The Star: September 19, 2019

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The Star Thursday September 19 2019 14 NEWS • By Sophie Cornish SUICIDES AND life-threatening events are having a major impact on the mental health of firefighters who are called out to assist. Their union says it has got to a crisis point. Problems have increased since 2014, when the former New Zealand Fire Service signed an agreement with St John to respond to life-threatening emergencies, including suicides, cotdeaths, heart attacks, strokes, and cardiac arrests – known as ‘purple calls’. Now known as, Fire and Emergency New Zealand, the organisation attended more than 6500 medical emergencies nationwide, in 2013, prior to signing the agreement. By 2017, this figure had almost doubled to 11,500 annually. By 2018, about 10 firefighters in New Zealand had committed suicide. Christchurch firefighter Gary Duncan is a father-of-two and said seeing death of young people in his job, “really knocks him.” New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union general secretary Wattie Watson says better mental and emotional training is needed. Ms Watson and Mr Duncan say when the memorandum was signed with St John in 2014 training for emotional trauma wasn’t provided, Said Mr Duncan: “We got an email about the memorandum of understanding, but we called it the memorandum of misunderstanding. Next minute we were getting all these calls to medicals and we were going: ‘Hang on, we haven’t had any extra training, we want extra training’.” Said Ms Watson: “There is an issue around the training of medical response, it’s not good enough. It should have always Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz Firefighters’ mental health at ‘crisis point’ Wattie Watson been coupled with mental health resilience and it wasn’t, and that’s a learning curve for everyone.” But Ms Watson said FENZ “genuinely wants to address the problem” and has carried out a series of actions. Te Ihu region manager Paul Henderson said “an awful lot” is being done by FENZ to address mental health concerns. “We offer a range of psychological and well-being support to people, that is available to the immediate family as well, not just firefighters. There is access to counselling, psychologists, peer support and a health monitoring service,” said Mr Henderson. The Te Ihu area covers north of Waitaki River to the top of the South Island and across to the West WELL-BEING: An increase in medical calls being responded to by firefighters is having a toll on their mental health. Coast, including Christchurch. The region is the only one in the country to have its own ‘wellbeing officer’ who is a uniformed member of staff – Jim Ryburn. “It is different here. We have probably more resources here than you would find in the rest of the country, primarily on the back of things like earthquakes and everything else that has gone on in this city. “He has got a range of clinical psychologists that he can refer people to,” said Mr Henderson. Ms Watson is pushing for psychologists to have further training to deal with firefighters. “Their situation is unique in that they face mortality every time they go out, they know they could die every call. Like police and ambos, they will also face trauma every time they go out. So they have that combination as well as the fact that no one is trained to walk into fire like they are. Their mental gymnastics is extraordinarily unique and therefore their treatment has to be targeted at them,’’ she said. Christchurch firefighters are now dealing with more suicide callouts that ever before. Figures released recently by the Office of the Chief Coroner show suicides have risen by 42 per cent in the region, since 2007-2008. If trauma at incident is measured by death, then the city, Wigram and Spreydon stations are the busiest, Mr Ryburn said. Aside from specialised training for psychologists, Ms Watson said the union is pushing for fully covered or subsidised health insurance for firefighters and a more comprehensive peer support programme. Subsided or fully covered health insurance will mean firefighters may be less apprehensive about seeking help when needed. “One of the things that make people nervous about saying ‘I’m not coping’ is that they don’t know how the employers are going to react. They are scared their employer is going to say: ‘Well you are too unsafe to be on a fire truck’,’’ she said. 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• By Sophie Cornish GARY DUNCAN has seen a lot in his 35-year career as a firefighter. But attending a job where a talented and promising young man took his life is something that “really knocked” the fatherof-two. “Suicide seems to be growing exponentially and I’ve seen lots of that . . . from the outside Gary Duncan their lives seem perfect and that’s one of the hardest parts is when we experience death or injury in young people because they haven’t lived . . . especially when you have a young family, it really knocks you. It’s happened a lot with the extra ambulance work we have been doing over the last three or four years,” he said. An increase in attending ‘purple calls’ which are lifethreatening situations, has taken a mental toll on firefighters, Mr Duncan says and he is no stranger to the issue. Two years ago, his former colleague committed suicide. He was in his late 50s with a wife and two children, about to move into a new home. “I started in the fire service with him. He was an exceptional man . . . no one knows why; he never asked for help. That’s the hardest thing, men don’t ask for help, they don’t know how to ask. Previously, Mr Duncan said he would try and protect my family and not tell them the things he saw on the job. “I would just bottle it up. But the cup overflows and you see that with a lot of the guys. They might drink too much, or it will manifest in other ways. Attending suicides has become the norm for firefighters in Christchurch, but “it doesn’t get any easier,” Mr Duncan said. The trauma of dealing with family members during lifethreatening situations is also Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz difficult. “To put it simply, a fireman rolls up, puts out a fire or breaks open a car. Whereas with purple calls, you show up, the family is screaming, their family member may have had a heart attack and they’ve seen it happen . . . they will be asking why we are there . . . they might say: ‘What the f**k are you guys doing here? I called for an ambulance’.” Mr Duncan says he didn’t feel like he had adequate training to mentally manage the increasing medical calls FENZ staff now attend. “We weren’t trained enough to deal with it . . . we could go to cot deaths or chokings and as you can understand, the mothers are just screaming. Guys with small TRAGEDY: The events of the Canterbury earthquakes and increased medical calls such as suicides, have led longtime firefighter Gary Duncan to seek help to deal with the trauma experienced in the job. He says more needs to be done to aid firefighters with this. PHOTO: GEOFF SLOAN children and older guys with grandchildren, it can be quite traumatic . . . I think in some guys’ minds, that gives them a really hard time.” While there are debriefs to talk about what was experienced, Mr Duncan said a lot of men still don’t know how to channel the emotional nature of the job. The veteran who started in the industry at age 24 admits he didn’t seek out FENZ’s well-being services available until after the February 22, 2011, earthquakes. On the day of the earthquake, his wife was away and the fatherof-two had to drop his five and seven-year-old children off at a friend’s house, before heading back to work. Thursday September 19 2019 The Star NEWS 15 ‘Men don’t ask for help, they don’t know how to ask’ hot ULEBs are Metro Ultra Insert Pyroclassic Mini and Pyro IV Woodsman Serene Metro Ultra METRO ULTRA INSERT Fits existing masonry fireplace and chimney. NEW He didn’t see them again for three days. He called the tragedy “the straw that broke the camel’s back” in his career. “With the earthquakes, with the things we saw, you would see those things sporadically, but not on a huge scale as we did and having to leave our own families at the time . . . afterwards, the amount of guys that were getting assistance because of the trauma they had been through, it was like one-third to two-thirds of the entire staff. “Ultimately, loss of life doesn’t really come into it, you don’t really think about your own mortality, but in that situation, you thought about it a lot,” he said. Firefighters in Christchurch are now able to get help from the country’s only welfare support officer, Jim Ryburn, who operates in the region. But, Mr Duncan says a “clone” of Mr Ryburn needs to be made in each region around the country. “He got so many guys the help they needed, without them having to ask too much . . . he would act as a middleman and make sure those people had what they need . . . 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The Star: September 19, 2019

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