Mike McGrew estimates his family has more than 320 years of cumulative experience in police and fire service.
His father was the chief of the Santa Barbara Fire Department. His grandfather was a member of the Los Angeles Fire Department. He was a police officer for 31 years.
“I have a long line that goes back three generations,” said the former homicide and major crimes detective.
But centuries of public service have left deep scars, some of which will never heal. That’s why McGrew said many of the thousands of first responders who have been on the scene of a spate of wildfires in Southern California over the past two weeks will ultimately return home burdened by memories of the death and destruction they’ve seen. I know from experience that this will happen.
“It hits home for me personally,” he said.
“They’re good at fighting. They’re first responders and they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. But fight after fight comes. How do you deal with those?”
To help in this fight, McGrew co-founded 911 At Ease International, a Santa Barbara-based charity that provides free trauma-informed counseling to police and firefighters. The group is one of many created in the past decade to address mental health issues among first responders, who have much higher rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide than the general population. One.
The Kern County fire chief leads crews battling a raging apartment fire in Altadena on Jan. 8.
(Gina Ferrazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“Firefighters are exposed to the ultimate worst-case scenario, and it does something to someone,” said Hugo Catalan Jr., director of behavioral health services for the Los Angeles Unified Fire Department. “I always tell firefighters that you may not have PTSD, but you probably do have post-traumatic symptoms.
“What you see every day changes you. The amount of trauma you’re exposed to is something most people will never see.”
McGrew said most people experience about six traumatic fight-or-flight episodes in their lives, but police officers and firefighters typically experience more than 200. But for years, first responders have embraced the macho stereotypes surrounding their work, refusing to acknowledge the mental toll their work takes.
“There’s a stigma. They told me to go out and struggle because it was a hard job,” said McGrew, who said the stress of the job made her consider suicide. “The multilayered trauma begins to affect you. Your life begins to fall apart.
“Police officers and firefighters have very high divorce rates and passive coping mechanisms, such as alcohol.”
But the idea of ”just rubbing in the dirt” has faded over the past decade as the costs of these coping strategies have become known and access to mental health support has become more widespread.
“It started with the next generation,” Catalan said. “Mental health has become a much more available and talked about resource throughout their lives. They’ve been in therapy all the way through elementary school, middle school, high school, and college.
“So we’re seeing a much higher number of members coming to us at a much younger age, as opposed to members nearing retirement coming to us when everything is already falling apart. .”
Firefighters return to camp set up in the Rose Bowl parking lot.
(Allen J. Scherben/Los Angeles Times)
Still, getting firefighters to talk about it isn’t easy. Especially when firefighters don’t admit they’re suffering in the first place. For Pasadena Deputy Fire Chief Tim Sell, it’s become something of a motto: “If you see something, say something.”
Pasadena Deputy Fire Chief Tim Sell attended the daily briefing for firefighters camped at the Rose Bowl.
(Allen J. Scherben/Los Angeles Times)
“That’s what makes a good fire department great,” he said. “We live together, right? We try to be a family at the station, so when someone is off, or someone is in trouble, we notice the signs and actively support them. I’m getting better at what I do.
“Is it a problem? Absolutely. We’ve seen it. It doesn’t take a catastrophic event for it to accumulate and affect people.”
“There’s always a cultural aspect, and you can’t break through that armor,” added Scott Ross, a former Los Angeles County fire chief who now works as a peer counselor. “It took a long time for peer support to become trusted by fire services, a place where you know it’s confidential and you can talk to someone who’s been through something.
“But we have not yet reached a situation where this is 100% acceptable.”
Ellen Bradley Windell, co-founder and clinical director of the Valencia Relationship Institute in Santa Clarita, is the mother of a Los Angeles County fire chief on the front lines of the Palisades fire. She has worked with first responders for years and says many of the issues they face are the result of “accumulated trauma.” This means that, like the smoldering embers of a wildfire, they can build up over many years, flare up and rekindle unnoticed.
“Something happens and it explodes,” she says. “The battalion chiefs come into my office in uniform, and then they break down in tears.”
That’s why she agrees with McGrew and others that the true impact of the Southern California wildfires on first responders will not be known for years.
“When we’re busy fighting a fire, we’re responding. But when the situation is over, we start thinking about what we saw and what we did,” said Cal Fire Capt. Robert Velasquez said. “You end up making things worse and doing things that are harmful to you.”
Richard Alamo of Sacramento walks his K-9 service dog Ember in the Rose Bowl parking lot between duties with firefighters and first responders battling the Eaton Fire.
(Allen J. Scherben/Los Angeles Times)
This weekend, Velasquez was helping staff the Peer Counseling Center in Rose Bowl, the base camp for about 4,000 first responders to the Eaton Fire. There, clinicians, chaplains and up to eight therapy dogs are on call 24 hours a day. And they were busy.
“The dogs are definitely a hit,” Velasquez said as her cheerful yellow Labrador, Ember, lounged in the sun at her feet.
But dogs are also important because they make people open up.
“If it wasn’t for the dogs, we wouldn’t be able to make all the contacts that we do,” Velasquez said.
Peer counseling typically provided by first responders is different from traditional counseling or therapy. Peer counseling brings together police officers and firefighters who have gone through similar experiences, either in groups or one-on-one, to support each other. Dr. Steve Froelich, director of behavioral health services for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said this approach is important.
“The most dedicated clinicians, even though they’re not doing the work, have a level of understanding that we don’t understand,” he says. “If it wasn’t for the person on the other end of the phone, we wouldn’t even be able to have this conversation.”
Families of first responders are often part of the equation, as their families also suffer from the effects of work. As a boy, McGrew remembers being traumatized by watching news reports about the deaths of several firefighters in the fires he knew his father was fighting.
“I was sure my dad was one of those firefighters,” he said. “I remember crying when he walked in the door because he was alive.”
Decades later, McGrew was working on another wildfire when his wife called to say she had been ordered to evacuate.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there,” he told her. “I’m busy helping these people. These first responders are willing to sacrifice their lives to save someone else’s life. But they can’t help themselves.” It becomes even more personal when you know it’s affecting your family as well.”
It’s happening every day at the Eaton Fire, where firefighters remain vigilant while friends and family are forced to evacuate. At least two firefighters continue to work after losing their homes, Sell said.
“There are a lot of problems in the marriage. The children are affected,” Bradley Windell said. “And when they come back, especially if they’ve been away for a long time, things change.
“Families are under a lot of stress, so we work with them on anger management.”
But for some, that anger will continue to burn long after the wildfires are extinguished.
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