The city of Greater Sudbury provided an update on their response efforts to a severe storm that ripped through the city on July 9.
Chief Administrative Officer Ed Archer hosted a media conference on July 10 and was joined by representatives from Greater Sudbury Utilities, Public Health Sudbury & Districts, along with the city's general manager of growth and infrastructure Tony Cecuitti, and general manager of community safety, Joseph Nicholls.
Speaking about the volume of calls for emergency response, Nicholls explained that the operational tempo that crews were working at was something that the city has not seen in some time.
"Fire crews (in New Sudbury) were responding to calls for wires down, trees down, poles on fire and those type of calls," said Nicholls. "Between 4:30 p.m. and about 10 last night we responded to about 57 calls, that is certainly a high level of call volume for this service, we would typically see three to five calls in that time span."
Greater Sudbury Utilities has been working since the storm passed through to get power back to some 4,000 customers who were knocked offline. At the time of the press conference there were still more than 1,000 customers without power, and Archer said that it could be up to three days before everything is fully restored.
Burgess Hawkins spoke on behalf of Public Health Sudbury & Districts, urging residents who have lost power or experienced flooding to exercise proper precautions in the clean up.
"From the health unit our main messaging is around prevention, the first part of it for those without power is around food. Unfortunately, fridges and freezers don't work without power," said Hawkins.
"An average fridge will keep your food cold for three or four hours after power goes out, after that if it's too long from the food being cold, it can become a hazard for you."
Nicholls touched on the city's alert system, as there was some stir as to why there were no notifications sent out prior to the storm touching down, but there was one sent out the week prior when the city was under a tornado warning.
"During the July 5 weekend we received a tornado warning and it came through the national alert system to many of the residents and it was at that point that we elected to activate our own Sudbury alert system," said Nicholls.
"Sudbury alerts, we try to use that system for life-threatening issues. Yesterday we had warnings and watches, but because there isn't a known direct threat to life and limb we decided not to use that system. Later in the evening, working with fire services and Greater Sudbury Utilities we became concerned about potential downed wires that had not been discovered so it was elected at that time to send out a Sudbury alert."
The clean up is ongoing and there is currently no estimate on the dollar value of the damages that Monday's storm.
Click the video above to watch Tuesday's press conference in its entirety.
