10TH Anniversary of the ICE RAIN CRISIS... LA CRISE DU VERGLAS
by Luciano Pimentel
Where were you in 1998?
I remember it very well...
Or do I?
"It was the best of times -
"It was the best of times -
it was the worst of times"
would apply very well to this, yes...
would apply very well to this, yes...
Most of Quebec was left without electricity
for a good chunk of the first two months of 1998
when the entire province was hit,
out of the blue almost, by an ice storm
whose intensity and repercussions
took EVERYONE by surprise...
Lucien Bouchard was, at the time, the ruler...
Pardon, the prime minister of Quebec.
To his credit (as to mine - for he is, after all
my namesake and my lookalike too, in a way)
he had poise and leadership,
great commander-in-chief qualities
and generalship
exactly when it was
most desperately needed.
One of the few times
that I was proud of my namesake there...!
At the height of the crisis, many volunteers,
social workers, police and the army
were dispatched onto the streets to go door-to-door
and fetch every recalcitrant or cranky party
that would not leave their unheated home...
They could simply not be left in their homes,
with no heat, food or supervision as it was -
for back then, as is the case now, many are they
who count among the elderly and lonely
retirees who live absolutely alone
and cannot fend for themselves in such
daily activities as going to the bathroom
or dusting off the furniture - much less
dealing with such a crisis...
out of the blue almost, by an ice storm
whose intensity and repercussions
took EVERYONE by surprise...
Lucien Bouchard was, at the time, the ruler...
Pardon, the prime minister of Quebec.
To his credit (as to mine - for he is, after all
my namesake and my lookalike too, in a way)
he had poise and leadership,
great commander-in-chief qualities
and generalship
exactly when it was
most desperately needed.
One of the few times
that I was proud of my namesake there...!
At the height of the crisis, many volunteers,
social workers, police and the army
were dispatched onto the streets to go door-to-door
and fetch every recalcitrant or cranky party
that would not leave their unheated home...
They could simply not be left in their homes,
with no heat, food or supervision as it was -
for back then, as is the case now, many are they
who count among the elderly and lonely
retirees who live absolutely alone
and cannot fend for themselves in such
daily activities as going to the bathroom
or dusting off the furniture - much less
dealing with such a crisis...
Hypodermia and dehydration
were very real dangers
for all of these people.
Danielle Laporte and Germain Duclos
were two of the "guardian angels"
who assisted with social care work,
often guiding the elderly and difficult patients
to accept being taken in by the healthcare system.
Danielle had requested a reprieve
after many days of work without respite -
but since there was no relief on the way,
no one else available to readily step in
and replace them, she reconsidered
and chose to stay, mainly to assist Germain,
her companion both at and off work.
Danielle last helped a very cranky old woman
to simply accept to be taken to the hospital.
The old lady was brought to the hospital,
eventually, but a mere day later, she died.
She had a most malicious type of influenza
and had, unbeknownst to all,
transmitted the virus to her benefactor.
Yes - Danielle was to die too.
A month earlier,
Danielle had written a fairytale
for the children's care department
of the hospital in which
she helped patients the most.
It is reminisced about, by Germain,
that it was "très singulier"
- i.o.w. very singular -
that she wrote such a story
(un conte)
which featured
all the elements
that foreshadowed
what she herself
was going to become undone by
within a mere month or so...
Her story was about two children
who get lost in the woods
because of 'verglas' (ice rain)
and then, even in this type of tale,
they do die...
Their mother finds them though
and gives them a piece of her heart
so that they can survive -
and the children come back to life.
Happy ending.
In real life,
Danielle had, of course, heart failure
due to the virus that she contracted.
Germain recalled that she was hesitant
about how to end her story, too...
It was almost a reflection
of her desire to rewrite
her own ending
manifesting itself there,
way ahead of the sad events.
All this touching reminiscing took place
and was recorded for posterity
at the every end of a 2005 documentary
that relates many stories that happened
around "la crise du verglas" -
on a Historia TV show called "Tragédies"
that focuses on many such
calamitous events...
Danielle Laporte's story
is the only truly tragic story
that is retold there, though -
for, the rest of the interviewed parties
that agreed to participate to this show
and the episode on the Ice Rain Crisis
were all met with happy endings.
Louis-Marc Chicoine, a cook who worked
for the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Montreal,
met his bride during the crisis -
a woman that he thought, at first,
to be totally unreachable before,
of his own humble admission.
They met while doing volunteer work
at the height of the crisis.
Another couple reminisced
about how circumstances led them
to wind up back in the room
where their baby girl was conceived -
for the woman to deliver the baby!
Another volunteer worker,
married to an SRC-TV reporter
who bears a very literary name,
(Alexandre Dumas - would you believe)
talked about the improbable fire in her home
in the midst of all of her own helpful work -
which required her going home at midnight
and getting ready to go back to the shelter
around 6AM, every single day...
Her home was rebuilt - so, it was bad luck
but not as "tragic" as other stories were,
alas, most of them
untold stories...
Many died during that crisis.
27, if I remember the number right.
Many more were scarred for life.
As the new Mrs. Chicoine noted so well,
during the height of this crisis,
a newfound solidarity emerged.
Everyone was solidary and helpful -
no longer was there individualism
and solitary lifestyles,
in complete anonymity -
no, fraternity actually existed once more!
It was all lost when electricity was re-established,
as everyone returned to their modern world's
instilled and execrable individualistic attitude...
Everyone returned to
"uncaring mode", basically...
Everyone became,
once again, in effect,
the antithesis to
caring Danielle Laporte
who gave her life
to be there for others.
To all those who died during the crisis -
to Danielle Laporte and all the nameless ones -
this piece is dedicated.
None of you will ever feel cold -
ever again.
+++
Danielle Laporte and Germain Duclos
were two of the "guardian angels"
who assisted with social care work,
often guiding the elderly and difficult patients
to accept being taken in by the healthcare system.
Danielle had requested a reprieve
after many days of work without respite -
but since there was no relief on the way,
no one else available to readily step in
and replace them, she reconsidered
and chose to stay, mainly to assist Germain,
her companion both at and off work.
Danielle last helped a very cranky old woman
to simply accept to be taken to the hospital.
The old lady was brought to the hospital,
eventually, but a mere day later, she died.
She had a most malicious type of influenza
and had, unbeknownst to all,
transmitted the virus to her benefactor.
Yes - Danielle was to die too.
A month earlier,
Danielle had written a fairytale
for the children's care department
of the hospital in which
she helped patients the most.
It is reminisced about, by Germain,
that it was "très singulier"
- i.o.w. very singular -
that she wrote such a story
(un conte)
which featured
all the elements
that foreshadowed
what she herself
was going to become undone by
within a mere month or so...
Her story was about two children
who get lost in the woods
because of 'verglas' (ice rain)
and then, even in this type of tale,
they do die...
Their mother finds them though
and gives them a piece of her heart
so that they can survive -
and the children come back to life.
Happy ending.
In real life,
Danielle had, of course, heart failure
due to the virus that she contracted.
Germain recalled that she was hesitant
about how to end her story, too...
It was almost a reflection
of her desire to rewrite
her own ending
manifesting itself there,
way ahead of the sad events.
All this touching reminiscing took place
and was recorded for posterity
at the every end of a 2005 documentary
that relates many stories that happened
around "la crise du verglas" -
on a Historia TV show called "Tragédies"
that focuses on many such
calamitous events...
Danielle Laporte's story
is the only truly tragic story
that is retold there, though -
for, the rest of the interviewed parties
that agreed to participate to this show
and the episode on the Ice Rain Crisis
were all met with happy endings.
Louis-Marc Chicoine, a cook who worked
for the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Montreal,
met his bride during the crisis -
a woman that he thought, at first,
to be totally unreachable before,
of his own humble admission.
They met while doing volunteer work
at the height of the crisis.
Another couple reminisced
about how circumstances led them
to wind up back in the room
where their baby girl was conceived -
for the woman to deliver the baby!
Another volunteer worker,
married to an SRC-TV reporter
who bears a very literary name,
(Alexandre Dumas - would you believe)
talked about the improbable fire in her home
in the midst of all of her own helpful work -
which required her going home at midnight
and getting ready to go back to the shelter
around 6AM, every single day...
Her home was rebuilt - so, it was bad luck
but not as "tragic" as other stories were,
alas, most of them
untold stories...
Many died during that crisis.
27, if I remember the number right.
Many more were scarred for life.
As the new Mrs. Chicoine noted so well,
during the height of this crisis,
a newfound solidarity emerged.
Everyone was solidary and helpful -
no longer was there individualism
and solitary lifestyles,
in complete anonymity -
no, fraternity actually existed once more!
It was all lost when electricity was re-established,
as everyone returned to their modern world's
instilled and execrable individualistic attitude...
Everyone returned to
"uncaring mode", basically...
Everyone became,
once again, in effect,
the antithesis to
caring Danielle Laporte
who gave her life
to be there for others.
To all those who died during the crisis -
to Danielle Laporte and all the nameless ones -
this piece is dedicated.
None of you will ever feel cold -
ever again.
+++
Labels: commemorative, ice rain, verglas
posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ @ 5:04 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Ice storm lessons endure 10 years after disaster
Thu Jan 3, 10:19 PM
MONTREAL (CBC) - Ten years after a massive ice storm battered Eastern Canada, many Quebecers say they've learned key lessons from surviving a disaster considered the "worst ever" to hit the country in recent memory.
The 1998 winter ice storm dumped as much as 108 millimetres of freezing rain on parts of Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, coating the region in a thick crust of ice that dragged down kilometres of telephone and powerlines and paralyzed the network, affecting more than five million Canadians.
More than 1,000 hydro towers, utility poles and electrical transmission towers were toppled, leaving one million Quebecers without power for several days, and in some cases weeks.
Thirty people died, nearly 1,000 were injured and hundreds of thousands were displaced by the crise du verglas, as the storm has become known in Quebec.
"It was like a war zone," remembers Robert Lemay, a Montreal South Shore resident who was caught in what was considered one of the worst-hit areas.
Many feared for their homes and were forced to flee after the rain stopped, as the temperature dropped and the blackout endured. They sought refuge at emergency shelters or with neighbours, friends and family.
"It was really cold, and we couldn't live here," Lemay said in a recent interview with CBC News. "I totally panicked for the first week. Tried to find a generator, tried to keep the house warm. I didn't want to leave the house ... I was afraid that it would crack or something."
In the end, Lemay's house was dark and cold for 23 days - a marathon ordeal he endured along with about a million Quebecers caught in the so-called "triangle of darkness," a zone south of Montreal between Granby, Saint-Hyacinthe and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu where Hydro Quebec's power grid suffered the most damage.
Many Quebecers have switched heat sources
When power was eventually restored, Lemay vowed to wean his home off electricity as its main source of heat.
He installed a livingroom fireplace powerful enough to warm the entire house and added a second propane-fired hearth in the basement. He also stocked his house with emergency supplies, including a radio, canned goods and candles.
Many other Quebecers also reconfigured their home heating. Eric Bouchard's family endured 20 days without power in their Saint-Hilaire home, where they lived in 1998 with their six-month old son Timoth?e.
"The was nothing that worked," he remembered. The family camped out at their in-laws' house until Hydro Quebec was able to restore electricity.
Bouchard has since bought a generator, chopped wood for a new wood-burning stove in his living rom, and switched to gas in the kitchen.
The effort is worthwhile as it's just a matter of time before another epic storm strikes, he said. "I'm convinced we'll have another ice storm. The climate is changing."
There won't be a next time, Hydro Quebec says
After the storm a flurry of recommendations followed a provincial inquiry that studied the storm to distill its lessons.
The Nicolet commission concluded Quebec's civil security plan was limited by poor communication between different levels of government, and couldn't handle disasters at a municipal level.
The commission also urged Hydro-Quebec to reinforce its grid and introduce measures to limit the scope of future blackouts.
Quebec's power utility says there will never be another blackout of the ice storm magnitude. "We would have some customers without supply, without power," affirms Hydro Quebec president Thierry Vandal. "But those numbers would be significantly diminished and the time frame to restore service would be counted in days, not weeks."
Hydro-Quebec has spent about $1.5 billion repairing and rebuilding its network since the storm. It replanted and reinforced wooden utility poles to prevent the domino-toppling effect, and buried a few electrical lines.
Hydro also added a new power line into Montreal to avoid any future situation where it has to consider shutting down the city, as it was forced to do during the ice storm.
The grid is much more stable today, Vandal said.
Ice storm money still frozen, Quebec says
The Quebec government eventually reimbursed Hydro Quebec for damages incurred during the storm.
But Quebec says it is still waiting for Ottawa to pay out some $435 million the province says it is owed for ice storm expenses.
The federal government has paid other provinces hit by natural disasters, including Manitoba - and Quebec should be treated the same, intergovernmental affairs minister Beno?t Pelletier told the national assembly in December.
Premier Jean Charest has raised the issue with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Pelletier said.
With files from the Canadian Press
+++
Chilling memories of 1998 ice storm that battered Quebec, Ontario, Maritimes
Thu Jan 3, 1:57 PM
By Sidhartha Banerjee,
The Canadian Press
MONTREAL - Different sights and sounds bring people back to January 1998, when millions of Canadians found themselves in the icy grasp of one of the most crippling natural disasters in the country's history.
Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips, who spent much of the ice storm explaining the phenomenon to international media, says rarely has a weather event captured the attention of so many.
"I have 25,000 weather stories in my collection and there's no question the ice storm is still king," Phillips said in an interview. "You can't exhaust the weather superlatives when you talk about the ice storm from hell."
Nearly five million Canadians in an area that included southeastern Quebec, eastern Ontario and parts of the Maritimes were battered by three successive waves of freezing rain that came with warning but without interruption.
Phillips says it's impossible to know when such a destructive ice storm might recur. While the '98 storm was a well predicted event, one element set it apart from most Canadian weather phenomena.
"The best thing about the weather in Canada is that it hits and runs," Phillips said. "It doesn't stand around and torment you and clobber you like in other parts of the world."
That wasn't the case with the ice storm, which went on for days with no let-up in what was a very un-Canadian system, Phillips said.
Myroslaw Smereka, then mayor of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, has vivid memories of the stench of wood burning day and night in the cold darkness that consumed the picturesque city along the shores of the Richelieu River, south of Montreal.
St-Jean was smack in the middle of "the triangle of darkness," an area that was without power for more than a month. Smereka recalls spending part of the time sleeping in a small room just off the municipal indoor pool next to the town's emergency headquarters.
Smereka says a shelter that began by catering to 80 locals two nights into the storm had to deal with 2,000 just two days later. The city was enveloped in ice, more so than other area cities and towns.
Lucien Bouchard, the then-premier, and Hydro-Quebec officials continued to insist the situation would be fine within days, but Smereka said police and firefighters on the scene knew better.
"For them it was clearly a war zone, it was impossible to believe that politicians were telling us in three or four days that everything was going to be OK," said Smereka.
The storm spared no one, with some areas receiving as much as 100 millimetres of freezing rain from Jan. 5 to 10, covering everything in a thick layer of ice and leaving some people without electricity for more than 30 days.
At least 30 people died as a result of the storm. Damage totalled about $3 billion and the Canadian military was required to assist in the days that followed the storm.
Anyone who lived through the event has a story of how everyday people made the difference.
Neil Semenchuk remembers that a day or two into the storm, a longtime volunteer in the Montreal-area community of Kirkland arrived at the community recreation centre and decided to make soup and coffee, in case anyone wanted to get in out of the cold.
Semenchuk, the city's recreation director who ran its shelter, recalls that the volunteer went into the gym that morning and spent the next 10 days cooking meals, including a candlelit roast pork dinner for 350 people.
"He cooked meals for anyone and everyone who walked in," said Semenchuk, who said it was the tireless work of such volunteers that made the shelter's efforts successful.
"I thought it was one of the most terrifying and gratifying experiences I'd ever gone through.
"There were times we almost thought that we forgot what it was like outside the building. "At 4 p.m. you look out the window and it was black as far as the eye could see."
The resiliency of people is at the forefront of most ice storm stories.
Smereka says he saw neighbours help each other even though they'd never previously met.
"There was this whole camaraderie, this solidarity that was generated by all of this," Smereka said. "Generally speaking, in a catastrophe, the volunteers are not also the victim."
Former Hydro-Quebec president Andre Caille, one of the most visible figures during the ice storm and known for appearing frequently during the crisis in a turtleneck, said the success of restoring the power grid was down to the utility's employees.
Many spent 16 hours a day battling the elements, trying to get the collapsed electrical grid up and running.
But the one thing Caille knows is that never again can Montreal be effectively shut down.
Five days into the storm, the number of Quebec homes without power peaked at 1.4 million, affecting three million people. By then, the power coming into Montreal had collapsed and the city was in the dark.
"Never again can we end up in a similar situation in Montreal," Caille said. "The first time it happens, we can say we didn't know and it's not our fault. But a second time it would be our fault because we knew it was possible."
Hydro-Quebec says it has made a number of improvements to its power distribution network since 1998. The power lines are stronger and the towers are built tougher and additional power supplies would allow the utility to restore power more quickly, Caille said.
"We're much better prepared now," he said. "The transmission network is much stronger, and our people are better prepared."
But the former energy executive says he's not in any hurry to go through another such storm just to test the stronger systems.
"No, I don't think we need to prove it," Caille quipped.
WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID ABOUT THIS NEWS STORY
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No Photo Available.
Mtlting icicles, the works. Ferr, do you have a profile at the niche interracial dating site named interracialconnect.com . As you know thousands of new members join daily to meet dream date in this comfortable community of cultures and ethnicities. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
POSTED BY: julee on FRI, JAN 04, 2008 02:02 AM -0500
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No Photo Available.
Every story seems to forget that Ontario and the Maritmes were hit just as hard. I was one of the 14,000 military who were deployed to help those in need. Many of those were revservists from all over Canada who left jobs to help. Every town, village and city in eastern Ontario has its tale of the ice storm. It was not just Quebec who suffered, all Canadians did.
POSTED BY: Ian S on THU, JAN 03, 2008 11:45 PM -0500
*
No Photo Available.
I'm tired of these articles just on Québec's experience of the Ice Storm - it's like it almost didn't exist. I was 17 and got a job to do clean up after the storm (then went back to school). Some houses were out of electricity for more than 27 days. There was lots of abuse from some people (i.e. "why should i give back this generator while nobody gave me money for the gas", price increases, people charging too much for boosts, etc.) but there were also great stories and THANKS TO THE ARMY!
POSTED BY: racicotmarc on THU, JAN 03, 2008 10:13 PM -0500
#
N Ferreira
I remember living through that storm in Cornwall, ON, with 10 days of no power. Getting our water from the river, heating over a fire in the front lawn, melting icicles, the works. What an adventure!
POSTED BY: N Ferreira on THU, JAN 03, 2008 09:05 PM -0500
+++
La crise du verglas : dix ans déjà!
2007-12-17 18:14:00
Janvier 1998 : le verglas paralyse une partie du Québec. Les routes sont impraticables et le réseau hydroélectrique est perturbé. Au pire de la crise, un foyer sur cinq est privé d'électricité en plein hiver. L'horreur.
by Natalie Girard
Ce qui s'annonçait comme un simple avertissement météo deviendra un phénomène météorologique spectaculaire. Le 5 janvier, une pluie verglaçante tombe sur le Québec. Mais les cinq jours suivants, dans la région de Montréal, une centaine de millimètres de pluie s'accumulent au sol pour se transformer en verglas.
Sous le poids de la glace, les pylônes s'affaissent, les poteaux électriques tombent, les transformateurs sautent et les branches d'arbres cassées s'empilent dans les rues.
Certaines municipalités sont plongées dans le noir pendant plus de 30 jours. La zone entre les villes de Granby, Saint-Hyacinthe et Saint-Jean-sur-le-Richelieu, en Montérégie, est la plus durement touchée. On la surnommera : le triangle de glace. Les gens sont donc forcés de quitter leur maison : plus de 100 000 personnes se réfugient dans des centres d'hébergement.
Le 8 janvier, l'armée canadienne est sollicitée. Elle participe au nettoyage des rues et à l'évacuation des sinistrés.
L'économie est également affectée. Les entreprises doivent interrompre leurs activités et les agriculteurs sont en train de perdre une partie de leur bétail.
À Montréal, on craint le pire lorsque l'alimentation de deux usines de traitement d'eau potable s'interrompt durant quelques heures. Les gens sont obligés de faire bouillir leur eau dans le but d'éliminer toutes possibilités de contamination.
Hydro-Québec fait appel à l'Ontario et aux États-Unis pour venir en aide aux monteurs de ligne qui travaillent jour et nuit afin de remettre sur pied le réseau électrique.
Le 8 février, 35 jours après le début de la panne, le courant est rétabli partout au Québec.
Le gouvernement met sur pied un programme d'indemnisation pour les sinistrés. Selon le Bureau d'assurance du Canada, 600 000 réclamations provenant des ménages et des entreprises ont totalisé un milliard de dollars.
Des millions d'arbres ont été gravement endommagés dont beaucoup d'arbres fruitiers. De plus, un nombre considérable d'érables à sucre ont énormément souffert.
La Commission Nicolet a été créée afin d'enquêter sur les circonstances entourant la crise du verglas.
+++
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