Welcome And Guest Introduction

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, and we love to hear stories from the front lines of crisis communications. I'm Tom Mueller. Thanks for joining us again this week. On our show today, we're very fortunate to have a uh very highly experienced incident commander uh with us today. Uh he's very experienced and long in tooth in dealing with crisis situations. Um, he is Chief Craig Covey from the um Orange County Fire Authority. Chief, welcome to the show. Thank you, Tom. Glad to be

The Scale Of Orange County Response

Tom Mueller 0:49

here. Let me give you a quick rundown of the Chief's background. He started off as a uh paramedic and worked his way up through the department to fire captain, then battalion chief, and now serves as Division I Chief within Orange County. So he's been with the Orange County Fire Authority for 32 years. Uh, Chief, I'm sure you've got a lot of stories to share based on all of that. But before we get to that, tell me a little bit about the group that you look after in Orange County. How big is your area of responsibility?

Craig Covey 1:27

Sure. So the Orange County Fire Authority is a joint powers agreement, and we we contract off fire services to 23 cities in Orange County and the unincorporated community keys. So with that, we cover that with 11 field battalions. And then supervising those field battalions, we have seven field divisions. Mine is division one of the seven divisions. So I supervise fire services in the cities, uh, four of our cities, Lisa, or excuse me, um, Garden Grove, Westminster, Seal Beach, Los Alamitos, and two unincorporated areas. Uh, that's roughly 55 square miles, 320,000 people uh with 14 fire stations. And we ran last year, we ran right around 33,000 calls.

Tom Mueller 2:13

Okay. Well, that'll keep you busy on a day-to-day basis. It's just incredible the scale of what you look after, Chief. And,

Inside The GKN Chemical Release

Tom Mueller 2:23

you know, uh, I first sort of became aware of you uh just watching the recent incident in Orange County in Garden Grove, the GKN chemical release incident uh over at GKN Aerospace. And that was uh an amazing incident to watch just because of the scale of it. Uh, for for those of you uh who aren't familiar with that, you can look back at some of my past podcast episodes, and we've talked a lot about that incident, but essentially it involved a uh a thermal runaway in a storage tank that was going sort of super critical. And Chief Covey here was on the front lines of that and making that decision to evacuate your communities, Chief. That was

Choosing Evacuation Under Pressure

Tom Mueller 3:15

a decision that affected the lives of 40 to 50,000 residents. How much pressure did you feel making that decision?

Craig Covey 3:27

You never make a decision like that lightly. Uh, it's not only the residences, it was 5,000 businesses on a holiday weekend. I mean, the economic impact as well as the life impact of a decision like that, um, you don't take lightly, but with the intel that we received, and you know, Washington had a uh a tank explosion during that same time frame where 11 people were killed. Um, so you have to err on the side of caution and on the intel that you get, and you're gonna have to do it. You know, um on the other side of town, we had a uh a festival going on that was gonna have a quarter million people go through it. It was impacting that as well. So, yeah, holiday weekend, everything going on. Uh, this was about as stressful as it gets.

Tom Mueller 4:16

Yeah, you know, I'm just suddenly reminded of the movie Jaws, you know, and it's summertime and the beaches are open. And you come in and say, sorry, Mr. Mayor, we have to close the beaches, right? Um, not yeah. So uh fascinating to sort of watch you guys do that. Um and any in hindsight, Chief, was that the right call to make given the situation?

Craig Covey 4:46

I think any professional will always look at hindsight and evaluate everything they did um based on the information that I had, um, through some not only the experts that ran that facility, but our hazmat team experts. I literally was driving there. So I knew this address and I saw when it came up, I started monitoring it closely. And then when it was started growing, it's like, okay, I called my field battalion chief that was there and said, Hey, do I need to come out? And his single word was yes. So I'm driving out there on the freeway, and uh another division chief, one of our other division chiefs, calls me. And he's kind of our hazmat program expert, and he calls me in his opening as soon as I see the phone ring, I'm a little nervous, right? All right, why is he calling me? And when he his first opening words to me is, are you nervous yet? And of course, my natural response is uh, should I be? And he's like, Yes, single word again. So I'm like, all right, all right, well, are you available? Start heading this way, you know. And you don't have to know everything, but you have to know people that know things. So I made my decisions based on my trust in the people that know what's going on. And when I'm getting alert factors like that, uh, zero hesitation, single word yes. Um, I think we made the right decision. You can't judge it on the outcome. The outcome was amazing for for what we had happen and not destroy our community, whether by homes or by nature, is incredible. And it was the the last thing we thought was going to happen, but the fact that it did shouldn't change our decision to keep our community safe. And it was tough, but it was the right thing to do.

Leading With Truth On Camera

Tom Mueller 6:35

Yeah, one of the things I I loved about watching you guys manage this incident um was your sort of forthrightness about why you were making this call, right? And the videos that you created to keep the communities informed uh and all that. It felt very transparent. And is I'm just curious, is that um you seem very natural doing that, talking, running videos, uh, and all of that stuff. So is that just born of your experience? Are you naturally comfortable in front of people?

Craig Covey 7:12

Uh certainly experience. Um, you know, you think about in our careers, you know, you promote the captain, you start doing these little things here and there, you promote the battalion chief, and you collectively you you get these opportunities to speak in front of cameras, uh, whether it's on the side of the road or in front of a house or go into a class. I've been to uh I'm heavily involved in instant management teams, both locally, uh uh with federally, both with FEMA and search and rescue and as well as with a fire team. And you end up having to speak in front of things. And some of the major incidents I've been on, you provide those incident updates. It's not a press conference like some of the what we were doing there. But you know, I play ops chief on a major incident, and I and you've seen it on the fire assignments where they're putting videos out now and they they walk around the horn on the fire and tell what's going on. You know, you you do all those collectively and you start, you make your mistakes on some of those, and you read you retape them, and you and you you build your comfort in that, and then you get hit something with a GK incident. Never in my career have I been in front of 50 cameras with an international audience. Uh that's certainly how do you train for that? I've I've been in front of fake briefings, you know, with two people in a testing process or or part of an incident management team class, but nothing to the size and scope and scale of what we were doing there uh with an international audience, critiquing every word you said. Yeah, that's it's beyond understanding of no one can ever be comfortable in that situation. I mean, I appreciate your your support and your comments about it. Um, I am in no way, may in no way uh or means a natural at it. Um, I just did the best that I could. And I have to give a ton of credit to our PIO section, and I can elaborate on that if you want, but they did an incredible job. We had with some people that earned some gold stars on that incident, the hazmat team, the drone program, uh, but our PIOs are right there at the top of the conversation as well.

Tom Mueller 9:20

Well, let's

PIO Strategy Against Misinformation

Tom Mueller 9:21

talk about the PIOs for a minute there, Chief. Um, I had Greg Berta on here recently, and he, you know, walked us through some of his team's activities. One of the surprising things was that several members of his team were brand new, right? They'd finished their PIO training the day before this incident, and they're pushed right on out into this pressure cooker situation, which is just a tough way to cut your teeth, right? But what did you uh what did you like about how your PIO team worked with you and works with you on a continuing basis? It seemed to be a pretty smooth flow.

Craig Covey 10:01

You know, we talked about it in our pre-season IMT meeting. We had uh uh we had everybody get together and had a meeting, and and the thing I spoke with the PIOs when we were addressing them with our thoughts and expectations, as you know so well, you can never beat social media. Uh, it's everybody's on the side of the street with a camera that can live stream and and put out their view and message of what's going on. We can never beat that timing-wise, but you know, I asked them, I said, we what we need to do is cut that time down as quick as possible and be as proactive as possible to limit misinformation or God unfortunate disinformation intentional. Uh, so try to get ahead of that. You'll you'll never get ahead of it, but we needed to be aggressive with it. And obviously, with this one, it was a perfect case in point of trying to get ahead of any false information, making sure we had good, clear communication out. Um, that being said, I where it was another one of those moments like I talked about earlier. And and we have a chief of staff who's kind of in charge of our media side of information as well. And he worked strictly for the fire chief. And right before our first press conference, I spoke to him and I said, Hey, how am I doing this? How am I playing this? Right, you know, what am I what message am I getting out to the community? And he kind of sat back a second and thought about it just for a brief second. He goes, you know, Greg, just tell them the truth. And I'm like, hey, that's easy. That's what they deserve. That's what I believe. I can do that. And I don't know if you noticed, Tom, in my my press conferences, I never used notes. Now that has its pros and cons. The con is I'm gonna mess up a word, I'm gonna do something, maybe say something I couldn't or shouldn't have said. But the pro is in and the feedback that I've gotten is that it felt genuine, honest, and not a script. When I see someone up there reading something, to me, it's a Saturday night live skit and they're just telling a story versus coming up and telling the community they had the right to know. Transparency is, as we all know, is the most emphasized word in society now. And let them know the facts and what we're dealing with, and and my passion to trying to fix it, even though I was given something I said wasn't fixable.

Tom Mueller 12:30

Yeah, you know, and the um the optimism that you uh that you showed throughout this was really interesting uh for me as I watched you, just that um they're telling us this is inevitable, but we're not accepting that. We're we've got a brain trust of people together, we're working on solutions. And um, you know, by golly, your optimism sort of paid off there in terms of what was inevitable did not happen. Now it was a bit of luck that that, you know, that that didn't happen. But at the same time, you know, you guys weren't crying crying chicken out there, and uh you were being very honest with people and letting them know uh you know the situation as best you could. So that worked well. Uh, you know, it's unusual, Chief, for for somebody to be able to step out into a high-pressure press conference like that without using any notes. So kudos to you for being willing to do that.

Getting Ready For Tough Questions

Tom Mueller 13:35

Um I wonder, you know, looking back on your career, you know, a lot of times, you know, in my role, I will coach other PIOs on how to brief an incident commander as before they're going into a major press conference, right? And, you know, what are the sort of key messages we want to hit? What are the key data points? Now, ideally, your incident commander knows all of that, but you have a lot on your mind in terms of what's happening with operations, uh, you know, with the logistics, uh, lots of other issues that are happening, dealing with the liaison aspects and the elected officials, um, all of that. So, how do you uh sort of uh how do you like to be prepared? If that's if I can put it that way, or do you just not need that kind of preparation from the PIO team?

Craig Covey 14:32

I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, we did have some conversations, uh, you know, preparedness-wise, things we want to focus on. Um really it was talking to my experts and getting educated to a point that I could I could answer the average question. And then if I didn't, I had one of them on my shoulder there. Okay, you got me on that one. Bring them in, let them provide a little more depth that they're searching for that I didn't have as an incident commander. Like I don't have a hazmat background. I I was a first responder, basic level hazmat guy as a as a as a firefighter, bringing in the guys that are true hazmat experts, they could answer those detailed questions, but I spent a lot of time talking to them because I I came up in aviation and search and rescue and paramedicine and all those other things I can speak to eloquently or fluently uh because of my experience. Uh, but this one I didn't have that background in and had to really get some, you know, on-the-job training right there, just some time training to be able to answer up to the questions. Um, and I had some experience with that. I don't know if you're familiar with, we had one of those the world's largest uh buildings, the blimp hangar burned down in Tuston. And it caused an asbestos release across the city. And we dealt with that for a couple of weeks, and I was the operations chief on that. And um, as part of the, as you know, the IMT process, we had that cooperators meeting and we speak to the cooperators and give them updates to what's going on and answer questions. That played a large part in my preparedness for this kind of briefing. Again, nothing prepares you for 50 calendars in you, but when you got a room full of cooperators because you evacuated half of a a city, um, it certainly begs for a lot of questions that you have to be prepared for. And I just use that previous experience of how that went, lessons learned from it, and and played it into this.

Tom Mueller 16:31

Okay. Well, as you said, uh, you know, it was it was quite genuine the way you presented yourself. And I have uh never seen a response where the communications were really managed via prepared videos almost exclusively by the IC or you know, the senior team leading the response. And it was uh I I I think this is fairly common for you guys in Orange County, just talking to your PIO about that. Um, but for most other responses that I've looked at, you know, that was really unusual, but so well done, right? Because we got you, the incident commander, talking directly to all of us about what's happening, what the risks are, why you have us out of our homes, uh, all of that. And it just was very heartfelt and it worked really well. And you know, I peeked in at some of the numbers, you know, and some of those videos were getting 600,000 plus views, right? So you were trending on uh social media that week, obviously. So a lot um a lot there.

Craig Covey 17:44

So surreal when you hear your I was getting comments from Australia, some friends in Australia and New Zealand who were were seeing me there. So yeah, it's it's pretty surreal that that had that kind of global impact.

Balancing Media With Command Meetings

Tom Mueller 18:00

Uh just focusing on sort of the PIO realm for a little bit, Chief. Um, you work closely with PIOs, and I'm sure have through your career. Um, any instances where um you know things didn't go well with a PIO or you got uh crossways with them? Any lessons that you sort of took away or that a PIO could take away from your experiences there?

Craig Covey 18:28

Man, you would think you think there would be. Uh at least on this incident, there wasn't. Uh we, I mean, we have dedicated professional PIOs who who are doing this. You know, our department runs almost 200,000 uh calls a year. So they're very, very, very active. Um, so we interact with them a lot. They're true professionals, they're really the ones guiding us. I can't say, I mean, they understood the impact of my time, they were balancing that once. They would deflect once and let some of the other PIO guys do those interviews, and only pulling me in on the ones that were critical and they wanted and needed support on. Uh, it did interact a couple times, I guess would be and it's very minor. As you know, in the incident management process at 12 o'clock, we have a command and general staff meeting, and it was pulling me out of those meetings sometimes to go do uh a briefing, but that also timed with the the media's schedule. So it it caused conflict here. But thankfully we run with two ICs on it uh on our IMT. We have a primary and a secondary, kind of a IC and deputy IC, although we don't call it that. We're both equals. And um, he would run that CNG meeting and catch me up when it was done. Uh, so I guess that would be the only conflict there is some of the times it it impacted what we were trying to run in our planning peace cycle.

Tom Mueller 19:56

Right. And how was the uh was the team able to sort of schedule you, you know? I don't know if you guys ran the the um um the ICS 230 form, you know, the schedule for the response on a daily basis. And were they able to plug in those press conferences and other critical times for you, or was it really more ad hoc uh in grabbing you and pulling you in?

Craig Covey 20:22

That's a good one. I haven't seen a 230 form, so I'm not familiar with that one. Uh so I would unless they were doing it internally with themselves, uh, it was pretty ad hoc in with me that hey, we're gonna leave you alone till such and such time. We're not gonna have anybody. You're you're good till 1500, 1530, 1600, uh, or we'll schedule the next one. Um, so I I I believe it was a little more ad hoc. Uh, I'm not sure if they were running a 230 on it.

Tom Mueller 20:48

Okay. All right. Um that's just something I've run into a lot. In uh, you know, I came up in oil and gas, right? So we would always have, you know, Gulf of Mexico oil spill exercises, or eventually the real thing that you had to work. And uh getting, you know, when we had we knew we were gonna do press conferences, we were knew we were gonna do morning satellite briefings with all of the national morning shows, right? So we've got to get that on the schedule so the incident commander knows, and and everybody else knows uh he or she's going to be engaged, you know, for this period of time, and we need to make space around that so they can get that media piece of it done. Uh, but that's you know, not every incident commander prioritizes those communications, uh, but they are uh quite critical, you know, especially when you've got you know thousands and thousands of people out of their homes or impacted by the incident.

Craig Covey 21:50

You know, my fire chief became more available um as the incident kind of progressed there. I he did see me quite a bit in the beginning, and then his time became more available. And he kind of started taking into a uh more of a lead role on some of those bigger ones like CNN and others that were national broadcast stuff, uh, which took some of the pressure off me, uh, which was great. So I could focus on running the incident. So he did a good job getting in there and and taking some of that workload off of me once they recognized what was going on.

Learning From Social Media Feedback

Tom Mueller 22:21

Yeah. And do you have, do you feel like you have a cadre of trained professionals who can go out and do that media? And are people willing to volunteer for that, or do you really have to push them out?

Craig Covey 22:35

I think all of us are pretty much a push it out. You know, you raise your hand for certain positions, it comes with that. It's not like we're uh, hey, I'm a look-at-me guy, it's the fire service world, the whole nature, and and it's more of uh a necessary evil for lack of better word. Um, the the the community has the right to know, as we talked about earlier. And if you're the guy, you're the guy. And go be the guy, represent the patch, represent the profession. Um, that for me, and I think most first responders are pretty passionate about that. The last thing we want is our agency, ourselves, or the profession to look bad. So go out there and and do the best that you can. Um, you know, one of the things I did, I don't know if uh Captain Barta talked about it, uh, social media and those comments that you were talking about and looking for feedback. Uh, one of the things I started doing initially and then I stopped doing it for a variety of reasons, but I tasted out is to scour the social media comments. Obviously, you got the trolls. Um, but more importantly, there are comments out there that, hey, we're missing. It's a hole in our game, it's a hole in our swing. And let's make sure we capture that in some of our upcoming briefings so that we are getting the messages out to the community. And it's it's touching all those touch points that maybe we've missed previously unintentionally. And I learned that uh from a big wildland fire that we had here. Um, we we evacuated 75,000 people between us and Riverside County. And and a lot of the feedback I was getting on that supported how I was doing business, which parlayed into the GKN incident. And that feedback is critical to success. And we got to look at it and see there is a hole in our swing. We're missing some points, or they need some clarification as to whys, and we can provide that to them so that they understand. Again, to your point earlier, why we have them out of the house on a holiday weekend, disrupting their lives. You know, we had a mass casualty incident in the middle of that. We had to evacuate a nursing home with 10 people on ventilators. Uh, I mean, you you think about the scope of that and the impact, and the people had the right to know the why. And that so searching those media points and making sure we're we're getting out all those questions answered was a big goal of mine.

Tom Mueller 25:05

That chief, did I hear that correctly? That you personally were looking at social media and just trying to assess where the gaps might be.

Craig Covey 25:14

I did start initially, and then you know, you get caught up in some of the trolling and end up talents, and it just wasn't worth it to me to get buried in that. But I would when I'd had a few minutes, I would flip through comments to look for those opportunities of things I was missing. I said, you know, it's I gotta stop doing this. Uh, there's a whole PIO team there, so one of those guys can do it. You know, just give me the stuff I need to know and and the support so that I keep moving forward.

Tom Mueller 25:39

Yeah, it's uh well, I'm just fascinated to hear that you personally engaged in that a little bit. It just shows how important, you know, that social media aspect is to managing these communications in a crisis. So um that kudos to you for uh you know at least showing that interest and spending some time there. But that is one of the PIO team challenges, you know, is just drinking from the fire hose of social media and trying to sort out the wheat from the chaff and you know, people who are looking for help versus people who are just you know throwing in a suggestion for it, um uh or whatever. So um it's it's fascinating to me that you spent some time on that. So good for you. That keeps your PIO team honest as well. It does that.

Closing Thoughts And Contact Info

Tom Mueller 26:33

And that's gonna do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast. Join us for the next episode where we'll continue our conversation with Chief Covey and dive even more in depth into key issues around his crisis management background and best practices for incident commanders and for public information officers. So look forward to catching you on that next episode as well. In the meantime, if you'd like to drop me a line, you can email me at Tom at Leadinginacrisis dot com. And we'll see you soon on the next episode. Take care.