Special Report: At least 115 firefighters and emergency medical workers committed suicide across the nation in 2017, more than the number who died in the line of duty, experts say.
Cal Fire Battalion Chief Ernie Marugg, left, hugs Will Mitchell, the father of Ryan Mitchell, a firefighter who committed suicide in November 2017, at Cal Fire's San Diego unit headquarters in El Cajon. Mitchell is now a volunteer fire chaplain.
The figure, likely an undercount, is a startling one, and one that many worry portends an epidemic as ever-lengthening fire seasons, more frequent mass casualty events and increased strain on emergency personnel take their toll. In the past few years these advocates have sought to increase awareness about firefighters’ mental health, pushed departments to offer more firefighter-appropriate help and stepped in as counselors themselves.
“They sacrifice so much to save the lives of others,” she said. “It’s time that we pay them the same respect, and save theirs.”Cal Fire Division Chief Daryll Pina, one of Mitchell’s mentors, said the two had an hourlong conversation a couple of weeks before he died.talked about the demands of being a captain, Pina said. He was thinking of applying for a transfer to work on a helicopter. And he had separated from his wife.
“It’s chronic, repeated exposure to everyone’s worst day,” said Sara Jahnke, director of the Center for Fire, Rescue and EMS Health Research at the National Development and Research Institutes Inc., a nonprofit health research group. In California and across the country, fire chiefs, labor leaders and counselors have committed new resources to support firefighters before they get to that point.
Filling the card was just one task Dale had undertaken in her role as a “lead peer counselor” at the Woolsey fire. Her main responsibility was providing firefighters with informal, confidential, peer-to-peer counseling.AdvertisementMany of those fighting the Woolsey fire had responded to the Borderline Bar and Grill shooting in Thousand Oaks just 12 hours earlier. Some of their own families had to evacuate from the fire’s path, and several lost homes.
In San Diego and elsewhere in the state, Cal Fire has worked to beef up peer support and reduce the stigma around using it.
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