IceStorm 98 Study

Cadet Wing Commander Beaudoin (LC) is a 4th year engineering student at RMC. He is in charge of all the cadets under the supervision of Lt. Col. Michaud. The quality of his taped interview is poor so this transcript is an overview of his discussion with the Ice Study Project.

LC was made aware of the impact of the ice storm on Thursday morning by Lt. Col. Michaud. Michaud had ordered the cadets confined to barracks even though the school still had power. Classes had been cancelled because of the inability of teaching staff to venture in to the school. LC held meetings with the other cadet squadron leaders and it was decided to contact the civil authorities to offer the assistance of the 900 cadets to the City. The main contact for the cadets was Police Constable Melvin of the City of Kingston Police Force. LC set his room up as the Operations centre for the cadets. He said that it was a bit of a crush as the room is only 6'x8' and at any given time there was 5 to 6 people there. They worked by candle and flashlight and utilised their personal cellular phones and radios for a communication system.

On the Friday, the school received their orders from Land Force Central in Toronto that they were to be placed under command of the Base Commander at CFB Kingston. The first area of responsibility for the cadets was to secure the school, the weapons depot and the museum as the power went out at approximately 1900 hrs. on the Friday.

The City requested that the cadets assist by canvassing the areas that were without power. They were asked to do a door-to-door and check on the residents to see if they needed any special assistance. LC said that it was unfortunate that the cadets could not do anything more than that but because of the lack of winter kit (clothing), they could not do work that required them to be outside for prolonged periods. It was decided that the cadets would wear their sweat suits that were clearly marked with the RMC insignia so that the public would be able to identify them. They began the door-to-door on the Sunday morning. The cadets used additional equipment such as maps of the City, flashlights and Motorola radios.

LC said that the cadets sent an liaison Officer (LO) to City Hall so that if the services of the cadets were required by any of the emergency agencies they could be contacted right away. The LO in turn, called the school and stated how many cadets were needed and where they were to go. LC said that sometimes this became confusing because an agency would ask for a couple of cadets for a few hours and then keep the cadets there longer than the requested time. This made it difficult to keep track of the cadets.

LC said that for the most part, the cadets worked in the shelters, the kitchens and did the door-to-door canvassing. He said that he wished they could have done more and would have liked it if the cadets could have got involved earlier. LC said that he was glad to be of assistance because on a number of occasions the cadets found residents in need of medical attention. He recalled one resident that required the use of an oxygen tank and had no power to operate it. The cadets found this out and called for an ambulance to take the resident to the hospital. In all, he is happy with the work the cadets did during the emergency and said that they logged in over 6300 people hours of assistance to the City.

LC said that many of the cadets had family members situated in the worst hit areas of the storm and he himself had family in Quebec. He said that they managed to get messages through to the cadets' families that they were fine and that their families were doing as well as could be expected.

The cadets spent off-duty time confined to barracks and to reduce the stress, they organised card games and shared their battery operated radios and CD players with each other. LC said that they were kept busy by carrying out routine checks around the school and by acting as message runners to preserve the batteries in the radios.

LC and the cadets kept a detailed log of the participation of the cadets. This log has been archived.