Who would have thought a small fire department on an island off the east coast of Vancouver Island, serving a permanent population of just over 2,000 residents, would develop a dedicated following of nearly 200,000 members on social media – larger than the fire departments of Miami, San Diego or Chicago?
Certainly not Pender Island Fire Rescue Captain Todd Bulled, who took over the department’s social media accounts back in 2018 with the goal of educating the public and raising awareness about fire safety.
“My thoughts were I wanted to do posts to inform the community of any kind of emergency situation,” he said, adding that some posts also aimed to provide general and educational information tailored to the island’s population.
Starting simple with one “cliche post” after another, similar to what departments across Canada were doing, Bulled felt his message was getting lost in an infinite sea of content on social media platforms.
Whether it was about burn restrictions, fire risks, home maintenance or simply good practices, he felt his messages fell on deaf ears. That became apparent one day when he published a post about the importance of changing smoke detector batteries when winding clocks back or forward.
“I would scroll through Facebook and Instagram on those time change dates and I would see 10 different departments all posting the same poster,” he said. “And I always thought to myself there’s no real point for us to post this.”
After that realization, Bulled began looking for a way to stand out. With limited resources and a small platform that initially had only a few hundred followers, he started tinkering. That’s when he realized, “Oh, we need to do entertainment,” which he paired with life’s best medicine: laughter.
Dabbling with a few ideas at first, Pender Fire’s posts would garner more and more traction, jumping from a few hundred views to eventually thousands.
However, a big turning point would come in the summer of 2024, as B.C. was experiencing one of its worst wildfire seasons on record.
In a mini-series of Instagram shorts, Bulled set out to raise awareness about the dangers of careless smoking during the dry, hot summer months. Inspired by old cops-and-bandits films, he plays a “Butt Patrol” officer tasked by the fire chief with tracking down the town’s ‘serial flicker.’
While the series performed well online, the real star was its antagonist, Canadian actor and producer Bruce Greenwood, who “catapulted” the department’s production to the next level.
“He always offered to help out with doing some of the content,” Bulled said. “He probably spent about a week with us overall, giving us a master class on filmmaking.”
From lighting to sound and filming techniques, those lessons resonated with Bulled, his team and, most importantly, Hayden – Bulled’s 23-year-old son.
“He’s kind of our secret weapon in terms of getting those great shots, doing all the editing and colour grading,” he said. “He’s the guy behind all that.”
While the young man proved to be a formidable asset behind the camera, he also became a key figure in the operation’s rising popularity. A source of inspiration to the team, the Gen Z member’s true talent was in recognizing trends and understanding social media’s ever-changing algorithms.
“We began watching trends online and putting our own twist on them, and that is how we got to today,” said Bulled.
This eventually led to the department’s big break on the international stage in fall of last year, when Bulled and his team recreated a scene from Twilight and garnered attention from around the world, with viewers from Germany, Ukraine and Australia sending their love.
“Those videos just blew up and went totally viral,” he said. “They just went around the world, which is pretty amazing for us.”
To date, their most popular video has amassed nearly two million likes across social media platforms and attracted widespread media attention, including an appearance on a Chicago morning show.
“It’s been really interesting on so many different levels because, initially, our priority is to protect the people that we serve in the community,” he said. “ When we do these messages, we want to keep Pender Islanders safe. But the fact that the accounts have grown to the point where we can keep people safe and get those messages to people all around the world is really special to us.”
With no signs of slowing, Bulled said his department will continue raising awareness through humour. And while he knows “internet fame” can be fleeting, he and his team take pride in entertaining people worldwide from their small island community.
“I feel like, in a small way, we’ve put Pender on the map.”