Recovery effort continues #igornl

Via Trudy Lundrigan and Flickr, here are some photos of the impact Hurricane Igor had on Lawn, Newfoundland.

Lawn is currently out of gasoline.  A shipment of gasoline sent by ship to the southern part of the Burin Peninsula didn’t stretch far enough to cover the community.  CBC quotes the mayor of the town saying:

"We're waiting now. We've got no gas here whatsoever," said Mayor Bill Lockyer, before calling the decision that put his community in this position "brainless."

Lockyer said given the road conditions, Lawn residents have the longest drive to the Grand Bank hospital of any Burin town. And the community of almost 800 is home to at least three people who require dialysis treatment, Lockyer said.

The provincial government is using some of the government’s own ferries to move supplies across Placentia Bay to the communities on the southern part of the peninsula.  They are currently isolated by damaged bridges.  While repairs are underway, it is possible they may only be able to handled reduced traffic loads for the first while after they are back in service.

CBC also quotes one resident who is concerned about the current state of affairs:

"We haven't seen any help at all," [Jenny] Tarrant said.

Tarrant said apart from what she can find online, she's not hearing any plans for relief. She said until Lawn residents get some answers about when aid is coming, concern will continue to spread.

Assessment of roads continues but the widespread nature of the damage continues to hamper recovery efforts.  Canadian Forces engineers decided to postpone bridge installations on the Bonavista Peninsula Sunday pending an improvement in road conditions.  The existing state of roads prevents heavy trucks from moving equipment into position.

All areas of the province now have electricity.  Newfoundland Power crews completed the the job of reconnecting lines over the weekend and are now focused on dealing with individual homes and small clusters that have lost power due to tree damage to specific sections of the grid.

A map released by the Government of Canada over the weekend gives some indication of the scope of the problem facing recovery teams. Towns marked in purple have declared states of emergency.  those in red have food shortages.  The map is current as of 1130 hours local time, Saturday 25 Sep 2010.

While roads damage is keeping some communities isolated, recovery teams have airlifted fuel into a number of towns and villages.

 

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Sucker bet: windy moose version

The guy who did such a bang-up job of looking after the Hurricane Igor disaster is now the guy leading the fight against moose-vehicle collisions.

Anyone care to wager on the prospects for success on that one?

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The Emergency Response Disaster #nlpoli

Communities on the northeast Avalon recovered relatively quickly from the worst blizzard in the province’s recorded history. However, the recovery in the City of St. John’s was slower than that of the neighbouring municipalities.  Both the mayor and one media commentator have placed responsibility for this on the provincial government and out-of-date legislation.  However, the actual problems in the recovery in St. John’s stemmed from the City’s approach to recovery operations. Other issues that have not gained significant public notice persisted because of the province’s failure to intervene.

The General Situation

Residents of the northeast Avalon came through the largest blizzard in the province’s recorded history with relatively few fatalities and virtually no reported incidents of significant damage to property or infrastructure.  That is remarkable in itself given the storm and a smaller snowfall that followed on its dropped more than  100 centimetres on parts of the region and wind gusts hit between 1305 and 150 kilometres an hour during the peak of the blizzard. 

Of the roughly 250,000 affected by the storm, only about 10% - 27,000  - lost power during the storm and the bulk of those had their power restored within 48 hours of the last snow flake. This contrasts with 2014 when a series of events knocked out power to a significant portion of the island for several days. 

Two avalanches reported publicly damaged houses and caused people to leave their homes but without injury.  This is in contrast to a relatively minor blizzard in 1959 that caused an avalanche that The Battery in St John’s that killed nine people.

Municipalities in the region had cleared at least passable cuts on all streets within 48 to 72 hours after the storm subsided on Saturday and by Tuesday all major municipalities had begun to lift their states of emergency to one degree or another. The provincial government had also cleared the major highways to the city within two days of the storm.

Unfairity but sadly all too true #nlpoli

Last week, municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien denied having anything to do with having a couple of New Democratic Party politicians “uninvited” from a community breakfast organized by the Gander Chamber of Commerce at the annual Festival of Flight.

O’Brien told reporters:

I don't hold any power over them as the MHA. I don't fund them. I can't pull their funding or anything like that. So the NDP nor anybody can say that.

This week, we learned that nothing could be further from the truth.

Canadian Forces backgrounders: #igornl

Update: 26 Sep 10:  Third ship is actually HMCS Montreal, another FFH, not HMCS Moncton as earlier indicated.

Elements of 4 ESR are involved in bridge construction and supplying potable water to communities where fresh water is unavailable, according to media reports. in addition to army water purification capability, the three FFHs have the capacity to produce drinking water.

HMC ships Fredericton and Montreal arrived from Halifax.  HMCS St. John’s at St. John’s during and immediately after IGOR.  The week before the ship had carried the Lieutenant-Governor on his annual tour to remote coastal communities.

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Original Post (24 Sep 10):

For those who are interested, here are some links to background information on the units and equipment involved in the Canadian Forces’ disaster relief operation in Newfoundland:

• HMCS St. John’s and HMCS Fredericton are Halifax class frigates.
• HMCS Moncton is a Kingston class coastal defence vessel.
• You can also find some good information on these ships and on the Sea King helicopters at the navy website.
• The CH-124 Sea Kings are part of two helicopter detachments (one each on Fredericton and St. John’s from 423 Maritime Helicopter Squadron at 12 Wing, Shearwater.
• 4 Engineer Support Regiment is an engineer regiment of the Canadian army:

The Regiment's primary operational task is the provision of sustainment engineering such as water supply, route maintenance and construction, vertical construction and the provision of utilities. The Regiment is also capable of performing traditional engineer tasks in the following areas: mobility and survivability.

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The politicisation of public emergencies

CBC commentator Bob Wakeham [CBC Radio audio file observed Monday morning that:

Also last week the emergency measures organization seemed to keep a low profile.  perhaps its employees were doing what they were supposed to be doing, but some of my journalistic friends working this hurricane story told me EMO seemed more than willing to hand over visual and public responsibility to cabinet ministers, to talking heads all of whom one would think know little or nothing about these matters, certainly a lot less than officials with a specific mandate to deal with, as the name implies, emergencies.

Right after saying that, Wakeham noted that there did not seem last week to be a sense of immediacy to the emergency response.

These two elements are connected.

And they tie as well to an observation made later Monday morning by the host of the morning talk show in the province.  Randy Simms wondered if the province’s fire and emergency management agency had a communications plan and any people responsible for carrying it out. Simms likened the situation to a disaster in the United States or the cougar crash.  He wondered where were the daily  - or even more frequent - technical briefings that featured, front and centre, the people actually delivering the emergency service, telling the rest of us what they were doing.

What Simms is talking about is what one expect in any other part of North America. Effective public communications are an integral part of recovery operations. Priority should go to basic information – where to find shelter, contact numbers to report problems, etc. – so that people who need help can get it.

This is a basic communications principle:  give people the information they need.

Regular operational briefings allows the emergency managers to make sure that accurate information on the entire emergency gets to the public using news media.  A typical briefing would include maps showing local situations and the type of problems being dealt with.  People get information.  They can track progress.  As events develop they can gain confidence that things are getting better. They can also better assess their own situation and make sensible decisions about their own situation;  they may need to just hang tough and weather the discomfort.  Or they can seek help.  Either way, information helps people make the right decision and have confidence.

In the modern age, officials should be using websites, Twitter, and Facebook to help push out detailed information. These can also be ways of feeding information into the emergency management room. 

News media bring pictures.  E-mails and twitter posts can give clues to where problems and that will supplement the information coming to the operations centre from health, fire, emergency, roads and other officials who should be present in the command centre.

The competence of the recovery - readily displayed to the public - instills public confidence.