IceStorm 98 Study

( ii ) Planning Process

1. A municipal emergency co-ordinator should be appointed who is responsible for keeping the Emergency Plan up-to-date. This person should not be a consultant, but rather a municipal employee.
2. Use a loose-leaf binder format for the Emergency Plan so updates can be made easily and other important information can be inserted during an emergency.
3. People from all the various agencies and groups involved in emergency response should be involved in emergency planning, training and exercising including:
   • police
   • fire
   • ambulance
   • utilities
   • public works
   • social services
   • parks and recreation
   • mapping/GIS services
   • Red Cross
   • Salvation Army
   • Community Care Access Center
   • Victim Crisis and Referral Service
   • Hospitals
   • School Boards/Principals and Vice-Principals
   • Amateur radio operators/ARES
   • armed forces
   • YMCA
   • Legions
   • volunteer groups and individual volunteers
   • businesses, industries, and institutions
   • media
   • seniors’ homes, special care homes, etc.
   • community groups
   • neighborhood watch groups
   • Emergency Measures Ontario
4. Emergency planning should be done and reviewed by people who are going to be on the hot seat during an emergency and people involved in prior emergencies.
5. Emergency Plans should include up-to-date lists of municipal and community resources and where they can be found, including information on how to access these resources outside of normal business hours.
6. Emergency Plans should include up-to-date lists of municipal employees and volunteers together with their skills, and phone numbers and addresses at work and home.

   “Regardless of what an up-to-date emergency plan might have said, ‘my most powerful tool was having all the staff home phone numbers.’ This enabled the collection of information about who was doing what, which was crucial to planning the response to the crises. It allowed a reporting structure for things to happen efficiently while allowing for staff to respond to their personal and community emergencies. He doubted that anything that he knew in a traditional emergency plan would have helped in the ice storm situation. They did learn a lot from the ice storm that may find its way into the emergency plan either general or specific to an ice storm.”

   from the interview with Gerry Mulder, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources

   “It would have been a lot easier for me to call people if I had some kind of a staff inventory, or telephone fan-out. It would have been nice to have an inventory of skills of staff, which might be needed in response to the emergency.”

   Marvin Valensky, Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services, Kingston

7. A list of vulnerable groups and individuals should be kept up to date. A list of critical infrastructure (treatment plants, pumping stations, hospitals, etc.) should be maintained.
8. Keep hard copies of lists mentioned in #5 and #6, and #7.
9. Plan to use resources inside and outside the community.
10. Include public awareness and education in the planning process, since initial response in a disaster is often by the victims themselves. Stress preparedness of individuals and families; one interviewee suggested households should plan to be able to look after themselves for 2-3 days.
11. Communications, both internal and external should be a planning priority.
12. Consider prevention and mitigation of disasters when planning.
13. Try to build some redundancy into resource planning. Both Brockville Psychiatric Hospital and Kingston Psychiatric Hospital had extra room and were used extensively as shelters. If communities lose these types of resources through restructuring, dealing with the next emergency will be more difficult.
14. Planning needs to consider how to respond when the resources you normally have aren’t there (e.g., -electricity, phone lines, fuel, etc.)