Connecting in Chaos: PR Strategies from the Frontlines

Disaster communications isn’t just about fighting fires – it’s about connecting communities amidst chaos.

In this episode, host Tim Conrad discusses the intense challenges and strategies behind managing public relations during the 2023 British Columbia wildfire season.

Guest Jan Enns delves into her own experiences with evacuation and loss, while highlighting the critical importance of mental health for responders and residents.

Together, they share valuable insights on how to navigate the complexities of crisis communications, emphasizing the power of empathy, community engagement, and resilience.

Listen For:
06:30 - The Butterfly Effect Explained
14:51 - Developing a Crisis Strategy Amid Chaos
18:40 - Navigating the Meta News Ban
25:03 - The Mental Health Impact on Responders

See the graphics and documents discussed in this episode
Documents and images

Guest: Jan Enns 
LinkedIn | Website | Facebook | Instagram

Connect with Tim Conrad, APR
LinkedIn | Website | Facebook | Instagram 

Chapters

• 6:30 The Butterfly Effect Explained
• 14:51 Developing a Crisis Strategy Amid Chaos
• 18:40 Navigating the Meta News Ban
• 25:03 The Mental Health Impact on Responders

Transcript

Tim Conrad (00:13):

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. During this podcast, I'm happy to welcome guest host Jan Enns of Jan Enns communications. As I am the guest on this episode, I was a public information officer in three emergency operation centers, the Caribou, Squamish Lil'wat, and Columbia Shuswap regional districts, and I led the Caribou's Pathways to Preparedness project. Jan has experienced being evacuated many times and unfortunately lost her home to the McDougall Creek wildfire outside of Kelowna last summer. She's known as a huge supporter of many working in public relations. Immediately after being evacuated, she took time to help others check in on those she knew were part of the response, including me. Let's learn more about Jan.

Kendra Stoner - Announcer (01:15):

Jan Enns is highly regarded for her engaging delivery and practical tips. Jan brings three decades of experience, insight, and enthusiasm to her sessions. She's best known for helping local government professionals implement programs that not everyone in a community may want or want to pay for, ranging for mandatory recycling to privatizing seniors care. Jen thrives on empowering local government professionals and elected leaders to become calm, confident, and compelling communicators, whether in person or online. Jan provides custom media messaging and social media training and coaching to help her local government clients achieve their corporate goals, avoid or minimize issues, reduce the need for damage control, and even sleep better at night. In addition to her hands-on experience working for the regional district of Central Okanagan Interior Health and the Insurance Corporation of bc. Janice, a sought after conference and workshop presenter. She's a regular presenter at BC's Local Government Management Association events, a faculty member for BC's Municipal Administrative Training Institute and Local Government Leadership Academy, and has taught citizen engagement for the University of Alberta. Her recognition also includes LG MA's Distinguished Partner Award. Jen holds a master's degree in communications, a certificate in local government administration and IAP two certificates in public participation. She leads the Okanagan Communicators Network, coadminister, the BC local gov communicators Facebook group, and is an active member of the Canadian Public Relations Society. Outside of helping local gov pros, you can find her loving life in Kelowna, British Columbia.

(02:50):

Tim Conrad is a seasoned public relations professional who excels in difficult and high pressure work. Tim has worked in a variety of industries including natural resources, municipal utilities, dental services, construction, pet services, finance and events. He has held leadership roles in emergency management communications and post-disaster engagements in instead of Canada's largest emergencies. These include record setting 2023 wildfires in DC's, caribou, Squamish Lilette, and Columbia s Shuswap Regions three record setting British Columbia wildfire seasons from 2017 to 2021, healthcare and post-secondary education during the Covid Ovid 19 pandemic and the 2013 Southern Alberta floods. His work in emergencies has been studied by academics worldwide and adopted in California, New Zealand and Australia. Tim received the reputable Shield of Public Service Award from the Canadian Public Relations Society for his exceptional efforts during and after the 2017 wildfires and the lamp of service award in 2022 for distinguished and dedicated volunteer service leading CPRS professional development nationally for nearly a decade. He's a former structural firefighter who responded to over a thousand calls over a dozen years.

Jan Enns (04:08):

Well, first off, I want to say thank you, Tim, for allowing me to do this. I mean, what an honor for me to get to inju you on your podcast, so thanks for doing that. But let's get started with our first question, shall we? And that is actually something that I've been quite curious about for most of the time that I've known you, and that is how'd you come up with your company name, butterfly Effect Communications, and what does that mean to you? How'd you come up with it?

Tim Conrad (04:38):

Yeah, so this is my second company in the time that I've been in public relations. I had one when I was younger when I first started out, and it was called Ripple Connection Promotions, and I did a lot of event and websites and stuff like that. I was a little bit more marketing focused, and so I couldn't use that one again. I had to have something new, but I just want to tell a little story about that one. I was, ripple connection came from sitting next to a pond and just throwing little pebbles out into the water and it was perfectly calm. And watching the ripples come to the edge and realizing that this one little pebble made this big impact. And so when I started to think about this company and what I want to do, one thing I've always had in my head is that I've always kind of operated that.

(05:27):

It's like public relations is the way I operate anyways, a lot of little small changes to get big results. And so that's where the Butterfly effect comes from. I can't take credit for the name though. This was a conversation, there's over a couple of weeks and my wife came up with the name, so credit to Ardella, she came up with this name one evening when we were sitting and chatting about it, and that's where comes from. I would love to have Butterfly effect.com, but thanks to the movies that have been made on this topic, not possible, very, very expensive to buy that domain name.

Jan Enns (06:08):

Great. What is it? Butterfly Effect?

Tim Conrad (06:10):

Yeah, so it's butterfly effect communications.ca. And so yeah, hopefully I come in and check it out. I'm going to continue to add resources there for people. Of course, the podcast is there, but I have a big bank of resources as I discover things, I try to put this big bank of resources up there that people can refer to if they need to.

Jan Enns (06:30):

That's great. Well, I'm sure that we all appreciate your resources, especially this podcast series, so let's get on with this one especially. But I actually have one more question about you, Tim. Just diving a bit deeper, that public relations and communications has many facets, and crisis comms is clearly your specialty. Without a doubt there. I know from my own experience in the EOC and watching my colleagues' experiences in the EOC, it takes up a tremendous amount of professional and personal time and energy. When that call comes, you basically give up your normal life. So my question to you is really this summer, this coming season where the rest of us are looking at going like picnicking or paddling, you're going to dive back into disaster, and I'm just curious about what drives you to do that.

Tim Conrad (07:26):

Yeah, I mean, I really do enjoy the work, and it kind of grew as a kid. I grew up around firefighters surrounded by them, so on my street there was loads of them. The chief lived next door and he's the reason why I have these helmets behind me. He used to have that on his wall, and so I wanted my own helmet someday day. And so it just became, providing community service was kind of how I grew up and through helping neighbors out, I was involved with scouts things and then got, when I went to college, my professor, Trudy Richards was very influential in showing me this path. And we did this mock exercise at a naval base in Halifax actually, that they gave us a really neat experience, and then I was locked from that. And so when I jump into these things, I know that I can help people and I know that I can bridge some of the gaps that are there and disasters naturally. And because of the background I've had through firefighting and through doing the different emergencies I've done, I have developed a good understandings of how things work. And so I like to be able to help people out, and ultimately that's where I go, that it just feels amazing to help people and particularly when they're at their worst moments, which we often see obviously in disasters.

Jan Enns (09:04):

That's so true, and that's such a gift that you bring, having the, I don't mean to make this sound cliche, but boots on the ground as well as the public relations and merging those two, that's a really valuable and important resource to share.

Tim Conrad (09:18):

Yeah, yeah, it is. It's wonderful to have that background, and I've been lucky to have lots of different people that I've worked with over the years. You certainly get that as you work different emergencies, every person has an influence on you that you work with or you meet. And as I'm talking, every blink I can think of a different person and yeah, it's really cool. So I really see myself every time I go out there and I'm working as a combination of all of the people that have contributed to me into that moment. So big thanks to all of those people.

Jan Enns (09:53):

Okay, so let's talk about helping those people, and particularly some of your experiences about last summer, you experienced some of the most unique challenges in fighting this information, this communications crisis piece of you had to deal with things that we haven't seen the likes of in terms of the public response to emergency response. You had to deal with people not evacuating, you had to deal with people, sabotage of equipment, people stealing things, theft, and also some very public protests. So while you're in the middle of, you had to deal with these mini crises, if you will, in the context of the bigger one, which is about the day-to-day crisis communications response. How did you do that? I understand that you developed a strategy. Tell us about how you did that and what the result was.

Tim Conrad (10:50):

Yeah, I mean, the short answer is I didn't sleep. You don't sleep much, especially in those first few weeks, and you work an incredible amount. And even when I'm in the down cycle out to the EOC, I'm still looking around. And that's a big thing I really want people to know is it's so important to build it from research, to build from research, even in an emergency, you really need to understand what's going on, what the impact on people is out there in the community, and how you can connect that to the responders and the response that's happening. So my team worked really hard to collect intelligence out in the community. So we had people out behind the fire lines when the evacuations were still in place. So they were meeting with the residents that had stayed behind and hadn't evacuated and met with the responders.

(11:50):

And we also were looking at all the media and social media and just really trying to get a good sense of where things were at and where the needs for people were for information and started to fill some of those gaps in. So how we kind of then developed that into strategy is really difficult in an emergency. As you can probably imagine, it is very chaotic most days in an emergency operation center. I know Jan, you've spent some time in that world and you just don't have time when you're doing strategy, really like time to sit down and think and to ponder and to brainstorm and to bring up ideas and shoot other ideas down and throw more ideas in and so on until you kind of come up with something. And that's really difficult when you're exhausted and working at a fever pace. So what we do is we had this big long hallway just outside the emergency operation center in the shoe swab as well as another room.

(12:55):

And we would go between the two depending on what was going on, and we would put big sheets of paper up and start to sketch out as like, here's what situation, break it all down. And then we, we'd had markers in our back pocket and then we would walk by and it was like, come up with this idea. It was on the way to the bathroom, on the way to the lunchroom, that sort of thing. So that's how it would often have these little bits and pieces. And then at the end of one of the days when we had a bit more time, we would get together, and this is often, once an emergency is ongoing for a bit, the EOC will shut down around supper time, and so lots of people go home, and so it's quiet there so that we would take that time and stay behind and develop that strategy and hammer it out.

(13:47):

There were a few times where we could get together for a little bit in the meeting room and do that work, but it was very much a team effort that we would pull everything together, look at what we could do, and then from there, develop that strategy. So the other thing that we also had, we had two teams going at the same time in two different regions. So we tried to share our strategy across the teams because the timing of everything was almost similar. The fire swept through both regions at the same time, so the timing of that was lined up and the issues were similar and so on. And I want to give a shout out to Shauna Bruce. She provided us with insight from responses across Canada and strategies that she knew based upon her expertise and observations. So she gave us a strategy document a couple different times over to help us understand what might be workable and might not be right now.

Kendra Stoner - Announcer (14:51):

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 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. Those 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,

Jan Enns (15:54):

And I know this is a bit off topic, but we talked a little bit about connections before delivering content and how important that was to your strategy in terms of meeting people and getting out there and having conversations with people. Can you speak a little bit to that?

Tim Conrad (16:11):

Yeah, yeah. So it started with Lloyd on our team getting in behind the scenes and having those conversations. And then from there we started to make connections with some of those community members that were evacuated on the other side. So he was talking to some that were still within the evacuation zone, and then they had family members or friends that were outside. So we started to meet with them often after hours down in there was at the hotels or wherever in the parking lot, like you name it, we were everywhere. So that was the first kind of interaction with people that were affected.

(16:50):

And then we expanded that into doing community outreach and engagement. So we started in the Schwab, we went to the Sorento farm market and started to have conversations with the community members there and understand where they were at, what they needed, what questions they had, and the community is wonderful that way you'll get the questions, they do the work for you, so you just need to piece everything together and put out the information then. So it was a great approach. And then we of course expanded that into when once the evacuation was over, we went into the community at different points throughout the community, met with them at general stores and grocery stores and wherever people were gathering and had those conversations.

Jan Enns (17:44):

I think that really speaks to some of the success of your strategy is connecting people on the ground. And let's talk a little bit about that as well too, is being able to connect with them. I know at the start of last summer, we were dealt a little blow in our communications on all fronts for local governments. At the start of last summer when meta blocked Canadian news on Facebook, there are other platforms as well, and I know you have used Facebook, you and Emily had sort of pioneered it back in the caribou fires years ago as being such a great way to connect with communities. So with that, with us not being able to get the news onto Facebook, how did that impact how you delivered information or how you developed your strategies and tactics around delivering that information?

Tim Conrad (18:40):

Yeah, talk about bad timing. The meta band was really just kind of going in place in July, so as the fires were starting and then they got worse at the end of July, so nobody really knew fully what the impact was going to be like, and it was significant. You mentioned Emily up and I back in the Caribou in 2017 and credit to that organization, the Caribou Regional district that did have an established Facebook page for the emergency program, and they still have that to this day. So what we did was we just really tried to grow that, make it even larger, and it was amazing. We had a million video views back then for a population of 66,000 people, and then we did that in just a hair over a month. I think it was 32 days or something like that. So it was a very, very powerful platform, and now it's shifted and META'S platforms, all of them have become a place where false information has completely taken over real news and real information.

(19:59):

So it's a stunning reversal and it's really difficult. I am in the midst of it. I was furious at them for doing this because it really did impact people because you couldn't even share information. Nobody had any clue how to do it. And still, I really still don't see people being able to easily share Canadian news because if you try to put a link in, it blocks it. They're even blocking images and things like that. So it's making it very difficult. So yeah, the metrics for local government pages now have really shrunk down to being tiny no matter what we seem to try. Last year, the interest has been lost on Facebook for Canadians, and the algorithm promotes Facebook groups, even Facebook groups from outside the country, just very groups about different topics more than sources within the country. So it's a very difficult spot and it's made it, frankly, it's quite dangerous what's happened with it, and right in Canada's worst wildfire season. So I've unfortunately lost a lot of faith in their platforms, being able to support emergencies going forward, which just breaks my heart because they were so spectacular before, and I was a huge promoter of it as I stood on stages wherever and talked about how awesome Facebook was. And so now I'm saying owned media, owning your own thing is the future because just with a flick of a switch, these large media companies can cut out really important things. Yeah,

Jan Enns (21:39):

Absolutely. I totally agree with that, owning it as well. Obviously these disasters are very difficult for, for everyone involved in your role, you've often noted, and this is something I'm sure you saw a lot of in your work in the She Swap and that face-to-face work that you were talking about, but just some of the challenges of mental health wellbeing for responders. Tell us about what you've experienced and what other responders should watch for.

Tim Conrad (22:14):

What I've seen over the last several years is the disasters are not what they used to be. When I think back to 20 ish years ago, the length and the impact of the disasters has gotten quite bad compared to what it used to be, and particularly that length is where it's really impacting people because going back to the caribou fires in 2017, that ran 77 days of emergency, which at the time was unheard of. I couldn't find anything even close to that in Canada, Canadian history. And now the three emergency operation centers that we worked in last summer ran almost a hundred days each. So three of them did that. So that really wears people down as responders no matter what position in. So I got to talk to a lot of firefighters this time, and I made sure that I talked to a lot of firefighters because the way the shoe swab fire in particular burned, it moved 21 kilometers in less than 24 hours. And what I started to hear immediately once it happened was just how downright scary it was for everybody that was on the ground. And so that trauma is there with your responders, the people that are helping. And then if it applies then to those evacuated residents that ultimately did not evacuate and stayed behind to try to fight, so they're traumatized as well. And then those that evacuated are traumatized.

(23:54):

It's scary. And so add into that, that there's a lot of people that are frustrated. They don't feel heard, they don't understand what's going on, and we are seeing a full spectrum of how people react to emergencies now that we used to see the fight flight, but now we're seeing them do more things. So the fear is kicking in or the freeze is kicking in, and that's the one that's kind of jumping up for me. So you really have to watch for that and everybody, and watching for it in my crew who deal with public directly quite often and watching for their mental health, so always checking in on each other. I'm always, when I'm talking forever, every single firetruck that I passed that was stopped somewhere, I stopped to talk to them to make sure I was checking in on how they were, and I realized right away it was like, we need to get critical incident stress in here.

(25:03):

So I advocated for that team to come in and support that debriefing and that trauma to help them get through that because it was a very scary event. And so same thing with community. We have mental health resources, we hand out, and I'm watching for that. I had a particular resident that it was a really tough conversation. She didn't like me, she didn't like talking to me, she didn't like my answers, but she sat and talked to me for a while and then she got up and she had to walk away. She just could not continue talking to me, but I made sure I circled back with a friend of hers to make sure that they got her mental health support because I could see that she was struggling. And so that's top of mind for me with these. And I really want to urge people out there that mental health is probably the number one priority right now when you're dealing in disasters because it is just such an enormous impact on people

Jan Enns (26:03):

That is so important. And I think it's something that is an area that hasn't been dealt with as much, and I think that's really important that you're calling attention to it as well.

Tim Conrad (26:17):

And I think we can do a lot. So this past year I took Mental Health First Aid just to help me understand what I'm looking at, because I didn't know sometimes what I was looking at, even though I've seen it many times over. But I was like, is this person in trouble or not? Are they or am I? I didn't know. So there is a mental Health first aid course out there. You can take it in your community most of the time. It's a really good course. It's one day. So it really urged you to take, it was, I really appreciated taking that course.

Jan Enns (26:50):

That sounds great. When you first told me about that, I'm like, I need to take that. Of course, I have been through our own situation here and try to help out where I can as well, so thank you for that. That's a really good tip.

Tim Conrad (27:09):

When doom and gloom strikes, you want butterfly effect communications in your favorite contexts. 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 card 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're to us when you are looking to engage, educate or expand, put butterfly effect communications in your favorites, find us at www.butterflyeffectcommunications.ca.

Jan Enns (27:55):

I'm thinking about what you're talking about here too, though. We've got a really tense situation. People have got through a lot of trauma, the residents there in terms of maybe losing their home, not knowing where their family and friends are, the process of loss and recovery. I'm just curious about when you bring that really sensitive audience together with your team, this is a really high stakes, high stress conversation that's happening. And what are some of the things that you can do to keep both your team, your responders and the residents safe in these face-to-face interactions or open houses or town hall meetings?

Tim Conrad (28:38):

Yeah, safety is huge for me. I do have that background too. And so I want everyone safe, the residents, the responders in my team, and that kind of caught some residents in particular off guard this year. That was often one of my first questions to them is like, are you okay? Are you safe? And they were really taken back and they were like, why would you care? Some of 'em, they were really very, there was, as I said, lots of tension in this community, and I was like, don't worry about all that stuff. Let's just talk about you for a moment. And so, yeah, at the same time, we did have to deal with this extreme tension. There was threats. We saw lots of things happen that were very abnormal compared to any emergency that I've dealt with. And so before we did outreach, we developed a really strong understanding of our environments that we were going into.

(29:33):

We did meet with, as I said, those residents that didn't evacuate. We met with some of the most vocal opponents to response efforts, and we also went out and scouted all the locations where we wanted to possibly do public engagement. So we had a good sense of what we were walking into. And in the past, I've gone solo to public meetings or to speak to people that was very normal for me and felt safe. I never had a situation like that. So even if it was my first time in that location, I remember going to different spots in the past and I was like, I've never been to this spot before. I don't know any of these people, and I'm walking in and it was fine, never ever felt threatened. So that's not something I'd recommend. Now based upon what we experienced last year, the threats that were made towards us, I had 'em right in front of my face.

(30:25):

The person walked right up and do that on a few occasions, and that happened to other people on my team. So we made sure, we put a lot of emphasis on resident safety, but also our own safety, and we wanted to know that we were there to help people and we didn't want them to see us as something that they should fear and they should attack. So yeah, we had a sort of a structured team approach, and we took out a lot of the first engagement processes. We went out and did, were a team of six to eight people, and we just wanted to hear the experiences. We gave out safety information to people and thousands of death mass, for example. So some of the leftover stuff from the pandemic we were able to put use to. And yeah, I heard that particularly in the shoe Schwab. They finished a post-disaster public engagement here recently, and the tension is calmer there, which is great to hear. So doing that, that work is important and it does pay off, but it is hard, and you do have to put a number of safety pieces in place. And so we always knew where everybody was and what they were doing, and we always had multiple people on our team.

Jan Enns (31:50):

I think the comments that you're sharing are really helpful for our public information officers moving forward, because I do agree with you that the world has moved on and that these are really high stress, high risk for serious conflict conversations as you've experienced this past summer. So thank you for sharing those tips. Really valid. Okay, another question, because I just saw the news recently and it's not good, I'm sorry to say, but the federal government just announced on CBC the other day about the warning of another devastating wildfire season. And so I'm curious, just in closing, if you have some words of encouragement for our public information officers who might be faced with the of yet another summer in the EOC.

Tim Conrad (32:42):

Yeah, yeah. And so this is part of the challenge is that we're doing this back to back, and last season, as we know was a very difficult season all across Canada. So lean on your colleagues outside of the emergency is one thing. So my network with the Canadian Public Relations Society, including you, Jan, has been an incredible support for both advice and encouragement and just making sure, checking in it, get a little emotional thinking about it, but just amazing when I was out there working and to get those messages, to get a text. I have someone I hadn't heard from in a while. It means a lot, right in the midst of it. It's tough, and you just kind of going through the paces every day. And when somebody remembers you like that and looks out, checks in, and sometimes you get to have, I have some friends that will send just something silly to distract me from the moment, and it's good.

(33:45):

So really try to lean on your network that you have. And yeah, you have to push yourself. There's no question about that, but you also have to know your limits and respect the limits of your mind and your body, work together as a team to support each other. That's one thing that my team was so incredible with last year. We had no tension within our team. We were just, anytime one person was having a rougher day, the rest of the group picked them up and or take work off of them if it was just not their day that day, which happens. So eat well, get outside for exercise, even if it's for five minutes, get out and get some, get out to that EOC if you're in it, and absolutely relish any positive. So we would grasp onto these small positives. So there was funny little thingss that would be said in the ooc, so we had little board behind us that we wrote 'em down so we could look and laugh.

(34:47):

Lots of little funny things that were wins. We would celebrate those as a group. And yeah, the other thing I'll say is working large emergencies is the most important work you will do in your career. You have to put absolutely everything into it that, and it's the most rewarding and the most challenging. So you get an opportunity to really push yourself while having some really amazing moments mixed in there, and make sure you open your heart, because that means a lot to people when you're working with them. I've shared tears, right? It's tough that those memories come back now, and it's like those, I love taking those forward with me, those people. And the cool part is I get to go back these communities and see these people, and it's so wonderful. And that's what happens when you open your heart and just be with them in that moment. So don't be afraid to do that because it does actually help your mental health quite a bit.

Jan Enns (35:50):

Well, thanks so much for this opportunity to have this conversation. I have learned so much. You have touched my heart in so many ways, as you know, so I've learned as well from the other podcasts, so I do encourage you to check out the others in the series. I think this is so exciting. I think this is a space that we need more resources for people who are in these situations, and to have your voice of experience added to that is powerful. So thank you for doing that. But before I let you go, you did give me the microphone. I understand that you've been doing these pictures, getting these pictures by your friend Rowan, made as a way to say thank you to your team members. So I understand that there's one of you.

Tim Conrad (36:35):

Yes, there is. Yeah. And here it is. What do you think?

Jan Enns (36:39):

Here it is. I think it's great. I think she captured you perfectly, and I love that hair

Tim Conrad (36:47):

Great. Yeah, she's awesome. And yeah, she captured a lot more personality in mine. She does know me, so yeah, wonderful. And yeah, we've had a lot of fun with those. That's great. Well, Jan, I really appreciate you joining me and being the guest host for me. And on behalf of so many public relations professionals, you lift up so many people. I hear that all the time. You've been one of my cheerleaders. You're just such a great cheerleader to so many, and I just can't thank you enough. You're just so freaking awesome. It is just that simple. Thank you. I always enjoy every moment that we get together, and so thanks so much for joining me.

Jan Enns (37:30):

Thank you so much for having me, and here's to our powerful network of colleagues that keep us uplifted.

Tim Conrad (37:38):

I'm so honored to have had Jan join me for this episode as a guest host and really appreciate her taking the time to do this. She's definitely one of the favorites in our profession. You can reach Jan Ns on LinkedIn or through her contact info in the show notes. She's with Jan Ns Communications as well, so you can Google that and you will find me on LinkedIn and in the show notes as well.

(38:12):

Thank you for joining us for the Wildfires Floods in 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, 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. Do one thing. That's this week. To get prepared for an emergency at home, try this one. Clear debris from gutters, ditches, and pipes so water can flow freely. This also cleans up materials that wildfires want to burn. 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.