IceStorm 98 Study

On the Wednesday evening as they were holding a meeting about how they could become more involved with the local community, the lights flickered and power went out to half the building.
As there was no backup generator or battery power to run the building, everyone headed home.

On Friday, realizing that the storm was intensifying, RH and his staff manned the phones and contacted his 1,000 or more parishioners to identify people who might need help. The survey took two days to accomplish.
Surprisingly, given the rural location of the church, all 5 phone lines remained intact.

On Saturday while listening to the local radio station desperately trying to deal with the deluge of calls, RH and Paul Armstrong decided that they would volunteer their services in an attempt to help the station co-ordinate all the activity.
They went to the radio station and were told that the police station was co-ordinating the activities. Since RH was the police chaplain, he knew the chief. Chief King told him that they didn’t have the space to organize things at the station. The next step was to drop by the municipal building on North Augusta Road and they got the same reaction. On to City Hall were they were again told that neither the space nor the manpower was available to organize a distribution centre. Finally, they approached Mark Darroch of Social Services who responded by telling them that “if you would do that it would help us tremendously”.

Mark Darroch appreciated their offer, which would allow him to get on with other priorities.
Word spread quickly to the Belleville and Ottawa areas that the Standard Church was open for business. On the following Saturday two huge vanloads came down from Belleville containing supplies of batteries, candles, water and propane which was stacked along the hallways of the church.
On Sunday a radio service was broadcast from the church which also relayed the fact that the church had supplies available to those who needed them. Chief Barry King was also in attendance at the service.
That Sunday afternoon, people began dropping items off at the church. At the same time it was indicated that the power would be fully restored to Brockville on Monday.

Bags of used candles etc. slowly made their way back to the church from city residents.

Soon calls were coming from the Kitchener Waterloo region, as it became known that the Standard Church was the distribution centre for the city. “Well, come Monday we had transport trailers pulling in here..one from Colonial Cookies brought a tractor trailer load full of chocolate chip cookies.” The sanctuary, which can sit more than 1,000 people, was turned into a storage area. The storage area was open from 8:00a.m until 8:00 p.m. Candles were burned to provide light since at this time there was still no power.
RH went on to say that “everything that came in here we got rid of the same day we never kept anything here overnight”. As soon as they had emptied the church, it was filled up again within 24 hours.
Late Monday night power was restored which allowed the church to become fully operational.

Calls came in requesting generators, which the church did not have. RH called E.M.O. in Brockville to request insurance coverage on any generators which they might let out to the public. He was assured that they now had insurance. On Tuesday he had 50 generators to distribute throughout the community.

Trans-Canada Pipelines supplied 10 brand new generators along with two large truckloads of hardwood. When asked if there was anything else he needed, RH said that he could use some more generators. So they shipped 10 more generators from Quebec. In all Trans-Canada Pipelines had distributed more than 100 generators along the 401.
A Christian Reformed Church in western Ontario called around to the local farmers and a further 15 generators were shipped to the church.

As the week went on RH and his staff serviced 22 shelters. He was covering a very wide area which stretched from Cornwall almost to Kingston, up to Perth, Smiths Falls and as far as Westport to the north west. Volunteers accomplished all this.
On the third day, many had to return to work.

Costs now became an issue, as fuel was necessary for the delivery of generators, wood etc.
This was somewhat alleviated by donations of cash from parishioners. This touched on a cornerstone of the Standard Church. “Every time there was a need the monies would always come in for it.” The parishioners were very, very generous and this was before the 4 for 1 policy came into effect.

“The neat thing was to have everything in place. The infrastructure was here, the volunteers were here, and the staff was here. Our whole staff was here for three weeks doing this.”

RH expressed a certain frustration in his dealings with the various shelters. The problem was that staff would change so he was not always talking to the same person. At the Standard Church the person assigned to a particular station was always there to answer the phone. The staff had two people at each station so that one person could relieve the other. There were 8 people assigned to 4 phone lines. At the height of the storm there were over 150 people serving as volunteers working in a building without heat.

RH has two children both of whom “loved the storm... it was a chance for them to give, they were part of this operation, they packed up groceries to take them to the shelters..they’d jump into the car to come and see it...”. He had invited an elderly couple into his home for 4 days who soon became nannies to the children... “my kids just loved that ..it was a good healthy experience for them... for ourselves and I think for our whole community”.

“There was devastation, but certainly not something that everyone could recoup from.”
It was a good lesson in working together, which was what was important.

The church informed the shelters when it was shutting down and “ a few people wanted to hang on to the system as long as possible” but the social services set a deadline for the final shutdown.
The few supplies, which remained, were forwarded to women’s shelters and half-way houses, which were grateful for it.
Supplies had been handed out “with no strings attached”, there was “no red tape’ or policy provisions to abide by so that they could use their own judgement in distributing them.

Batteries, which had been left over, are going to be sold at an in-house sale and the proceeds will be given to the ice storm relief fund.

“I didn’t notice any stress to almost a week later”. The church operated 16 hours per day and they attempted to minimize burnout by working in pairs. Paul and RH organized the generators and wood supplies while others ran the warehouse. At first no one knew how long the emergency would last- the uncertainty was an unsettling factor. Six days would be workable - but 3 weeks was just too much.

On the following Tuesday, “it was a critical point here”, the generators were being assigned out and “people when they call, they were in desperate shape - you can handle being the Messiah, the rescuer for a little while, but then you realize I can’t do much more”.
They tried to close the church down at 9:00p.m. but the phones were continuing to ring and “when the phones ring you know that there’s a need and as long as we had supplies our mandate was to meet the need”. Reluctantly RH answered the phone and was met with a request for a generator from a man with four kids who were freezing. RH told him that he had no generators left but that as soon as he got a call he would get one for him. RH went home and took a call from his partner who suggested he call the man back and “at least tell him that you can’t get one”.

At that point he received a call from a man in Athens who told him that his power had come back on and that he had a generator available. He was located 4 doors away from the man who had called the church earlier looking for a generator. RH couldn’t believe it.

The calls continued. At 11:30 he got a call from a farmer in Lansdowne who told him that his generator had just broken down and he needed one so that he could milk his cows the next morning. As it happened, the church had been storing a large generator since there was no call for it, so RH made the connection to get it to Lansdowne.

The next morning, RH scheduled shifts for everybody in an attempt to reduce stress.
Although it was still quite cold in the church, people made do with sleeping bags and coats etc.

Whenever a request was made that they couldn’t fill, the church contacted the radio station who put the request on the air and 15 minutes later the church would get a call from someone who had what they needed.

Local merchants also helped out - Black and Decker, Shell who provided kerosene at no cost, “it was phenomenal to see the generosity of people”.

Unfortunately, those who made cash donations before the 4 for1 program won’t be recognized as much as the organizations who give now. They were “the real hero’s” according to RH.

RH was in contact with Mark Darroch on a daily basis and attended EMO meetings whenever it was possible to do so just to keep up to what was going on.

It was remarked that the church could respond much quicker to the emergency because they didn’t have to deal with the “red tape”.

There were cases were people took advantage of the generosity of the church.
A call came in for firewood, so a church volunteer loaded his truck with help from a friend and drove to the address. They arrived at a $ 200,000 plus house with two new cars and “two probably three pickup loads of firewood sitting there”. “The guys were heartbroken”. The obvious question - why would you even call us was put to them. So they took one stick of wood from their load and handed it to them saying, “that’s probably all you need from us”. They went on down the road to a “shack” which housed people who had nothing. They dropped their load and went back for three more loads.

In a sense this approach was an advantage since the volunteers could make on the spot assessments of needs. Social service agencies “got a little bit tight on how to hand out food vouchers ...”. There were people who took advantage of the food supplies but after a while they were able to identify those who abused the system. In the long run “it was better to be more generous... rather than hold up the needy”.

Due to several internal changes that took place “we were ready for the storm (when it hit)”.
They will be installing a couple of generators in the church.

Luckily the phones remained intact. RH’s cellular phone “was a lifesaver” as he moved from shelter to shelter and called back to the church with a list of requirements..

The Social Services had requested RH to tour the shelters on their behalf “not to represent them but to meet the needs (of the shelters).
As a result, no complaints filtered back to social services since needs were being met.

The Salvation Army had taken on the responsibility of providing food to the volunteers and others at the shelters since they had the facilities to accomplish this. The Standard Church distributed supplies to the shelters as they received them. As RH noted, “whatever came in went back out”.

In closing, RH maintained that he was “very thankful “ for the experience. It certainly brought the community together and proved to them that they could manage to overcome any crisis.