IceStorm 98 Study

William (Bill) Grier is the Fire Chief of Leeds & Lansdowne as well as the manager of the local phone company (Leeds and Lansdowne have their own small phone company).

On Jan 9 at 11:05 am -- the reeve, deputy clerk -- declared the emergency. The power had been out for a couple of hours -- but there's a time frame before that in which you have to get various things in place. You don't just declare an emergency and then open the door, you have to get things set up -- so that's why there's a six hour delay.

Each day the committee met -- council and everyone else associated with the emergency plan -- to discuss concerns and what should be done next.
There was arrangements made to acquire as many generators as possible mainly to get the community centre opened up as a shelter and our second fire station on highway 32 for our residents in the western section of the municipality.

There were quite a few volunteers came forward to man the shelters, and also the volunteer fire fighters -- they manned fire station #2. We set it up on shifts so the guys wouldn't wear themselves out because we still had to contend with fire suppression and other calls.

We had a total of 32 calls between Jan 9-18 consisting of medical assists, CO checks, motor vehicle accidents and diesel spills. So between helping residents and responding to fire calls they were quite busy. They also pumped basements and did door checks. They hauled water to cattle as needed.

Bill Grier stayed at the telephone company which is part of the emergency plan because they can talk to everyone from there. The telephone company has a standby generator -- so things were normal there.

The second day there was another meeting to plan further steps. The Glen House Resort offered to open up as a shelter. Quite a few of the residents had relatives in Kingston and elsewhere and had moved -- being a tourist area a lot of people south of the 401 are mainly summer people. And there's no one on the islands in the winter. We go from Howe Island to Tar Island.

As Fire Chief I have the authority to make some decisions. But the daily meetings set the decisions. There was no challenge to Bill Grier’s authority, which derives from his position as Fire Chief. Bill Grier has not yet heard anything concerning the number of hours his volunteers worked -- but they are paid on a point-system (so many points for training, so many points per fire). Last year it worked out to $2.35 per hour. Some municipalities paid $10 per hour, but so far Bill Grier has not heard anything on that.

Bill Grier only had to expend money for fuel -- there was no large output of cash. The municipality may have had to spend some money, but Bill Grier is unaware of it. Bill Grier did not think about money at the time.

Property and life safety is the first commitment. A basement pump was secondary to the property and life safety. That was the first priority.

The Lansdowne Telephone company has seven remote stations with backup battery systems good for six to eight hours average. We lost a couple because we did not get generators there fast enough, nor did we have enough. Bill Grier ordered two from London and he brought them down which made it possible to rotate them -- go to one and charge it up. If people's wires to their house were not down they had phone service.

The Gananoque office went totally dead and we actually feed through from Gananoque to Kingston and that caused a little havoc for a short time, but Bell got on that and got it back up. We had communications from the telephone company to the municipal office through the telephone and also with our radio frequencies. Once we got a generator set up at the municipal building we had communication through our roads department.

Bill Grier worked most closely with the volunteers from the fire department and his staff at the telephone company. He hired some part time people -- his son to look after generators -- and there were volunteers who offered to guard the generators at the remote locations. They lost no generators. There was a gentlemen from somewhere in the US who phoned Bill Grier and offered to bring generators (2) and flashlights and batteries and donated them to the Fire Department -- an 8 hour drive.

The biggest thing was fatigue. But Bill Grier says that the people of Leeds and Lansdowne deserve a pat on the back for the way they helped each other.

The Deputy Chief coordinated activities with Bill Grier. Bill Grier did not stick to the fire department because he is also the manager of the phone department. If something came up they would get hold of Bill Grier and discuss it.

The emergency plan had just been updated and for all intents and purposes it worked well. But the plans in most areas are centred on one thing. Ours had phone numbers and various contacts in the first section -- the other thing that caused problems was the magnitude, so the people you were trying to get hold of -- ministry of health and united counties -- they had nothing at their end so it made it virtually impossible to get a hold of…

Once they had things set up it certainly helped out. One of the other things that we learned about after was the twinning. We were twinned with the Ministry of National Resources and they sent a lot of people to this area after about 5 days. They helped with distributing generators and clearing brush and ... they were excellent. A couple of days later the army came in and they did the same thing; brush, checks, pumping basements. They had a large generator to take around to the farms night and morning. After a few days things came together better.

"I guess one thing that maybe was a little bit confusing or troublesome was ... this area here is blessed, cursed with two different hydro ... part of this area is fed from the east and the western part of our township is fed from Kingston area." A lot of people were concerned about when power would be restored. We had communications with the Brockville end, but not with the Kingston end. So that left our people in the dark. No one really knew how the hydro structure worked, which was no one's fault.

The biggest problem was the thought of people having generators but not knowing how to have them in the proper place so as to not asphyxiate themselves in their houses. One gentleman did die that way. He had it sitting in his outside cellar-way and then the basement door was open a crack -- to prevent someone from stealing it -- and that was a concern because there were no more generators to be had.

Bill Grier does not think they could have changed much. Their emergency plan worked well -- at least with regard to getting hold of the major players -- the centre worked well as a place to get information and get warm. Bill Grier does not see a lot of scope for improvement.

Bill Grier did a debriefing and there is another coming up at the county level (in May sometime) -- the biggest thing is that the emergency plan should be updated on a yearly basis, to keep your volunteers ... cause it could not be done without them ... Bill Grier had people bringing food to the telephone company, lots of it, and good quality.

The main part of the emergency plan -- the section of contacts -- worked well. The rest might as well have been ignored. Nor does Bill Grier see how an emergency plan for an area-wide disaster could be designed.

Bill Grier has had no emergency training other than what he did through the fire department. Bill Grier was able to attend a meeting in Brockville and they (Emergency Measures) were able to get them a couple of generators and a large number of smoke and CO detectors. The Dep. Chief took them around to elderly people with no detectors. Those came from Bernie Boyle in Toronto. First contact was done through Harold Tulk in Brockville.

Bill Grier had very little contact with the media. The Reeve is supposed to issue statements to the media, information is supposed to come from people like Bill Grier, but the Reeve is supposed to be the contact person.

Stress was visible, though Bill Grier did not notice it in himself. He was too busy. Some of the volunteers were getting tired, but not stressed, because they were doing a lot of jobs. Bill Grier’s wife helped out in the community and his kids are all grown with families of their own, so Bill Grier did not register stress. He was sleeping at home every night and his home was kept warm by the wood stove in the basement. It worked well for he and his wife.

Bill Grier saw a lot of community interaction, as a consequence of people helping each other.

Bill Grier has nothing to share with us in terms of documents but directs us to Diane Hall and John Trudgen.

All costs are going to come out of the budget -- provincial funds have come through for one generator that blew up. As for the telephone company, the main cost is labour; they worked 21 days straight, minimum of 14 hours and maximum of 22 hours and there is still a lot of work to do -- they have not stopped working on lines since the 8th of January. They got at least another three weeks or so worth of work. Most costs are going into labour and they may have to shift some capital costs into labour costs -- but they are a long way from knowing what the total effect of the ice storm will be on the telephone system.

"The residents deserve a pat on the back for the way they got through it."

The telephone company ordered a bunch of new poles that came in on the 9th -- so they went and installed them for Ontario Hydro. This made it possible for Hydro to get the service back on faster, because Bill Grier’s men knew how to install poles. Bill Grier’s men installed 45 poles for Hydro. Bill Grier hired some part-time guys -- and his son who runs a backhoe -- and that speeded up Hydro's efforts. So they were also able to get the township's phone lines back onto the poles. So it helped out both organizations.