Minnesota Firefighters Rely On Mental Health Team To Deal With Tragic Calls

MARA H. GOTFRIED
St. Paul Pioneer Press

The St. Paul firefighter found the 2-year-old boy lifeless in the blaze and ran him outside to Kevin Lagos, fire equipment operator for Engine 18.

Lagos, who is also a paramedic, worked on Amir Coleman and said he did all he could. But the child died at the scene of the Frogtown fire last year.

Last week, Lagos was at a fire in the neighborhood and helped carry the body of the 60-year-old homeowner from the house.

"It's difficult," he said of the cases. "As a father of two young girls, it's taught me to never pass up an opportunity to tell your young ones you love them, and your parents that you love them."

Though firefighters often endure stressful situations and see death at more than fire scenes, some cases call for special attention to emergency workers' emotional well being, said St. Paul firefighter and paramedic Jason Ortman. Ortman is a peer counselor, an on-call coordinator and a board member of the nonprofit Metro Critical Incident Stress Management Team.

The St. Paul Fire Department calls in the team for debriefings after "critical incidents," which could include a death in the line of duty, a fire death, a serious injury or the death of a child, suicide or several stressful events in a short period of time.

Cases with children are often the most upsetting and can stay with firefighters for years, said Capt. Mike Mills, who is assigned to Engine 18.

"A lot of us are parents, and we see our own kids or think of them when something happens," he said.

Lagos said a debriefing after Amir's death in March helped him deal with the emotions from the day.

"I guess the days of old, when firefighters were supposed to be stone figures and not have anything bother them, are gone," he said.

The fire was classified as an arson and Amir's death a homicide. Police arrested Amir's uncle, who was later released without being charged. They continue to investigate.

'Kitchen Table' Talk / St. Paul had three fatal fires last year and has had one this year. Many of the firefighters from Station 18 -- on University Avenue near Dale Street -- who responded to the fire that killed Amir last year were also called when Richard Alan Meier died in Monday's fire, said Fire Marshal Steve Zaccard.

That's not a coincidence -- the largest concentration of fire fatalities over the past seven years in St. Paul has been in the Frogtown area, he said.

In St. Paul, all firefighters are emergency medical technicians and about one-third of the department are more highly trained paramedics, which brings them face to face with other kinds of death and injuries.

Though debriefings occur in the most serious cases, workers in emergency fields say the more informal talk after stressful situations helps them cope. At firehouses, it often happens around the kitchen table, Ortman said.

"For the most part, emergency workers are really resilient," he said. "Part of that comes from the kind of environment we work in. It's a very supportive environment. It's like an extended-family situation."

Ortman, one of six St. Paul fire personnel on the Metro stress-management team, said his interest in the team stemmed from something that happened in 1996. When he was a firefighter in Nebraska, he saw a boy who had been electrocuted fall 35 feet to the pavement. Ortman treated the child, who later died.

"While we were treating him, his father came up in the alleyway, and his scream was just one of the most horrific sounds I've ever heard in my life," Ortman said. "It's something I'll keep with me forever."

After it happened, Ortman said he and others "received an absolutely horrible debriefing." Other emergency workers on the call were seriously affected: One firefighter quit six months later, and a police officer had problems with substance abuse and went through a divorce, Ortman said.

Ortman said he volunteers for the team because, "If I can keep one of my brother or sister firefighters from going through what I did, it's worth my time."

Normal Reaction To Abnormal Stress / The Metro Critical Incident Stress Management Team works in the seven-county area and occasionally helps other nearby departments, Ortman said. It includes peer counselors from every discipline in emergency services -- fire, police, EMS and dispatch. The team includes chaplains and mental-health professionals.

"We pretty much go in and help them understand their reactions are very normal to an abnormal incident," said Kathy Abram, Metro CISM board chair. She is a retired Dakota County sheriff's deputy and has a master's degree in psychology. "We all tend to think we're so strong that we don't need to deal with it, that we should push on and go to the next call. In reality, you do need to deal with it if you want to survive the job."

The team, in existence for at least 20 years, conducts three debriefings a month on average, Abram said. Similar teams are in other parts of the state, she said.

The best time for a debriefing is after 24 hours have passed, "when individuals have had one night of down time," Ortman said.

At least one peer counselor and one mental health professional lead the session, Ortman said. The peer part is essential because, "You mention mental health to most law enforcement and fire and they shut down like, 'Whoa, I don't want to talk to you,' " he said. "But they're willing to talk to a peer."

One of the biggest components of a debriefing is hearing from co-workers or peer counselors that their reactions were similar, Ortman said.

"That starts putting it in a context like, 'OK, I'm not crazy,' " he said.

They talk about what might be normal symptoms in the days after, and sometimes for a couple of weeks -- insomnia, inability to eat, anger, grief and depression, Ortman said. They also provide information about how to get more help.

Capt. Chris Parsons, secretary of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 21, said there's still "a lot of that John Wayne kind of attitude" among firefighters.

But Parsons said he also believes the younger generation of firefighters is more open to "taking care of the mental aspects, the psychological aspects" of their lives.

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