Crisis on the Ground: Public Outreach and Personal Recovery

From the frontlines of wildfires to the heart of communities.

This episode dives deep into the gritty realities of disaster communications. Tim Conrad interviews Lloyd Piehl, an experienced information officer, about their harrowing yet impactful experiences during the 2023 British Columbia wildfire season.

Lloyd shares compelling stories of working closely with firefighters and community members, illustrating the emotional and mental toll of such crises.

Their discussion covers the importance of public outreach, mental well-being, and the therapeutic role of art in processing trauma. Piehl's unique approach to healing through Lego art therapy provides a fascinating insight into coping mechanisms for those in high-stress environments.

Listen For:
02:34 - Life in the Firetruck
09:37 – The Reality of Disaster Zones
11:23 - The Importance of Public Outreach During Disasters
18:31 - From Anger to Healing: Transforming Community Emotions

Guest: Lloyd Piehl
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Transcript

Tim Conrad (00:16):

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 ugly 2023 British Columbia wildfire season, along with lessons from past emergencies. I'm happy to introduce you to Lloyd Piehl in this episode. Lloyd was an information officer in the Columbia Shuswap regional District emergency operation center and supported the Pathways to Preparedness project in the Caribou regional district. Here is more about Lloyd.

Guest Announcer (00:49):

Lloyd Piehl has represented numerous agencies in varying industries over his 15 year communications career, focusing primarily on public engagement, community relations, and events management. Well, he prides himself on his ability to communicate effectively to the public. Highlights in his career include managing the grassroots communications for Hockey Canada proceeding the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, leading community relations and public engagement for Terra utility and handling national communications for Marble Slab Creamery. He has worked some of Canada's largest disasters, including the 2013 Southern Alberta floods and several wildfire seasons in British Columbia From 2017 to 2023, Lloyd has received numerous awards for his work, notably receiving a community award for the City of Grand Prairie for his work with anti-bullying initiatives and receiving the honor of being named a hero of the flood from the Alberta government for his work with the 2013 High River floods.

Tim Conrad (01:44):

Well, hello Lloyd. How are you today?

Lloyd Piehl (01:46):

Doing good, Tim. Good to see you. How are you?

Tim Conrad (01:48):

I'm good. I'm good boy. The two of us have been working together sporadically for over a decade, and we've been through some things together from fun community events, sadly down to murders, and we've worked together on a handful of crisis and six disasters, including some of Canada's ugliest disasters such as High River in 2013 and the Caribou Wildfires in 20 17, 20 18, 21. There's probably a couple others in there. We've been there quite a bit. Yeah, and Lloyd and I are kind of like a married couple. We get along most of the time, but we have the odd moment where we've had enough of each other, and usually that's from me wearing him down. So you put credit back, you put two beings

Lloyd Piehl (02:34):

In a truck for 12 hours a day in a disaster. It's going to get contentious at points.

Tim Conrad (02:39):

Yeah, exactly. And one thing that we also do is look out for each other quite a bit, and we've been great at doing that and making sure we're both in good shape and able to take on the task that's in front of us. So on that note, Lloyd, you work from the heart that I've always said to everybody that we work with. You can always feel the emotions that come right out for you and you capture and pull it in, and you're great at supporting people. They're the top on your priority. And so I'd like to know where that priority for supporting people comes from.

Lloyd Piehl (03:22):

Probably my family. My grandpa was a Mounty when I was a kid. I idolized him, just I worshiped the ground he walked on and just the stories he would tell me of helping people and knowing that he had had a positive impact in others' lives and that it doesn't matter what we do, all our degrees, all the things that we get, these titles and stuff, as long as we're good to each other and helping other people, that's what really matters and it matters to me. My mom was a communications officer with the Calgary Police for I think 25 years, and I mean, she had some really rough calls to the point actually. It kind of frankly destroyed her a little bit. And that's one of the reasons why, like you said, we look out for each other. I'm very aware of our mental health because I saw my mom go through some really bad stuff with some really bad calls.

Tim Conrad (04:06):

And yeah, you grew up in a family that has given the big public service, so the emergency services in our communities and supported them and therefore been around that. And I think, yeah, it does wear off on you a bit. For sure. So as we jump forward to this past summer, you were one of the first of the team on the ground in the Columbia shoe swab, and you immediately jumped into a firetruck with Deputy Chief Sean Cobra, and your job there was to get out and do some situational awareness, grow that amount of knowledge that we had for both the information team and the EOC team. And you spent time with volunteer firefighters and community members. I'm curious what that was like.

Lloyd Piehl (04:56):

Life-changing, not to sound dramatic, it was completely life-changing. You and I are often as communications guys, we're kind of glued to a chair trying to get our information from second thirdhand sources and trying to cipher what the public needs to hear and what they don't need to hear. I had never really been in that situation. Not only that close to the actual disaster happening, but also the people affected. I met firefighters that they had lost their house four days before, not four years before, not 40 years, four days, and they were out there doing their job. And it was really hard for me to see that, but I can't imagine how hard it was for them. You know what I mean? If it's hard for me to see someone in that situation and it affects me, I can't imagine the mental hit they were having, and probably well probably will for the rest of their lives.

(05:42):

But being on the front lines, I mean the stories to him, oh my God, trying to a six point turn with a rig in a rank five fire, the time they came back to the fire hall at Scotch Creek and they're like, okay, I we're safe, we're good. And then all of a sudden, just like artillery trees started popping off and raining down, not needles coming. It was full on four or five foot sections of trees just shooting down our artillery to see where they had been. Darren Reynolds took me through what's left of his house and just to walk there. It was the second time he'd even been back to his house, and he was still assessing which animals of his were even alive. So to be that fresh and that raw in a disaster was very new for me, but completely put wind under my sails. So we have to do this, we have to be here. We have to help them as much as we can.

Tim Conrad (06:34):

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I got that experience with the different firefighters. That was honestly one of the highlights for me as a former firefighter, being able to have that kind of interaction with them. And when I was out in the fire zone, I'd often stop at the command center on the way back and stop in and see whoever was there. They're usually popping in for a snack or a drink. And yeah, it was truly an honor to meet so many of them and hear their stories and what they went through. So yeah, really quite something.

Lloyd Piehl (07:09):

And to welcome a stranger to welcome a guy in who they'd never met before, Sean, literally if I had gone out in any other truck, I don't think the ground guys would've given me as much respect or that, but that I came with Sean and that Sean was willing to put his reputation to this guy. He doesn't even know that. He just got told that, oh, Lloyd's been to some disasters, but as we drove, I hope I helped him. I hope I helped him kind of navigate it too. I think that was his first really large scale disaster. And I mean, he completely was capable, but it was still good. I think for me to be there just to be a sounding board, it's okay to feel this guys. And I mean, even a couple days, I just sat outside the command center at Scotch Creek, they put a mobile center up and Asan had to go do something.

(07:54):

I'm like, just leave me here. And yeah, first couple days guys were like, who's this? This guy? And then they saw obviously I could eat just as well as them. And food a disaster. Food always becomes that thing. But no, to be at the center there and just have the guys come in, tell me their stories and unbelievable loss. I think six firefighters at Scotch Creek alone, lost houses, but still there, still showing up still all day. Well, the one firefighter, a Darren Reynolds son didn't have boots. A couple drove, I think, to Kelowna and got him firefighting boots and then drove it back to Salmon arm so he could keep on going. And that's just one story of about 10,000 from that region

(09:37):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We constantly met firefighters with different stories like that, and these are all volunteer firefighters in the community, which is incredible. And yeah, it was amazing. So I wanted to add too that how this fed into the strategy that we use.

So as you collected information, I was kind of in between. I was still working with Squamish Lil'wat and transitioning over to Columbia Shuswap, and so you were feeding me the information and I was working on what the strategy was going to be going forward. And so those first bunch of calls that we did together and you were texting me and sending me pictures and things like that, that helped to form up how we went about things, how we use video to get ourselves coverage and national and provincial news, which we weren't getting at the time in the way that we wanted to make sure that the story was getting out there. So it was very pivotal to all of that. Well,

Lloyd Piehl (10:20):

Well yeah, that one, there's image of Darren and looking at his house, he went across Canada. It was on, I mean, dozens if not hundreds of news outlets used that image. I saw it everywhere. And obviously your ego is your ego. I was pretty proud that I had done that, but also I was even more proud that we can get that story out, especially in today's day and age. You have to use images, videos if you don't have it. It just doesn't have the impact with people unless they can actually see it with their own eyes.

Tim Conrad (10:47):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And then just so people are aware, at the time, that area was under evacuation order, so very few people were actually in that area. So the images that we were putting out were some of those first images that were coming out from that Shires scene, and particularly the Darren video, him describing his losses. That video was on all national news two different times on one network and just traveled everywhere. So it's quite impressive. So

Lloyd Piehl (11:23):

Obviously I had to be careful in the area because like Soda Creek at Caribou, we had to be very careful because people hadn't even been allowed back into their homes yet. And I didn't want to be the guy to take a picture of someone's home that hadn't been there yet, because the traumatic damage that could do to a person to see it secondhand without your own eyes, it could be life changing if they see that before they're ready to see it.

Tim Conrad (11:47):

So up next, you led the ground effort in outreach, and we don't often have the resources or the time to support that important face-to-face communication directly with the community. So last summer, we were able to dedicate the most time to outreach and engagement of any disaster that I've worked in and certainly that we've worked in. We began our outreach efforts before reentry and with most of our face-to-face time with residents in the month after. So we did reentry, I think it was around September 6th, something like that. And then we had done a bit of outreach prior to that in Sorento, and then we shifted to be in the fire zone for the rest of the month of September. It was interesting, the community was still under evacuation alert at that point in time. I'm curious, Lloyd, for you to tell everyone about the people, the emotions and how that healing begins. We've been there post-disaster for different engagement processes, and we've done lots of smaller public meetings, that sort of thing, and in disasters, but this was different. We were doing face-to-face with residents for several hours a day, and you did the most of everybody on the team. So tell me about that.

Lloyd Piehl (13:18):

Like you said, we usually don't have time for that, even outside of a town hall or a quick pop-up meeting. I don't think we've ever done public outreach during a disaster. It's always afterwards. It's always kind of, once the fires are out, then we can kind of go and it's usually months after. And some people are more affected, but most people are kind of not checked out. But I don't know. It's not the same as doing it right at the time and being there on the ground. I mean, well, the first day I pretty much almost had rocks thrown at me because people were so upset with local government and they had every right to be, and I understand why they were upset. There was a lot of miscommunication happening. We live in an age now where everybody can hop on a mic and be an expert.

(14:01):

And so we listen to everybody and everybody can't be talking in these things. We need to have people listening to where the sources are coming from. And I understand people don't trust government times. I don't trust government sometimes, but in this situation you have to when it's life or death like that. So yeah, people were very angry at first, very hurt, shocked. We talked about that gentleman yesterday that lost 50 acres and didn't know that anything was even available to him, like 50 acres. He didn't lose 50 feet, he lost 50 acres of land and didn't think he had help. And when we saw him in that parking lot, I think you were there. We saw him in the parking lot, he was mad. He was ready to start throwing at us. And by the end, Dale had him basically walking hand in hand with Dale.

(14:42):

And that's why you do public outreach. I admit with resources, we usually don't have enough to do it in disaster. And it's a genuine shame because after seeing this year at the shoe swap, we definitely as close to the fire as we can get safely, we should be there to give information. Because unfortunately, also, and it's not just this area, this area is very independent, but at Shoe Swap, we saw people aren't leaving anymore. And that's a little unusual that people would rather stay with their things. But also Covid, since Covid, people just don't have as much. People are afraid of losing what little they have left. And I believe in my mind, it's misguided to stay with your stuff. It's just stuff. It's just things. But also, I don't have a nice little place out by a lake that's beautiful that your grandpa had and your dad had.

(15:32):

So I can understand why people who have worked the land there wanted to stay there. And I know it was contentious. I know it was between the authorities and the people living there, but as I said to the people in the parking lot, if I was you, I probably would've stayed too. And that's dangerous when you have the people who are telling you to leave saying, well, maybe you should stay. And it was very hard for us to tow the safety line when sometimes the people were helping. I saw guys running around in water trucks. It looked like they'd been welded together, but they were doing good work. They were finding the places, they knew where the hotspots were, they knew where to go. Some of them were safe, some of them, not all of them, but what we saw, we saw when they started doing firefighter training to civilians, I think that was a first, is it not right to have civilians being trained as a fires happening on fire safety?

(16:25):

I think it was very big of the wildfire service. I think that was a really big concession on their part, but it bought us so much credibility across the board. It showed that we were willing to work together. So yeah, doing the public outreach, I think of the fire service hadn't sent that olive branch out. I don't think we would've kept doing public outreach. I think there might've been even safety concerns for me, but because there had been some collaboration, people realized we are willing to work together. And yes, I admit I was wearing a banner that people did not want to talk to me at first, but I had some information, had some cookies on the table, just something small, and I couldn't believe how many people were mad at me at first. And by the end, we're like, okay, you're on our side. And that is why you have to do public outreach in 2024 now is because unless, like we said with pictures, unless they can see it with their own eyes, unless they talk to a person with their own experience, they don't believe.

Tim Conrad (17:21):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it just gives them that opportunity. And you mentioned that we sometimes will agree with them links like, Hey, we would've stayed behind too, maybe if we were in your situation. And that's just, you can't pick a fight in those moments. You can't be objecting to that. You're not going to teach them anything. So that's one thing that I've learned that you just go along with it to try and get them to open up. And that's more important. And people really, it is a big part of the healing process to be able to talk that out and to let that frustration out. And if you're the person they need to yell at, that's fine. And you've heard this from me many times that I've said, you can yell at me all you want. You won't hurt my feelings. It's okay. I know that that's just a stage.

Lloyd Piehl (18:12):

Yeah, they're just at a stage of acceptance, grief, bargaining, all that stuff. They're at that stage. And if they're at anger, then yell at me. I'm getting paid to be yelled at. Go ahead. I mean, I'd rather you didn't yell at me. Rather, we have a conversation. But if you need to yell to heal, have at her.

Dark Poutine Promo (18:31):

Canada may be known for its landscapes and friendly people, but beneath the surface lies a darker side of crime history and the paranormal. Since 2017, the award-winning Dark Poutine podcast has explored the shadowy corners of the great white North and beyond, delivering chilling tales from a uniquely Canadian perspective, hosted by Mike Brown and Matthew Stockton with over 300 episodes and fresh releases every Monday, dark Poutine is your weekly ticket to the creepier side of Canada. Listen to Dark poutine on Apple, Spotify, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcast.

Tim Conrad (19:06):

And yeah, it certainly helped to move things along. I had a couple of circumstances myself where I remember the one fellow, he wouldn't talk to me at first and looks could kill. The first time he saw me, he killed me across the parking lot. And then the second time, I got a high out of him. And then the third time I managed to talk to him, and it was good. He actually realized I'm just a person and can be, he might not like some of the things I had to say, but I was at least telling him from an honest perspective. It's just that sometimes they didn't like what that message was. 

Tim Conrad (19:48)

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 stomping glass from going in a blue cart 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 were looking to engage, educate or expand, put butterfly effect communications in your favorites, find us at www.butterflyeffectcommunications.ca. 

So yeah, we've often used outreach and community engagement for other work that we've done, such as public awareness campaigns for new products and services, and we've had great results there as you know. What do you think of the results that we had, we've had in disasters doing this and as well as in recovery? Do you think it's had a really good impact? And I'm saying this, we do have some measurement on this to know, but what's your personal feeling when you're working personal and professional, when you're there working on the ground?

Lloyd Piehl (20:23):

You know me, I think if we help one person, we've done our job. So if we help a hundred people, et cetera, et cetera. But no, do you remember 2017 at Caribou? We were doing the tour afterwards, and we were at, I don't even know which community center we were at in the middle of nowhere, and we were just finishing up and a woman came in and she didn't talk to us. And I was snotty and I was grumpy with her. I didn't even talk to her. I just kind of, why are you here so late? The meeting was an hour ago, Tim and I have to get on the road. We have four hours to drive in the dark here. Come on. And finally I went up to her and I said, can I help you? And I wasn't good. I wasn't my top.

(21:02):

And she just started crying in front of me. And I was like, uhoh, what have I done? And she had not accessed anything. She'd had her entire property burned out. She hadn't even talked to her family about what had happened. She was literally still every day waking up, and it was happening to her again. And this was like two months after she'd been burned out. So for 60 days, she woke every day in that same amount of trauma. And no, we hit her. We got information in her hand, we talked to her, and it changed me. It changed the way I respond to disaster. Now. There is no quick fixes. There is no, we have to be somewhere in four hours. We're here now. We will help you now if it takes all day, takes all day. And so build in a long-winded answer. I believe we have an incredible impact, and I don't even know how you would measure it, that you have, measurement is great because there's so much soft science to this.

(21:51):

There's so much where we are just lack of a better word. It's kumbaya. Sometimes we're just there to help you feel better about this so you can get ready to do the next things you have to do, because we can give you all the paperwork, give you all the information, but the people have to go and do it themselves. And if they're so broken, they can't, then nothing happens. Like that woman for 60 days, nothing happened. And then we hit her and she was ready to start healing, start fixing her property up, start accessing help. So no, I think the outreach, oh, man, it's a tough sell in a boardroom. You and I know that you, and I know it's always tough to sell things to corporate because they want measurement. They want this to happen. You have to show, we've done this. And a lot of our work, we can't show what we've done. I mean, when I'm in a parking lot for 12 hours talking to people, I can write down numbers, but I can't tell you if I've helped them or not sometimes. So yeah, I think it's immeasurable in some ways, but I think that it's something that disaster response, people across the planet has to start looking at that. It needs to be, we don't put it at a town hall 10 miles for the disaster. You get as close as you can where the people are.

Tim Conrad (23:01):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And just too, the longer we spent there, the more we heard from people and people would come back and feed us with information. And so right up until that last hour that we were, there was someone came along, told us about a fellow that was down in a parking lot, sleeping in his car and needed help. When they saw us, I think it was two days earlier, they hadn't pieced together what was happening. And then they realized that this guy had lost his home and was living in his vehicle and hadn't access to any services. So we got him lined up with things. Yeah. 

Dark Poutine Promo (18:31):

Canada may be known for its landscapes and friendly people, but beneath the surface lies a darker side of crime history and the paranormal. Since 2017, the award-winning Dark Poutine podcast has explored the shadowy corners of the great white North and beyond, delivering chilling tales from a uniquely Canadian perspective, hosted by Mike Brown and Matthew Stockton with over 300 episodes and fresh releases every Monday, dark Poutine is your weekly ticket to the creepier side of Canada. Listen to Dark poutine on Apple, Spotify, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcast.

Tim Conrad (23:40)

So yeah, over to you for a question.

Lloyd Piehl (23:47):

So many man, we've been through so much, so many disasters. I guess let's start first, what was your worst day in disaster, the worst kind of thing that happened to you? And then what was your best day in this? What was the moment where you were like, I'm good. I've got this.

Tim Conrad (24:06):

Yeah, super interesting question because yeah, I sometimes think of the best days are sometimes the worst ones. You can take something really bad and work with it. It's sad to say that, but the worst moments for me are whenever there's emergency responders that are in danger, you and I have both experienced what it's like to hear that there is a crew in danger, retreating to safety. We often lose communications with them when that happens. And when you sit there and wait for hours and sometimes overnight, and I don't sleep those times. There was a couple of those nights this summer that I didn't sleep because we had those situations that were out there, and we don't talk about those too much. But particularly with wildfires, they're acting much different than what they used to. And they're burning in different ways. And therefore, sometimes people are getting caught even with all of the safety. And I mean, BC wildfire service and all the services that come to help are very focused on safety. But it still happens. These fires are doing, they have a mind of their own and they have their own weather in a lot of cases now that they can create. And I really hate those days even thinking about it. It just doesn't make me feel good. And then

Lloyd Piehl (25:36):

There's one team I always choke up when I talk about, so I'm hoping I don't, but we lost a rappel team. We lost communication with them, big firestorm. They were young. They were all 19 years old, and they did everything. They went back to black, they sheltered in place, put their tents up, the fire tents, and they made it through the night. They checked in first thing in the morning. But you're right, I didn't sleep that night knowing that there were three 19 year olds out there in the middle of a fire.

Tim Conrad (26:04):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's just so spooky. So best days for me are when the community's able to return. It's also among the hardest days because it's such a massive job for us in the information team. We have to do a lot of prep in advance. And then there's a lot of things that kind of go on those two to three days that happens. It, it's exhausting. And it's also where we see all the emotions from the public. You see the anger, the sadness, the fear, and the happiness. So I remember standing this year in different spots, waving to people as they went by. And then I worked my way up to the checkpoints where everybody was coming in and there, everybody slowed down and would say hi, or some would yell at you, some would be, some of them wanted to jump out of the vehicle and give you a hug.

(27:06):

And I heard that that did happen with some of the team earlier in the day that they were just so thankful. So in that moment, that's when you see the resilience of the community coming alive as they bond over the shared moment and begin that recovery, which it's an amazing thing to watch. And that's my favorite part about disasters. And it's unfortunate we have to go through the loss to get there, but it's that resilience piece. I love seeing a community, a group of people, individuals just sitting, fighting back and not bowing down to what they face as they go forward. So it always gives me great pride too, that reentry day for the work that we've done as an information team. And then of course, the wider EOC team puts a ton of work into it to make it happen. So yeah, always a good day there.

Lloyd Piehl (28:06):

Yeah, I agree. You're right. You have in your days, oh, I did this or I achieved this. But you're right, when we bring people home, that's

Tim Conrad (28:13):

The best. Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. And it was really cool this year because one of the things that was unique about the shoe swab was it was basically one road in, so you could stand there and wave to people. So I was constantly going along and stopping for a while and waving to people as they went by just to welcome 'em home. So mental wellbeing is very important in our work as information officers in emergency incidents, whether they're large or small. So as someone who is drawn to helping others, tell us how to balance the draw to help others along with your own mental wellbeing.

Activities Announcer (28:53):

Here are some quick stats. Butterfly set communications activities during 2023 season of emergency preparedness and response. 10,000 kilometers traveled the equivalent of 24 weeks, worked in emergency operation centers, 12,000 residents evacuated 49 public engagement events where we had over a thousand conversations with residents. 9,000 knn, 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.

Lloyd Piehl (29:52):

Cool. It's tough. Obviously you have put your air mask on first before you can help others. You and I know this year I had my first tour at Shoe Swap. I had to go home. I was no good to the team. I was no good to myself. I had seen too much in riding with Sean. I had seen more active than I'd ever seen Active. We go afterwards, it's all burnt out black. There's nothing there. It's quiet, it's eerie, but it's not happening actively. We're not having to skirt fire. I mean, I got so lucky. The Nicholson Fire Department Volunteer Fire Department took me in their truck for just to film alone. And we were walking through, basically we were checking houses and there was active fire all around us.

(30:36):

So yeah, you have to put your air mask on first. But after seeing all that, I had to go home after a bit. I was no good to anybody. And I think the best part about me is I realized I was no good to anybody there. You and I know that day in the office, I was in tears and just, it kills me. You know me. I'm a guy that I'm there. I'm there. But no, when I can't do it, it really, really hurts me. But also letting someone down, because I'm not a hundred percent, I think would hurt me worse than leaving. Do you know what I mean? Actually saying I can do something and then not doing it would be far worse all kinds of ways. I mean, as silly as it is, my hotel had a pool in it. I would go every day as soon as I could.

(31:24):

I'd get in the pool. The ladies at the Marriott and Salmon arm, thank God bless them, they'd let me go in the morning. They'd go in the morning before I'd go, I we'd get into at like six, 7:00 AM 5:00 AM I'd be swimming laps in the pool, just kind of getting my head and just enjoying the float. As silly as it was, it was a very centering thing to do. And you do those things all day. Sometimes it's a snack, sometimes it's a meal can center you. Sometimes it's a funny conversation. Sometimes you call home. There's a million things you can do to keep you going in this. And as you saw with me, sometimes all those little tricks, all those little coping mechanisms don't work because it's just so big and so much. But no, I went home, I think I went home for about a week, 10 days, got my family stuff in order here, saw family, got myself back to baseline.

(32:12):

And then as soon as I was good, I was back there. I believe I was needed. And that's when, yeah, we started doing the public outreach. And really, if I had gone from the office to public outreach in the state I was in, I don't think I would've been any good to anybody. So I think the biggest thing about this is spot checking yourself. Yes, everyone around you can tell you something, but you really have to be honest with yourself in this that I am not capable right now, or I'm good. I'm doing good. And again, like you said, checking in with each other. You and I are great about that, just checking in. Even when we were doing the tour there just in October there, it was not that emotional a tour, but we still had to check in with each other a couple times. We saw people affected, saw people hurting. And you and I are very compassionate people, and we're sponges. We take on people's pain, but that's why we do what we do, is because we have that capacity to take someone else's pain and help them process it a bit as well.

Tim Conrad (33:11):

Yeah, and I mean, I really want to highlight the fact that you knew and you recognized that you were needing a break and took that break, and everybody knows this that works with me. There is no judgment when it comes to that. If you need a break, we get a break. It's that simple. And we decide, we work together to figure out what that break is going to look like. And if you, or even coming back. And it's something I learned many years ago on one of my earlier disasters that I worked with someone that had hit that wall and needed to get out. And at the time, I remember the management was not as kind to them. And I felt that was really unfortunate, and it added to their issues. And ultimately they did not stay there as an employee going forward. And I don't blame them.

Lloyd Piehl (34:10):

I faced a bit of it. I faced a little bit of it when I said I wanted to leave. A couple of the alpha male guys are kind like, oh, why are you going home? Kind of that, oh, why are you going? And until, I don't think those guys have been through as much as we've been through. You know what I mean? I don't think they know how long these things go. I think a lot of people expect this to be about a 10 day thing, and it's over and and I know it's a marathon, not a sprint. It is months, sometimes years to recover. And if someone needs a break, if management or anyone gets in the way of that, not to be too dramatic, it could lead to suicide. It could lead to all kinds of negative outcomes that you don't need to have that are completely avoidable if you just do the right thing at the right time.

Tim Conrad (34:55):

And one other thing I want to add is something you've heard already from me, but I want the audience to know. It's like you came in, you did the initial work on the ground with all the crews and the community members took that break, came back, and you did, in my eyes, of all the years that we've been working together, you did some of your best work that you've ever done this year, and it just showed that that giving you that time actually resulted in a phenomenal benefit to you and then to all the people that you helped too. So yeah, so it's brutally hard work at times. It's physically, psychologically, mentally. And I think it's really important that everybody always looks out for each other.

(35:47):

So you do some other things to help with your mental wellbeing. And as we've been chatting here, maybe some people have noticed in the background that there's some Lego and you're a Lego master, and you have a very large collection. You've participated in design and art projects displayed in schools, and at the Calgary Library, which is if you've never, people have not been to Calgary Library, it's worth a visit. It's a beautiful spot. And you have a fascinating project underway now that you're going to show us. So for those that are listening to the audio version, look in the show notes for these images. Yeah. So tell me about some of these ones. So let's look at the first one here now.

Lloyd Piehl (36:32):

Well, you and I met, obviously working for a utility company. And the best thing at working there obviously was our friendship. But the second best thing was they had a really good health benefit plan. And I got paired with a counselor there that helped me with a lot of my childhood trauma, a lot of stuff that had happened to me along the way. And in processing it, he talked about heart therapy. And I mean, I'm a very artistic person inside, but not outside. It just doesn't flow out of me. I just wasn't taught those things. But somehow, Lego, Lego is the one thing that I can pretty much manipulate it into anything. So yeah, in that, he talked about art therapy, you put the trauma down, you draw it, you do whatever you want. Even one day, as silly as it was, I put a paint suit on and I rolled paint on myself, and I rolled on a picture.

(37:17):

And then he said, okay, I can see your heart here. I can see this here. And I mean, in his art, you're kind of interpreting it. But what he did afterwards, he smashed it. And I went, and he goes, that trauma's gone now. And I just totally wowed me. So in doing Lego, yes, I've done some really neat, really unique things for libraries, for museums. But I started doing some for myself, and I started just building small, and I kind of wrote down a paper, what are the 10 most traumatic things that have happened in my life? And I've been through it all. I mean, you and I, looking for bodies in a landfill. When I was a teenager, my mom was in a fatality car accident that we all witnessed, and it was unfortunately, life-changing. But I put down these 10 traumas and I started building 'em in Lego.

(38:03):

And the first one I did was I saved a family in a domestic dispute. I actually was awarded for heroism for the Calgary Police Service. It was, oh, it was ugly. I built it first. I built that one first. And I couldn't believe when I started taking it apart, how it left inside me in playing God, in building it. I could have done anything I wanted. I could have made it silly, but I tried to make it as real as possible. And when I deconstructed and took it apart, I couldn't believe inside how much it healed me, how much that trauma was Now, not up at the front, it was actually very far back, if not entirely gone in some of the cases. So yeah, as you can see here, I think it was TLA Lake. Is that where that fishing lodge was that Yeah. Right.

Tim Conrad (38:48):

Was no, that one of the fishing lodge was up in Nazko.

Lloyd Piehl (38:52):

Nazko.

Tim Conrad (38:54):

Nazko.

Lloyd Piehl (38:55):

Yeah. And you and I went up there, and I mean, those poor people there, their entire resort had been saved unquote, but what, 50, a hundred miles in every direction was burned black. No one was coming there. See, I built this one based on that, just the fire tornado that came down over the hill. It slapped the lake. It made the lake explode, killed all the fish in the lake. So those people can't even run a fishing lodge for heaven's sakes anymore. So yeah, actually, I just recently did six frames of caribou in 2017. And yet you're in a couple of them. Obviously. The one where we found those people in the car accident, Tim and I, it was our last day. We were literally on the victory lap. We were done, we were laughing, having pop. We couldn't be happier driving back to Kamloops.

(39:41):

And I just happened to look out of the corner of my eye, and I saw some fence was wrecked, and I looked back and I think I saw a car say to Tim, there's a car back there. Sure enough, we back up. And they had rolled in such a spot. If we hadn't seen them, I don't know what would've happened to those poor people. The woman, the elderly woman obviously had a pelvic, she got airlifted out after us. I mean, you having a satellite phone. We didn't use a satellite phone the entire time except for that. But yeah, I built that scene because I don't know, that one really affected me. All the stuff we've seen, that one shouldn't be. I mean, shoot, you've been to how many motor vehicle accidents? I've assisted in probably five, maybe 10 in my life where I just happen to be at the right or wrong place at the right time, and I'm the guy doing it.

(40:25):

And so, yeah, the best part of building these scenes back up and building 'em up, I get to take this apart, and then it may still be inside me, but most likely it won't. And I can't recommend art therapy enough to people, especially to someone who may be adverse to therapy or talking about it. Just build your own little world and work on it yourself, and then when you're ready, talk to others. But yeah, I cannot espouse counseling enough for people, especially with what we do in disaster. You have to, if you can't at least talk to family and friends about it, talk to a professional. And again, if you can't, art therapy. So yeah, I, I've been doing a thing called the, it's the Trauma project, and I've been putting all my life's traumas into Lego scenes. I build them up. And yes, it's very difficult to remember as I'm building to remember the things I lost or the ways I was hurt. But again, you get to play God, and I get to take it apart, and I get to choose to heal. And I really do think, as dramatic as it sounds, it's helped me shift from being a victim to a survivor in a lot of things in my life. I don't view myself as a victim nearly as much about what happened to me in my past. I definitely view on myself as a survivor, and that's really empowering.

Tim Conrad (41:36):

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I really appreciate you taking the time to share some of these images with us of the work that you've done. We've chatted a lot about this, but it's like when I saw the first one, one of the trees in that area up by Nazko, it just captured it so perfectly. It's amazing that you could do that in Lego, right? But it was like as soon as they saw, it was like, I remember the exact spot, that moment, and

Lloyd Piehl (42:07):

You could hear, we couldn't hear anything. All it was was wind. I've never been, when I was a kid, we went to this place called Craters of the Moon, I think, in Oregon, and it's all black, and it's an old volcanic place. That's the only thing that even touches what you and I saw near Nazko. I've never seen that level of destruction. Everything was gone. There was nothing. It was just ash and soot and a couple tree stumps, a couple hundred thousand tree

Tim Conrad (42:32):

Stumps. Yeah, there was just these single sticks sticking up. Nothing, no branches left on them, just burned right off. It was a crazy sight. Yeah. And you mentioned, and just how that trauma affects us, and the emotion hit you as you were describing that one moment with the family, and we've talked about this a lot too, is that there's a lot of things that stick with us. And to bring them up and have that emotion isn't that you haven't dealt with it. It's that you still hold onto it, right? It's still there. And there was a lot in that, right? We've talked a lot about that particular moment for you, but there's a lot of things that when I talk about them, I can't. That pollution we came across ended up triggering. What I didn't realize. I had trauma from many years ago in a fire call, and it triggered it to come alive.

(43:23):

Real fun job for my poor counselor figuring that one out, because we had gone through a hellish 2017 wildfire season. So we had to unpack it one day at a time and ended up, that was the incident that triggered it, and it was a loss of hope that I had. I didn't know how we were going to get these people. We were out in the middle of nowhere and no tools to work with really, and they were trapped. And so it took a bit of creativity and a little bit of luck, and we got them out.

Lloyd Piehl (43:50):

Well, I think you came out, you had a hammer and a satellite phone. I had a blanket and a Snoopy first aid kit. It was laughable what we had, but we helped them. We got everyone lived that day. Everyone got out. Again, the tools are great, but the training, the experience is what really matters.

Tim Conrad (44:08):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Lloyd, thank you again for being part of the Butterfly Effect Communications team last summer. Your role had an enormous, enormous overall demands, and you always bring everything to the table for residents, and you're a leader in advocating for relationships, for mental health, and for strong two-way communication, which is, so I wanted to thank each of you in a unique way. So I had a friend, Rowan, do an illustration that I'm giving to you now, and here it is. What do you think?

Lloyd Piehl (44:43):

Oh my God, that's so cool. It looks like me. I mean, not that that's a good thing. No, that's incredible. Wow. And everyone on the team kind of gets a caricature like this.

Tim Conrad (44:56):

Yeah, everybody's getting one of their own. So yeah, just something kind of neat. I love her style, and I just thought it was a kind of fit for the sort of a bit of chaos that we go through. So

Lloyd Piehl (45:09):

Yes. No, I love it. Thank you. That's a wonderful gift.

Tim Conrad (45:13):

Yeah, thanks a lot. And I really can't thank you enough. Thank you so much for joining the team. Again, Lloyd, we didn't stop for long. We hit the road together after for a large emergency preparedness project, and just as we really rotate it right from the shoe swab response rate into that, so I'm sure we'll be seeing each other again soon. In the meantime, I encourage other people to check out other episodes that we have in this series as well as others that we're working on for another series. And thanks very much for joining me today, Lloyd.

Lloyd Piehl (45:48):

Thank you, Tim. It's been my life's honor to work with you and to help people.

Tim Conrad (45:52):

That's awesome. You've done great work. Thanks a lot. How lucky have I been to work with such wonderful people who bring their dedication, skill ethics, and their heart to butterfly effect communications and our 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. You can reach Lloyd Peel on LinkedIn or through their contact info in the show notes. Thank you for joining us for the Wildfires Floods in Chaos Communications podcast. We are so appreciative of all of those 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.

(46:48):

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'd like that too. Thanks for joining us. Oh, hey, I forgot something. Do one thing. That's this week. To get prepared for an emergency at home, try this one. Create an evacuation plan with your household, and pick two locations as your muster points in opposite directions at some distance away. The 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.