How to Communicate – When People Won’t Evacuate

Doug Downs (00:07):

History is littered with examples of times people refuse to adhere to warnings, even when both the danger and the likelihood were obviously high, the dangers of smoking. For example, people have smoked cannabis, tobacco, and opium for thousands of years by the early 20th century, as people began to live longer, the adverse effects of smoking became more noticeable. In 1929, German scientists, Fritz Lickinct, published statistical evidence of a link between cancer and tobacco. The British Doctors study in 1954, and then the US Surgeon General's report in 1964 released more studies and more damning evidence, but people kept smoking, especially when you have fun loving comedians, chockfull of adjectives to help sell them.

Actor One (01:02):

Hey, boss, listen to this Newport commercial I just wrote.

Actor Two (01:05):

I expect you to write jokes, not commercials.

Actor One (01:07):

Oh, but listen to this. Newport refreshes while you smoke because only Newport combines menthol, fine tobaccos, and a hint of mint. Oh, that's beautiful.

Actor Two (01:17):

I've always said that about Newport. I also say Newport is more refreshing to begin with. More refreshing all the way. Hey,

Actor One (01:24):

I'll write that next week.

Doug Downs (01:29):

Another example is mandatory seat belts in cars and trucks. Australia was the first to make wearing a seatbelt the law in 1970. Then Canada, then the UK, and lastly, the United States in 1984 and only in the front seat, and it doesn't include New Hampshire yet if you're in the backseat, some states say it's okay if you don't buckle up. Passengers who don't wear seat belts in the backseat of vehicles are eight times more likely to be injured or killed in a crash. Although when you hear the arguments by those opposed to wearing seat belts, they do make a pretty good case. Like in this clip from the show cops.

Cops  (02:09):

Yeah, not a big fan of a seatbelt, especially in the summer heat. It's just so not comfortable. I don't need a seatbelt. You know why? Because I'm focused. I'm right here. See that? You know why that is? I took karate for six years. I got reflexes like a cat. My sensei told me that like a cat. I think he said cat. He had kind of an accident. I think about the seatbelt. Dude, it's just one of those things that the government does to control you. You don't need a seatbelt. It's just like one of their inventions that just don't make sense, like vaccines or preschool. Preschool

Doug Downs (02:46):

Another example is the subprime mortgage crisis, which led to the 2008 financial meltdown. Loans were being given to people who obviously couldn't ever pay them back, but banks kept approving them. Once all the banks were doing it, it became normal and it got out of control. Some economists warned about the risk of these mortgages bringing down the entire economy, but that could never happen. No, not when Nobel Prize economists were saying Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were just fine. Too big to fail. In the summer of 2023, fires raged across the western Canadian province of British Columbia. 8,000 properties were under evacuation order, but an alarming number of people refused to leave. Tim Conrad was one of the lead communications professionals in those emergency operation centers. He says he's never seen anything like it, and it's only going to get worse today on stories and strategies, how to communicate when people won't evacuate.

(04:04):

My name is Doug Downs. Just before we get started, this episode, Spotify wrapped came out this past week, and we heard from a few people actually that our little podcast was their number one for the year, which is absolutely amazing. I can't tell you how excited I was to get those notes. So thank you to Jennyfer Grundler, Cissy Laframboise. Cissy I hope I'm saying that right. And Kelly Edmund for sending us a note on that. We're going to send each a small gift in the mail just to thank them. My guest this week is Tim Conrad, joining today from Kamloops, BC. Tim, have you looked at your Spotify wrapped or unwrapped yet, whatever it's called?

Tim Conrad (04:43):

Yeah, I did. I'm all over the place. 1500 artists, over 3,100 songs. But Dave Matthews band finished at the top this year. Probably I would say again, and classified number two, and the Beatles number three. So a little bit of everything.

Doug Downs (04:59):

Interesting. My number one was the Rolling Stones. Again, it's kind of just predictable, but somehow Enya was in my top three. I've been hijacked. That's all I'm saying is I've been hijacked, my account's been hijacked. You're in Camloops, right, which is part of the beautiful area of BC's interior prone to some wildfires in the summer today.

Tim Conrad (05:23):

Well, Kamloops is good. We're on probably the last day that you'll be able to say that you could go mountain biking and snowboarding on the same day. We're getting some snow, I think tonight, and I'm looking forward to getting some laps in soon. So yeah, it's a great little spot. If you're looking for fun to be had outdoors, this is paradise here.

Doug Downs (05:44):

Anytime of year. Yeah, absolutely. Tim, you've held leadership roles in emergency management communications and post-disaster engagements in some of Canada's largest emergencies, including the 2023 wildfires in BC's, caribou, Squamish, Lillooet, and Columbia Shuswap regions. I struggle with that word, Shuswap. I got through it. Healthcare and post-secondary education. During the COVID-19 pandemic, you received the prestigious Shield of Public Service Award from the Canadian Public Relations Society for your efforts during and after the 2017 wildfires, and your work in disasters has been described as the gold standard study by academics across Canada and adopted in California, New Zealand, and Australia. So Tim, a lot of our listeners will know, but just give us some highlights of an emergency operations centre or an EOC, what it is, and how that fits in the incident command system or the ICS.

Tim Conrad (06:50):

Yeah, so you'll hear EOC emergency operation center quite a bit when there is an ongoing emergency or a large event of some sort, and there can be multiple EOCs running at the same time. So to support a response. So in a case of a wildfire, there may be a wildfire operations, law enforcement first nation and the local government. And the local government is where I tend to work the most. And each EOC is structured using what you mentioned there, the incident command system, which is an international standard that sets up the roles and responsibilities of how decisions are made. It's still a very flexible to match the incident and it can grow and expand the team to match what is necessary. So there's a director that leads a team, which includes section chiefs for planning, operations, logistics, finance and admin, liaison risk, and then information, which is what communications and public relations tend to fall into is that information piece.

Doug Downs (07:58):

And I know since I've taken my ICS training, and it's been some years, a, it's a lot like a military operation in the way that it's structured and regimentally the way it behaves. But number two, the fact the ICS is pretty much a global standard means regardless of language, regardless of culture, geography, obviously ideas can be traded back and forth, and learnings can be had back and forth pretty much, right?

Tim Conrad (08:24):

Yeah, that's right. And one of the things that I try to get people to do, because there is a very strict structure within it, as you say, it's kind of military-like the important thing is to lean into that structure when you have an incident. And as you lean into it more, what happens is more space opens up so you can be creative and get the process stuff and get it down really well so that you can spend more time being creative on the things that you need to, and then that allows you to really kind of expand your thought. Otherwise, you're just going to be running frantic the entire time.

Doug Downs (09:00):

Summer 2023, you were part of three EOCs, which is a ridiculously busy summer, wicked and dangerous forest fires for the most part with different causes. I know that recognizing there are always people who are going to stay behind even when it reaches the point where emergency officials say, got to evacuate. What happened that summer of 2023?

Tim Conrad (09:30):

We certainly saw a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear that surrounds wildfires. There's a fear of losing everything. You own your home, your business, your community. And the fear has become more significant as the wildfires have become more dangerous and destructive in the past 20 years in Canada. So some people fear government overreach, and some of those same people don't trust the government to save their property from fire or looting. There's a strong disconnect between some residents and their government. That gap has widened quite substantially in recent years. I think we all know that if we've been working in public relations and paying attention, and it's now become a problem in emergencies, what we saw this summer was residents who had experience and resources to stay in evacuation areas, which is common. We usually see a small number of residents will stay behind and try to fight fire, and they do have previous skill, and they've done this so over decades. So they're used to that. But we also had residents that didn't have experience and the equipment or resources to survive, stay behind, which was a real challenge for us this time because while we're clear that if you stay behind, you're agreeing to stay on your property and you must be able to sustain yourself for the duration of the emergency. Some didn't appreciate that when they ran out of food, water, and fuel, that they couldn't just go and get that and come back in and started to claim that. You mean the

Doug Downs (11:10):

Stores weren't open while all the fires were going?

Tim Conrad (11:12):

On, right? Everything closes down when there's an actual evacuation order in place. And so it, it's a tough balance, right? Because ultimately the law doesn't allow governments to tell people that they just told to legally leave to allow them to then exit and then get back into that same area. So you have to remember, we're managing thousands of people that are displaced and taking refuge elsewhere safely and supplying all of the operations that's going on. So it's a big job. So yeah, it was a real challenge. We had ridiculous amounts of things happening, and I mean, I can share more if you're up for that. Yeah,

Doug Downs (11:55):

Absolutely. What happened?

Tim Conrad (11:57):

We saw a few residents who sabotaged firefighting efforts by removing or stealing equipment. They tampered with critical

Doug Downs (12:05):

To save their home, to save their property, I assume.

Tim Conrad (12:07):

Yeah, yeah. And so we're talking like removing equipment from firefighting equipment from a wooden bridge that was on the only road that was in the area. In another case, we saw the sabotage of equipment. In that case, it was a water source and they were going to put a hole in the water and they thought they were going to improve the water source, but by doing it the way they were going to do it, it was going to drain the water source. So lots of strange things. We had protests on blockades that we had set up on highways that were closed because it was unsafe. We had to,

Doug Downs (12:46):

What were they protesting? The fact that emergency officials were there?

Tim Conrad (12:49):

They were protesting. Yeah, they wanted to reopen. They felt that the highway should be reopened and they wanted to take down the barricade and open the highway. But the reality was it wasn't safe for emergency responders to use it, let alone the general public. The fire was on a cliff above the highway. So it was a real challenge and a couple weird ones that I was just a double take when you hear it the first time, but people creating fire breaks with bulldozers on both public and private lands. So we had a bulldozer go right by somebody's house without their permission. We had a helicopter bucketing a fire in a no-fly zone,

Doug Downs (13:33):

A private helicopter,

Tim Conrad (13:35):

Really strange stuff, a private helicopter that halts all operations. When those types of things happen, and we have to make sure it's safe for responders because they're working in the air and on the ground and they need to know that they can do their job safely.

Doug Downs (13:51):

How did they treat the emergency officials? Was there verbal abuse of any kind that took place?

Tim Conrad (13:58):

Yeah, there was certainly a lot of confrontation that happened, a lot of tension in the community, and this is in two locations that I was supporting. We saw some people being approached, emergency respondents being approached by different residents and being quite aggressive, and in some cases we've had threats of violence. And so it was a really very difficult time. And I take it all back though to it comes down to low trust and it's kind of a mixture of information being put out and being either ignored or not received, and that vicious cycle of low support, funding, community resources that ultimately help you in a time like this. And then they get angry that those resources aren't there, even though they were the same people that maybe were not wanting to support a new firetruck, for example, or a new tool that would help them in a situation like that.

Doug Downs (14:59):

What's amazing, and I am a Canadian, so maybe I have this view of it, but there's an old joke about what do you say to 10 Canadians to get them out of a swimming pool? You say, okay, everyone, it's time to get out of the pool. Canadians are usually quite apathetic, nice, calm, we follow the laws. We don't stand up against... but this is happening in Canada. So then your job here amidst this turmoil, is to communicate or develop communications in a way that results in the action that's so desperately needed. What did you do and what happened?

Tim Conrad (15:36):

Yeah, I think one of the things is when I get into an EOC, I often find that the way in which we practice in that situation when we come from sort of a regular job and then get into that is we matter communications to the scattered. And that approach has really failed. So you're just spitting out constant communication and thinking you're getting things out to people. Oh,

Doug Downs (16:11):

Messages, you're transmitting, transmitting, transmitting.

Tim Conrad (16:14):

And so one of the things I do is I shift around and I really do build from strategy down to tactics. So I say strategy eats tactics. And so for those that haven't worked in large disasters, you may not realize how little time you get in clear head space to strategically plan. It's like hours if you're lucky. So for me, it's like late at night once everything shut down, and I did a lot of my planning between one and three in the morning this time around, and I spent as much time as I could kind of looking at what residents were posting, commenting, saying to the media, and that's where I kind of discovered a plan that I hoped would work, and it really did.

Doug Downs (17:03):

What was it?

Tim Conrad (17:04):

Yeah, you're really curious. You,

Doug Downs (17:07):

I want to know what you did. I know you did TV appeals, you recorded fire officials, you got some national broadcast

Tim Conrad (17:14):

Out of it. Yeah, absolutely. So that's exactly it. That's one of the things I discovered right away. I was like, we had a lot of local volunteer firefighters that had a good, strong reputation, and they're a great source of information for what's going on in the community as well. So we paired one of our team members, one of my team members with the deputy chief who was going into the fire zone daily, and he helped us understand what both the firefighters and the community members who stayed behind as they gather, they often gathered in the same location. So he was able to gather intelligence at those locations and help us understand what the local issues were going on. And then we were also looking for stories to tell in a real raw and rough way, much like the content that residents were putting out on social media, those that had stayed behind. So our first video was with Deputy Chief Sean Borough. He spoke with honesty about the challenges and appealed for cooperation.

Deputy Regional Fire Chief Sean Coubrough (18:16):

There's a small percentage of the population that's been negative. We've had some instances of threats, abuse, theft of equipment, and other unfortunate events. For that reason, it makes it very difficult for us to do our job under those kinds of conditions, these men and women that have been...

Tim Conrad (18:40):

Then next we moved in to tell the story of two firefighters who stayed behind the front lines and stayed on fighting the fire during the time while their properties burned down and no scripts for any of them. They were all shot with lower quality video and lower quality audio. Yeah, very, very raw, and that was very, very intentional.

Doug Downs (19:04):

You got national pickup on Canada's national TV networks. What did they tell you?

Tim Conrad (19:12):

Yeah, we had just phenomenal results from media. I've done this work for 20 years now on and off and never had this kind of run that we did. So over about a 10 day period, we had four different national news stories on all the top big three in Canada, and they were top stories within one of their top three stories on each of those networks, and they picked up the footage that we put out and the story they used our messaging, our spokespeople, and then carried it. And in the one case with the video with firefighter Darren, who unfortunately his whole property was destroyed, that video they took and used it multiple times, and so it ran for over a two week period on one particular network. So it was just great results and we really started to see a shift in how people were seeing the, that are experiencing the communications and starting to understand where we were going and what we wanted them to understand and where we wanted them to go.

Doug Downs (20:27):

And I know part of the feedback you got from the networks was that they didn't want slick produced video and audio. They wanted the raw stuff. In fact, they had semi rejected on a different emergency in a different location. They kind of didn't go with a very slick, well-produced video that was provided.

Tim Conrad (20:46):

Yeah, that's right. They had a beautiful set of videos that were provided by another service, and they even commented to me on a

Doug Downs (20:55):

Different incident

Tim Conrad (20:58):

And they commented to me when we were doing our media trip tour through the area of the fire on the day of the reentry, a number of them came up to me, which top reporters within the country, and they said to me, they said, we really love the rawness of those videos and we couldn't use any of the other stuff that you saw from this other service because it was too Hollywood. It was so well done that it just didn't fit to be news. And so it was quite a learning from them. I was surprised by that, and it was like some of our stuff ended up being a little bit more raw because we were capturing those stories as they were happening. So we didn't get to the point of actually having the relationship with the person that was on video to say, Hey, can you put a mic on? So it just happened, and then they allowed us to use that.

Doug Downs (21:53):

How other channels, I mean the television is one thing, radio is another. Can you use newspaper or our websites effective social media? Do people lose power in some of these emergencies? What are some of the other strategies slash tactics I guess, that can be used?

Tim Conrad (22:10):

Yeah, that's an area that we also did something different than I've done in the past, although it went back to some of my earlier work 20 years ago, and everything we did was with intention. So even those video briefings when we did them, I dressed to match the audience. I made mistakes and I was empathetic when we weren't able to tell people what they wanted. And we did see that immediate shift in sentiment, but we still hadn't gotten where we wanted to. And so I rolled the dice on a huge gamble. Like I said, we had a lot of tension and it was one of the people I worked with said to me, watch your back. I was somebody that was on television on YouTube all the time, and so everybody knew me wherever I went. And it said something to me that this person had never said that to me in all the years I've worked with them.

(23:08):

And so what we did was we went right into the belly of the dragon. This fire in particular, in the shoe swab looked like a dragon when you look at the map of it. And we started to immediately meet people as they reentered. So we did a little bit of a test before at a farmer's market that was just on the outskirts. And then we started by when people came in, we met them on the road, gave them information, and then we took it another step, and we went to all of the little community stores, gas stations, restaurants, set up a little booth outside and exchanged information. So got information from them and did a bit of an environmental scan. And then also were delivering education information. And it was really neat to see it kind of shift people. And I had one particular gentleman that it took three times for him to even come over and say hi. And so eventually he did, and he told me I was so angry at you the first time I saw you. I couldn't come over and talk to you. But we eventually did get him over there, and that helped to slowly build some trust and we were able to show that we were human and we were trying to help them.

Doug Downs (24:18):

Perfect. Tim, thanks for this.

Tim Conrad (24:20):

Appreciate it, Doug. Thanks a lot.

Doug Downs (24:22):

If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Tim Conrad, as I say, his website and his other contact information is in the show notes, stories and strategies is a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcasts. If you'd like this episode to do us a favor, share it with one friend. Don't forget to leave a rating and a review. Thanks for listening.