The Leading in a Crisis Podcast

Hosted by Tom Mueller

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Latest episode

Jul 2026

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About the show

Interviews, stories and lessons learned from experienced crisis leaders. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com. Being an effective leader in a corporate or public crisis situation requires knowledge, tenacity, and influencing skills. Unfortunately, most of us don't get much training or real experience dealing with crisis situations. On this podcast, we will talk with people who have lived through major crisis events and we will tap their experience and stories from the front lines of crisis management. Your host, Tom Mueller, is a veteran crisis manager and trainer with more than 30 years in the corporate communications and crisis fields. Tom currently works as an executive coach and crisis trainer with WPNT Communications, and as a contract public information officer and trainer through his personal company, Tom Mueller Communications LLC. Your co-host, Marc Mullen, has over 20 years of experience as a communication strategist. He provides subject matter expertise in a number of communication specializations, including crisis communication plan development, response and recovery communications, emergency notifications and communications, organizational reviews, and after-action reports. He blogs at Blog | Marc Mullen Our goal is to help you grow your knowledge and awareness so you can be better prepared to lead should a major crisis threaten your organization. Music credit: Special thanks to Nick Longoria from Austin, Texas for creating the theme music for the podcast. #crisis #crisismanagement #crisiscomms #crisiscommunications #BusinessContinuity #LeadingThroughCrisis #CrisisResponse

Listen to episodes

60 recent

July 22, 2026Episode 8923 min

EP89 Feeding the political and media machines during a crisis, with Chief Craig Covey

Send us Fan Mail When 50,000 people are evacuated, the emergency is only half the fight, the other half is the information. We pick up our conversation with Orange County Fire Authority Division Chief Craig Covey, a veteran incident commander, to unpack what really happens when a major response collides with nonstop public demand, intense media pressure, and elected officials who want to lead the narrative for their communities. The result can be a messy communications environment where accuracy, timing, and trust are on the line. We talk candidly about the “joint, unified information pipeline” and why going off script creates confusion for residents and unnecessary friction for responders. Covey explains how cooperator meetings and direct conversations can reset expectations, protect city managers from surprises, and keep updates clear and consistent across multiple impacted jurisdictions. You’ll also hear a practical leadership move that turns political attention into operational advantage: tasking elected leaders to push emergency declarations quickly, delivering relief for residents and opening the door to state and federal resources if conditions worsen. The episode goes deep on modern crisis communications tools and threats: the value of a single crisis website or pre-built “dark site,” the challenge of fragmented city messaging and social media, and how AI can help teams publish faster in multiple languages across diverse communities. Then we hit the unnerving part, a deepfake video that made Covey appear to speak fluent Vietnamese using his own briefing footage, and what that implies for misinformation during disasters. If you care about emergency management, public information officer best practices, incident command leadership, or crisis communication strategy, this conversation is loaded with field-tested lessons. Subscribe, share this with your favorite PIO or IC, and leave a review, then tell us: what’s the hardest part of keeping one trusted message during a crisis? #emergencymanagement #crisismanagement #crisiscommunications #ocfa #publicinformation #PIO Support the show We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

July 22, 2026Episode 8827 min

EP88 Leadership, humility and tough decision making in a crisis, with Chief Craig Covey

Send us Fan Mail One call can reshape an entire weekend, a city’s sense of safety, and the credibility of the people in charge. I’m joined by Orange County Fire Authority Division 1 Chief Craig Covey, a veteran incident commander with 32 years in the fire service, to talk through what it really feels like to make an evacuation decision when the stakes are massive and the information is still developing. We walk through the Garden Grove GKN chemical release and the real-world pressures behind ordering an evacuation impacting 40,000 to 50,000 residents plus thousands of businesses. Chief Covey explains how he weighs intel, leans on hazmat experts, and makes peace with a hard truth in crisis management: you cannot judge the decision by the outcome. Protecting the community has to come first, even when the economic and political pressure is intense. We also get practical about crisis communications. Chief Covey shares why he chose to speak plainly, often without notes, and how “just tell them the truth” became a north star for public updates. We dig into the Public Information Officer partnership, the challenge of social media misinformation, and the balancing act between media briefings and the Incident Command System planning cycle so operations keep moving while the public stays informed. If you care about emergency management, public safety leadership, or crisis communication best practices, this conversation delivers grounded lessons you can apply. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more incident commanders and PIOs can find it. #emergencymanagement #crisismanagement #crisiscommunications #ocfa #publicinformation #PIO Support the show We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

June 21, 2026Episode 8730 min

EP87 Prioritizing video and social media - Orange County incident comms, Part 3

Send us Fan Mail When tens of thousands of people have to leave home over a chemical incident, the hardest part isn’t just operations, it’s keeping the public confidently informed while the story explodes across the news. We pick up our conversation with Greg Barta, Public Information Officer for Orange County Fire Authority, on what actually works when the phones won’t stop ringing and every word can move a community. We dig into OCFA’s crisis communication strategy on X, why it remains their primary channel, and how that choice serves two critical audiences at once: residents who need clear instructions and the media who amplify official updates. Greg shares how the team uses short incident commander video messages to “feed the beast” with accurate B roll and soundbites, while still carving out time for one off interviews with local affiliates and national outlets without pulling chiefs away from running unified command. We also get real about pressure points: a tiny on air wording slip that triggers hours of follow up, how media monitoring helps you spot problems fast, and why it’s better to admit uncertainty than to guess. Then we zoom out to crisis websites, the danger of information vacuums, and what it signals when a responsible company is largely invisible in public messaging. Along the way, Greg talks onboarding brand new PIOs mid crisis, choosing between specialists and well rounded reps, and the leadership support that makes timely, accurate updates possible. Subscribe for more crisis management lessons, share this with a communicator who needs it, and leave a review so more responders and leaders can find the show. #ocfa #gknaerospace #crisiscomms #crisiscommunications #PIO #gardengrove #emergencymanagement #orangecounty Support the show We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

June 21, 2026Episode 8618 min

EP86 Orange County black swan incident with PIO Greg Barta, Part 2

Send us Fan Mail When a chemical incident triggers the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents, communications stops being a “nice to have” and becomes operational. We’re back with Greg Barta, Public Information Officer for the Orange County Fire Authority, to dig into the nuts and bolts of crisis communication that most people never see: where to stage a press conference, how to set the tone, and the subtle skill of knowing when it’s time to end Q&A before it turns into a loop of repeats and rumors. We also get candid about staffing and endurance. Greg walks through how his incident management team scaled PIO coverage with a 24/7 posture, including clear assignments for on-camera interviews, a dedicated media phone line, and a rover role to absorb surges. If you’ve ever wondered how agencies keep messaging consistent across multiple shifts and multiple partner agencies, this is a practical look at building a battle rhythm that holds up after the chaotic first 24 to 48 hours. Then we zoom out to coordination: the interplay between the PIO shop and the liaison officer when elected officials are intensely engaged, and why a dedicated elected officials briefing can protect the core response while keeping leaders informed. On the public side, we talk community hotlines run through the Emergency Operations Center, the flood of social media comments and X direct messages, and what happens when “helpful suggestions” start clogging the system. If crisis management, emergency communications, media relations, and incident command are part of your world, you’ll leave with tactics you can apply immediately. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more crisis leaders can find the show. #ocfa #gknaerospace #crisiscomms #crisiscommunications #PIO #gardengrove #emergencymanagement #orangecounty Support the show We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

June 21, 2026Episode 8521 min

EP85 Orange County Fire PIO shares stories from mass evacuation incident, Part 1

Send us Fan Mail Imagine being PIO for an incident that includes the evacuation of 50,000 local residents and and a real threat of major explosion or chemical release that could cause massive damage to homes and businesses. That' black swan scenario is what PIO Greg Barta was facing with his team at Orange County Fire Authority this past Memorial Day weekend when a runaway chemical reaction threatened their community. Greg serves as lead Public Information Officer (PIO) for the Orange County Fire Authority and gives us an inside look at how the team organized and managed communications to local residents and media around this incident. We walk through what it looks like to staff up communications on a holiday weekend when you only have a few full time shift PIOs who just completed their PIO training the day before the incident. Talk about being tossed into the deep end of the pool! Greg shares with us his strategy for relying on videos and social media to communicate critical incident updates to the evacuated communities. This proved an effective strategy, largely owing to the communications skills and empathy of the incident commanders and fire chief who appeared in the videos. We also dig into the mechanics that keep a unified message intact: media advisories, daily talking points as living documents, and a fast approval loop with unified command so information moves quickly without getting sloppy. Finally, we talk media relations when the story goes national, reporters are clustered at the command post, and a press conference expands to nine speakers, plus the pre briefing steps that kept the event controlled and on message. This is part one of a multi part deep dive. Subscribe, share this with a communicator who needs it, and leave a review. #OCFA #gknaerospace #crisis comms #crisiscommunications #PIO #orangecounty #gardengrove Support the show We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

June 14, 2026Episode 8432 min

EP84 Using AI to prepare for crisis, with Clearline Crisis

Send us Fan Mail Most companies don’t fail a crisis because they lack smart people. They fail because the “plan” is a dusty document, the spokesperson is untested, and the first real coordination happens at 11:30 on a Sunday night. We sit down with Mitch Cohen, founder of ClearLine Crisis and a 25-year crisis communications veteran, to talk about what it takes to build real readiness before reputational risk turns into an enterprise-threatening event. We get specific about AI in crisis management: where it genuinely helps and where it can create dangerous false certainty. Mitch explains how ClearLine tackles the problem with two guardrail layers, a crisis communications doctrine that drives better decisions and a language layer designed to avoid generic AI voice. From there, we walk through how scenario planning questionnaires generate editable crisis playbooks across dozens of crisis types, and how audio-based spokesperson training can pressure test key messages with increasingly aggressive questions. Reach ClearLinecrisis at clearlinecrisis.com Support the show We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

June 7, 2026Episode 8318 min

EP83 Volunteer Turns Chaos Into Clarity With A Community Crisis Website

Send us Fan Mail Fifty thousand people evacuate, rumors fly, and the search for the latest information becomes frantic. During the Memorial Day weekend chemical incident in Orange County, California, residents in Garden Grove and Anaheim needed more than breaking news; they needed clear, trusted, practical directions they could use immediately. Enter Victor Tran, a 27-year-old web designer and software engineer who voluntarily created a crisis website to aggregate emergency information and updates. Through some busy and sleepless nights, Victor built it into a real-time resource hub for the community, including translations into seven languages, at ggspill.com. We unpack the crisis communications problem that shows up in almost every emergency: too many sources, too little time, and a constant drip of misinformation. Victor walks through how he vetted resources, organized essentials like food, transportation, housing, mutual aid, and services, and designed the site to reduce mental load for people who were displaced and exhausted. We also dig into how he pulled official updates from the Orange County Fire Authority into a single place so residents could keep situational awareness without chasing posts across platforms. Find Victor Tran on LinkedIn, or at his development site: https://victortran.dev/ #gknaerospace #orangecounty #ofca #gardengrove #crisiscommunications #crisismanagement Support the show We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

June 2, 2026Episode 8230 min

EP82 A Journalist's View - high stakes chemical leak and evacuation in Orange County, CA

Send us Fan Mail On this episode, we continue our review of the high-stakes incident and evacuation in Orange County, CA over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Some 50,000 residents were forced to flee their homes as a runaway thermal reaction built pressure and risk inside a local manufacturing facility. We're joined by journalist Alexandra Datig, who covers news issues in Southern California, and also runs her own news site, FrontPageIndex.com. Alex was on the scene as emergency responders worked to stop the runaway reaction taking place in a chemical storage tank located not far from the famed vacation destination of Disneyland. How well did emergency managers communicate the threats and requested evacuations to a population of 50,000 people? Alex walks us through her assessment of the communications response as she saw it over the course of six days. We take a detailed look at the real communications choices that helped keep people calm while responders worked through uncertainty, rising temperatures, and fears of a potential explosion tied to methyl methacrylate (MMA). Several community meetings were held during the incident. Did the responsible company, GKN Aerospace, participate in those meetings with local residents? Should they? We discuss those issues, along with the threats and upsides, of participating in a community meeting. You can reach Alex Datig at FrontPageIndex.com. #orangecounty #ocfa #emergencymanagement #crisiscommunication #gardengrove Support the show We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

May 30, 2026Episode 8128 min

EP81 Hot take: Orange County chemical incident - crisis communications review

Send us Fan Mail A storage tank starts heating up, pressure builds, and suddenly Orange County is staring down a worst-case scenario: a thermal runaway that could end in a catastrophic explosion or a dangerous vapor release. Over Memorial Day weekend, that risk forces rapidly changing evacuation decisions, including a massive evacuation affecting about 50,000 people in Garden Grove and Anaheim. We dig into the pieces that worked: frequent, casually shot video updates from incident command that let people see empathy and competence, clear plain-language explanations of what’s at stake, and strong public health framing from Orange County’s health officer, Dr. Regina Chinsio Kwong (Dr. CK), on what exposure could do and why the evacuation zone matters. We also look at smart distribution choices, like making “critical incident updates” easy to spot on social feeds, plus the later push to add multilingual subtitles, including Spanish and Vietnamese, using AI-assisted translation. Then we get into the complicated parts crisis leaders have to own. The company involved, GKN Aerospace, stays mostly invisible until late written statements, raising real questions about trust, accountability, and timing. A volunteer-built website becomes the best one-stop information hub, exposing the risks of not launching a unified command site quickly. And as the incident stretches on, lawsuits and town halls show up right on schedule, bringing emotion, politics, and safety concerns into the response environment. If you lead in emergency management, public information, or corporate crisis response, this is a practical playbook you can borrow from. Subscribe, share this with someone who handles high-stakes comms, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway. Resources mentioned in the podcast: ggcity.org/emergency - Garden Grove city emergency pages ggspill.com - Volunteer information website that provided valuable information #orangecounty #gknaerospace #crisiscommunications #emergencymanagement #emergencyresponse Support the show We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.

May 23, 2026Episode 8040 min

EP80 Dude! Where's my stuff? Managing Iran war supply chain disruptions

Send us Fan Mail As impacts from the war with Iran become more evident around the world, and more serious, we dive into how one highly experienced supply chain manager is managing the disruption. Hint, planning is key, but existing relationships (or lack thereof) with suppliers can play a significant role in your response. Jeff Zudock, a veteran of ExxonMobil and an expert in supply chain management and troubleshooting, shares his insight into how companies are handling this emerging crisis. More product shortages are likely in the coming months as material storage is drawn down and not replenished. What can you do about it? Jeff offers up his perspective for VPs and senior managers working these critical issues. We talk about why the Iran conflict is not just an “oil story,” but a transportation and capacity story, where vessels get trapped, lead times stretch, and costs surge even when material still exists somewhere in the world. Jeff explains how modern global supply chains depend on invisible feedstocks like methanol and other industrial chemicals, and why some specialized fuel additives are made by only a handful of producers across limited regions. From there, we zoom out to the management systems behind the scenes: just-in-time inventory, minimal safety stock, and the harsh math of rebalancing supply across oceans, rail, and truck when ships and containers are out of position. Jeff shares a practical crisis management approach for procurement leaders: map your gaps, set trigger points, segment customers, communicate early and often with suppliers, and empower the people closest to the work to run tactical solutions while leadership steers the longer-term plan. If you want a clearer view of supply chain risk, procurement strategy, and business continuity planning under real pressure, listen now. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review: what part of your supply chain would break first? Reach Jeff Zudock on LinkedIn here . #supplychain #iranwar #crisismanagement #procurement Support the show We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.