Veterans use front-line experience to help Peterborough, Ont., with ice storm recovery
Peterborough was hit with 20 mm of ice build up during last weekend’s storm
Clean up efforts continue following the ice storm that devastated parts of central Ontario a week ago.
The storm left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity and many stranded at home due to fallen trees and power lines.
The freezing rain stopped last Sunday and that's when Sydney Gerzymisch and her fellow "greyshirts" at Team Rubicon, a humanitarian aid organization, jumped into action in Peterborough, Ont.
"We like to look for the unmet needs of the community that we're in," she told CBC Toronto. "So we talked to them, we asked about their unmet needs, about the hydro situation. We talked about the trees down. And then we did a lot of driving around and just looking at the damage."
Environment Canada first issued freezing rain warnings across the region Friday, March 28 and the warnings didn't lift until around 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 30. Peterborough was one of the worst-hit areas with 20 millimetres of ice build up — and its mayor declared a state of emergency.
That's when Team Rubicon came to help.
The veteran-led organization serves communities during and after disasters. The organization relies on volunteers, or "greyshirts," who are named for the grey t-shirts they wear as a uniform.
Many of those volunteers are veterans whose expertise is invaluable in a crisis like the ice storm, Gerzymisch said.
"[They're] ex-first responders, people who have very specialized skill sets," she said. "And when they leave that part of their life, they're left kind of in limbo. Like what do you do with all this knowledge and all this experience that you have? It's not really something you can often apply to just your everyday civilian life."
For the ice storm, that means volunteers with relevant training and skills have been able to step up to better organize clean-up efforts outside of those being carried out in an official capacity by the municipality.
Veterans bring specialized skills in times of crisis
"We capitalize on all of that training and all those skills and all that experience that already exists in those folks," Tim Kenney, Team Rubicon's vice president of programs and field operations and a former infantry officer in the Canadian military, told CBC Toronto.
"We begin to leverage it to fill the gaps," he said.
In this case, that amounted to sending out chainsaw operators like Gerzymisch to help clear trees from yards and driveways — areas not typically covered by the municipality or insurance.
That kind of aid makes a huge difference to the people most impacted, Gerzymisch said.
"They haven't been forgotten about. That's really important to people … that someone is out there thinking about them and that they don't have to do [the work themselves] because a lot of these trees are really dangerous," she said.
Gerzymisch have been involved in several previous Team Rubicon operations in other regions, but this one literally hit close to home. She grew up in the area and many of her family members were impacted by the storm.
"You don't expect for disaster to strike in your own home," she said. "It's very fulfilling for me to be able to help out and provide my local knowledge to all the other greyshirts here because I'm the only one really from the area."
Acts of charity and a sense of community has been characteristic of the recovery efforts, Peterborough Mayor Jeff Leal told CBC Toronto
Clean up a community effort, mayor says
"Neighbours helping neighbours. Team Rubicon [is] going into neighbourhoods where there is a high population of seniors to help them, cleaning up their yards from all the branches and other debris and also helping low income people that possibly couldn't afford to have a private sector entity come in to clean up their yard," he said. "It's all hands on deck."
The mayor said the city will also continue using its resources to aid residents with the clean up.
He says he's also hopeful the sense of camaraderie in the community will endure as Peterborough and surrounding areas continue to bounce back after the storm.
Premier Doug Ford spoke about the storm clean up on Thursday, thanking the front-line workers and volunteers, including Team Rubicon.
He also called for an improved communication system to better handle emergencies in the future.
"We have to come up with a new mechanism to communicate because it's very difficult to communicate when people don't have the the ability to watch the television," Ford said. "We have to come up with something with the cell phones because ... their number one concern out there is communication."
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