of more than 2,600 wildland firefighters, about a third reported experiencing suicidal thoughts and nearly 40% said they had colleagues who had committed suicide. Many also reported persistent depression and anxiety.
“We are humans first, not firefighters or dispatchers,” said Ali Wiseman, a Cal Fire dispatcher who reeled off a cascade of colleagues’ deaths while attending the recent trauma camp in the desert. “Even though it’s hard or painful and embarrassing, I have to trust the world and tell my story.”All that the fire service once understood about fire size, behavior and severity is no longer valid. “Once-in-a-career” fires now come every year.
California’s wildland firefighters are now in a defensive crouch, facing an amped-up enemy fueled by climate change’s most destructive weapons: theloss of 130 million parched trees from disease and pests, and extreme weather conditions that defy predictability and precedent. Griffith said the personality type of firefighters is to “walk it off then get back to work. The sense is that you can’t go to your crew and confess a weakness because you are the officer. We’ve got hotlines where people are talking about substance abuse and marital abuse. People are overdosing on their day off.”Jeff Griffith, a retired Cal Fire captain, says the personality type of firefighters is to “walk it off then get back to work.
“We ask the question, ‘Are you going to kill yourself?’,” Ming said, adding that if a firefighter says he or she is considering suicide, the peer counselor immediately contacts authorities. “We are never going to leave them alone in that case. We stay with them.” Another problem is lack of expertise in diagnosing unseen wounds — not broken bones but broken minds. “It’s very, very, very,” Goldman-Mellor said. “Many physicians are not trained in evaluating mental health problems.”
Cal Fire sends more than a dozen firefighters each month for intensive treatment at these workshops, with sessions involving vision boards, yoga and mindful breathing lessons. “Mostly anger, that is what I see a lot,” he said. “ ‘I am not what I pretend to be,’ that’s the conflict. ‘I feel helpless.’ That sense of helplessness drives them crazy. They cannot save people. ‘I am not enough.’ They harbor that negative feeling constantly. They become paralyzed.”
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