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CANADA | JANUARY 19, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 2 |
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Grim Fairyland The worst ice storm in nearly 40 years robbed some 3 million people of heat, light and their sense of security, in a glittering state of emergency By ANDREW PURVIS
In almost 40 years there has been nothing like it. The storm began on Monday night with a 45-mm lamination that transformed the landscape into a frigid fairy tale--with no happy ending. The transparent sheets that clamped themselves onto every surface turned highways into curling rinks, caused hundred-year-old trees to topple under the sudden accumulation and sent power pylons crashing down like skeletal monsters. Day after day, the rain kept falling--and freezing. In St.-Cesaire, southeast of Montreal, 20 hydro towers tumbled in one night alone. As many as 3 million people from the Bay of Fundy to Lake Ontario lost power--and with it, heat, light and a sense of security--throughout the week and into the weekend. In Ottawa the federal government shut down all but essential services and declared a state of emergency, the first in the capital's history. Two hundred other municipalities announced emergencies of their own. Most families stayed indoors, with children gleefully missing school while parents struggled to put food on the table. Grocery stores and the occasional service station tried to stay open, but intrepid shoppers had to browse shelves by candlelight and tally their bills with pencil and paper, using powerless automatic scanners as writing tables. By Saturday the death toll had reached 11, including a 90-year-old woman who succumbed to hypothermia when her heating failed. Others died in house fires as they attempted to fend off the cold. Upwards of 100 more were hospitalized from carbon monoxide poisoning after trying to warm their homes with barbecues. Property and business losses were expected to exceed $350 million, or more than the cost of the Saguenay flooding of 1996. Nobody was immune. In upscale Westmount, Brian and Mila Mulroney's secluded crescent street was clogged with fallen branches. Even Lucien Bouchard's Outremont home went dark for a while, leaving the premier to wonder briefly where he might spend the night. "We'll never, never hesitate to call for additional help," the separatist leader intoned before pleading for assistance from Ottawa. "And especially not from the federal government where we pay taxes." Ottawa was happy to oblige, along with others. Defense Minister Art Eggleton dispatched 3,000 troops to Montreal to help clear debris, and power-line workers were pledged from as far away as Manitoba, Newfoundland, Maine and Vermont. But at midweek, as crews restored power at a rate of 10,000 houses per hour, another storm hit and they started all over again. Communities rallied. At a Montreal soup kitchen, volunteers in their 70s worked to prepare hot meals for other seniors stuck at home. The Bank of Montreal opened up corporate meeting rooms as dormitories for employees and their kin. And in Ottawa the Chateau Laurier Hotel lowered its average $140 nightly rate to $28 for the duration of the emergency. Room service not included, of course. No one complained at that.
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he Great Ice Storm of 1998 brought many things to eastern and
central Canada, most of them bad. It brought cold, darkness,
transportation paralysis and in a few cases death. Above all, it
brought a primordial reminder that only a few frail steel
structures and humming power lines separate millions of
Canadians and New Englanders from one of the most brutish and
unpredictable climates on earth. It will be a while before the
lesson is forgotten.