Mike McGrew estimates his family has more than 320 years of experience in police and fire service.
His father is the chief of the Santa Barbara Fire Department. His grandfather worked for the Los Angeles City Fire Department. He has been a police officer for 31 years.
“I’ve been in line for three generations,” said the retired homicide and major crimes detective.
But centuries of public service have left deep scars, some of which may never heal. So McGrew knows from experience that many of the thousands of first responders who have responded to a series of wildfires in Southern California over the past two weeks will eventually go home with memories of the death and destruction they witnessed.
“It’s a personal blow to you,” he said.
“They’re doing a great job fighting. They’re doing what they have to do, first responders. But then it’s just battle after battle. How do you deal with that?
To help in the fight, McGrew co-founded 911 At Ease International, a Santa Barbara-based charity that provides free trauma counseling to police and firefighters. The organization is one of many formed over the past decade to address mental health issues among first responders, who suffer from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide at much higher rates than the general population.
On January 8, the Kern County Fire Marshal directed firefighters to extinguish a fire at an Altadena apartment.
(Gina Ferrazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“Firefighters face worst-case scenarios. This is helpful for some people,” said Hugo Catalan Jr., director of behavioral health services for the Los Angeles Unified Fire Department. “I always tell firefighters you may not have PTSD, but you probably do have some symptoms of a post-traumatic event.
“The things you see every day have changed you. The extent of the trauma you have endured is something most people will never see.
McGrew said most people will experience about six traumatic fight-or-flight incidents in their lifetime, while police officers or firefighters typically experience 200 or more. However, for years, first responders tended to embrace macho stereotypes around their jobs and refused to acknowledge the mental toll these jobs took.
“There’s a stigma. They tell you it’s a hard job, so go out and take it,” McGrew said. He said he had considered suicide due to work stress. “Layered trauma starts to affect you. Your life starts to fall apart.
“Police officers and firefighters have very high divorce rates and they also have negative coping mechanisms, such as alcohol abuse.”
However, as the costs of these coping methods have become known, and as mental health support has become more widely available, this “smudge it on” attitude has faded over the past decade.
“It starts with the next generation,” Catalonia said. “Throughout their lives, mental health has been a more accessible resource and talked about. They have received treatment in elementary school, through middle school, through high school and college.
“As a result, we are seeing more members joining us at an earlier age as opposed to near-retirement members joining us when everything has collapsed.”
A firefighter returns to an encampment set up in the Rose Bowl parking lot.
(Alan J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Still, it’s not easy to get firefighters to speak their mind, especially if they don’t admit they’re suffering in the first place. For Pasadena Deputy Fire Chief Tim Sale, it’s a bit of a “if you see something, say something” motto.
Pasadena Deputy Fire Chief Tim Sale during a daily briefing for firefighters camped at the Rose Bowl.
(Alan J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“That’s the great thing about a great fire department,” he said. “We live together, right? We really try to be a family at the station, so when someone leaves or someone gets into trouble, we’re getting better at noticing the signs and being proactive in our outreach.
“Is there a problem? Absolutely. We’ve seen it. It doesn’t have to be a catastrophic event for it to accumulate and affect people.
“This has always been culturally driven, and we can’t break that armor,” added Scott Ross, a retired Los Angeles County fire captain who now works as a peer counselor. “It took a long time for peer support to become a trusted entity within the fire department; a confidential place where they knew they could talk to someone who was going through something.
“But we’re not at the point where we’re 100 percent accepting of that.”
Ellen Bradley-Windell is co-founder and clinical director of the Santa Clarita Valencia Institute for Relationships and a Los Angeles County firefighter on the front lines of the Palisades Fire The captain’s mother. She has been working with first responders for years and says many of the issues they face are the result of “cumulative trauma,” meaning trauma builds up over time, burning undetected before reigniting , like smoldering embers in a wildfire.
“Something happened and then they exploded,” she said. “The battalion commander came into my office in full uniform and they just fell apart.”
That’s why she agrees with McGrew and others who say the true impact of the Southern California wildfires on first responders won’t be known for years.
“While we were busy fighting fires, we were dealing with this. But when things calmed down, we started thinking about what we were seeing and what we were doing,” Cal Fire Capt. Robert Velasquez said. “Things will deteriorate, or we’ll end up doing something bad for us.”
Richard Alamo of Sacramento takes his K-9 service dog Ember for a walk in the Rose Bowl parking lot during a break from battling the Eaton Fire with firefighters and first responders.
(Alan J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
This weekend, Velasquez was helping out at a peer counseling center at the Rose Bowl, home to the nearly 4,000 first responders who responded to the Eaton fire. Clinicians, chaplains and up to eight therapy dogs are available around the clock. They’ve been busy.
“The dogs are definitely popular,” Velasquez said as Amber, a happy yellow Labrador, lounged in the sun at his feet.
But dogs are also important because they allow people to open up.
“Without the dogs, we wouldn’t be able to have all the contact,” Velasquez said.
Peer counseling typically provided to first responders differs from traditional counseling or therapy. In peer counseling, police officers and firefighters with similar experiences meet in small groups or one-on-one to support each other. Dr. Steve Froehlich, director of behavioral health services for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said this approach is critical.
“Even the most dedicated clinicians haven’t done the job and we haven’t been able to gain a level of understanding,” he said. “I wouldn’t even be having this conversation without my companion on the phone.”
First responders’ families are often part of the equation, as family members are also affected by the job. McGrew remembers being traumatized as a child by a news report that said some firefighters had died in a fire he knew his father was battling.
“I’m sure my father was one of those firefighters,” he said. “When he walked in the door, I just remember crying because he was still alive.”
Fast forward a few decades, and McGrew was fighting another wildfire when his wife called to say she had been ordered to evacuate.
“I’m sorry I can’t go there,” he told her. “I’m busy helping these people. These are first responders who are willing to sacrifice their lives to save other people’s lives. But it’s even more personal when you know you’re not just impacting yourself, but you’re impacting your family.
This happens every day during the Eaton Fire, with firefighters holding on to the front line while their friends and family are forced to flee. Searle said at least two firefighters are still on duty after losing their homes.
“There’s a lot of marital problems; the kids are affected,” Bradley-Wendell said. “Then when these people come home, things change, especially when they’ve been away for so long.
“There’s a lot of stress in the family. So we’re working with them on anger management.
Yet for some, that anger will continue to burn long after wildfires are extinguished.
