IceStorm 98 Study

When Sister Rosemarie Kugel awakened on Thursday morning she was very cold, went to switch on her light and there was no light. That is her first recollection of the storm. She has always kept a flashlight beside her bed. She then looked out the window. "I couldn't believe what I saw. I just couldn't believe it because the power lines in front of our house were down." She and the other Sisters live at 203 Johnson Street, right across from the Hotel Dieu Hospital. "The power lines were down. The tree branches, one was swinging across the power line. I looked up the street...and here's that huge tree across [a neighbour's] front steps. I thought, 'You know, this is really like a war zone'." There were yellow police ribbons cordoning off the street. "And we were freezing, of course, candles all over, no real power...." They thought of making a cup of coffee and couldn't. "Couldn't do anything."

Then they decided to go over to the hospital to see what was going on there. Hugh Graham said right away that he thought they should establish a shelter at the hospital. He called the City and told them that Hotel Dieu was ready to do this if it's of help. Because the hospitals in Kingston are in the process of restructuring, Hotel Dieu had transferred all of their in-patients to K.G.H. and so did have empty wards. But the beds went with the patients. They only had about 50-something beds left but they did have some mattresses.

"It got into action pretty quickly, housekeeping and all the departments." It was about 4:00 p.m. when the first set of people were already there. They had over 70 people the first night. Hotel Dieu had said they would be available for the frail elderly or people with medical needs, families with children and so on. Their youngest were 3-week-old twins (one twin had just been discharged from the hospital). They put the family in the Child Development Centre area so they could get a little peace and quiet. "So, of course, I love children so down I went to see who these children were. And Mama was trying to feed one baby and the other one was crying hysterically. Of course, I grabbed the one [who had just been discharged from the hospital with bronchitis]...." Sister Kugel held the baby for quite a while and enjoyed that.

Sister Kugel was trying to get a sense of where everyone was and what was going on "because you knew what you were doing but you didn't know what all the other people were doing ". She went back to the lobby and saw that they had registration tables set up so they would know who was coming in and where they would be located. Every chair in the lobby was occupied. People had their bedding or their personal belongings beside them. A nurse checked to see if they needed medical care, if it was all right to just assign them a bed anywhere or if they needed special medical services.

The cafeteria has also been vacated because food has been contracted in. (They only have the coffee shop now.) So they put mattresses on the floor of the cafeteria and assigned "beds" to people there, with signs over the mattresses to identify which bed was whose. Sister Kugel found it delightful that many people, once assigned a bed, would go right back to the lobby to socialize.

"It's an experience I will never, never forget because although there was this constant activity going on around, people coming in by carloads, being registered, and others waiting here and some getting coffee.... Even though there was all that activity, there was no chaos. It was like a large, caring, compassionate community... each one looking after the other." She describes it as peaceful and "a little bit of heaven" amidst what would otherwise have been confusion. Sister Kugel would mill around asking people how they were doing, if they needed anything, reassuring people.

The first night, they had between 70 and 100 people. The second night they had 340 "guests" at the hospital. They only used the Jeanne Mance entrance so that they could control who was there.

"When we [the Sisters] first came to Kingston, 100 orphans were brought to us one Christmas eve. And that's what came to my mind when I saw all these people coming in." Many of the guests during the ice storm were frail elderly and people with physical challenges, in wheelchairs, etc. They were served soup and sandwiches. Volunteers in the coffee shop made the food and it was all free. Street people would also go in and ask to warm up a bit and they were also able to get some food. They'd warm up and then they'd leave again.

In addition to the 57 mattresses in the cafeteria, they used the Brock 1 (cardiac outpatient) clinic area because it was already set up with oxygen outlets for those who needed special care. Volunteers would be on standby in the reception area of the clinic so that people would know where to find them. Some beds were already there and there were examining tables. "So it was closer to a real bed than the army cots that I slept on and everybody else slept on." The cots were quite high, with canvas strips across them and a metal bar right in the middle.

Sister Kugel slept on a cot in one of the secretary's offices, in-between her desk and her filing cabinet. The cot could be wheeled out in the morning so that the secretary could do her work. Another Sister was in the next room right up against another wall next to a desk.

They tried to centralize everything so that they would have someone overseeing the different areas and the Sisters would wander in and out of all of the areas "just more or less seeing if everything was okay" and doing whatever they could to help out, making sure everybody was getting their meals and seeing to various needs as they arose.

Hotel Dieu had staff around the clock, helping with registration, housekeeping, food service, etc.

The volunteer services had a five day supply of food and were also calling other providers for food. Generally, they had soup and sandwiches for lunch, doughnuts, muffins and cereal for breakfast, coffee and there was always fresh fruit available.

After the second night, they started to do some triaging to see who could go to other shelters that had been opened. They set up a team of physicians, nurses and social workers to examine each person in order to determine who really needed to stay at the hospital shelter in order to have close surveillance and who could be moved elsewhere. It was hard to do that because people were very comfortable at the hospital. By this time, Hotel Dieu had been asked to be prepared to take some of the nursing home patients from Rideau Crest and others.

Volunteers provided transportation and McCoy Travel, which provides service between the three hospitals, gave 24-hour coverage during the storm. If somebody called to say they needed to go into the shelter, volunteers would go and pick them up. And as soon as someone's power went back on, they were driven home.

Sister Kugel says it was awful to have to ask people to leave because they just did not want to, so, after the triaging, they had a pastoral care worker and a social worker visit each of them and explain to them why. "I was at the door saying good-bye and I was in tears because some of them were elderly and I thought to myself, 'They are frail and very frightened'." But because they did not have a medical need to stay, Hotel Dieu had to make room for the potential influx of nursing home people. As it turned out, they were not called upon to take these people in but they had to be prepared since the City had asked them to be.

It was a great experience because all of Administration came together. They met at least once or twice every day in order to address any problems and to see if they could do anything better.

There was a large group of volunteers (some of whom were also guests at the shelter) who were ready to be called upon to take guests wherever they needed to go or to find people to let them know they could go home because the power was back on. At times, there were as many as 25 or 30 volunteers available.

Additional telephones were brought in because of the high need for people to contact their families.

Their first guests were from Elizabeth Cottage, who were very appreciative.

When Sister Kugel described the situation as 'a little bit of heaven on earth', she was saying it in contrast to what the activity was. Instead of people having a 'me first' attitude, it was more of an "are you okay?" position that people took toward each other. "This is kind of surprising in our society when people are pretty much independent" and wanting their own due. It was not a stressful situation for her. "It was people in need and that's what we are about so for me it was like bringing [it] to reality and being present with it."

They had mass every day in the chapel and on Sunday they held a special ecumenical service that was non-denominational. Guests could also go up to the chapel at any time and many went there just for the quiet and to be away from the activity.

Trish McGowan is hosting a meeting on May 8th during which Sister Kugel, Mark Edmonds and others will be exploring ways to be prepared for any type of emergency, including such things as a power failure in the summer time, a terrible wind storm, etc. They are going to evaluate what might be done better, focussing particularly on the elderly.

They have learned from this experience where their registration needs to be set up and where their discharge needs to be. Sister Kugel said many of the things they've learned are so simple but you don't think about them at the time. She does feel that the organization was very good, considering the short notice.

She mentions that the Queen's University students and the cadets were wonderful. She was very impressed at how good they were with the seniors because many of them don't have experience with older people. "So to see them caring for them and accompanying them with a wheelchair and carrying their belongings for them, it was pretty nice to see." There was also a lot of camaraderie among the workers themselves, too.

Hotel Dieu has their own disaster plan "but to activate it is something totally different. So it's only after you have really operated under a disaster that you will see what you really need to do better."

The people who went to the Holy Cross School shelter were physically well. The school has a large gym where they set up "these famous army cots". She laughs as she says they looked pretty nice compared to the canvas cot she had to sleep on.

She mentions that "Dr. Ruth" (Ruth Wilson of the Family Medicine Centre) brought her children down to Hotel Dieu to volunteer.

The President of the federal Treasury Board, Marcel Masse, came to see them at Hotel Dieu. At that time they had already triaged and discharged many people to other places. He did go to one of the units and was able to ask the people how it was for them in the shelter.

By the eighth day, things were pretty well back to normal. They had closed all of their clinics and all of their day surgeries. They cancelled everything because they were also taking patients from K.G.H. who had been discharged but had no place to go. K.G.H. set up their shelter after Hotel Dieu asked them and St. Mary's for help. K.G.H. was then able to take in people who did not require so much nursing care. Hotel Dieu had been designated by the City as a shelter for the frail elderly and those needing medical care the moment Hotel Dieu offered, right from the beginning, but did not have the other hospitals lined up to begin with.

In their publication "Memories of Ice Storm '98", Hotel Dieu tried to list all of the volunteers who helped them, although they probably missed some of them. "We could not have done it without those volunteers."

The five Sisters were "guests as well as welcomers" because they were without power for over a week.