Could It Happen At Your Firehouse?

Posted: 11/08/09

When my nephew isn’t deployed, he is based at Fort Hood, TX. He and his family live in Killeen.

I guess you could say that he is career Army. He is currently on his 3rd tour in Iraq. Thank God.

I was sending messages back and forth with family on Thursday, November 5th and all were grateful that he was “safe”. That is to say; he wasn’t at Fort Hood. It was strange to say it then, but on November 5th, it was safer for Jeff to be in Iraq rather than at his home base.

Why are we witnessing these awful events? Why is it that, every time something terrible happens; people familiar with the perpetrator fall into two camps: the “he was a really nice guy” to “there was something really strange about the guy”. Perhaps that is why we can’t always stop these tragic events; we are looking at the same person, but we don’t SEE the same person.

With the Fort Hood shootings, irony never loomed larger. A psychiatrist went crazy. Even more ironic is the fact that other psychiatrists didn’t notice that their colleague was acting and talking crazy.

As I watched it on TV, I kept thinking about the old cowboy movies where the cavalry would have an Indian scout and you didn’t know if he would lead the soldiers into an ambush. I mean; a Muslim in the U.S. Army going to Afghanistan to fight against Muslims; would he be conflicted?

The news was fermenting anti-Muslim sentiments and that is unfortunate for the law-abiding, devoutly Muslim/devoutly American sectors in our country. But the news kept playing it; “Nadil Malik Hasan-devout Muslim…Nadil Malik Hasan-opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…Nadil Malik Hasan-shoots 52 unarmed Americans on our nation’s largest Army base and 13 are dead”.

Hasan was described in an interview by his cousin as a “good American”. If so, then I guess you should nominate Timothy McVeigh for a posthumous Congressional Medal of Freedom!

What would cause this man to shoot people who had done him no harm and who had no say in his deployment orders, but get shot-some multiple times-because they were unfortunate to be where he was on this day? It appears, based on the fact that he was giving away personal items before this heinous crime, to be a hate crime and anti-American in nature.

If Hasan had wanted out of the military bad enough, he could have gotten out and without shooting anyone. It’s interesting that he was willing to take training, bumps in grade and a paycheck that was said to be six figures without missing a beat. Then, when his marker came due and he was to be deployed to Afghanistan, he didn’t want to go. No; I think that it is deeper than that. Regardless, the ball was dropped at Walter Reed and Fort Hood.

Nadil Malik Hasan committed an act of terrorism. There are pieces of information coming together since the incident that indicates that this person “snapped”, but put a lot of thought and planning into his crime. And it bears some scrutiny.

There should be some takeaways from this incident that the fire service can learn from.

For example: If a CISD team is debriefing us, then who are debriefing THEM? If we are sharing in graphic detail to a team and others are doing the same with the same team, then wouldn’t you think that there would be a saturation point for these teams?

Just like we “rehab” our people at an incident, should we not do the same for CISD teams?

Then, there is the problem of recognizing issues with our firefighters. Everything from drug and alcohol abuse to arson can find the most inopportune time to present itself and then, it’s too late.

Does anyone have a problem with holding regular roundtables with their people to find out what’s on their minds?

I would think it would be prudent of leadership to take an active interest in the people who are relied upon to carry out our missions. They need every available tool and every advantage to be successful and that includes good, mental health.

If the dinosaurs in the fire service continue to believe that talking about “feelings” is a sign of weakness, then we’d better be prepared to clean up the mess that will surely follow.

Do you ever wonder if any of the close calls and near misses are the results of our people not being in a good, mental state at the time of the call?

Or will you continue to believe that “you will get use to it” and develop that “mental toughness” that we hear so much about”

Yeah; put it right there next to the applications for disability and your turnover rates.

Let’s face it; they aren’t like you or me…

And they SHOULDN’T be!

Related reading posted here on Monday, November 9,2009: http://firefighterclosecalls.com/fullstory.php?95922

TCSS.

The article as submitted is published under The Adventures of Jake and Vinnie© umbrella and is the intellectual property of Art Goodrich a.k.a. ChiefReason. It is protected by federal copyright laws and cannot be re-printed in any form without expressed permission from the author. You may read other works by the author at www.chiefreasonart.com.