The North Lanark CHC is located in Lanark Village, population 800, which is about 70 kilometres southwest of Ottawa. Busloads of tourists visit Lanark each year to shop at the Kitten Sweater factory outlets. But in the January ice storm, travelling was not an option for many residents of the sparsely populated rural township. There are just over 4,000 permanent residents living in the township of almost one million hectares and Lanark Village is the largest centre in the township. A state of emergency was declared on Thursday January 8th, when Lanark Village lost its electrical power, and it lasted more than two weeks. Outlying areas had lost their power three or four days earlier and many remained without power for up to three weeks. "The CHC was at the table to raise awareness around health issues," says executive director Wanda MacDonald. But in fact the CHC served several functions during the ice storm. As a health facility, it housed and fed medically vulnerable residents in the first three or four days of the power outage, later sending them to nursing homes and hospitals in nearby towns. It then became a triage centre. The CHC was also the hub of overseeing the health of all residents. "I must have sounded like a broken record," said MacDonald. "I kept stressing the need to do house to house checks to see how people were doing." Some local roads were impassable and residents, many of whom live miles from the nearest neighbour in houses with long private laneways, were stranded. Carrying out house checks was especially challenging since Lanark Highlands had just been created, the result of an amalgamation of four townships, and only one of those four had a formal rural mapping system, MacDonald noted. The CHC was first public facility to open its doors to township residents when Lanark Village lost power -- a generator was set up at its one-year-old building within an hour. The CHC is the only health facility in the township and so staff acted quickly. They identified medically vulnerable citizens in the CHC data base, and immediately began to take in residents who could not survive without electricity and adequate heat, including people who needed oxygen to breathe, elderly people with Alzheimers or other debilitating illness and a palliative patient. "The CHC gave people a decent place to be, with access to medical care," Reeve McDermott commented. Irene Donaldson, 66, cared for her mother, 92 year old Annie Kemp, at home for the first overnight after the power went off. "I had my mum covered in blankets and with a hat on her head. The temperature in the house was down to 7 degrees," said Donaldson. CHC nurse Heather Loubier called to check in and the elderly woman, who needs constant attention, and her daughter were evacuated to the CHC early in the morning. Examination rooms were used as bedrooms for those who needed medical care, and the army brought in cots for coordinating committee members like McDermott, CHC staff and volunteers and others to sleep over at the centre. "Nurses and doctors checked on Mum all the time, and everybody seemed to cope pretty well," said Donaldson. Volunteers like Jean Dugdale Foster, 79, worked in the CHC kitchen, feeding patients, staff and others -- like Hydro crew members. "About 25 people stayed over, and we had 40 people for each meal," said Dugdale Foster. "We had hydro workers come in a 6 a.m. for breakfast, and it was like having a thrashing gang to feed. At 10 a.m. we served residents and two hours later they were right on board for lunch at noon! People were happy to be warm and fed and it was a great way to get rid of a lot of food." Dugdale Foster and others made dinners from scratch, but benefitted from an influx of pies that residents had frozen for future use but that now, with the power failure, had to be eaten up quickly. After four days, when it became apparent that power would not be restored in the township for a while, the medically vulnerable like Donaldson were sent off to nursing homes and hospitals in Almonte and Perth, and the CHC began to serve as a triage centre. Meanwhile, right from the beginning, the CHC served as the central location for informally mapping the rural areas, so that army personnel, accompanied by local volunteers, could locate remote houses. The first task -- not an easy one -- was to clear roads and lanes. "The township is highly forested and trees are close to the road. Sometimes, you couldn't even see where the road was," commented McDermott, the reeve, who toured the area in an army helicopter. If after army and volunteers made an initial visit, there were concerns about residents' health, the situation was "red flagged" and CHC staff made house calls. CHC nurse Heather Loubier said home visits were organized, for example, when there was a risk of hypothermia or when people were using lake and river water. "I recall one woman living alone in a cottage was using river water for drinking and beginning to show signs of dehydration from gastroenteritis." There were other cases where residents were using carbon monoxide generating heating units, like kerosene heaters, and suffering from headaches, nausea and drowsiness. In such cases, time and patience were necessary to help people decide to leave their homes if it appeared they could not cope well there, Loubier said. "Elderly people found it particularly difficult to leave their homes, as they were already feeling so vulnerable," she said. A few days into the state of emergency, other overnight shelters opened -- two in Lanark Village and five in various centres around the township. The CHC played a key role overseeing health and safety standards at the 7 shelters. As well, residents who had been at the CHC, but were not in medical need, were redirected to the other shelters so the CHC could concentrate on dealing with medical needs. There was a steady stream of people coming to the CHC with a variety of problems ranging from lacerations to scalds from boiling water to ashmatic attacks and babies with severe diaper rash. Ann Chabot, in her early 80s, first stayed at the CHC and later left for the shelter at nearby Watson's Corners. "She kept everyone's spirits up," said Loubier. "Once I went there and she was telling jokes that made the hydro men blush." Chabot also wrote about her experiences in her poem Once Upon An Ice Storm. Here's an excerpt: . . . . "The furnace just quit heating You can't even have a coffee So you go to the community centre Related Web Links:
|