Mike McGrew estimates his family has more than 320 years of cumulative experience in police and firefighting work.
His dad was chief of the Santa Barbara Fire Department. His grandfather was with the L.A. city fire department. He was a police officer for 31 years.
“I’ve got a long line over three generations,” the retired homicide and major crimes detective said.
But those 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 working the spate of wildfires in Southern California over the past two weeks will eventually head home weighed down by memories of the death and destruction they have seen.
“It hits you personally,” he said.
“They’re good in the fight. They’re doing what they have to do, the 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 in the past decade to address mental health issues among first responders, who have much higher rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorders and suicide than the general population.
“Firefighters are exposed to the ultimate worst-case scenarios. And that does something to somebody,” said Hugo Catalan Jr., director of behavior health services for the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City. “I always tell a firefighter you probably don’t have PTSD, but you probably do have some symptoms of a post-traumatic event.
“The things that you see on a daily basis have changed you. The amount of trauma that you’re exposed to, most people would never see.”
McGrew said most people will experience about a half-dozen traumatic fight-or-flight episodes in their lives, while a police officer or firefighter will typically experience 200 or more. Yet for years first responders leaned into the macho stereotypes surrounding their jobs and refused to acknowledge the mental toll those jobs were taking.
“There’s a stigma. They told you it’s a tough job, so go out there and suck it up,” said McGrew, who said he contemplated suicide because of the stress of his job. “The layered trauma begins to affect you. Your life starts falling apart.
“Cops and firefighters have a really high divorce rate and negative coping mechanisms like alcohol.”
However, as the price of those coping methods has become known and as access to mental health support has become more widespread, that “just rub some dirt on it” attitude has faded over the last 10 years.
“That started with the incoming generation,” Catalan said. “Mental health has been a much more available and talked-about resource throughout their lives. They’re been exposed to therapy in elementary school, middle school all the way through high school and college.
“So we are seeing a lot more members that come to us at a much earlier age as opposed to members that are closer to retirement that are coming to us when everything is already falling apart.”
Still, getting firefighters to talk it out isn’t easy, especially if they won’t admit they’re suffering in the first place. For Tim Sell, Pasadena’s deputy fire chief, it’s become a little bit like the motto “if you see something, say something.”
“It’s what makes great fire departments great,” he said. “We live with each other, right? We really try to be a family at the station, so when somebody’s off or somebody’s struggling, we’re getting better and better at noticing those signs and being proactive in the outreach.
“Is it a problem? Absolutely. We’ve seen it. It doesn’t take a catastrophic incident for it to build up and affect people.”
“It’s always been kind of culturally driven and we can’t break that armor,” added Scott Ross, a retired L.A. County fire captain who now works as a peer counselor. “It’s taken a long time for peer support to be a trusted entity with the fire service; a place that’s confidential and that they know they can go talk to someone who’s been through something.
“But we’re not anywhere close to being 100% of where this is an accepted thing.”
Ellen Bradley-Windell, co-founder and clinical director of the Valencia Relationship Institute in Santa Clarita, is the mother of an L.A. County fire captain on the front lines of the Palisades fire. She’s been working with first responders for years and says many of the issues they face are the result of “cumulative trauma,” meaning it builds up over years, burning undetected before reigniting, much like the smoldering embers in a wildfire.
“Something happens and then they just explode,” she said. “I have battalion chiefs coming into my office in full uniform and then they break down.”
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.
“When we’re busy fighting the fire we’re dealing with that. But when things wind down, we’re starting to think about what we saw and what we did,” said Robert Velasquez, a captain with Cal Fire. “Things fester or we end up doing things that are hurtful to us.”
This weekend, Velasquez was helping staff a peer-counseling center at the Rose Bowl, the base camp for nearly 4,000 first responders working the Eaton fire. There clinicians, chaplains and as many as eight therapy dogs are available around the clock. And they’ve been busy.
“The dogs are absolutely popular,” said Velasquez as Ember, a cheerful yellow Labrador, lounged in the sun at his feet.
But the dogs are also important because they get people to open up.
“We wouldn’t be able to make all the contacts that we make without the dogs,” Velasquez said.
The peer counseling typically offered first responders is different from traditional counseling or therapy. In peer counseling, police officers and firefighters who have had similar experiences meet, either in group setting or one-on-one, to support one another. Dr. Steve Froehlich, director of behavioral health services for the L.A. County fire department, said that approach is vital.
“The most-intended clinicians, not having done the job, there’s a level of understanding that we can’t have,” he said. “I wouldn’t even have this conversation without a peer on the phone.”
A first responder’s family is often a part of that equation because family members also suffer from the effects of the job. As a boy, McGrew remembers being traumatized by a news report that some firefighters died in a blaze he knew his father was battling.
“I was convinced my dad was one of those firefighters,” he said. “When he walked in the door I just remember crying because he was alive.”
Fast forward a couple of decades and McGrew was working another wildfire when his wife called to say she had been ordered to evacuate.
“I’m sorry I can’t be there,” he told her. “I’m busy helping these folks. These first responders, they’re willing to sacrifice their lives to save somebody else’s. But it’s a little more personal when you know that you’re not just affecting yourself, you’re affecting your family.”
That’s happening every day at the Eaton fire, where firefighters have remained on the lines while their friends and families have been forced to flee. Sell said at least two firefighters have remained on duty after losing their homes.
“There’s a lot of marital problems; the children are affected,” Bradley-Windell said. “And then, when the guys come home, the dynamics change, especially when they’ve been gone so long.
“There’s a lot of stress in the families. So we’re working with them on anger management.”
Yet for some, that anger will continue to burn long after the wildfires have been extinguished.
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