The aftereffects of the '98 Ice Storm
(Courtesy of CTV News)
For many of those living in the Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick regions that were hit by the Ice Storm of 1998, it is a storm that they will never forget. Lasting from January 4-10, these unlucky parts of Eastern Canada (and northeastern US) saw up to 100 millimeters of freezing rain and it took months for some to recover power.
The Damage
Nelson St in Kingston
(Ian MacAlpine, Kingston Whig-Standard)
Blackouts
In Quebec, an estimated 3.5 million people experienced blackouts. The longest residential blackout lasted 33 days. About 600,000 people lost power in Ontario and 48,000 in the Maritimes. Over one million Americans also lost power.
Scope of the '98 Ice Storm
(The Weather Network)
Hydro
Hydro-Quebec was hit the hardest during the Ice Storm with over 3,000 kilometers of power network breaking down. 24,000 poles, 4,000 transformers and 1,000 steel pylons were damaged or completely destroyed. Cost of repairs exceeded 800 million. Comparatively, Ontario had 11,000 poles, 1,000 transformers and 300 steel towers damaged.
Farmers
Farmers affected by the Ice Storm saw an immense amount of damage to their livestock, fields and products. Over 13.5 million litres of milk (an estimated $7.8 million) was dumped. Losses in Quebec were around $14 million and $11 million in Ontario.
Fallen pylons (Bernard Brault, La Presse)
Insurance Claims
The Insurance Bureau of Canada estimated the final insurance claims for the damage caused by the storm would exceed $1.1 billion.
Fatalities
In total, 35 people died from storm-related causes such as house fires, falling ice, carbon monoxide poisoning and hypothermia.
(Courtesy of CBC)
Moving forward
When the Ice Storm occurred, I was 6 years old. My father was working for Hydro One and we rarely saw him during and following the storm. As my siblings, mom and I huddled together in the living room to keep warm on cold, powerless nights, we would try and stay up to hear stories from his long days at work.
20 years later, I was curious to see what sort of changes were made to study and prevent future disasters of this magnitude happening again.
Hydro One work from Jan 12-18
(Stephen Speagle, Day Calendar 1998)
(Courtesy of Power Workers' Union)
Interview clip with Bill Bennett
Director of business development at Energy Ottawa, Bill Bennett, was a superintendent of stations with Ottawa Hydro during the Ice Storm and dealt with the mayhem of the storm, first-hand. 20 years later, he discussed all of the measures now put into place by (now) Hydro Ottawa.
In addition to constructing less cross arms and adding vertically-constructed poles with insulators directly onto them, Bennett also mentioned the mass clearing of branches around lines and more underground construction to provide power through multiple paths.
"All our residential new construction is underground. There’s been a concerted effort in parts of the city to look for opportunities to put distribution underground. It isn’t a perfect situation underground but makes situations like the ice storm more bearable," Bennett said in a phone interview.
Four out of five trees were damaged on Mount Royal during the storm (Armand Trottier, La Presse)
Hydro
Project Ice Storm
Tasha Geymonat & Jody McKellar give birth to Jesse McKellar en route to the hospital (Wayne Hiebert, Ottawa Citizen)
It was during the onset of the storm that Suzanne King, professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University, and a group of researchers decided to study over 100 pregnant women in the Montérégie area to determine whether maternal stress during pregnancy is related to postnatal functioning of exposed children.
Thus Project Ice Storm was born.
David P. Laplante, research associate in schizophrenia and neurodevelopmental disorders at Douglas Mental Health University Institute also took part in the project that followed children born after the Ice Storm for 13 years.
"For me, the finding with the potential for the greatest health concern (concerns that may still only become more noticeable as the children become adults) is the link between objective hardship and body mass index. Higher objective hardship is associated with higher body mass index values. More importantly the magnitude of this relationship has increased with increasing age. This is important since higher adult body mass indices are associated with a number of health concerns," Laplante said in an interview.
In addition to this, the study concluded that women's stress levels also affected cognitive and behavioral functioning and epigenetics.
"Our research has demonstrated the importance of intervening with pregnant women during times of crisis. The question remains how to intervene. Trying to return these women’s life back to normal as soon as possible might help," Laplante explained.
"We are presently studying whether a simple writing intervention might help in reducing the long-term effects of the disaster on the pregnant women and potentially the exposed child. Preliminary data suggest that this form of intervention might be beneficial but a more definitive answer will have to wait."