Long after the roar of flames has been silenced, the rubble has been swept away and the rebuilding process has begun, those who survive wildfires have another, more personal, battle ahead of them.
The anxiety from what transpired as the fire burned and the duress caused by unwinding the path ahead can be nearly impossible to bear, as residents of the McDougall Creek wildfire-ravaged B.C. community of Traders Cove know all too well. There are roughly 100 homes in the neighbourhood and while 34 were completely destroyed none were left unscathed.
The Nuszdorfer family’s Traders Cove home was spared last year when fire tore through her neighbourhood, though that doesn’t mean it was without damage. Like many of those who came home to standing structures, they had to deal with singed siding, smoke damage, water-logged floors and even rotting food from refrigerators that had been shut down at the peak of the firefight.
“When the people whose houses didn’t burn down first came back, we were surrounded by rubble, none of the neighbours were here. That was pretty awful,” Nicole Nuszdorfer said.
Nicole said just going through the experience of the fire “was bad enough.”
“These things happen, it’s the red tape and issues that have made it unbearable,” she said.
The agonizingly slow process of rebuilding, which includes navigating bureaucratic processes with local governments and wrangling settlements from insurance agencies, is also a strain.
Katalin Nuszdorfer said it’s been an all-around draining experience.
“We’re feeling the financial stress, which is a mental drain right there, we’re missing work because of all the paperwork we’re doing and a lot of it is redundant because we don’t have guidance of what it is we need to do,” she said.
Those who are on the front line of flames as they descend on communities now have access to supports. It’s a change from generations of firefighters past and incredibly important.
Wilson’s Landing fire Chief Paul Zydowicz lost his home in the wildfire, along with 12 other firefighters in his crew, and he’s grateful for the services they have.
“Focus on mental health in the fire service is huge. Every single fire department that I’ve ever worked with and dealt with has an internal program on how to deal with it,” Zydowicz said.
“We have procedures for all of it. We have access to professional help when necessary. And maybe the old guard, the guys that have been there for 20 or 30 years, maybe not as much. But I can’t really say that, because I haven’t seen it. I think everyone that I’ve spoken with has very much understood that there’s potential for long-term issues here, if not addressed.”
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He said nobody he works alongside believes they’re too tough to reach out for help.
“People suck it up and go, ‘Yeah, you know, I can’t deal with this by myself,’ and that’s huge. I think that’s a really good progress for us as an industry,” he said.
He’s also seen good progress personally. The stress and sadness he felt dealing with the pain of watching his neighbours’ homes burn was at times hard to bear.
“That’s a pretty big hit on somebody that does this or even a part-time job,” he said.
“I don’t mean to harp on the mental health, but getting that help is important. Finding ways to deal with your family and comforting them and making everybody understand that it’s going to be OK because it is going to be OK (is important).”
West Kelowna fire Chief Jason Brolund said one thing about firefighting is that so many decisions are made in the heat of the moment, and the consequences are permanent.
“When the fire was burning, we didn’t have time to think about a lot of things,” Brolund said.
“For the most part, one of those things we didn’t have much time to think about was our mental health. We just all had work to do. We all had long days. There was hundreds or thousands of decisions that had to be made. So I think for many of us, the darkest days weren’t during the fire, they were the days that followed.”
He said that he still wrestles with some of the decisions made.
“Driving through those neighbourhoods where homes were lost is difficult for me, and it’s difficult for a lot of our firefighters,” Brolund said.
“We, of course, question, why did things play out the way they did?”
Inevitably, he said, he reminds himself that they did the best they could with what “exploded” in front of them.
The supports, luckily, help reinforce that message.
“We have a very robust program for mental health within the fire department. Long before this fire, things were put in place to help firefighters do the very difficult things that I asked them to do almost every day,” he said.
“We have access to counsellors, we have a chaplain, we have trained firefighters who are there to help each other out.”
He said there is one member on each crew that is trained to recognize issues and have difficult conversations.
“After the fire, that became even more important, we brought our firefighters and their families together over a series of evenings with mental health professionals, some of the best in the province, in order to give us tips and tools that we could use for our mental health,” he said.
“Most importantly, we just talked it through. I still go sit with the firefighters on a regular basis, and I’m hearing stories, things that I didn’t know happened. And sometimes that is the first line of defence; the best medicine is talking about it.”
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