IceStorm 98 Study

On the day of the ice storm, I was one of the few people who was able to get to work. I was greeted by the Commissioner, Lance Thurston, who mentioned the meeting at the PUC building at 10 o’clock to deal with the storm damage.

When did you realize how bad the storm really was?

We had a fair amount of damage to a big tree in our front yard. It was blowing wildly during the night and my wife was concerned when she woke during the night. The roads were not too bad coming to work — it’s only a five-minute drive to get here. The building power was out so that was a major concern. I didn’t realize how bad it really was until I learned at the meeting that the whole region was affected. The next step was to go to City Hall and go out and see how bad things were and then do an update at 3 o’clock that afternoon. It was on the way back to City Hall that I got a good look at the damage (downed trees and power lines).

Given the exceptional circumstances, were you conscious of the formal authority you had, or did you think that these are pretty exceptional times, and I may not go by the book?

It was pretty well standard fare. I was not involved much in the money issues. Most of the jobs I was dealing with were the setting of shelters which was done through the local school boards. I was also involved in getting some donations, such as cots, for the shelters. So we had to send people out to unload these 2000 cots from the tractor trailers. I had to arrange for tools to open the crates. The response to our requests was overwhelming. In the beginning, the construction industry volunteered their services but after a few days we had to compensate them for their time.

How did you communicate?

You would call people inside City Hall or send a message (verbal or written). Internal communication was basically hallway meetings and catching people on the fly. Scheduled meetings tended to take place about 3 p.m. or around 8 at night.

Once decisions were made, was there any difficulty in communicating decisions from the centre to the field?

Yes, there certainly was. Gardner Church would assign two people to a job just in case one person got sick, but sometimes the two people didn’t know they were assigned to the same project. Mike Schultz of the Kingston Police Force was on the same assignment as I was. We both arranged for volunteers to unload the cots at the armouries. We ended up with way too many volunteers for the job. Another example was that I had arranged for a volunteer to meet the tractor trailers at the truck stop at Highway 15 and 401 to escort them to the armouries, but somehow the tractor trailers made it to the armouries without the volunteer’s help. Communication was one of the fundamental problems in coping with the ice storm.

How did you work communication with the public?

Using the tree project as an example, we wanted to clear access to KGH so we had the crews start in two locations: one at KGH and the other in the suburbs at Reddendale. We arranged for transit buses for warm shelters for the workers and volunteers. The army carried the brush to the side of the road and then it was loaded into dump trucks. We wanted to keep the streets clear because a snow storm was expected that night. After the streets were cleared, people started bringing brush from their yards and piling it at the side of the streets that we had just finished. I called to City Hall and told them to get word out on the local media so that people would not pile brush from their yards by the streets.

The shelter at LCVI lost power and a decision was made by others to move to another high school, Frontenac. I thought it was important to have a home base that was not subject to power outages, so I got in touch with City Hall who contacted the army and they brought a big generator to LCVI.

In terms of what worked well, I found that Dave Cash and I worked well on the tree job. By that time we had gotten into a routine in dealing with other issues. Our focus was clearing the streets, getting access to the hospitals, and keeping lines of communication open.

What didn’t work well was having two people to do the job. As much as it created a team, also created one of the biggest problems because you then had two people tripping over each other. We recognized this as a problem. So Dave Morgan said, “You make the decisions and I’ll help.” That’s the way we went and it seemed to work well. The biggest problem I had personally was after leaving the LCVI shelter one night and driving by a big apartment building and I could see flickers of light. I went in and talked to the superintendent. She was very agitated and concerned for the elderly tenants, some of them on oxygen and some bedridden. So I called to City Hall and they sent city buses to move people to shelters and ambulances for those who were bedridden. I ended up losing my voice and that was very frustrating.

I think it was a problem that not all city hall staff were involved. There was a perception that we would be tripping over each other. I didn’t see that as a problem — I would rather have too many people than not enough. It was more difficult to direct the volunteers than it would have been for my own staff. Next time, I would insist that all staff show up for work.

Any amusing anecdotes?

I had a call from someone on Howe Island. When asked why this person didn’t call his local counsellor at his own town hall, he said he had called there already and he didn’t get anywhere. An interesting thing was that we had all these trucks in from all over and one of the volunteer outfits was Union Gas in Kingston Township cleaning up the brush in the city and the gas was supplied in that area by PUC. One resident on Alwington Avenue approached a Union Gas truck and told the driver to get off the street. The driver thought she was angry because a township gas company was working in the city. It was later found out that the lady just doesn’t like trucks on her street!