The Star: September 19, 2019
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• By Sophie Cornish<br />
GARY DUNCAN has seen a<br />
lot in his 35-year career as a<br />
firefighter.<br />
But attending a job where a<br />
talented and promising young<br />
man took his life is something<br />
that “really knocked” the fatherof-two.<br />
“Suicide<br />
seems to be<br />
growing exponentially<br />
and<br />
I’ve seen lots of<br />
that . . . from<br />
the outside<br />
Gary Duncan<br />
their lives seem<br />
perfect and<br />
that’s one of the<br />
hardest parts is when we experience<br />
death or injury in young<br />
people because they haven’t lived<br />
. . . especially when you have a<br />
young family, it really knocks<br />
you. It’s happened a lot with the<br />
extra ambulance work we have<br />
been doing over the last three or<br />
four years,” he said.<br />
An increase in attending<br />
‘purple calls’ which are lifethreatening<br />
situations, has taken<br />
a mental toll on firefighters, Mr<br />
Duncan says and he is no stranger<br />
to the issue.<br />
Two years ago, his former<br />
colleague committed suicide. He<br />
was in his late 50s with a wife<br />
and two children, about to move<br />
into a new home.<br />
“I started in the fire service<br />
with him. He was an exceptional<br />
man . . . no one knows why; he<br />
never asked for help. That’s the<br />
hardest thing, men don’t ask for<br />
help, they don’t know how to ask.<br />
Previously, Mr Duncan said he<br />
would try and protect my family<br />
and not tell them the things he<br />
saw on the job.<br />
“I would just bottle it up. But<br />
the cup overflows and you see<br />
that with a lot of the guys. <strong>The</strong>y<br />
might drink too much, or it will<br />
manifest in other ways.<br />
Attending suicides has become<br />
the norm for firefighters in<br />
Christchurch, but “it doesn’t get<br />
any easier,” Mr Duncan said.<br />
<strong>The</strong> trauma of dealing with<br />
family members during lifethreatening<br />
situations is also<br />
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz<br />
difficult.<br />
“To put it simply, a fireman<br />
rolls up, puts out a fire or breaks<br />
open a car. Whereas with purple<br />
calls, you show up, the family is<br />
screaming, their family member<br />
may have had a heart attack and<br />
they’ve seen it happen . . . they<br />
will be asking why we are there<br />
. . . they might say: ‘What the<br />
f**k are you guys doing here? I<br />
called for an ambulance’.”<br />
Mr Duncan says he didn’t feel<br />
like he had adequate training to<br />
mentally manage the increasing<br />
medical calls FENZ staff now<br />
attend.<br />
“We weren’t trained enough to<br />
deal with it . . . we could go to cot<br />
deaths or chokings and as you<br />
can understand, the mothers are<br />
just screaming. Guys with small<br />
TRAGEDY: <strong>The</strong><br />
events of the<br />
Canterbury<br />
earthquakes<br />
and increased<br />
medical calls<br />
such as suicides,<br />
have led longtime<br />
firefighter<br />
Gary Duncan to<br />
seek help to deal<br />
with the trauma<br />
experienced in the<br />
job. He says more<br />
needs to be done<br />
to aid firefighters<br />
with this. PHOTO:<br />
GEOFF SLOAN<br />
children and older guys with<br />
grandchildren, it can be quite<br />
traumatic . . . I think in some<br />
guys’ minds, that gives them a<br />
really hard time.”<br />
While there are debriefs to talk<br />
about what was experienced, Mr<br />
Duncan said a lot of men still<br />
don’t know how to channel the<br />
emotional nature of the job.<br />
<strong>The</strong> veteran who started in<br />
the industry at age 24 admits<br />
he didn’t seek out FENZ’s<br />
well-being services available<br />
until after the February 22, 2011,<br />
earthquakes.<br />
On the day of the earthquake,<br />
his wife was away and the fatherof-two<br />
had to drop his five and<br />
seven-year-old children off at a<br />
friend’s house, before heading<br />
back to work.<br />
Thursday <strong>September</strong> <strong>19</strong> 20<strong>19</strong> <strong>The</strong> <strong>Star</strong><br />
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He didn’t see them again for<br />
three days.<br />
He called the tragedy “the<br />
straw that broke the camel’s<br />
back” in his career.<br />
“With the earthquakes, with<br />
the things we saw, you would see<br />
those things sporadically, but<br />
not on a huge scale as we did and<br />
having to leave our own families<br />
at the time . . . afterwards, the<br />
amount of guys that were getting<br />
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“Ultimately, loss of life doesn’t<br />
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really think about your own<br />
mortality, but in that situation,<br />
you thought about it a lot,” he<br />
said.<br />
Firefighters in Christchurch<br />
are now able to get help from the<br />
country’s only welfare support<br />
officer, Jim Ryburn, who operates<br />
in the region.<br />
But, Mr Duncan says a “clone”<br />
of Mr Ryburn needs to be made<br />
in each region around the country.<br />
“He got so many guys the<br />
help they needed, without them<br />
having to ask too much . . . he<br />
would act as a middleman and<br />
make sure those people had what<br />
they need . . . Jim is exceptional,<br />
but he’s the only person in the<br />
country who does this.’’<br />
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