East Lansing’s Paramedics Offered Help as They Recover, Too

“You step into this profession because you want to help people,” East Lansing firefighter and paramedic John Newman told ELi in a phone interview on Wednesday. “You know [a mass shooting like Monday’s] is a possibility, but you are never ready for it.”

“We did trainings and that’s why [the management of the response] went as well as it did,” Newman said. “But you are never really ready for it.  You have innocent people who have just been attacked, victimized and, because of the situation, there is only so much you can do immediately. You’re trying to get them out of there and get them to the medical care they’re really going to need. Because they need more than we can offer on the scene.”

Now, Newman told ELi, some of those first-responders need help themselves. 

They need peer and professional support to process what they went through individually and as a group as they were pulling victims out of Michigan State University’s Berkey Hall, trying to save lives while police raced around them to find the assailant and helicopters flew overhead.

In East Lansing’s Fire Department, every responder serves as both a firefighter and a paramedic. The team of 12 who responded to Monday’s call donned Active Violence Incident (AVI) gear, including bullet proof vests and special helmets. 

But they all understood that relatively simple protective gear might not be enough to save them if a gunman turned a weapon on them.

Newman was not on duty that night. Asked where he was, he said he was at home, “lying down and staring at the ceiling and wondering how everybody was doing” as he listened to reports coming in over the scanners.

As vice president of the East Lansing Firefighters Local 1609 union, Newman told ELi he is glad that ELFD Chief Dawn Carson agreed at noon on Wednesday to allow those who were on the scene Monday night to delay return to work until they can be part of the “critical incident debriefing” that will take place Friday. 

Eight of those who responded to Berkey Hall on Monday were due to return to work today. But now, with the chief’s decision in place, Monday’s responders can wait until they have had the opportunity for the formal debriefing and the support it offers. 

Other ELFD personnel who were not on duty Monday night have stepped up to volunteer to cover for the temporary absences of their colleagues.

Newman has served in ELFD for 23 years and  says the culture of his profession has changed for the better. Leaders in the profession now recognize just how important it is for first responders to have formal systems of debriefing and processing after traumas like Monday’s. 

“And they need the chance to say they are not ready to come back to work,” he said. 

Within emergency services, there was a long-standing stigma around saying you need time and help, Newman explained. 

“You say, ‘I’m fine. I’m good.’ There’s a staunch march carried out.” 

But that kind of approach just leaves people unnecessarily harmed. The profession has learned the hard way, from events like the Oklahoma City bombing and the terrorist attacks on September 11, that unprocessed feelings can lead to suicide.

Nowadays, Newman said, there is an understanding that responders need to go “through phases of transition before going back to work.” And the leadership has to respect that, because even something as simple as the squeal of the alarm bell can disorient a first responder who has just been through a prolonged violent scene like Monday night’s. 

This Friday, a special gathering – that “critical incident debriefing” – will occur. In the room will be East Lansing police officers and firefighter-paramedics plus dispatchers who worked Monday night’s shift. 

The team assembled will also include vetted professionals who counsel emergency responders, people who know how to help the group come together to try to make sense of what happened Monday night.

“Sometimes there is no making sense, though,” Newman said. “It can be a struggle for a lot of our members – the fact that it doesn’t make sense.”

Nevertheless, at Friday’s special meeting, those who were on duty Monday night, “will have time to be with one another in the same room, to communicate what’s going through their heads. They will have questions about what happened. They will put the pieces together. It’s hard to be able to grapple with the complexities of the whole thing alone.”

The professional counselors in the room “will know when things need to be slowed down, to steer back to something.”

If individual firefighter-paramedics and police officers need to step out of the room to talk one-on-one with a supporter, that will happen. And peer support will continue after that meeting, too, enabled and legitimized by this formal debriefing process. Professional counseling will also continue to be offered.

“That’s always still available down the road,” Newman said, speaking of “the magnitude” of Monday’s scene.

“You want them to be ready to be 100 percent focused on the next call. You want them focused, ready, prepared, capable. And to get there, we have to take the time, process what happened, get ready to get back in.”

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