IceStorm 98 Study

Wayne Forbes is past president of the District 8 Road Superintendent's Association with extensive service as a public servant.

January 8th, Wayne Forbes realizes that there is considerable concern arising from the number of trees that have come down, at least in his area, he had no idea how wide the emergency was. By January 9th (Friday) he had been in contact with the Fire Chief and the Reeve. Wayne Forbes began to realize that the entire region was in crisis. Wayne Forbes spoke with the Reeve who called Wayne Forbes on his cell phone for progress updates on clearing of roads (Jan 8th, about mid-day). Everyone was trying to get their own situations under control. Wayne Forbes also spoke with the telephone manager (Bill Grier) who also had a lot of poles down, so Wayne Forbes had a lot of contact with his superiors on January 8th.

January 7th: Freezing rain in the afternoon, sanding crews sent out to do main roads, ice-bladed a lot of them too until about 6:00pm. Wayne Forbes went out again at 11:00 and "ran into total devastation." Wayne Forbes contacted the plow and sander operators and had them in by 3:00 am and ordered them to take chainsaws with them. Trees were falling across roads as Wayne Forbes was driving on them. Road clearing began using graders to push the big stuff off the road surfaces. Late January 8th: Wayne Forbes and his crew worked until dark and then he sent them home. At daylight January 9th they were cutting trees and using their backhoe to push trees off the road, the biggest concern was power lines and poles where they were advised to stay well clear of. They worked till dark January 9th.

January 10th, Wayne Forbes began to concentrate on Hill Island which is heavily treed. He spent the day down there and contacted everyone they could to get their cars out to the main highway in case they needed emergency help. They worked till dark again. Wayne Forbes had no power but got a generator from the telephone company so that they could run their fuel pumps and keep their trucks "at least a little bit warm" and to heat their office.

January 11th: Wayne Forbes orders snowplowing again, some of the lines have been picked up, but they are still clearing roads with chainsaws and pushing trees off the main part of the road.

January 12th: Sanding to make roads passable for emergency vehicles.

January 13: Wayne Forbes is averaging 16-18 hours a day of work so far. The weather changed to pouring rain and things got sloppy. Wayne Forbes goes out at 4:00am and notices that frost is coming out of the roads so all the roads have to be sanded again. The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) from Red Lake showed up and Wayne Forbes met with them at 11:00am and took them on a tour of the roads. They brought cutter crews with them. Wayne Forbes set up a priority list and started on Hill Island. At 6:00pm the power came on at WF's garage.

January 14th: MNR teams bring about 28 men with them and Wayne Forbes has 16 to work with, clearing roads on Hill Island (hangers and so forth) and they were able to clear and limb everything. Wayne Forbes makes assessment of sand and salt and orders more from his supplier.

January 15th: Still on Hill Island this time with army reserves and MNR people. Heavy snow begins falling in the afternoon and Wayne Forbes orders a halt as it becomes unsafe to have people in the bush. Wayne Forbes brings all his plows out again and works until 11:00, then brings his crews in at 4:00 am for yet another plowing. But 10:00 am that morning the MNR cutters are able to resume their work on Hill Island (which only has 2.5 kilometers of road, but the damage was extensive, and the trees are close to the road).

January 16: Roads plowed again, cutting still on Hill Island.

January 17th: Wayne Forbes moves some cutters off Hill Island moves them into rural areas. Two chainsaw gangs begin clearing roads -- MNR and Army stay on Hill Island and begin working with volunteers. They begin chipping.

January 18th: Crews come off the island and different priority is established with MNR. Wayne Forbes gets a boom truck to cut hangers off the tops of trees. Crew comes down from Kitchener-Waterloo.

January 19: More heavy snow, more plowing, more sand and salt. Wayne Forbes has 12 army guys in addition to MNR guys. They are now following second priority list -- off Hill Island.

January 20th: Wayne Forbes and crews begin ice-blading residential streets where ice up to 9 inches has accumulated (the snow/ice combination was building on the roads this whole time). By January 26 the heavy ice is cleared off the roads by graders and trucks.

WF's job as laid out in the emergency plan is "to initiate enough help to make sure that our roads are passable, so we can get emergency equipment in and out ... we did emergency work only." Normally Wayne Forbes would just keep clearing the roads, but this did not happen. Once the emergency was declared "we did emergency work only."

A lot of the roads were windswept and there was a lot of ice on them -- which did not get sand during the emergency. Normally Wayne Forbes tries to keep things as clean as possible, but the emergency forced different priorities. Wayne Forbes just did what he had to do to keep his roads system clear for emergency vehicles and equipment. Wayne Forbes took it upon himself to do that and no one challenged his authority. Six or seven days into the storm council decided that once the roads were open Wayne Forbes veered away from the emergency plan. No concerns were raised about how much money Wayne Forbes was spending even though "looking back" he thinks he should have. Wayne Forbes has four full time workers, who worked around the clock until the MNR and army arrived.

Wayne Forbes says he has been on the job for 27-28 years and he made decisions on the basis of what is the most urgent and prioritize from there. There were days when things were coming from all directions, but Wayne Forbes dealt with the worst one first and put off the other ones.

After the fourth day the council and emergency people met every day between 1:00 and 2:00 to update what was going on. The council left all WF's decisions to WF. There were concerns raised, and Wayne Forbes would send out a man as needed, but nothing came up in the first five days of the storm.

WF's radios operated -- even though he took the aerial off his own truck. Wayne Forbes had a generator at the municipal office so that the radio system continued to operate, all trucks have two-way radios and Wayne Forbes has a cell phone. Wayne Forbes only had a day's worth of trouble with communication as a result of ice on the towers.

Wayne Forbes had no trouble communicating with his colleagues on council. He has praise for the fire chief and other council members. Everyone was able to keep in touch with those they needed to.

Wayne Forbes had no trouble contacting his suppliers for salt and sand although they were backed up -- but he had it within 48 hours as promised. Within three days of the order Wayne Forbes had as much sand and salt as he needed. Only one of WF's crew members had phone trouble and was hard to contact, but the Fire Chief (Bill Grier) made sure that all the important phone lines were working. Wayne Forbes divided his time between his truck and his office -- including grading and working with a chainsaw. It was a 60/40 split (road/office) after the first couple of days when Wayne Forbes spent 80% of his time on the roads. When the organization started to settle in he was able to spend more time coordinating through the office. MNR and CAF people (about 100) provided lots of resources and met with Wayne Forbes twice a day (morning and lunch) and the CAF deployed on a 8 or 9 hour day. Wayne Forbes had regular meetings with the CAF every evening. Wayne Forbes has praise for the CAF and for their resources: they got him a helicopter and generator for local farmers. Their command structure made it easy for Wayne Forbes to get what he needed from senior officers. "If we needed it, we had it." Wayne Forbes has praise for the younger members of the CAF who assisted in the emergency. They took orders and were safety conscious -- nor were there any injuries.

The teaming (or twinning) system worked for Leeds & Lansdowne because L & L was twinned with the MNR and they had a lot of expertise and resources, and coordination skills. They thought of the things that Wayne Forbes had not: they had good equipment and lots of it. The twinning system worked well according to WF. They seemed to be able to get hold of anything Wayne Forbes asked for. Other areas had lots of volunteer help but less in the way of direct expertise provided by the MNR.

Wayne Forbes says that there was concern about clean water in one hamlet, but MNR and hydro responded to that. Wayne Forbes cannot think of anything that did not work too well. "Things seemed to slide together pretty well." Wayne Forbes had a lot of autonomy to do what he thought he had to do. Wayne Forbes puts a lot of emphasis on having qualified people and keeping out of their way -- i.e. not micro-managing their actions from a distance.

Wayne Forbes cannot say what he would do differently in another ice storm beyond prioritizing differently in the first couple of days of clearing roads. Had Wayne Forbes known that Hill Island was so bad he might have responded to it sooner, but he had no way of knowing how bad that area was. Heavily forested areas would be his first priority so that people can get to the roads earlier.

Wayne Forbes "would not change a whole lot" as a result of the ice storm. He expects to be able to call on the same people again -- but in terms of methods he does not see a great deal of scope for change. Communications may change if the township acquires another generator. Wayne Forbes has a generator for his own facility, but otherwise he advocates few changes. Wayne Forbes and his workers had a chance to "show their true colours" and he thinks they looked good.

Wayne Forbes did consult the emergency plan. "We have a good plan." The plan was not designed to respond to this kind of emergency, but the section of contacts was useful. Wayne Forbes does not have any emergency training, but he does have some background and firsthand experience (tornado in Barrie, he worked up there for 18 years).

MNR (Red Lake) did a great job according to WF. "Made my job an awful lot easier." He had no contact with the media.

Stress was not a concern, but exhaustion was. By the 10th or 11th of January (4-5 days) he had averaged only 4-5 hours per night of fitful sleep. His office is close to his home, but he had to leave his family to take care of themselves -- although his older kids seemed to manage well. Wayne Forbes did not experience a lot of stress -- his own phone system was only out of service for about 4 hours. The army did a house to house check and that seemed to make it easier for people who -- after a couple of days of isolation -- just needed someone to talk with.

Wayne Forbes saw a lot of community interaction in the township, a lot of neighbors helping neighbors. Wayne Forbes met an interesting person (Slim Erickson, MNR Red Lake) who had worked with the fire rangers in the north and he was an excellent resource for coordinating. Very personable and well traveled, knowledgeable and easy to work with. Wayne Forbes got a call from Greg Murphy (in the Barrie area) who offered to send down his own work crews to assist in L & L. They ended up going to Brockville, but Wayne Forbes had all the help he needed from the MNR.