Firefighters receiving mental health supports

It’s a battle both physically and mentally. We need to continue to strive to do a better job to take care of our people. The firefighters in our fire department were exposed to a very significant traumatic event. You know, seeing your own community burn last summer’s wildfire season in the Okanogan, taking a toll on firefighters mentally, something not always talked about. This is my 29th year in the fire service and and you know, when I started, we didn’t talk about mental health at all. You know firefighters were expected to be stoic and and do their job and and do so without complaining. That was one of the first things we were told. Now we focus much more on mental health and now firefighters around the Okanogan seeking mental health supports more and more as fire seasons continue to worsen in the region. We bring in a sports psychologist and he talks about like high performance mindset and. Just how you how you frame looking at different events in life. On relationships and team like how do you build a good team is like you start with yourself and then you build your your personal interpersonal relationships and that that’ll kind of take care of the team. The McDougal Creek wildfire putting members strength and resiliency to the test last summer as they had to protect the homes of others while many had to watch their own burn. It’s like rocks in a backpack and you know every incident that firefighters go to that are difficult is another rock and not backpack and eventually if that backpack becomes too heavy to carry. It starts to affect your life in many different ways, and it’s not until after the seasons pass that many begin to feel the mental struggles. And a lot of times it’s you don’t even realize it. There might be, you know, streets that you avoid or or a neighborhood that you don’t go through on your commute home. And and it’s only after you start talking about it do you realize, like, I’m avoiding that neighborhood because of what happened last year, the province added an online training program to help firefighters cope with stress and anxiety. To date, close to 7000 municipal firefighters having roles in the program. Victoria, Famia Global News.