IceStorm 98 Study

Because of the ice storm, I was quite involved with the customer-service component. I dealt with customer contact and resident concerns

What are your recollections of the night of the storm?

I was at home. We had quite a few branches fall on our house so it was a fairly eventful night. We lost our power on Thursday morning. It was my first week on the job and I arrived at work a little late because I couldn’t get out of the garage. I have an electric garage opener and we had to manually open the door. The emergency aspect of the situation didn’t really hit until the afternoon, probably around 2 o’clock.

Were you part of the Mayor’s meeting?

No. I was called into a meeting with Lance Thurston, who was part of the original meeting with the Mayor, to try to come up with a game plan. I was brought in specifically to handle customer inquiries. I was only in that meeting for about a half hour and then I was sent down to City Hall to start setting up the call centre along with Sheila Hickey.

Were standard operating procedures very much intact or were things more flexible because of the circumstances?

I think because I wasn’t involved in the Mayor’s meeting, it was looser for me although it was under Lance’s directive and recommendation that we started setting up at City Hall. Actually some of the staff had already gone down to City Hall from the Midland Avenue office. At that point we were still not sure who actually had made it to work. I got to City Hall around 2:30 or 3 o’clock. Sheila Birrell was involved with communications and was also helping us out with answers because we were starting to get some calls from residents.

How did you approach the communications question because it was so important in terms of making sure that not only incoming calls were answered but also that you had access to getting your messages out?

That first afternoon was a bit confusing. We set up in the clerk’s department at City Hall and any calls that came in because of the emergency were routed to us. We started assigning certain extensions specifically for the emergency and we were still getting calls for other reasons as well because some people were not aware of how urgent the situation was. Under Sheila Hickey’s direction, we had emergency phones that were actually installed before I got to City Hall. As the day went on, under Sheila Birrell’s direction, the first press release went out. We started assigning staff to each phone so that each phone in the clerk’s department was staffed. As the information came in it was handed to the staff so that they all knew what was going on.

What about money? Was it a constraint that you felt? Did you feel that you had to leave a paper trail or did you think you could worry about that later?

For the first day or two money was not as much of an issue. Making sure that the residents were safe and that they were getting the proper information was most important. We did receive quite a few calls from residents in crisis situations as well. We were also getting a lot of calls from out of town people who were concerned about their relatives or friends.

In retrospect, what worked well and what didn’t?

For me coming from another department, what really worked well was that everybody pulled together and worked as a team. It didn’t matter if you were at a clerk’s level or if you were a senior manager. Everyone made sure the job got done. It was a little confusing for everybody because it was the first emergency situation that Kingston had experienced, but I think it was a success because we didn’t have any casualties.

What were some of the major problems that you experienced?

Even though we did have an emergency plan, it was still very confusing. Volunteers were just pouring into our office and we didn’t have a real plan as to where we should be sending them, but as the days progressed it got more organized. Also for the first 24 hours we were short staffed as well.

What about the stress factor? Was it there for you or was it outweighed by the camaraderie?

In the first 48 hours the stress was more directed to the safety of the customer, making sure that the information was going out and that we would be able to handle the calls that were coming in. As we got more people to come in and help us out, we were getting more organized and the stress got more to the point where we were tired because we had been there so long. The people who were there from the beginning knew the history, so we needed them to be there. After a certain point, you felt like you took ownership of the project and you felt that if you left, City Hall would fall apart because you knew from the beginning what had happened, the progression, and why things were being done a certain way.

Have you heard how the new emergency plan is progressing? Have you seen it?

I have just seen a report so far.

Is there a date when it will be out?

I haven’t heard.

Do you think the city will be better prepared in future for such a disaster?

I think so. We can actually put the issues on paper now. I don’t know when the original emergency plan was put together for the city. This was a particular situation as well. If we had a bomb threat maybe the situation would have been different but as far as an ice storm situation, I think we will be much better prepared. I expect the plan will be circulated so that we can comment on the particular points that need to be addressed. Communication to the public is one issue that needs to be addressed. In an ice storm situation when people don’t have power, how do you actually get the message out? As soon as information went to the media, it was out. The media were hungry for the information. It really was important for the staff who were answering the phone calls to have the information before it went out and that didn’t always happen. However, the media were very cooperative. You need to get information to the media but you need to get it to everybody else as well. As the situation progressed, it did improve but the first few days with the information changing so quickly it was hard to keep up.

Did you have any contact with the provincial or federal authorities at all?

The only contact I had with outside organizations was that I was asked to investigate how Montreal and Ottawa were handling certain situations. We were basically doing the same as they were. Montreal was dealing with issues away beyond ours. They needed beds for 100,000 people whereas we were dealing with much smaller numbers. They had been in this situation since Monday whereas Thursday was our first day of the storm. For the first day or two, we were getting calls from customers who were distressed and then after that we started to get angry callers.

What did you do when you got an irate caller on the phone?

There wasn’t much that we could say except that the hydro crews were working as hard as they could. We told them that they had to understand that there were a lot of people without power and the crews were trying to address certain areas at a time. Sometimes they would get power back in an area and they would move to another area. Then a branch would fall on the lines and the power would go out again. We just explained this to the callers and most of them understood. In my own case in Gananoque we were the only ones on our street who didn’t have any power for four days after the others had their power back on.

Can you recall any amusing anecdotes or lighter moments?

The support from the community was amazing and the food that came in was incredible. We had volunteers who just showed up and didn’t want to go home because they didn’t have any power at home so they thought they would just stay at City Hall. I spent two nights at the control post at City Hall so I spent a lot of time around the volunteer drivers. We drank a lot of coffee and there were some silly moments. We tried to have one person at the control post at all times because we had volunteers staffing the phones. Usually the phones only started getting busy around 6 a.m. During the first 24 hours some of the callers would ask if their garbage was going to be picked up. We replied, “Probably not.” On Friday, someone came in to get a marriage licence.

Is there anything I haven’t asked that you think is important?

As the days progressed we did get more organized especially with the call centre, getting volunteer organizations to coordinate the staffing of the phones instead of us having to coordinate that ourselves. After the first 24 hours, the Tourist office was designated as the volunteer centre and then after that it went just to the organizations basically. Next time, there are things that could be delegated to organizations like the Salvation Army or Red Cross which would make things easier for us.