IceStorm 98 Study

The Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA) was established in 1993 as a provincial Crown corporation to provide water and waste water services to Ontario Municipalities. In 1998 it was the largest water service provider in Canada, operating more than 400 facilities and serving over 200 municipalities in the province. The operations range in size from small lagoons and pumping stations to large scale urban water systems. It has a staff of nearly 800.

The cost of the ice storm to the OCWA in salaries, equipment, vehicles and miscellaneous expenses was $319,644.36.

Ron Gagnon, Vice President, Eastern and Northern Operations.

RG had to go to Toronto on Thursday and the train was fine going down. Half way through the day he got a couple phone calls from his eastern managers (Ottawa, Cornwall hubs) saying that they weren’t experiencing difficulties yet but expected that they were going to lose power at some time. When RG couldn’t take the train back later on Thursday (it had been cancelled) he definitely knew there was an issue unfolding. Eventually he got a car ride back to Kingston with someone from his office.

The first action taken was to invoke their emergency response protocol. This involved talking to each of the area managers and he found out that their needs were mainly for portable power generators to power up water and sewage plants and pumping stations.

They did an analysis of what portable power units they had and since the OCWA covers the whole province, they were able to bring in staff and equipment from Toronto, south-western and northern Ontario. In a couple of cases they didn’t have generators large enough to meet their needs and so went to municipalities for assistance.

One of the biggest changes to their normal routine was the need to staff operating facilities (which normally were attended only 8 hours per day 5 days per week) now were on 24 hr per day checks for fuel and operation.

Friday night was a late night and the long work days continued on into the next week. In some areas they spent over a week in emergency mode. In Kingston there were two days where the water treatment facility was actually out of power. The generators just weren’t able to provide enough power to keep the water flowing. They had enough power to keep their treatment plant operating in the former Kingston Township (the other plant in Kingston is operated by the city.)

Overall, the region lost power to 30 waste water treatment plants, 20 water treatment facilities, and 62 sewage pumping stations. This represented a service area of over 200,000 people. Through a combination of “good planning and good fortune”, they were able to maintain services without jeopardizing the water supply and quality for drinking and fire fighting. They were able to continue treating waste water but in a few minor cases there was waste bypass at pumping stations because there was simply no power or standby power. Generally, environmental impacts were minimized.

Regarding his authority to act, RG said there was not a problem since, under their emergency response system, he had the authority to make decisions. The OCWA is, however, under contract with their clients so RG made sure they were in contact with the municipal emergency response teams.

The organisation’s corporate environmental management system was developed in 1994 when they started. Part of establishing that system involved crisis control. They have ranked incidents on a scale of one to three. Three, being a full-blown crisis plan. Usually this means a crisis management centre is set up at the OCWA corporate office in Toronto. Although the ice storm was a level three contingency, RG decided that it was easier to respond from Kingston.

With regards to communications, part of their emergency response system involves setting up a regular contact schedule between RG’s office and the regional managers. They got in touch with each other either by line or cell phone, or email. Everyone in the office was involved in keeping the media and others informed. The plan itself worked relatively well although there were problems with the communications system for keeping in touch with staff.

RG’s comments to the OCWA ice storm debriefing included his feeling that they were about 12 hours slow in actually starting their emergency response. Another issue was the lack of a clear listing of their critical movable assets (i.e. generators.) He felt they wasted about 8 hours putting together information regarding what equipment was where. Subsequently, they have created an equipment list and an inventory of the types of skills their staff have (such as emergency response and fire-fighting experience and/or training.)

Most of the co-ordination came from RG’s Kingston office but each hub has operations managers who developed the schedules for their staff, identified and deployed resources, and monitored what was going on. So local levels were essentially controlled locally.

Priorities were established with the local managers during the first hour of emergency operations. They were: to continue delivering safe water, not to flooding basements, and to protect the environment. Once these priorities were established RG contacted the Regional Director for the Ministry of Environment to inform him of their plan. He agreed with that.

What worked well/not:
Responding from the Kingston office worked well (rather than going to the corporate office.) It was easier to get sense of what was going on. Involvement of the entire organisation also worked well since it meant getting help from outside quickly. Letting the local managers control the local response worked very well. They had virtual authority to do whatever was needed.

RG felt that the benchmark of well OCWA performed was that no one knew they were out there. “In our business, if they don’t know you’re there that means you’re doing a good job.”
The biggest problem from a regional perspective was that there did not seem to be a co-ordinated approach to the whole emergency response for the area.

They contacted the provincial Emergency Measures Office early on but never heard back from them. This seemed a bit odd, but what could they do anyway.

He received a call from ADM of the Ministry of the Environment, asking if they had any spare generators to offer.

They may have had a bit of an advantage in that OCWA is a province wide organisation and so they could pull equipment from outside the crisis area to help.

Contact with the media increased towards the end. It was not a priority. Although, through the municipalities, they did ask people to conserve water.

Stress was an issue, RG guessed for about 80% of the people involved in the direct field response. The managers, in particular, were putting in a lot of hours partly because some staff couldn’t get away from home. In talking to the managers, they noted signs of stress among their staff who usually were easy-going and non-confrontational. During the crisis there were some verbal confrontations.

Cost was never an issue.

RG noted that he felt very proud and impressed by the response of his organisation. At one point 50 people from outside the area were asking to come and help.