Nuanced. - Inside FortisBC: The Safety Secrets Behind Your Natural Gas

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Public Safety Manager Ada Nadison from FortisBC joins to unpack gas safety, wildfire response, emergency planning, invisible infrastructure, and how behind-the-scenes systems keep your home safe and resilient with host Aaron Pete. FORTISBC:https://www.fortisbc.com/Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

My name is Adan Addison and I'm the public safety manager at Fortis BC. Electricity actually scares me. Way more than gas does because you can't give it a smell, you can't see it. What is the safety culture at Fortis BC? You can't operate a utility company without safety just being at the core of every level of what we do. You don't want to be the person that didn't do your due diligence and didn't get information and ending up, you know, hitting a gas line that is providing power to the local, like, hospital or the local elementary school or a care home or a nursing home. What do you think would be important for people listening to this to understand about safety?

When we think of wildfires that are becoming very calm in place, how do municipalities and indigenous communities respond to this? The more education we can do and the more just little reminders that we can throw into their daily life, it's just a little action that they can do daily to build that habit. How do you make sure that indigenous communities are supported with some of this important safety training? Ada, thank you so much for being willing to join us today. Would you mind first introducing yourself? Thanks, Erin. Yeah, my name is Ada Nattison, and I'm the Public Safety Manager. at Fortis, BC. Thanks for having me.

It's my pleasure. Are you able to walk us through a bit about the work that you do in relation to Fortis BC? Yeah, you bet. So, you know, when you think about safety at a company, especially with a utility company where we have customers, I would kind of break it down into two pieces of safety. So there's the safety of all the staff that work at Fortis and making sure they're following all the safe work procedures. So that's like occupational health and safety.

So I'd say that that's a different role with regards to safety. And then there's the safety of all the individuals that interact with their infrastructure that don't work for the company. So the general public, contractors, first responders. So my position is to support the safety programs of everybody outside of Fortis. What do you think people should understand about that area specifically? Utilities are one of those things that people use on a daily basis, but they don't really understand kind of where it come from and how it works. it's a really interesting field because it's an opportunity to educate people on a resource

that essentially helps their daily lives function on a daily basis. I find that really interesting, and I've spoken in the previous interviews about this, that it's such a need to have natural gas in communities, in homes during winter. Most people end up having severe health issues, if not passing away, during cold spells, not during heat spills to the same extent. And so it is an incredibly important piece of infrastructure that supports people in living their lives. How have you reflected on that throughout your work

and understanding how big a role this plays in people's day-to-day lives that they don't always recognize is so crucial? I'm just going to do a bit of my background, I guess. So I spent many years working for 911, so just public safety and working in a field that protects the public interest has always been a big passion for mine. So, you know, working in 911 and whenever there's a major incident,

part of the decision-making that we do is to look at the critical infrastructure that's in place in a certain community and how that's going to impact how things go. I also worked in emergency management for several years as well, which is where critical infrastructure is also a huge part of that industry. So just kind of through my career trajectory and just seeing the importance of things like utilities and hospitals and care centers and how they play. a huge role in supporting the community and making sure the community can just function as it is made me very passionate about moving towards working in the utilities industry and then doing the

public safety. Right. Where did that come from for you? What specifically? Being interested in public safety and emergency management and caring about those types of things. I've always been a pretty empathetic person and it's really important for me to do something with my life where I wake up every morning and I feel like what I'm doing contributes to society in some way.

even as a kid. So it just, it was a natural fit for me. When I went to school, I chose a degree in criminology. I got my certificate in police studies, and then I also got another certificate in emergency management. So I just need to feel like I'm doing good every day. That's just very important to who I am as a person. Is there anything, like an experience you had, like calling 911,

where they played some sort of role, or were your parents really involved in safety and community? Like, where do you think the impetus was to go down that path? That's such an interesting question. I've never been asked that before. If, when I think about it, my dad's always been, like, a stickler for safety. He actually works for WorkSafeC, and he's an incident investigator, and he did a lot of jobs in occupational health and safety, too. So I think that safety culture was just in my home growing up and just making sure, you know, he was the type of person that made sure things were put away in the right place because anything, accidents can happen.

And so I think as a kid I was just exposed to just being safe and it just trickled into my adulthood. Yeah, because one thing that you said I really liked and it was that like there should be a certain amount of being able to live your day-to-day life and not have to worry about these things. And that's a really interesting comment because like I keep looking at it from this perspective of like, oh, there's these things that like plays such a crucial role in our life and we don't understand them. And your point is well taken that like that's an important piece of like. like a healthy civilization that we can trust that people are managing it. I was just walking through my community and they're doing like research on the bugs in the area. And I was like, well, I'm glad somebody's thinking about that because I'm certainly not thinking

about that. And knowing that there's somebody behind the scenes managing these things, we often hear about being proactive and being reactive and the goal is always to be more proactive than reactive. How does that play a role in safety from your perspective? So it's really interesting talking about when you were just mentioning how there are people that are essentially working behind the scenes to make sure things are safe and operating well. There's really two pieces to safety, and I've noticed this.

This is something I'd like to, a culture I like to shift, I think, in BC for me personally. So there is, because we live in a generally, like, privileged society, people go about their daily lives, not really worrying about, like, we don't have war and we don't have, you know, like extreme poverty, like some other places of the world. So people don't think about the things they need to do to keep, themselves alive, right? Generally, there's a culture in BC where individuals reply very heavily on authoritative or governing bodies to take care of them, right?

But there's also a piece that's missing where there's an onus on personal preparedness because when something big happens, these resources are going to prioritize vulnerable communities, vulnerable populations, and then the average person is going to be very low on the, you know, on the lesser priorities. But the average person thinks that or is relying on these agencies or these bodies to come in and save the day. So things take longer. So to have a really healthy community, I think people really need to focus on knowing what they need to do to keep themselves safe. Often when it comes to emergency situations, the first responders are actually your neighbors.

It's not a first responder, right? Because they have to get to you first, right? So the person that lives next door, you know, your friends and your family, those are the people that need to be able to, be self-sufficient and resilient enough to take care of each other until that professional help comes if they can even get there. So with our public safety program at Fortis, you know, there's a huge emphasis on education and just making sure our customers are aware of, you know, some of the risks associated with the utility. It's a very safe utility, but nothing is 100% foolproof. So we want to make sure they understand, you know, where things can go wrong, how to identify

issues, and then be able to take the correct actions and steps to keep themselves and their neighbors and their community safe. And then in the event that these things don't all work out, then that's when the professionals come in, whether it be our technicians or the first responders, depending on what the incident is. So that's a long-winded answer. Yeah, no, it's a really good answer

because we had the 2021 atmosphere river. And I think for a period, that woke a lot of people up because all of a sudden two in the morning, people are sandbagging a dike to try and stop it from breaking, and the community's coming together to try and address things. But for a period of time, Chiluac was very close to being an island, and so was hope, and we're not as prepared as I think we should be. But then once the incident is over, it seems like we kind of go back to normal.

And we kind of, like, everybody knows you're supposed to have, like, three days worth of food or something like that. Minimum. Minimum, yeah. And yet, like, if you do go into most people's homes, do they actually have that? Is it expired? Are they maintaining it? Does it seem like kind of a luxury to buy those things? I think it often does for people. So what are some of the barriers you see to getting people to,

take an interest in getting educated and be the individuals that are prepared? I think it's a human nature thing. People have, especially in today's society where, you know, like cost of living is high, stress is high, you know, almost everybody in the family has to work to, you know, to make ends meet. There's limited capacity for what they're going to focus on and prioritize, and your day-to-day living is always going to take priority over something that might potentially happen in the future and you don't know if it's going to.

So that's definitely the struggle that I find with safety. Because safety is just something I think about on a daily basis, it's always on the forefront of my mind. But it's not going to be something that's in the forefront of the average person's mind. They have to worry about their kids, their job, all these other things, safety kind of comes down at the bottom. So the more education we can do and the more just little reminders that we can throw into their kind of their daily life to just, and it doesn't have to be something so big or an overhaul of their life. It's just a little action that they can do daily to build that habit. I think that safety mindset is a is a habit that you have to build and it's in little things like

it's it doesn't necessarily have to be as as tangible as like putting together like your kit but it's um you know like like wearing a seatbelt right people never wore seatbelt before and then you just slowly you enforce kind of a regulation and then becomes a habit and now almost nobody would get into a car without putting a seatbelt on so yeah if we can zoom out what are the larger scale safety concerns that you have to look over and monitor, what are, when we're thinking about the infrastructure of Fortis and these big tank systems and everything going on and all of it going into people's homes, how does that all function? And what are some of the safety concerns at a high level that are concerns? Yeah, so it's a pretty, it's a pretty kind of

complex process or map. So when it comes to our infrastructure, we have a really amazing engineering operations team that are responsible for maintaining the integrity of our infrastructure. So that's outside of my particular role, but I work very closely with them in terms of just figuring out how I can communicate any important information on their end to the general public. So they do regular checks. They survey for gas leaks. For our high pressure systems, we even have helicopters that will do aerial patrols to identify any unauthorized activity along our pipelines. So that's something that happens on a daily basis on that side. And then there's the education for individuals that will interact with their infrastructure, which is what I

focus very heavily on. So we have our customers and homeowners that are gas and electric customers, so any safety they need to know around having those utilities in their home. There are professionals that work around our infrastructure, so excavators, construction workers, landscapers that might dig around a gas line or do work around a power line. They need education on how to do that work safely around a utility. And then there's also first responders that might respond to an incident if there is an incident with whatever utilities. So, you know, a downed power line, what's the safe way for a police officer or a firefighter to respond to an electric hazard or a gas leak? So that everybody goes home at the end

of the day. Interesting. Are you able to walk us through at a high level, how some of those things would be approached or communicated out in regards to gas leaks and down power lines? Yeah. So for gas leaks, for like a residential customer or the general public or community, there's the kind of the basic safety messaging. So what natural gas smells like. Well, natural gas actually doesn't have a smell. We put a couple. We add a smell. Yeah, it's called Merkaptin. So it's that rotten egg smell that you hear about, you know, as a kid. So just that education going out. If you smell that, it means there's a natural gas leak. And then, you know, make sure you leave the area that you're in because gas can displace oxygen. And then it would lead to suffixation. So just that general messaging. So, you know, get out, call 911, call the Fortis BC Emergency Line. So there's that piece.

And then there's the education piece around any kind of digging or ground disturbance where there is gas. So our infrastructure runs everywhere. Like, it is all over the community. So we have a big campaign for the BC One Call. I don't know if you've heard of BC One Call. Yeah, but it's a free provincial service where if anyone is planning to do any kind of disturbance to the ground, they can go to their website or call that number. And BC1 Call is essentially like this company or this nonprofit organization that has different utilities that are members of it.

So, for example, if you want to do work in your yard, you go to that website and you highlight an area on the map with where you want to do work. BC1 Call will have that information and go, okay, well, in this space, there's Fortis Gas, there's BC Hydro, there's sewage, there's sewage, There's telecommunications. So it sends a message out to all the different utilities that own infrastructure in that space. And then it's the responsibility of each utility to send a map of where their infrastructure is to whoever requested the locate information from BC1 call. So we send them a map of where our gas lines are. The map has instructions on how to dig in a safe way so that you don't hit a gas line.

And that's a huge piece of our campaign as well. So that goes out to homeowners and professionals, like construction workers that do work. But you're saying that's a separate company. I didn't know that. I always assumed, because it's a call before you dig, I always assumed that that was like an arm of Fortis or something. You're saying that's a separate organization. It's a separate entity.

It's not for profit. Yeah, and different municipalities, different utilities are all members of it. How long does it take to get all of that information? You should put in your request about three business states. before you start. So Fortis has a really fast turnaround time. We will usually get you the map within three days. Wow.

That's a lot of information because you have to think there's construction going on every day across all of British Columbia and obviously across Canada, but like across British Columbia where people would be making that call and asking for that information. Yeah, and it's a legal requirement too for construction workers. Like if you're doing any kind of, the minute you put something in the ground, you're not allowed to do that before you do your one call and you get that mapping information for all the different utilities that are that are there. Interesting. So it's now click and call before, or click or call before you dig. So you're able to request that online now? Yes. Most people do it

online now. I mean, with, you know, with the shift in technology, it used to be phone calls, but now everyone likes to go on a computer and just type in what you need to do. And submit that information. That's awesome. What do you think would be important for people listening to this to understand about safety in regards to their home and how they operate with gas lines? So the underground utility infrastructure highway, I guess, literally makes your community function. And you don't want to be the person that didn't do your due diligence and didn't get information and then ending up, you know, hitting a gas line that maybe is providing power to the local like hospital or the local elementary school or a care home or nursing home.

You don't know where these lines go and what buildings. they're feeding, and the response to repair a line can take hours. So depending on the time of year too, like if it's a very cold time of year or a very hot time of year where they're relying on it for cooling, I mean, you just don't want to, you know, you're doing it for the safety of yourself, but also for the safety of your community. I think there's a civilian, like, responsibility there to, you know, follow safe procedures whenever they're doing any kind of work around utility infrastructure. Right. The other piece I wanted to ask about was in regards to to indigenous communities? Because one thing I've just noticed working with my community is that

some contractors haven't followed BC code, BC building code, and municipal code on developments. How do you make sure that indigenous communities are supported with some of this important safety training? That's a great question. So part of my program is to provide free training to professionals that do any kind of ground disturbance. So I work really closely with a colleague in the damage prevention sphere at Fortis, and that department has a lot of data in terms of the different areas within our service territory

that see an increase in damages to our infrastructure. So every year we kind of look at that data, we try and figure out what communities need the most support, and then we put on a free session in that community that anybody can come and attend, including indigenous communities and indigenous contractors. I've also, I mentioned to you earlier that I'm about 11 months into this role, so it's still kind of building the program. But I've looked into different associations that indigenous contractors are a part of.

So my plan for next year is to reach out to some of these associations and host indigenous specific training sessions as well. So indigenous contractor specific training sessions. Interesting. I'm wondering if we can stay on that line of thinking, when we think of why, wildfires that are becoming very commonplace. How do municipalities and indigenous communities respond to this with gas lines in the area? What does that look like? So it's very much like a collaborative effort.

Like when there's a wildfire emergency professionals will meet, you know, regularly through, whether it be through like an emergency operation center or regular coordination call meetings. So we have a team at Fortis that is the community indigenous relations team as well. So in the event of an act of wildfire, there would be a representative from Fortis Emergency Management, someone from our community and religious relations team, someone from the local band or whoever's responsible for emergency management for that community, as well as somebody from like the local authority, so the city where the wildfire might be and the BC Wildfire Service. So there's a lot of coordination and communication that happens during response.

to an incident, and that conversation happens to make us, to help us determine maybe areas of priority where we should turn off gas or, or evacuate. But Fortis doesn't do the evacuation, but we are a part of the conversation so that we know what areas might be evacuated so that we would have to shut off power or gas to those areas. Is that relatively easy to do to go, like, okay, this area is like a wildfire setting this way, just switch it off? Like, is that, that sounds simple, but is it more complex? complicated behind the scenes to...

We have a pretty impressive, kind of like, what's the word I'm looking for? Like, we have a room with all these monitors, that monitors, like, the pressure of the gas in our different lines throughout the province. Like, our technology is pretty impressive. Like, turning off the power is way easier than turning it back on. Oh, okay. Yeah, because when you turn it back on, we have to go and actually assess our infrastructure to make sure that it's not damaged and it's safe. and there's like the physical relighting of our gas. Yeah, but turning it off is easy.

Turning it off is easy. Can you walk me through a little bit more of the turning it back on process? Because that seems really interesting that that's actually one of the challenges. Because you have to relight. So we have to go to every residence that has gas. And we have to, our technician has to go and actually relight the gas and make sure, like, the meter is not compromised. It's in good condition. So, yeah, and there's no leaking or anything like that.

So it takes hours, like depending on. on how many customers are without gas, it can take a long time for... If you have like $2,000, $10,000, if you have a whole city that's being impacted by a wildfire, that's a lot of manpower. It is a lot of manpower, and, I mean, it's not just the re-lighting, but it's also making sure that infrastructure is still in good shape, right? Like, nothing needs to be replaced, and... How does that work when they're underground?

Like, what's the... We dig it out. You have to dig it up? Yeah. I would imagine, in some cases, you would be able to, I don't know, how would you double-check? Because you couldn't, for like, say, a whole subdivision is without, how would you check every home? So our system can also detect where there's leaks, you know, if the pressure has changed, because all our pipes run under different pressure depending if it's a distribution pipe

or a transmission high-pressure pipe. So we know what pressure the gas is supposed to be flowing within these pipes. So we have technology that monitors that pressure. We also have really sensitive methane detectors that can detectors, like, if there's gas. gas coming out of the ground where it shouldn't be because it should be sealed in the pipe. So we have a whole bunch of kind of engineering technology to figure out if things are functioning as they should. And then if we come into an area where it's like, okay, our detectors detecting, like gas, like leaking, then we'll, you know, we might have to shut it down,

dig a hole, repair chunks of the pipe that might be compromised. And so there's, yeah, there's a whole team that does that. If I had to guess, I feel like a lot more people are more, more understanding. of BC Hydro because it's on its face makes sense. Like we all learned about like hydroelectric dams when we were a kid or got to go see one. So it's more, I think, commonly known. And it's visual.

Yeah. It's above ground, right? Exactly. Whereas natural gas is often, I feel like even I don't fully understand it because it's out of sight, out of mind. We're the invisible heroes. Exactly. So can you walk us through?

Like, I feel like I would think that natural gas. is less safe because I understand it less. That doesn't mean it is less safe. It's just my ability to comprehend the safety process for that would be lower. Obviously, when you drive past like a hydro line that's down, you know danger. And so I'm wondering is that when you came into Fortis and started learning about natural gas and how it works and the safety procedures and everything, is it as safe? How do you, how do you digest the safety of natural gas in comparison to something like hydro?

I love that question. I actually think natural gas is really safe because even though, yes, you can see power lines and Fortis does have electricity as well, right? So you can see visually see the power lines. Electricity, it's, the power line is not the hazard. It's the electricity. And electricity is invisible.

You can't see that. So electricity actually scares me way more than gas does because you can't give it a smell. You can't see it. You don't know where it's flowing or charging. You don't know where you're going to go before you get electrocuted. It terrifies me, right?

Right? Natural gas is invisible, but we can put a lot of safety mechanisms in place so that it's identifiable. So that mercaptin, that smell, you can smell natural gas. You can hear it because of the pressure that it flows through the pipe. So if you puncture the pipe, you're going to hear, you're going to hear, like, a tire is what 30, 35 PSI, or distribution lines can be like 60 to 80. You will hear that sound, right? So at least you can identify there's some kind of risk present. Also, the flammable limits of natural gas is very small. So if you have a space and in that space you have oxygen, in order for natural gas to ignite,

there needs to be 5 to 15 percent of that space is gas. So if it's less than 5 to 15 percent, it won't ignite. And if it's too rich, so like if the space is filled with gas, it won't ignite. So it's a very, very small window where gas has to exist in a space for it to be flammable. And so it makes it extra safe, right? And then, but it doesn't mean that a room full of gas is safe because gas displaces oxygen, so you don't ever be in a room that's full of gas because you'll pass out, right? You don't know that.

But there's so many natural safety, like, mechanisms or qualities in place with natural gas that make it a pretty safe product. Yeah, I'll take gas over electricity because you can't see electricity and you can't identify it. That's fascinating. I know that this isn't your area, but when you see the mass, infrastructure the natural gas takes, what's running through your minds in regards to the safety component and just, it's just unique because you'll have a deeper understanding of some of that infrastructure than our average viewers would. But just being able to tour some of the sites,

it was very humbling to realize the amount of work and the amount of infrastructure it takes for us to have warm homes, that we don't really ever comprehend and we don't go to these sites. And then you think of the safety procedures that have to exist there, just from your perspective, you've gotten to, I'm sure, tour some of these sites and work within some of these buildings. What has your response been to some of those buildings and the infrastructure? It's easy to take that stuff for granted, right? Yeah. A couple things. One, it's amazing what humans can do.

You know, just these infrastructures didn't just pop up out of nowhere. There are people that were passionate about the industry and the topic and their communities that wanted to find a way to essentially help power our communities. in a natural, like, a safe, reliable way. So that comes to mind. And then another thing is that a lot of our staff that work in these facilities that maintain them on a daily basis, they're part of the community, too, right?

So they live, work, and play there, and they have a deep, intrinsic kind of passion and value for maintaining this infrastructure because it also feeds gas to their homes and their neighbors' homes and their kids' school. And so, I don't know, it just feels like you're part of, you're part of working, at these facilities is also being a part of the community that you live in. Yeah, it's different

than other jobs. I don't know. You just, you know that when you come home at the end of the day, you did something to make sure your house can do all the things it needs to do so that can be your home. What is the safety culture at Fortis BC? It's extremely high. We're also regulated by so many different bodies depending on the different types of work that we do. It's in everything. You know, we have check, we have personal safety procedures for what we, personal preparedness clothing for what we wear when we show up to work, check-ins and security steps are in place for access into, you know, certain buildings. There's integrity and asset management on the engineering side for, like, the physical infrastructure. There's a lot of cybersecurity that we have to do for just the different technology that we use to track and monitor the maintenance of our, gas and electric infrastructure it's you can't you can't operate a utility company without safety

just being at the core of every level of what we do do do you find it's intrinsic within the staff as well uh especially operations yeah i mean like any company you have um you have individuals that you know like work in the office and do administrative work the amount of safety that they need to focus on is not going to be as strict or rigid as you know people out there in the field Yeah, so there's different levels of safety depending on the responsibility and scope of their role. But generally as a company, the company takes a lot of pride in just safety, whether it be for our own staff or for the customers and the general public. I'm curious, you started in criminology, I did as well, and you take this journey, you go into 911 calling. How do you, what was the journey to Fortis from your perspective?

Like, how did you end up in this area? Yeah. So, yeah, so I did 911, and then throughout my career at 911, I progressed into, like, RCP dispatching and becoming the training specialist. And when I moved into the dispatch role, there was a lot more coordination involved in the role than with 911, as a call take, you're taking calls, but as a dispatcher, you're part of larger scale kind of response. So when I was in that space, I looked into other types of jobs that require that kind of coordination because I found that I excelled in coordination. So that's when I heard about the emergency management program at the Justice Institute of British Columbia. So I went and got that certification and then working at the Justice Institute of British Columbia and working in the emergency management department. And from there, part of my role was to work with different utilities to design. exercises for their staff so that they can practice their emergency response plans and see

how it works if there are any opportunities for improvement. So part of that role, some of the clients that I worked with were utility industry. So that's where I got a little bit of a sneak peek into that utility space. And I was like, okay, this is super fascinating. You know, I've always been interested in critical infrastructure. And this role kind of blends learning something new with my passion for public safety and a bit of emergency management as well. So it's been an interesting journey. That seems like it because it's so interesting when you go in behind the scenes and start to understand all of the facets at play.

And then you talked about coordinating. What do you think stood out to you about being able to coordinate some of those programs and some of the work? So, you know, there are some people that are like specialists or like Jack of All Trades, Master of None. I find with coordinating, you need to definitely be like a jack-of-all-trades person. You have to have a sense of all the different pieces that exist within an organization or community that have to work together to make something to function. So I love that.

I love knowing that when there's an incident, you have to think about A, B, C, D. You have to making sure they're all talking to each other and that you're thinking about the needs of each of these individual, like, entities. So I feel like I have a natural propensity to be empathetic. to kind of just see what's missing within, like, a certain organization's, like, scope or person's, like, role or life. And I think that ability really helps with public safety because you're able to communicate messaging in a way that the person that you're talking to will actually receive it, right?

Like, because you can't communicate the same way with everyone. Everyone needs this kind of a special hand, right? Exactly. Yeah. One of my favorite things about what you've kind of described is within, like, a healthy society, you need people who are interested in all different areas that are willing to want to cook the food, want to make sure the garbage is taken out, like make sure so many different pieces of our everyday life are taken care of, and we need people who are focused on our safety.

And as you've described, like sometimes we can take them for granted. In emergencies, we become much more aware of our own safety concerns. And it seems to me that you're a safety leader and somebody who's passionate about making sure people are safe. And so I'm just wondering, how does that show up in your everyday life? Like, is this something you see when you go out into the world all the time where you're like, oh, that could be done better? Or how do you interact with that in your personal life? Okay, that's really funny because I was talking to my friend about this the other day where I told her that it's, like, it's June.

And I've helped four people replace a flat tire this year. Wow. Because I travel a lot for my role, too. And I said, I don't know what it is, but I'm always running into people that have flat tires on the highway. And she goes, no, no, no, you're not running to them. You're always seeing them. People see them all the time, but nobody stops, right? And I was like, I didn't really think.

She's like, you're the type of person that will just, like, because that's what you look for, you notice it more, right? And I was like, okay, so it definitely trickles into, like, everything that I do. And, like, you know, little things to, if I'm out with friends and, you know, tell me when you get home at the end of the day. So I know you're good, right? Like, you walk through that front door, just those check-ins, you know, making sure that I travel solo a lot for my work.

So just making sure I have everything I need in place. I check in with my boss regularly or my team. So I don't know. It's just a part of, it's hard not to. I don't even like sitting at a restaurant with my back to the door or the window. 100%. I want to be able to see what's coming.

Everything that's around you. I like that because I think we're in a time right now where people are hyper-independent, but I also feel like people really want people to care about them. And so we're in this weird time where people are like, I just want to go do my own thing, but what if something happened to me? Yeah, exactly. And so I think that's an important piece is, like, when you are leaving a bar or when you're

doing something that you know people care about you and that there's somebody following up with you to make sure you're okay. And I just think that's an important thing for us all to keep in mind is that we need to be there for each other, even if we're not close to our neighbors anymore, that's still an important piece of our culture that we should try and preserve. Absolutely. Is there anything else you'd like people to know about? Fortis safety?

We are receptive to what works and what doesn't. You know, we have a really great team called the street team. I don't know if you've heard of it, but they're staff that we put into communities, essentially. So they learn a little bit about all the different kind of pieces of Fortis that customers need to know about. We show up at these public events with the Fortis tent. So if anyone's ever seen a Fortist's tent, the people that man that tent or work there are called, like, the street team. And they're there to just engage with the public and learn, you know, what the public has to say are here.

So if you ever want to communicate with us, don't be afraid to talk to anybody in the street team. They collect that information. It comes back to us. We take that information and we figure out how we can improve our programs and enhance it. Just making sure that the community and the public feels that we are a part of the solution is really important to us. and we have great staff that are super passionate about just enhancing everything that we do. So that would be my... Amazing.

How can people learn more? Well, there's a website, obviously, and we're on social media. We have Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram. And, yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much, Ada, for willing to join us today. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Thank you.