As the peak of fire season approaches in the months ahead, wildland firefighters are preparing for the hard work they will face as they respond to fires across the state.
Managing fires is a knowingly dangerous job that not only threatens the physical safety of firefighters, but poses a threat to the mental health of those who protect their communities.
As fire seasons become prolonged and more intense, and firefighters have been asked to work longer and harder hours, the mental and physical toll of the job has only increased.
The Western Fire Chiefs Association says that past wildfire suppression, hotter and drier conditions due to climate change and shifts in the water cycle are all contributors to the increasing intensity of wildfires in Oregon.
Firefighters also experience other stressors such as grief from witnessing increased loss in communities — sometimes including their own colleagues — as fires spread due to increasingly hot and dry conditions.
Chris Ryan, a local wildland firefighter for a private contracting company, Dust Busters, says that while the job is rewarding, it is difficult to adjust back to everyday life after working a fire season.
“When you come home, you’re going to be in flux,” Ryan said. “You’re going to be in a weird spot because you’re doing all this work outside, and then you come back and you don’t really have to do anything.”
Ryan explained that it is easy to crash after coming back from a season and trying to stay as busy as possible during the season. He said overworking in the offseason is a common way to cope with not having as much to do, but that it is an unsustainable way to live.
Firefighters are often expected to work through anything without concern for their own well-being, according to wildland firefighter Courtney Kaltenbach, who is employed by a local contractor.
“Firefighting is an extremely patriarchal, masculine field, so it’s dominated by a culture of toxic masculinity, which is ‘don’t show any weakness,’ so already there’s a huge difficulty trying to change the culture around talking about mental health,” Kaltenbach said. “It’s especially difficult I think for people who aren’t men, mental health-wise, to exist in that world.”
Kaltenbach mentioned that in their experience, they have only just begun discussing mental health in their training process, but it is far from adequate.
“What we need is comprehensive, job-specific training to talk about the stressors that we face, and we are nowhere close,” Kaltenbach said. “Right now all we have is a page in a book that talks about mental health, and it is really easy to flip through it, and it doesn’t really do anything concretely for anyone on the ground.”
One organization working to create mental health resources available for firefighters in need of support is Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. GWF is a nonprofit composed of past and present federal employees. According to its website, the nonprofit advocates for classification, pay and benefits, comprehensive health and wellbeing, expanded workforce to accommodate for expanded fire seasons and a federal wildland fire service.
GWF works to ensure that firefighters across the country are receiving financial stability, and that there is adequate funding and support for the programs that are being built to support firefighters.
Cofounder and current president of GWF, Luke Mayfield, said mental health services for firefighters are still in their infancy stage and emphasized the importance of examining the work-to-rest ratio as fire season expands.
“Evolution is key. You don’t see it, you know, you start out as a seasonal employee, with a light at the end of the tunnel being that winter,” Mayfield said. “This has turned into more and more of a career, and people are being asked to work full time, year round or eight months out of the year. We’re losing that light at the end of the tunnel.”
GWF Comprehensive Health and Well-Being Subcommittee Chair Pete Dutchick highlighted how complex the topic of mental health is.
Dutchick said GWF’s goal is to create an environment with an array of different resources because each firefighter’s mental health varies. What works for one person may not work for another.
“It’s innate in the job, to where you have to be able to push yourself through a lot of discomfort, and I think, unfortunately, sometimes that translates into the realm of mental health,” Dutchick said.
Dutchick noted a “cultural shift” around mental health in the firefighting industry within recent years. Older generations of firefighters, coupled with younger generations, are talking about the topic more than before.
The Wildland Firefighter Foundation is another organization working to create mental health support for firefighters. Its mission is to financially and emotionally provide support to firefighters and their families affected by critical incidents on and off duty across the country. While they are based in Boise, Idaho, they provide services nationwide.
While WFF has provided support for mental health related calls for the 30 years it’s been in service, its official mental health program was only recently established in February 2023.
WFF now has structure and funding in place to specifically support this mental health program. Its director of mental health, Eric Brocksome, said suicides are becoming a greater concern as there are now almost as many suicides as regular fatalities in the field.
Brocksome said while those in the fire community are aware of federal resources, they are not always the most accessible.
“Sometimes it’s cumbersome and difficult to navigate, so they generally shy away from it as a collective because it can lead to them becoming blacklisted or looked upon as less-than in their crews.”
Brocksome said that some firefighters are concerned with reporting mental health concerns for fear that they will be deemed unfit to serve or be removed from their crew.
“That is like death to them. It’s worse in some ways, because that’s their whole life. A lot of them are closer to their crew than they are to members of their own family,” Brocksome said.
Brocksome explained that WFF is meant to fill in the gaps of resources available through employee assistance programs provided by different agencies. WFF offers emotional support, referrals to therapists, self care, rehabilitation and provides the financial support needed to receive these services.
Brocksome emphasized the importance of mental health education and raising awareness to destigmatize the topic in the firefighter community.
He said he’s hopeful for a tipping point to quickly encourage change in the future.
“Our motto is ‘compassion spreads like wildfire.’ And so that’s what we’re really trying to do is teach them how to show compassion in those moments, and how to step up and support each other.” Brocksome said.
He said that with the right mental health care and “self-care ideology,” the idea and belief system will “take off across the community.”
For those endangered by this fire season, Oregon Wildlife Response & Recovery has a list of local resources to turn to for help.
