Inferno Insights: PR Strategies from the Frontlines

When wildfires rage, clear communication is the ultimate firebreak.

In this episode, Tim Conrad sits down with Mike Lupien, a public relations expert, to discuss his experiences during the 2023 British Columbia wildfire season and the infamous 2016 Fort McMurray fire.

Mike shares his insights on crisis communication strategies, the development of essential reentry guides, and the intricate dynamics within an Emergency Operations Center (EOC).

Mike emphasizes the critical role of communication in managing public perception and facilitating recovery efforts.

Listen For:
02:39 - Fort McMurray Fire Insights
07:01 - Evacuee Challenges
13:18 - Reentry Logistics
21:13 - Recovery Communications Planning

See the graphics and documents discussed in this episode
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Guest: Mike Lupien, APR
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Transcript

Tim Conrad (00:15):

Welcome to the Wildfires, Floods and Chaos Communications podcast. I'm Tim Conrad, president of Butterfly Effect Communications. Our team of information officers will take you through our experiences navigating the 2023 British Columbia wildfire season, along with lessons from past emergencies. I'm happy to introduce you to Mike Lupien, a PR. In this episode, Mike was an information officer in the Columbia Schwa Regional District Emergency Operations Centre, and also supported work in the Squamish Lil'wat EOC. Here's more about Mike.

Announcer (00:48):

Mike Lupien is a principal owner of unrestricted public relations, a communications consultancy and contracting service based in Edmonton, Alberta, with 30 years of experience in public relations and marketing for corporate government and not-for-profit sectors, Mike works with organizations to build relationships with those who matter most to their success, including thorough internal communication and employee engagement strategies. He has a proven record in crisis communications execution, and has enabled organization leaders and support teams to manage emergencies through timely communications and engagement with a broad range of stakeholders. Mike is trained in the incident command system and was a member of the communications team for the Fort McMurray wildfires in 2016 and the Bush Creek East Wildfire in 2023. Mike worked in progressively senior roles in corporate communications for Syncrude, the Alberta Government's Public Affairs Bureau, Enbridge Pipelines, ATCO Gas and Electric, Sobeys and Careers, the Next Generation. Mike is an avid volunteer giving his time currently as board president for the Edmonton International Film Festival, the organizing team for the Centre for Family Literacy's Annual Evening of Wine and Words, fundraiser and director for the Riverbend Soccer Association. He's also an accredited member of the Canadian Public Relations Society

Tim Conrad (01:59):

Last summer, and you were among the first two of the team to arrive in person in the Columbia Shuswap. It all happened very fast. I was called on Monday and I called you and some others within minutes, and you were on the road within two days and stayed there for nearly five weeks, so it was quite a long stretch. This was your second extreme wildfire with the first being Fort McMurray back in 2016. Of course, many Canadians of many others around the world will remember that one. So I'd like if you could tell us a bit about that experience and some of the similarities between the two.

Mike Lupien (02:39):

Yeah. Well, Fort McMurray, it was interesting because having grown up there and everything, and I was in Edmonton working for doing some contract work with an oil sands company, and so still had my connections there. When the fire broke out, of course we're all wondering what's happening with friends and family members and things like that, and I was on a little job to track down employees because, so they evacuated the entire city, which is close to 90,000 people. Had to get out of there in a very short timeframe, only one highway in and out, and actually we had the option to go north, but eventually the road runs out and that's sort of the way the fire was going. But yeah, it was a real nail biter for us. I was phoning, like I said, phoning employees to see where they were. Sometimes I was getting with the phone, the phone just doesn't ring.

(03:46):

You knew that that house had burned down probably. And then I was called a good friend of ours, Diane Behan gave me a call and asked if I would come up there, and I was really excited, honored actually to be able to go up there, but by the time I'd gotten there, we were about seven or eight days into the fire, they'd moved the EOC twice. They evacuated twice. So I came in and joined a team that was about 20 people strong by that point. So in terms similarities to what was going on in S Schwab, I was a guy who was brought in after something was already going on and just diving in. I came in as a stranger, but I got to know the team really well, and we worked really well together. So I say that would be the similarities of the two is when you're in this situation where there's no time for little things going on, it's like everybody's got to be focused on the job at hand.

(05:03):

And we did that. We all worked together in both scenarios. It was a really interesting way of working together, especially in the Fort McMurray side. It was 20 people, everybody had tasks to do and we just did them in swa. We're all sitting next to each other and you could talk and steal information or whatever you needed to do as everybody was right there. So yeah, both experiences really were very good experiences in terms of how communications works in that sort of environment. And it led me to get into the, I hadn't taken the training for ICS incident command system, so for McMurray, I got to see it in action, and then I took the course and now I really understood a lot more in the SWA scenario of how everything works and what your role is there. Yeah,

Tim Conrad (06:04):

Yeah, excellent. Yeah, certainly there were a lot of similarities there. As you said, the one road in one road oat and a very fast moving fire in both cases with Fort McMurray, it was crazy because the fire started and within 24 hours it was threatening the city and requiring people to evacuate and burning down structure. So it was really quite rapid and so significant fire and lots to learned from that fire because it was one of the first documented fires where it was captured a lot in videos and photos. So it helped. I know a lot of fire theory folks to understand how the fire moves from the wildland into the urban interface. That was really big, huge, huge leap forward for what was known and how that happened due to the Fort McMurray fire.

Mike Lupien (07:01):

I'd say another similarity too is the desire for everybody to get, and I'm sure it's the same where it is, but the desire of the people, the evacuees, to get back to their homes as soon as they could. And people, because they're so far away, they don't understand what the situation is like right there. Why can't we come back? It looks like it's all out and that things are safe. So being able to communicate the reality that's up there is really up there or in wherever it is that you happen to be working out of is really important.

Tim Conrad (07:37):

Yeah, that's right. And that's the thing, when utilities get affected, it's a lot longer process to do the reentry because you have to reengage the city, which is a difficult process. So last summer, your role was mostly planning within the information team. I laid quite a bit on your plate and we spent some long days as a team working together on a number of projects. So let's talk about a few of those starting with your work, the work that goes into developing the Reentry Guide, which you led that process. So take us through that.

Mike Lupien (08:11):

Sure. Yeah. Well, as I said before, I came in as a stranger and everybody's running doing their work, so you sort of have to figure out what needs to be done until they can obviously give you things to do. So what I learned from Fort McMurray was the development of that reentry guide. And so what I gleaned in the first couple of days was that we're going to need this while everybody's working on what's actually happening right now, I thought I'll look forward and I'll see what, as soon as they pull the trigger on bringing people back, we're going to need this thing. So I spent lot of time working the EOC to dig up the information that would be needed for a reentry guide. So I used the Fort McMurray guide as a template. I realized later from looking online at lots of other wildfire reentries that a lot of people were using something very similar.

(09:16):

So I don't think it was all too brand new, but obviously the information is dedicated right to that area. So I worked a lot with the call centre because a lot of the people were calling asking the questions. So using that information plus understanding what people would want to know, when can I get in there, when I get in there, what sort of dangers am I going to be faced with? How do I mitigate that? What do I do with my fridge and all the spoiled food and contents and things like that. And also then reaching out to the utilities because they had their messaging, they wanted to get in there as well. So anyway, it was just really coordinating all that and making it ready. And sure enough, when they did pull the trigger, that piece was ready. And I can't believe we did that over a long weekend, but we handed it to a designer on Friday of a long weekend, and we had printed pieces on the Monday. It's crazy.

Tim Conrad (10:24):

And it was a booklet too, so I'll link to the document in the show notes so that people can see it. We pulled it off in probably what would be considered hours really, but it was over a few days. And one of the things that you were doing as well in that time period I remember was you would prepare the key messages for the day. And so that helped to feed into what was going into the reentry guide as well, and what maybe was missing in the reentry guide. Yeah. But again, using the call centre is such a good thing. You have social media too, but I find the call centre you tend to get the better, you get more depth with

Mike Lupien (11:11):

It. And the folks there that are handling those questions and they know what information they need and they want to get it, they want to do the best job to get it out there. So they were an excellent source of information for sure.

Tim Conrad (11:30):

So another one is reentry. So once we got to that stage, then it was going through the reentry process, and that begins with an opportunity for residents to see destroyed structures privately, to give them time to see them before the rest of the community returns. Very large project in itself takes a number of days. It was all we had to work on it, but take us through that and what it's like once we got to reentry, it was basically over a three day process.

Mike Lupien (12:06):

Yeah, I had the Fort McMurray scenario to fall back on as well. I mean, we were bringing back, it was a stage reentry. They were telling people, if you lived in these certain neighborhoods, then you come back on this day. So they had three days, I think, to get everybody back there. And because of the extent of the damage, they couldn't necessarily have everybody look at their places first. So they did coordinate tours to be able to do that. So we're looking at that model, and you've been through these before, so we knew what the ideal scenario is, is that people get to see what's happened to their structures first before people come around and start driving around and looking at everything. And so here we were on, like I said, the Friday of the long weekend, trying to plan out a reentry and when that might actually be, knowing this is the standard that we want to hold ourselves to.

(13:18):

And that I recall us doing this, going through this exercise a couple of times, having paper up on the wall, even getting down to a mathematical calculation if you say you want it on this date, and this is the number of people we need to bring through. I think we needed to bring through a couple hundred people to look at their properties, and so we're going to need at least five, six days for this. And then when it came down to, no, it's three, that's fine. We just work backwards and figured out a really good solution for that. And I think it still worked out to be a really good, good reentry. The people, I just remember being at those at the gates when the people or the blockade when it was open and the people started coming through and they were very appreciative of it, that at least everything had been set for them and it was safe to reenter.

(14:23):

And they had the booklet there and we had posted online to let people know in advance. And yeah, I'm thinking about how we actually, to get those people to come back early to look at their properties, we had to phone that. We had to contact them, at least the ones we knew, those who reached out to us and wanted that service. So we did that. We had all kinds of supports available to them. We had tow trucks, even if somebody happened to get stuck somewhere or whatever. Anyway, I thought we did a really good job with the time that we had to get folks back, for sure.

Tim Conrad (15:04):

Yeah, and that's kind of important to point out that a few things here that if you've had properties lost to whatever your incident is, you need to begin the process of tracking down those people. And believe it or not, right now, there's not actually any contact list that you can just say, oh, so-and-so owns this property and here's their phone number. Because most people don't have their phone number associated with your municipal taxes. You're tracing back through. And then sometimes you'll find it's a rental property, then you're looking for the person thats renting. SO'S a bit of a difficult process to find out who has these structures on these properties, and it takes a bit of time to wind through that. So put that call out early that you need people to reach out to you and get their contact info ahead of time. So just start that process immediately.

(16:12):

And the other thing I was going to say too is that when we're doing that reentry process, you have to think about a lot of things. You mentioned the tow trucks. We had a lot of roads that were very heavily impacted and weren't, there's a lot of little, tiny, small sort of, you would call 'em driveways. A lot of people would say they're driveways, but they were actually the road to several houses, and they were in some cases not the best shape because of different things that had happened. And so we had to have contingencies there for that. We had mental health professionals already, and of course our emergency support services and our resiliency team as well. So lots of people to coordinate and make happen. So it's big job, and you led the group through that process and it went really very smooth. So good on you.

Mike Lupien (17:09):

Yeah, it was interesting to, yeah, because it wasn't just a communications exercise, obviously we took one person from, I think we had at least one person from every group in the EOC there, and especially a few people from logistics. And again, I got to just say, we did all this over the long weekend, so we're calling people and asking them to be available, and then are we going to get people and that sort of thing. And I remember us having one location where people could come to either on their way to their property or on the way back just to have a place to stop and people to talk to. And even though it wasn't a busy place, I can't imagine what things would've been like if we didn't have that. There was a few people who dropped in and said, and this was their first time, they hadn't accessed the resources that were available. And they're like, I got nothing, and I was renting that place and now what do I do? And so for that, it was worth it. And just to have all those people on standby for that,

Tim Conrad (18:25):

It was a very often a very emotionally challenging spot to be. I remember pulling in the first time I got there, and there was a couple that had just gotten under their vehicle, and I could recognize right away that they needed some mental health support immediately. And so got that lined up as I was walking across the parking lot for them because they had just seen the loss of everything that they had, and it was hitting them hard. So yeah, that's one thing in the information role is that you do get that exposure directly with the public. Not all the roles in the EOC do.

Mike Lupien (19:12):

And just to add one more thing, it was an unexpected piece, but when I did pull into the contact centre there at the, I'm trying to remember the name of the park, but it's where the salmon people can come watch the salmon come through, and it had been damaged a bit and it's part of indigenous lands. So yeah, while we were setting up, there was three guys there, and I didn't know I was checking off my list, who are these guys with? But they said, oh, we're just here. We just want to do a blessing for the land and for the return of the people and all that stuff. And it was something that just totally, because they were dealing with their own, their community was really damaged, and I didn't know if it would have been right to reach out to them or not. So I was very thankful that they came and they did that. So we just like, what do you need? What can we do for you? And they said, we'll just do it when we think the time is right. So it was a really neat experience

Tim Conrad (20:23):

And they gave us some songs as well, which was beautiful. I came to find out later that the chief, the coup key was amongst those three, didn't realize that he didn't introduce himself as that, and I had not met him up until that point. So yeah, I said,

Mike Lupien (20:42):

What did I get for you guys? And I said, could you give me $150,000 for a new house? I said, okay, see what

Tim Conrad (20:50):

I can do. Yeah, that's right. I believe two of them had lost their homes. So yeah, there was so many people affected. So our team's support ended with response, but we did provide tools to support recovery, including an extensive recovery communications plan, which you led the development of that as well. So tell us how we should develop recovery communications.

Mike Lupien (21:13):

Well, that was a new one for me. And again, it's that part of that looking forward piece. I think I have to give credit to Shauna Bruce, who gave us a lot of really good information for us to think about, not just for the reentry, but what happens afterwards. And so I took that into consideration. And also we had Chris Marsh with Clear Sky Consulting, I think, and he wrote an interim recovery plan that encompassed everything, and there was a communications piece to that and why it was important. And I also checked out a few other things I recall, I'm just looking here, when the EOC commander said, we want to make sure that this recovery plan meets the criteria of the Sendai framework, and that's a United Nations thing and stuff. So I did a bunch of research on that. It's like, what's that all about and how does this all work together?

(22:23):

It's like I have a file folder that's like that thick of all these things that I thought were needed as consideration. And in the end, I think the thing that gave us, so with all that, which was great, but I think the thing, the exercise that gave us really the most was really useful to the development of the plan was the public engagement that we did where we went around to, we started just doing casually at the farmer's markets and asking people for their, just what they were thinking, what they were feeling at the time. And then when we got to go back into the community after people got back in there and then started to talk to people, and then you guys took that over and turned it into a bigger thing with the survey and that people could do online or in person, a little bit of an open house seat kind of thing, but casual.

(23:19):

But the information that came out of that helped form the plan. And the big part of that plan was that we needed to involve the people in the recovery. I mean, you can't just walk in and say, well, we're going to do this, this, and this, because they know what they need. And I think they needed to feel like they were part of it. So that was a big recommendation was more engagement and more going into the community and asking them, how do we build back better and so that we don't have to go through this again. And I'm sure that would bring up a lot of the hard feelings that some people had in the area, but also help them get through it so they could move to the next level, let's move and let's get beyond this and do the plan and create a plan. So in that way, I think our recovery plan was a really good starting point.

Tim Conrad (24:23):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely was. So many people haven't been to a large and devastating incident such as this, and even fewer have been in an emergency operation centre during one. So can you explain the different EOC section roles? You kind of alluded to them a little bit earlier on, but some of them are logistics, operations, liaison planning, finance, and how they work together on projects, say as reentry, for example.

Mike Lupien (24:55):

Yeah, I think you named them all. Didn't

Tim Conrad (25:00):

Pretty close

Mike Lupien (25:01):

All the colors of the vest. So yeah, in Fort McMurray, it was an interesting scenario because the EOC was, there was only one of us, our liaison, the information officer went into the EOC, came back and told us what needed to be done and we would all strategize and then we would break up the job and take it on kind of thing. And SWA was great in that way in that we are all in the same room. So as soon as something came up, we needed to do something, you could just walk across, literally across the room and talk to the person who you needed to get things done with. And so I worked really closely with the planning group operations or I am trying to remember what Tom's role was there, but I know I was, because he was part of ESS and recovery,

Tim Conrad (26:03):

I was doing liaison. But he did jump around a little bit too, so,

Mike Lupien (26:07):

So he had a lot of really good information about who to reach out to, or even just strategizing with him and a couple other folks about how do we talk about this or how do we move things around? So as much as on the communication side, as much as we could talk to each other freely, it was really easy to just go over and once, I dunno, you spend five weeks in the same room with people I get to know they're pretty good. So you could just walk over and okay, here's what I need going on, what do we need to do? How do we do this? And vice versa, they would come to us. Can we get some messaging out to tell people that they can't take the barge across the lake to see their house and they can't put their boats in the water on the long weekend? Things like that, right?

Tim Conrad (27:04):

Yeah, it's a lot of back and forth. It's a constant process where there's information always being passed around inside the EOC and that each role, if everything's working right, logistics takes care of logistics, planning takes care of planning operations, does the getting, so operations in this case was a lot of firefighting efforts on the local fire department side. So it's just essentially a big engine that's running and all of the parts of the wheel are there and they all rely on each other to make it all work. So yeah, it's a lot of fun. I really enjoy, you have to lean into the structure for sure. But yeah, it's really good.

Mike Lupien (27:49):

And I would recommend to any of your viewers, listeners that taking that ICS 100 courses, I mean, it's very easy to do and it sure does give you the foundation for understanding what you're going to get yourself into when you go into that sort of scenario, like wearing the vest, who do I need to talk to because, and they're all color coded and it all works out, and there's a system that everybody follows and it works really well.

Tim Conrad (28:24):

And one of the challenging parts for a lot of people is it's not about who can do the job best. If you have the skill, for example, it's about the vest that you're wearing. So if you are good at that skill, maybe you need to move over into that section and take on a role there. But otherwise, it's up to the role to do that particular job. And if you start to split it off differently, the ICS structure goes out the window and it gets quite messy. I've seen that a few times and it doesn't work well. And so we don't want to go there.

Announcer (28:56):

Here are some quick stats, butterfly effect communications activities during 2023 season of emergency preparedness and response, 10,000 kilometers traveled, the equivalent of 24 weeks, worked in emergency operation centres, 12,000 residents evacuated 49 public engagement events where we had over a thousand conversations with residents. 9,000 KN 95 masks given to residents, nearly a mask for every person in that region, 2,600 videos and photos, 1,300 spokesperson mentions in one month reverse media coverage from significantly negative to positive in just two weeks. Over 1 million words written or reviewed, zero lives lost. Now, back to the podcast.

Mike Lupien (29:56):

Well, I mean, I've only done this twice and you've done it, I dunno, a couple dozen times in different aspects from being on the ground, fighting the fire to being in the room, and then leading the communications function there. And I, I've always been the grinder, and in this case, I got to actually watch how the communications leader liaison works with the team. We are in the room, but I know you've been in different places and different scenarios. And so my question is, what's the dynamic like at the higher level with EOC leads? I'm sure there's side conversations that go on, and so I just was curious about the dynamic that goes on there and how, is it the same as everywhere? What's happening in the room or is there some friction or whatever? I mean, I'll leave it to you.

Tim Conrad (31:07):

Yeah, yeah. It is different for sure than what's happening with the overall EOC team. One of the most important things that I always tell people is that when you walk into an EOC to drop your ego and your title at the door, this is because when you walk into an EOC, you're going to get a new role and your boss might be reporting to you. I've seen that many times over. I've had that, frankly, where my boss has been reporting to me. So it's really important to drop that ego and it's all in for the better of the incident. So that's where you have to come from. So for the public information officer role, which is the lead of the information section, it's very important for me when I'm in that role to bring the situational awareness of what's going on out in the field, what the public perception is, what's happening, what's to be expected, and how all of that needs to be considered in decisions and functioning. If the uoc is functioning well, the management team is getting together every, at least once a day, and those are all the section chiefs of all of those colored vests that we were talking about a little bit ago.

(32:38):

And will review actions that are underway, make some decisions, and set direction for the next period forward. Most Doc Cs I've worked in, I've had people within the organization and others who are brought in from outside to support. So there are always new faces coming in. That's one thing that's kind of interesting. If you ever have some tension with somebody that you're not getting along with, usually you could just wait five days and you'll have a new face. But I honestly haven't found in all of my years doing this, I think I counted 21 different emergencies and large crises, and that means probably getting close to a hundred different EOC directors as an example, because you go through multiple OOC directors in one event, and I've gotten along really well with almost all of them. There's only been the odd one here and there. That's been a challenge. And so it's not been too much of an issue. And usually when there is an issue, it's an ego issue creeping in there. So you can't have hurt feelings in any oc. You've got to kind of let things bounce off if you, and the other thing that we do as an information officer that sometimes people don't get to see is we'll deal with elected officials as well. And so we'll have conversations with them, and they don't have a role within the OOC except to support the policy side of things. So that's policy and funding.

(34:23):

So it's good to keep them out when they get involved with the ocs. Things don't go so smooth, and it gets political, of course. So we don't want that. Decisions in an EOC should always be based on the best operational decisions. So yeah, to sum it up, I honestly find most of the people that work in this world are really good. What you have to watch for is, like I said, ego creeps in. That's not good. Never good want to keep the ego out. And then you also want to really pull upon people's strengths and use them as best as you can. So sometimes you need to shuffle people into a different position to make sure that they're good. And then the last I'll finish with is making sure that people have proper breaks and getting time away. And it's really good then because it gives somebody else an opportunity to be in that role and learn, which is a very important piece these days. The best way I often think of an EOC is, it's pretty chaotic, but it's pretty controlled. And so for the information team, we're all working fast on a number of projects. Can you tell us what it's like as we all work together towards a common goal?

Mike Lupien (35:47):

Yeah, I'm thinking of one project. I mean, we turned out a lot of stuff there. Created a website over a couple of days. There was a lot of stuff that we worked on, and like I said, we were all literally sitting next to each other. So it's like, Hey, talk back and forth, back and forth. I remember

Tim Conrad (36:13):

Dropping.

Mike Lupien (36:14):

Yeah. Well, yeah, that's important too. If you overhear something going on, it's like, oh, just grab your stuff and go walk. I just heard you say blah, blah, blah. But one of the big ones that I was particularly proud of though, was we were trying to, we knew that people wanted to rebuild. They wanted to get back and start rebuilding our properties and things, and what do we need to do to do that? And it's a very complicated process because there's a lot of inputs. Well, if you have this thing, then you got to do these things and that thing, you got to do all these things sore. Bri and I worked together on that. We had some input from Michelle as well on it. And of course we were working with Corey Payman, who is, I mean, that's his area. When he is not in the EOC, that's his real job is permitting and development in the region.

(37:12):

So I think in the end, working with them and then as a team going in, talking to his team, going and us talking and doing our thing, going back to them back, there was a lot of back and forth, but I think in the end, we came up with what I think is a really good tool that they could probably use all the time, not necessarily even for a natural disaster or anything. If somebody wants to get something built, then they say, well, here's the process. And that took a lot of input from team members and even from creating the pieces to designing those pieces and getting everybody's, you were even involved in the checkoff of it, you and Tracy. So I was really happy with, that was just one of several things that we got one of several tools that are now there with this group that they can use going forward.

Tim Conrad (38:20):

Yeah, it's hard to, I always have a hard time explaining to people how much you get done in an emergency and how quickly you get it done. A lot of the barriers that sometimes are there in the rest of the world that kind of vanish in those moments. And that's part of that structure that you get to take advantage of that. So it's a cleaner approval process and how you work together is really important. And I found that amongst the information team, we each had different projects we were leading, but we were participating in other projects with others. And so we were constantly looking at ways to improve and make it better. And yeah, I was just so impressed with how quickly we were able to pull things around. Like you said, we created a website, the Reentry Guide planned out, the reentry process. There's all the media that goes along with that.

(39:26):

So there was taking care of all that, and then the elected officials side, and just a crazy amount of detail that really came together in what comes down to hours. And yeah, we certainly were a tired looking bunch in those groups of days. We worked hard. And then the crazy part was we had to work hard and then go out and be right in front of the public for the next few days then, and then we transitioned right away. And I just want to add, too, that we'll be talking about in another podcast episode with Bree, we're talking about that graphic and the creation of that, which was a project that she let

(40:12):

Excellent. Well, Mike, you were the foundation on our team leading planning on big sheets of paper, down long hallways and in meeting rooms and pulling together piles of information into something simple. As you mentioned earlier, at those stacks of papers, I think I picked on you a few times saying, you look like you were heading off to junior high or something with this massive pile of papers and books and things that you were leaning on to put our things together. So despite the exhaustion, we felt your attention to detail was impressive, along with your skill in dropping a joke at the right moment. So there was your, a great person to have sitting next to you to make those harder moments a little lighter. So I wanted to thank each of you in a unique way. So I had a friend, Rowan, she did an illustration of each of you, so I'm giving that to you now. So here it is. What do you think?

Mike Lupien (41:13):

That looks great. I think it's me. I dunno if I've ever been that green before, but I,

Tim Conrad (41:22):

It's probably a good thing.

(41:26):

Well, Mike, thanks so much for joining the Butterfly Effect Communications team. It took too many years to finally be able to work together. We've been still doing some work together and are working on some other projects here coming up. So looking forward to that. And thanks for joining me. Check out the other episodes in this series and keep an eye out for additional podcasts we are working on. Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate it. You join me today. Thanks, Tim. It's my pleasure. Anytime. Wow. I'm so lucky to have been able to work with such wonderful people who bring their dedication, skill, and ethics to the Butterfly Effect Communications team. I was so proud of the work our team did, listening to residents, responders, and clients, and creating strategies to improve communication during and after the wildfires to reach Mike Lupien. Jump on LinkedIn or see their contact info in the show notes.

(42:19):

Thank you for joining us for the Wildfires, floods and Chaos Communications podcast. We are so appreciative of all of those who we work alongside, who take time from their lives and communities to help others. And we are loaded with pride for how responders react and residents respond. You can catch longer versions of this podcast on the YouTube channel for Butterfly Effect Communications, which includes photos, videos, and sample graphics from last summer. Thanks to the team at Stories and Strategies podcast, my friend Mike Brown with the Dark Poutine Podcast, and Kendra Stoner for voicing the guest bios. For more podcasts, learning opportunities and resources, visit www.butterflyeffectcommunications.ca. That's also how you can connect if you'd like to hire us for disaster emergencies, crises issues, or hey, even the fun side of public relations, we like that too. Thanks for joining us. Oh, hey, I forgot something.

(43:21):

Do one thing that's this week. To get prepared for an emergency at home, try this one. Check to ensure your home insurance has coverage for fire and flood, as well as accommodation if evacuated, When doom and gloom strikes, you want butterfly effect communications in your favorite contacts. We bring calm to chaos through effective communications. We believe ethical communications can guide populations and organizations to prepare, respond to, and recover from crises, emergencies, and disasters. But hey, we're not all doom and gloom. We do fun things too. We can help with projects like stopping glass from going in a blue parrot or grease going down a drain, writing a report, or understanding how a community feels about something new. Maybe those aren't all that fun, but they are to us. When you are looking to engage, educate, or expand, put Butterfly effect communications in your favorites. Find us at www.butterflyeffectcommunications.ca. Wildfires, Floods, and Chaos Communications Podcast is a 2024 production of Butterfly Effect Communications Incorporated. Make sure you share it with someone and go back and listen to another episode. Okay, thanks.