While the destruction and trauma resulting from the Old East Village explosion cannot be overlooked, the immediate response from city agencies is drawing praise from the City of London’s Community Emergency Management Program Committee (CEMPC).
Friday marks exactly one year since the explosion on Woodman Avenue. On Aug. 14, 2019, a vehicle slammed into a home, striking a gas line that resulted in an explosion that levelled one home and left two others so badly damaged they were demolished within days. Seven people were taken to hospital — one civilian, four firefighters and two police officers.
Early estimates last year pegged damage at $10- to $15-million and Daniella Leis, now 24, of Kitchener — the woman driving the vehicle — faces a dozen charges in connection with the case.
“Based on the seriousness of this event, the severity of the event, the significant impact on the community,” CEMPC division manager Dave O’Brien told Global News, “the way both our emergency response services and agencies came together and certainly the cooperation of the community both at the time and after — (it) really showed that advanced planning, training, engagement in community play a significant role in the management of any emergency.”
The explosion took place at 10:51 p.m. that Wednesday night, and by 12:06 a.m. Thursday — 75 minutes later — a reception centre was opening its doors to the roughly 100 households that had been evacuated.
“We have a variety of teams on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week specific to support our community in a variety of ways including if members of our community don’t have a place to stay due to the circumstance,” O’Brien explained.
“(Our team) was activated quite quickly that night and people were brought to the reception centre and then provided accommodation.”
The emergency response was so thorough, O’Brien says, because of the frequent, in-depth training team members across a variety of city departments and agencies take part in.
“A couple of years ago (the city) undertook a pretty aggressive training program where on a weekly basis we bring on-duty personnel from a variety of agencies to the emergency operations centre and run them collectively through a scenario where they have to figure out how to respond to the different situations that we’re presenting to them. It’s really paid significant dividends for us,” said O’Brien.
“It’s certainly more than just looking at a piece of paper, like an emergency response plan. It’s actually getting down into the tactical pieces of those responses: it’s about the language that each service uses, it’s about the different capabilities that each service could provide and how they collectively can come together to manage those various events.”
The agencies represented in the emergency management program include first responders like firefighters, police, and paramedics, but also agencies like London Hydro, London Transit, the city’s Environmental and Engineering Services, Corporate Communications, and others.
As well, London’s CEMPC holds intensive three-day training sessions each year, according to the city’s website.
In October 2017, emergency personnel and other local agencies took part in what was described at the time as the area’s largest emergency field practice scenario to date.
That training scenario, called Foxtrot 2, involved the aftermath of a possible tornado amid a cross-country meet with multiple causalities. Constable Sandasha Bough with the London Police Service explained at that time that annual training is federally mandated and that every five years “we do a larger practice scenario.”
More recently, in November 2019, OPP led preparedness training at multiple locations in London and Middlesex County. Nineteen additional agencies on a local, provincial, and national level took part in that training.
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In addition to the human-focused emergency response, London’s animal care and control program — with services provided under contract through the London Animal Care Centre (LACC) — was active the night of the explosion to respond to the needs of area pets.
“People had to leave the area and people had to leave quickly and they had to leave their animals either lost or unsecured inside their homes,” said officer Chris Lewis.
“It was our fear that there would be hundreds of animals that would be running the area in fear from this explosion. I’m happy to report that didn’t happen. But when something like this occurs, your immediate response is to fear the worst.”
Lewis says, generally speaking, animals instinctively run for safety when they hear a loud noise. LACC had two officers driving around the neighbourhood “for days,” had people stationed at the Boyle Community Centre (where displaced residents with pets could go to), and had someone always on-call.
“I spoke to as many of the homeowners as I could to try to get a sense as to the number of animals that could be missing and I think within less than 12 hours after the incident, we had less than six that were unaccounted for but believed to be in their own homes. Of the animals that were missing, only two were confirmed to be unknown, people didn’t know where they were,” Lewis said, adding that LACC was able to reunite one or two pets through social media.
“This is remarkable, this actually shouldn’t have happened. I’m happy that nothing bad happened but for all intents and purposes, I can’t stress enough that the City got lucky.”
Roughly one year on, Lewis says one or two animals were never found, but “it could have been so much worse.”
For residents looking to make sure their pets are accounted for in an emergency situation, Lewis says that licencing plays an important role.
“If someone has to leave their home, and it’s an emergency — could be anything from a tornado to a train derailment or whatever — if a series of blocks or a series of the city is evacuated and animals are left… if we know that Home A has two cats and Home B has two dogs, if we need to then liaison with the fire department or whoever to bring these people back to get their animals, we have a ready list,” he said.
“I would strongly encourage people to keep their animals registered with the city.”
O’Brien adds the response to the Woodman Avenue explosion shows how important emergency preparedness and hands-on training is, but he also noted that “with every emergency situation there’s always lessons learned.”
“We learned some lessons around natural gas-type-related events. We’ve changed some of our notifications when it comes to those particular specific events to ensure that there’s a broad range of folks that are immediately notified to make sure that we’re actively available to respond. That’s one of the bigger ones that came out of it,” he explained.
“The real positive pieces to this are: of course there were some people injured, (but) we didn’t have any deaths associated with this (and) the community did an outstanding job in cooperating right from the very beginning of the incident through to the recovery portions that went on for many, many weeks and to some extent are still going on.”
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