Workshop Description In this 30-minute interactive workshop, I’ll share frontline lessons from fire departments and public safety agencies—where I serve as Fire Captain and Public Information Officer (PIO) at the Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA)—during high-stakes emergencies of all kinds, and translate them directly to corporate crisis communications in 2026’s always-on digital world.
We’ll explore the memorable Ready, Set, Go! analogy for mastering crisis response:
- Ready: Proactive preparation long before trouble hits—pre-approved playbooks, designated teams, regular drills, and always-on monitoring to harden your organization against reputational threats.
- Set: Heightened awareness when early signals appear—activate the crisis team, gather facts, draft tailored messages, and establish clear triggers for escalation.
- Go!: Decisive, early action—issue unified, transparent first statements within the golden hour, prioritize empathy and stakeholder safety, use multi-channel dissemination (social, alerts, media), and focus on containment rather than waiting for perfection.
Key public-safety strategies include five adaptable tactics corporations can adopt:
- Unified messaging / single source of truth — Designate a clear lead (like a PIO, Communications Director, etc.) to ensure consistent facts and tone across all channels.
- Early and transparent updates — Share what is known, what isn’t, and next steps immediately to build credibility and reduce speculation.
- Multi-channel dissemination — Reach audiences where they are (social media, apps, alerts, briefings, traditional media) with simple, actionable info.
- Empathetic, human-centered tone — Lead with concern for people affected, avoid jargon, and acknowledge impacts to foster trust.
- Proactive monitoring and early intervention — Watch for emerging signals ("smoke signals") and address them swiftly to prevent escalation.
We’ll contrast agency successes with the 2025 Astronomer Inc. CEO/HR “kiss cam” scandal at a Coldplay concert (viral video exploded July 16, 2025; 48-hour silence fueled #AstronomerKissCam trends, power-dynamic backlash, CEO resignation, and lasting reputational damage). Attendees will have the ability to practice crafting golden-hour responses using the Ready, Set, Go! framework.
Why this topic matters and what attendees will walk away with Crisis communications remains a top priority for PR and comms professionals. In 2026, reputational threats ignite in minutes—viral videos, executive missteps, bot-amplified outrage—and traditional corporate responses often lag, allowing damage to spread. Fire and public safety agencies excel daily at turning chaos into coordinated trust through speed, clarity, empathy, and unity—principles every corporation needs now to protect brand value and stakeholder confidence.
Attendees will leave with:
- A clear Ready, Set, Go! blueprint incorporating the five adaptable public-safety tactics above for faster, more controlled responses.
- Golden-hour toolkit: Ready-to-use elements including:
- First-acknowledgment statement template (express concern, share verified facts, outline immediate/next steps).
- Holding statement variations for common scenarios (e.g., executive issue, product concern).
- Quick multi-channel checklist (social posts, employee alerts, media outreach).
- Empathy script starters (e.g., "We are deeply sorry for the impact..." + stakeholder support commitments).
- Fact-check/internal alignment one-pager to ensure accuracy before release.
- Real-world contrasts: agency wins (transparent updates reducing fear and panic) vs. failures (Astronomer’s delay enabling endless speculation and leadership fallout).
- Personalized crisis playbook: A customizable, ready-to-adapt framework attendees can fill in for their organization, including:
- Monitoring triggers — 5–8 specific "smoke signals" and thresholds (e.g., sentiment spike >30% in 1 hour, viral hashtag >10K mentions) to activate "Set" mode.
- Simulation ideas — 3–5 quick tabletop scenarios (e.g., off-hours viral executive video) with debrief prompts for quarterly drills.
- Escalation protocols — Decision tree, contact list (C-suite, legal, HR), approval chain, and "Go!" activation criteria.
- Post-crisis steps — After-action review template, trust-rebuild actions (follow-up updates, stakeholder outreach), and recovery metrics (sentiment trend, NPS). This outline turns the Ready, Set, Go! framework into an actionable, living document—implementable immediately for scandals, outages, or breaches.
About the speaker:
I’m Greg Barta, Fire Captain and Public Information Officer at the Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA) in Orange County, California where I manage crisis communications for over 1 million residents across 23 cities and unincorporated areas. With 20 years in public safety, I serve as PIO (The Face of the Organization), leading real-time messaging, facilitating interagency communications, and monitoring public sentiment during major incidents (such as OCFA’s 183,000+ responses in 2025).
Our OCFA social media channels reach a combined audience of over 220,000 followers (Instagram: 100,000+, Facebook: 114,000+, X: 104,000+, LinkedIn: 5,500+), allowing us to deliver timely safety information and emergency updates to a wide community.
Over the course of my career, I have managed countless crisis responses from major wildfires where homes and communities have been lost, to line-of-duty injuries and deaths of firefighters, to high-profile national news stories that demanded rapid, transparent, and unified communication under intense scrutiny.
My daily experience in public safety chaos—coordinating unified messaging under pressure, delivering transparent updates to diverse audiences, and bridging frontline tactics with community trust gives me a unique perspective on crisis communications that translates directly to the corporate world. I’ve spent years adapting emergency principles to help organizations prepare for, respond to, and recover from reputational threats. This combination of authentic firefighter/PIO expertise, hands-on incident management across life-and-death scenarios, and a passion for making complex crisis strategies practical and actionable makes me the ideal person to lead this workshop and deliver immediately useful insights to PR and comms professionals.