IceStorm 98 Study

Ron Sharp lives quite far north of the City of Kingston, in Verona, and they were not fully aware of the extent of the ice storm until Thursday morning. He had no light, no heat, no power, but he did have telephone service. He was able to contact his head caretaker who went into Q.E.C.V.I. on Thursday morning and gave Ron a "site overview" of the building. Ron was not concerned about damage to the building. Being a school, the only trees they have are in front of the building. There was some damage there.

When Q.E.C.V.I. was built, almost 46 years ago, it was the major building in the north end of Kingston. At that time, there was very little development on Division Street, there were no houses in that vicinity and Q.E.C.V.I. basically sat in the middle of a field. The power that came into the building came in through underground lines. The school transformer is just off the gym corridor so, because they are fed from a main line and not from a branch line and because some of it was underground, their power was never out for more than two periods of five minutes throughout the whole time.

One caretaker who lives in Amherstview and another who lives near the school went in to check the school and they reported that the school was fine, power was up and the heat was on.

At about 9:00 a.m., Ron received a telephone call at home from one of the superintendents at the School Board asking for an update. About an hour later he received a phone call from another Board official asking for the same information. Ron was reluctant to leave his own home until the power came back on, so he stayed there listening to the news. He told the caretaker to lock up the school building, put the alarm back on and go home.

In the afternoon, he got a phone call from Superintendent Horst Wohlgemut, who was acting as the Board's lead staff in dealing with the community, who informed him that the City was considering opening a shelter at Q.E.C.V.I. and "was that possible". Ron said that either Thursday or Friday was fine. Superintendent Wohlgemut called him back later to say that they were going to open to shelter there sometime Friday. Ron then got a hold of his vice principals to see if they could go in. One could and one couldn't. He also got a hold of the caretaker staff again to let them know that somebody from the City would likely be over on Friday.

As a result of the Job Action for Teachers in the fall, they had developed a phone tree at the school which they set into operation on Thursday to check on people and they ended up coming up with a list of people who they were and were not able to contact. Ron needed to know which of his staff had serious problems of their own or not. He has some staff who live to the west of us (a couple of secretaries live in Napanee) who had no problems, of course, and some who live to the east of us who were in dire straits. With this, Ron knew he could only get 15-20 staff in out of a staff of about 100 counting care staff and secretaries.

On Friday, Ron and his wife decided to move into town with his sister who lives in Waterloo Village (who was never without power). After moving into town, Ron went to Q.E.C.V.I. At that point, the Red Cross and a number of other agencies had been over and they were in the process of moving in. [Ron did not have access to his journal at the time of this interview and could not verify the date of the actual shelter opening, which was, in fact, on Thursday.] At any rate, "... when I got in here, they were still in the process of setting up. And, of course, everybody was running around like chickens with their heads cut off."

Ron recalls that some things were happening that should not have been. His main office was wide open, as was the student services department. He had to "sort of push people out of there" because he has student files there. "So everybody had to leave there and that didn't go over too well with some of the officials, that I was kicking them out of the office." He then set them up in an office and got them outside phone lines. The care staff who were in were doing everything "but it was a case of 'too many chiefs'" because there were about 10 people running it and they were each asking the caretakers to do different things, which was very frustrating to the caretakers. Ron then sat down with the committee that was running the shelter to talk about what he would like to see happen from the school's point of view; that one person would deal with the caretakers, that he had concerns about security in the building and concerns about the safety of small children (because the stairs are fairly steep, it's a big building with a basement at the back where a person might be without supervision for quite some time). They also have quite a bit of money invested in computers in various rooms.

Q.E.C.V.I. has a food services program at the back so they were able to use that kitchen as well as a kitchen upstairs.

"At that time, little things seemed to keep coming up." The emergency lighting wouldn't come back on because it is battery-powered. It had come on once during the night and had been gone for about 10 minutes. Those batteries take days to recharge once they've been used. "There were some folks in here from the City who were being rather forceful about me getting batteries from somewhere and we had a little chat about that."

The Board of Education sent people over to get things set up. "They were very good at getting their technical staff to come over." All of the heat in the building is on computers so the heat automatically dies down at 8:00 p.m. every night so that all had to be re-programmed.

Toilets were getting plugged, little kids were throwing things into the toilets, and there were no toys so Ron organized getting toys and cribs from the two daycare centres in the building.

The Education Act states that everything that goes on in a school is the responsibility of the principal, so he had no concerns about making decisions within the school.

Ron says he has exceptional caretakers at Q.E.C.V.I. but "they were getting run off their feet" so he set up a schedule to have the caretakers in for 8-hour shifts, which seemed to work better. He talked to the people from the Salvation Army about what they needed in terms of food preparation and got that organized. He then gave out his cell telephone number and said, "Call me if you need anything". There were so many people there that he did not feel the need to spend 24 hours a day at the shelter, including sleeping on the couch in his office. He would go over three to four times a day or received phone calls from the people at the shelter. "Meanwhile I kept the Board informed and we just went from there."

The Army was on site by Saturday and it was a great help. The Red Cross had set up cots in the gym and the Army folks rearranged the cots so that more people could be accommodated.

There were approximately 160 people sleeping at the shelter each of the three nights and they would have an extra 50-100 people at meal times and for snacks. There was a table set up in the foyer with food and the cafeteria is upstairs with tables. They also set up a couple of rooms with televisions (connected with the aerial) and a safe play area for the kids (using some of the tumbling mats from the gym and craft supplies from the art room).

"So they were up and rolling.... The Red Cross people were phenomenal." Mike Stoneman and Yvonne Evoy were there "and both of those people were exceptional". And the Salvation Army was wonderful. "They were really good, very giving."

They did have some problems at the shelter. Ron says that it appeared that they ended up with about 5 or 6 people there "who were given bus passes to get them out of Toronto by the City of Toronto Social Services" who made the bad choice of going east instead of west. They arrived at the Voyageur Bus Terminal on the night of the ice storm and had nowhere to go. There were a few problems with those folks, one being that they were infected with Hepatitis "C". Once the Red Cross found that out, they got the Public Health people in and basically segregated them by moving some cots on to the stage and asking them to stay there. Ron is not sure how this information was revealed but thinks these people told the nurses from the V.O.N. and Hotel Dieu Hospital who were at the shelter. Alderman Ken Matthews was at the shelter because "he knows lots of folks in the north end" and he found out about it and somehow the information got around.

One night they had to call in the police to deal with one of the "folks" who was 'under the influence'. On Monday, they had to have police over again to arrest a different man who "was significantly under the influence".

Ron's care-taking staff "were extremely concerned about fluid-borne infectious diseases and all that sort of stuff" so the public health people gave them a brief workshop on how to control this by using a Javex solution, how to clean, wearing gloves when cleaning washrooms, etc. They also took over a couple of containers to put any needles in that they might find. As Ron says, these issues "sort of complicated things greatly".

It also meant that, at the end, the Board gave Q.E.C.V.I. an extra day before resuming classes. "They sent over extra caretaking staff and they basically disinfected the school. They sort of started at one end with the solution that the public health people had suggested and they just basically hosed down the whole building, especially the gym areas, wiped it from top to bottom. And we did find needles. So we were very careful about cleaning up." There are toddlers and infants in the school, pregnant teenagers and many others in the school so they had to be careful in dealing with the clean-up. "And that's something that no one, I think, either on the Red Cross side or the City of Kingston side or the School Board side really gave a moment's thought to, that there would be a problem with that."

As things started to get better, people were moved out of the school shelter and over to Penrose. Until about Tuesday (as Ron recalls), "they were running full tilt". And then it took only half a day to collect up the cots and blankets and all their stuff "and away they went", which left Q.E.C.V.I. to do the clean-up.

Ron says the two young women from the Health Unit were exceptional in terms of giving the care-taking staff enough information to deal with the problems and in soothing some of their concerns regarding Hepatitis "C". Ron repeats that it was a very serious situation with the infected folks because they themselves didn't really care. "They'd go in and pick up a sandwich out of a tray and then take a bite and, if they didn't like it, they'd put it back. Well, then, the Salvation Army would just...dump the whole tray of food. They were not cooperative in that sense." Their lack of cooperation led to some tension and to the police being called.

The question of who had authority in the building to deal with that kind of situation was one of the things that was never sorted out. As an example, on one day a Red Cross volunteer asked Ron what should be done about one of the situations. Ron said he would "call the cops right now and get them out of here." He told the worker that he would telephone police if the worker felt uncomfortable doing so. "It's your shelter but I'm responsible for the school so if you have a problem with phoning the police...I don't. I'll have him out of here as fast as you like." The Red Cross volunteer did call the police. When the police arrived, Ron simply said, "Look. I'm the principal of the school. He's under the influence. I want him out of my building." "No problem," was the response and the man was removed. Ron feels that the Red Cross person was in a bit of a difficult situation because their mandate is to look after people, not to incarcerate them, but Ron's is to look after his building and the safety and security of the staff and students in there.

So the issue of who is responsible for the building is something that needs to be sorted out in the future for the next time. Perhaps the State of Emergency supercedes the authority granted by the Education Act - this is unclear.

Security had been discussed at the first meeting with the planning group. The Red Cross brought in the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires. Certain areas of the building were blocked off and a routine was established whereby one caretaker and one member of the Red Cross would tour the building regularly. (They did find, after the fact, some empty beer bottles outside the building.) They also found some folks in places where they were not supposed to be and moved them out of there.

There was no problem with theft or vandalism although, "There was some silly stuff. I mean, there were some folks here who, I think, were quite disorganized and totally...their world was thrown upside-down by the ice storm and they soiled some of the corners of the building and the two telephone booths were used as washrooms, whether by little kids or by adults we weren't sure."

One of Ron's earlier suggestions was to open up the change room so that people could take a shower. Red Cross and the City did not want to do that at first because they were concerned about public health and, perhaps, the issue of personal privacy and safety. Ron felt that "nothing improves a person's outlook [more] then being clean". He laughingly says that it was after the second day that "I think common sense told them that it was time to get a shower going" so they got a sign-up sheet going so that people could go in one at a time to use the shower.

Although people seemed to be getting very frustrated and bored at the end, Ron does feel that Q.E.C.V.I. was an appropriate location for a shelter because they had kitchen facilities, washrooms, a big space for people to sleep. Plus, their power did not go out, they had telephones, they had a place to store food, shower facilities, so although it "wasn't the Hilton" it "served the bill". Ron comments that, the next time, "you need things for kids to do". Senior citizens were most concerned about the safety of their houses and wanted to go and check on their homes so some way of getting a Neighborhood Watch as a way of doing that would be a good idea. (There were a significant number of seniors there for at least a couple of nights.)

During the day (up to about 9 o'clock at night), Ron had teachers go in to man the switchboard so that people could phone in to check on other people, which freed up the Red Cross to do other things. The Red Cross also wanted access to a P.A. system but the one at Q.E.C.V.I. is about 20 years old and, "if you don't use it the right way it will shut down on you. Well, 10 minutes after they were here they fried the P.A. system." Ron has since mentioned to the Board that if they're going to use schools for shelters, they should upgrade that kind of equipment. However, a new P. A. system costs about $60,000.

Ron provided access to a computer and printer so that a list of names could be compiled so that they could answer callers' concerns about the location of people. Ron does say that this was done "almost ad hoc" and recommends that there be a registry process so that you can find out where people were.

Bell Telephone went in and switched off the money boxes in the telephones in the school so that people could use the phones whenever they wanted. Before they did that, they had been providing quarters for folks.

"There were lots of examples of tremendous community support. McDonald's was bringing food here by the ton. Tim Horton's, Brown's Vending, Weston's Bakery.... One day I was here when a truck came in from Kitchener-Waterloo from the Schneider's plant and they just unloaded about 200 pounds of hot dogs or something like that and Oktoberfest sausage so it was hot dogs for supper that night! And then they needed buns and they phoned over to Weston's and Weston's just brought them over buns. And then they needed something else and they phoned over to the I.G.A. and the I.G.A. - I mean it really was quite exceptional, the community support that they got.

"And the Salvation Army just...I was just amazed at how they just seemed to call people, and the Red Cross." There was a group that came in from London, Ontario (and other areas, mainly from western Ontario) and they would just go in and say, "Okay. Our turn. Away you go." Ron comments on how kind everybody was and "especially to the older folks".

He recounts the story of one gentleman who did not like being in the gym and was sitting out in the main foyer. One of the caretakers asked him what the problem was and he replied that he couldn't sleep on a cot and that he usually sleeps in a chair. They got one of the upholstered chairs from Ron's office and put it in the main foyer for him and then he asked if they had a rocking chair. So they then got a rocking chair from the infant daycare facility in the school "and that's where he spent two days, basically. He just spent it out there in the main foyer and he'd doze off for half to three quarters of an hour and then he'd wake up and then he'd go have something to eat and he'd watch TV or..." Papers were delivered to the shelter and magazines were obtained from the library so this gentleman would choose some magazines. "As far as I know, he never slept in the gym.... I'd get here at maybe 8 o'clock and check on things and then leave at 9:30 or 10:00. He would be there in his housecoat, rocking away. He'd have his breakfast, and he'd go have a shower, then he'd walk around...."

Ron allowed smoking in a covered area just off the main foyer because he "wasn't going to have old folks toddling out to the street". Quite a few of the older folks were smokers and were glad to not have to "shuffle out on the ice".

There were a lot of rumors going around, also - rumors such as "oh, they're not cleaning up in the north end, the south end is getting cleaned up first", or "they turned off the power in the north end so the south end...", or "they're going to turn the power out so they can do some repairs". So the Red Cross and the folks were dealing with rumors. Then the Army sent over and plugged in a second transformer out front which caused people to worry a little bit. Ron comments that these things would make people antsy or panicky and that the longer it went on, the more worried people became about "when's it gonna end".

Regarding costs, Ron gave all of his first aid kits and supplies (approximately $400 - $500 worth) to the Red Cross when they went in and, although they returned much of it, most had to be thrown out because seals had been broken, etc. At the time of this interview, the new supplies he has ordered have not yet come in. He also lost about $400 worth of kitchen supplies as well as food in the refrigerators which he had told them to use. All in all, the cost was about $1,000 - $1,200. But there was no theft or vandalism in the building, so it was just "consumable stuff" like toilet paper, paper towels, etc. He has sent an itemized list to the Superintendent in hopes of being reimbursed.

There were also overtime expenses. Caretakers were there 24 hours a day for the entire time and they have all been paid. The clean-up afterwards involved 10 or 12 caretakers for a day, instead of the usual 5, in order to clean the building "in terms of the Hepatitis "C".