Welcome And Incident Context

Tom Mueller 0:07

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 again for joining us. If you want to drop me a line, you can email the show at Tom at LeadingInacrisis.com. On today's episode, we're continuing our conversation with Greg Barda, who's public information officer for Orange County Fire Authority out in Orange County, California. As you might recall, Orange County dealt with a huge chemical incident with a runaway thermal reaction at a chemical facility there and required the evacuation of between 40 and 50,000 local residents over the Memorial Day weekend. So Greg has lots of interesting stories to share about his team's

Why X Is The Main Channel

Tom Mueller 1:00

experience managing communications for that incident. Let's rejoin that conversation now. Yeah, let me just talk social media with you for a little bit here because I was just really, really impressed with the way that your team really pushed information out on X. And that to me seemed to be the primary vehicle for communicating along with the video messages, right? And then, you know, sending out those video messages that the incident commanders were doing. But is was that really the primary channel you were using then to reach the community?

Greg Barta 1:39

Yeah, and that that kind of always is. That's kind of part of our game plan here, if you will. So whenever there's a major incident in our jurisdiction, it's X is going to be the primary focus for us for putting information out. And one of the biggest reasons for that is that's how the media picks up basically incidents that are happening. So for us, it's a two-pronged approach. We are able to obviously disseminate information directly to the community. And then secondarily, and equally just as important, is the media is able to pick it up so then they can generate their own um news segments based on it. So if we if we post a video of Chief Covey like we were doing on there, I don't want to say they don't need to talk to us, but they kind of don't need to talk to us because they've got the video right there. They can go ahead and post it and they can come up with their own talking points based on what he himself as the incident commander is saying. So it I don't want to say it reduced the amount of media calls we got or requests for interviews because we obviously got a lot, but sometimes, you know, obviously they want stuff non-stop. Um, and it's kind of a way for us to provide them, you know, uh a little something if if we're not able to get out there to write that second, or you know, everybody wanted to interview Chief McGovern, Chief Kovey, understandably so, but they were pretty busy at times too. So when we couldn't get them out there, at least having the video for them to be able to run with and and play across you know their various broadcast um you know networks was a good option.

Tom Mueller 3:07

Yeah, that definitely a best practice the way you've implemented that. I mean, you've you feed the media machine with the videos from the experts who were leading the response. You know, if I'm a reporter, it just doesn't get any better than that unless I can stick a microphone in his face and get a personal interview. But in situations like this, you know, that's not gonna happen, at least not very often. Um, did you did you take time to do any sort of one-offs with local TV stations, or did you really just rely on the videos to get that the

Video Updates That Feed The Media

Tom Mueller 3:41

B-roll and the messaging out?

Greg Barta 3:43

We did, I wish I would have kept a tally, or we would have kept a tally of how many interviews were done. We did a ton of one-off, I mean a ton of one-off interviews. So um we kind of in the morning I got with Chief Covey and we would kind of get what the layout of the day looked like. I mean, again, everything's so dynamic that it could change at a moment's notice, but um fitting in when he could do some interviews and Chief McGovern when he could do some interviews, so that we kind of knew, like, okay, I got a little window from 11 o'clock until noon, you know, after the cooperator meeting, I got Chief Covey. I can I can get some interviews in for him. Um, I've got Chief McGovern at this time, so we could really focus on on getting the media what they want and and they do need it, um, while not taking away from their jobs, you know, running the incident. So in their absence, we utilized our PIOs to do those interviews, but we made it a pretty big priority to especially like the national news, you know, ABC World News Tonight, you know, NBC News, those national ones. We got Chief McGovern. Um, he he was on that pretty much non-stop, as was Chief Kovey. And we were able to really, you know, pry them away and give everybody what they wanted at least once a day. I mean, you know, the media wants it five times a day. They wanted a one-on-one interview with him, and that you know, it couldn't happen, but we we pretty much fed the beast and were able to give him what I thought was a more than adequate you know, ability to talk to to the two chiefs.

Tom Mueller 5:13

Yeah, and and Greg, the uh the local affiliates weren't a little put off by the fact you were giving the networks the attention there.

Greg Barta 5:23

Oh no, our locals got just as much as they probably got even more than than the national. So one great thing, we have I mean, I would borderline call a lot of the media that we deal with on a regular basis. I I don't know if I'd go as far as calling them friends, but man, they're almost my friends, and and I'd say that for our whole staff. So Chief McGovern, you know, he he knows them on a first-change basis. He I don't want to say deals with them, but interacts with them, you know, fairly regularly. So we didn't just prioritize the national, we prioritized the local as well. So I mean, everybody got treated you know fairly evenly. Um, you know, obviously the national kind of they pretty much had like one request a day, and they want to get it out before the East Coast, you know, news feeds hit, where the locals they wanted multiple hits a day. So, you know, obviously coordinating, you know, if you had three or four requests from one local agency throughout the day, you know, very tough to have the fire chief available for four requests a day. That's where we used our PIOs to fill in those gaps. Um, you know, but we did make it a priority to give them the same treatment that the national news got as well.

Scheduling Interviews Without Distraction

Tom Mueller 6:34

And Greg, I did notice uh the fact that you had new brand new PIO staff out there sort of answers the question. But I did see one interview uh where the PIO was giving out incorrect information. And um that probably explains it to me now. If you got some brand new people there. But you know, any PIOs who've worked, you know, a number of incidents are gonna always have those little quotes I'd like to have back. You know, that little miscommunication that I said that was wrong, even though I thought it was right at the time. So I know you had a little bit of that to deal with, but overall it seemed like messaging was spot on throughout.

Greg Barta 7:18

Yeah, I mean, every instance got a little challenged, and this being such a unique one, and um, yeah, that was just a and I at first I didn't know where that crack versus cracks was coming from. Or like, wait, cracks, we didn't know it's a crack. So we put out a message, and then um we have a you know a media monitoring company too. So I quickly went on and was able to pull, you know, I got the interview. I'm like, okay, and that individual, he's phenomenal. It was, I mean, legitimately, you know, we're talking, just finished his training and thrown into the deep end. And and in that exact interview, he says crack and cracks, so it's not like you know, it's just it's one letter, a little misspeak, but obviously, you know, um, makes a difference. So caused a couple hours of uh of extra work that night, Chief Kobe and I, a couple extra phone calls. Um, and and that individual we talked about the next day, like nobody was mad. Those we've all made those mistakes, like, and it wasn't even a mistake, it was just a quick little you know, slip of the tongue with an extra, extra letter. And I I think honestly, like I put myself in in his shoes. I'd be uh I mean, I'd be pretty nervous. It's like the biggest incident in the entire country going on, and you're having a talk in you know to media, and you've never really done that. So we talked about it the next day, you know, um gave him a break from the TV for a little bit, like, okay, let's not, you know, it's okay, like not a big deal, take a breather. Um, we got him back in front of the camera. He did great. So, um, and I'm sure, you know, I I learn more from little mistakes I make than when everything goes perfectly. So I I I'm sure he'll, you know, hammer that home for him and for all of us. We use it as a good point for all the whole PIO shop. Just, hey, everybody, let's just make sure, you know, and if you're unsure of something, it's okay to say that and and you know, get the correct information.

Tom Mueller 9:15

And again, as you've said, it was a very dynamic situation, you know. Boy, there's teams going in to inspect it and it's changing rapidly. So um, but it it sounds like you guys were able to manage through that well and and no problems. Again, a little tiny blip on this uh

Correcting A Small On Air Slip

Tom Mueller 9:33

as you've gone through it. Um hey, I want to talk to you about uh crisis websites for just uh a minute, if we can. Um, I come from you know from the uh corporate background, I've worked in the oil and gas industry my entire career and in fact managed uh a network of dark crisis websites for the company globally, right? So if we had an incident somewhere in the world, we could stand up a crisis website very quickly. Um but now OCFA, you guys generally don't do crisis websites for your responses.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Is is that right? Yeah, that's correct.

Greg Barta 10:15

So okay, we rely pretty much on social media um for the day-to-day operations of getting the messaging out, which is it's pretty effective. Obviously, um websites are great. The hard part is like managing that, obviously, in and who's gonna be inputting stuff in live time. That's why, so the emergency operations center, um, in conjunction with Orange County Sheriffs, they so we actually did have a website up for this incident. Um, and so we were announcing that as well, like on at the press conferences. Um, and if people were calling the call center, they were certainly directed to the website, and that did provide like it has the updated you know, evacuation uh zones, the shelters, maps on there and whatnot. Um, but we we don't have one, you know. We obviously have our website that we use as an agency for our day-to-day um, you know, anybody can go on, but we don't have a specific incident um webpage that you know we manage in live time.

Tom Mueller 11:12

Did you happen to see that uh private citizen website that that was put up, uh ggspill.com? I didn't. Was it good? Was it accurate? It it was, it was fantastic, actually. Um, and you know, I I'll chew on GKN uh a little bit, the company that was involved and had this tank incident, um, for as far as I could tell, not really being prepared to manage and communicate around a major incident. Um, but you know, you need to be able to set up websites so that you're providing, you know, credible information to people because if you leave a vacuum, somebody else is

Do You Need A Crisis Website

Tom Mueller 11:55

going to fill it, right? Um, you had just a local 27-year-old guy who's a software engineer and web designer, and he just saw a need. So he started pulling together all these different feeds. Uh, he had an RSS feed coming from OCFA, so all the latest tweets were there on the top of the site. He found out who was uh you know offering free food to evacuees, and he was posting up links to the restaurants that were offering food. Um, you know, the evacuation maps, the the videos that you were producing over there in the unified command. He had those on the site. So he just really did a terrific job. And uh I I again I don't have statistics for how many, you know, what kind of traffic he got there, but he did a nice job. And I I just became aware of it because he was commenting after critical OCFA treat uh tweets out there, like you guys would post a video, he'd post a comment under it saying, hey, this is uh website where there's available information as well. Um, so you know, he was one of the good guys. Yeah. But boy, you don't have to go very far to find somebody with um, you know, malintent to try and throw monkey wrenches into something like this, right? And uh so anyway, is from your PIO perspective in the Orange County Fire Authority, uh, doesn't sound like websites and that was much of a focus for you for this incident.

Greg Barta 13:35

No, and and it in it generally it hasn't been past practice for us for. I mean, the the major brush fires are obviously the ones that we we deal with. We had that um those Tustin hanger hangers, the big blimp hangers. Um so we had one of those burned down a few years ago. That was a pretty big incident, and it drug on for weeks just based on the smoke and the like potential environmental impacts. So

A Citizen Built Site Fills Gaps

Greg Barta 14:01

um web page was made for that, but that again was kind of done through the county emergency operations center. And obviously they get some information from us, from the sheriffs, from the police departments, you know, impacted and everybody. Um, but yeah, it's not something that we here at OCFA or our incident management team, um, we're not really doing that in live time um ourselves. Okay. Yeah.

Tom Mueller 14:26

Well I I wanted to just shift gears quickly and ask you about um GKN, the company that was involved whose facility had this runaway thermal reaction going on in their storage tank. And we didn't see them in this response until day five, essentially, when we saw a statement, uh press release that was issued uh from I believe from the UK. And uh how about in the unified command and the incident management team? Was the company you know visible, active in this since this was their facility?

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Yeah, great question.

Greg Barta 15:11

So my my knowledge is somewhat limited on their involvement. Um I personally myself did not have any interaction with them until kind of af after the incident had after we had basically turned the incident back over to you know them, Orange County Health and AQMD for the cleanup component of this. I do know that they were in communication with with our team. So, you know, the IC liaison officer, that there were communications and stuff with them. But as far as the PIO shop, us and them, we we didn't have any communication with them um like during the actual incident. Okay.

Tom Mueller 15:53

And and that probably would have helped out in doing the inquiry management uh kind of things if you had you know a GCAN person in the JIC who could provide some level of expertise to help answer um some questions, uh, which when you're dealing with, you know, like major oil spills or other chemical incidents like I have in my career, you kind of expect that, right? You've got company people staffing in a jick alongside agency staff and you know, kind of unified command doing its thing.

Greg Barta 16:28

Um but yeah, I mean, and I don't like I don't know their organizational structure or if they have spokespeople that are local or email. Um so I do know that they were involved with you know our our team, but not necessarily like they weren't you know involved with us as a PIO section.

Tom Mueller 16:50

Okay,

Where The Company Was In Communications

Tom Mueller 16:51

yeah, and that that was my impression watching this, right? They just were a non-entity in the whole communications thing, and you know, from a best practices perspective, as a company with hazardous operations, it it doesn't reflect well on them. And I look at that and I think, well, you know, they didn't have a plan to deal with a major incident at this facility, certainly not a crisis communications plan, uh, but that's a lesson learned for all of us for other companies out there who are watching and thinking, wow, could could that happen to our company? And hopefully spurs them to spend a little time developing their own crisis communications plans and strategies. So good.

Greg Barta 17:37

Yeah, absolutely. I do know they went to a city council meeting in Garden Grove and a spokesperson for them did deliver basically a statement um kind of after the fact.

Tom Mueller 17:48

But I saw that. I'm working on another podcast episode that deals with the town hall meetings um because we have a lot of experience in that in the oil and gas industry when you have incidents that affect communities. Um and yeah, it was I was very happy to see them show up for that meeting. You know, they missed a couple of earlier opportunities to engage with the community at other meetings. Um, so it was it was great for them to be there. Um, and and I'll talk more about that. They uh so kudos to GKN for turning up and addressing some of the citizen concerns. Um that empathy thing, you know, they gotta work on that a little bit. Talk to Chief Covey or what government and uh and work some of that empathy into what you're doing because they had a very angry community, a scared community, and you didn't get a sense you know that that was that they just cared that much. And uh I thought they could have done that piece better, but tune in to the next podcast and it'll shed some light on that.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

There you go.

Tom Mueller 19:03

Okay. Um, Greg, any other issues that uh any stories you can share from behind the scenes there, you know, for people who might find themselves working a big scale up incident. Um, you know, the evacuations was a unique piece for this. Uh did you gosh, I don't know how to quite phrase this because that was such a huge part of this, but it's mostly you know, uh it's not very visible for most people who are watching, right? Um unless you're you know you're watching the local news and they're talking to people. How big an issue was the evacuation centers and all of that from your perspective, or was that really for others to deal with?

Greg Barta 20:00

To be honest, really for others to deal with. Um, and that's like for our incident management team, it wasn't that was pretty much the cities, the Red Cross. Um, they were the ones you know implementing those evacuation centers and and giving us that information, but not a

Evacuations And Update Frequency Decisions

Greg Barta 20:18

huge impact on on like what we were having to deal with as a communication shop on you know the incident management team. Um, but there definitely were unique challenges. I mean, if that was kind of one of the questions you had. One so two that come to mind, one I already touched on, but one of the biggest ones is I had a conversation with one of our assistant chiefs about the frequency at which we provided information. There's that there's that fine line of giving too many updates, but where you're not really providing an update, you're just kind of talking to talk versus not providing enough. So we were trying to float that fine line of, you know, in my head, I kind of had I want three a day, you know, a morning like a briefing, a midday, and a nighttime, like almost like a sign-off for the night, kind of. Um, it's just a a rough draft of what we wanted to accomplish. But what was unique about this is, you know, when we have a brush fire, something is always changing and rapidly. It's getting bigger, the containment numbers are getting bigger, we have more people operating on the fire. This residential area is under evacuation orders. Okay, now they're lifted, but now this one is there's so much new stuff to put out there that you you kind of almost can't keep up that way. Where this incident, I don't want to say that nothing was occurring, but we weren't able to give those like updates of you know the new information that was like drastically new, um, where we do on a brush fire. So, you know, it's kind of that fine line of like I wish I had more to give you every five minutes, but I don't. Um, so that was kind of a challenge. That it was a dynamic incident, but not nearly as dynamic as most of the fires we go on, or kind of those more all hazard incidents, you know, in a different nature. So that was a challenge and something we were in live time kind of you know dealing with with providing information, but you know, having it not occur as rapidly as as we're used to. And then the other big challenge I already touched on it was having three brand new members. So when we got them down there oh in the afternoon on that Friday, there was um there was at one point I basically I had to tell a couple of them I I'm sorry, I can't talk to you guys right now. I'm gonna need like 30 minutes and then I'll help you. You're not the it's all good, just you can stand here and watch me. But like it was to that point where I didn't have 30 seconds to explain anything. Like I had to move, move, move. Um and so you it's like you had help there, but you couldn't really use the help. And then myself and Sean, you know, we were both talked, like, oh man, like some of these it's just easier for us to do it than like delegate it. Where if I delegate it though, I'm gonna have a lot of questions. So it's gonna just take more time. And then the other challenge, we kind of already touched on it, you know, with the new people, and and sometimes there's mistakes. The other thing I I wrestled with was I know the like the three individuals very well. Um, they're all amazing fire captains, and everybody has certain strengths and weaknesses, and it was one of them is just a phenomenal person in front of the camera. He's just got that god-given natural ability, like I mean, amazing. But it's do I just put him in front of the camera every time and not give the others a rep, but then they're not gonna get better, and then also he's not gonna get better at those other avenues that you know maybe some other people are better at. So it was kind of like that fine line of, you know, oh, who do we send where? And and and and what's funny is the best example I have of that, a funny story from it, is

Onboarding New PIOs Under Pressure

Greg Barta 24:06

when we first sent somebody to evacuation center, I thought it might be pretty rough. I thought it might be one of those where the community is upset they want to be back in their homes, rightfully so. I get that. Um, and it might be a contentious environment. So that one I picked the person who I thought was the best adept at like kind of playing hot seat and in and dodging and weaving as those punches come in. And and the best part of that was he called me and thanked me for sending him there because everybody was giving him standing applauses and shaking his hand and saying thank you. So it kind of turned out to be, you know, I sent sent the guy that I thought could do the best at dealing with uh a rowdy crowd that maybe wasn't too happy, and he ended up getting the crowd that loved him. So um just a unique one, and we talked about it afterwards. Like, yeah, you know, potentially in the future, and some of those guys they all have different strengths. Like, do we lean into the strengths or do we keep working on everybody getting well-rounded? And I think it's incident-dependent. I think if I had to do it all over again, I might have on this one just because it was such a one-off and so unique. In hindsight, I might have leaned in a little bit more to just putting people in their areas of strengths and and leaning into those a little bit more, especially because they were so new that you know what? Okay, the guy who's great on camera, let's just lean into it, put him in front of the camera. There's one person who's really good at um kind of the administrative stuff, could have used him maybe more full-time on the computer doing some of that stuff just on this one because it was such a unique incident.

Tom Mueller 25:38

Yeah. Well, you know, the challenge of the PIO and and the and the onboarding process. I've you know watched a number of uh oil spill incidents where you know they kind of start escalating as oil starts moving around on the tides and the uh you know, the Coast Guard station here who's working it is looking for additional resources to come and help them manage the response. But people show up and they don't have time to onboard them, right? Because there's so much happening. So I see that a lot here. But you know what? Hey, give a lot of credit to your training program in preparing your PIOs to at least, you know, step into a leadership position here and and help deliver some of those key messages. So, you know, where would they be without the training that you provided to them?

Greg Barta 26:32

I think the funniest thing is so part of the class that we put on, uh I have a slide on there and it's called like worst case scenario. And it has it's incidents that we've had line of duty deaths. Um, we had a buggy with a bunch of our wildland firefighters roll over and severely injure a bunch of them a few years back. Um, so just kind of like, hey, you know, you're in these PIO classes and you never think that incident's gonna happen to you. And so it was all realistic incidents we've been on. And I explained to them how it's insane how the phone never stops ringing, like you are just doing your best to tread water, and it can be very stressful. And doing these press conferences with limited amount of time to prep for them, it it's it's a whole different animal. And then they said, like the first press conference, I think we did at two o'clock on that Friday. Um, they were like, Holy crud, you I didn't even realize it was as bad as like this is it's gnarly. Like what you're saying is totally right. I cannot believe like how quick this all comes together and how what you guys have to do in such a short period of time. So it was kind of funny that they literally had the slide the day before of worst case scenario, and then they were thrust

Training For The Worst Case Scenario

Greg Barta 27:39

right into the worst case scenario.

Tom Mueller 27:41

Yeah, absolutely. Well, again, that goes back to planning and preparation, right? And showing that leadership and getting your people onboarded, and of course, to management for seeing the value and need of having those PIO staff there, uh, and providing, you know, the funding for all of that. So kudos all around. Uh Greg, I'll just say, you know, congratulations to you and to OCFA organization and to everybody, you know, who was involved with the communications of this. Um, it really was a fantastic job. And I've looked at a lot of scenarios and incidents over time. Uh, I was very, very impressed with you guys. So congratulations for that. Uh, and let's hope you don't have to do it again soon.

Greg Barta 28:30

Yeah, no, thank you. It's I mean, honestly, I I think the credit really goes to our executive management staff here. So, you know, our from our fire chief, Chief McGovern, on down to our deputy chief, assistant chiefs. Every one of them places an emphasis and a value on communication and providing that timely, accurate information, not just on these major instances, but day in and day out. So we know we have their support, um, and that's huge. So I, you know, I don't know that many agencies have the kind of support, you know, for corporate communications, for the public information office that that we do from our fire chief on down. So um it's it's great, and we all feel fortunate, you know. Um I I love my job in large part because of the support that um we have from them. So it's it is great. So kudos to them for setting us up for success.

Tom Mueller 29:22

Yeah, absolutely. All right, Greg, thank you very much for joining us uh on the podcast. Great stories, great experiences there. And

Leadership Support And Closing

Tom Mueller 29:32

uh I hope uh if if you don't mind, I may invite you back at some point in the future to maybe talk about another issue.

Greg Barta 29:39

I'd love to. Any you you name the name one that you want it to be, and we'll make sure it happens.

Tom Mueller 29:44

All right, Greg, thank you. That's gonna do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. And a reminder if you'd like to drop me an email, you can hit me at Tom at leadinginacrisis. Thanks for being here. We'll see you again on another episode. Take care.