A call doesn’t always end with a happily-ever-after fairytale ending. There are tougher calls when people or children don’t survive, and these situations can take a toll on the firefighters. After these serious calls many of the firefighters and other individuals that responded to the call with the engine company will gather at the firehouse for a meeting of the Critical Stress Debriefing (CSD) team. The firefighters use this meeting as a method of stress relief, a time to understand the chaotic events of a call, or an opportunity to share their reaction/experience during the call.

 

“Often times we’ll go out on a call, we’ll take care of the individual, we’ll package them up, we’ll put them on the ambulance, we’ll get them to the hospital, and this happens obviously very quickly. And then we release them to the nurses and doctors and then we back off after we’ve given them our information and sometimes it still bothers us. It’s hard to let go. So we want to know now ‘how did we do?’ ‘How’d that person fare?’” -Randy Fisher