The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Cal Fire seeing more mental health issues
On-the-job deaths, PTSD, suicidal thoughts and fatigue are starting to take a toll
The morning sun warms California's high desert, launching a clear spring day. Behind high walls at The Nurturing Nest and across from a mineral pool, a small group of men and women roll up yoga mats and arrange themselves in a semicircle. Their week at this retreat is ending and a counselor seeks final thoughts from each of them.
“Why are you here?” the counselor asks a young woman sitting alone on a small sofa, hugging a pillow to her chest. She stares into the middle distance and lets out a deep breath. “Death,” she said. “So many deaths.” The men and women at the retreat are steeped in death. All but one work for Cal Fire, dispatched to the desert as a last resort, seeking release from the never-ending pain and fatigue brought on by their jobs.
Defensive and defiant at the beginning of the week, the California firefighters and a dispatcher break down their emotional walls by the end of it, laughing, weeping and recounting once-secret stories about death, terror and fire. They recall horrific sights of friends trapped by flames and reveal their urges to take their own lives.
For firefighters battling California wildfires, these emotional injuries are a workplace hazard. Longer and more intense fire seasons have taken a visible toll on the state, leaving a tableau of charred forests and flattened towns. But they've also fueled a silent mental health crisis, including an alarming rise in post-traumatic stress disorder among the ranks of Cal Fire, the
state’s firefighting service.
Fifty-four California firefighters have died in the line of duty since 2006, according to the Cal Fire Benevolent Foundation, and nationally, more than 3,000 firefighters have died from job-related injuries and illnesses since 1990.
But when they race into wildfires, it’s not just their bodies that are at risk, but their psyches, too. Wildland firefighters arguably face more psychological stress than most, since their battles are prolonged and their personal risks are high.
“I would be willing to bet that there’s suicidal ideation in half of our employees right now, and half of them have a plan to do it,” said Cal Fire Captain Mike Orton, a former Marine who recently transferred to a Los Angeles County inmate fire camp.
California’s wildfire statistics read like the losing side of an arms race: 2020 was the state’s worst fire season on record, with more than 8,600 blazes taking 33 lives and burning 4% of the state. Once-feared megafires are now dwarfed by the state’s million-acre “gigafires.” Climate change has forced wildland firefighters, trained to be nimble problem-solvers, to do a hard pivot. With too few firefighters to cover all the fires, they are on the front lines longer, with shorter respites at home. Some battle fires for months at a time.
Mental health woes
The state’s fire service has only recently tried to come to grips with the scope of the mental health problems among its 6,500 firefighters and support personnel. Cal Fire’s behavioral health program began in 1999, but four years ago had only eight employees, reaching 27 now. Their work is mostly reactive — sending those who actively seek help for their pain, trauma and suicidal thoughts to retreats or therapists under contract with the state.
Fatigued, traumatized and frustrated, some California firefighters, including captains and battalion chiefs, say Cal Fire must do more: Staffing shortages create punishing shifts, forced overtime and long deployments. Cal Fire keeps crews on fires for 21 days without respite, while their counterparts with the federal government work 14day shifts. Those deployments frequently go much longer.
The job strains their marriages and families. One Cal Fire battalion chief in Riverside County, Jeff Burrow, said 80% of his station house crew got divorced in a single year. Sleep deprivation, alcohol and drug abuse are on the rise, firefighters and therapists said.
Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, whose agency oversees Cal Fire, called the mental health of California’s firefighters “a growing challenge. At times it feels like a crisis.”
“We are asking firefighters to fight what are truly catastrophic wildfires,” Crowfoot said. “Every year we are sending thousands of firefighters into intensifying conditions, and more and more dangerous seasons.”
But who will want to battle these fires if these conditions continue?
Several firefighters described high turnover at their stations. And Cal Fire’s statistics suggest that attrition has suddenly worsened: Last year, the number of firefighters and other full-time personnel voluntarily leaving was nearly twice the four-year average, reaching 691 — more than 10% of the agency’s workforce, according to data provided by Cal Fire spokesperson Chris Amestoy.
Statistics gauging the extent of the department’s mental health problem are scant: Cal Fire collects no information on PTSD or suicide among its staff so the agency cannot say whether it’s as rampant as firefighters say.
Cal Fire does track the number of times its employees and family members contact a peer-support team for help with an array of issues, primarily physical and mental health. And those numbers have been climbing: from 1,362 contacts in 2011, the first year Cal Fire began compiling the data, to 17,310 last year.
Counselors say a majority of the requests for help are related to stress. So far this year, 24% sought referrals for medical and psychological issues, 12% for grief and loss and about 9% for addiction or substance abuse.
A 2016 report found that nationwide, firefighters are 40% more likely to take their own lives than the general population. In addition, in a 2019 online survey of more than 2,600 wildland firefighters, about a third reported experiencing suicidal thoughts and nearly 40% said they had colleagues who had committed suicide. Many also reported persistent depression and anxiety.
The survey is believed to be the most extensive research into the mental health of wildland firefighters.
Patricia O’brien, a former federal firefighter who coauthored the study, said the increasing frequency and intensity of California wildfires, coupled with the fireservice ethos of stoicism, is a formula for severe and unresolved trauma.
“This is humans battling a force of nature. We don’t get to conquer nature,” she said. “And if we try to do that, there will likely be negative outcomes in the form of trauma exposure, tragedy and loss. There are human burdens that firefighters carry.”
Year-round battle
All that the fire service once understood about fire size, behavior and severity is no longer valid. “Once-ina-career” fires now come every year. What used to be called a fire season is now a year-round battle in California, with about 8,800 wildfires last year alone. Firefighters are staying on the fires lines much longer as they battle larger, more intense and more persistent fires.
California’s wildland firefighters are now in a defensive crouch, facing an amped-up enemy fueled by climate change’s most destructive weapons: the worst drought to grip the Southwest in 1,200 years, loss of 130 million parched trees from disease and pests, and extreme weather conditions that defy predictability and precedent.
And there is little indication that things will get better as California cycles into an era of what fire crews call drought fires — massive, stubborn and dangerous. Wildland fire commanders caution their charges to “keep their heads on a swivel” — always alert to danger. Mental health experts now add another layer to that vigil: Firefighters must also be on the lookout for stress, fatigue and trauma in themselves and their colleagues. It’s tricky, however, to spot.
Cal Fire’s mental health program, Employee Support Services, functions as triage, working with those who want help, then directing them to therapists or doctors. Mike Ming, a 30-year Cal Fire veteran in charge of behavioral health and wellness, said much of the work is done by peers who are “active listeners.”
The counseling and other services are voluntary and confidential.
Ming said firefighter suicides are a “trend that we’re hearing about more. We’ve had six deaths over the last couple of weeks. There have been overdoses. There’s no getting around that in the first-responder world, there is a problem with suicide. Cal Fire is no different.”
Respite helps
On weeks when Nurturing Nest in Desert Hot Springs is given over to firefighters, its name is toughened up to Freedom Ranch. Some firefighters, dubious about the need for therapy, call the trauma retreats “Camp Snoopy.”
Cal Fire sends more than a dozen firefighters each month for intensive treatment at these workshops, with sessions involving vision boards, yoga and mindful breathing lessons.
Those who come to the retreat do so of their own volition. No one is ordered to attend. For some it took years to gather the courage to face their demons.
Ramesh Gune runs the facility and is a therapist trained to work with first responders. He’s drained at the end of a week of concentrated counseling.
“Mostly anger, that is what I see a lot,” he said. “‘I am not what I pretend to be,’ that’s the conflict. ‘I feel helpless.’ That sense of helplessness drives them crazy. They cannot save people. ‘I am not enough.’ They harbor that negative feeling constantly. They become paralyzed.”
His work, he said, begins with reminding California’s firefighters that there is a path to feeling better, feeling lighter.
Hiram Vazquez, 38, carries a body full of tattoos as visual prompts lest he forget what’s important to him — portraits of his family on one muscular arm and a pirate theme on the other to remind him of the storms he’s weathered. The Cal Fire captain based in Riverside is trying to focus on the good things, incorporating coping tools he learned at the retreat.
“I had hit rock bottom,” Vazquez said, detailing planning he had thought through for a suicide. He finally asked for help, and came to the desert.
“Stuff I didn’t realize I was carrying came up,” he said. “I’ve been on incidents where my friends have got burned over. I’ve been on incidents where people I was working close to have died. I’ve lost good friends. I’ve seen a lot of deaths. I’ve seen a lot of suicide with my peers or people that I know.”
The responsibility of leading crews, and keeping them safe, weighs heavily. It’s one of the burdens that brought Orton, 47, the former Marine now stationed at a Los Angeles County inmate fire camp, to a trauma retreat.
“Every action I take (as) captain, every day of my career, I always think, ‘How am I not going to die? How am I not going to kill somebody today?’ You are constantly thinking about that on the job. I compartmentalize things so that I am able to take the stress.”
“This is humans battling a force of nature. We don’t get to conquer nature, and if we try to do that, there will likely be negative outcomes in the form of trauma exposure, tragedy and loss. There are human burdens that firefighters carry.”
— Patricia O’brien, a former federal firefighter who co-authored a 2016 report that found firefighters nationwide are 40% more likely to take their own lives than the general population