Toronto Mayor Rob Ford curses in a jafaican accent when he's loaded

[SteampunkBanana]

Just past Electric.

[chgoliz]

Oh…it’s right off Bloor Street! Guess I should have checked before engaging in snark, eh?

[WearySky]

The issue people are having with him not declaring a state of emergency was back at the end of December, during the ice storm, when thousands upon thousands of people had no power. Yes, it gets cold in Toronto and they can deal with that, normally. But when a freak ice storm comes in and kills power for a larger percentage of the city for a week, that’s not just “Oh Toronto, you can’t seem to handle the cold” territory, really.

But, as to why he didn’t declare a state of emergency? I think there’s a pretty simple reason for that: he didn’t want another one of [these situations][1].

[1]: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2009/01/11/10_years_later_mel_lastman_proud_he_called_in_army.html[quote=“AlexandraKitty, post:37, topic:20318”]
If someone in the house does not respect machinery, that is not any mayor’s fault. Bad things happen because sometimes they do.
[/quote]

This isn’t a case of “someone in the house does not respect machinery” as if somebody just brought their BBQ into the house for shits and giggles - these are desperate people with no power in EXTREMELY cold temperatures who were just trying to keep warm. I’m not sure if Rob Ford declaring a state of emergency would have helped these people get to some place warm (I don’t know the individual cases, to say if these people had the option to go to a warming station and just chose not to, or if they really just didn’t have any other options), but let’s not pretend that this is just “ha ha Darwin awards” territory.

[IronEdithKidd]

Normally, if an ice storm hits, it’s pretty localized and amazingly, power companies do help each other out. There have been several occassions when line workers crossed borders to get power back up as quickly as possible. In the case of this storm, it hit a wide swath of customers (several million people) in both the US and Canada, and there just weren’t any spare line workers to send anywhere. Are there other forms of assistance declaring a state of emergency would’ve provided?

Oh, and not once did I say that folks in Toronto just can’t hack the cold. It is considerably colder than normal, that is all I said. Like, three times now.