FIVE QUESTIONS ANSWERED:
1) Should the mayor have declared a state of emergency?
It’s the question that’s burning up a certain hashtag (#darkTO) on Twitter. The answer is yes. When folks are dragging barbecues into their homes to keep warm and Toronto Hydro and the fire department are handling 300 times the normal volume of calls for days on end….
About 300,000 customers and an estimated 1 million people were affected by the power outage. That’s 10 times more than the number displaced earlier this year by the floods in Calgary, where an emergency was declared.
Five days in, some 50,000 T.O. households were still without power or heat.
Certainly the cops treated the situation like an emergency from early on, opening up 13 police stations as warming centres early in the week when it became obvious that the dozen or so run by the city wouldn’t be able to handle the growing number of folks shivering in the cold with no place to go.
Emergency evacuation measures were taken beginning on Christmas Day, when police announced their canvass of neighbourhoods in the northeast end. They went door-to-door in six apartment buildings still without power in the Don Mills and Sheppard area to evacuate some 50 seniors and other vulnerable adults and take them to warming centres.
Police continued evacuations Thursday, saying those efforts were being coordinated with the city’s Emergency Operations Centre, Toronto Community Housing, Toronto Hydro and the TTC to identify other apartment buildings still without power.
2) Was the mayor playing politics in an emergency?
As soon as the storm hit, Rob Ford was making his own political calculations.
Senior bureaucrats reportedly urged the mayor to declare an emergency, but publicly they backed him up, saying it wouldn’t have made a difference.
Ford didn’t want to be sidelined, of course. He likes to be seen as running the show, and declaring a state of emergency would have meant handing authority to his deputy, Norm Kelly, as mandated by council when it stripped Ford of most of his powers.
His stated reasons for not declaring an emergency shifted as the blackout dragged on. First he argued that it wasn’t needed. Then, when it became clear that tens of thousands of people would still be without power during an extreme cold alert on Christmas Eve, he said declaring an emergency would cause “panic.”
The experience elsewhere demonstrates that the media and public often view the declaration of an emergency as a decisive action addressing a crisis. That’s why a number of councillors urged the mayor to do so.
Ford now seems to have changed his tune, calling for an emergency meeting of council on January 10 to request relief cash from the province.
3) Would declaring an emergency have made a difference on the ground?
Such situations usually take days to assess. But the city knew within eight hours of the storm’s arrival that there would be power outages affecting tens of thousands of residents for at least three days.
In hindsight, declaring an emergency from the get-go would have helped mobilize more person power and better coordinate efforts.
And we have to ask why Ford didn’t lean on his fishing buddy in Ottawa? Manitoba and Alberta both received federal assistance after flooding in the last year. So far the only word from the PM on the ice storm has been a tweet (“Thoughts are with those without power due to the ice storm – please stay safe”) while the ravages of this storm system have been felt as far east as New Brunswick.
Declaring an emergency would also have given the mayor extraordinary powers to contract goods and services. In that case, Toronto Hydro crews could have been augmented with private contractors to help hook up those still in the dark.
But containing the cost of the cleanup effort seemed to be on the mayor’s mind as the days passed. He refused to get into dollars and cents at the December 26 press conference.
4) Has the city’s handling of the storm taught us any lessons?
The mayor says no. Crisis? What crisis? That’s his mantra in times like these. Easy when you can afford a hotel room.
Could Hydro crews have been moved into position earlier? We knew days in advance that the storm was coming. Scores of cities had been affected in Michigan. Could Toronto have requested outside help sooner than the 48 hours it took? More importantly, is there a long-term plan to bury hydro lines, for example, to protect us from the effects of future storms?
Toronto Hydro has acknowledged communications problems after customers were literally in the dark for days about what was happening and when they could expect relief.
The sad truth is that we seem to have learned little about emergency preparedness and the importance of prevention since the ice storm of 1998 and the July 2013 deluge.
Governments have done a cost-benefit analysis and are more willing to chance what used to be called once-in-100-years weather events and whatever damage they might bring than to spend money to guard against disasters.
5) Will fallout from the storm hurt Ford politically?
The mayor was mostly present, at least at press conferences and the odd photo op, but not always accounted for throughout the power outage. It hasn’t exactly been a Giuliani moment.
The frustration level among affected residents, especially one of his supposed bases in Toronto Community Housing, has been rising. It reached boiling point on Boxing Day when one of his aides handed out Rob Ford fridge magnets to a group confronting him about being without power.
At press conferences every day since December 22, the mayor essentially offered cold comfort: everything that can be done is being done to rectify the situation.
He’s in a tough spot. Had he declared an emergency and turned over authority to Kelly, he would have missed his chance to pose as a strong leader in a crisis. But having taken the politically expedient route, he hasn’t come off as a father figure.
His heart may have bled for those without power, but he seems to have miscalculated, terming the outage an “inconvenience” at one point, perhaps thinking the situation would be rectified more quickly and now finding himself wearing the growing fallout.
We can’t blame the mayor for the ice storm that knocked out the grid, of course. But the prolonged darkness seems a tragically fitting end to a year under Ford.
Emergency Management And Civil Protection Act 101
Who can declare a state of emergency The head of council of a municipality or his or her designate the premier.
How an emergency is defined A situation, or impending situation, caused by the forces of nature, an accident, an intentional act or otherwise, that constitutes a danger of major proportions to life or property.
Criteria used when considering whether to declare an emergency The act sets out a number of criteria which can be boiled down to this: when the situation poses a major danger to life or property or a threat to the provision of essential services (energy, potable water, sewage treatment, supply of goods or medical care).
Other circumstances to consider The declaration of an emergency gives the mayor special powers to purchase goods and services.
Role of the federal government The Emergency Ontario handbook says: “Statutorily, only the Province of Ontario may request Federal Government assistance and municipalities may not apply directly for Federal assistance.”
enzom@nowtoronto.com | @enzodimatteo
