IceStorm 98 Study

B. ORGANIZING THE RESPONSE

1. Remember it is normal to be disorganized at first – it always takes a few days to get organized.
2. Response from outside the affected area was slower than from the inside, because it was difficult to get people to understand what was happening if they weren’t in the middle of it. People from outside the area should come and see for themselves what the situation is.
3. To know the nature and scale of what you are dealing with it is important to do reconnaissance – people should be assigned this task (both inside and outside the affected area). An early estimate of the people, services, and equipment required to respond to the emergency is needed.
4. The problem couldn’t be managed from Toronto – local managers were needed but required support from head offices (government and non-government).

   “During the crisis response, at least telephone communication was maintained at all times with Guelph (OMAFRA’s head office). In addition, each evening there was a one to one-and-a-half hour conference call with all the managers and directors at the command centre and the eight or ten managers that were distributed in the east. We were updating them and they were telling us what support we could expect. It was important to have a pool of people off-site.”

   John Finlay, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs, Brighton

   “If we needed major items like more generators and pumps, the call would first go out to Trenton. Very early on, MNR set up a receiving depot at Canadian Forces Base – Trenton. MNR equipment, normally stored at Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie and Dryden, was flown to Trenton for redistribution during the ice storm response. At the end of each day, an order would be faxed to Trenton. Trenton would reply as to whether they had the item or how long it would take to get it. The fire boss would make the decision as to whether he had the time to wait for it.”

   Terry Eccles, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources

5. It is important to keep track of things. This includes staff, volunteers, equipment, donations, purchases, people using shelters, and incoming calls. Computers, maps and accounting staff should be utilized for this job. Duplicate message pads proved useful for keeping records. Having records allows you to match requests with offers and volunteers with jobs. Good records also allow you to apply for aid, return equipment to the right place, and thank the right people.

   “If you don’t know what you have and you don’t know where it is, you can’t effectively deploy resources. Picture trying to do any job; try and bake a cake when you think you might have the ingredients but you don’t know where they are.

   Convincing the group of the importance of this step was difficult because they were a bit caught up in the emergency. Dealing with emergencies is not most people’s everyday line of work. [Dealing with emergencies] you learn to save yourself time and aggravation by developing systems and taking good inventory as the emergency is unfolding. A fellow taught me two rules a long time ago, and it downplays the thing, but it’s sort of a way of looking at it. Rule number one is ‘don’t sweat the small stuff,’ and rule number two is ‘it’s all small stuff.’ So you sit down and you literally take this thing apart and put it back together. While I’m sure it seemed like a waste of time to them in the beginning, the next day when somebody calls in for a generator, and you go down the list and say ‘OK, yeah, we have a 6,500-watt generator sitting right here, and you assign a crew to go get it, life is much easier. It’s a lot calmer then, because you’re not scrambling around looking for resources you’re not sure you have...”

   Scott Cowden, Toronto Fire Service

   “There was no prescribed method for tracking the generators and when they numbered only five, tracking them was not a problem. But as the numbers grew, a system of numbering each generator and placing correspondingly numbered pins in a map was how she kept track of their whereabouts. Byvelds credits the manager of the farm supply dealership with devising the system.”

   from the interview with Rita Byvelds, Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Ontario

6. Document procedures so others can take over a job.
7. Record what is happening for reporting during the emergency and for debriefings after the emergency.

   “Issue pocket-sized notebooks to everyone. There needs to be an easy, accessible and retrievable method of recording events. Much trial and error led us to conclude that office-based systems (computers), clipboards, and binders were impractical when people were moving throughout the facility.”

   Hospital Quarterly, Dave G. Hunter, Delores MacDonald, Linda Peever- Spring 1998

8. Use cameras to record damage. City of Kingston workers initially filled out occurrence sheets describing the location and nature of the damage. When this proved too time consuming pictures were taken instead. Tape recorders could have been used and would have been faster than filling out the occurrence sheets, but the City didn’t have the machines or batteries. Cameras were purchased for the emergency.
9. “The emergency response requires not only carrying out day to day operations but also logistics planning (eg. food, shelter, supervision, materials, equipment, fuel, tools, etc. for work crews) and planning for the “what ifs”. Time spent in preparation for something that does not happen is not wasted energy.”

   Hospital Quarterly, Dave G. Hunter, Delores MacDonald, Linda Peever- Spring 1998

10. Strategic planning (thinking ahead beyond the next day) is required.

    “Trust and use the prepared disaster plan, even if it feels like ‘overkill.’ It would have been much easier for us to implement the formal components of the disaster plan, then back off if any were not required. Instead, we found ourselves trying to catch up once everyone’s time was over-committed to the tasks at hand.”

    Hospital Quarterly, Dave G. Hunter, Delores MacDonald, Linda Peever- Spring 1998

11. Expect the nature of the response to change over time and expect changing priorities. Set priorities on a day-to-day basis.

    “There seemed to be crisis after crisis…you’d feel as if you had control over one aspect and then something else would happen.”

    Ben TeKamp, Mayor, City of Brockville

12. A lot of operations planning was done overnight, with crews meeting in the morning for a debriefing and to get their assignments for the day, so no work time in the field was lost.
13. Setting up places for crews to eat together got everybody together for the morning debriefings.
14. Expect an ebb and flow of activity; expect that some people will have very little to do at times when other people are run off their feet.
15. Maintain safety practices at all times. Limit outside work to daylight hours.

    “Safety was one factor that was not overlooked by MNR in favour of following the municipality’s wishes. For example, through EMO, two chippers were sent down from Parry Sound to Lansdowne. One was ‘a relic from 1970’s’. After spending ‘quite a lot of money to get it working’, it was found to have no safety equipment on it. Nor did it have a reverse, in case something got caught in it. MNR made the decision to scrap it. The municipality pressured the MNR to let them use it. MNR refused on the grounds of the safety risk and ended up disabling the machine by removing the battery and switch.”

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

16. Expect frequent meetings, especially at the beginning.
17. Ensure Control Group meetings focus on planning and decision-making, and not on operational issues. This helps keep the meetings shorter and focused on the issues the Control Group should be dealing with.
18. All disciplines including the private sector and military should be at the Control Group meetings. Allowing a lot of people to attend the meetings helps to keep everybody informed.
19. Ensure no one is taking phone calls during a control group meeting.
20. Ensure people answering the phones get information as soon as it is available (eg. Press releases, Control Group meeting minutes.
21. Create Control Group meeting minutes as the meeting is taking place so they are available immediately after the meeting (this can be done using a computer).
22. Work in pairs and use the buddy system so someone can be trained to take over, and people can keep an eye on each other for stress. This is true for all types of workers from Control Group members to volunteers.
23. If you can’t attend a Control Group meeting, send someone in your place so the information flow continues.
24. Don’t change things unless you have made an obvious mistake – changes result in confusion. Once someone is trained to do a job, keep them doing the same job; once a contact is established for something try to make sure that person remains the contact throughout the emergency.
25. Don’t assign the same task to more than one person. In the City of Kingston people would carry out an assigned task only to find out someone else had been assigned the same task and it was already done. This resulted in a duplication of effort and a lot of frustration.

    “There was ‘a little bit of conflict’ between the players in the response, but not much. One thing the City didn’t do well enough was manage conflict when two or three people did the same job at the same time. Obviously it was wrong to have two or three people doing the same job at the same time, but it was inevitable.

    When you had resources being sent out of Brockville, resources being sent out of Kingston, resources being sent out of Ottawa, and resources being sent out of Toronto, it wasn’t surprising that occasionally a crew would get to an emergency site and find out that somebody else had already solved the problem. And it was deeply frustrating to people, and we had a lot of people getting angry around those issues: ‘God dammit I’ve wasted an hour driving all the way out to the boonies here, and lo and behold the Red Cross has been here for an hour and a half, why wasn’t I told?’ Thump, thump, thump. Several people responded to an emergency call, because the person in dire straits phoned everybody they could think of, and we all responded. There were some instances in which we got there first and heard later that others had gotten there.

    The redundancy occasionally originated in City Hall, but in most cases it was because the person in distress called several people for help, and several people responded.

    from the interview with Gardner Church, interim CAO, City of Kingston

26. Look at the emergency as a long term one and set up operations to last indefinitely.

    “If the exact duration of a disaster situation is unknown, anticipate a lengthy period at the earliest stage of planning. This will be important for such issues as staggering times off for a limited number of staff.”

    Hospital Quarterly, Dave G. Hunter, Delores MacDonald, Linda Peever- Spring 1998

27. “The emergency response part of it is our business, so we practice for it all the time. When you make decisions, you make sure that you get all the facts from everybody, and you talk to the people who are going to have to carry out whatever it is, and find out what the best methods are for doing that under the conditions we were under. So we just followed those procedures. There wasn’t anything that was really difficult for us to make decisions on.”

    Glenn Gow, Fire Chief, City of Kingston

28. “The response of the MNR fire crews is so practiced that it is automatic. Their organizational skills were a great benefit to the municipalities they were here to help.
    The crews initially came to cut wood but stayed to organize the response to the emergency. Their (the MNR crews’) experience with fire fighting was a tremendous help here for the municipalities. They just set up their organization the same way they would move into a fire situation and it worked extremely well. I think you can adapt that to any type of emergency.”

    Terry Eccles, OntarioMinistry of Natural Resources

29. “Allow for some trust, flexibility and the bypassing of usual bureaucratic processes to expedite getting on with the job at hand.”

    Hospital Quarterly, Dave G. Hunter, Delores MacDonald, Linda Peever- Spring 1998

30. Egos need to be dropped, so everybody can get on with the job at hand.
31. “The way things unfolded was the best way to meet the particular challenges of this ice storm. It is doubtful that classical organizational theory and command structures would work. You just go with the flow and do the best you can. Empower people. Take some risk with them. Mentor more people to participate. The effective organization was very flat. It didn’t matter who was management or bargaining unit, professional, non-professional, you did whatever had to be done. Now you had to run your hospital the way you would run a hospital but outside of that, when it came to helping so many other people, you just did what you had to do and whoever was able, did.”

    Wayne Barnett, Kingston Psychiatric Hospital

    “It was critical that the administrator did not call an internal disaster because by not doing so, options were kept open for people to do what was necessary and not just what was prescribed [by the internal disaster procedure].”

    Beverley Jones, Kingston Psychiatric Hospital

32. “No matter how enticing it is for administrative staff to roll up their sleeves and work along with everyone else to get the job done, those charged with managing a disaster must attend to those perhaps less rewarding, control-group and command-centre functions. From our experience, managers must find a balance of planning and doing, as staff morale is indeed positively affected when all levels participate in the front line activity”.

    Hospital Quarterly, Dave G. Hunter, Delores MacDonald, Linda Peever- Spring 1998

33. Business resumption and access to money is critical for enabling people to look after themselves during an emergency; effort should be expended on keeping /getting businesses back up and running. This is especially true in small centers where there are no alternatives to the one local grocery store or bank.

    “Lack of cash was a problem. Debit and credit cards were not useable as they rely on electrical power for their transactions. During the second week, after dark in Alexandria, I came upon one of those bank machines in the middle of a parking lot. It was hooked up to a generator and there was a Brinks truck feeding it money. I bet there were people from 50 miles around there to get money from this bank machine.”

    Kathryn Moore, Ministry of Transportation, Kingston

34. Remember that you will need to decide how and when to stand down and turn off the supply tap.
35. Visibility of politicians, police, fire, ambulance, and military is reassuring to people in a disaster.

    “Studies show that crime rates tend to fall during disasters but that the public does not believe this and wants extra police patrols for reassurance.”

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

36. Use a situation board to convey information instantly. (One Canadian Tire store in Kingston adopted this technique, displaying a list of items in high demand that were not in stock at the time).
37. Use unlisted phone numbers and keep them unlisted.
38. Remember that dairy herds and other livestock need to be looked after as well as people.
39. Don’t use armouries as warehouses, because they may be needed to house soldiers.
40. There is often a clash between military and civilian cultures. Police officers are used to dealing with both cultures and can help smooth relations.
41. Consider screening volunteers. This is a delicate issue but can be very important. In the City of Kingston Social Services was instrumental in screening volunteers; also use the police to do background checks.
42. Have visible ID or marking for staff and volunteers. This can be planned for ahead of time.
43. Ensure your equipment is kept in good shape and maintained properly. Fire trucks need to be kept warm, so fire halls should not be used for shelters during the emergency.
44. Identify people with special needs. Neighborhood watch volunteers may be able to help. Neighbors, especially in rural areas, were crucial in identifying high-risk situations.
45. In rural areas sending a local person with military personnel to do door-to-door checks worked well. The local person knew where to go, often knew the people they were calling on and the military provided vehicles, communications, and a reassuring presence.
46. Use a banker to help collect and record donations.