IceStorm 98 Study

Mr. Reiach’s job involves the linking up of municipal data bases to a graphic mapping display. He gave the example of providing a visual display of those households who had not yet paid their municipal taxes as an illustration of what the linkage between the municipal data base and his GIS system can provide. As a member of the Corporate and Strategic Planning Commission, his present task is to assist the local municipalities in designing and developing data base systems which would be compatible with his own.

On Wednesday, January 7, on the eve of the storm, the offices of Corporate and Strategic Planning were moved out of City Hall to their new location on Gore road [former Pitsburgh Township Offices]. That next morning L.R. arrived at his new office and started to unpack boxes. By noon, since nobody else had shown up for work, he went home and remained there until he received a call on Saturday morning from Jim DeHoop, the Director of Information Technology requesting his assistance at City Hall.

Arriving at City Hall at 7:30 a.m. he met with Jim DeHoop and set about bringing all of the City computers on line. There was nothing that he could do at his new office since all of his equipment was still in boxes and there was no power to the Gore road office. So he concentrated his efforts on restoring computer power for City officials and helped to familiarize newcomers who had come from outside of the old city who required computers for their own use. In particular, those who were managing the shelters required computers to maintain records.

Along with the mayor’s secretary and Lester Webb, he took on the task as the recording secretary at the various management meetings which took place during the storm.
At one point someone asked him if he could provide a generator. Since he had 8 years experience as a City Engineer he took this task on as a challenge and for the next three days set about locating generators.

Cynthia Beach, General Manager of Fleet Operations for the City of Kingston, had been assigned the task of locating and assembling generators for those who required them. L.R., Jamie Brash, and Barclay Mayhew ... “by accident, default or whatever, fell into the job and just started functioning and doing it...”

On Saturday night they had located an empty area in the market wing of City Hall and established it as their headquarters. The fact that there was a door with back access to the parking lot and a phone line which did not have to go through the main switchboard added to the value of the area. As soon as this area was set up they were able to take delivery of generators. Hydro and fire crews from the City of Toronto brought in some generators and were provided with coffee and a meal in the back area of City Hall.

As the ‘market wing centre’ became more organized, they responded to requests for generators which were coming in from across the City. Crews were dispatched with generators and space heaters to the various shelters and elsewhere wherever they were needed.

L. R. would receive calls from City residents who had discovered that generators were available. In situations such as this, and many others, common sense would apply. His response was to ask why they had not moved into a shelter. There were exceptions to this rule. Several buildings which had been evacuated still housed several elderly people and in those cases, a generator and space heater were provided. The crews would return on a daily basis to top up the generator and make sure that things were running smoothly.

On the following Sunday afternoon, the Toronto crews requested permission to return home. L.R. contacted Bob MacDonald of Toronto Hydro who agreed to replace the crews with a new team as soon as possible. As it turned out, MacDonald made the trip to Kingston along with the new men. L.R. stated that he was “thoroughly glad that he did because he was a great help to us...”. As L.R. reiterated “we had three groups that came down to help us, Toronto Hydro, Toronto Fire and Toronto Police... and Toronto Fire sent Bob Crawford who was their disaster planner. Bob Crawford and his team “were down here as observers” but that didn’t preclude their participation to put things into perspective and to offer advice whenever it was felt necessary... “they weren’t here to do our jobs... it was our disaster, we owned it, we were responsible for it... they were here to help...”.

Calls were increasing in frequency. Some were from Smiths Falls requesting generators, others came from Wolfe and Howe Islands requesting assistance. Crews were dispatched to the Islands with generators and equipment. L.R. estimated that he had sent 40 generators to Wolfe Island.
The Toronto Police Force sent down their Emergency Tactical Unit which was a self contained mobile unit equipped with a generator. L.R. sent them to Perth to supply power to a local school which had become the area shelter. They were also sent to a retirement home on Highway 38 to assist.

The generator which powered the “bubbler unit” that kept the Howe Island channel open for ferry travel had broken down, so L.R. had to arrange for a replacement.

L.R. operated the centre on a 24 hour ‘round the clock’ operation. While he worked the day shift from 7:00 a.m. until 11:00 at night, Paul Warren operated from 11:00 until 7:00 the next morning.

Everyone, without exception, put in well over 100 hours that week. Yet it was an experience which proved to be beneficial to the new City. As L.R. described it “ we got to know some people really well very very quickly... it was a hell of a bonding thing for the new City, staff (whose) names you had heard over the years all of a sudden you were working side by side with them... now in the aftermath and trying to make the new City work we’ve all got a new perspective of people... it’s all been a really good (experience).”.

L.R. was soon to become a member of the Emergency Management Group which met periodically throughout the crisis. On Tuesday January 13, “it was decided that City Hall should be returned to a state of normalcy and that the Emergency Operations Centre would have to move... at the same time, Gardner Church, who at that point had been in charge of running the E.O.C. was going to Toronto and so he appointed Mirka Januskiewicz who is the commissioner of Corporate and Strategic Planning... and Lynne Jorden, who is the head of the libraries as the new E.O.C. managers. After a review of possible sites was made, it was decided to move the E.O.C. to the Gore Road offices and L.R. was given the job of setting up the facility.
Since few people dropped into the Gore Road offices (you only went there if you had business to conduct) there were fewer distractions. This certainly was not the case at City Hall where people were constantly wandering in and out of the building and causing confusion. It was strictly business at Gore Road.. Offices were organized into departments. A call centre would direct inquiries and requests to the appropriate department which would deal exclusively with those requests. A cafeteria would serve food to the staff and accommodations would be supplied to those who required them.

Although there had been some misgivings about the move to Gore Road, these were dismissed as it became clear that those who had been responsible for certain functions at City Hall maintained their position of responsibility at the new location. To a certain degree they were “starting over again”, but their authority was not diminished by the move.

From that point on, January 14, the Gore Road offices functioned as the Emergency Operations Centre with L.R. as the head of operations. Meetings were held on a daily basis to assess the progress being made to restore conditions to normal. The number of phone calls were decreasing along with requests for assistance.

As power was slowly being restored throughout the City, shelters were being dismantled and teams were sent to retrieve generators which had been distributed. By Saturday January 17, “things had returned to normal” and everyone returned to an 8 hour shift. Yet, L.R. maintained a state of readiness “because there was always that fear that another storm was going to hit... we realized that the electrical system had been badly damaged and it wouldn’t take nearly as big a storm to put it back into trouble, so we watched the weather... anytime they talked about high winds or more snow... it heightened our fear.. and for this reason, the E.O.C. is still operational and will be until Spring”.

According to L.R. the military had divided eastern Ontario into two regions with the dividing line being highway # 49. Ottawa supervised the area to the north of highway # 49, while Base Kingston was responsible for the area to the south of highway # 49. The military were conducting door to door searches throughout the City and rural areas as well as helping to clear roads.

As far as his personal authorization to undertake certain tasks was concerned, L.R., along with many others in this situation, was not concerned with lines of authority. He observed that “ I knew that things needed to get done... until somebody told me (that I’d gone too far) , I wasn’t going to worry about it”. He had just been hired by the new City based upon his ability to make decisions. Here was a golden opportunity to exercise his judgment and make those decisions.
“...I’m here to do something, I’m going to make a decision... a lot of it was pure common sense...” The City had established accounts with Canadian Tire and Anglin Fuels and it was just a matter of buying whatever was needed and keeping track of the bills. A separate account was set up for the exclusive use of the E.O.C. so that there would be no duplication of billings with the City.

All of the generators which had been distributed throughout the community had been returned to their owners after servicing inspections had been completed.

In addition to sending generators to shelters, R.L. supplied the Kingston Police Department with generators after their communications system experienced a failure. The large back-up generator which Bell Canada had on Princess Street was only reliable for a couple of hours. To avoid a complete failure of the telephone system in Kingston, Bell requested assistance from L.R. who located a generator and supplied it to Bell until power could be restored. Incidentally, this was the same generator which was sent to Howe Island to provide power to the bubbler system.

Some criticism was made about staff availability. A few wondered why they hadn’t been called while others had been “on duty” since the beginning of the crisis. This may have contributed to a feeling of being “left out” of the crisis. Another area of dispute concerned the move of the E.O.C. to the Gore Road offices. There were those who preferred another location closer to town, but in the end the Gore Road location prevailed.

L.R., among others, would have liked to have some event signal a sense of “closure” to the crisis. The parade of trucks down Princess Street signaled a return to normalcy “it was a small thing, but it was something”.

“...I’m not looking for anybody to come up to me to say thank you, you did a good job, because there are a lot of people out there that did a hell of a lot more than me... I only did what I was asked to do, what I felt I could do... I didn’t do anything extraordinary that other people wouldn’t do...”.

If this crisis were to happen again, how would you handle it?

“I don’t know that you can honestly answer that, because now we have something that we never had before - experience... if I was to walk in to a facility that had never had a disaster... yes I’ve got it formulated in my mind things that need to be done assigned areas to people that this is your function... work out of this position... if it were to happen here, if we had a disaster tonight, we already know that this building is divided up, we know who to call in... what would I do different - nothing... I would start off where I ended...”