Creating YouTube Fame- Eric Hurst

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Introduction  
Hi, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of during the batch podcast. I'm your host, Jerry Dean Lund. And I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode, so please hit that subscribe button. And while your phones out, please do me a favor and give us a review on iTunes or Apple podcasts. It says hey, this podcast has a great message and we should send it out to more people. So please take that 30 seconds to a minute to do that review. And just maybe by doing that, it will push this up into someone's podcast feed that really needs this message. Now let's jump into this next episode with my very special guest. 

Jerry D. Lund  
Okay. Welcome to Enduring the Badge, my very special guest today is Eric Hurst. How're you doing, Eric?

Eric Hurst  
I'm great. How are you today?

Jerry D. Lund  
I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm happy that we had this opportunity to talk today. We tried to another time and it didn't work, you know, lovely technology that we have. But I think it's gonna go well today.

Eric Hurst  
Yeah, fingers crossed technology's gonna be on our side today.

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, yeah. Eric, tell the audience a little bit about yourself.

Eric Hurst  
Sure, so, as you may see, behind me here, I'm I'm at work today, I'm a Public Information Officer at South Metro Fire Rescue. We cover 300 square miles just south of Denver, Colorado. And I've been doing that both in full time and part time capacity for about five years, six years. And then I spent the biggest chunk of my career in 911 communications. So 12 years of that, kind of working my way up the ladder in dispatch. And before I did that, I was a volunteer firefighter. And before I did that, I was an explorer. And before I did that, I was a kid on the street waving at fire trucks and annoying the crew at my local firehouse because I wanted nothing more than to be where those guys were. So a lifelong dream of mine that I'm really excited I get to kind of live out now. 

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool that you've decided at such a young age that you wanted to be a firefighter and to be a volunteer and explore part time, a full time like, you've kind of ran the gamut of no firefighting, when it comes to the way you can serve the public.

Eric Hurst  
Yeah, for sure, it gave me a unique perspective, you know, both lined firefighter perspective. And here on the Colorado Front Range, we get a lot of wildland, so both wildland and structural, and then the 911 side of things was really eye opening, and certainly got my skills dialed in on how to talk to people, especially in their their worst times. And I think a lot of those things prepared me more so for the PIO role. And of course, in my my private life, I had been doing photography for a long time. And I started blending photography into my fire service career as well. So yeah, all of those things just kind of came together at the right time and the right place to allow me to have the role that I have today, which is just, it's amazing.

Jerry D. Lund 
That's, that's awesome. That's awesome to hear. Let's talk about beam explorer, let's kind of run through your career a little bit, and we'll just maybe start being explorer. What age did you start that at?

Eric Hurst 
Yeah, so even before I was an explorer, I volunteered with the American Red Cross, my father was a disaster team captain, so I would go with him to a lot of the fires and help relocate people who had been displaced from their resident. And so sometimes that was a house or apartment fire. And then other times, it was large, wildland fires, where we'd have to set up shelters. So I already kind of had a foot in the door and had been going to fires and meeting a lot of the firefighters around here. And they're the ones who told me about the Explorer post, in Castle Rock, Colorado. So it's actually where I live today. And Castle Rock at the time was much smaller, three or four fire houses and combination paid volunteer department. So I got on there, pretty much like the day of my 14th birthday, which was the minimum age requirement that they had. And I immediately started training riping along. So really, really cool stuff. And back then they had lower staffing only only two people per engine company, so I explored, played a more active role than they do today. It was more like just a junior volunteer firefighter role. So tons of great experience and amazing mentors, a few of which I am lucky to spend time with even today as an adult. So those are lifelong bonds that I formed all the way back.

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, writing at such a young age on the fire apparatus, and helping people you know, through disasters and stuff that feels like that might be little, that's a lot for a 14 year old to handle.

Eric Hurst 
Yeah, I agree, I think, especially then, that was 1998 when I started doing that, and I don't think I heard like mental health as a phrase being mothered at all in a firehouse at that point, aside from perhaps some of the patients that we were responding to, but certainly not nothing from an introspective standpoint about maybe how we should be thinking about things or talking about things. And so yeah, I think from you know, the emotional baggage standpoint that a lot of us talk about, it certainly started back then for me, I was responding to fatal car accidents, cardiac arrests, overdoses, lots of scary things as a teenager that my dad used to joke was a Scared Straight program because it's truly what it was. I was like terrified to do anything, you know. did a lot of kids get their to do but at the same time? Yeah, there was a lot of baggage to carry around and following the the mentors, I had most of them put on a tough face and just kept going. And so that's, that's what I did because I was, you know, trying to mirror the behavior of the people that I respected.

Jerry D. Lund 
Right, right. That's it that makes that makes perfect sense. Did you feel that baggage at any point? Or was it just kind of, did it like slowly build up over the years?

Eric Hurst 
Um, yeah, I think it did. And it took a while for me to recognize, you know, the, the volunteer firefighter thing was tough too. Low staffing and a mostly rural area. Hellacious car accidents, lots of lots of big drama calls. And so that stuff started to build, but I think just I just kept pushing it down. And then, of course, years of 911, you know, you're picking up one phone with with one awful thing hanging up and going right to the next one. And there's not a lot of time built in there to even take a breath between some of those. And they started to wear on me for sure. And then there was a couple critical incidents that I responded to. And, and finally, it ended up catching up with me at one point. And that's when I realized I had some serious PTSD issues that I needed to deal with to be able to survive, quite frankly.

Jerry D. Lund 
Yeah, that's, I mean, I just, I just keep thinking back to that young age, when I look at my kids and how they would have handled, you know, that going on those type of calls and stuff like that, I think that they would be pretty traumatized for them, you know, to go through that. And then yeah, and then building that on top of, you know, being a dispatcher, like you said, your, I hadn't really thought of it too much before. And I know dispatch is super busy, and they're taking all police fire, all kinds of calls. But you're right. I mean, you can go from one critical incident to the next critical incident or phone call, should say and then you know, there is no time for you to breathe. So you're getting an actually a whole different side of the ring and more reps of that type of stuff in a day than we do out on, you know, on the line.

Eric Hurst 
Yeah, it's, it's tough. And where I dispatched, I started in a smaller dispatch center. So there's two of us doing fire and medical dispatching at a time and then went to a bigger Fire Department here at South Metro and we had more staffing, but especially in that shorter staffing environment, you know, one person's managing the radio, the other person's got to deal with all the phone calls, because both of you are are too busy doing your own thing. So it was hard for a partner on the radio to give you any kind of a break. And, yeah, you certainly felt that stress. I mean, I can, I can still hear some of those awful calls for, you know, you name it, the pediatric things, the miscarriages, the cardiac arrests from, you know, witnessed arrests, or people who just found someone that committed suicide. And all in all, it averaged out to be about between 1015100 911 calls a year is what I would answer over the course of that time. That's a lot of, you know, calls and granted it it does feel different than when you see it in person. But I think in some ways, it's worse because we tend to visualize the worst case scenario. I think that's even true for operations personnel, when we're responding to a call, when you hear information on the radio or read it on your MDT, you're kind of forming like that worst case picture, at least for me, most of the time, when I show up at a fire, I'm like, Oh, that's not as bad as like I was perceived to be. And so on the 911 call, you're kind of visioning like the worst possible thing, and rarely is there any closure, so you just connect the phone and sometimes you're lucky and get follow up. And maybe you had a positive impact and you know, helping with a core save with early arrival CPR, or something like that. But the vast majority of the time you hung up and just had no idea and move on to the next thing and try not to focus on it too much. But yeah, just like anything, it starts to add into that, you know, bucket of trauma, and some point, it's gonna start to overflow.

Jerry D. Lund 
Right? I think, you know, as a dispatcher in answering those phone calls and you're right there, you don't get a lot of follow up and a lot of closure. Even on the EMS side you know, we transport some of the hospital we don't generally get as much follow up as we probably would like, you know, as a call stack up and stuff and they're starting to be better about getting that information to us. But yeah, without that closure it I feel like it's a little bit more difficult to bear. You know, what's what's what you've just gone through with that person. Do you think far as being like, what did you do to end up like taking care of yourself or just your mental health?

Eric Hurst 
So our technology is failing us a little bit. Can you? 

Jerry D. Lund  
Oh, shoot. 

Eric Hurst  
Can you ask again the question. It was breaking up a little bit.

Jerry D. Lund  
Sorry about that. So the trauma, you know, how did you deal with that, then, you know, the trauma. How did you deal with that in a healthy mental health wise way? Or what did you do for therapy or?

Eric Hurst 
Um, so how I dealt with trauma, I think it was hard at first, and it was even hard to realize, you know that some of the symptoms that I was, you know, feeling were probably coming from that. For me it, it started off with nightmares that turned into night terrors, honestly, and I hated sleeping. And that was an awful experience. You know, I was I was turning to whatever I could turn to, to try and avoid those feelings and then went to an incident that involve the line of duty death of the sheriff's deputy and several other law enforcement officers that were shot, and ended up working in various capacities with the sheriff's department for a week long period leading up to the line of duty death funeral. And there wasn't a lot of time to process, anything that I had felt during that time, because it was just work mode. And I tried to disconnect like that, you know, the sixth or seventh day into it was finally like a day off for me. And I was like, I'm just gonna go down to an RV show, and just clear my mind and walk around. And I very swiftly ended up experiencing a panic attack in the middle of the convention center full of RVs, and like, total panic mode. My, my wife was with me, and I just told her, like, I got to find a wall. And I don't know where that came from, like, maybe back to just like the basics of firefighter training, if you're feeling lost for a wall, and like I, I had to get to a wall and like, I wanted my hand on the wall, and I found an exit needed to get out of there and had to start breathing and calm myself down and just felt awful. And I that that was kind of the moment, I'm like, I haven't been sleeping. And when I do, it's awful. And now this just happened to me, and I can't imagine what might be next. And so that's when I started to research EMDR therapy. And it was something that I had never heard of before. But I put a lot of faith in the person that I scheduled the appointment with. And I did it in secret, because even though my fire department was really good about offering employee assistance, peer support and all that I just felt ashamed at the time and felt like there was something wrong with me or that I would be seen as you know, too weak, or, or maybe my chiefs would question if I should be able to even do my job anymore. So paid out of pocket went in secret. And I was amazed at the results it it helped reduce all the symptoms that I was experiencing, and was truly a lifesaver. And I was able to pass on that suggestion to a few people who were having their own struggles. And I know for sure with one person, it directly affected them in a way that it saved their career, they had a call that was awful. And they were ready to hang their helmet up when they got back to the firehouse and EMDR is what got them to go back to work. So that really started me kind of on a on a healthier mental wellness journey. And I have Yeah, like just I can't thank the EMDR therapist enough for helping me out and getting me to a better place in life where now I can deal with things better anyway. But it certainly helped recover from all that repressed trauma.

Jerry D. Lund 
Yeah, I think it's it's such a good therapy, that's probably something I would recommend to make everybody do once a year don't wait. So something's bugging you just kind of help clean up things in your mind. And by doing it once a year. I mean, like it said, most of the agencies that you work for have different places where you can go to get help, like EMDR I think, you know, for me, it was it was kind of a game changer for me too. It made me feel a lot less anxiety or anxious. I don't really like those two words a little bit, but it just helped rewrite some of the things that you know, that was going on inside my head that probably even if you spill them out in regular talk therapy may not help. So on the after you were able to get out, get out of the you know, the RV show and everything like that. How long did it take you to feel like you had to get that help? Did you just know immediately and I'm like, I gotta get something scheduled to ace out?

Eric Hurst  
Um, that you broke up a little bit there. But can you read? Can you repeat the question just to make sure I get it right?

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah. far as you know, when you had that moment inside the RV show, how long after did it you know, did you decide I'm going to get therapy like I'm going to schedule that next week or did you still wait a little longer?

Eric Hurst  
So you know that it's kind of a it's an interesting story. So when I had the panic attack when I've been having the the night terrors that was actually after probably a few months after I had had suicidal ideation to the point that I had written a goodbye letter, and had chosen my method. And the only reason why I didn't do it that day is honestly because a fire happened. And I could hear the on scene radio report because I had a scanner on in my house, and then I looked out my back window, and I could see a smoke plume, and it snapped me out of it. But I went to that fire. And I think that was kind of that hard hitting moment where I like, I really wanted to ask for help, but in the people that I looked at there, I just didn't even know how to say it, you know, like, I was hurting, so bad inside and, and I, I should have done it, then I should have done it before then I had so many different opportunities and ways to reach out. And what's really sad is that in that moment, I got to a point of thinking like it could never life could never get any better life was meaningless. And you know that just that incident, kind of press the pause button on that emotion. And then the next like super traumatic thing I went to I found myself having a panic attack. And when that happened, that was, you know, finally I said, I can't clearly I can't live like this, like I almost took my own life anyway. But now life is becoming intolerable, just to do the basic things. And so after the panic attack that was right away when I found somebody to talk to you to do EMDR. And I'm grateful that I did like an online fillable form on her website, but she called me back in short order. And we quickly scheduled something and she checked in with me to make sure that I didn't need something immediately, Ben. And I think sometimes like our employee assistance programs, while they're well intentioned, some of them just, I feel personally, like they're not set up for emergency responders, because we're in this world where like, when people need help, they call it we're there. And I feel like we're built that way. So it's like, hey, I need help, like, I need help right this second. And so it sucks. If you have to send an email or like leave a voicemail, and you're like, left with this, well, I guess I can't get any help right now. And that's a bad place to be. And so I would say just like anybody that we would encounter on the street or whatever, you know, those first symptoms that start popping up where you're like, maybe something's going on, that's when you got to get the help and waiting is it's gonna not do you any favors whatsoever.

Jerry D. Lund 
Yeah, I couldn't imagine living through I've never had like, the night terrors or, or dreams type stuff like that before. I couldn't imagine going through that and not wanting to sleep and just become more tired, more tired, more tired. And for me, the more that the more tired I become, the less I'm able to handle things, you know, appropriately. How did it affect your wife?

Eric Hurst  
Um, you know, there was a lot of confusion there for her I think and what she could do to make anything better because I was confused about it, too. And it was hard. You know, I think even in that moment, I wasn't 100% sure why those things were happening to me. One of the big things in EMDR that I had to work through was a motor vehicle accident that I responded to. And it involved a battalion chief with my my fire department, who had been T-boned in an accident, was trapped for a short time in his vehicle, but was able to self extricate and the car that hit him had two critical patients inside, one of whom was unconscious. And so I at the time was in kind of a volunteer photographer role for the department. It was before I was a PIO and he had left the scene of a fire when that accident happened. And so the the area was already depleted, it was a two alarm fire. And when I heard the call go out, I ended up being the first person on scene and was there for what felt like forever alone. And the first transport unit that got there, I did exactly what any of us would do. And it's it's to triage appropriately in the appropriate triage was for them to take a civilian that had been injured in that crash away. And, you know, meanwhile, this this battalion chief was getting worse, you know, had a serious head injury and he's a person who I met when I was in elementary school, and we would visit at the fire station all the time as a kid and and, you know, kind of mentored me growing up and so there was this just horrible feeling of helplessness as you know, we were on this dark road in the middle of the night and waiting for help to come that felt like it took forever and, you know, out of that he was like the last person to get transported and, and wound up offline for quite a while after that head injury. And I had to go to work that morning into dispatch. And so you know, I went home, took a shower, got my uniform on, cried on the ride home, like I had to, I had to call his family and talk to his family on the phone and then, like I got to dispatch and immediately went in to take a 911 calls, there was just never this opportunity to even think about processing anything I didn't, at the time think, you know, Hey, maybe I should take a sick day today because I don't feel good from a mental standpoint, right? And like, for whatever reason, that just isn't in our playbook, right, we, if we woke up with a fever, vomiting or something, we'd be like, oh, man, I'm out, I can't work today. But then you go through something that rattling, you know, at such a deeply personal level. And for whatever reason, we we feel like we need to power through that. And so I held on to that for a long time. And that was the call that I had to work through most when I started in EMDR. And what I found that these nightmares, I would go to motor vehicle accidents that, you know, were were bad, but they weren't close to anything of the worst I'd ever seen. But that night when I attract sleep, it was the most awful horror movie I've ever been in surrounded by that like MVA scene, I mean, just the blood that gore the screams all of it. And it was rooted in that, you know, traffic accident that I went through with with a battalion chief years earlier. That just that's how it was coming out was in my sleep. Probably because I was ignoring it so much. When I was awake, it had to find a way out. So true, truly awful. And then yeah, I was afraid to sleep, I'd come home from something big and be like, I don't even I don't even want to lay down and close my eyes. Because it's going to be so bad when I wake up from this sweating. And with my heart pounding. Yeah, just awful. 

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, that's how we so hard to go through so many months of feeling like that and just have that weight, you know, on your shoulder and not being able to like find that pause button to take care of yourself. I think sometimes as first responders, right, we don't like to hit the pause button. And we just like you said, we just like to power through things. And that's, and that's not the healthy way for us to deal with it. I think, you know, like you said, Yeah, I mean, for totally sick are throwing up and everything like that. And the other we're not going to, we're going to call off work. But yeah, just as important, as are those mental health days that you have to take, you know, to give yourself a chance to work through through the traumas that you're seeing and different stuff. You think all those, like, being a PIO is kind of like a whole another level of gosh, just the way they are perspective, perspective on the way that you you look at things. I'm sure going, you know, going to these calls and these big fires and stuff like that. Is it, do you feel, do you feel then do you feel the stress and everything like that still as a PIO?

Eric Hurst  
Yeah, I think it comes in different levels and different circumstances. And there, there have been times and it's, you know, for anybody who might watch South metros YouTube channel, they've seen your first on scene of structure fires and experienced the stress of a first arriving person, you know, first arriving emergency responder, a fire scene and, you know, setting up a scene. And then there's the other side of things where it's just, you know, my job is to go to the worst of what happens for the most part, short of short of rescuing geese from storm drains and the occasional cat from or dog from under a porch. Right, which, that's a fun thing. And we need that. But, you know, a lot of times it's a plane crash and and people have been killed or drownings that are reservoirs to these house, you know, house fires where people are injured or killed. And so it is different, I certainly have more of a hands off. I you know, it's rare that I have hands on anything, but I'm there to capture it in photos and videos, you know, there's times where they need to move a body before the coroner can get there. So I'm, you know, I'm taking pictures of a dead body in some strange position that we got to get moved in. So it's just a different kind of trauma, I think. But it's absolutely there. And then, you know, the the sort of interesting thing about it is, of course, when it is those circumstances, I'm going to have to go on the news and tell the reporters about what's going on. And especially when when you're live. The pressure of that, at least for me is tremendous. And it's no big deal when I'm talking and I realized that it's a recorded video I do pretty good. But yeah, like my ID goes up considerably when especially there's multiple cameras, and it's a live interview. And there's a lot of stress there to say the right things and not get myself in trouble there. And I used to want to always be like super stoic and I've kind of changed that recently, after talking to a lot of the journalists who I'm friends with, and I'm not as afraid to show emotion and just be a lot more honest about you know, why I saw what I respond or saw and not pretend like it doesn't affect me. And I think that that's a good first start. Not only at a personal level, but for all the other people who certainly are community members. To understand, like, it's not a bunch of superheroes that are doing this stuff, it's average. It's average men and women who are doing incredible things every day and like they're feeling it. And and when they go to these awful things in the community, like the school shooting that we had a couple years ago that I was on scene of, like, that sucks. There's, there's parents who work on this fire department who had kids at that school. And so it's all of those things like, it's okay to make that real. It's okay to say like this, this is affecting us. This is really hard, you know, we're still doing the job. But I think embracing those feelings right off the bat is helpful for our for our own, you know, mental wellness.

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, no, I think that's, I think you're so spot on, I think showing some emotion is not a weakness, because we're not robots doing doing this job that, you know, like you said, we have, we can relate to, oftentimes we can relate to some of these calls that we're going and that are pediatrics or, you know, different things that were, you know, like at the school shooting, and I can't imagine being, like, on, on shift on a day that you have to respond to like the school, you know, where your kids are in for a shooting, and then, you know, try to be a great first responder, but also, you know, in your minds, they're still you're still thinking about your kids. And I think you have a very unique job as a PIO of painting that picture for the cameras of like, what happened? I think that would be incredibly difficult. I think that's a very unique talent that you have in doing that.

Eric Hurst 
Oh, yeah, thank you, I, I love the ability that I have to tell the story. And when I first started out, a lot of the training that I had was, you know more about press releases. And in the way that we speak in press conference, and press releases, it's generally just like the black and white of the incident, and it doesn't leave a lot of room for, for that storytelling. And I think that a lot of us from in the PIO world kind of missed the mark, when we're given these, you know, big stage opportunities to really say how it is. And so I try and represent the firefighters on my department the best I can and, and that's, you know, being in the moment with them and talking to them about what they saw and felt, you know, sometimes we don't have time for that before I have to go on camera. But however I can articulate whatever the experience is, I think it's really important for everybody to be able to, to see and truly understand that. Really, regardless of whatever the call is, most of the time, if I have to go talk on the news, it's because it's super unpleasant. And so it's, it's hard enough, and I don't want to embellish anything by any stretch. But I think just being honest, at least for me, personally has made a pretty big difference in how I walk away from some of those calls.

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, I mean, it's it, there's a lot of parts to this, this job where you don't like there's not a lot of celebrating in some of these highlights things that we feel doing in for yourself, you know, as a PIO, you probably don't get to share too many like great stories about the department and what they're doing. But you're far more often talking about, you know, the different things you've saw, or they responded to, I think that's that always will play a little bit harder role, I think far as mental health wise is just not, not traditionally, like we do we celebrate our own successes type of thing in the fire department very well. Let's talk about your YouTube channel that you have.

Eric Hurst  
Yes. So not, not long after I got on full time as a PIO, I kind of just did a strategy assessment on what I wanted to do. And notice that YouTube is really just statistically where all of our public safety agencies should be putting more time and effort into as a platform just based off of the audience and who's there and I have to credit a lot of my success to Miami Police Department and specifically Nick who, who ran their, their YouTube channel and still does amazing work there. He kind of inspired it. And I I kind of joke because when I look at their channel success, the like the two most popular videos that Miami Police Department made were about Miami Fire Rescue. So I have to throw a little shade there. But that was that was my inspiration. I'm like, Well, clearly people want to see more fire stuff. And so my boss, my chief officers were cautiously optimistic about it when we started it, because it's definitely a different way to tell a story. We're being super transparent. And there's a lot of keyboard safety officers and Incident Commanders out there and they are not shy about expressing their opinion and you, you have to be, you know, pretty patient and open minded and we've learned some things and also taking feedback and then at the same time, I often have to have to remind people that just because my fire department does something different doesn't mean we're right or wrong , we just do a difference. 
And yeah, you know, it works for us and whatever works for you works for you. But what it turned into is pretty dang cool. And we became the most followed fire department in the world on YouTube. You know, a lot of our videos have over a million views now. And we've got a worldwide fan base. And they're, they're sending us patches and T-shirts. And people come and stop by and visit while they're on vacation to visit the firehouses. And I presented at FDIC a couple years ago and had a kid chase me down the street in Indianapolis, because he had recognized me from the YouTube channel. So super cool. And it's a it's a really great ability to do some great outreach, especially to the younger generation. And I feel that, you know, that's, if I would have been able to grow up and watch my fire department on YouTube, I just, I would have been thrilled about that, to learn more and get a better idea about what's going on. So being able to inspire school, and then certainly there from a recruitment standpoint, it's awesome to reach so many people that are out there. So really, really awesome that I can combine my passion for the fire service with my passion for photography, geography, storytelling, and, and even more so that, you know, our staff, for the most part are like on board and want to play along. You know, they're not, they're not dreading it to the point where they're like, no, don't do this. You know, they feel the pressure, of course of being on camera, but the fact that they understand how important it is to so many people, and they're willing to play along with me is pretty cool.

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, most time, environment don't want to they won't do that, right? They don't wanna be on camera, they don't want get their picture taken none of those things. What makes that YouTube channel so unique compared to other Fire Department, YouTube channels?

Eric Hurst  
Yeah, so we we, we have a lot of different content. And a lot of it was driven kind of from our audience and what they wanted to see. But we do a monthly PIO which myself and the other PIO, talk about the major incidents that we have and show the body cam and dash cam from our firefighters doing the actual work first person and kind of explain it. More of a community perspective, it's not so much about strategy and tactics if you're a firefighter who watches it, but you can still gain that from watching. Our goal is community education and awareness for them. And a lot of our videos are actually taken off of YouTube and put on local government programming. So it's aired on like the local TV channels for our community members. That's kind of why they're built that way. But we do apparatus tours, we do station tours. And then we have a series called The Day in the Life. And that's where myself or another PIO will follow someone for their shift. And the most popular one is a day in the life of the firefighter followed firefighter named Justin the board on one of our ladder companies for a busy day. That videos almost 2 million views now. [Wow]. And it's just it's reached such a cool audience. And I think the difference for us is it's just authentic. Most fire departments when they create videos like that they want their crew members to be maybe abnormally prim and proper, it's not to say that I'm going to show something that's inappropriate, we all know that there's, among emergency responders, there's conversation that might happen that that's not meant for public years, but at the same time, we want to show the, exactly the emotions right like that. These are crew members that are family and they're going to have fun and they're going to laugh and joke. They're going to clean they're going to train, they're going to immediately switch into professional mode when they're responding to emergencies. And it's our it's just what South Metros culture is. And that's what I wanted to capture. You know, a lot of times guys are like, Oh, do I have to wear my, you know, my badge shirt for this and I'm like, wear whatever you would wear on a normal day. I'm gonna catch you know, and it's just those little things. You know, the fact that our we're in Colorado, it's cold, you know, our firefighters wear hoodies, that's a normal thing. And so it's that kind of thing. Like we don't want to pretend to be something we're not what we're showing people is just 100% authenticity if you stopped by the firehouse right now this is what you would see you know that and I think that's why people like it so much is it's just it's a lot more raw and the editing that we do well while there is a lot of editing and some effects there it's a lot more like an episode of cops than it is Chicago fire so to speak.

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, yeah, that's a that's something I'd much rather watch right you know, the cops version of the YouTube channel fire departments that have Chicago fire, but you know, that's just that's just me because I'm into that type of thing. I think it's just cool that you let the guys be you know, authentically them you know, like you said wearing a hoodie and doing these different things like that probably creates a whole lot more buy in from them when they, right, when they're like I don't have to go put my badge shirt on I can just wear my hoodie and and then probably just adds that layer of comfortability.

Eric Hurst  
Yeah, definitely. And that's the biggest thing I want them to feel as comfortable as they can possibly be doing it and I you know, just shot one last week, and that was more of a one on one it was with an EMS supervisor. And so it's just he and I, you know, in his F 150. And it's me following him with a camera for 24 hours. And that gets old fast. So the, the more that I can encourage somebody to like, just be them, try and do your best to forget about the camera as much as you can. That that definitely helps. And I think that shines through and, and, you know, my hope is for most of the people who watch it, they feel like there they are in the moment. You know, it's it's not that we're addressing a specific group of people. It's like, you know that the camera is the audience. And so you should hopefully feel like you're a part of his day you're riding shotgun with him for what he's seen. That that's kind of the goal of it. So it's, it's great that they play along with me for sure.

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah. How did you develop the knack for being such a good storyteller?

Eric Hurst  
Oh, man, I'm not sure I started doing still photography in high school. And I think that's where my composition came from. I was leaving a shift as a dispatcher, one morning, I'd worked graveyard shift and I was on my way home to my apartment to sleep. And nearby, there was a structure fire that went out at a nearby complex and it ended up going three alarms. And I got there pretty much at the same time as the first new engine and I rattled off a bunch of photos, and the department loved it and said, Hey, if you want to do this, you know, we'd be happy to like, give you a pager and you can do it. I'm dating myself by saying pages. But that led me to start a fire news blog. Although I'm not a part of it anymore. There's there's a website. Here in Colorado, it's called 52, at fire calm. And I just as a dispatcher started essentially doing PIO work on behalf of all these other departments that really, in my opinion, weren't doing anything to show the firefighting culture, show the fires that were happening the rigs or anything like that. So I had a lot of like practice just in doing the blog. 
And when I jumped into YouTube, I looked at some other successful bloggers out there, not only Miami PD channels, but like Casey Neistat, and a couple of like the forefathers of vlogging. And just tried to make a style. And I think that's a really cool thing about YouTube is you don't have to have any formalized training, like you can just do it and get better over time. And a lot of the audience feedback really just helped me improve and having to learn things like audio and lighting. And I still, you know, struggle a little bit with x. I've never had formal training, but it was awesome people, people love the content that I was giving them, and they're like, Hey, this is great. Did you ever think about doing X, Y, or Z in your next video, I'm like, Hey, that's a great idea. I'm going to do that next. And so really, the audience has helped us make it what it is, and then honestly, just YouTubing other things, you know, like the video editing software that I have, if I have a question about it, or how to do something, I just find somebody else's YouTube video to help me make better YouTube. So it's kind of like this machine that drives itself, but it's mostly self taught. And then Connor, who's our other full time PIO, she came from broadcast journalism, and has more formal training and actually made packages for television. So she's been a great help for me as well, to help me with technical aspects of thing. And then I feel like the storytelling just gets better because I'm more comfortable about it. Our crew members are more comfortable about it, understand what it is, and we just grow. So I think the good thing is, I feel like most of my videos improve every time. And I know that because I look at the old ones and cringe that there's a lot on YouTube and people are still watching them, but it's good. That's how we grow. Yeah, definitely.

Jerry D. Lund  
Do you ever think? Or feel like you're gonna run out of content?

Eric Hurst   
Sorry, I broke out there. Do I ever feel like what?

Jerry D. Lund    
Do you ever feel like you're gonna run out of ideas for content?

Eric Hurst    
Oh, man. So, not not really. One of the series is called Sweet Fight. And we like we do a an apparatus tour of a unique truck every time and we've done so many that now that's like kind of slim pickins there. But as far as like the the Day in the Life series, we've got a ton of ideas for that move before. So like we've done individual positions will broaden that firehouses. We've got some great ideas that are coming up here for the next fire academy that we have to show more of the process when candidates are coming in to do their oral boards and things like that. So really, we've already done one Academy series where we follow the Fire Academy. Every week as they went through it. This one's going to be told a little bit differently, I think a little bit more exciting this time. So we can kind of re engineer some of the things that we've done to just feel a lot different. And I think that's really cool too. And like who knows what the next idea might be that we come up with or that one of our audience members suggests so you know, some of our most popular other things were because that's what the people wanted to see. And I think that's what's really great. The fire service as a whole, I've, I continue to see articles out there where fire departments are frustrated because the community doesn't understand or maybe in general, fire departments are doing a bad job with community education, and here we are, like, people are literally begging us for content. When I when I post something, there's a bunch of questions, we do premieres on YouTube. So when a video airs, for the first time, there's a live chat, and especially like, on the day in the life, we'll have those 2000 people watching the Premiere Pro and chatting with us and asking questions. And so it's just it's so cool. And I feel like we'll never have a shortage of content just because of that the amount of questions that people have and, and what they want to see. It'll always give us something new to do and show them. 

Jerry D. Lund    
Yeah. Have you ever considered putting on a class to help these other fire departments maybe start capturing the culture of their fire department? And getting that out to the community?

Eric Hurst    
I'm sorry, I thought about doing that with fire departments?

Jerry D. Lund    
You ever thought about creating the class?

Eric Hurst    
Oh, yeah, yeah. So I've been lucky enough to present it FDIC a few times and have a few articles about social media that have been published in fire engineering. And then I have gone on tour a couple times where fire departments or some of the fools groups have organised a class where I've done presentations on how to do that. And, yeah, I think next step, rather than just kind of the more broad scale social media courses that I'll give, we'll probably start doing something more YouTube specific, the social media strategy Summit. That's something where it's mostly private sector, but they do have a public safety portion of that. And I was fortunate enough to be asked to give a YouTube class on that earlier this year, and I have one coming up in December. So I am doing that. Not as much as I used to. And I think that goes back to like, the whole mental health thing. Used to be all consuming for me that job even on my days off, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm taking a lot of joy and in like doing things not job related on my time off. So I'm, I'm carefully picking and choosing my opportunities when it comes to building presentations and taking time to teach. But I know the importance also of paying it forward to the fire service and bettering the fire service in general. And I don't take that lightly. But that's one of those areas where there's a delicate balance that I'm trying to try to maintain. So but I'm always happy to talk about the YouTube stuff, if anybody wants to contact me. I love talking shop about that, and sharing ideas and suggestions.

Jerry D. Lund   
That's awesome. I think another cool thing that you're doing that a lot of other fire departments are doing a very good job of, and that's, you're, you're capturing the culture, but you're, you know, logging it onto YouTube, where people will you're gonna be able to watch this for years and years, I look back at my fire career over 30 plus years. And I have just like a handful of pictures, you know, things that I've been involved in or done. And just be kind of nice to have like a little book like, oh, yeah, remember that call, you know, read that fire? Or, hey, let's check out this fire we had and watch it on YouTube.

Eric Hurst  
Yeah, so YouTube's a big part of that. We recently opened up our 30th firehouse last year. And that's what I told the crew, I wanted to spend the first 24 hours in the firehouse with them. And at first, they weren't too thrilled. And I said, Yeah, but imagine, you know, 10-20-30 however many years down the road, people are going to be able to watch this video and think what that would look like, today, if we were able to look at a firehouse that opened like in the 1970s in our fire district, but that would have been like, so that's super cool. And then I couldn't agree more about the photography. So we actually, south metro has a website that's called southmetro.photography. And that's where the PIOs when we go to incidents, put an entire photo gallery and and we even try and name tag on with our personnel. So when it comes time for somebody to retire, or not, you know, trying to dig through archives, we just we have so much content, and not only from the personal standpoint of people sharing that with their family, but certainly for training photos, or marketing photos, you name it. That's been a really cool thing that that department let me start up and has been an awesome benefit for us. And especially because I'm a photographer, like I couldn't love what I do more than be able to, you know, photograph our firefighters doing their thing. So yeah, it's awesome. It's a great resource to have for us.

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, you definitely landed in the right position. Been able to combine all those unique talents. Where can people find find you on Instagram and this amazing YouTube channel?

Eric Hurst  
Yeah, so YouTube, if you just look up South Metro Fire Rescue, you'll find the channel there and kind of explore what we have to offer @southmetropio is the official account for Instagram. And then Facebook and Twitter, Twitter, we do a bunch of breaking news on there. So if there's a, an incident, PIO responds to every working fire, and usually there's video or photos of that, in pretty short order once once we arrive. And then personally for me, I really only do Instagram, which is unique for PIOs. I feel like most of my PIO colleagues have branched out over everything. I just like, I just come for the photos and I don't want want the politics or anything else. So right @workingfirepio on Instagram, and that's where I share some of my professional stuff and some of my personal stuff. I am an avid storm chaser in the spring and summer. So if you want to see some severe weather photos or videos, they'll show up on there. Yeah, that's where you can find me.

Jerry D. Lund  
So this avid storm chaser is another another part of you, like, how did you get into doing that?

Eric Hurst  
I got into doing storm chasing. I was a big geek. And I used to watch like PBS programming as a kid for whatever reason. And I saw some videos from Oklahoma State University as a professor there that would go storm chasing for research projects. And I thought that was the coolest thing. And when I got old enough to drive and could take myself to storms, I started doing that. And I was absolutely terrified of both fire and tornadoes when I was a kid, and I guess it was just this, like, if I'm terrified. I'm terrified that I want to face it. So I went to some conventions and learn more about meteorology and, and have gotten progressively better forecasting, the older I get. And yeah, that is just my absolute favorite thing to do on on days off, is to chase severe weather. And surprisingly, Colorado and our Eastern Plains has a fair share of that. So it's, it's a cool place to be. And some days I'm lucky enough to, you know, catch a fire in the morning with tornado in the afternoon. So it lends for some good photography.

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, I bet I've always wanted to do some storm chasing myself. I just, I think it was just I think there might have been a show there was a TV show back on I think, I don't know, it's probably in the late 90s. Or, yeah, late 90s, or something mid 90s. There, there were the storm chasers and there was always like on TV and then show their different rigs and all the different cameras and how they're trying to you know, interject this different technologies into predicting the storms and stuff. And I thought it'd be such a cool thing to do. Do you have to just drive your standard vehicle or you have anything special that you do? Or?

Eric Hurst  
I have Yeah, I've driven a couple different things over the years. And now I've got a Jeep Wrangler. And I found that that's about the best because some of the roads that I end up on, aren't maintained by the counties that they're on. So pretty rough and having to go over rough terrain and do that quickly sometimes to maybe avoid something or catch up to something else. That's been the best ride that I have found so far. So we'll see if that evolves. But yeah, that the Jeep does pretty good. And it's pretty simple. Now with the apps that you can get on, on the cell phones, you don't need some of the technology that you needed when I first started doing this. So it's it's good. It's but it's just like anything, right? It's hard to believe so, yeah, gotta know what you're doing before you get into it too deep.

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, definitely. All right, Eric, before I let you go this evening, I have my one last question that I generally ask, and that's what impact do you want to make in the world?

Eric Hurst  
Yeah, I think that's an awesome question. And personally, and I think you've given me great opportunity even to do it here. And it's just the the normalization of mental wellness. And if I can impress impress upon people, the importance of it, and making it okay to talk about making it okay to feel understanding that like, it's okay not to be okay. And not be sure even what to do with that. But know that you can go and talk to people who can help you make sense of it is really important. And as a person who's been there and thinking like there's just it's not going to get better and it's time to end things. It does get better, whatever you're going through will will get better. And you just got to reach out for help and ask for it. I've I'm unique in the PIO world that I have got sleeve tattoos to and my most recent sleeve includes a lyric from a song called Tragedy + Time, and it's despite the overwhelming odds tomorrow, and some of that ties into emergency response, of course, because of the things that we see but more specifically, that's that is a mental health live. And that despite whatever overwhelming odds you may have tomorrow can come if you give it the opportunity. So I've got that tattooed on my forearm and I'm happy to have that conversation with anybody who knows this is it. And I'm happy to share that here and, and just encourage people to have that conversation with each other. You know, Robin Williams is a great example of what the face of a suicidal person can look like. And it's not easy to spot. And so I think a lot of us just need to have more kindness, and really take the time if you ask them to be out there doing to open yourself up to hear them out, you know, if they're not doing okay, or or really, maybe even dig a little deeper if they say they're okay, but you know, they're not, you know, don't let that go and, and let them know that there's somebody out there who cares about them.

Jerry D. Lund  
Yeah, no, I like that. And I think it's truly like you said, if you ask somebody, how they're feeling and stuff like that, you should make it a very big point to be present in that conversation, not distracted by other things, because they might say something or waiting for you to say something. And that is that timing to be there and be present in those conversations, I think, will allow others to be feel more comfortable about sharing what's going on in their lives when they're not feeling okay.

Eric Hurst  
Well, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And for me, I've tried to be more honest, even when when people ask me there, people kind of laugh, but there are days where somebody says, Hey, how you doing? And I say, Yeah, I'm pretty average. And they laugh, like, that's a joke. But no, it's like, it's an average day for me. And so I've tried to be even better myself. Just saying, if I'm not okay, be like, Yeah, I'm not that great. You know, and yeah, just making that normal for our conversation. You don't have to pretend so.

Jerry D. Lund  
Right, right. Instead of the casual conversation, everybody, I'm okay. Everybody's okay. Are we okay? Even when you're not okay. 

Eric Hurst  
Yeah, exactly. 

Jerry D. Lund  
Well, thank you, Eric, so much for being on today. I really appreciate it. And thank you so much for sharing your story, and your YouTube channel and everything. Please, everyone, go check out the information that Eric Hurst gave you the websites and Instagram because there's some great pictures and great videos there.

Eric Hurst  
Yeah, thank you so much for having me on today. I really appreciate the conversation. You're doing your job and always look forward to hearing more.

Jerry D. Lund  
All right. Yeah, me too. Thank you Eric.

Outro  
Thanks again for listening. Don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you access your podcasts. If you know someone that would be great on the show, please get a hold of our hosts Jerry Dean Lund through the Instagram handles @jerryfireandfuel or @enduringthebadgepodcast also by visiting the show's website, enduringthebadgepodcast.com for additional methods of contact and up to date information regarding the show. Remember the views and opinions expressed during the show. Solely represent those of our host and the current episode's guest/s.