Trauma team: ‘We are here to help’
Firefighters were visibly crying on Shippan Avenue in Stamford on Christmas morning in 2011.
The heat and flames from the 1895 Victorian were so intense that it took several hours before they could retrieve the bodies of the three young sisters and their two grandparents.
At the time, Fire Chief Antonio Conte said piecing together a narrative was challenging because “The guys just break down, and it’s too painful.”
Firefighter Jacques Roy’s crew recovered two of the bodies.
“One was a little girl. I had children roughly the same age at the time and this call affected me,” he recalls.
Spending time with his kids would bring him back to the scene.
“My own children wound up being a trigger for me. I had a lot of the classic symptoms: intrusive images, inability to sleep.
“I was not doing well. Literally, I could not enjoy my children.”
He tried traditional talk therapy, “but if anything it only made it worse.”
But Jacques had an advantage that would ultimately help a lot of other first responders, and is positioned to help many more — he was married to a therapist who specialized in trauma.
Dawn Roy steered him to try EMDR therapy, which replicates REM (rapid eye movement) sleep to help the brain use its natural healing process.
“In three sessions I felt like myself again and I could enjoy my kids again,” Jacques says.
The Fairfield County Trauma Response Team (https://fctrt.org/) was formed as a result of the fire that killed 9-year-old Lily Badger, her twin sisters, Grace and Sarah, 7, and their grandparents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson. The holiday limited access to traditional resources, so the framework of the team was formed to offer help to the 61 firefighters who responded that day.
Even the Roys marvel at the serendipity of the group’s formation. “In a bizarre sort of way how it came to be might not have happened if not for the marriage of me and my husband,” Dawn says.
Jacques spread the word to peers who were suffering.
“Try this,” he told them. “It sounds crazy, but believe me, you’ll feel better.”
They did. So the trauma team created a 90-minute presentation for the entire 268-member department, expecting a few responses. Immediately after the session, at least 15 people asked for help.
For the first few months, they focused on serving the Stamford community. That — like so many other things — changed on Dec. 14, 2012. The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on a Friday. By Saturday, clinicians were in Newtown.
They treated state troopers, police, FBI SWAT team members, clergy, hospital workers who received the bodies of victims, and students and teachers in adjacent classrooms who heard the horror. They also provided therapy to therapists.
Immediate treatment can prevent PTSD, says Susan Marcus of Greenwich. Marcus is the agency’s board president and one of its more than 30 clinicians.
Because it is stealth, trauma goes beyond the experience of a traditional loss.
“They don’t have a mental illness. They actually have a brain injury. And you can see it show up on a SPECT scan,” Marcus explains.
Summoning firefighter terms, she says therapists seek to “empty the bucket before it overflows.” Firefighters,
who are meticulously trained to ensure physical safety, too often suffer instead from emotional fallout. Experts point out that more firefighters die by their own hand than in the line of duty.
For Jacques, that’s more than a statistic. A 26-year veteran, he points to a decade during which two active colleagues and a pair of retirees committed suicide.
“We spent hours and hours and hours ... (learning) how to keep each other safe. But we would never discuss our mental health,” he recalls.
Marcus says a major part of FCTRT’s mission is to change the culture among first responders regarding therapy. It helps when they “hear it from one of their own.”
“Jacques was so powerful in speaking very publicly and openly. He paved the way for us to get into more firehouses, more departments. As people heard about us, getting into the door became easier,” she says.
They are now trying to raise their public profile. The agency will participate in its first Giving Day Feb. 25. The 24-hour fundraising marathon is hosted by Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, which is based in Norwalk. Last year’s campaign raised $1.65 million to benefit 390 area nonprofits.
Future traumatic events are unpredictable, but Marcus expects team members to serve COVID-19 first responders and front line workers for years to come. The list of professions is widening as well. Funeral directors and nursing home staff, for example, are filling emotional voids for grieving families during social isolation.
Marcus pivots when I invite her to share closing thoughts, directly addressing first responders: “If you are struggling emotionally please reach out to us. We are here to help. If you are struggling emotionally, please reach out to us. We want to help. What you are experiencing is normal. It’s a normal response to an abnormal circumstance.”
While talking to Dawn and Jacques, I wonder aloud about Madonna Badger, mother of Lily, Grace and Sarah and daughter of Lomer and Pauline Johnson.
“There are times she crosses my mind, I wonder what she knows (about FCTRT),” Dawn says softly.
I’d met in New York with Badger 11 months after the tragedy, a few weeks before Sandy Hook. She wanted to share her story, and was seeking answers about the cause of the fire. Her lawsuit against the City of Stamford for hastily demolishing her home was not for monetary gain, and she ultimately settled on agreements that could save other lives. Madonna Badger just wanted something good to come from her loss.
The Fairfield County Trauma Response Team is what something good looks like.