IceStorm 98 Study

Bob Boyd (BB) has been involved in emergency planning at the municipal level for about 10 years and wrote the first Kingston Township emergency plan. When the city realized it needed an emergency plan five years ago, it hired BB as a consultant to write it, working in conjunction with emergency planning committees.

He is a retired engineer and spent much of his career in engineering administration related to the design, construction and operation of chemical plants. He was a member of the startup team for the original nylon plant in 1942, and has been in charge of the design of a number of plants for DuPont. He was on assignment to the federal government as chief engineer at Canada Post at the time the national mail system was being mechanized.

BB began by talking about the emergency plan. He said the former Pittsburgh Twp. emegency plan was more or less a copy of the former Kingston Twp. plan. When it became apparent that all three plans would be superseded by the amalgamation on Jan. 1, BB spoke to people about the need for a new plan for the merged city. The transition board last spring appointed an emergency plan committee, which in turn engaged BB to write the plan last June, while working very closely with the members of the city's emergency planning committee and seeking their approval on parts of it all the way along.

BB says it is interesting that the plan didn't get to the transition board until early December. It was approved and then had to go to the printers. BB received it back from the printers, ready to distribute, on Dec. 29. While he would normally have mailed it, there was a big snowstorm expected within days and so he brought copies around by hand to the homes of about 25 or 30 of the key people, fire chiefs, police chiefs, etc. The snowstorm didn't materialize, so BB felt a little foolish, but then about a week later the ice storm hit.

Not too many people had read the plan by the time the storm hit. They key players in it had all been interviewed and consulted and agreed to the section of the plan dealing with their own duties and responsibilities in an emergency, but few if any of them knew how the different groups and individuals would work together. So, for example, the fire chief didn't know what the social services people's responsibilities would be, and so on.

BB's first involvement with the emergency response came on Thursday, Jan. 8, when he received a call inviting him to attend a meeting at City Hall of the municipal control group. That was the first of 6 or 8 such meetings he attended, roughly one per day, throughout the storm and the aftermath.

The plan is a legal document and there is an obligation on the part of the people named in it to do what it says they are going to do, BB said. It sets forth a requirement for a municipal control group consisting of about eight or nine people, including the mayor, fire chief, police chief, medical officer of health, social services administrator and so on. They are constituted as a decision-making body that is responsible for managing the emergency and that is a legal obligation they have to discharge. In some cases, the duties specified in the emergency plan bear little resemblance to the normal responsibilities of city employees.

The plan also sets forth the location of where the control group is going to manage the emergency, known as the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC). The plan establishes three EOC's, in descending order of preference. The primary EOC selected is one that was established about five years ago at the Corrections Canada staff college at the corner of Union St. and Sir John A. Macdonald Blvd. BB said that when it was chosen, it was equipped with all the things they felt would be necessary, including eight telephone lines, a 50-foot radio-transmitting tower with antennas on it for police, fire, public works, public utilities and the amateur radio emergency service (ARES). When it was found that there was no power at the building and that there was a tree over the road, the decision was made not to use it.

The secondary EOC, which is also very well equipped, and has been for 10 years, BB said, is the Woodbine Rd. fire hall. The fire chief was asked to activate it, so he set up everything in it, but it was decided not to use it. It was said to be too remote, BB said.

The net result was that an ad hoc decision was made to manage the disaster from City Hall. BB thinks that was a poor decision and has said so in his reports to the mayor and council and said the emergency plan committee also thinks it was a poor decision. In a meeting with the mayor on Feb. 11, "he pretty well agreed with me, and said never again would they try to run something like that from City Hall," BB said.

According to BB, the key disadvantage of City Hall was that it is a public building. There were all sorts of people going in and out who had nothing to do with the emergency response. "Some of the city's winos were in there picking up the free food that was all over the place, volunteer car drivers were milling around, and the press were there, making a nuisance of themselves," BB said.

BB recognized the circumstances that led to the decision, but his objective is to provide sufficient education to the key people that this would never happen again.

The city should have used the primary EOC, BB maintains. The penitentiary service said if they had been contacted they would have had the tree out of the way and hooked up their emergency generator within an hour or two. They did remove the tree and did hook up the generator the next day. But the site was never used.

Asked about complaints that the staff college is too small for the kind of widespread emergency the city was facing, BB said he hadn't heard that before but would question it. There is room for the municipal control group, and there is a big room earmarked for the media relations centre, good parking, cafeteria, good food, he said. Also, the key people, who were working almost 24 hours a day, could have slept there in accommodation that is available.

BB said the meetings he attended at city hall were really not management meetings, but were more like briefing meetings, and while the management group is supposed to consist of 8 or 9 people, he counted as many as 35 or 40 people at the meetings.

He noted that the first meeting was disrupted frequently because there was a telephone in the room that kept ringing and people were getting up and walking around the table to talk on it. Other people were talking on their cell phones, and much of this was being done by people who really didn't need to be there to make decisions. There is certainly room for briefing many people in the middle and even lower levels of the emergency management team, BB said, but it was a mistake to let those control group meetings get so large. Those meetings are supposed to be reserved for decision-making only, but they mushroomed into large story telling sessions. The whole management and decision-making approach needs to be revisited and will be. The atmosphere was "chaotic," BB said, and that was one of the two most serious problems that came up in the whole incident.

The second most serious problem was "the extreme difficulty" of communicating with Ontario Hydro officials, BB said.

When he was putting together the plan in Nov. and Dec., BB said he worked hard to get Ontario Hydro to give him the name and phone number of a key senior person that somebody like the mayor or the CEO could talk to in an emergency, but said he was never able to get that information. The only numbers they were prepared to give him were to answering machines, BB said. Some fairly big threats had to be made to Hydro by the CAO before they would send a senior representative to Kingston to report on what was going on. Talking to the press was one of the threats, BB said, although there was some advantage to not antagonizing Hydro.

BB has 20 pages of notes he took at the meetings. He says he was basically an observer and only spoke at the meetings on two or three occasions, when he was asked for his comments. [See Mirka Januskiewicz interview for a different take on this]. He did not speak up when he felt there were too many people in the meetings. He kept a "discreet silence" on that and a couple of other items. "It was obvious at that point we just had to tough it out, and if there's one thing an emergency responder, like the mayor or the fire chief or the police chief, doesn't need it's someone telling them what to do," he said.

BB's reason for being there was to observe the emergency response and see if there was anything that should be reflected differently in the emergency plan. He has been urging the mayor and Gardner Church to hold a debriefing on the emergency response. [One was eventually held in June, 1998]. Two to three weeks before the interview he said he had a good meeting with Church to discuss certain issues arising out of the emergency response.

For the past five years, the city has had a so-called emergency planning officer, a part-time staff member who also had other responsibilities. He was the person BB trained and who knew all of the people and was the person who could have contacted the appropriate official at Corrections Canada to get the EOC set up, and so on. Unfortunately, he was one of the 25 managers the city decided it didn't need, and so while he continued on the payroll, he didn't have a job after the end of December.

BB said this was unfortunate, because Bill Quinlan was the key person in the city organization who could have helped with the emergency response. During the ice storm, Quinlan was sitting by his phone, but was never called, BB said. Quinlan took some sort of early retirement, BB said, although he doesn't know all of the details, including why he was still on the payroll.

BB said he has been agitating for 1 1/2 months at least to have someone else named to take over those responsibilities on a part-time basis. That was one of the recommendations contained in the report he brought to the mayor for discussion on Feb. 11. They had just advertised for that position shortly before this interview, offering a $5,000 stipend, and BB said the job posting was the result of a discussion he had with Gardner Church about 2-3 weeks before the interview. Church asked if BB would be interested in choosing the best candidate and he said he would be glad to help.

The person to fill that job is badly needed and a lot of things are "on ice" until he or she is appointed and as soon as someone is appointed, BB said. He promised to do his best to get city officials moving on some of the things that need to be done.

What are the major things being delayed by the lack of someone to fill that job?

The main problem that arose as a result of not filling that position sooner is that the city has not yet held a debriefing, BB said. BB thinks it is extremely important and Church says he feels it should wait until the appointment is made. [Again, the debriefing was held in June].

The second thing is to get together the 8-9 members of the municipal control group and their alternates, a group of about 20 people all together, and go through the emergency plan with them, make sure they understand it and understand the ramifications of it. This will also guarantee that they have all seen it and read it at least once. They should then be taken on a tour of the primary and secondary EOCs to at least see what is there. They have to know how to gain access to the cupboards, which have all the supplies in them -- everything from coffee cups, pencils and paper to maps and radio transceiver equipment. They should understand that the EOC is "their room" and should be prepared to set it up themselves, BB said. There may not be anybody around to do it for them.

In the former township they have had emergency exercises in the past and BB has been delighted to find the mayor (does he mean Reeve?) the fire chief, the OPP staff sergeant knowing exactly where to get the stuff and getting the ladder out and connecting up the telephones.

BB thinks the next thing to be done is get the emergency planning officer off on various training courses. Emergency Preparedness Canada runs an excellent college at Arnprior. BB has attended three one-week courses. Kingston needs to get people, including the mayor, up to courses like that.

There is a basic course, a one-week course for elected officials, which Isabel Turner attended on several different occasions, another course for emergency public information, another for emergency social services planning, and so forth.

The emergency plan is an over-all management document that sets forth the broad outlines, but doesn't go into all the detail that is necessary, ie., what shelters should be selected, what equipment should be used in the shelters, how the public works people will deal with trees on the road, etc. All these details should go in separate departmental emergency plans.

While BB's emergency plan had been approved by the transition board, the three municipalities had separate departmental emergency plans and they were all moot once the amalgamation took effect. BB said not every department had a plan, but they are necessary and have agreed to do them. The only question is when they'll be able to get around to it.

BB's report and recommendations were approved by the emergency planning committee, which then decided to send it to the mayor and council, which was a month before the interview.

BB does not agree with suggestions that his emergency plan was focused on relatively small-scale, single-point emergencies and that it failed to contemplate a city-wide shutdown. The plan is exactly the same as plans in effect in large cities, he says. He has studied the kind of planning in places like Naples, Fla., and also a few other places like that, including some in New Zealand.

What were missing from the emergency response were the departmental plans, BB said. The departments were too busy getting organized for the amalgamation to develop the plans, and this was to be expected given that it was a brand new city, BB said.

The emergency plan, dubbed an interim plan, was deficient in that he couldn't put in the names of all the people who should have been in it because those positions hadn't been filled. BB said he has been busy since the beginning of the year finding out who has been appointed to those positions and getting their addresses and phone numbers, etc. He thinks he now has them all, with the exception of the alternate for Denis Leger.

Not all of the alternates have a copy of the emergency plan and not all have read it, BB said. He estimates that 150 copies should be issued, but only 30 have been issued to date. He has deliberately not issued more because the revisions need to be put in, with people's names etc.

BB is not convinced that not having all of the names in the plan in the first place was a significant problem. He has been told that in some of the meetings he didn't attend, they would be discussing who should be responsible for a certain job and would find the answer, and the name, in the plan.

BB feels the plan makes sufficient provision for a wide-scale city shutdown. When asked in the past what kind of emergency he has envisioned, he mentions a massive snowstorm that shuts down the city, or an earthquake, or a tornado, even a wide-spread power interruption, which is exactly what the ice storm caused. The plan is meant to cover any of those things -- not just single-point incidents like a train derailment, a plane crash or a chemical spill.

The Emergency Plans Act of the province defines emergency in very broad terms -- an abnormal situation which, to limit injuries to persons or damage to property or the environment, requires prompt and co-ordinate action beyond normal procedures -- and the planning it says should be done is to cover any type of disaster.

Asked about suggestions that the EMO was slow in responding to Kingston, BB gave an anecdote. After 11 p.m. on the first or second night of the storm, BB said he was called by Gardner Church, who had to get in touch with an official with Emergency Measures Ontario in Toronto. Church was having trouble contacting the EMO because the phones were not working from here [Kingston] to Toronto. He asked if BB could do anything with amateur radio. BB tried to get through on his home ham set, but couldn't reach the emergency station in Toronto because the radio propagation conditions were such that BB's signal was going right over it. BB's phone was working, so he called Emergency Measures Ontario and got an answering machine. He then called the OPP duty officer at OPP headquarters in Orillia and told him what was needed. He said he would have this official call Church, since incoming phone calls to Kingston were okay. The official did call later.

BB was disappointed that EMO had its answering machine on. Other than that, he has no comment on the efforts of EMO or the federal emergency planning agency. BB said he doesn't work particularly closely with the provincial or federal emergency planning agencies.

Asked to detail more of his involvement with local ham radio groups, BB said amateur radio is a hobby, and part of that hobby is to be prepared to provide emergency communications in a disaster. This is done by an organization that covers all of the U.S. and all of Canada, the Amateur Radio Emergency Service, or ARES. There are well over 25,000 members on those two continents. BB's experience with ARES goes back to 1937. Over the years, they have provided communications in many hundreds of disasters, from the Mississauga train derailment to the Calgary tornados, the Barrie tornados, the San Francisco earthquake, Hurricane Hugo etc., where they have played a key role in providing communications.

Radio communications are needed partly because the phone system is not very reliable in a disaster. The system may be inoperative because poles are knocked down. This affects cell phones, which are just as dependant on poles. The other factor is the overloading of a phone system once an emergency happens, as friends and relatives elsewhere try to find out how their family members are doing.

The phone system does provide for something called Line Load Control, which makes it possible for designated phones to be usable for out messages. They will get a dial tone, but other users would not get one if the system is overloaded.

A few months ago, BB sent the names and phone numbers of 75 to 100 people in the city who should be on Line Load Control so their phone did have priority, but that still wouldn't have helped when the phones went out of service and when the lines were down.

ARES has been used in other types of emergencies. If the mayor wants to go out and look at flood damage, for example, ARES can provide an operator to go with him.

Over 10 years ago an ARES group was formed in Kingston. There were about 30 operators and they trained themselves to provide effective and efficient emergency communications. There is an ARES emergency communications plan that provides all of the information on how they are going to set up net control stations and that specifies the message form and so on. The Kingston ARES had never been involved in a real-life emergency until this one, because Kingston has never had one that required a state of emergency to be declared. [Ever, or in the past 10 years of local ARES existence?]

BB was the emergency co-ordinator of ARES for the first 10 years and retired from it about a year ago. On the second day, ARES was asked to provide the communications between City Hall and the various shelters because the phone system was unreliable. ARES set up a station at City Hall. BB operated it, along with two other people who spelled him off from time to time. They set up two-man stations at each of the shelters and provided communications of all sorts for 2 1/2 days, until the phone system was back up.

ARES uses a uniform record-keeping system to help analyse the emergency later and to protect the amateur radio operators from liability problems. They fill out a message form, which includes a number, the station of origin, the number of words (in case a word is dropped), the text and a signature of someone who will take responsibility for the accuracy of the information. BB estimated about 70-80 messages were handled in the 2 1/2 days.

The radio operators also kept a log for each station, giving the time at which messages came in. The paper trail usually becomes important after an emergency, "when the recriminations start." BB said there have been cases where people have tried to blame ARES operators for things that went wrong, so the log protects the operators and can also protect the people who wrote the messages.

For example, recriminations might occur if an ARES operator is given a message to send and it isn't delivered until much later, putting someone or something in danger, or in cases where a message is not sent properly.

All local communications were carried out on the amateur two-metre band, using transceivers, most of which were so-called portables, and using antennas of various shapes and sizes. While there were excellent antennas at the primary and secondary EOCs and an equally excellent antenna at Red Cross headquarters, there was nothing set up at City Hall. ARES had considerable difficulty communicating in the first day or so when they were asked to set up their station on the ground floor of City Hall at the West end. It got so bad that BB told them something had to be done, and the station was moved up to the top floor. The new location worked fairly well, but required volunteer runners to go up and down between the station and the people working on the first floor. One was an RMC student and the other was in one of the local high schools.

The messages were largely concerned with the operations of the shelters, getting supplies to the shelters, and reporting in the number of people they had there.

Carl Holmberg has mentioned the lack of a centralized, military-style chart to update organizers on where resources are, etc. But BB said that issue touches on something broader. In any EOC, an important component of the operation is the 'status board.' BB said they had the appropriate size flip charts and the responsibility for keeping those charts up to date is assigned in the plan to the CAO or his staff. Church has since named Denis Leger to that job, and Leger could in turn delegate that to someone else, but the bottom line is that somebody must use the status board to mark down the key incidents that have occurred, the key decisions that have been made, and the timing of each. No such status reporting was used due to the inexperience and due to the fact that the board was at the EOC (the Staff College) and not City Hall. BB said there was no effort made to move things such as the flip charts, to City Hall from the EOC.

BB said Liz Cashman was secretary for all of the meetings and has produced a book of all the minutes of those meetings.

BB said it was interesting that very few decisions were taken in those control group meetings. Often issues were raised at the meetings that required action or that dealt with action already taken, but there is no mention in the minutes of what those actions were. BB feels there is room for improvement in decision-making. Issues were dealt with outside the meeting.

BB said he has heard from some of the members of the municipal control group that decisions were taken when they were not present. This is not the way a municipal control group should function, he said. The group should have been in on the decision-making, but BB thinks they weren't invited to be a part it.

ARES was about to dispatch some of its members, with a fair amount of equipment, to Lanark County, specifically Perth, because they were having a fair amount of difficulty with communications, but just an hour or two before they were to leave they got the call saying the phone service was back in place and they would not be needed. They were also in contact with the ARES group in Brockville. The ARES group in Belleville offered to come and assist Kingston's contingent, but that didn't turn out to be necessary.

Not all of the 30 or so ARES members in Kingston were involved in the response. Some were away and others are a bit "long in the tooth," BB said. He thinks about 25 people were involved, although not all of them were ARES members, some were members of the local radio club.

At home, BB and his wife were without power for one night and another evening. BB owns a generator that he bought for emergency communication purposes but he didn't end up needing it since he wasn't operating the station out of his home, but he did need it to operate his sump pump. BB said they took in four refugees from Montreal -- their daughter and three grandchildren -- and that kept his wife more than busy. The grandchildren kept themselves busy with games and Nintendo and keeping them happy and fed was his wife's role while BB was down at City Hall.

Asked whether he felt much stress during the emergency, BB said he had been thinking about what would have to be done in a disaster for years and the ice storm, while not routine, certainly didn't cause him any problems with stress.

BB said he grasped the scale of the emergency early on by monitoring neighbouring communities via amateur radio. It was clear that it was a widespread disaster, but he was aware fairly early that the Napanee and Belleville areas were not affected. The affected areas were east and north of those communities.

Asked about the source of his authority during the ice storm, BB said he didn't exercise any. His job is as a planner but he had no role in managing the disaster. He had some authority over the ARES group, but there weren't any major authority problems to deal with.

He writes the emergency communications monthly column for Canada's national amateur radio magazine. One of his columns dealt with the ice storm, and has been deposited in the archives at Queen's University as part of this study.

Considering it was a brand new organization, BB said he can't find fault with the way the over-all response was performed. "Nobody died and there were very few recriminations," he said. He hasn't heard any complaints other than slowness in being compensated for storm damage.

Asked what his biggest problem was during the storm, BB said it was trying to run an amateur radio operation under the adverse conditions in the bowels of City Hall.

As a side note, BB said that as part of his contract with the city, he is working on an emergency evacuation plan that would address the possibility that part, or even all, of the city of Kingston would have to be evacuated. It concerns things such as reception centres, evacuation routes, concentrations of people, how to deal with people with restricted mobility, etc.