Page 12 - GBC Magazine Winter ENG 2023

Severe
Weather Safety Checklist for Golf Courses
• Know Your Threats. List all the possible severe weather threats in your area, so that you can plan to protect your property, your staff and golfers from them.
•Develop An Action Plan. Make sure it includes specific actions for different times, stakeholders, and warning levels to protect property, people, and finances.
• Notify Everyone.
• Outdoor alerting system with a horn and
strobe light that relies on total lightning detection. They are loud, impossible to ignore, and send clear “danger” and “all clear” messages.
• Collect cell phone numbers from all your golfers when they tee off, so you can text and email alerts to all on the course to alert everyone of incoming weather.
•Identify Shelters. Maximum lead time is required to warn golfers about incoming weather so they can safely reach shelter by foot or by cart from anywhere on property. Have shelters displayed on a poster in pro shop and locker rooms; and include that information when you send out emergency texts and emails.
•Know Who Activates the Plan. This could be your pro shop staff, superintendent, or automated technology, regardless of who is assigned to this task, be sure it is clearly defined.
• Practice Your Plan. Just like a fire drill, you should have regular severe weather drills to help staff, golfers, and other guests understand what to do in a real-life weather emergency.
•Damage Assessment. First ensure that everyone is safe. Then do a sweep of your golf course and buildings looking for damage. It is important to list everything you see. For insurance purposes, take photos before and after severe storms.2
12
Golf Business Canada
The 130km winds and water surge from Hurricane Fiona destroyed hundreds of trees and left debris over the entire property at Crowbush Cove, PEI.
PEI’s The Links at Crowbush Cove, a top-rated golf facility that includes lodging and seaside golf, experienced significant loss of trees on their property and much debris washed onto golf course; with approximately 40 acres of treed forest damaged.
“Our first reaction was we need to get this cleaned up asap!” states Ryan Garrett, General Manager. “We cleaned the course pretty quickly. We were lucky to have staff and team members available from our other two courses (Brudenell and Dundarave) who quickly came to help and give us a hand. We gladly accepted any help we could get and utilized the workforce to get the course up and running again.”
“One of the biggest things we learned from this situation is to not panic. I spoke to Ian Andrew, golf architect, and he gave us some very good advice. He told us to get it cleaned up and then leave it be for a year to really see what the impact was. Fortunately, another renowned golf architect, Tom McBroom, was in the area as well, and Tom was able to look it over and give us his thoughts. Once the course was cleared, we realized that ... the course may actually improve with the loss of the thicker treed areas.”
Unfortunately, not all golf facilities on the island were as lucky. The clubhouse at Stanhope Golf and Country Club in Charlottetown caught fire during the storm, burning to the ground in less than an hour — destroying everything inside. With no clubhouse and trees down around the course, the course was not able to re-open last fall. However, the maintenance team came together, worked hard and did an amazing job to have the course ready to re-open in May 2023 with temporary facilities in place and most of the downed trees gone.1
QUEBEC’S SPRING ICE STORM
On April 5th, a devastating ice storm swept through southern Quebec and eastern Ontario leaving the area under a heavy coat of ice. The ice coated transmission lines and tree limbs. This storm knocked out electricity for more than a million people, resulting in fatalities and severely damaging property and infrastructure. Unfortunately,