Live Tuesday: Is it really Emergency Preparedness Week, and what motivates people? | With host Tim Conrad

Tim Conrad, APR, MCPRS (00:02)
Hey, I'm back, I'm back, I'm back and I'm live. I'm really excited to be here. I hope that you will get some folks joining me today. Happy Emergency Preparedness Week. Welcome to Live Tuesday. I'm Tim Conrad, the host of Wildfire's Floods and Chaos Communications podcast. And in this episode, I'm asking, is it really Emergency Preparedness Week and what gets people motivated?

I'm excited to be here today and to take you through this episode. And we're going to talk about a lot of different things. ⁓ Some things that I've learned over my years and in doing this business, mainly from other people, from residents, from responders. ⁓ I've realized at this point in my career, I'm getting coming up in close to 30 years as a public relations professional. I've been doing emergencies for 23 years. ⁓ So disasters, I'm talking about emergencies there. Firefighting goes back.

quite a long time. I started my teens and then stepped away, came back. So I was a junior firefighter, came back as a senior ⁓ and then did two stints as a senior firefighter, both with the County of Grand Prairie out here in Alberta and ⁓ then way back in my hometown in Nova Scotia, which you saw that ⁓ recent episode with the three fire chiefs. So I've been around this world a significant amount of my life

this is a topic that we could talk about for weeks and weeks and weeks. So there's only one week to do it in. ⁓ And yeah, let's see what we can do. So this is our second live episode, and I loved all of the comments from the first. Thank you so much. Quite a few people reached out to me. I was quite surprised. I've not had as much engagement off of an episode as I did off of that live episode. ⁓

It was awesome to hear from folks. ⁓ I love that somebody picked up ⁓ right away that ⁓ what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? ⁓ I thank you for your comment ⁓ and thank you for enjoying my humor, but you did not provide a calculation. So let's try again, okay? ⁓ And I know that... ⁓

Some people really liked some of the points in the last episode. They enough to reach out to offer their thoughts and to offer lots of different things. ⁓ and, ⁓ you know, hopefully you'll learn something from this episode as well. ⁓ And so, yeah, I'm excited to be here and ⁓ to be, ⁓ yeah, taking you through what we will be doing on this ⁓ episode and yeah, see what we can learn. So, ⁓

Yeah, so let's move along here. I'm still getting my Facebook up. So up there, there we go. All right. So what do you think of live episodes? What about the recorded ones? What about topics and people? What kind of topics and people do you want to learn from? ⁓ So give me some ideas. Send us a message over at www.communicationspodcast.com. If I didn't say that quickly enough, I'll say it faster for you this time. www.communicationspodcast.com.

Okay, we'll slow it down. www.communicationspodcast.com. And so ⁓ please reach out. I really appreciate hearing from people when you have different thoughts out there. So thank you so much.

Now, I wanna take a moment ⁓ to ⁓ acknowledge our ⁓ indigenous community that are around us. ⁓ for those that aren't aware, I live in Kamloops and just over my shoulder here, just pretty much straight across that way is ⁓ where the Kamloops Indian Residential School was. And this ⁓ facility, the building still stands today and ⁓ it has a terrible history. You don't need to... ⁓

read anything ⁓ if you don't want to about it, you can just stand outside the building and on a weekend especially and after a while you'll hear stories from survivors. It's something I have done and I've heard some absolutely horrific stories from this facility. ⁓ And I wanna really emphasize that when we see those denial of the possibilities of what happened in residential schools,

⁓ diminishing of what happened in residential schools, ⁓ it's wrong. And I ask of you in your community, if you see these things happening, to please stop them, to put the brakes on them, to report the posts if you see them on a Facebook page. Don't let the hate live on to another generation. These people have suffered through hell and ⁓ they...

To say they're survived would be, ⁓ I struggle with the word survived because you don't unfortunately come out of that experience and be a normal human being that can function ⁓ in your day-to-day life. So please, if you are seeing anything out there that is showing even a twinge of hate towards our indigenous folks that live across this beautiful Turtle Island.

Please stop it. ⁓ We really need you to, and for those that continue to come into this community and spread lies and false information that is very clearly available from tons of investigations, lots of documentation that's available online to prove that indeed horrific things happened at Indian residential schools across this country. And ⁓ we need to put an end to that. We need to put an end to the continuance of

the false information that goes on with those that it carried on for generations prior to us. So please put the effort in. And that's my Indigenous acknowledgement to please stand up and stand with the Indigenous people in our world. So now over to our main topic of the week. Is it really emergency preparedness week? And what gets people motivated? So ⁓ I'll tell you something.

I experience a strange thing as a person with my experience. Some people see me as an idiot, while other people see me as a savior. And that really messes with my head, especially as I have a pretty impressive case of ADHD. It's the only exam I've aced without stress and studying. ⁓ So if you think I'm an idiot, the time to hit next is right now.

So move along. And I don't want to hear any comments from people thinking that somebody that has decades of experience in this world of responding to big, large disasters and fires and all sorts of other weird and wacky things doesn't know what they're talking about. ⁓ I respect other people's opinions ⁓ that bring them forward and like to listen to lots of people's stories. I hope you'll listen to mine.

So I'm about to share some tips from my years of being a structural and a bit of wildland firefighting. was, you know, pull off the bunker coat and put on the overalls. That's the way it worked. And I'm also a community engagement leader during and after emergencies, as well as a responder to major disasters and emergencies over the last 23 years, as I mentioned. My experiences are lived and on the front lines in emergency operations centers. I've done over 30 hours in a shift.

But more times than I wish to count, mainly because after 30 hours you lose count. And ⁓ I've been first person through the door for an interior fire attack, in one case, five times in a matter of days, ⁓ which was an unreal experience as a young guy that dreamed of being a firefighter to be able to be going through the door first in five fires in almost a week. It was crazy.

I've also been in chief roles for multiple 100 day long emergencies and have led preparedness, response and recovery public engagements. So when I talk, the things I share are a combination of all of the events I've experienced, the amazing responders I've worked alongside and knowledge that they've shared with me and the residents that I've had decades long relationships with after disaster struck. I love to learn.

not just what the impact is in the moment, but what's the impact as we go through things and what could we do different? What could we shift to make people think differently? I am a messenger of successes and failures. And if you've worked with me, you will know I will always bring absolutely everything to the table. So.

If you were just joining this live, today's episode asks, is it really emergency preparedness week and what gets people motivated? I think ⁓ having a week focused on this is a good thing. And we need to continue to promote these things ⁓ and ensure that they continue to happen. ⁓ So you know.

We cannot say enough to do these activities always an ongoing. Emergency preparedness week is good. It's a good thing to do, much like ⁓ fire prevention week. Fire prevention week was started after the Chicago fires many, many years ago. And ⁓ it's had a tremendous effect on reducing the number of losses and deaths from fires over a century.

⁓ Today we have lots of different days for lots of different things and lots of different weeks for lots of different things. So it's a little bit harder to get through the mess of things that's out there in the world. So Emergency Preparedness Week is one of many weeks that's happening right now. So as we kind of wander through this conversation, ⁓ I want you to think about what other opportunities are out there to

⁓ look for emergency preparedness and look for those opportunities throughout the year that maybe we could see something change. So I think it's really good. ⁓ I've seen ⁓ lots of things happen out of emergency preparedness week that are good. But here's the thing. This week is also mental health week. And this week we also have Red Dress Day, Dutch Heritage Day.

Cinco de Mayo, National Teachers Appreciation Day. When you look wider at the month, it's Asian Heritage Month, Canadian Jewish Heritage, Polish Heritage, and Speech and Hearing Month. This is also a reminder that Mother's Day is Sunday. Your mother would like to hear from you. While you may think emergency preparedness is top of mind for many, it did not show up on the list that I just read off, as was provided by a Google search.

So Google doesn't even know it's Emergency Preparedness Week. My point should be obvious. These are days, weeks, and months that are special and highlighted by many. Emergency preparedness is among the many fighting for people's attention. So as I've been heavily involved with all things disaster and emergency for many years, I know this week's results are slightly above those of any other week of the year. Some new subscribers will be added to your list.

pages or emergency alerts, and perhaps a few people will be saying they will be getting prepared when they leave. Then it's back to the usual of begging for preparedness attention for the remaining 51 weeks. Or is it? When is the best week for pushing educational messaging around emergency preparedness? It's a good question, isn't it? And we're going to touch on that later.

For now, I'm going to take you through some of the tips and ideas from responders, residents, and our time working and preparedness response and recovery. Our first section will be about operations within an EOC. Then we will move to community and individual property. So I'm going to hit some points here off the go that will help us to get prepared for an operational preparedness moment.

Question number one, do politicians have a role inside the Emergency Operations Center or EOC? Now, boy, do I wish I could see some shaking heads right now. Which direction are they going? So no matter which system you look in, whether you use ICS or another system, there is a dotted line for the policy group and that's where the elected officials belong.

They should never be in an active EOC beyond a quick round of thank yous to the responders that are sitting there. Elected officials do not have a role in this place for very good reason. Politicians are not found in emergency departments at hospitals. They're not at the scene of a vehicle crash or while paramedics are doing CPR. Elected officials can create conflict and disruption

Well, actually, most of the time they do when they enter an EOC.

So kick them out when they will not leave. They do not belong. One thing I've told a lot of people is that disasters love company.

Disasters love company.

A disaster is a disaster. Do you want to really be sitting next to it and being friends with it? So I tell elected officials that if you want to be coated with tons of bad news and where the disaster is your own, come on in, join the party. Because you're going to wear it then. We're going to put you out front. You're going to be the spokesperson. And every piece of negative news that comes out, you can deliver it.

Or the option is we wait until there's good news later on when there's some recovery options happening and things like that. I'd rather have elected officials doing their job of speaking to constituents, finding out what's going on, relaying information from the EOC down to those constituents and getting information back from them and bringing it back to us at the EOC. That is extremely important role for elected officials.

And so if we can get them engaged in that, they're busy, they're valued, and they will absolutely know they are having an impact. So that is a great role for them is to turn them into community liaisons. So look for those opportunities to get them into the community and engaging with the community that they can then become part of that feedback loop for you. You got to get them out of the EOC.

I think a lot of people don't realize that maybe you need to be a bit more serious with it. They're afraid of politicians, but here's the thing. How bad would it look if your politician had handcuffs on them and was taken out of the EOC? Would that be good for them? Because I've actually been at emergencies where an elected official who happens to be a current premier was escorted off the property by the local RCMP.

So it does happen. And it's allowed for you, within your rules and your authority, to do that, especially when you have a state of local authority. You have the authority to do what you need in that moment. Take it and use it. And I know it's tough, but I'll tell you, leaving the elected officials in there constantly meddling around and shifting things on you or causing trouble is much, much more difficult to manage.

So it's, find, and all of the ones that I work with that we've got them so that they're happy, they're happy doing the community liaison role and relaying that information back and forth. The EOC runs like a well-oiled machine and they trust everything that comes out of it, as does the community, really does trust a lot of what comes out of there. So really try to look for those opportunities to get your elected officials out of the EOC. And please, if you are an elected official, don't try to come in. It's not your place.

I don't care if it's normally your boardroom or anything like that. It's not right now. It's an EOC. It has a purpose and it is running an emergency. You are not allowed at other emergency scenes and you're not allowed in this one. You heard it here. Okay. So to show you if that doesn't convince you enough that elected officials don't have a role in an EOC, they took on a big role during an emergency once not all that long ago.

and we all know how that went. The COVID-19 pandemic was less than great. It was confusing, emotional, and did not build trust at all. It destroyed it. It will take us many years to rebuild it. Many mistakes were made, and if emergency managers were left to do what they are so good at, we would not have the uncoordinated viral madness that

the pandemic response gave many of us. It was such a mess from one day to the next. It was like somebody popped awake at two in the morning, came up with an idea, and walked to the microphone. That is not emergency management. And that's where elected officials tend to excel, if you can call that excelling.

So let's get a spot for this in our preparedness plan. Let's prepare our elected officials to not be the authorized personnel that are on that sign on the door in the EOC. Let's get their understanding that they are not authorized personnel and do not have a role in an EOC. I'd love to hear your experiences and hope to get some more stories which I can share anonymously on a future episode. Not necessarily on that topic. It could be on some of the other ones we're gonna talk about.

But I wanna hear some of your EOC experiences. I wanna hear some of your crisis experience and communications and how you've done that. I want to hear different things that are happening out there so we can share them widely and we'll share them anonymously so that your identity and the story is protected.

So next up is systems and processes. You have them, but do you have the connections between them? You may have a process for getting information out, but what happens when someone new is forced into it or when they can't get access to critical social or web accounts to make a post, for example? I've worked in multiple emergencies in which it has taken days for information officers to gain access to

dozens of systems they need to do their jobs. There are some places where it takes over 40 different systems in order for an information officer to go through the cycle of their regular day. It is insane what we have to do. You think that it's simple, but it's not. Sometimes we use one system to post to social media and another one to edit.

We use one system to post to web, but then your emergency alert is going to come out in another one. There are systems for all different levels of things. And it's a very complex job. I would say it's probably got the most systems in place for one single individual to use in an EOC than any other role in the EOC. I'm trying to work on that to make that better. But one of the challenges is

getting to know all those systems. So this is a critical flaw ⁓ in being prepared that becomes very stressful for everyone, especially the public information officers who get berated from all angles as they try to gain access and make changes. It's not so simple sometimes, and then mistakes happen in other places. It's very natural. It's very normal. If you've got stress in one spot and you're trying to get through it and grind through something and learn how to do a system as you're going,

this thing over here might get a little messed up. It's pretty normal. We're humans and we're tired and we're working long hours and also information officers start early in the day but most of their work happens later in the day. Everything cranks up at one o'clock in a lot of world, a lot of emergencies world. So you start at eight or seven in the morning and then at one you just start winding up. And for us,

information officer. I can remember working in many roles where I was the only one there for about three or four hours every night in the OC. ⁓ If there was anybody else there with us, it was another information officer. And we sat there uploading, writing, getting things ready for the next day. And we were back there at seven in the morning, even though we might have rolled out it there at midnight. So it's a very different job and doesn't tend to get the resources that it should.

So look at ways that you can fix things. Look at a single login that'll allow you to secure, with secure access to all social media channels and other channels that public information officers require. Can you set up a system where they could log in once securely and have access to everything they need? I can tell you, yes, you can. I've worked for some organizations that have that. It's amazing. I was able to, in one case, log on to their system, record a video with a person.

add captions to that video and post it all within 21 minutes. It's possible. So look at the ways that can be done to get people logged in. And trust me, you're going to need it. Remember, golden hour is key to getting information out. That first hour is so key and it sets the pace for the rest of the emergency. Everything from there forward, if you haven't done that first golden hour right, you're going to have bumps later on that are going to come back to that golden hour.

So.

Without all of these systems, information does not flow to external and internal audiences. And that creates tension with these audience, with any of these audiences. And it can be solved with some operational preparedness and of course, some testing. So look at those systems. And once you figured those out for your information officer, head on over to the next station. Planning officer is gonna need similar access.

Operations, they're going to need access to systems. Make it easy. ⁓ You're going to learn a little bit that we've had some experiences that you think that things might go OK day to day, and you've got a plan. But then when it comes down to it, things fall apart. And because you don't control everything. Remember, disasters love company. Next up is security and hacking.

So here's where it gets really fun. I just told you you need easy access, and I'm also gonna tell you, you need to secure things really, really well. Two-factor authentication should be set up on all of your social networks, your website, anything that has any public facing ability. What we are seeing now when crisis and disasters and emergencies happen, nefarious actors from all over the world are looking for opportunities.

And these are phenomenal opportunities for them. Because when chaos is happening, people don't see some little things that happen. They approve things sometimes that quickly and don't realize that they've just approved somebody's access that maybe shouldn't have had but looked like they were the same person. They don't see when ⁓ a request is put in for something to allow someone access to a system that's ⁓

they did not have before. And maybe their system isn't secure on the other end. They might be using a personal computer that doesn't have any security protection on it. So there's all these doors that open during emergencies. And unfortunately, we as responders open them. in some ways, residents also provide this opportunity to be open in their own way. So it's something that responders and residents have to think about, because nefarious actors are coming and just

making a terrible situation even much, worse. So as an example this week, I know of at least one local government that has lost access to their Facebook page. They lost it during an outage that happened of an internet outage. So it was an opportunity, again, ⁓ a crisis moment where they were able to walk in and use that moment to gain access.

They know you're vulnerable and they know you're not paying attention. And once you lose access, it is very, very difficult to get it back. And you are certainly unlikely to see that during your crisis. So then you'll have two crisis to handle.

So by adding two factor authentication ⁓ with strict adherence to a process ⁓ to follow that two factor authentication, you also need to have a really strong process around where that device ends up. So if you're listening to this, I'm holding up my mobile phone right now, but this mobile phone is one mobile phone. Is all of the two factor going to this phone?

Who has the phone? How is the phone secured? What other things are on the phone that could gain access to the device? What happens though if the phone goes missing or is lost or is broken? So there's need for redundancy here. ⁓ Sometimes you can have this device and you have it locked to a device, but if you don't know where the device is, guess what you can't get? Access to get into

the account that you need. And it can take days to figure it out. I've been there. It was one of the biggest investigations that I've ever led was where is the phone that ends in five seven? Talk about a fun little adventure that was.

So that phone needs to have a process. It needs to be strictly followed at all times. That includes any time off for that person that might have it. And so you might wanna look at whether or not it should be tied to a human or not, or should it just stay somewhere where it's safe, charged and ready to go, and people know how to access it, a number of people. This process must outline

how new people can get added to your accounts through TwoFactor. If just one person has access to an account with out TwoFactor authentication, your page can be easily compromised. So I, ⁓ prior to doing some of this work about 10 years ago, I used to do a lot of Facebook ⁓ training courses and ⁓ I would come across tons and tons of people that would lose access to their Facebook pages.

most of the time they were getting hacked via their email. So if your email is not secure, that means your Facebook page is not. And so they'll usually hack in through email or they'll sometimes can use your phone device as an opportunity as well in some rare cases. And from that, once they're in, they can actually start to pick away at getting access to almost everything that you have. Keep in mind in your email, you may have, especially if it's a personal email, you may have your banking information.

You may have social insurance number, your home address, all sorts of different things, your kid's names, when their birthdays are, who their friends are, who your friends are, and so on. Your email is one of the things that should be the most secure of all. So you have to put lots of layers of protection. That includes on your phone and on this device. How are you going to lock that device? What is it that's going to keep that locked down from somebody getting access to it if they happen to find it?

So my team is coming up against greater issues with access than we ever have. And that's a problem when you get called in ⁓ with a desperate call for help. We can help you fix issues, but we can't do much when we don't have the proper access, and especially if security is compromised. ⁓ So you need to fix them for you and the entire organization. ⁓

all of those who will access them.

So you may need some support, ⁓ and you should have layers of potential help available. ⁓ So I'm just going to talk a little bit about experience here for a moment and preparing your team and what they can, things they can do to get ready and why we want to pull in sometimes some experienced folks.

So there are only so many of us out there that have extensive experience in big emergency events that are willing to do it again. This has become one of the bigger things. I've worked with hundreds, really thousands of people in emergency operations centers. Just in one operation center alone, I know there was almost 300 people went through it while I was working there. And I was one of the main team members through that year.

⁓ so it's not unusual to see hundreds of people, ⁓ roll through these and, ⁓ you see lots of different folks, lots of different experiences. And I appreciate everybody and everything that they bring to the table. ⁓ you need to know those that are out there that have experienced that have done these big, gnarly, ugly events. They're different. They function differently. They test everything differently in your system and your people. They will push everything to the.

brink of disaster itself. They will break every process and every system that they can. ⁓ They will continue throughout the entirety, right into recovery, to try and damage as much as possible. Like I said, disasters like company. It's with this in mind that we build our crisis communications plan and plans and training to ensure that your team can do superb work without us being there. It's a terrible business strategy for me.

But I'm very proud when we do not get called by a client that recently was trained or had a crisis communications plan developed from us. Redundancy is the best friend that you haven't met yet, right? So making sure that you've got some different things in place to ensure what will happen ⁓ if. So have a good list of people that you can call upon if things start to go sideways.

There's a number of different consultants out there, but there's people that work in local governments and other government roles that maybe you could pull upon them. ⁓ And the issue that we're seeing right now is that if somebody does a really big event, they may not want to ever do one again. And I can say that with honesty, that there's a lot of events that I've done that half of the people that have come through and worked in the EOC never worked in an emergency again after that.

It was not something that they wanted to do. They said, hey, did it once. It was interesting. ⁓ That's enough for me. And so there's not too many of us. There's quite a few, even on my team, that have taken a few years away from it to give themselves a break. And there's others that I know in government that have given up their roles and moved into a less stressful role. You can't do this every summer or every year for three to four months of your life and want to keep doing it.

quite simple for a lot of people. And so you need to have some really good people in your favorites list to be able to call.

So as we talk about redundancy, ⁓ just wanted to say if anybody else is joining in for this live today, it's live Tuesday, and we're looking at is this really ⁓ emergency preparedness week and what really motivates people to get ready. So I'm just going through some thoughts and some ⁓ ideas from responders and experiences over the last bunch of years that can help operations, and then we're gonna get into community and property.

So redundancy is the best friend that you haven't met yet. What will you do when your website goes down? What happens if the entire region loses an internet provider for over half of a day, such as what just happened for a large portion of British Columbia yesterday? What would you do if you had no internet at all? What happens when the phone on which the two factor authentication is sent?

is sent to is missing or broken. What happens if you lose power just as you need to send out an evacuation alert or order? Did everyone in the EOC just get food poisoning? These are real experiences and they happen much more often than you believe. Introduce yourself to redundancy and treat them very well. Emergencies require continuous improvement and layers of redundancy.

As I, along with many others that I know, have done multiple 100 day long activations, I can tell you that you will need to have multiple layers of support to keep things running smoothly. So look at redundancy, say, hey, hey, come on over here. Let's be friends and keep them close because you always need to make sure that you're layering in extra, extra, Plan for the worst and then plan for what's even worse than that.

⁓ And that's where you need to be. Next up, we're going to move to community.

Now, if you're just joining the live, today's episode asks, is this really emergency preparedness week and what gets people motivated? Right now, we're gonna talk about community. Now, Fire Smart is good on your property, but it's great if your whole street is Fire Smart. Now, for those that are outside of the country, you can go to Fire Smart, just type in Fire Smart. I think it might be firesmart.ca will take you and you can learn about what Fire Smart is.

And what FireSmart does is helps to prepare a property for not being as impacted if a fire was to hit it, whether it be a wildfire or just any other fire.

So it's perfect if your whole community is Fire Smarted. And we need to look at how important it is to not only just have one host or a community, but an entire city or town, and start to work towards that. ⁓ Because sadly, I have seen many structures lost that are Fire Smart properties. In each case, ⁓ it appeared to me,

that the neighboring properties were not protected in any way. So they were not fire-smarted. And they may have had things like a coniferous tree up against the house or near the house, bark mulch going nearby, or ⁓ other things like debris and things up against their house. This creates a situation where the fuel load is too extreme for fire principles to be effective on a neighboring house. So you can.

have your host fire smart it, and unfortunately, it may not be enough to save it. Because your neighbors, who might be too close by, have created a very high fuel load. And once fire starts to impact their properties, it just simply is too hot. And fire smart principles no longer apply in that situation. I've also seen a property that survived an uphill rank six fire. And ⁓ along with neighboring properties, ⁓

which were destroyed around it. So in the case of this property, there was no suppression applied at all when this rank six fire blew over it, came up the hill, very rapidly moving, ⁓ wind back from its own created wind from the fire itself. ⁓ And the fire went over the property and their home survived. They lost a shed. That was it. The fun part was, is I met this homeowner and I went up to him, I said,

Great job with your Fire Smart on your property. And they looked at me and said, what's that?

And I come to be in the course of the conversation that ⁓ they ⁓ had never done any of that work. They had just bought the property a year earlier and the previous homeowner had ⁓ done all of that Fire Smart work. So kudos to them because they saved a home that they sold to these people and they were certainly thankful for it. Fire Smart works many times on many properties and it works better if the whole community is equally prepared for fire.

and even better if your entire city or town is fire smart. What fire smart does is remove fuel and the ability for fire to go from one object to another. For those who don't know, for fire to occur, you need a full fire tetrahedron. So around the outside of the the fire tetrahedron, you need fuel, heat, and oxygen. And they come together around a chemical chain reaction, such as a spark.

If you remove any of these three elements, the fuel, the heat, or the oxygen, you make it very difficult for fire to burn or to even burn it all. So what Fire Smart is doing is removing the fuel from that equation. Cooling zones for approaching fire are awesome for communities, communities which take the time to thin out trees and underbrush, cutting off branches,

12 feet ⁓ or three meters up helps as an approaching fire comes in, it can't ladder up that tree. And just a little education for those that aren't aware, rank one is rank six. So what it is, rank one is a grass fire. Think of that, it's all on the ground. It's not going up the tree. Rank two, you'll start to get it into the bushes, maybe into a tree a little bit. Rank three, it's definitely starting to...

creep up the tree a little bit, and then rank four, it's going up the tree, burning the whole tree, and five and six is a conflagration. Everything is on fire. It's a full inferno, and things are exploding in fire, essentially, at that point. What we know is we have very, almost nothing that we can do when a fire is burning rank four or above. There's very little human intervention that can be done, and I often tell people that, just to give you some perspective, you can take the largest

airplane that carries water and dump it onto a rank six fire. And by the time that that water hits the ground, it's completely been burnt up in steam from the heat of the fire. So that's how intense these fires get. So what we're trying to avoid is a fire that comes in no matter what rank it is that we want to get it down to rank one to three somewhere so that it's not creeping up the tree. And then therefore,

giving the fire an opportunity to travel with embers and so on and more heat and more fuel. So when we thin out the bottoms of the trees and clean out the debris around areas and clean out all the stuff that could be lit on fire, whatever, so you can talk everything from little leaves and trees and grass that's laying there, dry grass. And then over here, we've got a pile of wood and over there's a wooden shed and a fence.

All of those things lead to the ability for a fire to climb or creep in the direction it wishes to. And we want to stop that. And that's what FireSmart does is we create barriers in between. So we want to stop that ability for things to be able to climb up the tree.

Now we're gonna go into your property. So if you're just joining us on this live, we are talking about, is it really emergency preparedness week and do people get, what motivates people to get prepared? So first off, I'm giving you some tips that I've learned over the years from different folks I've worked with. And we're down to your property. Start simple, check your insurance. Do you have coverage to cover expenses if you were evacuated for three weeks, which is...

Pretty typical for the hundreds of evacuations I've been part of. I know tons of people that have been out of their homes for three weeks. So do you have that built into your insurance plan that you have coverage to be able to stay in a hotel? Because if not, you might be sleeping on a cot somewhere or with some friend on a coach or who knows where in your vehicle. Do you have appropriate levels of fire and flood insurance? Look and review that once a year. Take a good look. Make sure it still meets your needs.

⁓ Make sure you have the coverages that you want. Here's a really important one. Is your annual renewal during fire or flood season? And if it is, let's get it switched to some other time. There's a big reason for this. When there is a fire or flood season, we often have evacuations. In the moment that there is a single evacuation in a region, it depends for each insurer.

but they will go sometimes 100 to 300 kilometers away. And if you're within that circle around that evacuation order, they will not renew your insurance. And if they won't renew your insurance for three weeks or maybe a couple of months because that event is ongoing, you may lose your insurance. And once you've lost your insurance, you're then uninsured. And it becomes a lot more difficult to get insurance. In some cases, it's almost near impossible.

So you want to line up your renewal date to be in a non-emergency season for your area. So pick the spots where fires and floods don't typically happen or any other type of emergency that you might typically see. And that's when you want to have your renewal happening. never, ever in Canada, never, ever wanted to have it in the summer. I'll just say that because you will not get a renewal to happen.

So next thing to do on your property is clean up any debris. Think of anyone starting, trying to start a fire on a reality TV show. So I always think of survivor. What do they start with? They start with dry grass and twigs, and then they move up to the larger things. So those are the things that fire likes, wildfire comes into your property and says, hey, some dry grass and some twigs, right on, that's mine. I'm going to burn that up. So it does.

You want to get rid of those because in a highly volatile and dry condition situation, a fire loves those spots. Embers come down and find those, and that's what starts a small fire. That small fire becomes a bigger fire that then can trace into your home. You will find these piles of dry grass, twigs, and all sorts of debris under decks, so under your patios, your foundations.

along foundations and sheds, and of course in your eaves troughs along your roof line. So you want all of that debris gone. It does two things when you get rid of debris that's around your property. It stops fire and it lets water flow. So if you have flood situation, you want culverts to be free, you want your downspouts off of your home to be free and the water to be going well away from your home.

All of those things that you do to clean up debris around your home and around your property will help for both fire and flood. It's a two for one. Can't say enough. I mentioned this one earlier, bark mulch. If you want to burn your home down, put a line of bark mulch from the driveway up to your house. I've actually seen it go from the driveway straight up to the house and burn a person's house down. It is terrible stuff.

It really does love to burn. It's extremely dry and it's a great gateway for fire to travel. So get rid of that bark mulch, replace it with rock or dirt.

If there is a fire in your community, and I'm talking wildfires here, firefighters will look from the ground or the air to decide whether your street or home could be saved ⁓ and what's achievable in a safe amount of time before the fire arrives. So if your community road or home are prepared, they can see that in a glance. And that's pretty much what they're doing. It's a quick glance. It's a very rapid assessment that they do. And they go, yep, or no.

And they will then assign a crew to go and protect that home if there is an opportunity and time to do so. If your property looks cluttered with lots of items and debris laying around, that cannot be turned into a defensible space quickly by crews. So they will move to a property where with some quick work, they can create a defensible space and then move on to the next property. So get your community ready. ⁓

Get yourself ready. It helps to build stronger communities, networks, and support for everyone. You will feel better by taking the steps to prepare. And if you have anxiety, ⁓ turn it into action. This is one of the most awesome lines that I was given by a resident years ago. ⁓ If you have anxiety, turn it into action. Get outside and start tidying. Create barriers for fires and flood. Improve your chances of getting through emergencies. Check your insurance.

Just work on something that will get you ready because what you will find is your anxiety that you had will be reduced from your action. And each time you take that action, you'll get a little bit further along and feel a little bit more prepared. Remember, most people will experience a small emergency such as a fire or flood on or near their property at some point in time in their lives. Usually they're much smaller. They're not disasters. Those are rare.

Plan for the small ones and you'll be ready for the big one too. My next point up is...

one of the most important that you can ever do, smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors. So I'll be bringing the carbon monoxide detector into the camera here in a moment. These devices are the single most important device to save your life. They're cheap, they work great. A lot of them come with a 10 year battery now, so you don't even have to change batteries on them. All you need to do is check them. And this one has two buttons, I'm not gonna push it because it'd be super loud, but you go around and you test these at least every six months, just go around.

check to make sure that they're triggering. A lot of them now, they talk to each other. So when you press the button on one, other ones will go. But you do need to check every single one that's in your home. Change your batteries. If you can't remember the last time you changed the batteries in them, change them and make sure if it's been over a year, you swap out both those batteries. I mark my batteries. I also mark when I've installed it on the outside. So I know how old this one is and how long it's been in use. ⁓

I also just mark on the battery when I put the battery in so I know when it is. put the month and the year on there and then I know. Most of these today have two batteries. If you have one of these ones, there's, as I mentioned, you have wired ones that are straight wired into your house and they will have a backup battery. So you'll have to check that. That will be a little door that will usually open on the top side here and it just pops out. And then...

you will have the 10 year batteries. Those ones you don't need to do anything but test them and keep them clean. Whereas these ones are the more common, I would say, up until a few years ago, they will have two batteries. One is for the main alarm and one is your backup. So if you were to test these batteries, you'll notice that the one battery very rarely loses power. You could probably keep it in there for five years. So I often will swap the one over to the other side and retire the one off to recycling that's more worn out.

and put a new one in. So make sure you're changing them regularly and often. And of course, checking if they have battery backups as well. You should have a smoke detector ⁓ in the hallways on every floor of your home, outside of bedrooms. But have a smoke detector absolutely on every floor in the hallway ⁓ of your property. ⁓ As well.

you should have a smoke detector in each bedroom that a person sleeps, whether it's a guest bedroom or one that somebody is in on a regular ongoing basis.

It's amazing how many times and you can watch the news and hear stories of someone that has died staying overnight at somebody's home and a smoke detector would have saved their lives. So it's important and you'd be shocked. I had a case a year ago where I was ⁓ initial attack on a fire. Come to find out later that an electronic device started that fire.

The occupant was actually in the room at the time of the fire, had no idea the device was smoking and had started a fire. There was no smoke detector, which alerted them. They were in their bedroom and narrowly escaped. was daytime. They were awake and they had their back turned to it and did not realize that it was going on. was not a big bedroom, but they did not realize and had to run past and through fire to get out of their room. So it's, they are important even in the daytime.

⁓ They should also never be unplugged or disconnected. If they're annoying you, move them to a different location. So they're just a little bit further away. I found like one that's near a kitchen. If it's on this wall, put it on that wall. And that's often enough to get rid of that annoyance.

Next up are carbon monoxide detectors.

So carbon monoxide detectors come in different styles, ⁓ but this is a device that I can't say enough about, and you'll hear why in a moment. Carbon monoxide, or CO2, is an invisible and unscented gas and often kills people while sleeping. ⁓ Such things as an open window with gas seeping inside from an exterior engine, things such as a propane heater on a boat or in a camper.

A vehicle in a garage or a furnace ⁓ are all sources of CO2 that are in our homes and at hotels and all sorts of different things. Many firefighters, including myself, have had CO2 poisoning. ⁓ And ⁓ I've been on crews where we've saved people from it. And I've unfortunately lost a brother firefighter and his wife to carbon monoxide poisoning. They were on vacation.

and unfortunately did not realize that the heater was not ventilating well in the space that they were in and unfortunately did not survive the night. So CO2 is a very invisible and scary gas. You will not feel the effects of it or will for that matter understand them. ⁓ As someone that has had CO2 poisoning, just a light enough version that I didn't even have to go to the hospital for it,

⁓ It feels like a little nagging headache at the start. And ⁓ then you'll start to get a little tired. ⁓ So it's pretty wild how quickly it can hit you. I was not exposed to it for that long in that case. And ⁓ it's had quite an impact on me. So if you're joining live, just wanted to say we are here for, ⁓ is it really emergency preparedness week? And what motivates people?

to get prepared. So happy that you are joining live if you are. And if not, you'll hopefully enjoy some of the information in this podcast episode at a later time. Let me know. I wanted to let you know I'm heading out on a road trip next week. ⁓ So I'll be in Edmonton. We're going to go through all of them here. We're going to go to Valemont, ⁓ Jasper, Hinton, Edmonton, White Court, Grand Prairie.

Dawson Creek, possibly Fort St. John, over to Chetwind, Prince George, Quinnell, Williams Lake, Hundred Mile Hosts, and Kamloops. So if you would be interested in seeing me along that journey, please reach out as soon as possible. Would love to see you. I will also have a product with me that I'm demoing that's gonna, I think, really change how we can communicate during events. It's something I have been seeking for a very long time.

And I finally came across something and I'm working with this company to develop this out and look forward to ⁓ deploying that at some locations this year. So catch me along the journey. ⁓ I'm willing to sit down with anybody. If you'd like a training session while I'm out there on the road, I may have some time for that. I will be speaking at the CRH Net ⁓ symposium in Edmonton, May 12th to 14th. So if ⁓ you're going to be there, look forward to seeing you.

Our last part of our discussion is up next. What motivates people to get prepared? Well, you'd think, hey, that's a scary event. ⁓ I should get ready. But do they?

Is it seeing other people's events? Is it experiencing an emergency yourself? Each person is unique. And a bunch of years ago, we were fortunate enough to lead a project called Pathways to Preparedness. And I'm gonna be actually talking about that in Edmonton at the CRH Net Symposium and presenting. I'll be doing a poster talk as well. So the goal of this is

You know, we want to, ⁓ gosh, I've lost my thought spots. My thought spot has vanished on me for a moment here. Let me see if I can find it. All right. What motivates people to get ready? Is it fear or not? There's a lot of people that seem to think that they'll be scared into it. And I'll tell you, my experience has not been that. ⁓ I've actually found quite the opposite. ⁓ People...

that are scared hide. They hide from taking action. They don't get to work and do the things that they should. ⁓ It's a human reaction, I suppose, to when I'm scared, I'm going to hide. ⁓ And it's a rough thing to see because those people also know that they should be doing something. And yet there they are.

So what we want to try and do is see about where are those opportunities to motivate people. So through this Pathways to Preparedness project in 2023, we worked with this. It was a Canadian Red Cross funded project and it was looking and asking these questions of why don't you get prepared, especially in a very heavily disaster affected area such as the British Columbia Caribou region.

This is a region that is active with an emergency right now and has been for a few weeks and is often active four months or more every single year. So the people of that region know emergencies very well. They know disasters, they know evacuations and they know loss because they know someone or themselves or their family member, somebody they know has lost something.

that is important to them.

I, when we talked to the people out there, we went out, we did 36 different public engagement events, ⁓ had hundreds of conversations, ⁓ phenomenal opening of heart with people. Literally I went out a lot of time as myself. I also had Lloyd Wiley on the team. I know I'm missing somebody else, but we had different people out there on our team working to ⁓ draw these questions and the answers out of residents.

And I was quite surprised with what we came back with. So what I found out is that people are motivated by community. They're motivated by their neighbors, and they're motivated by connection. They want to see others being part of it, and they want to be part of that themselves. So they're motivated, when I say by their neighbors, well, you know, hey, so and so.

your neighbor mows the lawn, you might go out mow your lawn. Same thing applies in emergency preparedness. If somebody gets their property ready, the neighbor might copy. What a great thing to happen. They also want, they're motivated to work together. They find it overwhelming. They sometimes don't have the skill or knowledge that they need, and they need to rely on others to help them. So that's where the community can come in and pitch in and work together.

⁓ I know one community I came across where they've worked together and ⁓ gone host to host, property to property, and worked to Fire Smart every single property in that community together as a group. And in one case, they said, we had one property where it was elderly people, former ranchers and farmers, but they still had all their equipment and they still had all their property, but they didn't have ⁓ any Fire Smart work done and it wasn't prepared.

They ⁓ went and talked to them. And when they did, they found out that they were really wanting to be prepared. But of course, their bodies weren't allowing them to do that anymore. So being part of the community was very important to them. What they did have was a ton of equipment. And so they loaned all of that equipment to anybody in the community that was willing to work towards helping them get prepared. ⁓ And then they could use that equipment on their own property.

So it was a really amazing story to hear about of how this community and they've now they started as a preparedness journey and now that's a community journey. They do things together all the time. ⁓ They have other events. They've celebrated the work when they've gotten it done and they've really, really strengthened their community through getting prepared together. So there is something there that can be worked on.

look for those opportunities to connect community members and help them to understand the connection between themselves and their neighbors and working together to get prepared as a group. It's a pretty cool thing when it starts to happen. It does take the right people to be in the right spots. However, I have seen many different spots and they continue to lean on me when I pass through to come up with whatever the latest ideas are that are out there and things that I have seen in my travels.

and they continue to go the extra level. And I just so impressed with some of them. Now some of them have got fire caches and things like that. So they've just worked together. Any problems they have is not a problem. It's already coming up with solution at the time that they're discussing what the problem is. It is just incredible. I got to see it a few times right in front of me happening. And it's a wonderful thing. So look for community and connection. The other thing they like is a little bit of competition.

Now, it can be healthy competition or it can be unhealthy competition. Some communities want to compete against the community next door. Some want to compete against their neighbor. Some don't. So look for those opportunities where you can create them. Create a competition between different groups and different people to get them more prepared, more ready. So ⁓ there's just lots of opportunities out there to build. And I really think there is

so much you can do outside of it. So next up, we are going to talk about the final part, which is when is the best week for pushing educational messaging around emergency preparedness? Is it during emergency preparedness week? I think this week moves the needle of preparedness a little bit each year, just like fire prevention week does. It's tiny progress and we should keep going.

I absolutely think we should keep going with emergency preparedness week. But is it the best week for emergency preparedness messaging?

Do you know? Have you really ever thought about this?

The best week is actually around the emergency. They are all around the emergency in my view. So the week before the emergency, if there's a buildup such as floods forming, hurricane coming, tornado ⁓ weather forming up, wildfires getting closer, that period there is when people's ears start to pay attention.

And they'll start to say, gee, maybe I should get ready. Maybe I should get my 72-hour kit that I never did ready. And I should probably talk to the family about where we might go if this happened. Things like that start to happen. They naturally happen. So the week before, people are already starting to think about it. If something's nearby, it doesn't have to be right in their community, but it could be in a nearby region, that's enough. That's enough to get their brain starting to think that way.

So use that as an opportunity. The week of an emergency, all eyes from everywhere are on you. You will never likely see a more captive audience that comes to you with no advertising money required. OK? It's not like I've worked in areas where they're, you know, take the Caribou region. When I worked there the first time, there were 66,000 people. Yet our video.

On face, our videos on Facebook were watched 1 million times and over 1 million minutes. OK. On YouTube, same thing. Over a million minutes watched on YouTube that summer for 66,000 population. So guess what we did? We saw the opportunity and we started to mix in with our messaging, preparedness messaging. Biggest one, get people signed up for emergency alerts.

Can't say enough. This is your biggest opportunity and you will see the ⁓ gigantic spike during emergencies that you will never see any part of the year. It doesn't matter what week of the year it is. If it's outside of an emergency, you will never see that kind of spike in numbers. I have tried, trust me. And then the next one is the week after. The week after your event, people are hopefully getting back home and they're looking at their home and realizing there was a lot worth saving here.

and they're really thankful to be home. At the same time, their ears have never been more open than they are right now. They are going to listen for opportunities to avoid what they just did. And if they don't act right then, they will act later. So give them a list, give them a short list, a short short list, five, six items at most that they can do very simple things, very easy. Don't make it complex. Clean out your gutters. Clean up the bark mulch out of your garden.

Sign up for emergency notifications. Check your smoke detectors. Clean out the culvert so that it doesn't flood. Simple, easy things. The last spot that you can look at is the weeks after. Usually about three months after a large incident, people then realize they don't want to live through that again. And there's a great opportunity then to get in the door and have a conversation.

about being prepared for emergencies. So I hope you took some from this. I know it's a lot. Listening to me for an hour is a lot, and I apologize that it took this long. I really want to take this opportunity to thank all of the emergency responders out there, those that are working this week. There's lots of events that you're going out to. You're getting out into your community. You're doing lots of good work.

And I'm really proud to work alongside so many of you and do the work that we do. It's difficult work. It's challenging work. And ⁓ we'd certainly do it with lot of heart. So I thank you for doing the work that you do, getting out in your community and having these conversations and challenging people both in communities and back home in your office to do better. Don't forget, your staff need to get prepared too, because if they aren't ready, you aren't ready. So. ⁓

Get out into your communities, listen to people. They are full of lots of good ideas as well that they will share about how you can get prepared and ⁓ really highlight, try to share those stories of people doing great things.

Thank you so much for joining this live event with the Wildfire Floods and Chaos Communications Podcast. I'm Tim Conrad, and this is a production of the Butterfly Effect Communi... Wait, I'm really not talking right now, am I? Let's try this again. Thank you for joining me on the Wildfire Floods and Chaos Communications Podcast, a production of Butterfly Effect Communications, copyright 2026. I'm your host, Tim Conrad. Goodbye, hear me later.