IceStorm 98 Study

Issue #3 – Levels of Response

In Ontario, legislation and practice dictate that emergency response begins at the individual or household level and then moves outward to the local municipality, neighbouring municipalities, the provincial government, and finally to the federal government.

Local Municipalities

Official response to the ice storm emergency began at the local municipal level, as it should. Under emergency legislation, only the Head of Council (Reeve or Mayor) may declare a municipal emergency. Municipal staff cannot declare municipal emergencies, nor can the province of Ontario. During the 1998 Ice Storm, 66 emergencies were declared in Ontario, the highest number ever for any one event, and a number which would have been considerably higher had municipal amalgamations not taken place just days before the storm began. Ontario averages about 30 emergencies per year.

Most municipalities rose to the challenge of dealing with the consequences of the ice storm and took measures to keep their residents safe, warm, and fed. Previous training proved to be very helpful, but even politicians and staff with no formal training responded intuitively and did what needed to be done. Money was not an issue: those in charge simply said to their staff “if you need something, get it”. However, municipal employees, accustomed to working with tight budgets, continued to be fiscally responsible. The authority to act was also not an issue. Many interviewees reported not thinking about what authority they had; they knew a response was necessary and just did what needed to be done. The regular chain of command broke down. Staff who would not normally be making decisions, found themselves spending money and supervising various activities. Superiors trusted their employees to do what was required in a responsible way. There was also a shortage of workers as many staff were not available for various reasons. Some were away, and many were housebound with driveways blocked by branches, increased domestic responsibilities, coping with no power and flooding basements, or dangerous roads.

Municipal emergency plans had not contemplated an emergency on the scale of the 1998 Ice Storm. Plans were largely based on single-point emergencies where the geographic area and the number of people affected are much smaller and getting outside help is far less crucial. In some plans, the names, telephone numbers and addresses listed were out-of-date. Or even if contact information was up-to-date, telephones were not working and personal contact was difficult, if not impossible. Consequently, many plans were of little value and were therefore not used extensively during the ice storm emergency. Emergency plans should be revised to deal with widespread emergencies affecting whole municipalities and regions.

Local Volunteers

That the residents of eastern Ontario coped as well as they did throughout the crisis is due to many acts of human kindness, courage and generosity. Emergency responders and volunteers alike gave their time and strength. Bob Crawford of the City of Toronto Fire Service sums it up this way:

“The people of Kingston (where Bob Crawford was located during the emergency) should congratulate themselves for rising to meet the occasion. It was very reassuring, when I came back to Toronto and looked at our municipality here. It made me feel good to think that people are capable of responding in that kind of way to adversity.”

Neighbours helped neighbours, friends helped friends and strangers helped strangers.

Volunteers became the backbone of the response. However, the sheer numbers of volunteers in some communities created the need to develop systems to manage them. In some cases, volunteers were screened (the police did background checks and social services staff asked questions). In smaller communities, where people are well known to each other, this was unnecessary. Some municipalities set up databases with volunteers’ names, phone numbers and skills and called people when they were needed. Neighbours looked after one another during the emergency and were instrumental in identifying people who were in high-risk situations. In one case a neighbor kept a house from burning down:

“Neighbours were generally very supportive of each other, Glenn Gow adds. Many people phoned the fire service when something seemed wrong on their street. He recalled a fire in the Crystal Springs area near the end of the ice storm. A doctor had emptied his fireplace, put the ashes in a cardboard box and put them in his shed. At some point during the night, the shed caught fire. An old woman living nearby phoned the fire service, and they were able to keep the fire contained to the shed. “Had it not been for that senior citizen taking the initiative to phone us about it, there’s no doubt in my mind that he would have lost that end of his house, at least his kitchen anyway, along with that shed,” Glenn Gow said. “We were able to get there because of her call. So the neighbourhood watch increases I think, during these kinds of incidents, it just increases. People really look out for other people.”

Glenn Gow, Fire Chief, City of Kingston

People helped total strangers. For example, people with power at their homes went to shelters and offered others a place to stay. “This happened about three times, that somebody would come [to the shelter] and take a whole family away to shelter them in their home.”

Tilly Nelson,
Administrative Head, Loyalist Collegiate and Vocational Institute, Kingston

Many interviewees pointed out the need to create a database of volunteers and their skills as part of the municipality’s emergency plan, so the right people can be contacted quickly should another emergency occur.

Outside Assistance

Help from outside the disaster area came via the “front door” and the “back door.” Front door help was co-ordinated by various ministries of the federal and provincial governments. Back door help was both offered and sought. Municipal employees contacted colleagues inside the disaster area to offer assistance and municipal staff facing the emergency called their contacts in other municipalities to request help. Previous networking proved valuable in securing aid from municipalities outside the disaster area. Help was generously provided, with many municipalities charging little or nothing at all. Municipalities that provided aid will, however, be expecting a reciprocal response from those they helped, if there is a future emergency.

Generators

The ice storm emergency was first and foremost a power emergency. With no electricity, finding alternate power sources became the top priority. Generators were the most sought-after commodity. Generator working groups, which did nothing but track down and distribute generators, were formed at both the provincial and federal levels. During the emergency, installing a generator or using one already in place meant many facilities did not have to be evacuated that otherwise might have been (i.e., hospitals, seniors’ homes and jails). Fortunately, only a few evacuations were necessary. Generators were also used at shelters, stores, gas stations and Bell telephone switching stations. Farmers used generators to water livestock and milk dairy cows. Generators were employed to keep signals transmitting from radio towers. At private homes, generators provided heat, light, and water, and were used to pump out flooded basements.

A related problem was trees. As the ice accumulated, branches came down and trees were uprooted. In the process, they took down power and telephone lines, particularly at the street and individual household level. The result was streets and rural roads blocked with live wires and fallen branches. The danger of hanging branches coming down unannounced at any time created another safety hazard. This added to the difficulty of identifying problems and mobilizing resources. Fire engines could not get to all places and delivering messages by foot or vehicle was time consuming. In many areas, the power grid was turned off and roads were cleared of branches with snowploughs. Incredibly, there were very few injuries but calls to the police and fire departments were many times above normal, straining their resources.

Shelters

The next priority was setting up shelters where people could get warm, eat a hot meal, and stay overnight. Generators had to be acquired for many of the shelters. Other shelters were located in facilities that already had generators such as Brockville and Kingston Psychiatric Hospitals and some schools.

Health Canada had a large supply of cots in Ottawa, which were transported to shelters all over eastern Ontario. The shelters tended to be heavily used during the day but most had only a few overnight guests.

The large number of shelters that were set up in the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville created some problems. The OPP did not have the manpower to position an officer at each shelter 24 hours per day; Health Unit officials had difficulty inspecting them all; and County officials had trouble keeping track of where they all were and what services were being provided at each one.

The emergency plan for the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton calls for the Region to set up and run shelters during an emergency. During the 1998 Ice Storm emergency, the Region’s plan was not followed and individual municipalities instinctively set up their own shelters. Some emergency responders have suggested trying to reduce the number of shelters during the next emergency or designating fewer for overnight accommodations. (Kingston used city buses as mobile shelters where people could get warm, have a bite to eat, drink something warm, and be informed of the latest developments.) However, the shelters became important community gathering places, helping to relieve feelings of isolation and reduce anxiety. People met friends and neighbors at the shelters and their children played together. The shelters were also heavily used to disseminate information. Reducing the number of shelters may make the response easier for emergency officials, but could make life more difficult for residents who are reluctant to travel further to get to a shelter, or who are hesitant to go to a place they are not familiar with.

Urban vs. Rural Municipalities

The emergency response was somewhat uneven across municipalities, partly due to the state of preparedness of individual municipalities, but also due in part to the differences between urban and rural areas. Urban areas, which are more densely populated, were a priority for Ontario Hydro and had power restored sooner than rural areas. Urban municipalities with more staff, greater administrative capacity, and better resources and facilities were better equipped to handle the ice storm emergency. Rural areas are not only sparsely populated, but have fewer economic and public services, and consequently, the effects of the ice storm were different. The capacity of small municipalities to respond was limited. It was not a matter of competence but rather having a less sophisticated and smaller public sector with fewer resources. The larger geographic area of rural municipalities was also a factor in the emergency response. Greater traveling distances in rural areas made response more difficult and time consuming. Door-to-door checks took longer; and there was more road per house to clear and maintain. Rural residents also had to contend with having no running water, unlike urban residents whose water is supplied under pressure. On the other hand, more rural residents had an alternate heat source in their homes. Urban residents would be well advised to consider installing an alternate source of heat in their own homes in the future.

These differences were not always well understood by urban-based response agencies and emergency responders unfamiliar with the nature of rural areas. This partially explains why rural needs were not always well understood during the emergency, resulting in a delay in developing appropriate responses.

As already discussed, emergency legislation encourages municipalities to look after themselves before considering the circumstances their neighbours. As a result, assistance did not always get where it needed to go most during the ice storm. In the Kingston area, the military started doing door-to-door checks in the City and worked its way out to the rural areas. Military officials indicated that their assistance was needed more in the rural areas and that is where they should have started, working their way in towards the City. Quite understandably, Kingston officials felt some ownership over the troops at CFB Kingston (since the base is located in their municipality), and attempted to commandeer soldiers from the base and cadets from the Royal Military College (also located in Kingston), for themselves. (A Signals Regiment from CFB Kingston initially worked in Kingston and then was re-deployed to Quebec). However, in actuality, military troops are a national resource and should therefore be available equally to all municipalities and distributed according to need.

In other instances, urban municipalities, including the City of Kingston, did look beyond their boundaries, offering help to their neighbours and welcoming residents from other municipalities into their shelters. Some urban areas, such as Gananoque, kept their shelters open longer than would otherwise have been necessary, to specifically accommodate the needs of rural residents.

“Local governments wish to make their own decisions about how their resources are deployed. They are inclined to look after their own needs before they devote resources to another municipality – even if others are in greater need.”

Joe Scanlon,
Ottawa-Carleton and the 1998 Ice Storm: Sharing the Lessons Learned. Draft Report, pg. 71

County and Regional Response

Some problems were experienced in the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville. Individual municipalities were running their own emergency response, as they are supposed to under the legislation, but some services (such as social services and policing) are provided by or are co-ordinated at the County level. Further complicating this situation was the fact that municipal amalgamations had taken place just days before the storm and no county Warden had yet been elected. Bonnie McIsaac, Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services, described the situation this way:

“In Leeds-Grenville there is the separated City of Brockville and the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville which had just amalgamated from 22 to 14 townships on January 1, 1998. There was a leadership vacuum in the United Counties and the response to the ice storm suffered. The election for warden had not yet taken place. There was a definite power struggle between the individual townships and the United Counties. This resulted in duplication in staffing and equipping the emergency shelters, in the collection of food and the distribution of food vouchers and in accountability. It became such a disorganized mess that the Provincial Operations Centre in Toronto assigned one of their coordinators to the United Counties of Leeds-Grenville. Subsequent to that, an interim Warden was assigned to try and deal with the chaos. It did get somewhat better. There were also long standing struggles between the United Counties and the City of Brockville with respect to where the donations of food would come from, who could access the food donations, who would man the control centre. That was the downside. The upside was, at the end of it all it seemed to have forged stronger political relationships and relationships between the two social services departments. The responses of Lanark County and the City of Brockville were very smooth. Both had plans in place and strong leadership.”

Howard French,
Reeve of the Township of Rideau Lakes, who was elected interim Warden (and eventually Warden) of Leeds-Grenville had the following to say:

“I certainly would not have left Rideau Lakes to take on the other position of responsibility [Warden] had I not felt that first off that there was somebody that could be left in charge and secondly that I thought we had things well in hand.” Reeve French clearly felt his first responsibility was to his own municipality, but the widespread nature of the ice storm emergency required a co-ordinated response from the local municipalities and the County.

Some of these problems go back to the nature of the County as a municipality. Counties differ from other municipalities in being a rather loose confederation of local municipalities, with limited responsibilities. They exist to provide a limited range of services where economies of scale require a larger area than is afforded by any of the smaller local municipalities. In the case of Leeds and Grenville, secondary but not local roads and streets, social welfare and two homes for the aged are the responsibility of the County. The head of council, the Warden, is chosen annually by the county council that is composed of the reeves and deputy reeves of the townships, villages and towns making up the county. The county has limited administrative and professional resources, and no county council is likely to act contrary to strongly held views of a constituent municipality. The City of Brockville and the Town of Gananoque are not part of the County, although there are some joint service arrangements.

In the Kingston area, the County of Frontenac had been dissolved as of January 1, 1998. As a result of amalgamation, the adjoining Townships of Kingston and Pittsburgh had merged with the City of Kingston to form a new City of Kingston. The other thirteen townships had amalgamated to form four new townships: -North, Central, and South Frontenac Townships, and the Township of Frontenac Islands-, and the county functions were transferred to the townships.

Regional governments are somewhat like counties in having an extensive geographic area of jurisdiction. They are however much more powerful having more responsibilities and direct election to regional council of at least some members. Regions include cities, unlike most counties. Tension between local and regional governments is an ongoing problem. The local municipalities are not subordinate to the region, although in some respects they must conform to regional policies. In the case of the ice storm, two of the key activities, -shelters and electrical power-, were looked after locally and the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton had only a minor role.

There were also reports of municipalities “hoarding” resources, again as a result of people looking inward instead of outward. Being at the edge of the disaster area, Kingston received many of the shipments of donated goods coming from points further west. Kingston kept what it needed and tried to distribute the rest, becoming a de facto regional supply center. Kingston had not planned for this role and had trouble finding warehousing space. Eventually the local armouries was used, not the best place according to local military officials, who felt the armouries should have been left available to house troops. Not having planned to play a regional role, and busy responding to the needs of its own residents, Kingston became a bottleneck in the staging point for deliveries of supplies to points further east. There was no alternative found in the circumstances.

Again, this situation resulted from the widespread nature of the ice storm emergency, a circumstance not anticipated by local municipal emergency plans or by provincial emergency planning organizations.

Emergency Measures Ontario

In general, people interviewed for this study indicated they had little or no contact with EMO, particularly at the beginning of the emergency. Some interviewees tried to contact EMO officials during the first stages of the emergency but could not get through on the phone lines (e.g., Howard French, Reeve of the Township of Rideau Lakes). Aware they probably had their hands full, he set about seeing to the immediate needs of his community. French’s experience was typical and similar to that of Gary Bennett, Mayor of the City of Kingston:

“Q: In your first interview you pointed out that they (EMO) were three days late. Were they effective once they got to Kingston?

“I think they played an important role once they got here. The difficulty for EMO, once again, is they have limited resources and they were dealing with ... normally they deal with 20 or 30 emergencies a year, and this year they’ve dealt with something like 200 already, because there were so many communities across Ontario that declared emergencies. In fact ... they said the number of municipalities that declared emergencies was actually three times that [if you think of them in their old, unamalgamated state]. So I think [Emergency Measures Ontario] was no different than anyone else in the province, they were just absolutely overwhelmed with the magnitude of it. In fairness to them I think they were in the same situation as someone like Ontario Hydro, the cable companies, Bell Telephone or whoever. Nobody has those kind of resources just sitting on a shelf, ready to pull off.”

“And actually a lot of the [EMO] relief effort was further east from here. There were parts of Ontario that had already felt the effects of the storm, so a lot of EMO’s resources had already been dedicated further east, and I’m sure they were probably co-operating with the province of Quebec too ... So the Ontario Emergency Operations Centre was an important participant in the process. It’s just that initially at that table there wasn’t anybody there with us. And I guess that was my comment, that in an emergency you have to recognize that you have to be prepared to deal with the situation, probably at least for the first 24 or 48 hours, on your own, so you’re going to be in some ways isolated, and you’re going to have to be resourceful and just rely on yourself, your wits and your own resources, initially, because it takes time to bring resources to bear on an emergency situation ... It’s not a criticism; it’s just a recognition that that’s the way the system works.”

If it had been a train derailment or a plane crash, the situation with EMO might have been very different, Gary Bennett notes, but the ice storm was unique.

Q: It’s just a little ironic that one of Kingston’s councillors is a full-time employee with Emergency Measures Ontario, and here we are unable to get their attention during the first two or three days.

“Isn’t it. Actually he [Randy Reid] had been sent on to some community further east from here. He’d already been sequestered and gone. So I couldn’t even call him. He’d already been resourced out of the community.””

From the interviews with Gary Bennett, Mayor City of Kingston

Frustration with EMO was also felt in the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton.

“One of the first calls the original generator person made was to provincial EMO. Five hours later, an officer called back to say the province could not supply generators. Some days later, EMO wanted to know what generators were available and where they were going. Annoyed by the initial refusal, the generator team ignored the requests from Toronto and insisted on running its own show.”

Joe Scanlon, Ottawa-Carleton and the 1998 Ice Storm: Sharing the Lessons Learned. Draft Report, pg. 56

EMO was not prepared to handle such a large-scale emergency particularly at the outset. Typically, EMO sends a field officer to any municipality that declares an emergency. During the ice storm EMO found itself dealing with 66 declared emergencies and just 4 field officers. Greater demands than ever before were placed on the Provincial Operations Center (POC) and staff who had never worked an emergency were pulled in from other divisions of the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services.

EMO found itself in another unusual situation, receiving many requests each day for generators and other commodities in short supply such as batteries, flashlights, candles and various types of fuel. The POC also received calls from municipalities offering assistance and calls from other municipalities requesting help.

In response, EMO set up a special working group to locate and distribute generators. It was decided that existing networks would be used to get the other supplies to eastern Ontario. Suppliers such as Canadian Tire were contacted and asked to divert supplies to the disaster area. This approach worked, but stores ran out of many items before the system was put in place.

The concept of “twinning” was born at EMO, during the first weekend of the ice storm emergency. Municipalities offering assistance were matched with municipalities asking for help. The first match was made between Toronto and Ottawa, but when it was realized that the situation in Ottawa was well in hand, Toronto was twinned with Kingston and Smiths Falls. The twinning between Toronto and Kingston had already been arranged directly between the two mayors on Thursday evening. Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman gave the go-ahead for City staff to travel to Kingston and give whatever assistance was required. Hydro and forestry crews came, along with experts in emergency planning and response. Benefits flowed both ways. Kingston staff got much needed help, saw different work practices in action and learned about emergency response command systems. On the other hand, Toronto staff gained valuable experience and insight:

“[from an emergency management experience point of view] it was great. It was fabulous. It’s the only way to go. There’s nothing like being a part of it…to be in that, you can’t buy that kind of experience. You can’t go to enough courses to learn that.”

Warren Leonard,
Toronto Police Services, City of Toronto

Provincial Ministries

Various provincial ministries set up their own head office response units in addition to being present at the POC. Two such Ministries were the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) (St. Catharines) and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) (Guelph). Local Ministry officials in eastern Ontario praised the efforts of their head offices but felt some frustration that they were not free to set their own priorities:

“Sometimes there was frustration that they [head office] didn’t sense the emergency because they weren’t here on the front line. My #1 priority might be #10 on their list because they were responding to a bigger area. They were hearing the need but we were left to direct the operation pretty much ourselves. They really didn’t interfere with us a lot. They were quite helpful actually. I don’t know of any issue that was left undone.”

Wayne Brydges,
Head of Engineer Services, Ontario Ministry of Transportation

“This debriefing [EMO’s Postmortem of Ice Storm ‘98] was a fresh reminder for Kathy [Moore-Regional Director of Eastern Ontario, Ontario Ministry of Transportation], of the frustrations that she and so many other MTO employees had experienced during the storm as they were not authorized to use ministry resources to help locally unless EMO or municipal officials requested it.

As a result, the Kemptville luncheon was a good opportunity to reinforce to staff why it is so important during a crisis to follow the process set out in the ministry’s and the province’s emergency plans.

Using a hospital analogy, Kathy talked about the one doctor who takes charge during a disaster so that limited medical resources are used to deal with the most critically injured first. A similar system of centralized authority was put in place during January’s Ice Storm when EMO’s provincial operations centre took control of all activities in eastern Ontario. MTO was not allowed to act on its own, but had to wait and follow specific directions from Toronto.”

From “MTO Eastern Region Staff Reminisce at Ice Storm Luncheon”

The Provincial ministries have emergency plans, but were not prepared for this type of widespread emergency:

“[Ontario] Ministry of Community and Social Services were not prepared for this emergency. I am off to Toronto tomorrow and Friday and part of what will be discussed with us will be the Ministry Plan, what should be in place, a nuclear plan, but also probably the expectations and requirements for each area office to have a plan in place.”

Marvin Valensky,
Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services

“Twice a year preparedness exercises hypothesize separate problems but did not anticipate they would happen all at once. Nor had they anticipated the inability to pump fuel and warm and feed staff.”

Wayne Brydges,
Ontario Ministry of Transportation

Emergency plans did not contemplate the loss of communications systems that occurred. Plans were predicated on being able to use telephones, computers, fax machines and photocopiers. In addition to now planning for widespread emergencies, emergency planners will need to put systems in place to deal with severe breakdowns in communication.

Federal Response

At the federal level the “coordinating effort involved the identification, procurement and movement of a number of key resources from across Canada and from throughout the United States. These included generators, transformers, cots, medical supplies, telephone poles, etc. In addition, the federal assistance was able to facilitate the cross border movement of emergency supplies and personnel through Canada and United States customs and to arrange a waiver on restrictions on the movement of heavy loads on some state highways on weekends. Federal agencies provided information and assistance in the areas of critical incident stress management, the management of emergency shelters, disposal of dead animals, etc…”

Michael Braham,
Director, Emergency Programs and Exercises, Emergency Preparedness Canada, from a letter to the Ice Storm ’98 project dated April 23, 1998.

The federal government also provided troops via the Ontario and Quebec emergency measures organizations. Over 15,000 troops from across Canada were deployed, the largest ever peacetime deployment of Canadian soldiers. The military proved to be invaluable to emergency response and their efforts were highly praised by many interviewees.

During the ice storm, federal troops in Ontario were under EMO’s command. The role the military was permitted to play was dictated by EMO. Restrictions on troop activities created a problem: some troops felt hampered in their efforts to provide assistance because medical personnel were unable to use their skills to assist those in need. (Joe Scanlon, Ottawa-Carleton and the 1998 Ice Storm: Sharing the Lessons Learned, Draft Report). Legislative restrictions prevented military personnel from directing traffic, a role that would have been useful during the ice storm. One military officer interviewed felt that the military’s mandate should have been broader from the beginning, with the military left to decide how best to fulfill that mandate, rather than EMO changing that mandate during the emergency.

Other disagreements arose between the military and EMO:

“The military’s disagreements with EMO stemmed from a difference in philosophy. EMO’s approach, -as explained earlier-, is that municipalities must take care of their own needs, asking for help only when that was impossible. That is what might be called the “pull” approach. The military operates on a completely different philosophy - what it calls a “push” theory. It keeps pumping in supplies until it is clear that all needs are met. Then it starts making decisions about what is appropriate. Its view is that when people are in need there is no point in waiting until they make up their mind about exactly what they want. Later, any unneeded supplies can be reallocated.”

Joe Scanlon,
Ottawa-Carleton and the 1998 Ice Storm: Sharing the Lessons Learned. Draft Report, pg. 60

A further difference was management style. EMO tended on occasion to micro-manage even though it had neither the knowledge nor the resources to do so effectively. The military style is much more to define problems and assign responsibility, expecting the individual on the spot to use his/her initiative and judgment. At the operational level, they act on the request of local officials.

Summary

In summary, municipal response to the ice storm emergency was swift and vigorous, if somewhat uneven and disorganized. To fare better in future emergencies, municipalities need to do more planning and preparing ahead of time: -municipalities with plans coped better than those without plans, and previous training proved helpful. New plans need to deal with widespread emergencies as well as single-point emergencies.

Provincial and federal responses were invaluable and functioned at two levels. The field operational bodies acted quickly and effectively. However, the central offices took longer to comprehend the problem and to act. Three exceptions were OMAFRA, which has a long tradition of keeping in touch with the local farming community, MNR with long experience in dealing with emergencies in the form of forest fires, and MTO with generations of responsibility for maintaining and clearing major roads. To reduce the delay of central response during future emergencies, senior levels of government need to prepare plans for responding to widespread emergencies that can affect millions of people. In addition to fulfilling their traditional roles of providing advice and mobilizing their own resources, provincial and federal governments need to be prepared to procure needed supplies and equipment during some emergencies. They should also review the way in which they are organized to make decisions in an emergency.

The legal role regional governments and counties are permitted to play during emergencies needs to be clarified and their roles accounted for in local emergency plans. The role urban municipalities should play in assisting their rural neighbors also needs to be explored, as emergencies do not conform to political boundaries. This is particularly true of the urban-rural relationship.

Recommended Changes at the Provincial Level

Interviewees identified the following issues that should be considered by the Province:

1. Change legislation to require gas stations along Highway 401 to have back-up power for their fuel pumps.
2. Change legislation to require seniors’ homes and facilities that house other groups of vulnerable people to have back-up power.
3. Change legislation to require radio stations to have back-up power at their broadcasting offices and their towers.
4. Change legislation to allow members of the military to direct traffic.
5. Clarify authority to remove people from their homes.
6. Clarify authority to commandeer facilities for use in an emergency.
7. Clarify liability and workers’ compensation issues for volunteers and municipal staff working within and outside municipal boundaries during an emergency.
8. Prepare public service announcements (PSA’s) ahead of time for use during emergencies. Having PSA’s prepared in advance of emergencies was mentioned by a number of interviewees. If EMO prepares generic PSA’s local municipalities can adapt them for their own use. This is more efficient than each municipality preparing its own.
9. EMO should use a web site and/or e-mail to distribute information during emergencies.
10. Clarify who should request a psycho-social response if it is required during or after emergencies.
11. Stress individual and household preparedness in planning and education efforts. Consider combining Fire Prevention Week with Emergency Preparedness Week.
12. Consider building code changes to require both battery and direct-wired smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in homes.
13. Consider building code changes that would reduce basement flooding during power outages.
14. Educate municipalities regarding the role of the military during an emergency and how their help is to be requested.
15. Consider cross-training staff in other divisions of the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services, especially the Fire Marshal’s Office, to assist EMO during emergencies.
16. Use the Ice Storm as a new standard for emergency planning, similar to the way Hurricane Hazel is used as a standard for flooding.
17. Examine how the concept of “twinning” should be used in emergency planning and how twinning can be co-ordinated with mutual aid arrangements used by Fire Departments.
18. Examine the feasibility of instituting an emergency broadcast system such as the one that exists in the United States.