[CVRC] The hazards

[Matthew Parker]

(Message BCC'd to several emergency management and response partners)

Here is a rather sobering, first-hand account of recent events surrounding 
the ice storm in the Kansas City area just over a week ago.  Those of us 
who live in the cold weather areas would do well to heed the hard lessons 
learned by some and not make the same mistakes should an event like this 
occur in our area.

Thanks to Mike Bellinger, ARES-EC for Jackson County, Missouri, for passing 
along his observations regarding the storm and its aftermath.

Matthew B. Parker, N7TOD
Chairman, Northern Nevada Amateur Radio Services
http//www.qsl.net/nnars
ARES District Emergency Coordinator - Nevada Area 1


-------- Original Message --------

From: Mike Bellinger
Subject: The hazards
Date Mon, 11 Feb 2002 160706 EST

Matt

Feel free to ask questions about any of this information. I may or may not 
have more details to provide.

The thing most people don't realize is the danger involved with a storm 
like we had. Early on in the development of this storm, on Wednesday 
morning, the NWS distributed a strongly worded warning. It was something to 
the effect that if you chose to leave the safety of your residence, you 
were putting your life in danger. That I guess is relative, since there 
were many who stayed at home during the storm and thereafter were in no 
less danger. I will become evident as I describe what happens.

The first thing that began occurring on Wednesday is that icing was 
occurring before rush hour. Visibility though incompletely cleared windows 
was a problem. Accidents occurred. Police cars were involved in accidents 
getting to accidents. Ambulances couldn't get to accident scenes because of 
stopped traffic. Travel on road shoulders was worst of all. For the most 
part though, streets, roads, bridges and overpasses had been well treated 
by road crews ahead of time.

Then branches and the ice they supported began falling. Limbs fell on 
individual electrical services. Transformers blew and high voltage power 
lines arced. I was outside spreading deicer at about this time. Almost 
continuously, in some direction, I could see either blue, red or green 
flashes reflected off the low clouds as some part of the electrical system 
failed. Sometimes the events were close enough to hear the buzz of arcing 
high voltage lines or the sharp concussion of an overloaded transformer 
exploding. What mostly I heard though were falling limbs. About every 
minute a limb would fall somewhere in the neighborhood. This went on well 
into the next morning. Sometimes you could tell if a limb hit something, 
usually a house or a car.

Probably the most help hams could have been initially was to report streets 
closed by debris. There wer e lots of those. If public safety had that 
information they could route ambulances and fire apparatus around 
blockages. However, at that time, I don't know if officials could have 
handled that information had they had it. 911 dispatchers were getting 
swamped. On one hand you had adults and kids calling 911 asking about 
family who had not yet arrived home from work. On the other you had some 
number of people calling 911 for every electrical flash they saw or every 
electrical failure they heard. It was a scary situation for sure. Then 
there were those who called 911 to report their power was interruptions 
rather than first calling the power company.

I said the most initial ham help would probably be to report closed 
streets. This is not a task I want to dispatch mobiles at night to do. I 
would not agree to let any ham do that unless he had experience doing if 
before with the full benefit of daylight. Otherwise, they might agree to 
the duty without knowing what could befall them. It is just too risky. I 
saw and read of all manner of things falling on cars. I saw cars whose 
windows were cracked and then there were those that just had empty window 
frames. There were folks that were electrocuted when a power line energized 
their car as they were exiting the vehicle. There were other vehicles, 
including a school bus, that became entangled in falling power lines. There 
were folks that were knocked out cold from falling ice. I know a person 
that happened to. In the first day or so there were more than 90 persons 
treated in hospitals for either things falling on their bodies or their 
bodies falling on or against something. I would recommend against having 
your ARES folks practice reporting street closures at night for your 
exercise, lest they think it is OK and safe to do. It is not.

That brings up the next topic -- emergency rooms closed to ambulances. 
There were cases where emergency rooms had to divert ambulances due to 
their patient load. Very few ERs were always available, most were 
unavailable for at least a few hours and there were some ERs who were 
unavailable for more than 24 hours at a time.

Another hazard was the gas-powered generator set. We don't realize from 
seeing generators, operating out in the open at Field Day, how dangerous 
they can be. Citizens who have no experience with them, and therefore have 
no business operating one, will attempt something dangerous with them. They 
have no idea how much CO a single cylinder,10 HP motor can produce. People 
who wouldn't think of leaving their car to idle in an open garage, will 
operate a generator in a closed garage. That is what killed one couple 
here. People will operate generators inside the house or in the basement 
because they don't have cords of sufficient length and gauge to place the 
unit outside. Some who do place units outside will place them by leaky 
basement windows that allows the CO penetration. Others us e a slightly 
open basement window to pass power cords though, but position the generator 
too close to the window. In the first day or so in the metro we had 30 CO 
cases with 3 fatalities.

We had even more fatalities from fire. During the height of the ice storm 
the Kansas City, MO FD had as many as six working fires at once. The fire 
hazard can be categorized in three different phases. The first phase is 
fires and emergencies caused by things falling limbs, falling ice, falling 
power lines. Some of the most dangerous fires were caused when the 
electrical service was literally torn away from the house which in some 
cases started fires in the walls near where the power attachment.

The next phase would be fires caused when people resorted to alternative 
means of heating and lighting. Some fires resulted from use of kerosene and 
propane heaters. Those heating devices also accounted for some of the CO 
cases. Then there were fires that started due to imprudent handling of 
fuels. Storing or spilling fuel near a working gas water heater would be an 
example of this folly. Some fires resulted from accidents using candles and 
matches. There were a number of what I call friendly fire accidents. There 
was one case where a person had a fire in the fireplace and was using some 
wood felled by the storm. Without the proper fireplace screening in place, 
the popping of the fresh wood sent embers to the carpet. There were other 
cases where a roaring fireplace fire sent embers to the shake shingle roof 
on their own or a neighboring house. One person had a chimney and structure 
fire when he started a fire in a fireplace he had never used before. He 
found out there was wooden lath in his chimney that ignited. The cases in 
this group accounted for the greatest loss of life locally.

The final phase of fire danger occurs when electrical power is restored to 
a neighborhood. In most of these cases there was unsuspected electrical 
damage within the house. When power was restored, a fire started. One such 
fire occurred about two miles south of me. Fifteen fire companies were 
called to that one, involving 80 or so fire personnel. In one double 
fatality case, power had been restored to a house hours earlier, but an 
electric space heater was still being used in a front room of the house 
when it set a fire. This group had the second highest fatalities.

You might be wondering, with the power being out for some for up to ten 
days, if there were any serious cases of hypothermia. There was one notable 
case, but I hadn't heard too many others. The case I did hear the details 
about involved an older man who when out for a walk and got trapped beneath 
a fallen limb. He was not discovered until he had developed a serious case 
of hypothermia. The majority of the hypothermia cases involved the older 
and infirm.

Mike Bellinger