Veterans use front-line experience to help Peterborough, Ont., with ice storm recovery

Clean up efforts continue following the ice storm that devastated parts of central Ontario a week ago. 

The storm left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity and many stranded at home due to fallen trees and power lines. 

The freezing rain stopped last Sunday and that's when Sydney Gerzymisch and her fellow "greyshirts" at Team Rubicon, a humanitarian aid organization, jumped into action in Peterborough, Ont. 

"We like to look for the unmet needs of the community that we're in," she told CBC Toronto. "So we talked to them, we asked about their unmet needs, about the hydro situation. We talked about the trees down. And then we did a lot of driving around and just looking at the damage." 

Environment Canada first issued freezing rain warnings across the region Friday, March 28 and the warnings didn't lift until around 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 30. Peterborough was one of the worst-hit areas with 20 millimetres of ice build up — and its mayor declared a state of emergency. 

That's when Team Rubicon came to help.

The veteran-led organization serves communities during and after disasters. The organization relies on volunteers, or "greyshirts," who are named for the grey t-shirts they wear as a uniform. 

Many of those volunteers are veterans whose expertise is invaluable in a crisis like the ice storm, Gerzymisch said.

"[They're] ex-first responders, people who have very specialized skill sets," she said. "And when they leave that part of their life, they're left kind of in limbo. Like what do you do with all this knowledge and all this experience that you have? It's not really something you can often apply to just your everyday civilian life."

For the ice storm, that means volunteers with relevant training and skills have been able to step up to better organize clean-up efforts outside of those being carried out in an official capacity by the municipality. 

"We capitalize on all of that training and all those skills and all that experience that already exists in those folks," Tim Kenney, Team Rubicon's vice president of programs and field operations and a former infantry officer in the Canadian military, told CBC Toronto.

"We begin to leverage it to fill the gaps," he said. 

In this case, that amounted to sending out chainsaw operators like Gerzymisch to help clear trees from yards and driveways — areas not typically covered by the municipality or insurance. 

That kind of aid makes a huge difference to the people most impacted, Gerzymisch said.