Volunteer firefighters in B.C.’s small communities face distinct challenges: chief

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A volunteer fire department in Cultus Lake is mourning the death by suicide of one of its members on Christmas Day.

The 23-year-old volunteer firefighter was suffering from PTSD.

Chief Terry Murphy represents the province’s volunteer forces on a committee addressing mental health among first responders and has experienced the difficulties of being a volunteer firefighter in a small community.

“Chances are one of the members on our department knows the people that we’re getting called to personally,” he explains. “Second to that, it’s a small community. There isn’t immediate help.”

Murphy works in the community of Lac la Hache with about 800 people.

He says more than 70 per cent of B.C. firefighters are volunteers who work full-time jobs while being on-call 24/7. They do the same job as paid forces with the same risks.

WorkSafeBC categorizes sudden and unexpected incidents in the workplace as requiring a critical incident response, which can be a “kind of powerful event can impact the emotional well-being of workers and employers who are directly exposed to the incident,” according to their website.

Murphy believes the death of the firefighter should be considered for critical incident counselling for the other volunteer firefighters. But 15 years ago, it might have been a different story.

“Prior to the critical incident stress formal debriefing, I would imagine that it was the old school attitude of ‘you signed up, you knew what you’re getting yourself into, so basically suck it up,'” he says.

Murphy says mental health awareness and new resources have increased over the years, but there’s always more to be done. He would like to see more funding so departments like the one he’s chief of in the Cariboo don’t have to pay for travel costs and expenses for a member who travels to another town for resources, which comes out of their budget.

“Just funding and recognition from the government that we need the assistance monetarily to be able to look after our members’ mental health,” he says. “Right now, we’re kind of on the hook as a volunteer department to look after ourselves as far as that funding goes.”

However, through WorkSafeBC some counsellors will fly into small communities, or in some cases, volunteer first responders are flown to larger cities like Richmond for help.

The taskforce Murphy represents has more information for first responders looking for help or looking to help

There is a gofundme page for the Cultus Lake firefighter to raise money to help his family with funeral expenses.