For Those Who Were at Ice Storm 98

[Bruce Monkhouse]

This week while at our bi-weekly volunteer fire training night here in snowy Merrickville someone took note of my army.ca
T-shirt******shameless plug*****..which you can get by the way with no shipping charges during the month of December*****end shameless plug and brought up the ice storm in 98.
Now this was before I relocated here and they were telling me the story of the "army guys" sleeping in the fire hall.The general questions were of the "I wonder how they are doing now" type so I said I would post a thread so that anyone who was in the area at the time would know that they still appreciate all the help that was given back then.
Like I said, I wasn't here then but the broken trees all around the back forest still tell an amazing story.
Thanks,
Bruce

 

[Bomber]

I was in Alexandria and VanKleek Hill, We sent a detachment to a fire station, possibly yours, and they promotly clogged the only working toilet in the entire county. 

 

[Zoomie]

I slept on the floor of a firehall - it was west of Arnprior, in the middle of no-where.  We worked with the Volunteer fire department members in tree removal and taking of census.  I am pretty sure it wasn't Merrickville as we were not on the Rideau Canal.

 

[a_majoor]

I was in Kemptville, with a scratch company made up of menbers collected from all over SW Ontario from 31 CBG units. We spent the first night in the greenhouse of the Agricultural college (perhaps the only heated building in the entire town), and moved into the basement of one of the buildings the next day.

This was a Reserve deployment at its best: I was assigned a section at dawn inside the greenhouse of troops from all different trades and units, and sent out by mid morning. We clicked and worked together very well, doing census, tree clearing and various other grunt-work tasks. One day I will take a drive through the town again, to see how our handiwork has held up.

 

[sapper332]

Hello Ice Storm advocates!
My sub-unit and I spent a few enjoyable weeks at the Rec Centre in St Isadore, just outside of Cassleman.... I still remember how dangerous it was to try and get down the bowling lane in my socks to get to my cot!!!!

 

[Jarnhamar]

I was in the SD&G Armories (With hot food, hot showers and lots of cake)  :blotto:

We worked mostly around cornwall cleaning up sidewalks of tree branches, knocking down powerlines by accident and going door to door. We got tasked with QRF a lot which was basically us flying around in a helicopter which brought us to isolated places and checking on people. Had quite a few shotguns shoved in my face too.

 

[Meridian]

Shotguns shoved in your face?

 

[Jarnhamar]

People, because their dick heads, started going around stealing generators.  When someone (us) would go tramping around their yard knocking on doors and stuff they would get nervous and assume it's someone trying to rob them or steal their generators.

Also i think there was atleast one instance of of people dressing up like soldiers. Soon as people heard about that rumors spread fast so people were cautious of anyone in a uniform.

 

[Meridian]

Sigh. I can believe that. Im not entirely sure the average Canadian has any clue what our uniforms really look like anyway..... as compared to hunting camo, etc.

 

[foerestedwarrior]

I was in McDonalds the other day, and I started talking to this guy sitting near me. He said he was ther working(civi) and he said that without the military, they would have had alot more problems, and never would have finished near as fast. He said he has the utmost respect for all involved. I passed this on in my mess, and alot of people that were there, thought it was neat to have someone feel this way.

 

[Lost_Warrior]

I was in Montreal, and wasn't in the military yet.  A buddy of mine was though.  He was with the 3rd FLD Engineers in Mtl.  He was tasked with street patrols and door to door checks.

 

[Armymedic]

I was in Casselman. I helped move the towns doctors offices across the road to a smaller physiotherapy clinic so that the town still had some medical services. We also help transport a couple non critical cases from Casselman to Ottawa. I was there support 2 CER and reinforcing the UMS in the high school.

 

[Bomber]

I chased pigs, pulled GD in the Alexandria highschool (kept people from boning in the basement with a donated 6 D cell Mag lite) Got given a tooth brush, had pots and pans thrown at us, busted some cadet for "searching" females going into the highschool, conveniently only attractive younger ones.  At DQ donations, drank every jug of slush puppy syrup in the school cafeteria, Started a million trucks, watched a guy check the oil in a generator by removing an oil drain plug....it seized about 8 minutes later.  And sat idly in a window, wondering why in the entire town, the Carnation factory never shut down, and the little tiny Christmas lights that were strung up from one end of the main street to the other, stayed lit, night and day.  It was a really weird time.  Got to drive a city bus as well.

 

[Steel Badger]

Was in Brockville during the Storm....Elizabethville etc..


Funny Ice Storm story:

A couple of OPP constables we were working with arrested 2 fellahs for stealing generators....
These two desperadoes had kitted themselves out in CF Combats and were driving around to houses to "reallocate" generators to the "needy".......

They were busted when a gentleman phoned the OPP and said two guys dressed up as soldiers had shouwed up at his neighbours house and carried off the generator.
When asked how he knew they weren't actually members of the CF, this Gent replied:
"I served in the army for 20 years and thats the first time I've ever commissioned officers doing manual labour!"
The "Major" and his cohort "Lieutenant" were thus apprehended

 

[G .Dundas]

Was in Brockville during the Storm....Elizabethville etc..


Funny Ice Storm story:

A couple of OPP constables we were working with arrested 2 fellahs for stealing generators....
These two desperadoes had kitted themselves out in CF Combats and were driving around to houses to "reallocate" generators to the "needy".......

They were busted when a gentleman phoned the OPP and said two guys dressed up as soldiers had shouwed up at his neighbours house and carried off the generator.
When asked how he knew they weren't actually members of the CF, this Gent replied:
"I served in the army for 20 years and thats the first time I've ever commissioned officers doing manual labour!"
The "Major" and his cohort "Lieutenant" were thus apprehended

DO"NT tell stories like that!!!!!!!!!!! I now have to clean   my keyboard and screen after spraying them with coffee!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[John Nayduk]

I was in Kempville as well.  Six of us went to Kempville, the rest of the Windsors went to Cornwall.  I've never seen so many Hersey chocolate bars in my life!  If you were there, you know what I mean. ;D

 

[Radop]

I was in Kingston at the time of the ice storm and saw a lot of downed power lines and had no power for 5 days.  So what did we do?  We went to Montreal to help them! lol.  I was in St Hubert for 6 weeks, deploying to St Jean de Baptist for a week.

 

[Good2Golf]

Did the first 36 hrs straight in 1 Wing's op cell coordinating about 30-35 Griffons in the AO; then moved out and spent a day at the Winchester Ontario Hydro station trialling the ERSTA prototype on one of the Griffons looking at downed wires and scanning for houses with/without power.  No sooner had we got the microwave link to the helo working then MGen Ntynczuk (then Col or LCol, I think) walks in with Art Eggleton, shows him the downlink of the ERSTA V1.0 and tells him we're getting some more of these in the near future...alas it only that had turned out.  The rest of the op then turned back into flopping the Griffies around Southern Ontario and Quebec to give rides to all the local mayors and their family members (well, not the pets, but almost...)

Cheers,
Duey

 

[patt]

i remeber when my father went there it was his first time working on a farm it was pretty funny, a couple months after i went there and the people told me they had alot more respoect for the military after that

 

[SuperTrooper]

I was in Kemptville, yes the Hersey bars still give me the shivers and I have never had a drop of Brisk ice tea since then, skids and skids of the stuff!

I was in the RCMP/OPP building, found out it was a fall out shelter of some type, massive map of north america on one wall, last time they did a "kit check" of the stores was 1968, give or take.

A lot of movies were donated to us from the video store, slept on the lazy boy chair that the police had in the briefing room lol.

Saw two RCR pvt's give a high five only to wipe out on top of each other in front of the Col. still laugh to this day when I think about that.

Did a lot of driving in the country to check up on the guys who were guarding the generators, civi and military.

Second night we were there, 52 generators were stolen, my section and the help of one cop caught the guys after a few nights of watching them.
These three clowns killed two dogs to get at a generator, the dogs were chained to it.


A little old lady on one farm always made us spaghetti,  we gave her a lot of stuff in return.

One area that was being guarded was in the middle of a wind swept field out in no-where land, generator had to keep going around the clock to power up the bell box, after the first night shift the troops used up all the fuel to stay warm, so I went out to a farmer and asked if I could use some hay for a floor and some logs for firewood, he ended up driving his tractor over with a trailer and build us a sweat house lol.

During my daily check up of the civies out in the country, we found a couple frozen to death, they died from toxic fumes because they used hydro poles as firewood.

All in all, I felt good that I helped and was happy to meet many people that gave and asked for nothing, very proud how we all worked together from so many different units.