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More health problems are expected due to ice related injuries and the long term effects of stress, hypothermia and toxic fumes from heating devices. Thousands of farm animals died or were put down due to disease or hyper/hypothermia. Estimated costs of ice storm for the Province of Quebec in Canadian Dollars : 1 billion dollars of insurance claims, 3 billion dollars of lost income to businesses, 1 billion dollars for Hydroelectric infrastructure repairs, 1 billion dollars for Provincial governmental expenses, and millions of dollars for Federal military costs.
NDG Loyola High School Shelter Figures John Richardson, a city of Montreal employee in Sports, Recreation, and Social Development Departmenet said at the Saturday March 28th 1998, at an "Ice Storm Stories" meeting that "We should give enormous credit to Loyola High School." He provided the following information: The Loyola High School shelter was open for 9 days Over 10,000 meals were served A total of 1,338 refugees stayed at the shelter (overnight) and ages ranged from10 days old to 91 years old 37 Loyola faculty and their families also stayed at Loyola 425 volunteers worked with city and provincial employees to help the refugees in the shelter James R. Fleming, associate professor of science at Colby College, Maine, USA, current chairman of the historical committee of the American Meteorological Association was quoted as saying about the 1998 ice storm in Eastern Canada and United States, "So far this century there has been nothing like it. We did live through a history-making kind of event - you'll be telling your grandchildren about this. It certainly was an extremely damaging event for us and Canada. It will probably make the meteorological textbooks - even history books - as one of the biggest storms ever." The professor added that 1997 was the warmest year ever recorded globally, but a cooling trend in the Northern Hemisphere averaged out temperatures in North America to seasonal levels. Fleming, whose second book, "Historical Prospectives on Climate Change," is due out this spring, said global warming was not the cause of the special conditions that led to the storm - but El Nino was. More Facts and Figures According to a story which ran in The Hartford Courant NU Crews Return From Battle Up North written by Larry Smith January 25, 1998: Jarvis Langelier of Hydro Quebec power company was quoted as having said that "more than 20,000 miles of transmission lines were knocked down by the ice storms and 60,000 miles of distribution lines to homes. "(My emphasis) " Here is another quote from one of the 247 people from Connecticut Northeast Utilities people helping Quebec Hydro for the past three weeks.``It was like working in a war zone,'' said Jim LaChance, system restoration administrator. ``Literally for a hundred square miles no power. In my 27 years, this is the worst storm I've ever seen.''
Canadian Military Dispatch "Operation Recuperation" The Canadian Forces was tasked to provide support to provincial
authorities of Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick. The total number
of military personnel deployed reached a peak of approximately
15,875 (including 3,741 reservists). Approximately 200 Canadian
Forces units participated in this operation, the largest Canadian
Forces' humanitarian assistance mobilization in peacetime. For
comparison purposes, approximately 15,930 Canadian Forces personnel
were deployed for the Montreal Olympics in 1976 and 8,612 to
Manitoba for the flood of 1997. These TWO LARGE PDF files have a wealth of official informationed garned by the Americans and Canadian Governments: Click on them to down load, or view them if you have the Adobe Acrobat Viewer installed in your browser plug ins.  Click here to download Large pdf file from US corps of engineers 1.9 megs Click here to download Large pdf file from Statistics Canada 2.3 megs |
