A FIREFIGHTER’S STORY ‘IT’S SCARY TO ADMIT YOU’RE STRUGGLING’

Firefighter Ricky Nuttall, 36-yearold father-of-one

In this job, it is a given that you are going to see some difficult things. There is a defence mechanism built into the fabric of every firefighter – you finish a job, you talk about it with your watch if it has affected you, and then you move on to the next one. You can think the trauma has escaped you and then something happens in your daily life that reminds you of it. Weeks can go by after a particularly difficult incident before I realise it has affected me. After Grenfell, I thought I had been coping. I had gone back to work the day after. The brigade had been a huge support, offering us all emergency counselling, which more than 200 signed up to immediately and 600 more have signed up to since. A week later, at home one evening, I suddenly felt dreadful. I was utterly exhausted. I just felt I wanted to cry, but didn’t know why. I sat down at the kitchen table and put pen to paper. You might not expect this of a firefighter from south-east London, but that night I wrote a poem in five minutes – the words pouring out of me on to the page. I put it on Facebook and within a couple of hours it had been shared 700 times.

Two weeks later I realised I desperately needed to talk to someone. It’s a scary thing to have to admit that you’re struggling. I’m lucky to have never suffered from flashbacks – though I know some people have – but I was depressed and listless. I suspect it was a build-up of incidents from the previous 13 years in the fire service, but Grenfell was certainly the trigger. Talking about that night – and others – has helped immeasurably. It means I can live my life at full speed again.