IceStorm 98 Study

For Tom Smith [TS] it all started on the evening of Monday, January the 5th. By Tuesday they had some problems and by Wednesday evening the ice had built up considerably. They had sporadic outages throughout Wednesday evening and a major portion of the east end of Brockville lost its power. Around 11:30 p.m. TS said they called their people in because working conditions were too dangerous and they couldn’t keep ahead of the damage. They decided it was better to send everybody home for some rest and get started again the next morning at 6 am.

On Thursday the 8th, at about 6:45 a.m., they lost all power from the two 230,000 volt lines coming in to feed the transformer [for the Brockville public utility and local Ontario Hydro customers.] The Ontario Hydro office and all of Brockville was out of power.

They met to decide on what actions to take, from the distribution side of things, and decided to check the transformer in town. In the mean time they found out it was the ‘skywire’ that was down. The initial report was that 4 towers were down, later on in the day it was reported to be 8, and then 12 or 15. By the next day it was reported that all 52 towers were damaged. At that point it was beyond the capability of the Brockville service crews to handle the repairs. They started to look to Ontario Hydro’s head office in Toronto for assistance.

With the city-wide electrical failure they lost all communications, computers, heat, etc. Eventually, however, they located a generator, which would be of use to them and proceeded to rewire some of the lines coming into the building to accommodate the generator. “We realized at that time that, with the transmission line being out, we were in for a fairly lengthy duration.”

The downed line was the only source of electricity into the city of Brockville. Although there are two circuits both are on the same tower set. When one is shut off for servicing the other is normally used as the backup but, in this case, both lines were down. Similarly, there are two transformers at the station in case one fails. However, when there is no power coming in from the transmission line there’s nothing which can be done.

Even with the power feeds gone they knew, because of the severe ice build-up, they were going to have problems with the service cables once the main feed came back on. Major outages had occurred over night even before the main transmission line went down. They dispatched crews to patrol along the sub-transmission lines [44,000 volt] to assess the damage. When the major outage occurred they dispatched crews to each of their distribution stations to open the switches so that if power did come back on nothing would be live.

For communication they normally have two way radios and, once the generator was in place, they had their base station up and running again. They decided not to dispatch crews all over the territory but worked in close at first. The “main concern was to get the transformer station running and then work out from there.”

The repairs, which needed to be done, were more than the local crews could handle so they started to call for extra equipment and assistance. Initially they asked for assistance from the neighbouring work centres but they were all in need of help themselves. The zone manager was contacted to make arrangements for help and crews were sent up from areas not affected by the storm. They ask for field supervisors to be included with the crews and they started arriving on Friday with the crews following shortly.

“We had to get our 44,000 volt sub-transmission lines up and working to the distribution stations which are situated out in the country first... Once they were secure and cleared our plan was to continue on to the lower voltage feeders out of these stations.”

It took about 25 days to get everyone back with power. Initially they left out servicing the areas, which were primarily seasonal, knowing they could get back to them later.

The biggest problem was “not knowing the extent of the damage and the length of time it was going to be out. Every day it kept getting worse.” And, although they had people patrolling the main 44,000 volt lines, the trees continued to fall under the weight of the ice so the need for repairs continued.

A transmission crew came in from Belleville and cleared the main transmission lines, temporarily attaching them to the side of the towers [since all the tops were damaged]. Then the power was turned on. The power wasn’t restored to Brockville until Sunday, January 112th at approximately 7 am. It is expected that rebuilding the tops of the towers won’t be completed until the Fall of 1998. Problems may arise this summer, with lightning season, since the lightning conductors are not in place on the temporarily attached lines.

In terms of lessons learned, TS pointed to the need for logistics planning. They have about 30 local staff which, with the help that came in during the crisis, rose to 360 people. This number of people required a lot of food and shelter, which isn’t normally planned for. They also need supervision, materials, fuel, and tools. “We were lucky it was off-season for motels, but there was no heat for them.”

A shortage of hydro poles meant that poles were being delivered from British Columbia because they ran out in Ontario, and Quebec was using all that they had.

In all, about 122,000 Ontario Hydro customers were without power. Adding the local utility customers brings the total to approximately 500,000 customers.

They have an emergency plan in place “but nothing for something as extensive as that [storm].” TS noted that “...you don’t plan for this so it takes a while to get things in place.” And, “...being farther away from Toronto, they didn’t realize -they couldn’t believe- that this was possibly happening.”

One of the more useful tools they started to use during the crisis were cellular phones. They acquired a number of portable units from local dealers free of charge and just had to pay for the air time.

This was their means of communications, even once the phone system was up and running with the portable generator, “I’m not always at my desk and...voice mail in a situation like that -that’s three of four hours old- is almost useless. So we each carried our own cellular phone with us... [and]...realized the importance of instant communication -that you carried on your person- rather than on your desk.”

Fortunately, they obtained a large banquet hall to feed their staff and others like the OPP. It had kitchen facilities and the whole group was able to meet every morning at 6 am for breakfast and have a general discussion. They had a microphone system and were able to make morning announcements, encourage safety, and talk about what was accomplished the day before, and what was planned for the upcoming day. They also had a map there which was updated daily. Talking to his counterparts in the surrounding area, TS found they didn’t have that sort of facility and their crews had little contact with the main office. TS found that the large meeting hall was very useful and helped with integrating all the new people. It seemed to work well and he would make the same arrangements again.

In terms of communication with the media and city officials, when the power went out on Thursday TS couldn’t get hold of the Brockville utility company so he called city hall to let them know what the problem was [since, at that point, no-one else knew that the main transmission lines were down].

He was subsequently invited to meet with local emergency municipal coordination group and they had a number of meetings that day. They met twice the next day but the morning meetings were useless since there was little new information to report at that time. So they decided to meet 6pm daily.

Once the city power came on Sunday they had a 6pm meeting but then cancelled the meetings.

The counties also decided to have emergency meetings but they had just elected new municipal officials and there was no head -no warden in place. They had also reorganised some of the townships as of January first, and also had no leader in place. So they elected a temporary warden to take over until one was officially elected in order that they could start their emergency planning. “We continued meeting with them on a daily 6 pm basis at the counties office. Randy Reid was involved with emergency measures for both the city of Brockville and the counties all the way through. That started Monday the 12.”

As for media relations, TS feels that they should appoint someone early on in a crisis to solely look after providing information and status updates. The trouble was everyone was “trying to do their jobs and do things they thought were useful, but the media was ignored.” They now recognize the importance of keeping customers informed; “...we live in the information age.”

As things progressed they kept local reporters up to date with daily information updates. They took one of their operating maps to the county office and marked it up with highlighter each day indicating the progress made. They also had a copy of the same map set up at local radio station. “All of this was developed by the seat of our pants, there really was no plan per se, it just evolved.”

TS said it was hard to say if there were stress problems. Everyone was working long hours and with little sleep. But there were no serious injuries, broken bones or electrical accidents.

In one stretch of line, 113 poles went down and all had to be replaced. This was accomplished in three weeks rather than the three months it took a few years earlier when the line was originally built. Locally, they replaced about 57,000 meters of wire, 300 poles, 200 transformers, 1700 insulators. This is more than they would normally use in several years. They are still doing some cleanup and cottage connections.

They had help from St. Catharines PUC, Brampton Hydro, Guelph, Dundas, and Kapuskasing.

Asked if the electrical system is now somewhat storm-proofed, TS noted that there are still hangers up there [broken branches with some living connection to the tree]. Now that they are leafed out and getting heavier the added force of some rain and wind might start bringing them down, causing sporadic outages all summer long he suggests.

Overall they had great co-operation from all the agencies they were involved with, especially the fire, police and social services departments. TS was also impressed with the organisation of the emergency planning meetings. “Everyone helped each other out.”