this point.”

Without a doubt, the lack of co-ordination between the civil authorities was the biggest problem.
KM spoke about his experiences while in Alberta. He told EMO that in Alberta, a municipality is unable to obtain compensation for disasters unless they have forwarded an emergency plan to the province. Some of those plans were limited and some were very detailed. KM said, “I’m not convinced that when we think of disasters that we have a plan to deal with them.” KM said that in Alberta, there is a warehouse of supplies to issue during an emergency. He is not sure if something like that exists in Ontario.
KM also said that a big mistake the Base made was using the Armoury for a store house. He said that if the area had to augmented by additional troops there would have been no where to put them. Brockville Rifles had to be built up from 50 personnel to over 700 and they had to use the Brockville Armoury. If a similar situation had occurred in Kingston the Armoury was already “stocked to the rafters” and it would have been difficult to move the supplies to somewhere else. KM said that there was not a clear picture of exactly what was in the Armoury as the supplies kept coming in. He remarked that at one point, a tractor-trailer of bundled wood came in. The problem was that no one knew where to send it on to. He emphasised again how important having a joint EOC would have been.
KM said that the military has to seriously look at their future roles in an emergency. He said that it has to be questioned whether it is a good idea to store emergency supplies in a major urban centre. He gave an example of a kind of emergency that could involve an urban centre and that is the evacuation of a rural community to a city in the event of a major forest fire. That is an emergency that the city would have to take on.
Overall KM is pleased how the operation went but said they have to seriously look at any shortfalls that were apparent. The Base had to develop their own emergency plan. KM showed the writer a copy of a booklet titled, Lessons Learned, this particular edition was a report on the Manitoba Flooding. KM pointed out the recapitulation of how the civil authorities worked with the military. KM said, “I look at the area that we had to cover and wonder how we did it.” He is concerned that the local authorities will now develop emergency plans that primarily rely on military assistance.
KM said that the contact with the media is one area that he was not happy with. he said,

“That is the one thing we could have done better was to involve the media more. I would have had them sitting in every meeting and they could have got the information out sooner. The public had a hard time understanding what we were trying to do for them.”

KM said that with the area that they had to cover and the deployment of units it appeared that the City residents thought the military didn’t care about them. The Cadets and 79th Signals Regiment were the ones going door-to-door.
The biggest lesson that KM learned was that the use of military resources was too City centred rather than being used where they were needed most. KM said, “I’m sure that in the city there are enough strapping teenagers and neighbours that could have organised a door-to-door check on elderly and invalids. Instead, there were over 400 troops being used.” He suggested that the military should have begun their operation from the furthest parameters of their area of responsibility and worked their way in to the cities. KM recalls that in some cases it took 4 days to get to an area that needed to be checked. KM said,

“The saddest incidents were when we found an elderly couple who were without heat for 7 days and the husband was in an advanced stage of hypothermia and the wife had fingers that had no colour to them. The wife thought it was just poor circulation from being cold and not being able to eat properly but it turned out to be frostbite. We might have got to them sooner if we weren’t tied up in the City going door-to-door.”

KM gave another example of the troops finding a woman and baby both dead from hypothermia. KM said, “We were too city focused and we forgot about those elderly farmers.” KM said, “A large urban area should be able to take care of itself.”
KM said that as far as RMC was concerned, the City should have recognised their ability to assist much sooner than they did. KM said he was receiving calls from Commanding Officers in urban centres that they were very frustrated. What they were running across was requests to clear debris off the streets. That meant that those personnel were not available to cover the rural areas. KM said,

“I don’t mean to sound cold but we had military personnel out picking up small tree branches as their tasking. I believe the utility companies could have been doing that so that our people could have been used elsewhere. To me it was a waste of military resources as well as a time waster.” He said it was frustrating to see the troops picking up branches and in the house there would be two teenage boys and a father watching them. He said, “There was a lot of people shaking their heads.”

Stress was a factor for both KM and the Base. KM said he left his house at 0500 on the Thursday and didn’t walk back into his house until 0130 on the Sunday. He said, “My family was sitting around in a cold, dark house and could see their breath as they breathed. I said to Mother, ‘I forgot all about you’ and she said, ‘How could you forget about us?’ I had to buy a lot of flowers to make up for that.” He said that what they learned was there has to be some down time from the setting up of an EOC. KM said that they discovered that there is a need to have at least three shifts to cover everything in order to give people some time away.
The families of personnel were upset with the deployment of their spouses. He said “I can understand how hard it would have been for some that were sitting with a tree limb through their front window and no power and then to be told, ‘By the way, I’m being shipped out tomorrow’. It’s a hard pill to swallow. But in the end it is accepted that the spouse is in the military and it’s their job to go where they are told. Major General Jeffery expressed that very concern to his people and tried to deal with it the best that they could.”
On a final note, KM said that even though there is an emergency plan in the works for the cities, there has to be an inclusion of the rural areas. He said, “I think the rural areas really felt like second class citizens during this.” He said it is going to be important that everyone know exactly where their municipal offices are, any EOC locations and who to contact in the event of an emergency.
KM gave the study a copy of the area map for Sector South.
He also added that the City should involve themselves with any Command Post exercises that the Base has planned to test their emergency plans. KM said that the fire, police and other emergency services are invited to participate. He believes that the next one will simulate the Manitoba Floods.