Twenty Years After 9–11
Deployed to Ground Zero in September, 2001 by the International Association of Firefighters to work alongside trained peer Massachusetts firefighters supporting the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) digging on the rubble, Dr. Kathryn (Kathy) Dardeck , a Massachusetts psychologist, had already been training with the Massachusetts Fire Academy, Massachusetts Emergency Management Association, Massachusetts Disaster Response Network, Federal Emergency Management Association, American Red Cross, and the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation for 7 years on best practices for responding to disasters including terrorist events. She reports that her extensive years of training involved classes, seminars, meetings, readings, practice drills, learning incident command protocols, becoming knowledgeable about firefighter culture by spending time with firefighters at their firehouse, mock & real disasters involving casualties at Boston’s Logan Airport, apprenticing Critical Incident Stress Management firefighters in actual response to disasters as well as the aftermath of disasters involving plane crashes, burning cars with children trapped inside, suicides of both firefighters and police, and after eventually approved to do so, co-leading and then leading disaster response events with peer trained firefighters from her critical incident stress management team based out of western Massachusetts Emergency Medical Services.
Kathy Dardeck reports being well-trained for the terrorist events of September 11, 2001 saying that all her years of training just seemed to “kick in”. She and the other Massachusetts psychologists and firefighters in New York as a result of a mutual aid request from FDNY did their jobs and helped FDNY in all ways that were requested. That said, Kathy Dardeck described having had feelings about the destruction of the two World Trade Towers that she saw, smelled and heard, and the stories of the incredible firefighters to whom she listened and bore witness.
After serving tours on the World Trade Towers rubble in Manhattan, and at Ft. Totten in Queens where she helped organize the taking of DNA samples from distraught families of missing firefighters, Kathryn Dardeck returned home to Massachusetts. Despite following all required protocols of exit interviews at Ground Zero, Dardeck reported struggling a bit to reacclimate to everyday life. She likened it to what military veterans described to her that they felt after returning home from war. They described feeling a bit disoriented, hypersensitive to certain stimuli, and struggling with everyday life. She met with her teams multiple times to process what she witnessed and noticed that this significantly helped as she gradually improved and re-entered “regular” life.
As the twenty-year anniversary of 9–11 approaches, it’s a time of reflection, both looking back and to the future. Fire and police learned many response lessons including the necessity for all responder communications to be universally accessible. Responders seemed to fare best when rotated in and out after 10 days.0 Encouraging responders to process their experiences with trained peers once returning from deployment is a useful self-care strategy. As ever, mutual aid is a lifeline that will continue to be needed and highly valued. Being psychologically prepared for terrorist events is an ongoing necessity according to Kathryn Dardeck, and psychologists who get trained to work embedded with emergency medical services have an important part to play once they learn, train and are accepted into these cultures.
