IceStorm 98 Study

Endnotes

1. Follow-up interview with Gary Bennett, May 11, 1998.
2. Interview with Mirka Januskiewicz, April 24, 1998.
3. First interview with Gardner Church, March 17, 1998.
4. Interview with Mirka Januskiewicz.
5. First interview with Gardner Church. Retired Col. Gerry Coady was more direct, saying “you can drive a mac truck through the bloody plan for emergencies in the City. It was too general, too generic. It was not detailed enough in some areas.” Interview with Col. Gerry Coady, March 27, 1998.
6. Interview with Brian Sheridan, April 25, 1998. Staff Sgt. Glen Fowler of the OPP agreed, saying an emergency plan is only a guideline: “It lays out fundamentals, basics of what you have to do, who the people are, where you meet, what your basic responsibilities are. It’s not going to tell you how to do the job. It’s not going to tell you how big the disaster’s going to be. It’s like, ‘take the Ten Commandments; build your life from there.’” Interview with Glen Fowler, April 3, 1998.
7. Interview with Glen Fowler.
8. Carl Holmberg reports that four City politicians spent a good deal of time at City Hall during the emergency: Gary Bennett, himself, Joe Hawkins, and Dave Clarke. “We pretty much carried the political aspect of [the storm].”
9. Interview with Bob Boyd, March 24, 1998.
10. When he was told that Bob Boyd is still wedded to the idea that the Staff College would have been the best place for the EOC, Gardner Church admitted Mr. Boyd may be right. “It may very well be I didn’t pursue it forcefully enough. When I was told it wasn’t available, I dropped it like a hot cake. I must admit I didn't give it 20 seconds thought. It wasn’t available, it didn’t have power, they didn’t particularly want us ... fine. Move on. I never thought about it again until we had to find the maps, in which case we had to send somebody down to the Staff College to get [an elaborate set of sectional maps of the City].” Second interview with Gardner Church, April 27, 1998.
11. Asked about complaints that the staff college is too small for the kind of widespread emergency the City was facing, Bob Boyd said there should have been plenty of space. The building has a room for the municipal control group, and there is a large room earmarked for the media relations centre, good parking, cafeteria, good food and even overnight accommodations for key staff, he said.
12. Interview with Mayor Bennett.
13. Interview with Lance Thurston, April 17, 1998.
14. The white flag campaign was launched about halfway through the emergency, when the City put out a call for residents to fly a piece of white cloth out a door or window if they needed help. Military personnel doing door-to-door checks were told to keep an eye out for the makeshift flags and go to the aid of anyone who needed it.
15. Asked for more details about Bob Boyd’s challenge to her in the open meeting, Ms. Januskiewicz said it happened right after she informed Mayor Bennett that she was moving the emergency operations centre to Gore Road. “Mr. Boyd, probably he was as surprised as many of my colleagues that I am responsible for the emergency and that I was emergency manager ... but he challenged me [as to] why I [was] not considering the Staff College. And he challenged me of my knowledge of the emergency plan. What made it very interesting is that I didn’t know who he was, and I didn’t know what is his interest in emergency planning. I didn’t know why he was at the senior manager meeting anyway. I was stunned. Who is this individual, and who gave him authority to speak, and who gave him authority to question me in the open meeting? However, things like that happen to me all the time. I explained to Mayor Bennett that I made an evaluation of the Union Street [Staff College site], and it’s not going to work.” One of the reasons had to do with the fact that the Staff College was, by this time, requesting 24 hours notice.
16. Interview with Staff Sgt. Bob Napier, April 23, 1998.
17. Ms. Januskiewicz said she based her decision in part on advice from visiting Toronto officials (Bob Crawford, Warren Leonard, etc.), who said the emergency operations centre should always be located in a building where municipal officials have full operational control. Emergency Measures Ontario eventually told her the same thing. Since the municipality has full responsibility for emergency prevention, she says the province told her, the municipality should have full control of the emergency centre, and should designate one of its own buildings for this function.
18. Interview with Jim Keech, April 4, 1998.
19. Romano Sironi, “Assessment of Electrical Distribution for the City of Kingston,” summary of report by Toronto Hydro-Electrical Commission, Jan. 23, 1998, p. 1-3. Report is on file with the Ice Storm study, Queen’s University.
20. By contrast, Maj. Jim Frazer, chief engineer services officer with CFB Kingston, said he found it very easy to reach Granite Power during the emergency. But he said “Ontario Hydro was extremely difficult to get in contact with.”
21. First interview with Gardner Church.
22. These figures -- and a lengthy discussion of Ontario Hydro’s complex role in the ice storm -- are included in a consultant’s report titled “Ottawa-Carleton and the 1998 Ice Storm: Sharing the Lessons Learned,” by Carleton University journalism professor Joe Scanlon, p. 28.
23. Interview with Glen Fowler.
24. The water treatment plant for the City has generators, and they can operate for about 24 hours or more, but as the water goes through the filters, they plug up, and they have to go through a backwashing procedure. The backwash takes more energy than the generators will provide, and if you can’t backwash, it will shut down the system. Stewart Thompson, who is in charge of the treatment plants, called Utilities officials and said the situation was critical. Interview with Nancy Taylor, April 2, 1998.
25. Interview with Jim Keech.
26. The minutes from a municipal control group meeting on the afternoon of Jan. 9 give a sense of the deterioration: “Mr. Keech stated that we are in worse shape than this morning. The effects of the ice and the weight of the ice has taken the toll, we cannot operate switches, nor can we move the switches. He stated that the smaller switches ... are taking at least one half an hour or more as the trees are coming down. He stated that there are two dozen poles down and two dozen leaning badly ... Mr. Keech stated the longer it is out the harder it is to pick it back up. He stated that it is not as simple as once it is off you can turn it back on. He stated that we are looking at Monday before people will be on power. If it gets colder, then the outlook is much worse.”
27. First interview with Gardner Church.
28. First interview with Gardner Church.
29. Interview with Nancy Taylor.
30. Interview with Brian Sheridan.
31. Interview with Mark Fluhrer, June 17, 1998.
32. Interview with Brian Sheridan.
33. First interview with Gardner Church. Mark Segsworth confirmed this lack of understanding and revealed that his crews sometimes felt like their contribution was being overlooked: “One thing that kind of rubs the guys [in public works] the wrong way is that all the accolades have gone to the utilities people for the marvellous job that they did during the ice storm, and there’s no mention made of roads or the forestry crews.”
34. Interview with Mark Fluhrer. In addition to the City’s reforestation efforts, there has been at least one private initiative designed to bring the City’s urban forest back to something approximating its former state. Kingston’s Jewish Community Council, with the City’s assistance, has set up a trust fund for the purchase and planting of trees in certain parks. As of late April, 1998, the trust fund had raised more than $20,000 and was buying trees of a certain circumference at about $100 per tree. Organizers are hoping the City will chip in to plant and maintain the trees, which is quite a chore in the tree’s first year. Tree experts estimate that for every $100 tree, you can expect to spend $150 to plant and care for it in its first year. (Interview with Denis Leger).
35. Sironi, “Assessment of Electrical Distribution for the City of Kingston,” pp. 6 and 4.
36. Interview with Brian Sheridan.
37. Interview with Mark Fluhrer.
38. Interview with Mark Fluhrer.
39. Interview with Mark Segsworth.
40. Interview with Mark Segsworth.
41. Interview with Nancy Taylor.
42. Interview with Glen Fowler.
43. Interview with Sgt. Gary Collins, April 7, 1998.
44. Interview with Col. Ronald Aitken, April 21, 1998.
45. First interview with Gardner Church.
46. Interview with Carl Holmberg.
47. Interview with Col. Ronald Aitken.
48. In the end, Kingston wound up getting cots directly from the EMO. Emergency Measures finally told Lance Thurston’s group that they had a transport truck loaded with cots, on its way from somewhere West to somewhere points East, and promised to divert the truck to Kingston in order to drop off some of the contents. The City wound up going through the base to get the bedding. After about two days of wrangling, Mr. Thurston said, Kingston finally wound up with enough cots and enough bedding.
49. Interview with Carl Holmberg.
50. It’s difficult to sort out how much of the establishment of the northern field depots had to do with actual need and how much had to do with public relations. OPP Sgt. Gary Collins argued that Col. Coady’s group was brought in solely for political and financial reasons, so that rural residents would feel they were being looked after and the City could milk the province for more compensation. There seems to be little justification for such strong remarks -- rural problems were real and ongoing when the field depots came on line -- but various interviewees do suggest a political undercurrent to the exercise. Library system CAO Lynne Jordon, for example, described Co-Tal-Co’s involvement as “an attempt to make sure that the people in Kingston West felt that their needs were being attended to.” She added that “in the Pittsburgh area, that was a big concern, because the farmers in the rural areas really did feel that they did have some urgent, urgent needs that were maybe not being met as quickly ... They needed generators to get their cows milked.”
51. Interview with Scott Cowden, June 15, 1998.
52. Interview with Scott Cowden. Mr. Cowden also placed some of the blame on Col. Coady’s group, saying they spent so much time “establishing command levels ... that they weren’t actually delivering the service appropriately, in my view, for what that’s worth.”
53. Col. Coady said his group tried to get the message across that they were at the beck and call of City officials: “We would do what they would tell us and we told them what we were capable of doing and what we were going to do out there. And what we were going to do out there was, in fact, be their eyes and ears in the north, and be the collection centres for any requirements that we found out there or that were phoned in to us.”
54. Interview with Bob Napier.
55. Interview with Mirka Januskiewicz. She has no such concerns about active members of the military, who she said were indispensable to the City’s emergency response.
56. Interview with Neville Murphy, April 21, 1998. The stack is the initial point of contact between the City’s grid and the house.
57. Interview with Neville Murphy. A less routine call came in early in the emergency, on Jan. 7, when it was reported that a number of major power lines (44,000 volt lines) were down on Collins Bay Road. The lines didn’t blow any fuses, which meant that there was continuous arcing in that area. The fire department had responded, and because of the nature of the power lines, Chief Gow needed to go up and investigate. He knew it would be a problem at least through the night. Interview with Glenn Gow.
58. Interview with Neville Murphy.
59. Interview with Glenn Gow.
60. Many of the newer vehicles in the fire department’s fleet were too big to travel down blocked streets and roads. “We had to get into cars and drive, where normally we would take a pumper or a ladder truck.” Interview with Glenn Gow.
61. Interview with Neville Murphy.
62. This was not the only case of a neighbour alerting fire fighters to an ice storm-related blaze. Chief Gow recalled a fire in the Crystal Springs area near the end of the emergency. 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,” the chief said. “We were able to get there because of her call. So the neighbourhood watch increases I think, during these kinds of incidents. People really look out for other people.” Interview with Glenn Gow.
63. The generator crunch was so serious that thieves actually tried to steal a generator from a fire hall. A volunteer fire fighter was beaten up when he interrupted the robbery in progress. Staff Sgt. Glen Fowler recalled that “[It could have] deteriorated into a very dangerous situation. One of the fire substations north on Hwy. 38 didn’t have any hydro for quite some time ... [and] on night three or four, one of the volunteer firefighters went by the station and noticed there was a vehicle parked behind it. Knowing that there probably shouldn’t be anybody in there, he pulled in to check and there was a half ton truck at the back door and they were just about to lift the generator into the half-ton truck. So of course he pulled over and stopped and walked up to the one fellow. One fellow immediately jumped into the truck and the other one waited there to confront him. He [the volunteer firefighter] asked him what he was doing, and there was a confrontation as a result of that, and he got knocked down and hit in the face. And they ultimately took off in the truck. They didn’t get the generator, but had there been maybe a person with a little different personality, it may have been a lot worse assault.”
64. When Neville Murphy arrived at the Kingston Central station on the morning of Jan. 8, fire fighters were using hand-held lighting and trying to supplement lighting appliances with generators to the outlying stations. “We were basically trying to stay warm and dry and well-lit for the time being...” A portable generator was being used to power up the dispatch centre and keep the apparatus floor lit up, so that firefighters could see their gear and vehicles. Power was restored to the building within about 24 hours. Interview with Neville Murphy.
65. Interview with Glenn Gow.
66. Interview with Neville Murphy.
67. Bob Crawford, chief of emergency planning for the Toronto fire service, confirmed this version of events, saying he was basically turned away from the Woodbine Road fire hall when he first arrived in Kingston. Crawford said he didn’t understand it at the time.
68. Interview with Glenn Gow.
69. Interview with Dave Morris, Ministry of Health employee, April 25, 1998.
70. Interview with John Giles, manager of mobility for Kingston Transit, April 8, 1998.
71. Interview with Dave Morris.
72. Interview with Murielle Laplante-Wheeler, April 8, 1998. “We had volunteers who just showed up and didn’t want to go home because they didn’t have any power at home so they thought they would just stay at City Hall.”
73. Interview with Mark Segsworth.
74. See Mary Purcell’s notes from the City’s June 24 debriefing, on file with Ice Storm ‘98.
75. Interview with Lance Thurston.
76. Interview with Mirka Januskiewicz.
77. Interview with Terri Willing, March 27, 1998.
78. Interview with Denis Leger, April 27, 1998.
79. Interview with Lynda Breen, April 21, 1998.
80. Interview with Lynne Jordon.
81. Interview with Brian Sheridan.
82. Interview with Cynthia Beach, April 8, 1998.
83. Interview with Mark Segsworth.
84. Bob Crawford of the Toronto fire service shed some light on Toronto’s billing strategy following the emergency. He said the Toronto fire people initially tried to track all of their costs in Kingston, and kept receipts for everything. Some of the bills tended to be split between Toronto and Kingston. For example, all of Toronto fire’s gas bills were picked up by Toronto until they got to Kingston, at which point Kingston opened up the gas pumps and gave them free gas. Meals and accommodations were split between the City of Toronto and the City of Kingston. Mr. Crawford said he doesn’t think any of his staff were out of pocket from the trip.