IceStorm 98 Study

Asked when and how he realized that this storm was a major event, Kevin Collins [KC] replied that he was in a meeting in Belleville on Tuesday afternoon [January 5] and his pager started to go off a lot, with the memory overloading about 3 times. “I thought something's wrong here.” He concluded the meeting and found out there were power outages in the Cornwall area.

“So we started the wheels in motion, with generators down there. Then I drove to Kingston, and a little later the pager was going off again and it was evident that there were about 4 exchanges in trouble there in the Avenmore/Finch area, and I thought maybe we better get some troops from Kingston and go down, so I got hold of people in Kingston and Belleville, each of them hooked onto the larger mobile generators, and we proceeded East.”

"I left that night, packed for one night, and came back 3 weeks later."

"These things last for, usually, 4 to 6 hours or something like that, well this one you could tell was a little bit more major!".

In the morning KC thought he better go to the Hawkesbury area because he knew conditions were even worse there, and they were! Then the rain didn't stop and it just progressed from there.

“So what happened was the storm for me started in the East and my worst nightmare was that the storm was going to hit behind me because I pulled the generators, even pulled 2 generators out of Smiths Falls and I had left one mobile generator in Kingston and that's all I had back there, and we even moved it. So I was just thinking, ok the odds of this storm hitting behind me, like Brockville, Smiths Falls, or Kingston were pretty remote, so I took that chance and I took everything and we went East with them. Well we didn't have enough generators for down there and then the storm started to hit behind me.”

“My territory runs from Brighton to the Quebec border and then kind of along Highway 7, so it's pretty big, so it pretty much covers the storm (area).”

"After about 2 or 3 days I finally said to my boss you'd better get me relief 'cause there's just no way I can do this." And it ended up there were 7 other managers helping me and we just pulled resources in from the province to help out, but now they had... there were a lot of decisions to be made throughout the whole process.”

“We prioritized locally what the critical sites were, depending on switching equipment, depending on transmission, because in some critical sites you might have all the facilities where the national network may go through, so those sites need standby power. For other sites you just have to say well I don't have enough generators, I can't get to every place, so I'm sorry but we can't go there until we get some backup. We did some very creative and innovative thinking, I guess, along the way. We ran whole buildings with little Honda generators, where we would just go into a building and shut every circuit breaker off except maybe one, a rectifier or something like that, just one, that would just basically, barely keep the office up but at least keep the dial tone going, and the batteries floating.”

Smaller businesses usually do not have backup power; their phone system requires external power for other things, like the flashing lights on the phone and maybe features like the intercom systems or speakers, so if it doesn't have battery backup there is nothing in the event of a power failure.

“What we have in a building is switching gear and transmission gear, and that runs through storage batteries. Then what we do is hook on rectifiers to the storage batteries, so that one draws off the other and keeps the batteries up. When the AC goes off, the rectifiers shut off, and the office runs off the batteries, and depending on the size of the office, the batteries will last maybe 8 or maybe 12 hours. Some of them last a lot longer, and then in some sites, like in larger cities like Kingston, the storage capacity is a lot less.”

“So in the smaller buildings, we would run a little Honda generator, and just power one rectifier. You'd open up the door, and there would be nothing, it's completely black, everything possible shut off, except one rectifier, just enough to maintain power to keep the office going, which is something we've never done before. It's just an unheard of idea. We didn't have enough mobile generators to be in every site. I've got 84 buildings alone.”

In the end, “It worked well. There wasn't enough capacity in the Honda generators to charge the batteries, but it was enough to help. It was still discharging, but at a much slower rate. And then what would happen is somebody would steal the damn generator on us, and then we'd have none!"

In the Hawkesbury loop area KC thinks they lost 4 generators; 2 in one place, until a neighbour came and offered to store it in his garage every night. He pulled it back and forth in a toboggan every day and Bell kept him stocked with fuel. People were also trying to steal the huge mobile generators . In one place the police chased them off twice. Eventually Bell went around and took one wheel off every generator.

An emergency operations centre was set up in Toronto and they implemented an emergency plan. He set up mini local emergency response centres in Hawkesbury, Cornwall, Brockville, and Kingston just to handle the large volume of calls and to handle calls from ambulances and hospitals as well as other departments or shelters as they emerged. They also restored some of the downed cables. KC notes that the phones didn’t stop ringing.

They organized a lot of local responses themselves and used the emergency centre operation [they looked at problem from larger scale] to identify critical sites so they could prioritize actions. The largest fear was that the storm would hit Toronto. “If it hit Toronto and every generator in the province was down East we would have been in real trouble. So we had to be careful for a little bit.” They monitored generally and then dealt locally.

Regarding expenses, KC said, “we did what we had to do”. They had a large generator that wasn’t needed in Collins Bay so it was sent up to Hawkesbury because the local police had no power. “In a couple days their power came on so we moved it to a local farmer who had 75 head of cattle and was shooting them. He was some happy to see this generator roll in!”

One of KC’s roles was to liaison between municipalities, his own people and the other departments. He attended municipal meetings and worked with the police. They got police help to patrol around the clock. Worked most closely with the police chief and with the emergency centre.

The biggest problem was too many offices needing power and not enough generators. They mobilized what was available around the province. The emergency operations centre co-ordinated this. There were also teams of people to help. His help came from Windsor. Before they left Toronto he told them to make sure and buy all the batteries, flashlight and candles they could. They also brought a load of generators.

“Then we purchased [Honda] generators from Alberta. There were one hundred generators in one load. Once they arrived, [it took at least a week] they were ok.

Regarding how to prioritize their response, KC indicated that they picked the most populated and highest density of business areas and worked out from there.

He suggested that next time they might use less of the local emergency centres and establish only two. But the damage was so extensive and unique, “I don’t think anyone could have prepared better than we did. We did damn good.”

“We are establishing a better centralized data base of our emergency standby power.” This involves identifying where it is located, the type, and specifications and needs of all equipment, including serial number and cords involved with connecting to buildings.

For the smaller generators, Bell is now field trialing a couple of trailers which can hook on to 6-8 generators at once and be dropped off at various sites.

KC felt their emergency plan was excellent; well mobilized and efficient.

His own training involves not so much disaster training as lots of emergency operations planning. “It’s a high priority for us.”

He reported no direct contact with EMO.

Fatigue was an issue. But they didn’t work around the clock. They would try to relax in evenings, often with the hydro guys.

In general KC reports that it “was the most exciting experience of our lives. Nobody was stressed. It was a sense of accomplishment.” He noted the reward of seeing happy customers and the sense of teamwork. “No politics, just go out and do what it takes. He was “personally honoured to be part of the effort.”

Others to talk to: Line crews, Grant Loucks, Priscilla Gomer also has some good stories.

Regarding costs, KC said they were still sending in bills and didn’t think they had results yet. His estimate was over $11 million.