IceStorm 98 Study

Paul Tulk volunteered at the shelter from the outset of the crisis. He is retired after 30 years from the Canadian Armed Forces and now lives in Mallorytown. He is on the township's strategic planning committee. The SPC was in the looking at updating the townships emergency plan. The emergency occurred during the update. The Reeve (Dale Stamp) contacted Paul Tulk and asked him to attend a meeting to plot a response to the emergency. Paul Tulk got himself involved with the shelter (he lives right across the street from it) three days after the ice storm hit.

A decision was made on Sunday to set up a day shelter, no meals or overnight accommodation. Paul Tulk volunteered the Lion's Club (where he is a member) to set up coffee and do-nuts and this was the nature of his backdoor involvement. No one fully appreciated the extent of the emergency at this point. The phones where down. The Reeve had spoken with the Reeve at Front of Yonge and they agreed that the residents of Escott would use the permanent shelter at Front of Yonge (Legion Hall). And Tulk agreed to help run a day shelter. That's how it started.

It was an evolutionary thing (Tulk's opinion) as people became more aware of the full extent of the emergency an organized evolved to start catering to some of the requirements. It evolved rapidly -- a decision was made early on (not sure exactly when) to set up a township operations center in the day shelter. The shelter would run from 8:00 to 8:00 but township operations would run 24 hours. A number of needs were already known -- people needed generators for sump pumps, two or three young people were already going around Rockport making sure that people were looked after, they got absorbed into the township response. One of the councilors took over that aspect of emergency generator support -- which was a major portion of the response provided by the community.

When the notion of army assistance came up it was going to be door to door searches -- one of the local people was asked to coordinate and a call had been made for volunteers and over the course of 11 or 12 days organized three door to door canvases and set up a system of feedback on people who needed to be checked for various reasons, elderly, and that was tied in with the OPP and with the Fire DePaul Tulk.

Front of Escott contract with the townships on either side for fire services.

From these door to door canvases -- two by the army one by the township -- also we got an indication of people with food shortage or fuel problems and that generated the delivery of firewood and fuel -- all this evolved. When we realized that food was needed somewhere a volunteer was delegated. Centennial Church in Brockville was invaluable.

We set up a food depot and deliveries were made to people that we knew about and people were able to come in. We also had a small fuel depot for naphtha and kerosene. It was an evolutionary thing.

Some volunteers were delegated to watch or duty, they coordinated with other volunteers as resources came in. It was not slick. It bumbled and stumbled along -- everyone was caught short, there were some very serious problems with regard to communications that persisted throughout the whole emergency. We had no phone communications in the whole of the township and the reeve could not even get out of his house because of downed trees. He had no way of contacting anybody. The age of battery operated radios is out of people's minds. After a couple of days people realized that the emergency was out of the ordinary.

As information came in the organization evolved to take care of it.

One of the other problems too (person opinion) in the end, despite the bumpy start and less than ideal organizational structure, there was a great deal accomplished. People got food. They got fuel. They were checked on. A tremendous amount of generator support -- but because of the lack of communications a lot of people still don't appreciate how much got done and they tend to critical. They are being unfair to those who were involved. People did not even know that support was available because of the breakdown of communications. On the second or third canvass a flyer was sent out with information on available resources and how to be careful in the use of open flames in the home. Lack of communications was the most serious problem throughout.

Paul Tulk believes that the participation and willingness of township residents to come out and help other people was the thing that worked best -- "the key to the whole thing". For example: Paul Tulk was "flabbergasted" at the response of the young people -- early 20s -- who manned the emergency desk for the township and showed an incredible amount of composure and common sense and were able to provide direction to get things done -- beyond their years and experience. Paul Tulk was "very, very impressed." There was a couple of teams of youngsters -- who were providing generator support -- who literally had to be told to go home for rest because they were working 18-20 hours per days. No one had to be asked to do anything. We had a guy who came in from St. Catharine's visiting his daughter and -- by coincidence -- be fixed generators for the St. Catharine's Fire Department and he phoned home and stayed for 10 additional days.

Another thing that impressed Paul Tulk "never sell short the capabilities of your local residents" that they displayed tremendous organizational ability on a common-sense approach with a go-get attitude. That aspect worked well.

"The communications problem plagued throughout the whole event."

The other thing -- Paul Tulk got the impression -- that there were people who probably should have left their homes, and wouldn't. Older folks. Paul Tulk does not know whether it's an attitude thing (rural versus urban) whether people think they can persevere, or because "you can depend on your neighbors. We had people who would not leave because they knew someone would come and help them."

Communications did not work well. Paul Tulk's opinion is that there was a great deal of frustration arising from the feeling that Escott was left out in the dark. People were concerned about finding out where Ontario Hydro was, putting some time structure into their lives -- and very often Paul Tulk could not get information on the Front of Escott. Ontario Hydro's daily update was available on the phone, but it seemed like Front of Escott was bypassed when Hydro crews seemed to be on either side.

Paul Tulk knows that the Reeve was "extremely concerned about the passage of information from county to township" -- Front of Escott does not have representation on county council. Paul Tulk remembers hearing that they were getting military support but being frustrated that Escott did not seem to be a high priority for anyone. People would phone the operations centre but the operations centre would not know and people would start blaming the township.

From the resident's point of view it matters more that there is an appearance that someone is trying to get things done than that things are actually getting down. When you don't hear "Front of Escott" in a Hydro update it's very frustrating. People just said "What's going on?"

Paul Tulk's personal opinion is that no one of the three townships among Leeds and Grenville has the resources to deal with the emergency by itself - though they tried to -- as a result there was a lot of frittering away of scarce resources and the communications problems. Scarce resources have to be controlled at the highest levels: There could have been better coordination between townships so that there might have been less duplication and wasting of resources.

Paul Tulk spoke with social services at county level and learned that there were 20-odd shelters set up throughout the county every one of them competing for resources and volunteers. One shelter with the same number of volunteers probably could have looked after everyone. Coordination would have made better use of resources -- because you can direct them where they are required. "You got to start thinking more coordination with other townships." There is a region-wide county support plan, and we're part of that -- but then you end up with 28 people all calling on resources at the same time. So there has got to be a group above townships saying that we don't need 25 shelters if we can do it with ten and reduce wastage.

Everybody learned that it's nice to have an emergency plan but it has to be read -- and EMO and EMC run courses to train municiple officials on how to actually operate their plan. An up to date plan and training -- for every township -- is the lesson of this event.

Paul Tulk suffered some stress but more related to his concern for his house and property. Paul Tulk does not think that he suffered stress from his work at the shelter. Some people did start to demonstrate stress and it was a question of frustration and fatigue, people become short.

Paul Tulk was engaged with the shelter for at least two weeks. He lives right across the street from it. If one of the young people had a concern they could contact Paul Tulk whose phone stayed working. The Reeve's phones were down for four of five days. Paul Tulk spent a lot of time in the shelter, but no more so than others.

The military people who worked in Escott were -- for the most part -- from the Reserve, Brockville Rifles, and PWOR, local people who were working on their own back yard. Tremendous support from them. The army did a great job as well. Paul Tulk got great support from Grandy et al.

Paul Tulk does not want to comment on the frustrations that the army may have had themselves.

"There was so much that went on. We all learned -- I would hope -- the requirement to get their people trained and to never take these plans for granted."

In the future: "Certain key members have got to have Cell phones. A couple of key members must have battery-powered radios. They looked at the door to door canvassing aspect. It all boiled down to physical communications -- the biggest thing that hounded everybody."