First responders are dealing with mental health issues from the LA wildfires

Mike McGrew estimates that his family has more than 320 years of accumulated experience in police and firefighting.

His father was the chief of the Santa Barbara Fire Department. His grandfather owned the fire department for the city of LA. He was a police officer for 31 years.

“I have a long line of three generations,” said the retired detective and major crime.

But those centuries of public service have left deep scars, some of which may never heal. So McGrew knows from experience that the thousands of first responders working through the wildfires in Southern California over the past two weeks will eventually go home weighed down by memories of the death and destruction they witnessed.

“It hits you personally,” he said.

“They are good at fighting. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do, first responders. But then comes the fight after the fight. How do you deal with those things?”

To help in that fight, McGrew co-founded 911 At Ease International, a Santa Barbara-based charity that provides free trauma-informed counseling for police and firefighters. The group is one of many formed over 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.

“Firefighters are facing very bad conditions. And that does something to a person,” said Hugo Catalan Jr., director of behavioral health services for the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City. “I always tell a firefighter that you probably don’t have PTSD, but you may have some post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.

“The things you see every day have changed. The amount of trauma you are exposed to, most people will not see.”

McGrew said most people will experience about two dozen violent episodes in their lives, while a police officer or firefighter will experience 200 or more. However, for many years first responders relied on masculine stereotypes surrounding their jobs and refused to acknowledge how difficult those jobs were.

“There is profanity. They tell you it’s hard work, so get out there,” said McGrew, who said he was considering suicide because of the pressure of work. “Extreme trauma starts to affect you. Your life begins to deteriorate.

“Police and firefighters have a high divorce rate and negative coping mechanisms like alcoholism.”

However, as the cost of such coping mechanisms has become known and as access to mental health support has increased, that “rub the dirt on it” attitude has faded over the past 10 years.

“That started with the next generation,” Catalan said. “Mental health was the most accessible resource and talked about throughout their lives. They are exposed to therapy in elementary school, middle school through high school and college.

“Therefore, we see more members coming to us at a very young age than members close to retirement who come to us when everything has already fallen apart.”

Firefighters head back to camp set up in the Rose Bowl parking lots.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

However, getting firefighters to talk about it is not easy, especially if they don’t admit they are suffering in the first place. For Tim Sell, Pasadena’s deputy fire chief, it’s become like the motto “if you see something, say something.”

Pasadena Deputy Fire Chief Tim Sell at a daily briefing for firefighters camped out at the Rose Bowl.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s what makes great fire departments great,” he said. “We live alone, don’t we? We’re really trying to be a family at the station, so if someone’s not there or someone’s struggling, we’re getting better and better at recognizing those signs and being proactive in reaching out.

“Is it a problem? Definitely. We have seen it. It doesn’t take a catastrophic event to shape and affect people.”

“It’s always been kind of culturally driven and we can’t break those weapons,” said Scott Ross, a retired LA County fire captain who now works as a peer counselor. “It took a long time for peer support to become a trusted organization with firefighters; a secret place and they don’t know that they can go and talk to someone who has been through something.

“But we are nowhere near 100% where this is acceptable.”

Ellen Bradley-Windell, founder and health director of the Valencia Relationship Institute in Santa Clarita, is the mother of an LA County fire captain on the front lines of the Palisades fire. He’s been working with first responders for years and says many of the problems they face are the result of “cumulative trauma,” meaning it builds up over the years, smoldering unseen before reigniting, like smoldering coals in a wildfire.

“Something happens and they explode,” he said. “I have military commanders who come to my office wearing their uniforms and destroy.

That’s why he agrees with McGrew and others who say the true impact of the Southern California wildfires on first responders won’t be known for years.

“When we are busy putting out fires, we are dealing with that. But when things get bad, we start thinking about what we saw and did,” said Robert Velasquez, Cal Fire captain. “Things go wrong or we end up doing things that hurt us.”

Richard Alamo of Sacramento walks with Ember, a K-9 service dog, in the Rose Bowl parking lot between the operations of firefighters and first responders battling the Eaton fire.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

This weekend, Velasquez was helping staff the peer counseling center at the Rose Bowl, home to the nearly 4,000 first responders who fought the Eaton fire. There are doctors, chaplains and up to eight dogs available around the clock. And they have been busy.

“Dogs are very popular,” Velasquez said as Ember, a happy yellow Labrador, sat in the sun at her feet.

But dogs are also important because they make people open up.

“We wouldn’t be able to communicate with all of our contacts without dogs,” said Velasquez.

Peer counseling often provided by first responders is different than traditional counseling or therapy. In peer mentoring, police officers and firefighters who have had similar experiences come together, either in groups or individually, to support each other. Dr. Steve Froehlich, director of behavioral health services for the LA County Fire Department, said that approach is important.

“Therapists are not very targeted, without doing the work, there is a level of understanding that we will not have,” she said. “I wouldn’t be having this conversation without peers on the phone.”

The family of the first responder is often part of that equation because family members also suffer from the effects of the work. As a boy, McGrew remembers being haunted by news reports that other firefighters died in fires he knew his father was fighting.

“I was sure my father was one of those firefighters,” he said. “When he entered the door, I just remember him crying because he was alive.”

Fast forward a few decades and McGrew was working on another wildfire when his wife called to say he had been ordered out.

“I’m sorry I can’t be there,” he told her. “I am busy helping these people. These first responders are willing to sacrifice their lives to save someone else’s. But it affects you personally when you know that it is not just affecting you, it is affecting your family.”

That happened every day at the Eaton fire, where firefighters sat in lines while their friends and families were forced to flee. Sell ​​said at least two firefighters remain on the job after losing their homes.

“There are many problems in marriage; children are affected,” said Bradley-Windell. “And then, when the guys come home, the dynamic changes, especially when they’ve been away for a long time.

“There is a lot of pressure on families. So we work with them in anger management.”

Yet for some, that anger will continue to burn long after the wildfires are extinguished.