IceStorm 98 Study

E. SHELTERS

1. A lot of shelters were opened during the Ice Storm. Many, especially in the rural areas, were used very little for overnight accommodation, but were used extensively as drop-in centers – places where people could get warm, eat a hot meal, take a shower, find out what was going on, and visit with neighbours and friends.

   “While low use of shelters for overnight accommodations (in a disaster) is not usual, heavy use of these places as drop-in centres is unusual”.

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

2. The number of shelters made it difficult for those in charge to keep track of where they had been set up and which services were being offered. (For instance, the OPP did not have enough staff to have an officer at all 40 shelters in Leeds and Grenville 24 hours/day.)
3. Lots of small shelters resulted in a high level of ownership on the part of those who were running them.
4. Shelters were opened in different types of buildings including schools, legions, hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, fire halls, a snow mobile club house, and jails.
5. Schools make good shelters because people are familiar with school environments, schools are seen as community facilities, they already have an authority and people infrastructure, are on major transportation routes and often have facilities including kitchens, cafeterias, gymnasiums, a public address system, offices, lots of different rooms, and showers.
6. There was tension between City officials and schools officials at school shelters. Authority over schools needs to be clarified. Conflicts arose when the schools were still needed as shelters but school officials wanted to open them for regular classes. There may be a need to blend both activities for a while.
7. As shelters, Brockville and Kingston psychiatric hospitals had extensive back-up power and good facilities but, along with corrections facilities, using them as shelters created stress for people with past associations with these types of facilities. Some seniors reported being reluctant to go to BPH because they were afraid they wouldn’t be allowed to go back home.
8. Hospitals were used as shelters, especially for those with special medical needs (e.g., seniors, people recently released from the hospital, and people with chronic needs, such as requiring dialysis regularly). In an emergency with more injuries and deaths, the hospitals may not be available so other arrangements for those with medical needs would need to be made.
9. Triage people so they can be sent to the right shelter – where the level of care and the types of beds suit the person’s needs.
10. Try not to move people from shelter to shelter.
11. Separate the Emergency Operations Centre from the shelter if possible, because the noise and activity of the EOC interferes with the calm of the shelter.
12. Issues that had to be dealt with at the shelters included: beds (some are too high or too low for certain people); rules for smoking and drinking alcohol (eventually shelters banned alcohol); food safety, especially with donated food; outbreaks of disease; personal security; security for the shelter (some schools had thefts); vandalism; lights in sleeping areas; personal hygiene and showers; separate areas for seniors, families, children, infants, and teens; entertainment and toys; crafts and other activities; laundry; garbage; wheel chair access; parking and parking lot control; routines to ensure quiet times; cleaning (“school custodial staff were great”); phone access for shelter residents (Bell made pay phones free); phone access for shelter workers; access to information; checking on the homes of people staying at the shelter.
13. Try to ensure people bring clothing, bedding, and any medications they require.
14. Use medical students to help with health problems.
15. The presence of police and/or commissionaires at shelters was reassuring to people.

    “The Commissionaires were invaluable because they are invariably retired or soon-to-be retired military or law enforcement (people who have gone to school to learn about security). They were superb because of their past experience, they were able to give good advice and they were able to work with some of the residents in the shelters or people who lived close to the shelters who would go in to help.”

    Mike Stoneman, Canadian Red Cross Society, Kingston and District Branch

16. Use a separate entrance for shelter workers and provide separate eating and relaxing areas for workers.
17. Provide a central place to drop off donations at the shelter; control access to supplies [because some people were taking more than they needed at the time].
18. If residents from special care facilities are being brought to a shelter, bring staff with them since staff know what the residents’ needs are.
19. Be prepared to deal with drunk people showing up (one drunk was sent in a taxi to the Salvation Army shelter that deals with people with alcohol problems).
20. Be prepared to deal with parents who don’t look after their children (some parents were charged by police with abandoning their children).
21. Red Cross is good at doing registration and inquiry; use a computer to track where people are; use a registration card that people can take with them when they move from one shelter to another so they don’t have to re-register.
22. Military can help with registration.
23. Need to have people sign in and out of shelters.
24. Assure people that no information will be given out about where they are if they want their privacy maintained (this may include parolees, ex-convicts, fugitives, and dead-beat parents).
25. De-registration was one of the most challenging things, since most people wanted to leave immediately upon hearing that the hydro was back on. It was a challenge to make sure it was safe for people to go back to their homes.
26. Plan for shutting down the shelters; some people (especially the homeless) became dependent on the shelter and didn’t want to leave and some teens were having such a good time together they didn’t want to leave either.
27. Remember that the people in the shelters had no other options and that the shelter was a place of last resort for them; treat people with dignity and respect their privacy- the shelter becomes their home. The media does not have the right to access to the shelters because they are not “public” facilities when people are living there.

    "In terms of the shelters, at any point in that shelter when people are in the room where their bed is, that is considered their living residence. Just as I wouldn't come into your bedroom and try to find out if you were there or what you were doing, no one had the right to come in to that building to find out who we had there. And I'm talking about police in particular. This is not an opportunity for them to try and track down all the criminals that they've being trying to track down.” "People are very vulnerable in these situations and that space that they're in, as much as possible, has to be held in the same [regard] as if they were in their own house in their living room or their bedroom or kitchen. So when you talk about running a shelter, you've got to run it in such a way that people say 'yes, this is home for me'. And until you recognize that and say 'well, sure we have to have some control but we also have to recognize that there's a certain amount of dignity that people have to be treated with...’

    Mike had to explain this to the press (including the CBC) on a number of occasions. He finally let them go in to take some pan shots but was generally very resistant to letting them go in. Like I said to them, you wouldn't like me to come into your bedroom with a camera.

    Referring again to the media, Mike says he would allow them into the common area so that they would have opportunities for interviews. If a person in the shelter gave permission to have a photo taken or to be interviewed, then that was all right.”

    Mike Stoneman, The Canadian Red Cross Society, Kingston

28. Let people do what they are trained to do.

    "I think the thing that impressed me was the way in which the five different agencies all found what they were good at in the situation, let the other agencies do what they were good at, and just coordinated as we needed to. We didn't even really need to have team meetings the last couple of days.” [The five groups were] Queen's medical and nursing students, R.M.C. cadets, the Salvation Army, City Social Services, the Red Cross and their own [school] staff.

    from the interview with Gary Medd, LCVI, Kingston

29. What worked was having a City of Kingston representative at all the shelters at all times. The Red Cross was happy to have City social services staff at the shelters because they knew the City and were a link to City Hall.
30. On the people who used the shelters…

    “Q.E.C.V.I. was the highest need shelter in the community and was ‘the most challenging because of the population. We're talking people whose expectations are relatively high and their capacity to be able to deal with the situation is very low.’ Mike says it was very interesting fulfilling the needs of those people. Many of them were on social assistance and they were used to using the Social Assistance system. The people in the shelters who were not high need would come to the shelter for a hot meal (because that was the only way they could get a hot meal) but would generally prefer to stay at home. "I guess that's one of the unusual circumstances in a disaster, in any situation... People don't want to leave home when life beyond the walls of their home becomes uncertain." For the most part, individuals stayed in their home because there was a comfort level there and they wanted to protect their environment and have as much control over their lives as they could. For other people there was a need to be nurtured.”

    from the interview with Mike Stoneman, Canadian Red Cross Society, Kingston and District Branch