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L—R: Braeden Bilinsky, Alan Bilinsky, and Jared Bilinsky all served with the Niagara-on-the-Lake FD. Alan retired after 32 years of service.
By Laura Aiken
The utterly awesome brain
It seems as though the fire service has the brain on the mind as more than one of this edition’s columnists submitted material focused around this astounding mass of matter. Patrick Mathieu’s Recipe Rescue is on nutrition for brain health. Sean Kingswell’s Tools of the Trade discusses keeping your brain healthy for the long-term in considering aging, retirement and cognitive decline.
There are many great reads about the brain and an endless array of fascinating facts. Science is discovering that the brain is an organ of incredible plasticity but the origins of conciousness still elude us from a scientific point of view.
Author Bill Bryson, noted for his ability to synthesize vast amounts of detail into highly digestable reading after his bestselling A Short History of Nearly Everything , penned The Body in 2019. In it, he made a most clever observation: “The great paradox of the brain is that everything you know about the world is provided to you by an organ that has itself never seen that world...To your brain, the world is just a stream of electrical pulses, like the taps of Morse code. And out of this bare and neutral information it creates for —quite literally creates —a vibrant, three-dimensional, sensually engaging universe.”
Bryson’s book is full of striking tidbits that inspire awe of the miraculous brain. For ex-
ample, just sitting and doing nothing your brain goes through more information than the Hubble telescope has in 30 years. Your brain is a three pound, spongy awesome organ unlike any other in the universe. Bryson notes the research of Brazillian neuroscientist Suzana Herculan0-Houzel who redefined the number of neurons in the human brain to be about 86 billion. This is less than the 100 billion previously assumed, but still — it’s kind of an unfathomable number.
Your brain is a miracle, a three pound, spongy awesome organ unlike any other in the universe
And, just to pull one more fun fact from Bryson’s book, these neurons go on to create trillions of connections, leading neuroscientist David Eagleman to remark that there are as many connections “in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way.”
Has your brain blown your mind yet? The complexity is astounding.
In Mathieu’s column on nutrition he asks us to think about the brain as an expensive car requiring premium fuel. Think of putting crummy fuel in a Ferrari. Who would dare? It’s a great parallel Mathieu has drawn.
A study in Frontiers of Medicine called Lifestyle Choices and Brain Health
(Mintzer, J. et al), which conducted an overview of evidence from current research and expert opinion on the factors known to be relevant in keeping brain health through aging concluded that mental well-being, exercise, cognitively stimulating activities, sleep, nutrition, and social connectedness all offer opportunities for individuals in mid-life and beyond to make lifestyle changes that will have a positive effect on their brain health.
An interesting element that would fall under cognitively stimulating activities is music. The research around music’s ability to help us retain and retrieve memories, to soothe us when we are anxious and exercise our mind in learning and practicing and playing an instrument is fascinating. If you haven’t read Daniel J. Levitin’s bestseller This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, this 2006 book put music on the brain health radar for many. It’s a fascinating read for music lovers and the neuroscience inclined alike.
Between the articles in this edition of Canadian Firefighter and the many books out there on the brain, you’ll find no shortage of motivating text to keep the health of your brain top of mind.
October 2020 Vol. 43, No. 4 cdnfirefighter.com
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Aiding Beirut
After hearing the news of the deadly explosion in Beirut that killed over 170 people on Aug. 4, Prince Edward Island firefighter Kory MacAusland sprang into action.
MacAusland, a founding member of the Canadian Bomberos volunteer group, partnered with Firefighters Without Borders to send supplies to Lebanon. Donations were sent in memory of the 10 Beirut firefighters who died in the explosion. The project garnered overwhelming support from Canadian departments. By the end of August, he said the group collected two containers full of donations containing an estimated total of 1,000 sets of gear, as well as medical equipment.
Mental health funding
Over the next three years, the Alberta government will be allocating $4.5 million toward mental health services and support for first responders dealing with post-traumatic stress. A total of 450 claims were made by first responders to the Workers Compensation Board for post-traumatic stress injuries between 2014 and 2018. Grants of $1.5 million per year will be given to non-profit organizations and researchers.
Funds for Puslinch FD
Puslinch Fire and Rescue Services in Ontario received a grant of about $20,000 from the Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation of Canada. The organization was founded in 2015 and has awarded over $1 million for lifesaving equipment and support to emergency services across the country. The funds given to the Puslinch department were used to purchase new vehicle stabilization equipment and a new water and ice rescue craft.
The Toronto Fire Service reported 35% of their 148 operations firefighter recruits hired in 2018 self-identified as females, Indigenous peoples, and visible minority groups
Search and rescue during COVID-19
Cancer represented 86 per cent of all fatal firefighter claims in 2018, the Association of Workers’ Compensation Board of Canada reports
Alberta’s search and rescue teams are reporting increased numbers of incidents compared to previous years. Monica Ahlstrom, president of Alberta Search and Rescue, says by late August Alberta had 205 incidents in the province, noting that teams were also responding in support of and in tandem with Saskatchewan and British Columbia crews. Last year, the province had 134 incidents during the same time frame.
Ahlstrom suggests numbers may be on the rise because people are looking for activities outside the home and are often finding themselves unprepared. She specifically noted an increase in swift water responses and drownings this year.
“As soon as they relaxed some of the conditions around COVID-19, people wanted to get away from home and so people started going into the back country but are often unaware of the dangers in the
environment so we’re seeing increasing incidences,” she said. Conversely, in Ontario, Cathy Gill, training coordinator of the Ontario Search and Rescue Volunteer Association, says most teams are recording “lower than usual call-outs.”
“With COVID, for a fairly long period of time, people were not traveling the same way, therefore they had less opportunity to wander beyond their capabilities,” Gill wrote in an email. “As people are venturing out more now, there has been concerns that there would be more people heading into the back country to camp or out onto the water without proper training [but that has not yet been the case].”
Both Ahlstrom and Gill noted the pandemic has also created barriers to training for all search and rescue teams but, across the country, crews are often quick to offer support whenever possible.
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Celebrating Generations
A tribute to firefighter families.
By Laura Aiken
In family businesses, there are often negotiations around offspring and their candidacy — obligation, opposition or anticipation — to one day take the helm. As a firefighter, no such financial succession exists in the service, but many children have opted to take the path of a senior family member in the fire service anyway. This is evidenced anecdotally; though it was difficult to come up with statistics on the matter many of you will know of, work with, have read about or are part of a generational fire fighting family. This legacy of brotherhoods and sisterhoods, familial-hoods in kin and culture caught the attention of a firefighter photographer from small-town Ontario, and turned into a passionate adventure to form a book.
That photographer is Mitchell Brown. He was born in Hamilton, Ont., in 1967, and grew up in nearby Grimsby where he still resides. At age 16 his brother gave him a camera and he shot his first roll of film.
“I was hooked from that point on so I’ve been shooting now for 37 years,” he says. And yes, he did give up on film when digital cameras arrived, fully embracing the potential of the technology and direction of the art form.
His joy behind the lens turned professional when he went to a local newspaper in his formative career years and said he wanted to take pictures. The editor gave him a chance and an assignment for that weekend, which turned into a job. He stayed on for a short while before deciding to go it alone as a freelancer, working for newspapers in Toronto, Hamilton and Niagara area. He discovered a passion for wildlife, nature and abstracts, describing taking pictures as being very therapeutic for the mind and soul. Brown lives with chronic depression and anxiety.
The entrepreneurial photographer’s life eventually found him witness to a horrible tragedy — a fire involving multiple fatalities. The emotional toll it took on the firefighters moved him.
“It takes a special person to be able to do what they
do,” he says. “I’m truly grateful to be granted access to the tight knitted inner circle of the brotherhood and sisterhood. To be given the trust to capture moments in times of heightened chaotic situations, many being very emotionally charged; to be able to document the courage it takes and to photograph the physical and emotional strain involved is what keeps me fueled.”
Brown expanded the scope of his photography business to include Smoke is Showing Fireground Photography, which is dedicated to capturing the experience of firefighters. He fostered trust with his local area fire departments, and carries a pager because he’s on the volunteer rehab unit with Lincoln Fire Rescue. He has been active in that unit for three years, turning up at structure fires with his camera while also providing services like drinks and misting fans to help the crew as they battle the blaze.
Over the years he has built up an impressive gallery of the firefighters in action, equipment and life around the fire hall. The gallery is browsable at smokeisshowing.ca. His business in photography for fire offers
L—R: Martin Dube, Aimé Dube and Étienne Dube, all from Quebec fire departments.
PHOTO: MITCHELL BROWN
shoots for training, live scene, apparatus, traditional firefighter portraits and collages. He also makes custom helmet and turnout gear images.
His photographic pursuit of the fire service dovetailed into a niche book project called Celebrating Generations, which captures firefighters in the same family. He has photographed about 50 families of generational firefighters so far, but says the “most meaningful image I have taken for my Celebrating Generations project is an image I haven’t yet taken. An image I will never have a chance to capture. An image I can only reproduce in my mind.”
This is the image that cannot be. When he first thought of Celebrating Generations, he discussed it with his friend and then West Lincoln fire department Deputy Chief Kevin McIntyre. The plan was to kick the project off with McIntyre and his son Steven. Tragically, this plan was never to come to fruition. McIntyre passed away several months later in April of 2018.
“Instead of a would-be father son picture, I was tasked with documenting his funeral, the hardest thing to date I’ve experienced in the fire service.”
The project forged on and now that it’s in full swing,
Brown has photographed families all over Ontario and also Montreal.
“The more fathers and sons or fathers and daughters I photograph, the more come out of the woodwork,” he says. “It has taken off. They love the idea. There’s a special history to the fire service and what I want to do is capture the past and a glimpse into the future, passing the axe down from generation to generation.”
He says he was surprised by how many firefighters are part of a generational clan. He has photographed about 50 families so far. One shoot involved a father who was a firefighter and three of his children who also were. He is also finding a mix of volunteer and career crew.
While the COVID-19 pandemic initially shuttered progress on the book, Brown is now back to looking for more participants and returning to regular fire service shoots. In late summer he provided photographic services for the Parry Sound Fire Department in Ontario and he will be on hand to capture Lincoln Fire Rescue’s 50th anniversary plans.
In a testimonial, Dave Thompson, fire chief for Parry Sound, said: “He interacts with the firefighters in a manner that is greatly appreciated and his work clearly honours the dedication and responsibilities that it takes to be a firefighter.”
At Lincoln Fire Rescue, Fire Chief Greg Hudson provided this testimonial: “Not only is Mitchell’s fireground photography amazing, but he treats each scene with dignity and respect.”
Brown is open-minded about where the Celebrating Generations project will take him or end. It is free to participate in and Brown provides a print from the shoot to families. His plan is to complete the book and donate part of the proceeds to a fire service non-profit.
Though firefighters became a focus of his work, you can see a variety and the extent of his talents at mitchellbrown.ca, where he showcases his scenes from nature. Brown has been accepted into numerous juried shows and has received a best local artist award through these.
All in the family
An excerpt from his website’s artist statement shows what makes his stunning photography unique: I search out details that are often overlooked as we go about our busy lives. I look for the unusual. Nature’s art is all around us: I don’t create it; it’s already there. I just try to capture it, to preserve my vision for others to see, in hopes that the images I produce might just be someone else’s means of escape, their own therapy.
In capturing the firefighters at work and in legacy, he is preserving and enriching a history and a future of pride and timeless tradition. If you are interested in being part of the Celebrating Generations collection, you can contact him at 905-929-3686 or contactmitchell@ hotmail.com.
Mitchell Brown has photographed over 50 fire fighting families for his Celebrating Generations book.
Front Seat
By Jason Clark
This unusual summer
The summer of 2020 was a different one for all of us for many reasons. We faced new rules and regulations that the entire world was forced to come to grips with. A global pandemic caused the world to stay at home. A virus changed the way our dispatchers took emergency calls by adding COVID-19 screening questions to their script. Our tiered medical program changed the way we donned our personal protective equipment and we added mandatory N-95 masks, glasses, and shields as well as a disposable suit to every medical call we responded to.
This summer was also one that we would like to forget because our small town was the site of two tornados that touched down approximately 40 days apart. The first one in early June was classified as an EF-1 with wind speeds topping over 130 kilometres per hour and hit the outskirts of our village. The second came in late July, an EF-0 that did damage inside the town limits.
The town and area were fortunate in the sense that there were no reported injuries. The first tornado in June caused extensive property damage as two barns were destroyed and equipment was tossed around in the surrounding fields. Farmers had to relocate their livestock to neighbouring farms. Clean-up and rebuilding efforts started
It was a very extraordinary display of Mother Nature and the force that can come with a weather system that a tornado brings
right away.
Our station was called to both tornado incidents with the initial reports of wires down and arcing. As firefighters, our primary function was to making the scene safe for traffic and pedestrians as well as maintain a safe working distance from the trouble zone. The waiting game pretty much ends when either the hydro company shows up or the roads department is nice enough to take over with the road closed signs and allow the fire crews to move on to the next area or return to the station.
When the second tornado
Jason Clark has been a volunteer firefighter in southwestern Ontario since 2007. Having recently made the transition to captain from firefighter, Jason has had a new perspective on roles in the fire service and riding in the front seat. Contact Jason at jaceclark71@ gmail.com or twitter @jacejclark.
power company worked to reconnect the downed system.
One of the more impressive things that happened in both events did not have to do with the path the tornado took or how far it launched siding and toppled backyard treehouses and trampolines. It was the neighbourhood and town response.
hit in July, it touched down on a side street a few hundred metres from our main road in town. Thirty-foot trees were snapped in half and scattered around the entire neighbourhood. Shingles and siding were ripped from houses and large trees knocked down blocked streets, driveways, and front doors to people’s houses.
It looked exactly like what you would expect the aftermath of a tornado to look like. There was a clear path of destruction, a span of houses that were greatly damaged and further down the side streets you could see who was fortunate enough to have very minimal wind damage.
It was a very extraordinary display of Mother Nature and the force that can come with a weather system that a tornado brings. Utilities and power were knocked out for hours in parts of the community as the
When the second tornado struck the neighbourhood in the village, we were called approximately 45 minutes after it happened. We were on that scene for less than 40 minutes after checking for anything that would cause further problems like gas leaks or structure issues, but by the time we were packing our trucks up and moving on to the next area hit by the weather, neighbours and families of the homeowners had already put up ladders and made repairs to the rooves with tarps and spare wood and hardware. They had already cleared up branches and friends from all over town were in the area to see what assistance they could bring in the form of chainsaws and manual labour.
In the fire service we have a strong bond and unity with one another. We help one another in times of need and would drop everything to make things right again. This was no different than what happened this tornado wrought summer. Neighbours were gathering to see what could be done and to make sure their neighbourhood was returned to the closest to normal as possible. There was a sense of pride in their community. They answered the call and I am proud to be a part of this team.
Two tornados touched down in our village this summer, making it an even more unusual summer that 2020 was already set to be.
Extrication tips
By Chad Roberts
Chad Roberts is a firefighter in Oakville, Ont. He is a member of the Oakville extrication team and competes and trains across North America. Contact Chad at chadroberts12@gmail.com.
Instilling confidence with simplicity
Irecently read that “complexity creates chaos and confusion.” While I can’t entirely remember its source, the meaning of the statement has stuck with me and drove the topic of this column, which is first on scene trauma patient assessment. I’m not talking about the acronyms we have been ingrained with from day one, but a more simplified approach to the fire service’s role in initial patient care. Our roles in multi-vehicle accidents should not start with tool selection and moving metal, but more importantly towards making quick decisions that will ultimately have the greatest outcome on our patient’s chance of survival.
To accomplish this task I felt it was necessary to question one of the best I know in the industry. And through my years of competition and getting to know people all over the country I felt it would only be fitting to reach out to Mike Tesarski. He is a captain for a full-time Greater Toronto Area department, a flight medic for over 20 years, has been involved in the extrication competition world for many years and plays a major role in the trench and technical rescue sector across the country. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg and why I felt he was a great source for what I am trying to create for our service; a simplified approach to our first on scene trauma patient assessments.
While talking with Tesarski I came up with a series of things we should most importantly be surveying and evaluating. The first and foremost being an overall assessment of the incident. Being able to read what actually happened, how fast and from what angles can play a huge part in assessing our trauma patient. Being involved in an open
Being able to read what actually happened, how fast and from what angles can play a huge part in assessing our trauma patient
highway incident can have much greater impacts than one in town. Being involved in plane crash can produce much more severe injuries than a small accident in a parking lot. Take the words out of your patient’s mouth and survey what you think is severe. Our trauma patient may seem totally fine, talking and walking. Don’t get trapped into that. If the incident looks bad it
probably is bad for them —they just don’t know it or may not yet. Shock and the body’s response can do crazy things. As rescuers we have to read the incident and anticipate what could happen. Take a look at the inside of the vehicle as well. Is there intrusion from the crash and where? Steering wheel or pedal deformity? The collection of all this information must be something we are keeping mind and drawing our own worst-case scenario from for our trauma patient.
Our next step comes with questioning our patient, most importantly on what they remember. Do they remember the incident? Lose consciousness? Where were they going? What day of the week is it? What hurts or is entrapped? These are all key questions to get an overall early impression of our patients, and revisit these questions again to confirm or judge if conditions are worse. If they struggle with some or all of these questions we have to immediately assume we may have an issue. Whether it is because of the incident or maybe the cause, we need to get a baseline level of consciousness for our trauma victim.
ABCD: Although this may seem simple, it has to be there. There is no magic trick here, our baseline airway, breathing level/quality, overall circulation/bleeding and deformity must be performed right after we get a good idea of their LOC. While talking with your patient you are able to gather the A/B pretty quickly. For circulation, we need to go beyond pulse checks. Skin colour and temperature, as well as any gross bleeding are just as important as a pulse check when assessing our trauma patients. And lastly, deformity. Like we mentioned in the first part of the assessment, read the overall scene. Just because we cannot see a deform-
Become familiar with the circling cornerstones of the Lethal Triad of Trauma.
Here is an example of an on-scene overview and how it’s important to read your wreck and intrusion levels on our patients, not always solely relying on their responses.
An IC, just like in competition, needs to understand where his crew is at and the time it will take to complete the plan. Time is crucial for our trauma patients.
This depiction of the Lethal Triad of Trauma simply shows the circling effect it can impose on our trauma patients.
ity, the condition of the vehicle/ speed and types of vehicles involved can give us some key clues to our patients underlying injuries.
Time is huge and it is something that often gets away from us. There is a common theme in all the extrication competitions I attend. They are always timed and that is for great reason. Just like any major incident we attend in the fire service, time is key. Knowing when we hit that roughly 20-minute mark can be a great indicator for where we are at with our incident. The greatest place for any of our trauma patients is in an emergency room, so knowing when to make the call to
remove a patient quickly and with a little more force will far outweigh the minor injuries or pain that we may inflict while doing so. Our very capable medics can fix pain and minor issues, but we can’t stop bleeding in the car or on the way to the hospital. It doesn’t have to be an exact 20 minute stopwatch, but know your on scene times and call your dispatch if needed. Don’t be afraid to stop and call an audible to stop the time from running up.
And finally, one of the most important and overlooked things we can do for any trauma patient: Keep them WARM! Tesarski was the first to introduce me to a condition
called the Lethal Triad of Trauma. Very much how the fire tetrahedron is to us as firefighters, the triad of trauma is to victims. Simply put, when our patients are cold their blood flow is restricted, which in turn reduces the bloods clotting mechanisms, which are directly affected by temperature and PH levels (add on blood loss as well and the clotting mechanisms are reduced even further). Without those clotting factors our tissues aren’t properly perfused and can enter into metabolic acidosis, raising the body’s PH level. This delicate electrolyte imbalance can negatively affect the heart’s ability to pump
ROOKIE TO CHIEF…
blood, which decreases the body’s ability to thermo-regulate, worsening hypothermia. Add on medications, which a lot of our more elderly population take such as blood thinners and beta blockers that can make a normally elevated/ compensating heart rate read totally normal, and you can quickly see how the lethal triad of trauma can become a circling of the drain effect.
This was a guide to some of the first few things we need to accomplish with our trauma related patients and hopefully instill the confidence needed when first on scene. A huge shout out to Tesarski for sharing his knowledge
Back to Basics
By Mark van der Feyst
Firefighter survival series
Whenever we mention the term firefighter survival, we are referring to what an individual can do rescue themselves from a bad situation. This is usually accomplished with an evasive escape technique. Before we start our detailed look at these escape techniques, I want to go over a few important points. Firstly: Prevention is key! If we can prevent the need to use an escape technique, then we are better off. Being able to recognize signs of impending flashover, signs of building collapse, reading the fire conditions and smoke movement, just to list a few, is priority for the firefighter. These important skills will save your life by preventing the chance of losing it.
The second important point to remember is that evasive techniques are a last resort option. The techniques that we are going to look at are evasive – they are not designed to be used or integrated into a regular daily routine. They are there as an option to exercise when you are in a situation where if you do nothing you are going to die, but if you do something unorthodox or non-textbook, then you will live.
The last important point to remember is training is essential for both the technique and the equipment being used. Because these techniques are not a part of our operational routine, they need to be practiced all the more. It will not do you any good to train on the equipment and the technique once, never train on it ever again, then have to use it when faced with a life and death situation. This will set the firefighter up for failure.
The first escape technique we’ll discuss is the wall breach. This is
The techniques we are going to look at are evasive — they aren’t designed to be used or integrated into a regular daily routine
The number of key steps to remember when using a wall breach to buy more time to escape
where the firefighter is unable to locate a door or a window but has a need to get out now. Wall breaching is where the firefighter will buy themselves some more time to get out. By going to another room, the firefighter will hopefully enter a tenable space that will allow them to locate a window or a door to get out.
Why breach a wall in the first place? This is where the fire conditions of the room or the environment are becoming untenable — they are so severe that staying there
is deadly. Conditions such as impending flashover will be a good reason to breach a wall to get to another tenable area to buy some more time. An extra two to three minutes will be all that is needed to get from the tenable room to out of the building before being trapped by the rapid-fire event.
Every firefighter needs to know their wall construction and what types of walls will be found inside certain buildings. In a newer residential building, common wall
Photo 1: To initiate a wall breach, use a hand tool to first punch an inspection hole through the wall.
Photo 2: One finished making the hole, the firefighter can then take their hand tool and sound the floor in front of them to make sure there is a solid floor there to receive them.
Mark van der Feyst has been in the fire service since 1999 and is currently a full-time firefighter with the WFD. Mark is an international instructor teaching in Canada, the United States, FDIC and India.
construction will be wood lumber and drywall for interior walls with the exterior walls being comprised of lumber and brick or siding (wood, vinyl, etc.). In older residential structures, it is common to find lath and plaster on the interior walls.
In an office type of building the interior walls can be metal studs with drywall with the exterior walls being made from concrete, concrete block, brick, or sometimes metal siding. In some commercial buildings, it will be the same as the office set up, but some interior walls may be made of concrete. This will be true with industrial buildings as well.
Knowing the wall construction of the structure that you are in will help with determining if a wall breach is possible or not. In a residential structure this will always be possible. In other types of buildings, the wall type will dictate. The other aspect of wall knowledge is the
spacing between the studs, commonly 14-inches inside with 16-inches on centre. This will be more than enough room for a firefighter to breach and get through. Wall breach begins with the firefighter working below the midpoint of the wall height – this is because the intense heat and the fire conditions are going to force the firefighter to have to be this low. Using their hand tool such as a halligan (see Photo 1), they will punch an inspection hole through the wall. This is done to make sure that the room adjacent is going to be tenable and not worse than the room they are in currently. Once the inspection hole has been made and we see tenable conditions, the firefighter will continue to punch the wall with their tool to create a large enough opening.
In Photo 2, the firefighter has completed punching the wall and making their hole. They then take
their hand tool, sound the floor in front of them to make sure there is a solid floor there to receive them, then place the tool just at the base of the wall and floor. This is to landmark your tool – you will know where the tool is and can feel for it. Notice that the opening created is not “pretty” or “engineered” in size. It is a violent opening allowing the firefighter to pass from one room to the next.
Next the firefighter will sit their SCBA cylinder right inside the opening as seen in Photo 3. This allows for the biggest part of the SCBA to be passed through the opening first. The firefighter will then lift their one arm up and over their head and pass it through the opening. At this point, half of their upper torso should be through the opening –they can then pass their head through by looking straight ahead and following their head backwards.
In Photo 4, you will see that the firefighter can now bring their other arm into the opening, allowing them to use their feet to push the rest of their body through the opening. This can be accomplished by twisting and turning their body while pushing with their feet.
Once through the opening, the firefighter can grab their tool and head for the nearest exit be it a window or a door. Once out of the building, they need to let Command know and call off the mayday.
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Photo 3: The firefighter should sit their SCBA cylinder right inside the opening, allowing for the biggest part of the SCBA to be passed through first.
Photo 4: To complete the wall breach, the firefighter can now bring their other arm into the opening, allowing them to use their feet to push the rest of their body through the opening.
In addition to being a firefighter and R2MR Instructor from the City of Burlington, Ont., James Rychard is an advocate for mental and behavioural health in the fire service, sitting on multiple association committees. He can be reached at jaymzr007@hotmail.com.
3 tools for stress
By James Rychard
Given the VUCA — volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous — world in which we live, stress is a predictable outcome. For firefighters whose work environment is characterized by unpredictable schedules, events, and emergencies as well as erratic sleep and eating patterns, the effects of stress are significant. Stress leaves people vulnerable to negative physical, mental, and behavioral issues. Worse, too much stress causes the immune system to shut down.
COVID-19 has amplified exponentially the negative effects of stress on firefighters, their families, and their communities. Mitigating these effects requires both an understanding of what causes stress and the application of tools to help monitor and manage it. Firefighters need to determine when – not if – their stress levels are reaching their tilt factor, and what they can do about it. This article prescribes three easy-to-use tools.
The Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRSS)(https://www.stress.org/holmesrahe-stress-inventory-pdf ), developed by doctors Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe, assigns points to 43 stress-inducing life events that affect people’s health. The value associated with each Life Change Unit (LCU) is based on its potential impact on one’s stress level. For example, the LCU for divorce is 73, the second most impactful item on the SRRS. An individual simply checks each LCU they have experienced during the previous 12 months and adds their values. Research shows that subjects whose total score exceeds 300 have an 80 per cent chance of illness in the next two years while those whose scores are 150 or less have only a 30 per cent chance. When firefighters determine their current stress level, they can make informed decisions
about how to avoid over-taxing themselves.
The second tool, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, is depicted as a pyramid of human needs (see illustration). Maslow believed that we strive to reach the top of the pyramid because this is what makes us “feel” we are living our life’s true potential. However, we cannot achieve that level — or any other — unless all of the lower level needs have been satisfied. When that is not the case, motivation and upward progress will be disrupted as people move back down the pyramid. Fluctuating among the lower levels of the hierarchy creates a quagmire effect.
When you superimpose Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs with the SRRS by placing the LCUs in their corresponding needs categories, it becomes obvious that over 90 per cent of the LCUs fall into the bottom three levels. This means that numerous stressors are likely to interrupt the path to achieving one’s full potential. Firefighters who must deal simultaneously with an excess of stressors may experience decreases in confidence and motivation, leaving them particularly vulnerable to negative physical, mental,
and behavioral issues. Learning about the inverse connection between stress and motivation will enable firefighters to make better decisions about how to manage stress.
Thirdly, Gallup’s CliftonStrengths (a business assessment tool found at www. gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/253868/ popular-cliftonstrengths-assessmentproducts.aspx) identifies and measures 34 natural talents, encouraging people to focus on their top five talents. It also offers an action-planning guide specific to each strength. Gallup’s research team discovered that people who choose to use their strengths daily report results such as a significantly higher quality of life and level of work engagement than those who make other choices.
Firefighters can become better, stronger, healthier, and more engaged in life by taking three actions:
• understanding the inverse connection between stressors motivation;
• maintaining a high level of situational awareness about their own stress level; and
• playing to their strengths every day.
The three tools described here can help achieve those outcomes.
Abraham Maslow believed that we strive to reach the top of the pyramid because this is what makes us “feel” we are living our life’s true potential.
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Between alarms
By Arjuna George
A firefighter’s mindset
As firefighters we face adversity and challenges on a regular basis. This chosen profession, whether it be volunteer or career, provides endless occasions to grow and learn. Unfortunately, not all take advantage of the vast opportunities the fire service can provide you as a firefighter and as a leader. Not all foster a mindset for learning or jumping out of their comfort zone. This article is based off the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck who pioneered the study of the psychological trait known as mindset. She has described the world as being divided up into two categories of people, those with fixed mindsets and those with growth mindsets.
Mindset is essentially your mind’s attitude toward things such as whether you believe qualities like intelligence and talent are fixed—you either have it or you do not — or changeable.
A fixed mindset can be identified in those that lack the desire to learn and are ok with the status quo. Those with a fixed mindset tend to spend more time reconfirming their intelligence than expanding their mind with new current knowledge. Fixed mindset firefighters are constantly concerned with how they are judged and avoid errors all costs. They tend to give up after failed attempts looking at it as a lack of ability that cannot be improved. Fixed mindset thinking can be seen in the fire service where some view firefighters as needing to be muscle
bound heroes; anything else does not make the standard in their view. This mindset is demotivating and does not allow for continued growth.
Negative fixed mindset firefighters tell themselves “you are who you are, you cannot change it, you can’t do anything about it.” The more we tell ourselves we cannot, the more we turn our thoughts into negative ones.
In contrast, growth mindset firefighters have a thirst for knowledge, for learning by way of hard work and commitment. A fixed mindset would say you were born to be a firefighter; growth mindset says you can be a firefighter with dedication and hard work. That is a winning attitude.
Firefighters with a growth mindset embrace failure as a prime opening to learn and grow, to be better than yesterday. Each failure is looked upon as a learning opportunity, not as a barrier to getting better.
The greatest attribute I see in successful firefighters is a growth mindset. Those that live those principles tend to advance through the fire service, are well respected by their peers and generally are successful thanks to their passion for adapting and learning.
One simple technique to make the shift is to start using the power of ‘yet’ when encouraging others or for your own self talk. The simple addition of ‘yet’ adjusts your thinking to new openings of possibilities. As an example, picture yourself mentoring a new firefighter on SCBA. The recruit says, “I cannot don the
Arjuna George is chief of Salt Spring Island Fire Rescue in B.C. He has served on the department since 1997. Contact Arjuna at ageorge@ saltspringfire.com.
Fixed Mindsets
• Ignore negative feedback
• When faced with obstacles, give up
• See effort as pointless
• Avoid challenges
• Feel threatened by others success
Growth Mindsets
• Learn from criticism
• Persist even with setbacks
• See effort as a path to mastery
• Embrace challenges
• Get inspired by the success of others
SCBA in under 60 seconds, I just can’t do it.” As a coach, help them reframe their thinking and attitude towards the skill by adding the simple word ‘yet’. “You cannot don the SCBA in under 60 seconds yet.” This nugget can also be used for self-talk with an ‘if then’ statement turning, “I don’t feel confident to present to the class on fire extinguishers” into “I don’t’ feel confident to present to the class on fire extinguishers yet, but with a few rehearsals I will be ready.”
One of the greatest lessons one can collect are the good and the bad of others around you. These golden opportunities allow you to improve your leadership by learning from others.
As firefighters progress through their careers, there are several opportunities to advance through the ranks. These can be tense times where resentment and jealousy run rampant. A growth mindset member would take this opportunity to inspire them to work and train harder so they too can be that good. They respect the hard effort put in which drives them to
work even harder to improve.
To reframe your mind, challenge yourself to be a lifelong learner. Pick one area that you feel could use some improvement in and work towards mastering it. Look at the skill with a beginner’s mind. The beginner’s mind is a concept where you look through the lens of a child learning something for the very first time. Break it down, really get into it with no preconceived notions, just eagerness and a clear curious mind. You will find you will unravel areas you were having troubles with and expand your understanding of the skill.
One of the greatest side benefits to living a growth mindset is that it makes you more resilient. In the high stress, highly emotional life of a firefighter, being resilient has never been so important. With the mindset that sees challenges and obstacles as an opportunity versus having a sense of failure will increase your ability to bounce back even stronger.
Today is the day to begin shifting your mindset to a growth one if it’s been fixed. Do not accept that you don’t know or can’t do. Begin cultivating your mind to look at life and all that the fire service offers as an opening to success and growth.
If you find this a difficult challenge, might I suggest you reframe it as a “yet”. If you want to learn more, I recommend Dweck’s book called Mindset
Starting today and between alarms, take the opportunity to have an inquisitive mind and develop your growth mindset with effort over talent.
Tools of the Trade
By Sean Kingswell
Sean has been a professional firefighter and personal trainer/ wellness coach for 22 years. With many areas of specialty, he has had the privilege of helping countless individuals meet their goals. www.peakconditioning.ca
Your brain and aging into retirement
Fire fighting can be a grueling yet rewarding career. Those who are lucky enough to call it their job are passionate about what they do and want to enjoy the stage that follows: retirement. Retirement can mean many different things but common wants include good health, quality of life and longevity. All three of these ideas are tied to how we take care of ourselves and come with good planning and preparation over hope. Firefighters can have a propensity for challenges later in life due to disease potential, work related injuries or critical incident stressors. We, like any other part of society, also risk the natural changes that occur as we age. All of the aforementioned have the potential to be positively impacted with strategies. Transitioning to retirement takes foresight and the groundwork can be laid in advance in all categories of life.
One element of health that is tied to the desired outcomes of aging is maintaining our cognition. As a certified senior fitness trainer, certified brain health trainer and certified Fitminds coach, I have learned the amazing ability of our brain’s neuroplasticity. The use it or lose idiom is literal when applied to our cognition as our brain will actually prune dendrites that we don’t use. The hardware (gray and white matter) and software (circuitry) within the brain can be improved and maintained, which is in turn crucial in preventing neurodegeneration.
To support the brain and impact our trajectory while aging, we need to have a global approach. This means that all of the areas of the brain should be worked and strengthened. This includes the frontal, temporal, occipital and parietal lobe, the cerebellum and so on. They all can be addressed and often impact each other. It can be challenging to assess the global use of our brain. For example, many people may feel their brain is supported or strengthened because they read. Reading is great for the brain... but it is only work-
Retirement can mean many different things but common wants include good health, quality of life and longevity.
ing a certain area not the different lobes or cognitive domains. We want to make sure that all the domains are exercised including executive function, memory, attention and processing speed. Although not practical to outline in this article there are numerous sub domains within each.
Our brain is a dynamic organ, not static. It is like our blood pressure not our height, meaning also that it can be affected by the things we do. Ironically areas that support our blood pressure are also great for our brains. Good sleep, stress management, nutrition, and exercise are all important for both. Socializing is a fundamental contributor to brain health. Fire fighting is generally a very social career, potentially off the job but certainly on. When we retire do we have a plan in place to make sure we are spending time with people at a reasonable level? The big three for quality of life in retirement are health, purpose and relationships, all of which are impacted by cognition, yet also have a direct bearing on it.
Exercise can be used generally and specifically to help with having an adequate cognitive reserve and benefiting from the fluidity and flexibility of our brains. Exercise in general improves
neural efficiency, gray matter and brain activity. Cardiovascular training of course strengthens our heart but also has an impact on the brain. Resistance training is fundamental for aging. We must offset muscle losses and the biggest element for independent living long term is leg strength. Resistance training is also generally good for the brain as it requires motor learning, planning and sustained attention. Balance training helps with fall and injury prevention as we transition from retired to elderly. Frequency (how often) is a more important area of focus then duration (workout length) when it comes to exercise.
Specifically, exercising with the proper techniques can challenge your brain at a level and specificity to meet your current needs and future goals. A well-rounded approach would cover the different domains and outline your strengths and weaknesses. Programs of this nature need to be both novel and variable and are therefore engaging and fun. Dual tasking is a strategy that can be very useful in working the brain. Varied stimulus reaction time drills, memory work, choreography, language tasks, digit spans, task switching, space retrieval, movement flows, obstacles and multi component work are all examples of physical brain health training. The vision, vestibular and proprioception systems should all be worked also. Vision is highest on the neural hierarchy and all three work in tandem.
The brain can also strengthen through direct cognitive stimulation without exercise. This can be great for critical thinking, spatial orientation, language, computation and more. This needs to be done with the proper techniques to be holistically effective. We are so often drilled by the importance of strengthening our bodies and preventing their decline. Our brains deserve and benefit from workouts just the same. Neither should be neglected as a healthy brain later in life is a blessing beyond words.
FIRE SERVICE WOMEN ONTARIO
GREETINGS FROM FSWO
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT OF FSWO
Pike Krpan
Wow, things have truly changed dramatically in the world since our last section in this magazine in April 2020. It now seems so long ago that the world was just learning a new lexicon of coronavirus! We have witnessed the world turn around completely on many things we thought to be solid and unchangeable. At FSWO, we are reading these changes, and more specifically the unprecedented response to these changes, as an opportunity. We’ve seen fire departments overhaul their ways on a dime to protect ourselves and our community from risk.
It’s heartening to know that change in our tradition-laden service is so possible. So, we ask, how do we galvanize that kind of energy to respond to the crisis that is a lack of inclusion in our fire services? Inaction on this front is also a risk – a risk to the mental and physical well-being of our firefighters and in our team-based environment- an injury to one is an injury to all.
I’m asking this question because this week, like many weeks before, I received an email from another woman in the fire service saying she can’t take it anymore. She is planning on taking an early retirement after many years of service. Citing the lack of support from
CALM YOUR CORONAVIRUS STRESS WITH THESE RELAXING ACTIVITIES
MEDITATION
Meditation apps are an accessible way to institute a mindfulness regimen into your daily life.
COLOURING
Colouring is a simple, repetitive activity that’ll help you disconnect from the never-ending news cycle.
READING
For free online books, check out Google Books or Smashwords for work from independent authors and publishers. Or, if you’re more into short stories, Wattpad is your go-to.
COOKING
Making food can be a way to experiment and feel a small sense of accomplishment, all while doing something fun.
GARDENING
Tending to something green will give you a taste of nature while you’re stuck inside, and the small acts of caring for your plant can even count as self care.
HER HOPE FOR CHANGE
By Ali Rothrock
Firefighting was always what I was meant to do. I just didn’t know it until I turned 16. I’m not a legacy firefighter, unless you count my great-grandfather, which no one ever does. When I happened upon firefighting in my little town in central Pennsylvania in America, it was as if I’d found the missing puzzle piece I’d been looking for. Fifteen years later, firefighters are still my favorite group of people and firefighting is my favourite way to help people. I have been so fortunate to work with some of the very best and to learn from brilliant minds in many different realms of emergency service. But in the beginning, things were very different. The firehouse I first joined was not one where who I was was accepted. The firefighters had very clear expectations of how female firefighters should act both on a fire ground and in the fire station. These expectations were ones I had no interest in. My gender was made to feel like a handicap that I would never be able to overcome. Those firefighters saw me as a threat because I would not conform to these expectations and therefore I was an unknown entity. By simply existing there I was rebelling against these expectations. By not conforming I was rebelling against these expectations. Every time I got a new training certificate or became qualified to run on a certain rig, I was proving them and their expectations
www.cnet.com/health/ relaxing-activities-to-help-youcope-with-coronavirus-stress/ Continued on page 8 Continued on page 2
GREETINGS FROM FSWO
Continued from front page 1
her colleagues and management, she is ready to stop fighting. I can’t say I am surprised or that I fault her in any way. It reminds me that we have so much work to do.
I’m also asking this question because of the powerful effect that the Black Lives Matter movement continues to have on questioning inequality and justice in our communities. The fire service is not immune to the abuse of power that we have witnessed in policing. How do we speak out against police brutality and racism? As first responders, what ideals are we defending and promoting, and where does our silence speak loudly? How have Black members of our fire service, including Black women, been marginalized and maligned at work? How do we promote change in our own service, as they say – walk our talk – if we want to hold others accountable for their misuse of power? These questions are not the ones I hear being discussing around the fire hall table quite enough. We can do better.
In this magazine section, I’m excited to share the perspective of different FSWO members on their changing work experiences during the pandemic. I’m also excited to introduce Ali Rothrock to you, a truly inspirational firefighter who is making serious waves by talking about all aspects of firefighter health through her work at On the Job and Off. Generally, we use this space to promote our fall training symposium. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, FSWO has made the difficult decision to delay our 2020 event until next year. Despite the loss of this important in-person event, FSWO is exploring different ways to bring you online quality training and leadership classes this fall, along with a virtual Annual General Meeting. We are offering our yearly FSWO Awards and we are currently accepting nominations until October 2, 2020. To nominate someone for one of these awards and for more details on our fall sessions, please visit www. fswo.ca and our social media feeds.
We are continuing our partnership with the Oakville Fire Department and we are looking forward to offering another dynamic and powerful in-person Training Symposium in 2021 in Oakville.
Last, I want to share with you that FSWO is hard at work on developing a Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit for fire departments. The strategies we intend to share result from ten years of FSWO experience and also from the results of our ground-breaking survey in 2019. Participation was high - 1364 online surveys and 26 in-depth face-toface interviews were completed. The research was conducted and compiled by members of the Labour Studies Departments at McMaster University.
WE HAVE WITNESSED THE WORLD TURN AROUND COMPLETELY ON MANY THINGS WE THOUGHT TO BE SOLID AND UNCHANGEABLE.
Here are some of the highlights of the high level of response:
• the survey was shared to all staff in at least 11 fire departments in Ontario
• 549 men and 195 women in suppression completed the survey
• 160 respondents were in leadership ranks (higher than Captain), and 54 additional respondents represented non-suppression divisions
• 599 career and 134 part-time/volunteer firefighters are represented in the survey results
• 63% of women firefighter respondents had less than 5 years on the job and 11% with more than 20. This compares to 26% of men respondents with less than 5 years and 47% with more than 20 years. Many of our women firefighters are still new on the job.
To me personally, the results were surprising in that many of the issues I felt would be more statistically significant for women were also of concern to men. This has reinforced the need to make changes which will make the entire fire service a healthier and safer environment for EVERYONE. We intend to share more details this fall as our toolkit is released.
In the meantime, strength to you and your crews in these challenging times.
Sincerely,
Pike Krpan | President, FSWO
TIMES OF CHANGEPANDEMIC REFLECTIONS
If these last few months has shown us anything, it is the importance of being able to adapt and change to what is happening around us. And for those of us in the Fire Service, we have definitely been met with an abundance of ongoing changes to not only keep us safe, but also our families, loved ones and communities in which we serve. The one constant, however, was that no matter how the coronavirus has infiltrated the world around us, we still have a job to do. While we all have felt the impacts of the virus and the changes that have occurred as a result, exactly how each of us has been impacted can look vastly different for each person. We wanted to share with you a few different perspectives of individuals from within the Fire Service, as they provide us with a personal glimpse of how they have adapted during these unprecedented times.
By Debbie Higgins, Deputy Fire Chief with Toronto Fire Services
Friday March 13, 2020 lived true to its “Friday the 13th” reputation. I had just returned from an amazing two week vacation in Mexico, and had reported to work for four days. The rules changed that day, and I was forced into quarantine for the remainder of a 14-day mandated period. I packed up my computer and headed home, where I have largely remained, working remotely.
The City’s Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), which was activated on March 13, was soon overwhelmed with the scale of the emergency and the needs of the community. The Fire Chief was appointed to lead the City’s emergency response to the pandemic and one of our Deputy Chiefs was assigned temporarily to the EOC. With
both senior staff requiring support staff, this resulted in approximately 40% of senior management resources being removed from the daily operations of the fire service. A network of fire chiefs and deputies was quickly set up to exchange information and best practices to ensure consistency across the GTA, and to share information.
At the beginning of the outbreak of the virus in Toronto, the singular focus of the Toronto Fire senior management team was the safety of our staff. The analogy developed was that we were looking into the face of tidal wave, and we needed
PANDEMIC REFLECTIONS
THE ANALOGY DEVELOPED WAS THAT WE WERE LOOKING INTO THE FACE OF TIDAL WAVE, AND WE NEEDED TO GET EVERYBODY OFF THE BEACH AND BRING THEM BACK ONLY WHEN WE KNEW IT WAS SAFE TO DO SO.
to get everybody off the beach and bring them back only when we knew it was safe to do so. This immediately resulted in the closing of all inspection and public education offices, and the rescheduling of office staff to allow daily physical distancing in the office and work-from-home schedules. All modified duties staff were sent home, and training and other non-essential work stopped until we could make it safe to continue. This resulted in several weeks of working very long days to ensure we developed policies and procedures that allowed our staff to continue their vital roles, either in the office or from remote locations, while protecting their health and well-being.
No time of the day was off limits as we dealt with emerging issues that never seemed to stop coming. Issues that were considered low priority on a Friday night would suddenly move to the top of the list early Saturday morning, causing a significant amount of scrambling to resolve problems. PPE was scarce, purchasing was difficult, and city divisions were competing against each other for scarce resources.
Changes in work processes including everything from curtailing trips to the grocery store for front line crews, to modifying the ways that crews changed over at shift change, to relocating vehicles to allow better physical distancing in fire stations with multiple crews. Changes were made quickly, and often modified after implementation.
While our main goal remained the safety of our staff, we also did our best to keep staff informed, issuing a significant number of updates through the Office of the Fire Chief. In a typical year, TFS issues approximately 220 staff communiques – we reached this
milestone in 2020 on June 29. We tracked every decision made and the reasons for them (in anticipation of an “After Action” report). Of these the 336 decisions contained in these communiques, 217 were decisions that either originated within Fire or were corporate directives amended to suit our needs. At the time of writing, approximately 65 of the processes have returned to business as usual.
Our decisions were not perfect, but all were made in the best interests of staff. The results were evident as the number of COVID cases remained low amongst staff. Although we made mistakes, we did our best to correct them quickly. We scheduled twice-weekly teleconferences with the Association to share information and deal with issues as they arose as best as possible. We learned a lot. We know what we would do again, and what we would not repeat.
Everyone has sacrificed things over the past few months. Everyone has lost something, including vacations, time with family and friends, and relationships. Some lost friends and loved ones, either to the virus, or to other things as “normal” life continued despite COVID-19. I am no exception. But as things begin to calm down, and open up to something resembling normal life, I hope we will all have the opportunity to mourn, rejoice, and reflect on what we have, rather than what we have lost — and be proud of the efforts we made to support our staff and communities through this extremely difficult time.
Fire Chief with Toronto Fire Services, with the portfolio of Administrative and Mechanical Services. She previously held the portfolios of Fire Prevention and Public Education, and Professional Development and Training. She is currently on the Board of Directors of Fire Service Women Ontario, and is an Associate Director with the World Police and Fire Games Federation.
DEBBIE HIGGINS is a Deputy
Joanne
When Ontario shut down in mid-March and so many people were sent home, some with pay and some without, we knew that we were not going to be those people. We knew that we would have to figure out how to get to work when so many services were shutting down. We knew that we would be continuing to do our job no matter what. In what capacity and to what extent we didn’t know initially. Would we still run medicals? How would structure fires look? What about rope rescues?
I think all of us were feeling emotions that were all over the map. Driving to work on empty streets and highways gave us an eerie glimpse into what the world looked like and just how many people were staying home. Almost immediately the policies came out. The policy changes, the updates to the policies, and the clarifications of the updates. Who should come to work, who should not come to work, who you should contact if you thought you should not come to work. The screening tools came in and the process of sanitizing yourself, taking your temperature, sanitizing everything again. Sanitizing your truck and station first thing when you got to work, wiping down all the doorknobs, computer keyboards and common surfaces.
Calls initially seemed to drop off for us. Driving around a town that resembled a wasteland, there were very few car accidents, and nobody was
really on the roads. Structure fires initially declined because people were at home attending to all the things that could possibly start a fire. Then the suicides started. The reality of how difficult it was for many people to adjust and adapt to staying home and many being isolated at home and away from their many support systems, became clear. Still we kept on.
Figuring out the various call protocols, specifically medicals, during the first few weeks was quite an endeavour. Was EMS on scene first? Who would go in with them? What level of PPE would be worn? How many of us would go in fully protected? Wear your PPE but don’t waste your PPE as your department may have difficulty securing more. Figuring out logistics on the fly at a drug overdose VSA. Trying to maintain all your PPE protocols when there are 4 firefighters on scene initiating CPR, defib protocols, and trying to comfort and corral family and friends while also trying to help people maintain physical distancing. This followed by 4 Police Officers arriving on scene, oh and then 4 Paramedics on scene, all in a tiny apartment, made you realize how easy it all was pre COVID. Consequently, some of our relationships with other Emergency Services have been cemented. Days of running so many VSA’s dripping in sweat beside the same EMS crews and Police Officers over and over again, in the same extensive PPE, it felt like we were a small but mighty army.
Driving
around a town that resembled a wasteland, there were very few car accidents, and nobody was really on the roads.
We realized how very lucky we were. Not only were we still getting a paycheque when so many around us were not, we were still required to leave our homes and come to work for our 24-hour shift. And what a gift that was! When our families were climbing the walls some days, we got to leave the house behind and head into work where, gasp, we got to have conversations with other humans who were not our immediate family. We got to have a level of social interaction that felt so good and that so many others were denied. Yes, we had to figure out physical distancing, but that seemed a small price for the gift that was conversation and firehall banter.
Fourteen weeks later we’ve settled into a rhythm as we continue to grapple with how to do our jobs with all our new parameters in place. I for one am quite proud of us all. But hey, isn’t that what we do?
JOANNE BLANCHETTE was the first female firefighter hired by Oakville Fire Department in October 1994. She is currently an Assistant Platoon Chief in Oakville.
By
Blanchette, Assistant Platoon Chief in Oakville.
PANDEMIC REFLECTIONS
By Julie Petruzzellis, firefighter and member of the FSWO Board of Directors.
Standing in front of my washing machine, I pull off my uniform and throw everything that’s been at work into the wash, then head directly into the shower. This has been my new post-shift routine for the past three months. Initially, right at the beginning of the lockdown, when the weather was cooler and the shifts quieter, I would sit outside on my back deck after my shower with a hot cup of coffee and enjoy some time to myself, in what I could pretend was a world without demands.
As the sun creeps up earlier and the lockdown eases, my kids are awake sooner and shifts are busier. I find myself resenting everyone around me who has the luxury of working from home and am also increasingly desperate for a moment to myself in my own house. I don’t begrudge folks for their new work routines, but I’m pained by their disregard for mask and distancing etiquette when they head up to our main strip for shopping and necessities. I’ve been donning and doffing
protective equipment for over a decade now, and stress is making it hard to find the generosity to recall that using PPE takes getting used to. And yet I suspect that some people will never make the effort to get used to it.
My alone time consists of driving my car to a different neighborhood every few weeks, parking on a quiet side-street in the shade and checking in with my therapist via Zoom. Those of us working on the frontlines haven’t stopped having family and community responsibilities. I’m still running a household, parenting my two kids, supervising
MY ALONE TIME CONSISTS OF DRIVING MY CAR TO A DIFFERENT
NEIGHBORHOOD EVERY FEW WEEKS, PARKING ON A QUIET SIDE-STREET IN THE SHADE AND CHECKING IN WITH MY THERAPIST VIA ZOOM.
their baffling new reality of online learning, supporting my partner’s work-from-home schedule, and doing regular check-ins with aging and chronically ill parents. I do this while terrified I’ll bring COVID-19 home to them. All of these responsibilities have their own new challenges, just like my workplace.
When lockdown started my crew was shipped to a new station as a way to disperse staff with specialized training so that, should trained staff need to be quarantined, those specialized trucks could stay FSO in service. We were given a warm welcome at the new station, but getting comfortable with new colleagues can take time. In those early days my inbox was regularly flooded with multiple new operating guidelines. This was overwhelming and I found it impossible to keep track of new expectations. Luckily, the city was like a ghost town and shifts were quiet. In hindsight, those quiet shifts gave me time to get to know my new station-mates, grapple with new SOG’s and start to process the stress of what a pandemic could do to me, my family and my community.
I have the luxury of living in the core of the large urban centre where I’m stationed. Serving the community where I live has always been a priority for me. I have never wished for distance from this community until this year. My family has traded square footage, a fancy car and destination vacations for proximity to extended family, and easy access to museums, libraries, neighborhood
schools, and all the other perks of city living –perks that are not available during a pandemic.
As my crew-mates get into their cars at the end of shift, I find I’m envious of their long drives to homes with space around them and easy access to nature. The drives themselves are a much-needed transition period of alone time. I built that work-to-home decompression time into my schedule by going to the gym directly from work. That’s now unavailable and I have to settle for a shower and a stolen moment on the back deck. I also know I’m lucky to have that backyard space. If I look up to the right when I’m out there, I can see the 20-story community housing building a few blocks away where I know from work that there are active COVID cases and families are crowded into small apartments, with their only private outdoor access a small cement balcony.
This pandemic has forced us all to hunker down in the small units that we have built our personal lives around. As social creatures, these units are not enough to sustain us. Despite some envy of my work-from-home family and friends, at a time of mandatory social and physical distancing, I also feel lucky to come to work and participate in the camaraderie that is integral to healthy fire station culture.
JULIE PETRUZZELLIS has been a firefighter since 2006 and serves as a member of the FSWO Board of Directors.
HER HOPE FOR CHANGE
Continued from front page 1
wrong and this made them very angry.
My very first fire call turned out to be a catalyst for me, a cementing experience that would propel me forward toward a new goal that would materialize more than a decade later. We arrived on the side of the highway in a snowstorm. I didn’t know what was happening or even which fire truck I was riding on. I was just told it was a “bad car accident.” When we arrived, I watched the firefighters pull the body of a 5-year-old from the vehicle and perform CPR on her right there in the snow. Knowing what I know now, I believe she was dead when we arrived, but watching those firefighters do everything they could to save her was hauntingly beautiful. I was eager to get back to the firehouse so someone could tell me what I am to do with the memory of her. But when we got back to the firehouse no resources were offered. What we had seen and participated in wasn’t even acknowledged. That experience was formative in more ways than one. It wasn’t the blood and death that still resonates with me all these years later. It was the lack of care those firefighters gave to themselves, the lack of acknowledgement and validation of the expected response one would have to seeing a dead child. I watched them take their gear off and go home, tears in their eyes. And it was then, seconds after wrapping up my very first fire call that a seed was planted in my mind that would bloom far in the future.
My first many years in the fire service were marked by trauma. Not from witnessing death, dying and tragedy, but because of the experiences I had with people who I had trusted. Those firefighters talked about me as if I had no clothes on and talked graphically about the mechanics of sex while watching porn on the TV. I was made to believe that if I would just give in, if I would just allow unprotected access to my body, if I would just be quiet, then I would be allowed to exist in that station.
*trigger warning* After a few years in the fire service I was desperate for a new environment. I went on a ride along in a busy inner-city firehouse far away from my own. I just wanted to experience the good side of firefighters that I knew must exist
J B ON THE AND OFF
somewhere. But in that fire house, on an old couch in a pitch-black room, I experienced an attempted gang rape at the hands of three drunk firefighters. This experience was the final drop in the bucket, and it caused my mind to shut down. Again, I now know that this is not normal, and I have since been fortunate enough to experience the very best in the fire service. But there were many years in the beginning where I thought this was all firefighting was. I thought learning how to exist in this toxic and sometimes violent environment was what firefighting required of me. When my mental health finally unraveled and all of these traumas became events I could no longer see around, I realized that I needed help that I couldn’t give myself. I lucked out and met a fantastic therapist named Jill who gave my struggle a name — Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. With this, I was able to move my life forward with the intention of ridding this disorder from my mind.
In my recovery I turned to advocacy. I become involved with a women’s resource center, working in domestic violence, on the crisis hotline, and responding to the hospital to be an advocate for someone who had survived a sexual assault. I found a new firehouse and I started to think more and more about how bodies and minds respond to crisis. I realized how there are very little
tailored resources for first responders on this topic. I began to speak and tell my story with the goal of empowering other firefighters to know they aren’t alone in experiencing sexual harassment and violence in fire stations and to create new space for conversations to take place about the systemic issues that haunt our stations for anyone who doesn’t fit the firefighter stereotype.
Then in 2018 I started On the Job and Off, which is an online platform that provides mental health and anti-violence education for first responders. I wrote courses on post-traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, cumulative stress, anti-violence, and addiction. We’ve had first responders from all 50 states in America and some from Canada take our courses.
Over time the way I tell my story has changed. I don’t think of myself as a victim anymore and I don’t tell my story from that perspective. Instead, I purposefully ask more questions than I answer. I ask Fire Chiefs things like, “Do your firefighters know what behavior you find unacceptable? Do they know what the consequences are if they continue to exhibit that behavior? Do you have a code of conduct that you actually enforce? Do you know what to do if a firefighter is assaulted on the job or in your fire house? Do you know why it’s beneficial to have women in your ranks? For the mental health piece I ask, “Do you know the signs of a mental health struggle? Do you know what to do if one of your firefighters isn’t acting like themselves after a significant call? What mental health resources can you offer them specifically?”
I believe that someday the fire service will evolve enough that it eliminates the need for me to tell my story. I believe that someday what happened to me will be so far from anyone else’s lived experience that talking about it is no longer necessary. But we aren’t there yet.
ALI ROTHROCK is a speaker, author, educator, and advocate and has delivered over 500 presentations nationwide. Ali has been in the volunteer fire service since 2005, enjoying more than a decade as a firefighter and Emergency Medical Technician. Ali is also the CEO & Lead Instructor for On the Job and Off, which is an online platform dedicated to building more resilient first responders. Ali is the author of Where Hope Lives, a memoir detailing her journey through her first few years in the fire service. She is currently writing her second book After, which details her story of trauma recovery while featuring other’s stories too. In addition to her other education and certifications including a Certified Trauma Responder and Suicide Prevention Instructor, Ali also has an Associate’s degree in Fire Science and is currently earning her bachelor’s degree in Psychology with an emphasis in crisis counseling.
Fit for duty
By Sherry Dean
Sherry Dean is a career firefighter/engineer with Halifax Regional Fire & Emergency Service. She has more than 20 years of experience in fitness and training. deansherry@bellaliant.net.
Strategies for managing injury
At some point in time active people will experience injury. Knowing whether an injury is serious or superficial can be difficult, especially if you haven’t previously experienced similar discomfort. Pain management is different for everyone and that complicates analysis.
Acute injury happens suddenly, such as a sprained ankle or broken bone. These types of injury are typically easy to identify because of the mechanism of injury and immediate deformity, bruising and/or swelling. Acute injury can also be a pull or tweak in muscle or connective tissue. A pulled muscle or strained tendon doesn’t have the same symptoms or visual cues of a broken bone and therefore are harder to recognize as injury.
A subacute stage occurs within a few days of an acute injury as the body attempts to heal and recondition itself and continues over a number of weeks. It is during this time that the actions of the athlete can make a minor injury into a chronic (long lasting) one. Chronic problems can last many months or a lifetime if not treated correctly.
DOMS (Delayed-onset muscle soreness) can start to occur 12 hours after activity and can last for up to three days. Muscle fiber tears down during activity and your body repairs itself by increasing blood flow and inflammation which can cause soreness (DOMS). This may not hap -
4 Round Chipper
Reduce the rounds or adjust the exercises or reps as needed
Round 1
• 2 minutes of cardio
(run, bike, row, skip, etc. You can do something different each round)
• 50 squats
• 40 push-ups
• 30 butterfly sit-ups
Round 2
• 2 minutes of cardio (run, bike, row, skip, etc.)
• 50 KB swings
• 40 grasshoppers
• 30 burpees or burpee jump overs
Round 3
• 2 minutes of cardio (run, bike, row, skip, etc.)
• 50 lunges
• 40 alternating single arm press
• 30 Russian twists
Round 4
• 2 minutes of cardio (run, bike, row, skip, etc.)
• 50 wallballs or med ball slams
• 40 jump squats or med ball cleans
• 30 dumbbell snatches
pen after every workout but tends to be more prevalent with new movements or an increase in intensity. DOMS is not generally considered an acute injury. Even though the muscle fiber is torn down, it is at a microscopic level. DOMS does not occur during your workout but you may feel DOMS during a subsequent workout.
It is important for an athlete to be able to recognize the type and severity of injury. Seeing a professional is the recommended path but it isn’t always that simple. Wait times, lack of a family physician, avoidance or feeling as though you are over-reacting are all factors. The difficulty for a lot of ath-
letes is to decide whether to work through acute injury or not. Injuries require time to heal. Working around, not through, injury is the correct approach. Having a professional guide you through that work-around is always the best method.
Modify or adapt
While you are healing, modification is almost always a possibility. It may be as simple as changing a grip or range of motion if it removes pain from an exercise. If there is no way to remove pain it is best to avoid the movement until you are able to do it without pain. You may ‘feel’ a movement. It is important to differentiate ‘feeling’ or discomfort from pain. If you are re-introducing activity after injury it is not uncommon to experience discomfort as your body readjusts back into its previous level of activity.
When you cannot complete a movement without pain, adapt the workout. If you have a lower body injury you may be able to maintain an upper body exercise regime or vice versa. Adaptation may come in the form of moving from free weights to machines. This will help to keep you motivated, burn calories and move blood through your system.
RICE and MEAT
Each injury is unique and requires a strategy specific to the needs of the injury and person. There are two approaches to recovery. It will be beneficial for you to apply the correct process through personal ex-
perience and professional direction.
RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation is a mainstream form of treating acute injury.
• Rest your injured body part to allow it to repair and rebuild. .
• Apply ice to reduce inflammation and pain.
• Compress the injured area with a tension bandage or wrapping to decrease fluid and swelling.
• Elevate the injured part to reduce blood flow.
MEAT: Movement, Exercise, Analgesics and Treatment is lesser known and works on the foundation of active recovery, which increases blood flow.
• Movement should be gentle with respect to pain threshold.
• Exercise by modifying and adapting your routine to maintain blood flow.
• Use analgesics to lessen and reduce pain. Pain management can be a key to being able to move and exercise injury. Medications such as aspirin and acetaminophen and natural products like turmeric and ginger are all analgesics.
• Treatment may be professional or done at home. RICE may be used to treat an injury directly after it happens and MEAT may be used to rehabilitate you from injury to health. If these treatments are new to you, educate yourself through reliable sources. I’ll leave you with this workout, if you are injured modify, adapt or save it for recovery. Be well and stay safe and active!
Recipe rescue
By Patrick Mathieu
Nutrition for your brain
We have learned over the years through clinical research and from the amazing work of our brothers and sisters from the IAFF peer support training team that the link between physical and mental health are very much intertwined. It only makes sense that if we take care of our bodies then our minds will follow suit. Our peer support trainers provide us with guidance and programs to keep our bodies and minds fit, but there is another vital piece of the puzzle that keeps physical and mental health tightly linked and that is nutrition. Nutrition helps with a person’s physical health and as we know when you take care of your physical health your mental health is sure to bene fit and vice versa.
If you think about it, your brain works nonstop 24/7. There are the obvious tasks, like taking care of our thoughts and our movements and the less obvious tasks like making us breathe, keeping our heartbeat and controlling our senses. It is always on, even while we sleep. If you think of this con stant activity that our brain is en during, this means it requires a constant supply of fuel. This fuel comes from the foods we eat — and what’s in that fuel makes all the difference. What you eat directly affects your brain and ultimately your physical well-being, your mood and your mental health. Like an expensive car, your brain functions best when it gets only premium fuel. Eating high-quality foods that contain lots of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants will nourish and feed the brain. Un fortunately, just like an expensive car, your brain can be damaged if
Patrick Mathieu is an acting captain at Waterloo Fire Rescue in Ontario. He was recently featured on Food Network’s Chopped Canada. stationhousecateringco@ yahoo.ca @StationHouseCCo
you ingest anything other than premium fuel. Diets high in refined sugars and processed foods are not only harmful to the body but the brain as well. Studies have shown that traditional diets high in vegetables, fruits, unprocessed grains, fish and seafood, and containing only modest amounts of lean meats and dairy contribute to elevated mood and feelings of well-being. These traditional diets are also void of processed and refined foods and sugars.
A change in diet doesn’t have to be drastic. Below is a list of seven
(which help your digestive system to run smoothly), however recent research from the University of Virginia Healthy System has shown thanks to the brain-gut connection, probiotics found in cultures such as yogurt might also be able to impact a person’s mental health, assisting in lowering levels of stress, anxiety and depression.
Whole grains: I know I couldn’t cut carbs out of my diet entirely, we just have to rethink how we eat them. Whole grains are a rich source of tryptophan, an amino acid that helps to produce serotonin (the ‘feel good hormone’). Serotonin assists in calming the mind, improving your mood and
I know I couldn’t cut carbs out of my diet entirely, we just have to rethink how we eat them.
that happens to help your longterm brain health, make it a handful of walnuts. They look like a brain for a reason. Walnuts are full of antioxidants, helping to inhibit oxidation in the brain and body.
Leafy greens: Leafy greens seem to benefit almost everything in the body, including our brain. Harvard Health reported that research suggests people who regularly consumed daily servings of leafy greens such as spinach, kale and collard greens may have a slower rate of cognitive decline compared to those who avoided piling their plates with greens.
Beans: Yes they’re the musical fruit, but did you know beans are also one of the top food choices for a happy, healthy brain? Full of fibre
and antioxidants, beans and legumes (chickpeas, lentils and kidney beans, for example) keep you fuller for longer, keeping your blood sugar stable and enabling you to burn more energy (which, as we know is essential for good mental health). Beans also contain thiamine, a vitamin needed for the production of acetylcholine (the neurotransmitter essential for memory).
Try to make these foods the staples in your diet and you will see and feel the benefits in your mental and physical well being. I’ve also included a recipe for you all to try, my blackened salmon with strawberry avocado salsa. It checks off as both brain and body healthy! Eat well and stay healthy.
Search and rescue, response and the spectrum
The
Search and Rescue for Autism program offers a unique technical training opportunity for firefighters
By Laura Aiken
In 2011 a 12-year-old boy in Arizona woke up his family to alert them of the smoke in the home. After he was safely out, he became confused or scared, the entirety of his mental state will never be known but he bolted back in the house. He was autistic and he died.
This tragic example shows why first responders need be educated on strategies that will help ensure the rescue of an individual with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) will be a success. Canadian Firefighter magazine recently spoke with Shanyn Silinski, program manager for Search and Rescue for Autism (SARA), a program with Autism Canada, on the importance of emergency services being equipped with the skills to have the best outcomes for ASD individuals.
“Our idea of a safe place is not necessarily a perceived safe place for someone with ASD. Our idea isn’t theirs,” says Silinski. During the phases of rescue, it’s critical that a person with ASD be brought
safely the whole way back to the caregiver.
SARA offers a curriculum that firefighters can train to with scenarios that are based on actual events, says Silinski, who is a former firefighter training officer. There are eight different trainings that bring valuable information to the broader fire service. The training is designed to be comprehensive, appeal to the many different backgrounds coming into search and rescue and will help first responders identify neurodiversity. SARA is hosting a free virtual event on October 24 for search and rescue teams, emergency services and the broader community of ASD families.
The training is a prevention model, one that encourages an understanding of how to be inclusive and help autistic people feel safe with emergency services. It’s very important to help prevent secondary incidents, which can often be fatal for those with ASD, notes Silinski.
Wandering and bolting are two chief concerns when it comes to responding to
individuals with ASD. They can also be very hard to search for and they may not even understand that they are lost. The National Autism Association in America reports that nearly half of children with ASD try to leave a safe environment, a rate that is four times higher than unaffected siblings and more than one third rarely or can’t communicate name/address/telephone number. Even the excitement of being found can cause a person to bolt and this is in part why extra steps are needed in order to ensure safety. ASD people tend to have higher interactions with emergency services.
“The training asks you to look at the world a bit differently and choose how you react,” says Silinski. “Consider that the world looks different to them.
The addition of sensory supports such as headphones and sunglasses may create that feeling of safety and avoid sensory overload for someone with ASD during an often chaotic response scene. Responders
Wandering and bolting are top concerns. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder can be difficult to search for and may not even understand that they are lost.
Better responses and better prevention coupled with good communication and trust will go a long way to supporting the
vulnerable ASD individuals in our communities.
can avoid confrontations by realizing that individual “is not giving you a hard time, they are really having a hard time and they need help,” she says.
Autism is a lifetime disorder, so while a lot of research is based on children, who are easier to study, there are adults and seniors on the spectrum as well. Spectrum is a key visual in understanding autism. There are many variabilities in the
kind of symptoms that may present and how the person lives.
Better responses and better prevention coupled with good communication and trust will go a long way to supporting the vulnerable ASD individuals in our communities. ASD is very common, all communities will have individuals living with this disorder in them. Chances are someone you know directly or know of by acquaintance is autistic.
Autism Canada, formed in 2015, is an amalgamation of two of Canada’s largest, leading autism organizations — Autism Society Canada (established in 1976) and Autism Canada Foundation (established in 2002). The organization does advocacy work and offers a number of different resources to a variety of stakeholders. SARA is just one of several resources under the Autism Canada umbrella.
The SARA Launch and Learn will be held on October 24, 1:00 pm –5:00 pm. The virtual event is divided into two sessions, one for families/ caregivers and first responders/SAR teams, and the second half of the event is more concentrated on training for emergency services/SAR. You can register at sarautism.ca.
YOU OFFER THAT TOO?
YOU OFFER THAT TOO?
YOU OFFER THAT TOO?
You know us for firefighter training, emergency services technology, NFPA 1001, NFPA 1002 and NFPA 1006.
You know us for firefighter training, emergency services technology, NFPA 1001, NFPA 1002 and NFPA 1006.
You know us for firefighter training, emergency services technology, NFPA 1001, NFPA 1002 and NFPA 1006.
We also o er specialized professional training:
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• Fire marshal
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• Livestock handling in emergencies
• Livestock handling in emergencies
• Livestock handling in emergencies
• NFPA 1041 fire service instructor
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• Safety codes
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Need a spot for practical training for your department? We can help with that too.
Need a spot for practical training for your department? We can help with that too.
Need a spot for practical training for your department? We can help with that too.
Plus, you can advance your career with our bachelor of applied business: emergency service degree! Contact us for details.
lakelandcollege.ca/fire-ems | 1.800.661.6490
Plus, you can advance your career with our bachelor of applied business: emergency service degree! Contact us for details. lakelandcollege.ca/fire-ems | 1.800.661.6490
Plus, you can advance your career with our bachelor of applied business: emergency service degree! Contact us for details. lakelandcollege.ca/fire-ems | 1.800.661.6490
Dispatches
By Jennifer Grigg
Jennifer Grigg has been a dispatcher, volunteer firefighter, FPO inspector and instructor. She is now a resilience and empowerment coach and certified body language trainer. Contact Jennifer at jennygrigg312@gmail.com or jennifergriggcoaching.com.
Solving the puzzle, discovering ACE
Life is all about finding the missing puzzle pieces and I think I just found another one of mine.
You see, I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety and PTSD back in 2013 but these problems were issues I’d struggled with most of my life
I knew some of it was likely tied to early childhood experiences and the extent of trauma I was exposed to being a volunteer firefighter for over two decades, but there were other factors I wasn’t aware of until I was older.
Genetics was one of them, an important one considering a family history of depression, alcoholism, drug addiction and suicide attempts. The dynamics of my childhood family added to my already shy and introverted nature. However, rather than understand how these factors (and several others) were determinants in what I was experiencing (because it wasn’t something I learned about until later in life), I did what anyone else does in similar situations: I judged myself.
I judged myself as being frustratingly insecure, ashamed, anxious and afraid to trying new things. I felt anxious for no good reason, and felt needy a lot of the time. Therapy and medication really did help and I turned to one or both whenever things got to be too much for me to handle on my own. Though a psychiatrist once told me that given my history I’d be on medication for the rest of my
life, I’ve been free of them for three years. I’m happy, healthy and generally navigate life quite well. I’m human after all so I still stumble sometimes. The best part is that I managed to tackle my social anxiety by learning body language, and loved it so much I became certified as a coach, but that’s a whole other column.
When I delivered presentations I’d tell firefighters that if they suffer from depression and/or anxiety, they’ll likely be affected negatively in this role. But — and it’s a big but — that absolutely does not mean that you can’t do the job. You just need to be aware that it’s a possibility and have access to the tools and resources to support yourself.
There are many concepts I’ve learned along the way that have helped me understand the journey. Wounded healer is a term created by psychologist Henri Nouwen 1972. The idea states that an analyst is compelled to treat patients because the analyst himself is “wounded.” The idea may have Greek mythology origins. I found this definition on Wikipedia. Totally made sense to me because I’ve long held the opinion that it’s our trauma that connects us and allows us to recognize it in others and help others. I believe that the concept also applies to those who enter other “helping fields” such as fire, police and EMS as well as other emergency services.
Here’s another fascinating piece of the puzzle that found its way to me through a unique path and I believe this to be the
part that brought it all together for me.
Back in July, I had the distinct pleasure of doing a Zoom interview with Ernie Stevens and Joe Smarro from the HBO documentary Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops . I was in awe of these two gentlemen and their
For me, taking the ACE questionnaire was like finding the missing piece of a puzzle, and perhaps it can be for you too.
entire team in the mental health unit of the San Antonio police department the first time I saw the documentary earlier this year. If you’ve not watched the documentary, I urge you to check it out.
Something Joe said in the interview stuck with me and led me down the research path to learn more. He’d made a reference to ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) and ACE scores in relation to those who enter the military. He was in the U.S. Marine Corps prior to entering law enforcement and he referenced a correlation between scores of 4 and those who enter the military. He said that those who enter the military do so for one of two reasons: to escape their environment or to create a better one.
Talk about an “A-ha” moment.
The ACE score is a simple evaluation tool made up of 10 questions in which you score a point for each statement you experienced in childhood.
The ACE Study, as explained
by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, now the surgeon general of California, measured five types of abuse and neglect: physical, verbal and sexual abuse; physical and emotional neglect and five types of family dysfunction: a family member with mental illness, or who has been incarcerated, or is abusing alcohol or other drugs; witnessing a mother being abused; losing a parent to divorce or separation.
To me, understanding the evaluation and score not only explains why so many of us are drawn to emergency services, but also why so many of us struggle with mental or physical health.
Here’s the good news. We are not necessarily permanently damaged goods because of our adverse childhood experiences. Science has proven that certain activities support healing and it’s not just therapy. Exercise, meditation, journaling, healthy diet, etc., all greatly contribute to well-being. You can heal from your early experiences. And your ACE may be the reason you are so good at being a first responder. It allows you to offer compassion and empathy in a very deep and personal way. For me, taking the ACE questionnaire was like finding the missing piece of a puzzle, and perhaps it can be for you too.
Knowing your ACE score is a powerful self-assessment tool, and having an awareness of the effect of ACEs on others allows you to approach people with a whole new level of understanding.
