Welcome And Incident Context

Tom Mueller 0:06

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. On this podcast, we talk all things crisis management with an emphasis on storytelling from experienced crisis leaders. I'm Tom Mueller. Thanks for joining us again for this episode. On our episode today, we're going to continue our conversation with Greg Barta, who is PIO for Orange County Fire Authority in Orange County, California. Greg's team ran communications for that recent chemical incident there in Orange County that required evacuation of between 40 and 50,000 local residents over the Memorial Day weekend. So huge incident. Let's get back to our conversation with Greg now.

Press Conference Planning And Cutoffs

Tom Mueller 0:53

Logistics around press conference or even just delivering those, were there any little hiccups that you learned lessons from on this incident?

Greg Barta 1:03

Oh man. We've done quite a few of them. And what we like to say too is even the ones like we have one coming up a 4th of July Safety Press Conference. We try and treat all of those as a rep for when we have these unique dynamic ones. So I got to give a lot of credit to two people that really helped out. So my boss, Matt Olson, he's our chief of staff, and then Orange County Sheriffs, their communications director, Carrie Braun. So they were both there. A lot of experience between them. And so they were able to also really help make sure that there were no issues. So for example, um, we kind of came up with a game plan of where to locate the press conference, what the backdrop would be, you know, where we wanted it set up, kind of relayed that, you know, image in our minds, and then kind of went and scouted it out. And while we were doing the pre-briefing, um, my boss and I, so Carrie from the sheriffs, she went out there and made sure that it was all good to go and we were ready to rock. And honestly, like without her, like I trust her explicitly. So if something needed to be changed on the fly, she'll make the appropriate change. So it was really comforting, honestly, noticed knowing that she was there kind of handling business while we were doing the pre-brief. Um, and then as far as the press conference itself, as it was going, we talked about ahead of time. Obviously, I'm seeing it, the ground rules, all that stuff I have experience with. But sometimes gauging the okay, when's it time to cut this press conference off? Because there is that fine line of we're going too long. It's, you know, enough questions have been asked. Now we're just asking repeat questions. So I, every once in a while, if you watched it, you could see me kind of glance over to Carrie and my boss Matt. Um, and they were going to give me, they gave me the okay, two more questions, Mark. They we kind of had that discuss, like, hey, and we kind of had the look, they they know the look in my eye, like, all right, we're getting there. And um, so it was good. It it worked out. I don't want to say perfectly, but it worked out pretty well.

Staffing Up For A Black Swan

Tom Mueller 3:02

Yeah, and and all that preparation uh I think showed in the in the final product there. So, you know, one of the things, and and you can call this a black swan incident in your career, right? I've told you in the past I worked Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which was, you know, another massive black swan event uh that uh you know required you know months and months and months of coordination and response and staffing. But one of the challenges you run into when these things start to really scale is you know, how do you staff up for them? Right? And it sounds like you were able to use sort of your existing resources and manage the various shifts with this, or did you have to reach out for some backup resources as well?

Greg Barta 3:54

Yeah, so we're fortunate. So our incident management team, it's a type three incident management team, and we like to say that we function at a type one capability, and we do have a lot of of our members who are on type one, you know, Cal FIRE teams or Forest Service teams. So for the PIO section on this, I'll kind of give you the numbers. So at our height, we had so six PIOs working the incident along with um, and I'm talking just fire, Orange County Fire, um, along with my boss, our chief of staff. And then we had you know multiple police agencies involved, and they had their PIOs, you know, assisting as well on at our on-site JIC. Um, so for me, what the kind of the way we set it up, so we had one of our actually our third shift PIO, he was at what we call up on the hill at our emergency operations center for the county. So he was our conduit there. So he was up there, and we were able to in live time, you know, go back and forth, provide updates to each other because the county, they're the ones who push out um like the messaging that people get, the text messages, you know, the the alerts that they get on their phones. So we're able to coordinate that all pretty seamlessly, um, you know, with one of our members up there. So I had him up there, and then there were five of us um down at the actual incident. So our organizational structure was, you know, me as the lead PIO, then uh my counterpart, Sean Doran, who was you know, basically like the assistant lead or co-lead, if you would. Uh, he's phenomenal. Anything I can do, he can do. Uh, and then we had uh three PIOs, and this was kind of it was a unique challenge for this one. So the other three PIOs, they literally finished their onboard training at five o'clock the night before. So five o'clock on Thursday night, they had they finished their onboard training. We just trained them. They like just literally got their helmets, their jackets that say PIO on them legitimately the night before, and then fast forward 24 hours later, and they're kind of thrown into the lion's den, if you will. So um it was a great experience for them. It provided some challenges for us and some decisions that had to be made. Like, is it easier for me to just do this myself versus teaching you how to do something on the fly? Um, but it worked out well. We got into a flow, as I'm sure you're aware of. You know, those first 24 to 48 hours are you feel like you're just treading water the best you can and trying to keep your head above. And then after you get those through those first couple days, you kind of ease into a flow. Um, and we got a real good rotation of you know, people's roles and responsibilities, so they all got different experiences. Um but yeah, very fortunate uh we can handle it pretty much at a type three level, we can handle it in-house.

Tom Mueller 6:36

Yeah, and you got so it sounds like it did take you that 24, 36 hours to get the battle rhythm rolling, and then it works. And you were staffed 24 hours through the incident, right?

Greg Barta 6:49

That's correct. So we had basically all six of us, you know, 24-7.

Tom Mueller 6:54

Okay. Did you just a quick aside, did you have a uh particular handoff procedure from shift to shift uh for doing the handover?

Greg Barta 7:04

So

Shift Roles That Protect Sleep

Greg Barta 7:05

a great question. Um, so the way we worked it is so obviously it kind of our org, me is the lead, my counterpart Sean is like the co-lead, and then my other three PIOs that were on site with me, I kind of rotated them through three different positions. So, and obviously, like we could substitute them or move them around, but one person dedicated to going and doing the media interviews. I had one person dedicated to the phone. So we activated our incident management team phone. So I had one person dedicated to the phone, and then I had the third person as kind of the I call them like a rover or a as needed, and so we utilized that person when we got multiple media requests at the same time. Okay, okay, now you go out there, you guys both go do interviews at the same time, sent them to the evacuation shelters to go answer questions and you know, provide updates to the folks at the shelter. So kind of use them as a fill-in as needed, and and the way I kind of rotated it was so the phone, as you know, it oftentimes doesn't stop ringing. And that's kind of the worst shift to have over the night is the phone because the phone's gonna continue ringing throughout the night. One of the hardest parts is the phone just never stops ringing. So the way I kind of rotated my my three new slash other PIOs is you rotated from I wanted you as fresh as possible to be on camera. So when you went from camera person, then you basically rotated the next day you went to the phone. So that potentially you could have kind of a bad night that night. And then you went from the phone to the roverslash fill-in person, which pretty much meant at that night you were gonna be able to get a good night's sleep. That way you came back fresh and recharged for doing the on-camera interviews. Um, as far as handing it off, we had basically you were responsible for your role for 24 hours. Um, the incident, the way it kind of laid itself out, really the bulk of the media requests were done by eight o'clock at night. Um, so we left a command post um at night and and went, you know, to go get a little bit of rest. And then obviously, myself, I was available 24-7. So my phone was ringing in the middle of the night from you know my other PIOs and other sections on the incident with questions or you know, certain things that came up. Um, but that's kind of the way we managed it as far as handing it off. So I was basically always on 24-7. Um, my my counterpart Sean, pretty much kind of the same as well. Too, we were both available for any needs that arose. Um, and we relied on that person who was, you know, on the phone to, if there were any media requests or anything that was out of their comfort zone, to just reach out to us, and that certainly did happen.

Tom Mueller 9:54

So, was there somebody actually answering the phones on the overnight shift? Yep, 24-7. Yep. So, yeah, that that one individual had the phone um the entire time. How was the uh did you get a lot of overseas media inquiries, or was it pretty much just here in the US?

Greg Barta 10:11

The majority was US. We did have uh a handful of overseas, but primarily uh here in the US.

Tom Mueller 10:17

Yeah, the bigger these incidents get, you know, and the longer they go on, it tends to generate more international interest as well, depending on the scenario. And uh you can get you can find yourself working 24 hours a day just dealing with the media stuff coming at you. So it it's it's good it stayed relatively um limited there.

Liaison Work And Elected Briefings

Tom Mueller 10:42

Um hey the you mentioned the liaison officer who was working there. Uh tell me a little bit about the interplay between PIO and liaison for this incident. It was pretty clear distinctions, and I assume you guys work together on other fire incidents. Uh anything you know that you took away from this, given the level of agency and elected official engagement?

Greg Barta 11:13

Great question. Uh so uh our liaison officer, Chief Mall, he's uh I mean great to work with. Um super easy to work with. So uh very easy as far as working together and you know kind of collaborating on any needs that arose. Obviously, there's crossover between the liaison officer and the PIO shop, and then especially it's this was such a unique incident. Um, I I think one of the other unique things is you know, usually when you think of incident management teams, you're you're going on, like for us in California, a CAL FIRE team, uh the Forest Service team, and you're going on a fire that's not in your area. So for us, running an incident that's within our own jurisdiction, there are a lot of personal relationships that, you know, are built up between our chief officers, you know, especially the division chief and higher level, and certain politicians, city members. So I think one takeaway we kind of talked about as an incident management team, um, it just a quick on our last day on the incident, we all sat around, had a little powwow, the command and general staff. And obviously, we're gonna have a formal AAR process, but one of the things we talked about was maybe in the future having like a truly dedicated, if we had something similar to this magnitude, separate like politicians meeting for them. So, you know, you have your briefings, the plans meetings, the tactics meetings, the cooperators meeting. It would add yet another meeting, but having a specific one for the politicians because obviously they had a lot of questions, requests, need for information. So, you know, to kind of quench that thirst, it might be a good idea we all talked about going forward.

Tom Mueller 12:56

Yeah, I think that's a fabulous idea. And I'll I'll go back to my black swan incident. That was one of the things we implemented fairly early on was doing an elected officials briefing every day, 10 a.m. So they could get the latest from if not an incident commander, a deputy incident commander, uh, you know, somebody working the response uh who could brief them, answer questions, and then they're set to you know go do what they need to do through the day. So that's a terrific idea. And if you know, again, the bigger these things get, the more it makes sense to start segregating out your audiences a little bit and assigning people to work those.

Hotlines Social DMs And Suggestions

Tom Mueller 13:39

Um one of the other challenges you get is inquiries uh coming in, right? You said the phone never stops. There's a community hotline number that went up fairly quickly. Um and of course, lots of suggestions were coming in um to you. Uh give me a uh, you know, a sense for how you were handling the community inquiries, the suggestions that were coming in. Were you ready for that?

Greg Barta 14:11

Yeah, so the community inquiries part of it, to be honest, uh, from my shop, it it's pretty nice because we have a system in place where our emergency operations center, um, like we call up on the hill, where I was talking about that I have one of our PIOs was up there. So they have that call center. That that phone line, it's always ready to be activated. So when you know we say launch, it I mean it's not instantaneous in five seconds. There needs to be staff up there to handle the phone calls and they need their talking points, but it's a pretty quick process to get that in place. So again, our our phone line that we're answering, it's purely for the media. Um, so that number it's basically we put it out on a media advisory, and that goes, it's purely just to the media. So they're the only ones, conceivably, that have access or have that number, not to say they couldn't give it out, or you know, we do occasionally get the one-off, you know, citizen calling, but for the most part, our PIO line, it's only the media calling. So that keeps it pretty easy on us. And getting that hotline number activated early on in an incident, it really helps with taking the pressure off the incident for some of the community calls and requests. But obviously, like I mean, you could just imagine the amount of phone calls coming through, it's it's astronomical for them in our emergency operations center, you know, answering. So very important for us to communicate and collaborate with the messaging. So, you know, they have timely and accurate information they can provide to the citizens as well. As far as the suggestions, um, I gotta say, I I was the fortunate one on this being the lead PIO, I wasn't answering the phone other than you know, my work phone, there are certain members of like the media that I deal with all the time or the national media that reach out to me personally. Um, but other than that, like the suggestions, I it was more on social media. Um, you know, there were a million messages of those on our in our inbox, and our PR specialist, you know, she was able to give us some of those.

Tom Mueller 16:17

And so these were direct messages that were coming in via X?

Greg Barta 16:21

Oh, yeah, got direct messages coming in, and and then we saw you know, comments on. I mean, there were uh thousands of comments across all those of the posts, the videos we were doing. So uh I didn't really have too much time to read through a bunch of them during instant. I went through a little bit afterwards and and got a good chuckle at some of them. And um, you know, also on the flip side, I could see as a as a citizen, it sometimes the solution seems so simple, right? Like, well, why are they just doing this? Um, I mean, you ask any firefighter at the coffee table, we can solve every world problem in about five minutes. So I get it. You know, people, hey, I want to get home. Why don't we just uh build a giant ice cube and and on top of it, and why don't we throw dry ice at it? And you know, I mean, every idea under the sun, they they seem good to somebody. So yeah, we had the bet we had the best people working on it though.

Tom Mueller 17:08

So we can't say I just found it you know humorous because at one point there was a uh you know a tweet that came out on X that said, um, please stop sending suggestions. We have enough of those now, right?

Greg Barta 17:24

Well, and and part of that was to help our emergency operations center up on the hill, you know, they're getting those thousands of calls a day, trying to answer legitimate questions. So then, you know, they were getting a lot of calls too of the G Wiz suggestions, and then even people calling because it is Orange County Fire leading the incident. So our dispatch center, who's still trying to process, you know, the thousands of calls we run, um, you know, and they're still trying to handle those calls, and then they're getting inundated with calls of suggestions as well, which is, you know, that they're they are so phenomenally talented up there in our dispatch center. But again, you know, that's distracting from them, you know, doing their job. And so we we wanted to put a halt to it as best we could.

Tom Mueller 18:08

Yeah.

Closing And How To Reach Us

Tom Mueller 18:09

Well, uh, you know, I love the way you guys handled that using the X account. And that's gonna do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. Thanks for being with us again. Hey, if you want to email the show, you can drop me a line at Tom at Leadinginacrisis.com. On our next episode, we'll have our third and final installment with Greg Barta, PIO for Orange County Fire Authority. So join us for that thrilling conclusion of this video.