Public Information Officer - A Day in the Life

i'm eric and this is a day in the life of a public information officer [Music] when i or any other pio comes in in the morning usually one of the first things that we're doing is looking at social media catching up on any comments that were left that maybe we need to address or questions direct messages on our social media accounts if there's any information that we want to share with our community members or journalists sometimes pios will do that first thing in the morning or whenever it's timely so one of the first things that i did this morning was send out a message about how south metro was preparing for today because this fire danger situation has been on people's radar since five or six days ago and it's really been the top story on the news for the last two or three days so a lot of people are paying attention and a lot of people are worried so just some reassurance that south metro is prepared we've up staffed we're going to be sending a larger brush response than usual on even small vegetation fires today and really just to reassure them that we're prepared and also share information with them that we really are relying on the community to help us prevent fires from even starting today one of my favorite parts of being a public information officer is truly that every day is different and although my mornings often start out the same way as far as where i'm fact-finding and gathering information the rest of the day who knows what's going to happen pios at south metro respond to all working incidents and usually what those include are working structure fires working vegetation fires and any working special team call and for us special teams include aircraft rescue and firefighting dive rescue hazardous materials incident and technical rescue as the big ones that tend to have media interest the public information team here at south metro is responsible for social media management and content creation and we do that primarily on youtube facebook twitter instagram and on the nextdoor platform so our goal is really to reach as many of our community members as we can and also to inspire the next generation of firefighters and and future personnel for south metro and if you're watching this on youtube you may not be in south metro's district you may not even be in the united states and it's so powerful and so awesome that we have this reach our focus is for the residents who live in our community right now i'm working on editing a day in the life of an rto video and earlier this week i spent a lot of time down at the drill ground the rto staff is just amazing and they did a great job i got really incredible video and i'm so excited to be working on this edit one of the favorite things that i do honestly during my day is not only capturing the video for stories but editing them and sharing them with you all and i just get into this rhythm of storytelling and when the video gets lined out and i can start to edit it and add some music and really let it evolve and start to tell itself it's just really exciting and i can get really deep and involved in that so that's what i'm going to be focusing on this morning i'll be watching social media and our public information officer phone line which our journalist will call or text if they have questions from a weather perspective it's historically rare to have all of these conditions aligned with each other that these conditions are occurring literally from the foothills all the way to the kansas border yeah for updated information from a pio twitter's your best bet so i just got off the phone with a journalist from our local fox 31 news station she had some questions about what south metro was doing and some overall questions about the situation today while i was on the phone with her i just got a text message from a journalist at nine news in denver so in between these requests from journalists i was checking on our comments on social media and there's a great question this person wrote how are residents notified of fire and evacuations thank you and be safe and that's something that a lot of people wonder about and should sign up for so in south metro's fire jurisdiction we have three different counties that we cover which is portions of arapaho douglas and jefferson county and residents or people who work in our district and want to receive notifications should visit the county website of the location where they want to receive notifications for look for code red and there are some basic questions that they'll ask about where you're located at what the address is and some contact information on how you want to receive those alerts and then you'll start getting them um noel works for nine news and he and i have worked together for a long time which is really fun uh one of my favorite folks to work with and maybe you could just tell the youtube folks like how did you contact me today why did that happen what happens on your end yeah so i saw a tweet from south metrofire just about the the preparations that the department was making in anticipation of some really tough conditions today and i thought that was kind of interesting and reached out to eric to see if he could talk about what the department is doing to prepare for today and so it was that easy i texted him and he got back right away and here i am now talking to him about what they're doing today perfect yeah thanks man appreciate you being on thank you all right so this is different um having a camera on us when we're we're talking to you why why is there a camera on us right now what is this part of yeah so there's a camera on us right now because part of south metro's public information program includes a youtube channel are you gonna put the entirety of the interview online you think or what will it be uh we'll see how bad i do with this interview and maybe the whole thing will go on youtube or maybe just the good parts yesterday four firefighters with a wildland fire engine deployed to a fire in arizona outside of prescott and um we backfill that fire engine at the station with a reserve apparatus so really what that means for the community is south metro was able to go and help another community while our firefighters gained experience there but it didn't leave a hole in coverage in south metro's district we still have a fire truck there there's still firefighters who are ready to go when it comes to emergencies it's a pio's job to message the right information to the right people at the right time so they can make informed decisions about their safety for me one of the most challenging parts of the job is live tv news interviews they're usually related to an uncomfortable topic where people have been injured or killed or property has been destroyed and in the live news environment there's no do-overs it's not casual it's not a fun environment with our news reporters like what you saw in my interview with noel so i wrapped up some stuff at the office here and i'm gonna head out to the jsf because in about 90 minutes or so there's going to be someone from a sign company that's going to come and update the sign for us on the cherry creek trail so i'm going to make my way that way all right check it out there's the new sign for the south metro fire rescue drill ground this is on the cherry creek trail and we're going to keep doing some beautification projects out here and make it super cool for our community members to be able to come sit and watch the firefighters train your incident has been updated channel three that's mfm italian cheese ii italian cheek one safety 35 channel snf 3 wishfire map page r 21 b x riverside dental 2630 west bellevue attitude so we get a lot of questions about when do pios respond emergent and for something like this where we don't have reports of structures threatened there's no injuries we're not talking about evacuations at this point this is a non-emergent response for me south metro's policy says that uh an emergent response for support staff like myself has to be justifiable and so in this case i don't believe that it is um if we were to escalate this incident and they were lives and property threatened and getting the messages to the community about what action they need to take to stay safe then i might go emergent and we have a unit that's going to give an initial radio report looks like denver fire is our team prior to looks like they've extinguished the fire full update we'll be investigating i copy that we move over to three places okay so medic 11 is the first south metro unit on scene they have arrived and said the denver fire department is already there this is along bellevue avenue which is a boundary with the city of inglewood which denver fire department has a contract for fire service and it sounds like denver fire is already there and they may have already extinguished this fire so uh we'll listen for updates and then kind of determine how we're going to proceed with it so because of the amount of concern over today i am gonna send out a social media update on this um now that i'm parked and i'm off the call really just to update the community if they did get this confirmed vegetation fire message on pulse point that the fire is out our crews are there working and there's no danger to the community just to kind of offer some reassurances [Music] so it looks like there's a commercial carrier fire is it getting dispatched right now [Music] how are you dispatch that's it sorry what's team this is going to be a trash truck on the west side of the building the load was dumped i believe that the trash is on fire unknown about the truck everyone is out of the vehicle 81 degrees humidity is an eight percent wonder out of the south at 12 to 20. so it looks like we're going to be first on scene here which means they're going to have to give them the initial radio report tower 18 is still behind me dispatch pio10 i'm on scene shea center we do have a large pile of trash fully engulfed debris is blowing towards the north so we will have a potential brush fire exposure issue no other immediate exposures i'll be the offensive strategy investigating and the best access is going to be on that west side of the building debris is blowing north towards the north the potential breast mirrors closure issues to that side no other exposure is best access away from the so i am going to send a social media post on this coming from the door there's a fire hydrant on the left side if you come into the parking lot hit that and then we'll date you and try to grab some of that trash pulling around it keep it on the ground uh truck uh [Music] okay spreading to the north lot primarily paper running material is north start to another engine you're fired man and i don't want to okay what you got to see is kind of a rare event it doesn't happen very often that a pio arrives on scene first of a fire and super rare to actually get engaged in what's happening from a firefighting perspective or a support role perspective but south metro bases all of our actions on what we call critical factors one of the critical factors of this incident is that tower 18 carries 300 gallons of water and that water runs out very quickly even while using an inch and three quarter diameter hand line and realizing that they had a lot of fire and we were trying to keep this fire small and from spreading the captain asked me to assist with water supply so based off of critical factors and the needs at the time the captain felt comfortable knowing me and my past and firefighting that i could accomplish that i also felt safe knowing that i could accomplish that task on my own and do it correctly it's super rare that i get involved in that kind of a capacity so i guess this day is just rare in more ways than one tom we're along the south platte river near bellevue and santa fe the grass here beside the trail caught fire and burned right up against this tree over here multiple fire engines responded out here and there were likely more firefighters here than were needed to put out this small fire but on a day like today fire crews are not taking any chances super windy super dry it's going to be over 80 degrees day on friday firefighters don't expect to sit still it's kind of a wait and see and hope for the best eric hurst is a public information officer with south metro fire it's probably seen a few hundred fires in its life so far he's documenting this red flag day for the department grass bushes trees all of those things are very receptive to fire growth on a day like today a spark is all it takes the probability that there's more than one fire that could occur today is pretty high a small grass fire near bellevue in santa fe didn't burn long because on red flag days south metro fire triples its normal response they send seven engines support vehicles and more than 30 firefighters but conditions on friday call for additional help we have actually up staffed two different wildland fire engines and two wildland supervisors to be in service and available for calls because we know that the risks are a lot higher today this is the first time in my career that i can recall a time outside of fourth of july where we've up staffed wildland fire engines precautions could spare april 22nd from becoming the next infamous date on the calendar it's easy to think back to december to the marshall fire on a day like today it's easy to think back to even cameron peak or east troublesome fires those are still fresh in everyone's minds as well firefighters don't know where friday will take them not all red flag days are created equally but they won't sit still for long today is about being prepared and being proactive instead of reactive to situations south metro fire responded to a couple other fires today one included a large trash fire in a parking lot near homes and highland ranch highlands ranch take a look south metro fire says that fire started in a garbage truck the driver dumped all of the trash from the truck in the parking lot in order to save the truck even in those high winds the crews were able to put out that fire and keep it from spreading on any other day a fire like that may not seem so serious but you mix in a burning piece of trash with these high winds and the dry fuels out here gosh that fire could have been so much worse tom well we're certainly hearing that uh the wind whipping through your microphone and you know how warm it is today a record-setting day temperature wise so warm outside and yeah when you bring that up just a little piece of anything uh we know there are some things they can prepare for and they can tell us all to do our own part but something like that they had to react quickly thank you this is the time of day when i would usually be heading home from the office but given the unique circumstances and watching some interesting clouds and dust uh streaming over the mountains and and over here in douglas county uh just kind of taking it all in and looking at things and seeing what the conditions are i'll probably start making my way home here pretty soon but i'm on call through the rest of tonight that means that i take this truck home and i'll be ready to respond at a moment's notice if something happens so we'll see what the rest of the evening and overnight brings good morning so i am in my home office today today is saturday last night after i went to sleep about 2 30 in the morning there was a structure fire text message that came out i checked the call notes listened to the call on the radio and it actually started as a vehicle fire while engine 21 was responding there were reports of numerous vehicles on fire in a commercial building parking lot so the response was upgraded to a reported structure fire to bring some additional units to help them with the multiple vehicles that were burning engine 21 got that fire under control very quickly there was no extension to any of the exposures so most of the incoming units were canceled and it turned out to be a call that pio didn't need to go to so i went back to sleep and woke up now on saturday morning so i'm on call for the rest of the weekend and what that looks like for me is that i can do the things that we all normally have to do run errands do things around the house but i'm held to a little bit of a time constraint if a call occurs so if i do get a request either from a journalist or there's an incident that i need to respond to i need to be responding to those within 10 minutes of the call and i need to be on scene within one hour of the incident so i live very close to our fire district i can usually get places within 30 minutes or less depending on where the call is but we're held to that our standard and that goes for pios and south metro's fire investigators because our investigators also end up being on call from home after business hours thank you for riding along with me yesterday i hope that the video gives you a better understanding of what public information officers at south metro fire rescue do beyond the youtube channel but hey since we're talking about youtube if you like the video give it a thumbs up if you haven't already subscribed to our channel please do that when we look at our analytics uh there's only maybe 20 of you that watch some of our day in the life videos that actually subscribe to the channel so do us a favor and subscribe leave your comments and questions down below and we'll catch you next time [Music] [Music] you

Channel: South Metro Fire Rescue Centennial, Colorado

Views: 197,150

Keywords: Eric Hurst, PIO, Public Information Officer, Ride along, a day in the life, media, news, journalist, career, smfr, south metro fire rescue, response video, social media, final cut, vlog, vlogger, behind the scenes, red flag warning, high wind warning, colorado, interview, Highlands Ranch, denver, aurora, greenwood village, cherry hills village, littleton, parker, lone tree, foxfield, castle pines, castle rock, douglas county, arapahoe county, jefferson county, incident command, emergency

Id: 8JSZc1a-9zc

Length: 24min 7sec (1447 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2022