IceStorm 98 Study

C. COMMUNICATIONS

1. “Biggest issue is communication always in an emergency.”

   Wilsie Hatfield, Dupont, Maitland and Community Awareness and Emergency Response (CAER)

   “Communications were ‘lousy’. Communications on all these things are lousy. Anything we get involved in, communications are always a problem. It doesn’t come as a surprise at all that communications were a problem. Ask any policeman what happens when there’s an event, whatever it is, and what could have been fixed, it’s communications.”

   Bob Napier, City of Kingston, Police

   “The inability to communicate was the most serious problem that the MTO faced as part of the Ice Storm. Ontario requires dependable transportation and knowledge about road conditions so that vehicles are not sent down roads where they may get into trouble. The inability to communicate with remote patrols deprived the Regional Centre Group of that knowledge. They felt uncomfortable assuming that the highways were safe because they did not know.”

   Wayne Brydges, Ministry of Transportation

   “The hardest thing to understand about the whole ice storm is how dependent we really are on communications. I think that was the biggest eye opener that I saw.”

   Constable Al Melvin, City of Kingston Police

2. “Lesson #1 is that robust communications are needed”.

   Bruce Stock, Emergency Measures Ontario

3. Communications was the most time consuming problem…the weakest link.
4. “The biggest task was to keep the public up to date and informed – that’s the number 1 communication issue”.

   Marg Verbeek, Regional Municipality of Kitchener Waterloo

   “What the people really appreciated in Boucherville was our always telling them exactly what was going on.”

   Francine Gadbois, Mayor, Boucherville, Quebec

5. “Public information is never enough and we’ve got to become more innovative…maybe use the school board network.”

   Harold Tulk, City of Brockville, Fire Chief

6. Robust, redundant communications systems are needed. Back-up power is required for towers and offices.

   “It was decided that what was really needed is a communication infrastructure that doesn’t rely entirely on power. The problem is how we do that. A mobile emergency unit was an idea.”

   Rita Byvelds, Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Kingston

7. Ensure telephone systems will work without power; change the voice mail system to suit emergency needs.

   “Shut down all but a few selected voice-mail boxes. For us the voice-mail system presented two problems. Many staff members were phoning in to their supervisors, leaving voice-mail messages as to their unavailability or phone numbers where they could be contacted. Unfortunately if the supervisor was unable to report to work, no one could access these messages.”

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

8. Keep some phone numbers private and guard these numbers jealously; give the private numbers to the media. Issue phone numbers daily.
9. Ensure emergency facilities have lots of phone lines.
10. Call centers and 1-800 numbers for the public to call worked well. Residents got current information “and that was key”. Ensure people answering the phones are well trained and the call centers get new information as soon as it is available. Get head sets for people answering the phones.
11. The radio was invaluable for getting information out to the public. Ensure one radio station can broadcast to your entire municipality.
12. Cell phones proved to be extremely useful, especially for people working out in the field. This instant communication was important, did not have the delay of voice mail or pagers.
13. Amateur (ham) radio equipment and operators were an important life-line – sometimes the only means of communication. Install towers ahead of time at shelters and other emergency facilities.
14. Put ARES members on alert early on, when phones are still working and have them stand-by on their radios.
15. Amateur radio can travel with vehicles or people as well as being stationary.
16. CB radios were a life-line.
17. Portable radios were extremely helpful (some systems were brought in from outside the affected area).
18. Having different radio systems and frequencies sometimes meant people couldn’t talk to each other, but when one system was down, often another one was up. Harold Tulk, Fire Chief for the City of Brockville argues that the fire department should have a central communications system functionally independent of other emergency services.
19. Programmable radio systems worked “great.”

    “Kingston Utilities Supplier (Ericsson) sent in extra radios for use during the storm. In the past Utilities had a system where everybody had to talk on the same frequency. They replaced it in 1994, and this one is programmable, so you can program different talk groups. So Utilities had different crews on different talk groups, so they could be talking at the same time, but they would think they were on their own frequency. In the operations centre, they had four or five different base stations with people monitoring the different talk groups. For example, they had one person who monitored only gas leak calls and paid no attention to the electrical calls, ‘Because if you had everybody on the same system, you’d never be able to pick out the critical stuff.’”

    from the interview with Nancy Taylor, City of Kingston, Utilities

20. Ensure there are enough portable radios.
21. Set up a communications protocol for external and internal communications. Part of internal communications is letting the families of responders know what is happening.
22. Appoint a media spokesperson and a press release co-ordinator.
23. Set up press conferences with 5 or 6 senior people; make sure everybody restricts their comments to their own field.
24. Issue shorter media releases so they don’t take as long to compose and get out.
25. Try to priorize media fax list (some lists were so long it took several hours to FAX everyone on it); try to use the Internet (e-mail) to distribute information.
26. Use web sites to distribute information.
27. Public service announcements were a vital component in minimizing death, injury, accidents, and crimes.
28. Prepare flyers and public service announcements to be handed out door-to-door.
29. Plan for public announcement stations and billboards; use local businesses to disseminate information.
30. Use laptop computers to take minutes of meetings as you go and distribute minutes immediately after the meeting.
31. Access to information is needed on a 24/7 (24 hours a day/seven days a week) basis.
32. Consider establishing an emergency radio broadcasting system like the one in the United States.
33. Establish regular meetings with Council. They can feed information back to residents and assist with their contacts in the community.
34. Have liaison persons at the control center and at critical locations for sharing and disseminating information. (e.g., have a liaison person at seniors’ homes, so the residents can be kept informed).
35. Ensure pagers can be recharged and have a supply of extra batteries – charging pagers was a problem for many fire departments.