IceStorm 98 Study

Bonnie McIsaac and Marvin Valensky are Municipal Program Supervisors responsible for the implementation of Ontario Works legislation with municipalities. They negotiate service contracts with municipalities and their cost of administration budgets for social services. Valensky has an additional role of supervising MCSS program review officers for municipal audits. Both have roles involving work with their assigned municipalities during emergencies.

Valensky is also the Kingston Area, MCSS representative for Emergency Social Services responsible for liaising with municipalities to ensure that they have up to date emergency plans. He also is responsible for receiving applications and documentation of municipal staff and politicians for the Health Canada training in emergency social services.

Valensky and Marie Richardson, Manager of Direct Services, led MCSS’s immediate response to the ice storm.

McIsaac’s role during the ice storm was minimal. As the immediate response wound down, she became involved in the coordination and provision of one of the five municipal emergency services, psycho-social supports. She coordinated meetings with Health Canada and the municipalities to develop the psycho-social response and she is currently following through with that program, which is expected to last nine months. She coordinates the ongoing information about the provision of financial assistance to people affected by the ice storm.

Significant event:
Valensky: Valensky lives in a part of west Kingston that was not affected by the ice storm. On Thursday January 8th, MCSS Area Manager, Ernie Nelson phoned Valensky at home to alert him that he might get a phone call from MCSS corporate emergency services head, Barney Owens. Owens had Valensky’s name as the area contact and would want to know what was happening locally and what the needs were. When the call came from Owens, Valensky was updated regarding Owens’ linkage with Health Canada. Owen wanted to know what was happening in Kingston, Brockville, Gananoque and Lanark. Later, Owens made direct contact with the municipalities beyond Kingston.

The office at 1055 Princess St. was closed. Valensky spent Thursday making and taking phone calls from his home. Some communication took place regarding local need for cots and blankets. He attempted to contact the City of Kingston about what was happening there. The “new city” had a lot of new managers whose roles and responsibi-lities were unclear. He dealt with several people at Kingston City Hall including Tanie Steacy and Cheryl Mastantuono. He was unsure as to whether the city was working from a plan.

Steacy had already been in direct contact with Owens regarding cots and beds. Owens was the contact with the Canadian Forces and Health Canada. He was able to arrange for two transports, one from Ottawa and one from the west, to stop in Kingston and deliver cots and blankets for the shelters in the City. Other needs arose that Valensky thought could be addressed by Corrections Canada. After getting an appropriate phone number for Corrections Canada, he called and was able to get additional cots and bedding delivered. A central depot was located in the former Pittsburgh Township. The large transports off-loaded their cargo at the central depot. From there, smaller trucks delivered the items to the shelters.

There was an apparent lack of leadership at the City. When he phoned the City, if he didn’t get Steacy or Mastantuono, he would get “bounced around”. People didn’t seem to know who was in control and what was happening.

McIsaac: In Leeds-Grenville there is the separated City of Brockville and the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville which had just amalgamated from 22 to 14 townships on January 1, 1998. There was a leadership vacuum in the United Counties and the response to the ice storm suffered. The election for warden had not yet taken place. There was a definite power struggle between the individual townships and the United Counties. This resulted in duplication in staffing and equipping the emergency shelters, in the collection of food and the distribution of food vouchers and in accountability. It became such a disorganized mess that the Provincial Operations Centre in Toronto assigned one of their coordinators to the United Counties of Leeds-Grenville. Subsequent to that, an interim Warden was assigned to try and deal with the chaos. It did get somewhat better. There were also long standing struggles between the United Counties and the City of Brockville with respect to where the donations of food would come from, who could access the food donations, who would man the control centre. That was the downside. The upside was, at the end of it all it seemed to have forged stronger political relationships and relationships between the two social services departments.

The responses of Lanark County and the City of Brockville were very smooth. Both had plans in place and strong leadership. Kingston and the United Counties definitely noticed problems.

Valensky: His notes indicate that on the first Thursday he also was in contact with Health Canada; cots went to Hotel Dieu Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Collegiate and Vocational Institute and Frontenac Secondary School; contact with Marty Jordan at Kingston Social Services, Red Cross, Salvation Army, Canadian Forces (given numbers in Montreal and Quebec with no headway - handed off to Barney Owens)… some cots were in crates that had to be dismantled… Corrections Canada sent bedding to the YMCA and to the PUC… constant communication between Barney Owens and Valensky… Owens also in direct contact with Dorothy Theobald, Social Services Administrator in Brockville… 1,750 cots and bedding being sent to reception centres at Grenville Christian College, Brockville Psychiatric Hospital and Thousand Islands Secondary School…

McIsaac: There were, at one time, twenty-two shelters in rural Leeds-Grenville.

Valensky: On Friday, the City of Kingston was concerned that the shelters were getting full. They were looking to open up another shelter. Valensky helped set up Holy Cross Secondary School as a shelter. The Red Cross, Salvation Army and the Roman Catholic Separate School Board cooperated in this shelter which opened on Friday at 4:30 p.m.
Holy Cross never lost power. It also had a back-up generator. Some places in the former Kingston Township lost power for varying periods while other places did not lose it at all.

From Friday January 9th through Monday January 12th, Valensky was at Holy Cross every day. The lay out was designed to assure registration of all who came to the shelter.
There were quite a few elderly people. There were private individual rooms off the Resource Centre that were used to allow the seniors some privacy. They thought that they were getting an overflow of people from Hotel Dieu Hospital and there was no area set up for medication needs so they set aside a room as a pharmacy. The Holy Cross vice-principal basically moved into the school to help out. Valensky is very complimentary of both the vice-principal and the custodial staff.

Staff members from City Social Services were assisting at the shelter but they were getting exhausted as they had been working since the previous Wednesday. Valensky called MCSS staff who lived in the Bay Ridge area to help out. They took different shifts on reception. Later RMC cadets also came on five hour shifts to help in the shelter. Liaison was needed between the Red Cross and the Salvation Army to make sure that food was available at the shelter.

A lot of people were coming in just to use the shower facilities and to get a hot meal then leave. Some stayed days and went home at night. Others stayed overnight and left during the daytime. There were a variety of people. The sign-in log helped to keep track of where people were.

In the beginning, the Salvation Army tried to do everything to maintain the shelter, meal preparation at Harbour Light, trucking the food out to all the shelters, some food prep at Holy Cross, answering the phones… In the end, Salvation Army let others do the phones and some of the other tasks and kept to the food preparation and some pastoral care.

There were three administrative phone lines. Bell Canada sent in a technician to adjust the one pay phone so that it could be used for calls without charge.

They kept in touch with other shelters. There were rumours that QECVI was getting overloaded and that Holy Cross would need to take the overflow so they ordered more cots. The Princess of Wales Own Regiment militia did a superb job getting supplies to the shelter.

Shelter stayed open until Monday night, January 12th when, unbeknownst to the shelter volunteers, the military came and packed up all the cots. Valensky went in at 10:00 p.m. to find that the shelter was closed and that the cots were taken elsewhere.

Earlier, the principal of Holy Cross was pushing for the shelter to be closed so that the school could be re-opened. But he was told that notwithstanding his position, it was not his call. It was the call of the Mayor for as long as the emergency was being declared. Valensky thinks that since Holy Cross was a fair distance from the part of the City which was most affected by the storm, it was less popular as a shelter location. Transportation was an issue. People were reluctant to leave the downtown core.

McIsaac: As a rural resident of the City, Sydenham Road, three kilometres north of the 401, she was not informed about any of the shelters or other services until Wednesday January 14th, when a City of Kingston information flyer was brought to her door.

Valensky: When they opened the shelter at Holy Cross, the telephone communication between Holy Cross and City Hall was not very good. On Friday I called a friend who belongs to a group called ARES, Amateur Radio Emergency Services, who came over to Holy Cross and set up his HAM equipment. Other members of that group did the same at other locations. They were now able to hear what was happening across the City and on the police channel as well. It was a means of communicating between shelters as well.

When the Holy Cross shelter closed, the MCSS office was back in operation so Valensky went back to his usual role. He requested to be involved in some of the debriefing that was to happen with the City of Kingston but this has not happened to date. Some contact was maintained with the Red Cross but not with anyone else involved with the Holy Cross shelter. There has also been some liaison with Barney Owens and both he and McIsaac were sent MCSS debriefing updates.

McIsaac: The provision of emergency financial assistance in the municipalities was the next task, which arose and has become “the total focus” of MCSS. “The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing was very swift to provide municipalities with the Emergency Help Fund, which allowed them to issue emergency assistance to people in need.” Municipalities established their own processes and policies regarding amounts that they would issue. All basic, on-going services, like taking applications for General Welfare Assistance, stopped. All attention was being trained on issuing emergency food vouchers or cash for firewood, gas, clothing, and accommodation (in special circumstances). Each municipality established their own hours and weekend availability, if any. They also determined how long they would offer the emergency funds for.

There were very serious negotiations with the City of Kingston and MCSS represented by Marie Richardson) regarding what MCSS thought was “the very minimal amount they were providing for emergency assistance, which would have resulted in incredible traffic flow of people returning for more money.” For the 9,000 people on social assistance, Family Benefits Assistance (FBA) and General Welfare Assistance (GWA) in the Kingston area, MCSS wanted to offer “a one-shot, all inclusive deal. Not $20.00 which is what, originally, they (City of Kingston) were going to be issuing.”

“There was a lot of concern among some municipalities and some politicians about whether to issue food vouchers or to send people to get food from food drop-offs. There was even some, what we thought very petty, attitudes among rural politicians about wanting to know who would have received a food voucher and who would have gone and received food from a food shelter.”

The Emergency Help Fund went on for at least three weeks and was slowly replaced by the formation of the Ontario Disaster Relief Committees (ODRC) which are still in operation. Recently, an Extreme Hardship Financial Hardship committee has been set-up as a provincial sub-committee of the ODRC, to help people who don’t meet the criteria under the Ontario Disaster Relief Fund. So there has been an incredible outpouring of financial assistance to people.

After the initial shock (of the ice storm) was over, Barney Owens, at the Provincial Operations Centre in Toronto, phoned the Kingston and Ottawa area offices of MCSS and said “Would you please contact Raymond Lafond from Health Canada. He is the Canadian expert in the provision of psycho-social services in emergencies. Raymond wanted us to set up a meeting with municipalities, virtually within 72 hours. Municipalities felt that they were still dealing with the crisis but the turnout was actually quite good. Municipalities were encouraged by me and my counterpart, Glenn Eden in the Ottawa area office to start getting psycho-social services in place immediately.” This presented some problems, as the funding had not been worked out. Municipalities were still overburdened and didn’t have the manpower to put together the proposals and didn’t have money from MCSS to do it. So it was a little slow getting off the ground, especially given that Health Canada said that there are very critical timelines about when these services should begin. Right now, psycho-social committees exist in the City of Kingston, the United Counties of Leeds-Grenville, the County of Lanark, Prescott-Russell, Ottawa and Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry. (The psycho-social services are emotional supports and mental health counselling for adults and children and with a strong focus on the agricultural community to deal with the emotional effects of the ice storm.)

Nominally, they are to be delivered by the municipalities. But in Kingston, Leeds-Grenville and Lanark, the municipalities have subcontracted the service out to the health units, which also have a mandate to provide those sorts of supports. It also let the municipalities concentrate on getting regular services restored. Stigma was not a concern in recommending that the health units deliver the psycho-social services. Health Canada who wrote the book on this service does recommend that the service not be delivered by psychiatrists because of possible stigma attached to that.

Emergency Plan:
Valensky: MCSS were not prepared for this emergency. I am off to Toronto tomorrow and Friday and part of what will be discussed with us will be the Ministry Plan, what should be in place, a nuclear plan, but also probably the expectations and requirements for each area office to have a plan in place. It would have been a lot easier for me to call people if I had some kind of a staff inventory, or telephone fan-out. It would have been nice to have an inventory of skills of staff, which might be needed in response to the emergency. Hopefully the plan from Toronto will have different components in it, so that responsibilities can be distributed among area staff to help make MCSS a little more prepared next time.

Valensky expressed concern that he had not sat down with the City of Kingston for some time to go over their Emergency Plan. Yet he wondered how much difference it would have made. He was heartened by the volunteerism in the community. At one point at Holy Cross, they had more volunteers than residents. Part of the problem was that they had been directed to Holy Cross by City Hall. City Hall had not communicated about volunteers with Holy Cross. He took this to be an example of a lack of leadership at City Hall relative to orchestrating and communicating. This is something that he would raise with them at a debriefing.

Communication was difficult, if not impossible with Brockville, Lanark and other parts of the Kingston administrative area. This needs to be addressed.

The importance of updated emergency plans was clearly illustrated. It is one of his tasks to work with the municipalities to get the plans made current.

Even though 1055 Princess Street was operational by Wednesday January 14th, there were staff from this office to assist municipalities. Ice free municipalities sent staff to assist affected municipalities. They came from as far away as Hamilton and Waterloo. They came based on informal contacts: someone knowing someone as opposed to an office being officially required to assist another municipality.

McIsaac: How did it go so far? How could our weather people not be able to predict that it was going to get so bad? It became an emergency overnight. Couldn’t we have predicted it?

Valensky: There was somebody who did.

McIsaac: On Wednesday January 7th, she took hours to get home from Perth.

Barney Owens was key to the MCSS role in the response to the storm.

Authority to act:
Valensky: Questions his own authority and expressed frustration with the time wasted in trying to communicate to make things better. He depended a lot on Barney. He felt good about the work he did at the shelter.

McIsaac: “I don’t know what our authority is in the Kingston office. My perception is that the municipality has the authority. So we are there as a support.

About money:
McIsaac: The money came from Municipal Affairs and Housing. Like EMO, MCSS did not have to worry about money. The money for the psycho-social services is coming from MCSS and it is one of the mandated services. Is the service being accessed? At this point, in hasn’t even begun. Municipalities are just beginning to hire.

Stress:
McIsaac: With the snow melting, the full impact of the ice storm on the physical environment is just becoming apparent. Also for farmers, the spring is when they will recognize the full extent of their loss.

Decision making:
Valensky: He made decisions, as he felt able. For those beyond his power, he handed off to Barney in Toronto. With the support of the Area Manager, Valensky made his decision on the basis of need.

What worked well:
McIsaac: What didn’t work well was the lack of one person responsible for coordinating everything relative to MCSS.

Valensky: At the beginning, the lack of communication was a real problem. The nature of the emergency was such that it affected everyone and many who could have helped were in crisis themselves. Some simply could not cope and got out of town.

McIsaac: What did work well was the cooperation between the provincial and municipal offices, the sharing of staff resources both at the front line and the management level and the camaraderie that developed.

Valensky: was most impressed by the pulling together of people who were willing to help one another unequivocally.

In an emergency, the five key areas for municipalities to get involved in are: food, clothing, shelter, registration and inquiry, and personal services. The City responded well. Red Cross helped with the registration and inquiry. Things were learned as events unfolded.

McIsaac: Transfer payment agencies contacted their program supervisors for financial assistance for property damage as a result of the storm. There was little occurrence of people in care having to be transferred. Generators were in place or other emergency options had already been established. Subsequently, estimates for property damage have gone to corporate office. The secure young offender facilities operated for MCSS all had generators which clicked in when regular electricity was lost.

Valensky: Evaluation of the psycho-social services should be available in nine months.

Who else should be interviewed?
Barney Owens (Toronto) (416) 325-5555 MCSS, Emergency Service Coordinator.