City of Ottawa draws on lessons learned during derecho to prep for next emergency

Nearly a year after adestructive wind storm knocked out power for days on end, the City of Ottawa iswritingguidelines fordistributing food and checking in onvulnerable residents duringthe nextemergency.

The city also aimsto encourage neighbourhood-level effortsto deal with natural disasters, and boostresidents' self-sufficiencywhen a storm first hits.

Those were some of the biggest needs identified byRCGT Consulting in itsexamination ofhow the municipality responded to last spring's derechostorm.

A similar report into astring of tornadoes thattouched down in Ottawa-Gatineauin 2018focused on improving communication. Hydro Ottawa also released a short document about its derecho responselast November.

The thunderstorm that swept across Ontario andinto Ottawa onMay 21, 2022brought winds of up to 190 km/h.

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"The system was definitely working because shortly thereafter our corporate duty officers started to get a bunch of calls from other city services, mostly notably Ottawa Fire Services and 311," explained Beth Gooding,director of the city's public safety service.

As the commander at the head of the table in the emergency operationscentre, Gooding made operational decisions during the derecho aftermath.

Preparing for lengthy outages

The windsknocked overthousands of trees, and180,000 homes and other buildings served by Hydro Ottawa lost power. That first 24 hourssaw 2,800 calls to 911, triple the usual volume.

Some of the outages lasted for days, creatingmore problems and greater need.

Councillorsatthe emergency and protective services committee on Thursdayremembered the extreme pressure the city faced as residents lostelectricity to theirfreezers, causing food to spoil. They thanked staff, many of whom worked around theclock while alsonot having power in their own homes.

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Due to climate change, the city is experiencing more severe weather and must make itspreparationsmore efficient, Gooding said.

The cityhas completed a food security protocol to help determine how to get food to people in need in the event of an emergency. TheOttawa Food Bank has volunteered to be the first chair of that task force.

"It really is a checklist for us to follow when we're in a chaotic environment," Gooding said.

Many firefighters,public health employees andRed Cross and social service workers all made wellness visits to residents in need afterthe derecho. To ensure that approach is consistent, the city also wants to make sureit knows where people need help.

Expanding emergencytraining

Gooding described how the City of Ottawa has relied on a core team of staffthat can ramp up in an emergency.

"But we also find that that cadre is relatively small and so we keep on calling on the same people. During a prolonged response like the derecho, those people don't have natural backups," Gooding told councillors. "They weren't able to get appropriate breaks, if any."

The city is trying to expand the number ofcity employeesable to step into command posts and work on the front lines of an emergency.

For the head of the emergency services department, Kim Ayotte,the big takeaway of the derechoreview is that the City of Ottawaneeds to helpresidents and neighbourhood organizations who are willing to jump into action.

"We saw a lot of that during the derecho,we saw a lot of communities helping each other," Ayotte said. "We want to harness that."

Committee chairCoun. Riley Brockington, whose own community has been sorting out who can provide whathelp, agreed.

"There's a lot of goodwill and good people out there that have resources that can really help in an emergency," he said.

The city will need to help with training, Ayotteadded.It will also need to provide publiceducation about how to prepare for an emergency, and information about whether it's most appropriate to call 911, or the 311 and 211 information lines,depending on the situation.