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CANADA | JANUARY 26, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 3 |
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The Great Breakout Politics notwithstanding, it's taking all the energy eastern Canadians can muster to dig their way out from under the Ice Storm of '98 By ANDREW PURVIS /MONTREAL
More than 15,000 soldiers from the Canadian armed forces, by far the largest peacetime deployment ever, fanned out across eastern Ontario and southern Quebec, clearing power lines, patrolling for looters, and going door to door to check for residents disoriented by the cold and suffering from hypothermia. Some 5,000 electrical workers from as far away as British Columbia and Detroit labored 16-hour days, often forgoing meals, to restore heat and light to communities that had gone without them for more than a week. Even politicians demonstrated some marginal utility. Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard won praise from both French and English speakers for canceling his Team Canada junket to Latin America so he could hand out $50 relief checks to those without power and issue urgent pleas to those who refused to leave their unheated homes for the safety of public shelters. The newfound solidarity was born of necessity. Late last week, some 750,000 people in Quebec remained without heat or electricity. Temperatures plummeted to -20[degrees] C, and wind-chill factors to 40 below. South of the border, upwards of 300,000 residents of New England and New York State fought through their own darkness and cold. The death toll from hypothermia, carbon-monoxide poisoning and falling chunks of ice rose to 23 in Canada and another 12 in the northern U.S. Estimated costs of the disaster in Canada topped $1.25 billion. Worse, power in some communities would likely remain down at least until the end of January. Weather forecasts brought no relief--only more cold and snow. "It is a true catastrophe," exclaimed Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stephane Dion after visiting the so-called Triangle of Darkness on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. "I've seen nothing like it." The full extent of the calamity is only beginning to emerge. Hydro-Quebec officials revealed last week that four out of five transmission stations feeding Montreal failed or collapsed on the last day of the storm. On the south shore of the St. Lawrence, some 30,000 wooden poles and 1,000 steel pylons were destroyed in 96 hours. Safety tolerances previously considered conservative turned out to be woefully inadequate. "Transmission lines are designed to bear 45 millimeters of ice, which is a worst-case scenario, something that happens maybe once in a century," explained Elias Ghannoum, a transmission-line expert at Hydro-Quebec. "We got twice as much ice, something you see once in a millennium. Nobody could have predicted that." Perhaps not. But while the cost of burying all high-tension wires in the region underground is still believed to be prohibitive, officials are beginning to talk about other measures. These range from diversifying power sources (Quebec relies on hydroelectricity for more than 40% of its power) to ensuring that all older pylons, those erected before the 1950s, are replaced with sturdier versions. Technological fixes are another possibility. A Newfoundland engineer, for example, is developing a special kind of "fuse" that would allow high-tension wires to give way before too much ice has accumulated, so the towers at least are left standing. In the past, such proposals were considered too expensive. But with Hydro-Quebec losses alone estimated at $350 million, even deficit-wary politicians may feel the projects would be worth the price.
--With Reporting by Alexandre D'Aragon /Montreal |
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s millions of easterners from Lake Ontario to the coast of
Maine struggled last week to hack their way out of the Great Ice
Storm of 1998, they confirmed a familiar political verity: when
faced with a common enemy, even the most chronically contentious
communities quickly and effectively unite. Along the borders of
Quebec and Ontario, New Brunswick and the northeastern U.S., the
old bugbears of separatist politics, north-south parochialism
and voter frustration receded before the prospect of weeks
without heat and with wind chill nearing -40[degrees] C.
Canadians set aside their differences to tackle the hardships at
hand.