A deadly E. coli outbreak in Walkerton, Ont., changed everything 25 years ago

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Bruce Davidson remembers the E. coli outbreak that ravaged his hometown 25 years ago as a “strange dream.”

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The hospital in the small Ontario community of Walkerton usually wasn’t busy but it suddenly got inundated with patients experiencing severe diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain. The first cases were reported on May 17, 2000.

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Soon, the township roughly 140 kilometres north of London, Ont., ran out of diarrhea medication, the emergency department overflowed and air ambulances came to take sick people to other hospitals.

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What turned out to be Canada’s worst outbreak of E. coli O157 infections, caused by manure-tainted drinking water, ultimately killed seven people and sickened around 2,300.

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It was a “strange dream where you’re still you but nothing else is the same,” said Davidson. His own family fell ill and he later formed a citizens’ advocacy group in response to the tragedy.

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Schools and restaurants were closed, he said, and streets that normally buzzed with children playing on warm spring days felt like a “ghost town.”

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“For the first bit, we were all in shock, but very, very quickly that started to change to anger,” Davidson said in a recent phone interview.

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He had heard about waterborne diseases in impoverished parts of the world, but said he never imagined experiencing that in Canada.

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The country had the technology, money and infrastructure needed for a safe water supply, “and yet here we are killing people with drinking water,” he said.

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The health crisis caused by a mix of human negligence, lack of resources and natural factors caused countrywide outrage and triggered a public inquiry led by Ontario Justice Dennis O’Connor that lasted for nearly two years.

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It was determined that heavy rainfall between May 8 and May 12, 2000 had washed cattle manure from a nearby farm into a well. From there, deadly E. coli bacteria found its way to the municipal water system.

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The two brothers who managed the system — Stan and Frank Koebel — pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the case.

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The inquiry found that neither brother had the formal training to operate a public utility and water system, that they failed to properly chlorinate the water and that water safety records were falsified.

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The inquiry also found that Stan Koebel knew on May 17 that water was contaminated with E. coli but he did not disclose those test results for days. By the time a boil-water advisory was issued on May 21, it was too late.

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“It was extremely tragic and even more tragic by the fact that the operators who didn’t have proper training and didn’t understand that groundwater could make people sick were suppressing the results of tests,” said Theresa McClenaghan, the executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

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McClenaghan, who represented Walkerton’s residents during the inquiry, said had the brothers been transparent and told the public about the issue as soon as they knew, many would not become ill.