Each year our Department visits the Suffolk County Fire Academy to attend a lecture and do hands on work in the techniques needed to battle fires and incidents involving flammable gas and liquids.

I always enjoy this drill both as a firefighter and a PIO. Quite frankly the hands on portion, as any of you who has taken this kind of training know is quite spectacular as LP gas creates a pretty intense fireball.

As a PIO I look forward to the drill because I get some pretty neat pictures when I am not involved in an evolution and I get plenty of food for thought on how I can let the public know about flammable gas safety.

One of the facts that the public always finds interesting is that natural gas has no odor. The actual smell of the gas is created by a substance called mercaptan that creates the rotten egg odor to warn of potential danger.

Prior to substances like mercaptan natural gas explosions came without warning.

If I had an unlimited public information budget I would try to mirror the creative natural gas safety promotion undertaken by Puget Sound Energy.

The Washington State energy giant, much like stores used to do when they put a perfume sample in with a bill or direct mail piece, infused invoice contents with a scratch off that mirrors the odor of rotten eggs.

I spoke to a buddy in Washington who told me about the mailing and said that the odor after the scratch off was effective but not sickening to smell.

Kudos to Puget Sound Energy for this effect community outreach and safety program.

Here is a copy of the pamphlet

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When I departed Long Island for Las Vegas a few days ago I noticed that the TSA was profiling blue hair. Oh I understand everyone is on edge with recent breeches, put this was the definitive example of perhaps spending too much time on the wrong person.

The older women in question seemed to be wearing a pretty complex shoe. I would assume it was orthopedic in nature. After running them through the scan twice, they took the elderly women aside to continue their search and interrogation. I moved on and went to my gate. About 15 minutes later the same women shuffled to my gate. That was a twenty minute search overall of someone that has probably made nothing more complex in her life than an apple pie.

Let me state for the record that the TSA can scan my bags, make me walk through an X-ray machine, and even force me to show up a few minutes earlier if it means I’m going to be just a little bit safer in the air.

Most people though see little rhyme or reason behind TSA methods. I decided to scan and frisk the TSA online to see if they should be taken off a flight.

The TSA would be wise to spend a couple dollars (we know the airlines have it thanks to those checked baggage fees) towards a short-term PR campaign to turn a negative situation into, at the very least, a neutral one. There message is bland, boring and longwinded. Although it appears they mean well from a public relations/social media standpoint -

Here Are My Top Four PIO Things the TSA Should Do Immediately:

1. Stop sending canned messages on Twitter. Customize. Personalize. Incentivize.
2. Create video’s that inspire us, not ones that put us to sleep: http://www.youtube.com/user/TSAHQpublicaffairs
3. Put faces to go with the names on your blog (tsa.gov/blog). I want to know exactly who is communicating the messages you put out there. Ditto Twitter.
4. Clean up your Web site. Way too many links and tabs. One word. Simplify.

What would you add to this list? Would love to hear your thoughts!

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During my quick trip to Las Vegas, I’m glad someone was on fire watch at The Fire PIO desk.  I want to thank Bill Carey at Fire EMS Blogs who does such fantastic work managing these blogs as well as well as websites for  FirefighterNation.com/ Fire Rescue Magazine /JEMS.connect/JEMS.com LawOfficerConnect/LawOfficer.com.

The first piece Bill brought to my attention was written by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post. It is about stressed newroom budgets and how reporters must multi task to get a story out.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/07/AR2010030702506.html?sub=AR

The second piece is about a great public information partnership between the Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department and Metro bus.

http://pgfdpio.blogspot.com/2010/03/pgfd-pepco-and-metro-partner-for-fire.html

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This television PSA is from Great Britain. “Embrace Life” is an extremely creative and well done commercial about the importance of seat belts. It’s free to share on YouTube.   

I am going to place it on the Department’s YouTube page as well as feature it on our website with statistics about seat belt use and safety.

The PSA was produced by the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership. The SSRP runs a wide range of campaigns throughout the year to raise awareness of road safety issues throughout the Sussex community.

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