Just days before Christmas, the weather offices were blasting warnings by the hour that Southern Ontario was going to find itself in the throes of an horrific ice storm. I wasn’t there in 1998 when the eastern part of the province and much of southern Quebec were throttled by the worst ice storm in living memory. I do, however, remember writing an article about it and my research took me deep into the bowels of the story. A real human interest story, which ended in tragedy with the death of 25 people.
Now we regale people about our own fight with the ice. Like many people I listened to the forecasts but didn’t really hear them. We’ve had freezing rain before and it was never enough to get your knickers in a twist and I proceeded with my chores on that basis. I was busy getting all of the elements together to co-host a Christmas Eve dinner with family and friends. My responsibility included preparing the turkey and doing up a few plates of nibblies. One of my closest friends was hosting the event at her place, a spectacular 2-storey unit looking south over the Don Valley, which instead of showing us a kilometer of snow-covered evergreens and deciduous trees, the land absolutely sparkled as far as the eye could see.
I turned a table and a few cardboard boxes into a fridge/freezer just outside my back door, which worked out perfectly for the duration. I am also an avid camper so I pressed my large rechargeable lantern, head light, propane and backpacking stove into service. My son and his lady friend were joining us and supplied another backpacking stove. A supply of 8-hour emergency candles is always useful. The only real inconvenience was that I had to recharge my phone and the other batteries using the inverter plugged into the car.
My power disappeared during the early morning on Monday the thirtieth. Thus began life in the darkness. The following morning I was able to get through to the Toronto Hydro hotline to hear the message that as of then over 264,000 of my Toronto neighbours and nearly 200,000 residents in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) were without joy. The message also stated that people should be prepared to tough it out for at least 72 hours. Three days minimum – so long Christmas tree lights!
This was one of the worst ice storms to hit Toronto in several decades. Rob Ford, our well-known mayor went public to ensure the city that council members were standing by to provide any help they could. Those who still had power heard him say just that.
Any home reno stores that were open sold out of generators and flashlight batteries in hours and emergency candles flew off the shelves from every store that had them.
Near to me a small strip of stores had power. Luckily, one of the retailers was a larger grocery store. I slipped and slid my way to the area but checked the state of my car just in case I could use it while I was out. Some 10 centimetres had formed and, of course, the ice scraper was sitting inside. Besides, the police were asking people not to attempt driving unless extremely necessary. When I got to the store, it was like a day at summer camp.
Everyone was in a good mood and like all Canadians, treating this like a good adventure. For every person in the check-out line there was at least one tale of woe that was apprised with humour. “Being without power,” someone said, “is like listening to a mime on the radio. “That alone was worth the slog. On my return I was able to crack the layer of ice preventing the driver door from opening and got in so I could start charging batteries. “Forget the ice on the rest of the car,” I thought. “That’s why we have spring.”
At the peak of the problem, Toronto Hydro was faced with more than 90 large-scale outages. All available forestry workers were hacking and slashing fallen tree limbs and bushes clearing the way ahead of the hydro crews. Anthony Haines* CEO of Toronto Hydro was giving constant updates and for those that could hear said, ”We continue to be in the middle of the storm. The damage continues to be done as we speak. We will not rest until such time as we’ve fixed it.”
Toronto Fire said they received hundreds of calls and attended downed wires that were still hot and the city brought in every available police officer to help wherever they could.
Luckily, both Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Toronto East General hospital stayed alive with back-up gennies. A good thing too – six premature newborns entered the world amidst the icy chaos.
VIA freight and passenger rail lines as well as the GO commuter trains were closed with hundreds of broken trees lying across tracks. The subway system was shut down by breaks in the power flow. This problem was intensified because dozens of electric streetcars were stranded across the downtown as the overhead copper power wires continued to sag under the ice. Both Pearson International and Billy Bishop Airports were forced to cancel dozens and dozens of flights. Our newest water treatment plant and several pumping stations were put out of commission.
Norm Kelly, our Deputy Mayor put it the way I did. “This is the universe putting us in our place.” My take was similar. In my frustration, I felt, “Well you’ve proved you can beat us. Your point is made. Now it’s time to quit.”
Our Mayor, who had previously been stripped of many of his powers for acts unbecoming a City
Official still had the authority to declare Toronto a disaster zone. By doing this Federal and Provincial money would automatically be funnelled into the coffers to meet repair costs. Ford didn’t do it so we got no emergency funds. As I write this, all of the GTA mayors are meeting to draft a proposal to the Ontario and Canadian governments to send CA$106 million to finish the street clean-up and repair damage to city property. Toronto Hydro claims the extra CA$13 million it spent to get everyone back on line will not be found in the pockets of the ratepayers. I wish them luck with that one. Another thing was uncovered by the Hydro crews. They found hundreds of houses that had work done to the electrical panel (pony boxes, etc.) and/or wiring obviously not done by a certified electrician – a fire looking for a place to happen! The power for those residents was to remain in the “off position” until the illegal work was corrected and signed off by both an electrician and the utility.
This might sound odd coming from an editor, but when I had power back and was able to watch the news on TV I was frustrated by the amount of airtime dedicated to telling us how many people were still without power. Slow news days are a pain. I was also pissed at the fact the on-air newscasters kept egging people on saying they were entitled to make someone pay for all of their troubles. I say that if you can find the culprit, “Be my guest. Sue the living hell out of them.” Again, good luck with that one. My experiences during this were somewhat of a challenge (cold showers) but to seethe over the thing was only going to precipitate heart failure. We were all in it together and we’re all out of it together. Thankfully, no one lost their life. Just think of the stories to tell the grandchildren. And don’t forget to inject some humour.
As for Christmas dinner, I cut up the turkey and baked it in the barbeque. My friend turned her patio into a fridge cum kitchen and prepared tasty potatoes, several veggies, gravy, and cranberries on her barbeque and the portable stoves. We sat down to a delightful candle-lit table filled with good food, good drink, and great company. We had fun the entire evening. Just like my Dad used to say, “If you can’t have at least some fun, why do it?”
My power came back on about one minute before midnight on Christmas Eve.
*Please see the cover story on Mr. Haines in May-June 2013 issue of Electric Energy T&D print and digital magazine.
