Electricity Canada engages Ontario Mutual Assistance Group to assist with spring ice storm

Hi Shelley. Tell us a little bit about what mutual assistance is.
I think the concept of mutual assistance is something we are used to seeing when it comes to emergencies with more social causes – food banks sharing resources, hospitals loaning equipment, community centres offering shelter. It’s the same sort of idea, but it’s being done to coordinate efforts to help restore power during an outage as efficiently as possible.

Sometimes the utilities involved in mutual assistance will share that they are partnering in restoration efforts through social media or news release as a way of letting their customers know that they are working as efficiently as possible to restore power. People are happily surprised to see trucks from neighboring communities working on outages.

How did OnMAG come to be?

The proposal for an Ontario mutual assistance program came about in 2019. Toronto Hydro and Hydro One approached Electricity Canada with the idea to coordinate the efforts of the then 60+ Ontario utilities into one mutual assistance program. The program ran as a pilot in 2020 and officially launched in December 2021. Currently over half of Ontario’s utilities are members, with membership growing after each storm activation.

As OnMAG, we have activated 7 times, two of which happened in the first quarter of 2023. It is a program that meets a proven need and the frequency of use has steadily increased.

What kind of resources do members offer each other and how are they coordinated?

The utility requesting assistance sends in a request for what they need, and where they need it. They will stipulate the human resources they need like lineworkers or arborists. They will also itemize the specific equipment they are looking for – like radial boom derrick trucks, evac trucks, single buckets, etc.

The beauty of a regional group like OnMAG, is that since Ontario is its footprint, no ask is too big or too small. Members are always welcome to ask for help when they need it.

Once the utility has this information gathered, they call the OnMAG hotline. Their request is then shared out to the OnMAG membership.

The way the process works, members go through their inventory and itemize what support they can offer. A call is scheduled and the requesting utility reviews the offers and accepts the aid they need while on the call with everyone present.

One call, everyone is there. It’s fast, efficient support.

I have participated in four activations since December 2022. And I can say that in the case of OnMAG, we are working with a very special group of emergency managers. Often, we have more than one utility requesting assistance during an activation. Usually the offers of assistance from the OnMAG membership include more resources than the requesting utility requires. The exercise then becomes a process of choosing which offers are the best fit.

When it came to the ice storm last month, walk us through what happened from the time the storm hit?

We had some warning before the Easter ice storm. The storm landed on Wednesday, but OnMAG had been tracking its progress since Monday. We connected with Environment and Climate Change Canada to ensure we were receiving the latest weather reports and we met as a group on Tuesday to review who might be sitting with extra crews, who was expecting to be short on resources. Really we were doing our best to determine in advance where there might be a need for aid and what the support might look like.

OnMAG activated early Thursday morning with 2 utilities requesting resources. Arborists and vegetation crews were at the top of the request list. Crews worked throughout the long weekend with final restoration complete in time for Easter Sunday dinner.

Extreme weather events are on the rise due to the changing climate. What does this mean for OnMAG and other mutual assistance programs across the country?

Absolutely, climate change is increasing the incidents of extreme weather. Over the last few years, most of the major outages are related to weather events. When you put those two facts together, we are seeing more weather-related outages on a larger, more intense scale. On any given day a utility might need extra vegetation crews, they might need specific equipment. It is not feasible financially or from a human resource perspective for each utility to have all their own specialized equipment or to be fully staffed with specialized crews to tackle major restoration. Having a larger "team" to call upon for assistance is an incredibly efficient way increase your crew with one call. That is the kind of insurance that mutual assistance programs like OnMAG offer.