IceStorm 98 Study

Sylvia Fletcher is in her first term as mayor after three years as a councilor. She had never looked at the emergency plan in her time on council as chair of finance and Deputy Mayor.

Sylvia Fletcher did not feel that she could declare an emergency (early Thursday afternoon) because Granite Power felt they could restore power by 11:00 p.m. that evening -- Sylvia Fletcher felt they were in a different situation -- so they did not declare. They did get the shelter set up that day and Sylvia Fletcher talked to CBC. At 11:00 that night Granite power realized that they had lost the link to Ontario Hydro. They had the shelter set up and there were people there doing food. The police chief met with Granite Power.

Sylvia Fletcher knew there was a big problem on Thursday morning -- "you just had to look around" -- but Sylvia Fletcher cannot recall who set the first meeting that morning. The chief of Police? Clerk Treasurer?

Volunteers were organized to do a house to house search.

Friday morning: the 911 system went down and they declared the emergency. For the shelters the big thing was cots: they had tried to get cots on Thursday afternoon, but the head of social services (Carol Duggan) said the Red Cross told her they were all gone. Sylvia Fletcher stayed on the phone most of the day to the MP and MPP -- Friday morning -- trying to work out what to do about the old age home and knowing that they would have to evacuate without a generator. The concern was for the spread of disease. Sylvia Fletcher worked until 7:00pm calling and recalling to get cots and when they finally got an answer on cots (they were in Ottawa) Sylvia Fletcher arranged for a private company to pick them up. The old age home was ready to evacuate a couple of times, but had a generator by Friday night.

The police station (which became the command post) had a generator, and Town Hall was without power. It was not ideal but it worked.

Sylvia Fletcher was not that familiar with the emergency procedures. "You just knew that the job had to be done -- and it was an emergency -- so you do it the best that you can." Sylvia Fletcher says she sought to cover the bases and stay in touch with the power company.

Money was not a consideration. The biggest thing was safety. They were fortunate to get power back on along the main street so that the restaurants could provide food for people who needed it.

Other members of council were not really involved because they were not part of the emergency team, but some of them volunteered and were contacted by Sylvia Fletcher and updated as things developed.

When the phones were out, Sylvia Fletcher says they found one cell phone that they used until the generators and the 911 came up again. They used the phones at the police station which were on most of the time. They were out for a while on Friday morning, then they came on again.

Sylvia Fletcher says they want to prepare handouts to have ready in the event of another emergency.

Police and fire departments organized the door to door checks -- as well as checking lines and trying to secure generators. "They were good for anything." Gananoque has both full time and volunteer fire fighters.

Sylvia Fletcher made many calls to emergency services (EMO) but the response from the other end was very uneven -- you would talk to a different person every time. Sylvia Fletcher wanted some direction on evacuating the nursing home, but she was frustrated by the response from the other end. Sylvia Fletcher says she thinks EMO was overwhelmed too.

Sylvia Fletcher thinks Gananoque did okay, things went well. Some residents would have preferred that the Power Company would have known earlier so that it wouldn’t have taken as long to restore power as it did. "It's really hard to determine" -- but Sylvia Fletcher says that people called in to volunteer their places to people who were cold, and Sylvia Fletcher learned about the availability of generators and where to get them. Sylvia Fletcher's husband and brother also worked around the clock starting up furnaces with generators, and moved them around as needed.

Sylvia Fletcher thinks that the emergency response team addressed things quickly.

Sylvia Fletcher has met with council and is preparing a paper looking at what was done right and what should be changed (see interview with Gananoque Police Chief Claude Brett). There was a report done on the overview of the town -- and the big thing that came out of that was the need to update the emergency plan, but the emergency hit before they got a chance. So now the town is looking at all these considerations, as well as a permanent generator for the high school which would be designated as the shelter -- as well as one for town hall so that it could be the centre of operations.

Sylvia Fletcher never looked at the emergency plan but did things on a day to day basis. They simply looked at what needed to be done. Priorities were set by the emergency team -- when they could be assembled -- the team did not waste a lot of time on differences of opinion: it was a matter of addressing what had to be done. Social services worked on the shelter, board of works worked with Granite power, so there was no real disagreement. And Sylvia Fletcher kept in touch with surrounding townships to see if they needed anything that Gananoque could provide. Sylvia Fletcher was in touch with the Reeves of the surrounding areas: Sylvia Fletcher's husband delivered sanitary napkins and extension cords as needed.

Sylvia Fletcher has no emergency training other than CPR. Sylvia Fletcher dealt with the media by phone and the Chief Brett would fax 'blurbs' to the media. It took a couple of days to get up to speed on communication because every day there would be different messages to convey -- like taking down trees.

Sylvia Fletcher says that there was no time to think about stress. "When there's an emergency you have to deal with it -- you don't take time to think about stress." Afterwards Sylvia Fletcher thought a lot of people were tired, by Tuesday you could see people were becoming more stressed. But people also enjoyed being with each other -- "like the good old days" -- so people did come together. Volunteers were very helpful, people offered their homes to people without electricity.

Sylvia Fletcher says she was praised for what she did during the ice storm, but she just feels like "when things happen you just deal with them." It was hard to sleep with so much going on.

Sylvia Fletcher has no information on costs cause it's too early. There's too much clean up left.

Sylvia Fletcher says hindsight is great but on the whole she is "really pleased with the cooperation and foresight of everyone." Some people were really stressed -- but on the whole people were really pleased with the way things were handled."

Sylvia Fletcher says she cannot identify an area where things did not work well -- there was a lot of stress on some people (like the shelter) -- she feels like they could have all met together more often but without a central base that was difficult. Given the lack of experience things went really well. Sylvia Fletcher says that there were so many people in trouble that EMO was overwhelmed -- Sylvia Fletcher feels like the people in Gananoque worked well together.

Sylvia Fletcher says she would get more press releases out earlier if she had to do it again. The military came through Gananoque on Sunday and ... (off record) ...

Sylvia Fletcher says that people should always keep a full tank of gas, or fuel, that it would be useful to have people trained to move generators around. Sylvia Fletcher says that the board of works had hand-pumps so they could get fuel. Gananoque became a central base because they had gas and some places had power.

The new thinking is that every member of council should have a copy of the plan and that the plan be updated regularly. Sylvia Fletcher cannot recall when the plan was last updated. Meetings have been set for updates to the emergency plan.

Sylvia Fletcher says that power and phones were the big things, but Gananoque had power sporadically on Thursday Jan. 8-- and although there was an emergency it was "not at the disaster point." At 11:00pm Granite announced that they had lost the link to Ontario Hydro. Sylvia Fletcher and her husband had driven around constantly looking for where the lights were on and knew before 11:00 that the power was not going to be on as Granite had predicted. Sylvia Fletcher waited for the next morning to call EMO and declare an Emergency.

Sylvia Fletcher's first conversation with another mayor was with Gary Bennett (Mayor of Kingston) on Friday. It was an exchange of "what can we do for you?" and in this sense Sylvia Fletcher says it brought communities together. She also contacted Leeds & Lansdowne and was asked by them if they could have the shelter open for them as well.

Sylvia Fletcher's first conversation with Harold Grier (Reeve of Front of Leeds and Lansdowne) consisted of planning the use of the shelter for both communities. Sylvia Fletcher indicated a desire to work together with the neighboring township.

Sylvia Fletcher says she and her husband had no time to think about their own place during the emergency -- that they sustained some damage -- but that it was not their first concern. Sylvia Fletcher's husband ran generators around and they were too tired at the end of the day to do anything about their own properties.