IceStorm 98 Study

Mike Stoneman and his family were fortunate in that they did not lose power during the Ice Storm. His children are older so that meant that "the eldest that we have at home could then manage the troops" so his wife, who works with Kingston Friendship Homes, and he were able to "be very singled-minded" in their focus in dealing with the disaster, having no concern for their children's well-being. He feels he was allowed to do a lot more because of that.

Wednesday evening was the beginning of the storm and meetings were cancelled because of the weather. At that point he just thought, "Sure, it will be slick tomorrow and may be difficult to get into work." Later he started hearing some of the announcements about the storm, talked to his staff, and they decided not to go into the office because of the weather more than anything. But Mike had to go in to pick some things up from the office (they were planning on holding a fundraiser on Thursday night). Driving wasn't too bad until he tried to go into the office. The roads were all barricaded off in that area so he had to walk in. There was no power at the Red Cross office but he thought that "would be normal because the power distribution system around here is fairly old, so I would consider the trees falling on it, you know - from a rural background, you get used to that."

He also had some personal emergencies with his vehicle. He ended up standing out in the rain for about an hour trying to change the alternator in his truck by Canadian Tire (and was successful). When he called his wife to ask her to bring his tools to him, she told him that people from the City were trying to get a hold of him and "they're getting a little frantic." Mike then went home to pick up a change of dry clothes, sleeping bag, etc. so that he was "ready to roll". "I knew what the potential was. When you get frantic calls from the City, there's got to be a problem. It's not just smoke and mirrors."

He went to the P.U.C. office on Counter Street at about 2:30 p.m. that day and met with Cheryl Mastantuono, who was directing the set-up of the shelter situation and seemed to be directing the activities of the City at that time. Dave Morgan, another of the commissioners, was there. They were "briefing" and at around 3:00 p.m. made a conscious decision to go and set up a shelter. Mike knew it was going to be tough but the indication around the table was that they would only be involved until possibly Saturday, that it wasn't going to be a long-term situation.

Mike made some calls to people he knew. (Mark Edmonds was already involved so Mike didn't have to call him.) He called John Winship to let him know about it and called his other staff. One of the staff was assigned to stay at her home to act as the base of communications and coordination for the disaster. The other staff person eventually ended up at the shelter with Mike.

At about 3:30 p.m., Mike and a Social Services field worker went to Q.E.C.V.I. and they opened the shelter at 4:00 p.m. They were supposed to open a shelter at Frontenac Secondary School but it never was opened because their power was so unreliable. "The power would come back and they'd go to set up and, by the time they got there, the power was down." Social Services and John Winship (the Red Cross representative) set up the shelter at L.C.V.I. John wasn't there all the time but he worked with Social Services checking out the other shelters "and [was] more or less being the roving man on the scene", making sure everything was being set up.

Q.E.C.V.I. was the highest need shelter in the community and was "the most challenging because of the population. We're talking people whose expectations are relatively high and their capacity to be able to deal with the situation is very low." Mike says it was very interesting fulfilling the needs of those people. Many of them were on social assistance and they were used to using the Social Assistance system. The people in the shelters who were not high need would come to the shelter for a hot meal (because that was the only way they could get a hot meal) but would generally prefer to stay at home. "I guess that's one of the unusual circumstances in a disaster, in any situation... People don't want to leave home when life beyond the walls of their home becomes uncertain." For the most part, individuals stayed in their home because there was a comfort level there and they wanted to protect their environment and have as much control over their life as they could. For other people there was a need to be nurtured.

"Another issue that we've got to look at... we've got to learn to separate in the disaster those situations which are truly caused by the disaster and those which are there anyway." Mike does not believe, though, that there is a good way to do "benchmarking" pre-emergency in the community because interviews conducted now will be skewed and biased by the disaster itself. Mike gave the example of a person who told him that a person lost their business because of the disaster. But he points out that "you don't one day have a business and then the next week you don't have a business." If the business is on the edge, then the storm isn't the cause, it is the catalyst.

Mike estimates that in Kingston approximately 25% of the population is on social assistance and 34% overall have incomes of less than $30,000, "so we're looking at a very high percentage of the population in Kingston who are high need". Therefore, in terms of a psychosocial response, issues of abuse, of financial distress, of mental distress, the question is, "Was it the disaster? Or, was it the times that we live in and the disaster just was the optical piece that we look through to see it all?" In terms of any disaster, you have to look at that.

To illustrate his point, Mike speaks a bit about his experience in Florida (Tropical Storm Alberto) and says that one of the challenges they faced was that of communication in terms of the written word because a relatively high percentage of the population could not read. When FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) sent their documents out to people, they couldn't read them and did not know where to go for assistance. The solution was to read the forms over the radio. "Now just because the floods hit, the people didn't become illiterate. They were illiterate to start with. So you've got to look at that when you start evaluating some of the outcomes of the emergency. Are these social ills that should be dealt with outside of the dealing with the emergency."

Mike would recommend that we take a "long look" at how we deliver social services and how we help people to get out of the cycle so that people will become empowered to support themselves. He feels that a good model for this is that of author John McKnight who talks about capacity building and community building, building communities from the inside out using the resources in the community to help. McKnight talks about two issues: community needs maps and community assets maps and putting the two together. McKnight also says that the basis of social service is by and large serving the social servants and protecting their jobs rather than actually doing something of value for their community. Mike feels that there is "a move afoot" towards "empowerment of the person to be able to deal with the situation and normalize their life". This fits into an emergency situation "because we really have to start doing that in order for people to cope with some of the issues that come up as a result of emergencies".

The sites for the shelters were chosen by the City. At the time of the first meeting, the City was only nine days old and there was no formal agreement and there was no real plan that could be followed because the "major players" were yet to be identified. Because the Red Cross and Salvation Army, along with other agencies, had worked together for four years in one form or another developing a response, they were able to respond quickly. When Mike got to the meeting on Counter Street, Ruth Archibald [of the Salvation Army] showed up and they both knew that they would be managing shelters. Part of that is the provision of food and food services and some element of pastoral care and, in their previous ad hoc meetings, the Salvation Army was written into the Agreement to do food, clothing and pastoral care. (Mike is not even sure if that was actually written into the original Agreement because there was some resistance from " the players at the time, who are no longer with the City ".)

"We really went and pulled out all of the stops that we could because we're not concerned about 'saving face'. What we're concerned about is we know there are people out there that need help [and] it may be beyond their capacity to deal with it." When the storm was declared a disaster, all of their training came to the fore. They had no concerns about the legality of what they were doing as long as they were exercising due diligence.

Money was never a concern because Red Cross, at the "zone level", has an emergency fund. ["Region" covers Eastern Ontario and "zone" covers all of Ontario.] Their zone office is responsible for providing the resources in the event of a disaster.

Regarding his authority to act, Mike says, "the authority came more from the fact that I knew what needed to be done and that knowledge was the thing that drove the authority." All he had to do was call his supervisor in Ottawa who, of course, already knew we were in trouble because they were, too. It wasn't until about noon on Friday that they had a chance to converse because they didn't have cell phones or anything. "It was just plain serendipity striking that we were able to communicate the way we did." Mike had a cell phone from the City but the office here did not become operational again until the Tuesday following the storm.

At one time they had six cell phones from the City that they were responsible for. Of all their equipment, the only thing the Red Cross lost during the entire period (two weeks) was one pager. As Mike says, that was good because at one point in time they had eight loaned vehicles, two from Toyota Canada and six from various dealers in town. There was no discussion of rental fees. At one point the Red Cross was providing drivers and vehicles to the outreach service that Jerry Coady was running on behalf of the City to the northern parts of the region.

At one point, the disaster that the City was responding to changed from a municipal disaster to a regional disaster response. What CFB Kingston was responsible for at the start was everything from about a line that would cut across the province at about Highway 43 south to the river and east to Cornwall. That was called "Task Force South". "Task Force North" was the Ottawa area and covered the area north. Eventually what happened, because Cornwall is closer to Ottawa, is that Task Force South took on a different geographic shape. So they had quite a bit of territory to cover.

Part way through, on Saturday, the Red Cross was asked if they had anybody who knew about logistics and they said yes, they could get somebody in to do that. On Saturday, Mike was asked by his supervisor to take some people from outside the Region so that they could come in and take over so that we had "as one of our people said 'bench strength'". They brought in two waves of people to help out. The first wave took over the management of the Penrose shelter when everyone was decanted from the other shelters into Penrose. The second wave helped out in the warehousing operation.

The warehouse operation started at the Princess of Wales' Own Regiment (P.W.O.R.) as a depot for people to drop things off. It got much larger. "For instance, a D.J. in Hamilton started collecting anything he could get his hands on. Blankets and kerosene heaters and chain saws and sleeping bags and all that stuff. They sent about seven tractor trailer loads of stuff." And the City of Toronto sent blankets and pillows. Interestingly, some of those blankets had been sent from Montreal. We also received candles that had been sent from Quebec! Mike explains what he calls a "lead-lag" situation in a disaster where, when a call is put out for needed materials, the situation will lag on "and even after you get everything you need... because communications aren't that rapid... At one point in time the concern was 'how do we shut the faucet off?'" And getting closer to the end of the disaster, because there is only so much warehouse space, the Red Cross in Kingston was sending material out to as many places as they could. For example, they sent "stuff" to Snowy River Station up north.

Mike also tells the story of the Salvation Army sending 300 meals plus blankets, pillows and other things to Battersea via the new Griffin helicopters that the military has. These helicopters can land straight down and take straight off, so they were able to land in a very tight, confined spot. "So, you see, really you're talking about 300 meals and probably $300,000 to deliver them." He points out that this is not a criticism and comments that the military would have had to spend that money in training anyway "so why not a 'hot' training rather than some kind of exercise". He comments that it was nice to have the military as a resource.

The Red Cross took over the management of the warehouse on January 10th or 11th under the direction of the City.

About the time that the Red Cross was asked to send in the logisticians, they also had word that the emergency had been upgraded. Instead of the emergency being over on the first Saturday or Sunday, it was now thought that it could be three to four weeks because the electrical system in the City is very fragile. "They described it as a spider's web." So the Red Cross was preparing for the long term and had already put the call out to bring reinforcements in to work with them. "When we found out about that, I think that's when the heat on the project was turned up a few notches so that we would be prepared to meet the social needs."

The people that the City had were doing probably the best job they could with what they had to work with and the Red Cross was able to go in and be supportive and help them out. Red Cross trained emergency service workers had come in from Oakville and Hamilton, so had no community bias and could be seen as neutral. Some of them had had experience in real emergencies and others had just been exercised. So the Red Cross was able to take the warehouse operation and manage it on behalf of the City. Their involvement continued after the storm in getting the items returned. For example, the Timmins branch sent Kingston about 1,000 sleeping bags and an equally large number of pillows which had to be returned.

The warehouse operation was moved from P.W.O.R. to a warehouse on Montreal Street, right beside Kingston Oxygen. At the time of this interview, they still have such things as 15 boxes of sleeping bags that came in from a northern community that have to be sent back. There was quite a distribution that went out of that warehouse, a lot of it on army vehicles "and thank heavens for the military, thank heavens for the regiment of reserve that are at P.W.O.R. ... they loaded up five-ton trucks and took them out." Items were sent to other communities whenever needed, if possible (primarily water, kerosene, candles, food, food stuffs). Although the Red Cross occasionally received generators on shipments, they would allocate these through the P.U.C. who were primarily responsible for generator distribution.

The Red Cross got two computers where they kept a database of all items going in and out of the warehouse.

Until Tuesday, the key player in terms of communication and procuring things was Rose Mary Luz (the Safety Services Program Assistant) in her own home. His other staff member, Yvonne Evoy (the Volunteer Resource Coordinator), was managing the Q.E.C.V.I. shelter during the day and doing some coordination of volunteers from there or during the evening hours. And, of course, Mike had the cell phone from the City so he could be in constant contact.

With humour, Mike says, "I had confidence in everything and it was amazing how it worked. You just had to act like you knew what you were doing and you had to act like you felt everyone else did." Mike is "somewhat of an old-hand at this" either through exercises or actual experience so at no time was he really concerned beyond his capacity to deal with the situation.

With his sleeping bag and self-inflating air mattress, Mike stayed at the Q.E.C.V.I. shelter for the night shift. He was able to go home during the day shift and, after the first couple of days, was able to get a decent night's sleep.

In response to a question about what Red Cross might change as a result of this experience, Mike says that for the past six years the Red Cross and others have been "wrestling with" how they would respond to a disaster and could never come to grips with it. "What happened was this [ice storm] really became a focus of the direction that we should take." They are now going to distribute the Health Canada manuals to people who were involved in the management of the shelters or who were interested in it. They will then bring these people back together to see if people are interested in continuing and the Red Cross will then provide specialized training if people feel the need. Mike says they have many skilled people in the community but an understanding of the management and process of shelters will help them to utilize their skills better. They will then have a larger group of people who are prepared to respond in the future.

Wal-Mart has also donated an 8-kilowatt generator to the Red Cross House so that if the power were to go out again in the community, they would be able to stay in operation on site.

The Red Cross is still receiving urgent phone calls on a daily basis regarding needs that people still have as a result of the ice storm. Although many of the expenses will be covered eventually, people need the financial resources available now instead of having to wait until the end of April.

The Red Cross had indirect contact with the provincial emergency measures people in that Rose Mary called them for the cots. The cots came in from Health Canada, arriving in crates. The City took care of uncrating them and distributing them to the shelters.

The only other thing that is happening at the time of this interview is the distribution of dollars and finding out where all those dollars are going to come from in terms of provincial and federal storm relief. There is an Eastern Ontario emergency relief organization that has been developed and the "chair" happens to be in Kingston.

Going back to the topic of shelters - There was nothing in the City Plan to identify the location of shelters or places available to be used. The City looked at the schools as the first options. The Red Cross was involved only in the City shelters, including the Penrose shelter (after all of the shelters were decanted into one). As an aside, Mike comments that he feels it would have been sad had KPH (Kingston Psychiatric Hospital) been closed as previously threatened because they would not have been able to access Penrose, which could house 400 people in individual rooms. Also, at Penrose, if the power goes off then the generator kicks in 7 minutes later and it has power and water "and the whole ball of wax". The only problem with Penrose was possibly that a lot of the high risk people in the shelters may have had a past association with institutions and that may not have been the best for them.

After the fact, the Red Cross has had offers from Corrections Canada to set up shelters there but Mike feels that, there again, "you get into the psychology of high risk people who have maybe had a brush with the law, [going] to a shelter like that, it's really against all the principles of dealing with people in an appropriate and dignified manner". If that resource is the only one available, then you don't have an option. But it would be very stressful for the people.

John Winship was involved in the L.C.V.I. shelter and Tilly Nelson (Adminstrative Head of that school) "is just a grand person.... She's one of those people who just knows how to do and just goes about doing it."

Most things worked well "more by default than by plan". Mike says this is not a negative comment and makes reference to a Russian writer who wrote a book called Flow who talks about the natural flow of activities. Mike comments that that was what this experience was like. "There were problems but if you let it get to you, it would get worse. For the most part, things went really well. And even when we had times that we had to take action on particular issues, those things went really well.... It took a lot of effort but it didn't seem, looking back on it now, that it was [a challenge]."

The only example Mike can think of regarding something that didn't work well "was when people had made a conscious effort not to get along". He and Ruth Archibald (of the Salvation Army) have spoken about this and they agree that if the disaster had gone on much longer there might have been "words between groups that were working" but that this storm was "just enough". People were getting tired and stressed and resources were a little bit harder to come by and communications were dropping off "so it was getting to the point that it would have turned sour but, by and large, [everything worked well]".

Mike comments that this disaster was a little different from, for instance, the Florida storm because there doesn't appear to be a line where they can say it's closed. Part of the problem is that everyone, including the Red Cross, the City of Kingston, etc., has to get on with other business as well as the aftermath and clean-up from the ice storm.

Regarding this, Mike recounts a story from the Tuesday when he was at City Hall with his cell phone and his knapsack (his "office", as he laughingly puts it): a man went into the Human Resources office to ask about his OMER's pension. As he says, if people don't see what's going on in terms of the disaster, then they tend to be "egocentric". Another story is that the City Yard was getting calls asking when their Christmas trees were going to be picked up! So, even during an emergency when the fabric of the community seemed to be falling apart (or unstable), "people were asking for the most mundane things". Mayor Bennett was even getting phone calls from people asking when they were going to get their TV Cable back, even though he has nothing to do with Cable. "Really, you get from the ridiculous to the sublime in a disaster situation." People who are not involved in the emergency are more concerned about their needs than what others are suffering. "That's a product of the times that we live in. You see, the storm or emergency brings out the absolute best in people but it can bring out the absolute worst."

The Red Cross was receiving monetary donations during the storm (and still is, to a certain extent).

It will be quite clear in the City's new Plan what the responsibilities of the Red Cross will be.

The Red Cross here can definitely call on other people from the Zone outside of Kingston. Mike feels that they know even better now how to bring people in. He feels that they did a good job during the ice storm. They had an orientation with the first group that came in on the Monday and, although there was no power, they got to see road maps and the Red Cross building and got everything they needed. The first group was leaving on the following Sunday but there was an overlap of one day because the second group arrived on the Saturday. The Red Cross had a reception with the two groups on Saturday and they were able to informally brief and debrief which helped to get the second group on a good footing.

Because of Mike's prior experience with disasters elsewhere in the world, he was able to point things out to "the major players" which they could use in making decisions.

As for disaster training, Mike himself has had what used to be called the Red Cross Emergency Services Level One and Level Two. He has taken Situational Problem Solving and Leadership (a long time ago). He has had Exercise Design with Emergency Measures Ontario, Planning for Disasters in Peacetime, Social Services Planning in Arnprior. He has had various other courses offered through Red Cross and also has Instructor Trainer Level in emergency services.

The City and Social Services arranged to have Queen's medical students and the V.O.N. nurses go into the shelters. They also arranged to have the Commissionaires and another company offer security. Mike says the Commissionaires were invaluable because they are invariably retired or soon-to-be retired military or law enforcement (people who have gone to school to learn about security). He says they were superb because of their past experience, they were able to give good advice and they were able to work with some of the residents in the shelters or people who lived close to the shelters who would go in to help.

Mike describes a man named Billy who was like a "deputized security guard" who fit in rather well. Because he was not identifiable, he would stand outside and smoke or wander through the building to make sure that everything was as it was supposed to be and would pick up on things and report back to Mike that there might be an area of concern. For instance, there were some people sent from Toronto Social Services at the Q.E.C.V.I. shelter who were very disruptive (Mike feels that the big part of this story is best left untold).

At night at the Q.E.C.V.I. shelter, they tried to get people bedded down by 10 o'clock and turn most of the lights out. They left enough light on for security reasons, enough so that they could scan the room and recognize faces if need be. Although some people minded lights being left on, "it was unfortunate because we had to for 'due diligence' reasons and security". At no time was anybody in danger of being physically harmed.

Mike tells the following story as "a matter of disappointment": At one point they had a person who was identified as being infected with Hepatitis C so they had to try to make accommodations for that person in such a way that it didn't draw attention to them. "But unfortunately there was a politician that came in and centred the person out in front of other people. And then there was a convicted-and-released child molester and a convicted-and-released murderer. These same politicians felt that it was in their best interest to identify them." Mike says that they already knew who they were and were being extremely vigilant "and we didn't need to have someone coming in and letting everyone in the place know or having police come in and harass them".

Mike feels very strongly that the following point needs to be recorded in the Ice Storm '98 Study document:

"In terms of the shelters, at any point in that shelter when people are in the room where their bed is, that is considered their living residence. Just as I wouldn't come into your bedroom and try to find out if you were there or what you were doing, no one had the right to come in to that building to find out who we had there. And I'm talking about police in particular. This is not an opportunity for them to try and track down all the criminals that they've being trying to track down.

"People are very vulnerable in these situations and that space that they're in, as much as possible, has to be held in the same [regard] as if they were in their own house in their living room or their bedroom or kitchen. So when you talk about running a shelter, you've got to run it in such a way that people say 'yes, this is home for me'. And until you recognize that and say 'well, sure we have to have some control but we also have to recognize that there's a certain amount of dignity that people have to be treated with'...."

Mike had to explain this to the press (including the CBC) on a number of occasions. He finally let them go in to take some pan shots but was generally very resistant to letting them go in. "Like I said to them, you wouldn't like me to come into your bedroom with a camera."

Although there were two occasions when the police went in to look for somebody, there were many other times when the police would go in doing "courtesy visits". If the people running the shelters were to call the police to ask for something, it was apparent that the police would go in to help. Mike says that the Kingston Police officer who was managing the one situation that he was dealing with was exceedingly professional in his ability to deal with the issue and the individuals involved. "'I'm only here to help. I'm only here to make sure that everything is okay. I don't care whether you have a parole number. I didn't ask you for that.'" This officer was very kind and very nonchalant so people felt very safe. Mike imagines that some of the people, particularly those who were parolees, felt a little unnerved at being treated in such a respectful manner.

Registration and Inquiry was a problem during this emergency for a few reasons. Normally when people go into shelters they register so that as inquiries come from within the disaster zone and from without the Red Cross can be clear about where people are. It was a conscious decision not to do this. "There were enough issues that the new municipality had to deal with that adding that extra thing in and trying to get all the forms...." On the Registration Form there is a box that people can tick to place a restriction on who gets access to their information. The Red Cross could then say that the person is safe but would not necessarily identify where they are, depending on the wishes of the registered person. The registration information is the property of Social Services of the municipality and is not to be used to track people down for things like welfare fraud, etc. One of the problems Mike identifies is that they did not at that time have a cadre of people who could fall into taking care of registration quickly.

Referring again to the media, Mike says he would allow them into the common area so that they would have opportunities for interviews. If a person in the shelter gave permission to have a photo taken or to be interviewed, then that was all right.

Mike says that he does not think they were able to deal with stress as effectively as he would have liked. They had to do so much with so little time to "bring people up to speed and anything that's a new experience is stressful". He said that what they could do was to build in "away time" for his staff during the disaster situation, which he did.

In response to the question "what happened that was funny, intriguing, and interesting?", Mike says, "Well, I would say the whole thing start to finish." He does recount the story of a fellow who worked quite closely with him in the shelter. This man's daughter, who was away at university, had entrusted her father with the care of her iguana. He had been working in the shelter and he was without power at home and he noticed that the iguana was starting to turn black. "Picture this. Him driving around, the iguana in one hand over the heater in the car and his [other] hand on the steering wheel driving around the city trying to find a warm place for this iguana."

Mike says that one could say that "the disaster was successful in spite of itself".

Regarding costs, the Red Cross expenses came to about $70,000. Some of those were covered by gifts-in-kind, others were covered by Ontario's own budgets but they ultimately came out of Red Cross resources.

In closing, Mike talked again about the general preparedness of the municipalities before the amalgamation. The Kingston Township was prepared to turn everything over to Red Cross and let them "run with it". On the other end of the spectrum was the City of Kingston whose Social Service administrator said 'we don't need any help, we can do it all, you just have to do Registration and Inquiry'. And Pittsburgh Township didn't have a plan at all. There were other municipalities who would write the Red Cross into their plan but not let them know. The Red Cross itself was just in a general state of readiness to respond for anything. That would have been the normal state of events.

It was about 1994 that the Red Cross and several of the other agencies started to meet. A more-or-less verbal agreement had been struck. With the downloading that the Harris government instigated, "that really put a wrench into things, so emergency planning services became far less important in the scheme of things to the municipalities because they just didn't really have time resource or money resource to throw at it. And when they did have the time resource or the money resource, the people that were involved just were not, well, the plain language is they were not competent. And I don't mind being quoted on that because they just didn't pull it together." The Red Cross had gone to the City and their planners at that time. There was a person coordinating emergency services here (and he points out that the amalgamated city of Toronto also only has one planner). The reason given for not changing the written agreement was that legal counsel would have to look at it and it would have to go before City Council to be amended. "There didn't seem to be the will to do it because it was just too...inconvenient. And, I think, that's the bottom line of it."

Mike had been on an Exercise Design course with a friend of his (Dennis Lassard) who works for the Ministry of the Solicitor General and who manages VCARS (Victim Crisis and Referral Service) in Eastern Ontario. They started looking at social service response and felt that they should work on developing such a response. They brought in the Salvation Army, Social Planning Council, Community Volunteer Bureau, Community Information Centre (and St. John Ambulance was originally involved). "So we had the players around the table and that was really how it all started." In November of 1995, they worked with Randy Reid (the eastern representative for E.M.O.) and put together the final draft of the proposal for JEPP (Joint Emergency Planning & Preparedness) funding that the federal government provides. The federal government provides 45% of funding and the planning body provides 55%.

This group then talked to the C.A.O. of Frontenac County, who was interested in being involved in it, too. They worked together on the funding and "things looked like they were going to line up and then Michael Harris [premier of Ontario] made his cuts. And that pretty well stopped [it] dead in its tracks".

They had made all of the decisions regarding what they were going to do, what parts people were going to play and the funding that was going to be required so that they could have a "soft social service planned response". At that time, the municipalities were not amalgamated and Mike felt that they needed to do some planning in order to be prepared to respond to "all those people".

They had had a joint exercise with the City and the Township in May of 1992. It was a mock train disaster that took place on the Spur Line from Dupont, right on the boundary line so they could do joint planning.

Because the funding stopped, that didn't mean that this group shouldn't go ahead with their planning. In January 1996, Mike made a training presentation to the Salvation Army, who then started developing their own plans throughout all of eastern Ontario. Ruth Archibald, here in Kingston, started working on her plan and bringing her people together. "So when the balloon went up, we were ready. We weren't as ready as we would have liked to have been but we needed to have that disaster to kind of focus our attention as to where we should be."

"I guess in summary, I look at this as a good experience. It definitely taught me a lot about the community. It taught me a lot about the agency that I work for, the inter-relationship. It taught me, too, the next time that there's a disaster you should call out all the resources [and put people on standby right from the start] because you can always scale back but it's hard to build up."

As an example of how far-reaching an event this storm was, the Zone office received an Internet message from Australia from one of their volunteers. And the Executive Director of the United Way was in San Francisco at a sporting event and, looking up at the big screen, he saw [Mayor] Gary Bennett.