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

Nearly a year after a destructive wind storm knocked out power for days on end, the City of Ottawa is writing guidelines for distributing food and checking in on vulnerable residents during the next emergency.

The city also aims to encourage neighbourhood-level efforts to deal with natural disasters, and boost residents' self-sufficiency when a storm first hits.

Those were some of the biggest needs identified by RCGT Consulting in its examination of how the municipality responded to last spring's derecho storm.

A similar report into a string of tornadoes that touched down in Ottawa-Gatineau in 2018 focused on improving communication. Hydro Ottawa also released a short document about its derecho response last November.

The thunderstorm that swept across Ontario and into Ottawa on May 21, 2022 brought 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 operations centre, Gooding made operational decisions during the derecho aftermath.

Preparing for lengthy outages

The winds knocked over thousands of trees, and 180,000 homes and other buildings served by Hydro Ottawa lost power. That first 24 hours saw 2,800 calls to 911, triple the usual volume.

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

Councillors at the emergency and protective services committee on Thursday remembered the extreme pressure the city faced as residents lost electricity to their freezers, causing food to spoil. They thanked staff, many of whom worked around the clock while also not having power in their own homes.

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

The city has completed a food security protocol to help determine how to get food to people in need in the event of an emergency. The Ottawa 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 and Red Cross and social service workers all made wellness visits to residents in need after the derecho. To ensure that approach is consistent, the city also wants to make sure it knows where people need help.

Expanding emergency training

Gooding described how the City of Ottawa has relied on a core team of staff that 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 of city employees able 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 derecho review is that the City of Ottawa needs to help residents 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 chair Coun. Riley Brockington, whose own community has been sorting out who can provide what help, 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, Ayotte added. It will also need to provide public education 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.