Recovering Together in the Cariboo: Teamwork in Emergency Operations Response and Disaster Recovery

Tim Conrad (00:12):

Not finance, not strategy, not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare. If you could get all of the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry in any market against any competition at any time. This quote from Patrick Lencioni embodies the spirit of the emergency program at the Caribo0 Regional District in British Columbia, Canada. The region is known for its rugged beauty, sandwiched between mountain ranges, where living off the land is the main source of life. For many ranchers, foresters, fishers and miners residents live in rural or remote settings, many with no access to land-based communications such as internet, cellular networks, or even radio. While it has experienced more than its fair share of disasters, it also has one of the best emergency programs I have seen in my decades doing this work.

(01:05):

A big reason is Steph Masun, who until recently was the lead of the emergency program for several years. Her background includes public relations, program development, and community engagement. I'm your host, Tim Conrad. Welcome back for the second season of the Wildfires, floods and Chaos Communications podcast with the first of two episodes with guest Steph Masun. Hello, Steph. We will be winding back the clock to Williams Lake Safeway parking lot in September, 2017. When we met, you were considering a contract recovery role with the Cariboo Regional District, and we met to go for a long walk and discuss the role and the challenges ahead. We went for an hours long walk through the River Valley, and I'm curious as to what you remember from that day,

Stephanie Masun (01:57):

Tim, that was a great orientation to what had happened from a different perspective than the perspective I had had as a resident during the 2017 wildfires and that walk as we walked and talked and you had an opportunity to share with me some of your insights and experiences and your perspectives based on what had happened and your tenure in the emergency operation center with the CRD team, I was really struck by how much intention and how much positive energy really had gone into that response and into ensuring that I had some of the core information I needed to help me make that decision.

Tim Conrad (02:58):

Yeah, it's kind of interesting thinking back and hearing your words in that description in the positive part. It was really, I hadn't really thought about it in that way, but it was turned out to be a pretty positive thing for us as we worked through that and we started to get some progress on some of the things that we were working on. So it was, yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, and this river valley that we walked through, of course became a bit of a disaster site after that. There's been landslides there and there's been a wildfire down there this past summer. So it itself has changed quite a bit in that time. So now before I ask my next question, I just wanted to give some perspective on the 2017 wildfire season that we just started off talking about. So this is up in the Cariboo Regional District.

(03:51):

There was 272 wildfires that burned 9,000 square kilometers of forest from July to September, including the plateau fire, which was roughly about 5,000 square kilometers was the largest fire in BC up until two years ago. And as well, there were 60 homes and 167 other structures destroyed 149 evacuation changes throughout that time, affecting 48,000 square kilometers and over 35,000 people, which was 60% of the population of that region. We followed that with something kind of crazy. We went on a 12 week long public engagement tour. We traveled 3,500 kilometers to 24 different communities, spending 36 nights on the road from the end of October until just weeks before Christmas and hosted 50 hours of sessions listening to residents. I tell you, I hadn't looked at these numbers in a while. At one time, I could rattle those off the top of my head, but I did not remember any of them anymore. It kind of blew my mind when I look back, I forgot how intense that was. So I'm curious though, when you think back about the trip and the engagement trip when we started to spend a significant amount of time together, those 60 hours in meetings plus all the other time that we were on the road together, what pops out to you from that trip?

Stephanie Masun (05:20):

I think I was really struck by the uniqueness of each area and the vastness of the regional district from corner to corner. There had been impacts, and we really did travel from unincorporated community to unincorporated community and tried to draw in all of those unique attributes and sift through it to start to understand what the disaster recovery concept look like and what were going to be some of the unique challenges and what were going to be some of the alignments between those very individualistic areas. I mean, there was a common ground. The common ground was the incident, but the incident was experienced at different times and in different ways by different populations. And some of those populations were very rooted in place and had a long history and a rich history in the area, which had experienced some fractures and some tensions, and also some growing distrust and growing challenge with working with the administration and working with the responders who were coming to wind down some of the response and also to begin the recovery. So I think it really laid out for me what the, almost like a patchwork quilt that the CRD can be in the context of individual communities and unincorporated areas.

Tim Conrad (06:55):

And it was so interesting, wasn't it going from one community to the next and experiencing that different impact, but just how it's true, how widely vast it was. Hey there, I have a special offer for you. Jump over to www.canadiantraining.ca and subscribe to our newsletter, receive discounts and early access to our new training platform, which will launch this fall. What's more valuable is we will send Canadian training.ca subscribers, free guides checklists and more that you can use in your homework or volunteer roles, Canadian training.ca, learning from mistakes someone should sign up now for those free resources, one of the interesting things that I found, which we heard a lot, was we had a video that we played at the beginning, and I can link to that video for folks because it's still online today. And we played this video at the beginning, and the reason I created that video was just to give people a full picture of everything that happened, realizing that people experienced things in their community but didn't necessarily realize that another community also experienced things like they had or sometimes better or worse. And people would come up to me after either the video or after the night and they would say to me, I had no idea that other people had it worse than we did, or I had no idea they would come up with something. And that was quite an interesting thought that would come from people quite commonly.

(08:22):

So then again, we moved to March, 2018. It's been a few months after being on the road, and I delivered a report with 75 recommendations. I still feel a little guilty for having done such a long list, but it was what was needed. So tell us what happened next.

Stephanie Masun (08:40):

Well, there are a series of short-term midterm and long-term things that next. And I mean really at the initial outset, the recommendations were very based in the experience that you had had in the EOC and during that response phase, but also in talking to people individually and in groups, talking to board members, talking to responders, and talking to all of those different segments and sectors. And it really drew together some of the, and a lot of the key areas to start to build back relationships and not just build back relationships, but to build some relationships where they hadn't existed before. So the recommendations were staged and phased based on what could we do immediately? What could we advocate for? What was our role in implementing, assessing and evaluating how those recommendations may fit into a local government's business plans emergency program communications department. So really that and coupling with the recommendations from the after action review, which was also a significant list, and building that into a multi-year plan with the support of a very engaged board of directors and CAOI would suggest that the incident was taken very seriously by the leadership, and that leadership did position the recommendations in a place where they could be implemented with the resources that they needed.

(10:39):

That makes it sound very simple but reasonably. It was a multi-year, multi-pronged approach that is still underweight today. And some of those items that you had listed like ham radio and community liaising are still in development. They're underway and the connections are being made, but it's not a one-time done for most of the recommendations from both an a r and also the consultation and the communication lens.

Tim Conrad (11:12):

Hello to our listeners, in the United Kingdom, which is one of the largest audiences for our podcast, it's probably because I'm a self-appointed member of the Ministry of Silly Walks. We also have listeners in these cities, Lua, Sweden, Altoona, Iowa, mal Prom, India, Kuda Columbia, and Johannesburg South Africa. Thank you for listening to our podcast. We have a global audience with listeners in over 30 countries and nearly 300 cities. Wherever you listen, whether it's Spotify, iTunes, or Amazon Music, please subscribe and give us a review. Of course, please share with a friend by sending them communications podcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter.

(11:55):

So in Canada, when we were young, there was a show called Harriet's Hats, and Harriet was a young girl. She would try on a different hat each show that would take her off to learn about a new profession. So if you can imagine early eighties, not the best special effects, but she would go off and she would be into her hat in her profession of the week, and you're my Harriet, you've always been that since we've known each other because you have changed jobs even though you've been kind of in the same role. It's evolved and you've been with the same organization and your journey went from managing a recovery to building a robust and continually improving emergency program while also being the emergency operation center director for hundreds of days a year sometimes. So what were your lessons from managing the recovery first, going back to 2017, and I mean, you know what I'm like once a year, I have certain questions. I always ask, how are certain people doing and things like that. But tell me about the whole recovery because yes, it comes down to individuals, but there's a bigger picture to it.

Stephanie Masun (13:13):

I think that the lens needs to be long-term. I think that the immediate short-term recovery is relatively simple. Getting people into their homes, getting people into their homes safely, getting people water, hydro, basic needs met in that period of time. There's a flurry of activity and it's, as I said, relatively easy to meet those needs that immediately present the midterm. You're still coordinating organizing between different organizations, finding resources, pulling things together, and solutions can still be found around housing, jobs, economy, building back. Those things start to move forward. Processes are in place in general, is that longer term lens, it's that successive events start to begin and that long-term recovery piece can get under rug swept, not necessarily under rug swept, but it becomes less of that immediate front burner issue. And some of those more complex needs that aren't really solved by a local government, it isn't necessarily within a local government service area to provide some of those solutions.

(14:44):

It can become very challenging to keep those issues front and center for advocacy, for energy, for bringing parties together. I mean, there was a core group of us in the region from the municipalities and from the agencies and from some communities that tried really hard to keep connecting, keep meaning. And as other incidents were emerging on the landscape and new responses were beginning and other recoveries were starting, some of those really complex issues become harder and harder and harder to continue to keep a lens on and an eye on. And one thing I can say is that change is a constant and that there is always going to be a continuous change. I mean, the phases of emergency management denote that there is going to be a response, a recovery, a mitigation phase, an engagement and a preparedness phase. And the point is those spinning plates are happening all at the same time at different phases in different parts of a regional district. It's the crux of regional district emergency management, I think.

Tim Conrad (16:07):

Yeah, absolutely. And what was interesting too, coming in to help out this is I've been into different places to do response in the same geographical area before. I've never come into an area to do response. And then, which you did with me a few times, you added some recovery tasks to the list while I was there because we were doing response on another incident, but then we still had recovery from previous incidents that we were dealing with, so we needed to just improve some communications and information and so on. That was there. Boy, it makes it really challenging when you're juggling all of that

Stephanie Masun (16:49):

Because people's needs are different in the different phases your local government's needs are different in the different phases your human resources needs, your coordination needs, who you coordinate with is very different. Then the networks of relationships are significant. And maintaining those relationships can be a challenge. And I'm talking about just from the program management and coordination aspect of regional district emergency management. I don't mean your regular business continuity that also needs some attention and some love as you're proceeding throughout your year. Every now and then I would want to stop and just say, I'm not done yet. No, I'm not done with those other activities. But I also know that these new priorities are emerging and they need to be resourced and they need to be considered and looked at and thought about

Tim Conrad (17:50):

Critically. Yeah, absolutely.

Stephanie Masun (17:51):

Strategically,

Tim Conrad (17:53):

Yeah, it is not just a case of what you've gone through. It's not just a case of prioritizing response, it's recovery as well and multiple recoveries and multiple responses. So it's a big challenge. So commend you for the work you've done there to balance all of that and all of your team. So next up, what happened as you began to build the new emergency program?

Stephanie Masun (18:20):

Yeah, CRD had a really great foundation, and as I said, the board was tremendously gene on seeing future emergency operations be improved based on the learning from 2017. And the CAO really did position the priorities in the strategic plan and with the board and with the staffing to really allow the space and the drivers so that the program could continue to grow and change. And I'll say, you know what, the CRD, there was one business unit, one service area that combined response responder groups, volunteer groups like the fire departments and search and rescue. It also managed the 9 1 1 system, various MOUs and agreements with other orders of government and also emergency management, which was all demanding at different times, which meant that the board really wanted to look at different ways to deliver the service to allow for business continuity, but also so that the programs would meet and serve the public who was funding these services in the best way possible. So over time that the service areas were broken out into two separate service areas. So we had protective services, which maintained some search and rescue functions, and the volunteer fire departments and 9 1 1 services and emergency program services was broken out into its own service area so that it could be looked at strategically budgeted for in a bit of a different way and also staffed appropriately going forward.

(20:26):

Yeah,

Tim Conrad (20:27):

And significant change through all of that where it was when I walked through the door in 2017 compared to where it was even by 2018, but especially by 2019 dramatic shift and then continued that was ongoing. So on that constant shifting, you mentioned to me recently that it's important to anticipate staffing challenges and changes. What do you mean by that?

Stephanie Masun (20:57):

People are people, and I think that one of the most complicated situations I had been in was I was when we had first broken out the emergency program from the multiple service areas under one concept, it was I ended up alone. I had a staff person, and that staff person had goals and needed to grow and found an opportunity far, far away. And the emergency program was staffed by one person. And I mean that was a short period of time, wasn't that we didn't have resource dollars set aside for the staffing. It's just that it takes time and it can take time to find people who are qualified to work in emergency programs and to train and to develop their own skill sets and to grow into the roles and to function with experience and knowledge and place-based knowledge and community knowledge. It's really important that yes, people have the qualifications, but it's also really important that they can synthesize that knowledge with the place where they're working and continue to make improvements through the programs that they're working in. So there's a constant change, I would say is the theme of my learning so far in emergency management. And that can mean all sorts of different kinds of change. And different people have different skill sets, they have different backgrounds, they have different attributes, they have different desires, they have different places they lean in and other places where they don't feel so comfortable.

(22:45):

And managing teams of people requires a lens on that and an ability to sense when your teammates or members or coworkers need a pat on the back, need some recognition and also might need a bit of support as they grow into those roles.

Tim Conrad (23:06):

Thank you for listening. I really appreciate you taking the time to learn through our podcast. Do you have a suggestion for a guest or topic or maybe some feedback? You can write to us at communicationspodcast.com where you can also leave a review wherever you listen, whether it's Spotify, iTunes, or Amazon Music, please subscribe and share with a colleague of friend. Remember, we also have a newsletter that will give you more information including case studies and news from around the world, and we put up transcripts, links, and information about our guests on our website. Visit communications podcast.com. Thank you for joining the Wildfires Floods in Chaos Communications podcast. Join us for the episode for the second part of the interview with Steph Masun. If you like this episode, check out season one, episode two, Inferno Insights with Mike Lupien. Goodbye. Hear me later.