“It’s really interesting with incidents, and I struggle to call things emergencies or disasters, which it is for the people involved, but from the point of view of me supporting, I need to help members normalise incidents,” he said.
“We talk about what they tried to do, what they did, that they did the best they could, and that the outcome is variable, always.
“Then they go home and recharge and go and do it again tomorrow, but sometimes that’s not always possible.”
Mr Schwarz said first-responders sometimes talked about their days with their families, but sometimes they protected their families from how their days had been.
“But generally, families know if it’s a good day or a bad day,” he said.
Mr Schwarz said members were encouraged to maintain their self-care and be aware of their limits.
“Members are encouraged to step out if there’s an incident they don’t want to do,” he said.
“That can be a very personal thing – it can be a structural fire, a motor accident, it can be a person lost, it could be a job that involves children if they’ve got young family themselves.
“The whole reason that they need to protect themselves, to know their boundaries, is so they can still respond as first-responders.”
Mr Schwarz said trauma from incidents – known as vicarious trauma – could add to members’ personal traumas.
“Everybody has a slightly different understanding of it, because it’s an individual effect, but it accumulates,” he said.
“There are a whole lot of things in there, and a large part of that is vicarious – trauma from other people, other events, other situations, and just talking to someone who is traumatised.
“Trauma is classed as anything that has been overwhelming, and it can be different things for different people.
“It doesn’t have to be a fatality, it can be injury, the loss of stock, your favourite new car you’ve had for two days.
“It can be just the last little bit on top of your own, and your world’s just fallen apart.”
Mr Schwarz said members were also warned against reading social media posts following major incidents.
“It’s going to know more than you ever saw or did, rightly or wrongly, and it’s going to add to any trauma that members have taken home from that,” he said.
Member wellbeing advisor Marieke Dam said self-care and the peer support program were promoted as part of each fire season’s briefings to members.
“We speak about what it looks like when people are not doing well, so people start recognising it,” she said.
“We want people to be aware of what’s happening for them so they can say, ‘I want to step out,’ or ‘how can I get support to step out?’”
Ms Dam said support was delivered to members at varying levels, from individual to group or crew sessions.
“We can do something straight after an incident for when people come back to station, or after a couple of days,” she said. “People realise they’re not sleeping, they’re not eating, they keep rethinking the events and they then realise they’re actually not going very well, and then call all the supports that they know.
“From our perspective, it is important people know who we are, they know who they can contact, and they feel comfortable with that.”
Ms Dam said District 17 had vacancies for people to take up a peer-support role, starting with an expression of interest process and training.
“There’s quite a lot in that training, but in the end, there’ll be a very skilled peer that will be highly utilised within the services that we provide,” she said.
Mr Schwarz said he recommended first-responders, in the first instance, return to normal life following incidents.
“Get the yellow, the green, the blue or the orange gear off and go home and restart your normal life,” he said.
“But know your limitations and look at self-care and support – we all have trauma, and any fire weather day could bring it back.
“You don’t have to struggle alone.”
CFA members and their families can call the 24-hour wellbeing support line for free and confidential support on 1800 959 232.
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