Critics throw shade on eclipse emergency call
Move may have scared away visitors and caused hotel cancellations
There was plenty to celebrate as hundreds of thousands of people across Niagara looked to the sky in awe of a celestial wonder, but among all the hullabaloo, division over a pre-emptive emergency declaration is taking some of the shine off the total solar eclipse.
Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati said the emergency declaration made prior to the eclipse created “negative media attention” that hurt visitation.
Doug Birrell, executive director of Niagara Falls Canada Hotel Association, concurred.
Birrell said as soon as the declaration generated considerable media attention, hotels began receiving cancellations in the “thousands.”
“That was the TSN turning point,” he said, using a sports analogy. “Our operators are very sophisticated at inventory planning, and the term in the travel industry that everybody employs is yield management. It was pacing to be absolutely a record weekend, and when (the declaration was called), there were mass cancellations.”
Niagara Region Chair Jim Bradley, who signed the order on the recommendation of senior staff, said events tied to the eclipse were highly successful, even though Niagara wasn’t blessed with the best weather.
“I wish we could have called it something like a ‘declaration of preparation,’ because all it was doing was ensuring that we had all the available resources should something happen,” Bradley said.
“I think we would have been justifiably criticized if a major event, such as an infrastructure failure or a major accident, had occurred and we had not made every effort to prepare for it.”
Niagara Parks estimated 200,000 people saw the eclipse near the falls, topping its largest event ever, the Nik Wallenda tightrope walk in 2012, by 50,000.
Considering other areas in Niagara that drew good crowds, the overall attendance may have been in the 250,000 to 300,000 range.
Data from Canada’s leading payment services provider, Moneris, pointed to a successful event and a substantial economic spinoff.
The company said its “spend data” showed a “tourism frenzy” at local businesses generated by the eclipse. The number of transactions in Niagara increased by more than 50 per cent at the beginning of the week leading up to the eclipse. The transactions peaked on April 8, almost doubling, with a 99 per cent increase that Monday.
Diodati said the declaration was unnecessary because a detailed emergency plan was already in place, and there were no reports of major incidents. The mayor also said the city wasn’t consulted.
Diodati said he has “a lot of respect” for Bradley and his team and hopes there will be more consulting before such decisions are made, especially in this case, where Niagara Falls received the “lion’s share” of visitors.
“I did talk to Jim Bradley,” Diodati said. “I just suggested in the future, I think it would be good if we had some more discussions and consultations before decisions were made.”
Asked if he thinks forecasts of cloudy weather, hotel room prices nearing $2,000 a night, and comments about as many as a million people converging on Niagara Falls for the eclipse could have also negatively impacted visitation, Diodati
Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati said the emergency declaration made prior to the eclipse created ‘negative media attention’
said it was a combination of those factors, but the state of emergency declaration was the biggest deterrent.
“Every media that interviewed me … they all asked the same thing, ‘What’s the emergency, and why did you declare it?’ I said I didn’t declare it.”
Ron Tripp, the Region’s chief administrative officer, said the decision to issue the declaration wasn’t made in a vacuum, and Niagara Falls officials were involved in the planning sessions.
“I’ve been meeting with representatives of the 12 local councils every week, co-ordinating contingency plans and the rest of it, and it was vividly clear that we were planning to issue the declaration for at least the last six weeks.”
Tripp said the Region issued the declaration to ensure Niagara was fully prepared for anything that might develop. He also believes the Region received additional resources directly attributed to the decision.
“We certainly saw it regarding the co-ordination efforts with provincial and other first responders.
“We also saw it in the telecommunications coverage. I’m not sure the telecoms could have as easily deployed the enhanced systems they did without our state of emergency, or at least they would have said, ‘Well if you want that, you’re going to have to pay for that.’
“Our No. 1 concern was making sure our emergency response system didn’t go down because of a telecom failure.”
Birrell dismissed suggestions that other factors, such as cloudy weather, contributed to the destination’s lower visitor count.
He said if it were the weather, hotels would have received mass cancellations “a couple of days before when people saw that the forecast might not be favourable.”
“For those who ignored the impending doom message of the state of emergency … and came, it was an amazing day. A lot of capable people applied a tremendous amount of time, effort and acumen into planning that amazing day — this is what we do for a living,” said Birrell.
“The Niagara Parks did their normal, brilliant job. The city put a lot into this. Niagara Falls Tourism and Niagara Falls Canada Hotel Association all came together to plan this really, truly, world-class event. I think our planning rivalled anything anybody did along the path of totality.”
Birell said the declaration was “not well-communicated,” adding the “only word anybody got out of that was ‘emergency’ — nobody knew what the definition was.”
“We did not get the visitation or reap the financial return we should have. I have no idea what esoteric information the Region had to support a state of emergency, it sure hasn’t been shared. But the moment that came out was the turning point of mass cancellations. From my perspective, it was an unnecessary overreach.”
The Region issued a release on March 28 about declaring a state of emergency under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act (EMPCA) that “strengthens the tools the Region has at its disposal to safeguard the health and safety of residents and visitors and protect our critical infrastructure in any scenario that might arise.”
Diodati said “the upside to the downside” is that Niagara Falls received significant international media coverage about the eclipse, which should have a “residual” impact of increased international tourism in the coming months.
Tripp said he watched the QEW traffic monitors from early in the morning on April 8. The volume increased around the Oakville area early in the day, as usual, but indicators never turned red or orange.
It was a different story after the eclipse.
“Everybody left at the same time, so the whole corridor was red,” Tripp said. “That speaks to the fact that many folks were here ahead of time on the weekend, and the hotel rooms were full.
“From our perspective, having all the co-ordination, pre-planning and preventive work in place, the traffic flowed in, the traffic flowed out, and everything was safe,” Tripp said.
“There were no incidents. I think it was the right thing to do to ensure we were ready for anything.”
Ali Asgary, a professor with York University’s disaster and emergency management program, said EMCPA, which empowers municipal governments to declare emergencies, does not stipulate what constitutes one.
“Declaration of the state of emergency is very much situational and contextual,” Asgary said in an email. “For this reason, there is no standard procedure or even set guidelines as to when, and under what conditions, a municipality should declare a state of emergency. Even if they exist, they may not be effective because every emergency situation could be very unique. As such, the decision rests to those in charge at the municipal level.”
Asgary said the legislation also does not provide any guidance on the process of declaring an emergency, although it should require “proper assessment, rationale and justification.”
“In the absence of proper assessments, such decisions can be based on inaccurate assumptions or conditions that may change before the anticipated event, as was the case during the solar eclipse through the weather factor,” he said.
Asgary said emergency declarations are frequently criticized — including through legal proceedings such as a judicial review launched by Canadian Constitution Foundation on April 4 in response to the Region’s March 28 declaration.
“Many decisions to declare or not declare a state of emergency have been widely criticized, particularly when a state of emergency is declared but the situation does not turn into a disaster or when a state of emergency is not declared, but a disastrous situation occurs,” he said.
Janice Thomson, president of Niagara Falls Tourism, said when the state of emergency declaration was made, she conducted many interviews with media outlets to try to explain the situation.
“It’s an unfortunate administrative requirement, I guess, that the Region was facing to qualify for additional funding to cover overtime, etc.,” Thomson said.
“Once that word got out there, the news outlets seemed to spread it and get it out. I wish they could call it an accelerated or enhanced planning tool funding, something like that, because that’s really what it was.”
Thomson said Niagara Falls Tourism received inquiries from potential U.S. eclipse visitors about the declaration.
“Those are pretty serious words, right, when you hear it’s a state of emergency. We did get inquiries asking is it safe for us to cross the border? Is it safe for us to come in?
“We had to do quite a bit of work getting that information out there, that this is what it is and that it just means that the professionals that we rely on, on a daily basis for a safe environment — fire, police, health — they will be able to do their jobs at whatever comes up because nobody knew what we were going to face.”
Bradley wondered if all the talk about a million people may have also scared some visitors off.
In an interview before the eclipse, Niagara Regional Police Deputy Chief Todd Waselovich said the service had hard data about the number of hotel rooms sold and short-term rental vacancies to use in making some estimates of crowd size and traffic volumes.
The difficulty lay in predicting the number of day-trippers from the GTA, many of whom could decide where, or if, to travel at the last minute, based on the weather.
Diodati was the first public official to talk about up to one million visitors after speaking with representatives of a major award-winning U.S. documentary company that travels and covers similar events.
Diodati said the filmmakers told him to expect eight to nine times the number of people the city had at its biggest event. Doing the math — using the Wallenda tightrope walk as the baseline — meant about a million visitors.
Niagara wasn’t the only area to issue an emergency declaration before the eclipse.
Forbes media reported Kaufman County, outside of Dallas, and Bell County, between Austin and Waco, in Texas, both issued a disaster declaration ahead of the total solar eclipse. In Kaufman County, the decision was made in the expectation of a crowd of 200,000, which essentially doubled its population.
Essex and Oswego counties in New York both declared a state of emergency to prepare for the tourist influx and possible cell service disruptions.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb issued a state of emergency declaration on March 26. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders followed, releasing $100,000 (U.S.) from the state’s disaster response and recovery fund.
Asgary said emergencies should ideally be declared in response to “an actual or impending emergency that requires the activation of emergency response plans and emergency operations centre in response” rather than before an emergency situation occurs.
“Declaring a state of emergency without an actual emergency could be interpreted by most people as unsafe conditions or spaces and create unintended consequences,” he said.
Bradley said he considers the day a tremendous success.
“I think it was a good day for all of us. People enjoyed it. None of us will be around at the next one, but it showed that we have the capability of hosting something like this.
“This was the largest number of people in one day ever to come to Niagara.”