First Response

Within two and a half hours, an emergency meeting was convened in the City Hall where Council and leading citizens formed a joint committee chaired by the Lieutenant Governor. They proceeded to organize a set of sub-committees, adopted the name Halifax Relief Committee and after four days had established a strenuous routine for meetings (they also had decided on a letterhead!). The relief effort, in short, was rapidly institutionalized.

On that same fourth day, the parent committee approved 'a recommendation from the Reconstruction Committee to the effect that Thomas Adams, Town Planning Expert of the Conservation Commission, Ottawa, be asked to come to Halifax at once.'(5) Adams had had previous contact with Halifax authorities having assisted in drafting a zoning by-law and an official plan for the City (6).

Although the invitation came in December, Adams did not arrive until March and in the interim there pressed immediate medical and housing crises. In addition to the medical attention required for the injured, the Committee contacted Dr. Darlington, a sanitary expert from New York, to visit and advise as to general health conditions and prevention of epidemics. On his recommendation, the clean-up of the devastated area was hastened.

A contract for the task was given to Cavicchi and Pegano. Their 400 man work camp soon took form as a distinctive part of Halifax known as 'Cavicchiville.' The area they cleared was where permanent reconstruction ultimately would be undertaken (7). But thousands could not wait for permanent replacements. To house the displaced, temporary barrack-style apartments were erected on public ground near the Citadel. Seven such tenements were up by the first week in January (8).





Reconstruction area with modern streets





Experts like Adams and Darlington were not the only ones to respond to the Halifax catastrophe. A unit of American social workers, under the auspices of the Public Safety Committee of the State of Massachusetts, arrived and organized systematic relief procedures. After tending to immediate needs, the social workers aided with rehabilitation measures by recording and verifying the needs of over six thousand individuals. Among their tasks, the social workers were to interview the homeless and to credit them with replacements when permanent units were constructed in the Richmond district.

Some notion of the attention that the Halifax plight had for budding community-services experts can be seen by listing a few of the outside professionals: J.H. Falk, Director of Welfare Work in Winnipeg; Christopher Lanz, Director of Rehabilitation for the Salem, Massachusetts fire; Katherine McMahon, head worker for the Social Services Department of the Boston Dispensary; John F. Moors, President of the Associated Charities of Boston; and C.C. Carstens, Superintendent of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, whose article 'From the Ashes of Halifax' appeared in the social workers' professional journal, Survey.

A Columbia University study, Catastrophe and Social Change Based Upon a Sociological Study of the Halifax Disaster, documented for reference problems that social workers could expect to find in future disasters(9). Thus, the city became something of a training ground for a number of Canadian and American exponents of new professions related to social policy and planning, not the least of which was town planning.

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This document was last modified on March 8, 2000.