Fire trade media is written and read to educate the fire service about strategy and tactics. They also spend considerable space focusing on firefighter safety, but again in the context of firehouse and fireground operations. Many reflect upon or review the facts and circumstances of firefighter injuries or deaths, but these reflections are primarily operational in focus.
Few if any articles have focused on the situation of a line-of-duty injury or death from the perspective provided below. There is no discussion of response safety, no tactical analysis or descriptions of apparatus. And there are no great pictures of walls of flames or heroic actions to go with the text, making this among the rarest of submissions. This article, however, is all about survival: making it through when a serious line-of-duty injury occurs with long-term repercussions.
Chief Jason Wheatley’s Story
This is a survival success story. Chief Jason Wheatley of the Verdoy Fire Department in Latham, N.Y., survived a traumatic brain injury incurred while responding to a fire alarm. His family has survived a year of total upheaval, separation, travel to the rehabilitation center, and most of all uncertainty as to the ultimate fate of their father, husband, son and brother. The department survived a calamitous event without losing a member, without forgetting their unspoken oath to Chief Wheatley and his family while serving out their spoken oath to continue to protect the people and property of the Verdoy Fire District in upstate New York.
This story did have its challenges, obviously. Some of them were apparent and can be presumed; others came out of the woodwork and there will be more, without doubt. This article, dedicated to the spirit, grit and determination of Chief Wheatley, the extended Wheatley family and the men and women of the Verdoy Fire District, Verdoy Volunteer Fire Association and Verdoy Ladies Auxiliary, seeks to share our experiences with all of you in the hope that what we have had to endure will not have to be repeated by others. A special word of thanks goes out to all those in and out of the fire service who also stepped in, many times without asking and many more times without compensation, to help make this survival story a successful one.
The ultimate success: as of this writing, Karin Wheatley, who cooperated in and approved of the writing of this article, is in the final preparations of bringing Chief Jason Wheatley back to their home in Latham for good.
Line-of-Duty Injuries
The fire service seems to be well-prepared for line-of-duty deaths (LODDs), insofar as anticipating and planning for them are concerned. There is focus upon the LODD in our regulations, in our traditions and in our operations; it certainly has been seared into the collective conscience of the fire service.
Line-of-duty injuries (LODIs), on the other hand, take on so many permutations that it is difficult to get our hands around them. Many occur with little or no notice; others are more about workers’ compensation benefits and light-duty assignments; still others may mark the end of a career but are not, in and of themselves, catastrophic events. While the call for more fireground safety has seemingly reached a crescendo, and fireground injuries are now being prevented with greater frequency, LODIs still occur every day.
There are some injuries that are fundamentally life-changing for the injured member, their families and fellow firefighters. They can have almost as much finality as an LODD—permanent disability, dismemberment or disfigurement, irreversible brain damage, cancer, among many others—but they are, in fact, not final; the member is still very much here among the living, and not just in our hearts. Irrespective of whether the injured member remains in the service or must end active duty, the proud tradition of the fire service is that we take care of our own long after the LODI has occurred, and regardless of their condition going forward.
There are many considerations that we never think of, never consider, until the unthinkable and inevitable occurs: a member, a friend with whom we serve and have served next to for however many years, is suddenly incapacitated physically or mentally by an injury or event on the job. Based upon a real-life situation occurring in a firehouse that has frankly been “overdue” as it had not seen its share of LODIs or LODDs—just one LODD in 40-plus years and no significant LODIs—this article explores the many different issues associated with a fire department’s efforts to come to terms with and respond to an LODI.
The Scenario
It is a quiet mid-summer Saturday morning. Around 7:30, the tones of the pager sound and some members of this upstate New York volunteer fire department are already up doing their Saturday morning routines. At least one other, a life member, past chief, and the current safety coordinator, though, is coming off a late shift at his job, just getting into bed a few minutes before the alarm goes out. His body is trying to catch up on a couple of days of two-job demands with irregular hours.
Other members and the officer responding to the call see him come in and designate him as the chauffeur for the call. They sit in the rig or stand at the front overhead door waiting for him to don his gear and take his place behind the wheel. Looking back towards his locker, they see nothing but what looks like a pile of clothes on the floor, and his boots in the familiar fire service arrangement just outside his locker. Clearly, something doesn’t look right, and a closer look reveals a firefighter on the floor, blood coming from his head, unresponsive.
If luck had any role in this scenario, it revealed itself in the composition of the responding crew: a young, but level-headed officer, and at least two responders who are also police officers who immediately understood the urgency of the situation and initiated a cavalry call of police and EMS responders whose quick actions likely saved this member’s life.
The following hours and days, though, didn’t telegraph this outcome as this member’s condition remained critical as he lay in a coma. He underwent multiple surgeries and encountered numerous other challenges before he would be stabilized and before the full extent of his traumatic brain injury would be understood.
Taking Care Of Your Own
The enormity of this task of taking care of your own in the aftermath of a traumatic and life-changing injury is seldom understood by friends, family or the fire service. From the immediacy of the incident, to the transition from the emergent stage to the recovery stage, the demands that arise within the emotional tsunami that accompanies such an event require important preplanning, approaching the needs of family and firehouse as an operational challenge, and a softness and sensitivity that may not always be associated with the fire service.
Perhaps the first thing for firefighters to understand is that not all can provide all the critical elements of help or assistance all the time. We are, as a group and perhaps by the individual DNA that brings us to emergency services, driven to fix, cure, mitigate and settle an emergency situation. When that situation involves one of our own, that sensation goes completely off the charts. Getting past feelings of helplessness or being deprived of the opportunity to provide urgent assistance is crucial; help will be required by the family over a long period of time, and this is more marathon-like than sprint-ish. The only sustainable sensation of inadequacy is or should be when no support is provided, when the call for help is not answered; otherwise, all members who participate in providing assistance to a member and their family in any way will derive all the satisfaction and sense of adequacy that they could ever want.
For the family, the task is relatively straightforward: devote all time, energy and love to the stricken loved one. They shouldn’t be asked to do anything else. The rest of us want to provide support and assistance to the family, so let them know that we want to provide such support and assistance. In the fullness of time the family will know the who’s, how’s, what’s and when’s of all the support they received, but the emergent stage of the situation is not necessarily the time to sort it all out.
The fire service, it is safe to say, does best when compared to other social institutions in the early stages of an emergency incident to provide those things that make the family’s situation easier: provide transportation, food and lodging; take care of things at home, like the lawn, the family pet; and provide boatloads of support and reassurance. The classic scene in the immediate aftermath of an LODI is of a hospital waiting room full of members, some in turnouts, some in uniform and the rest in some sort of fire department-emblazoned garb. The support is almost overwhelming.
Of course, the department’s response has to be done in the context of continuing to provide professional fire and rescue services to the community. Relying upon mutual aid and offers of help from other departments are among the ways to continue to meet your first obligation to the taxpayers.
Preplanning: LODIs Often Overlooked
Beyond the emergent stage, the challenge for fire departments becomes a little more intense: how to keep up the level of support that so many of us instinctively provide at the outset of an emergency. Will the meals keep coming? Will the visits to the hospital or rehabilitation center happen as frequently? How the family integrates into its “new normal” is largely dependent upon the safety nets it has around it. This is where all the experience of the fire service in managing prolonged operations comes in particularly handy, and where personal resolve becomes critical.
Some of the angst for the family and the demands upon the fire service can be handled by preplanning, a true virtue and a core component of any department’s operations. Making medical and legal decisions for an injured firefighter can be greatly eased through three simple documents: a health care proxy (HCP), which allows a designated person to make critical healthcare decisions for another; a Do Not Resuscitate order (DNR), which allows extraordinary life-saving measures to be discontinued; and a power of attorney (POA), which provides to another person the right to make certain critical financial (including insurance) and legal decisions for a person whose capacity to make such decisions has been impaired. Since firefighting is an inherently dangerous profession, it makes sense that the fire department would be at the forefront of assisting firefighters in preparing these critical documents.
It won’t be long before the hard questions start to come on insurance coverages, long-term treatment options and other considerations. For many, insurance (and especially workers’ compensation coverage) is a foreign language, yet it is the single-most important aspect assuring the family’s long-term financial survival. These questions, while seemingly mechanical and cold when compared with the clinical aspects of medical care and emotional support networks that spring up around an event, are nevertheless crucial to address and to do so in a timely manner. Department personnel can be helpful but they are—and this is hard to acknowledge when trying to operate as a singular brother/sisterhood—potentially an adverse party to a workers’ compensation claim filed by an injured firefighter or their family.
Fire departments can help members and their families understand these issues, appreciate the importance of preplanning by completing legal documents, and learn about their insurance coverages before they are needed. Conducting special meetings or even using drill time to put members and their families together with experts in law, insurance and medical care can not only relieve a lot of pain later on in the aftermath of an LODI, but also provide a worthwhile benefit to members by preparing them for events outside the line of duty.
What happens if this preplanning is not done? Ask yourself what happens if there is no preplanning of a new building that catches fire? The incapacitation of an individual virtually stops all legal, medical and financial activities in their tracks, and can put that member and their family into almost immediate financial peril. Bank accounts cannot be accessed, basic health decisions cannot be made, and insurance claims cannot be filed.
Without this preplanning, a complex and expensive legal process must be initiated to establish a guardianship that provides through a court order all the necessary powers to make critical decisions. The guardianship itself will require routine checking in with the courts, the services of lawyers who are appointed to represent the injured party (as a separate representation from that of the family), and other things that only add to the complexity of a post-LODI life. While there will be sympathy in abundance from a court for the plight of the family, there are rules and regulations that not even a judge can waive, such as requiring the guardian—most likely a spouse—from having to go through training or certification or having to make periodic reports back to the court. Add these obligations to the many others foreseen or unforeseen, and there is ample inducement to preplan as much as possible.
Insurance Considerations
While the rules of insurance vary from state to state, there are a few immutable truths about it: insurance is complicated, and few people really understand it. A witches brew of multiple lines of insurance, such as health, disability, workers’ compensation and maybe even automobile insurance, which are sometimes conflicting and many times overlapping, is as toxic vexing as any potion in the cauldron. At the same time, however, and just as it is with our own insurance coverages and those of the people we serve who experience a loss, it is a critical component to the economic survival of the affected family.
Coordination of insurance coverage is a must, and sometimes there is not a single source to go to for such activities. After all, your health insurance likely comes from your employer, you buy your own car and homeowners insurance from a carrier and perhaps through an insurance agent, the fire department provides workers’ compensation and disability coverage. There are also other programs that all have their own vendor or manager, such as accidental death and disability insurance, which was provided to the injured member and his family. It is very important, and the earlier the better, to assign someone the task of helping the family to wade through the various coverages on a loss and assure to the greatest extent possible the timely flow of money to a family which may, or may not, be still getting a paycheck.
Some form of workers’ compensation insurance is at the core of an LODI. And it should provide most, if not all, of the coverage, from immediate hospitalization to rehabilitation to renovation of a home or office. Close cooperation of the representatives of the workers’ compensation insurer with medical providers (once the seemingly innumerable forms are completed—who are probably the weak link in the insurance equation) will assure a smooth entry into one aspect of the LODI experience that will continue, in some cases, for the rest of the member's life. In the scenario above, the New York State Insurance Fund, as the provider of the workers’ compensation insurance for the fire district, has worked assiduously on its own and with the legal representatives of the injured person’s family from the very first day of the incident to assure that payments were timely received, that benefits were coordinated and that all rehabilitation services were provided in a manner consistent with the best interests of the injured firefighter.
For volunteer firefighters, keep in mind that they have day jobs that provide benefits which may be accessed in the aftermath of a fire-related injury. Coordinating with the firefighter’s day job benefits managers can provide a seamless safety net of maximum insurance benefits, including expanded sick time (oftentimes extended even further by generous contributions from fellow employees of their own sick time allotments), health and disability insurance, and even retirement plan benefits.
One footnote on the insurance issue: without the proper authorizations for the legal representation of the injured firefighter by a third party, no insurance entity would speak with anyone but a family member, and in some cases, where the injured firefighter is the sole beneficiary, as in workers’ compensation insurance, even the next of kin was not appropriately authorized to speak on his behalf. This reinforces the need to have proper and comprehensive powers of attorney executed.
The media: Friend Or Foe?
The issue of media in the context of an LODI concerns both traditional media and social media, whereby we all become reporters and photographers. Dealing with reporters is already hard enough for the assigned public information officer of a department or the designated spokesperson for the family without adding the extra burden of the buzz of social media that can do so much to hurt the family throughout the LODI.
In our subject situation, the media interest was almost immediate but became even more intense when unique and unexpected circumstances arose. First, there was the event itself, which was much more widely initially reported through social media than traditional media. Sure enough, though, and especially with the chatter along social media circuits, the media soon became engaged in the conversation. For those who ever wrote an article for anything from the high school newspaper to a fire service journal to the seasoned reporter, it is the four W’s and H that become the immediate interest: the who, what, where, why and how of a situation. Fashioning the initial official message to those elements, with consideration to any investigation of the circumstances of an LODI, which may limit what may be said at the outset, should suffice to satiate the initial media appetite.
Coordination of media message is as important as the construct of the message: working with the family, to determine what, if any, information they would like released; working within the confines of the HIPAA law which provides strict limitations on the nature of personal health information; working with responding, investigating, and covering companies and agencies to assure that all messaging is consistent, compatible and clear; working with media outlets themselves to assure accurate delivery of the intended message, and assure ongoing coordination of future messaging.
Just as the professional media and assigned public information officers (PIOs) must manage and be managed, chief officers and authorities having jurisdiction—commissioners, mayors, city/county managers—must also manage the unofficial media. Fire department members are the first and best-intentioned reporters of LODI situations, taking to Facebook, Twitter, text-messaging and other methods to report, exchange, and analyze information. Some of it is out of genuine interest and concern for the injured member or angst over the circumstances, other more gossipy and still other more cultivated from the ever-present FOMO—Fear of Missing Out—a very real phenomenon in the social media age.
Those in command are fooling themselves if they think they can shut down social media chatter, and may actually be hurting the morale and psychological well-being of the force trying to do so. Instead, those charged with developing and maintaining the message should include the social media types in their media strategy planning and information dissemination. Recognize the irrefutability of social media as a staple of modern life, and remind those using it to operate in a responsible fashion, consistent with the wishes of the family and needs of the department. Fear of offending the family and hurting further the injured member is far better motivation to control social media activity than threatening punishment for going outside the chain of command. Conversely, if some information cannot get out, as in a criminal investigation, then it should be assiduously protected from any release.
Like everything else in the fire service, pre-planning media message management can go a long way in avoiding unintended difficulties. Presence on social media, routinely or with standby capabilities, allows both for instantaneous message management and an authoritative voice in an environment wherein such is not routinely found; press releases from previous incidents or models from other departments at the ready to assist in the forging of the one to describe the current situation are always useful; a list of media contacts and, better, actual media relations, can allow for customized messaging with assurance that it will be conveyed to the public largely intact.
Of course, there is always the unexpected angle that will be contrived by a media professional that could not be seen from a million miles away. In the situation at hand, that came in the form of questions from one reporter well-reputed for his tenacity, who made his rounds of various agencies asking a question that was not directly related to the LODI or the victim himself, but nevertheless ensnared everyone in the process. The morning of this LODI, the firefighter’s family was traveling out of state and could not be tracked down through traditional means. As an employee of the state’s emergency management office, an agency with considerable means and relationships, including with people with helicopters and police cars, the injured firefighter’s colleagues stepped up to the plate and tracked down his family and transported his family back to the area forthwith. This use of state resources, consequently, became the subject of this reporter’s inquiries, with the obvious intention of producing a blazing front-page headline.
Two things prevented that from happening: the facts and a well-organized media response plan. The facts, especially when they are in your favor, should never be feared or squandered. In this case, the firefighter’s condition was grave and he was not expected to survive the first 24 hours of this emergency. It was imperative to find his loved ones and return them to his bedside, as any fire department would do. No official channels were short-circuited, no emergencies were not responded to with the resources utilized in this case, and every decision had to be made by the authorities in charge of the responding agencies. As was the case, the firefighter’s employing state agency was not the department that actually conducted the reconnaissance or retrieval operations, so there were many other objective eyes on this deployment of resources. All of the above was presented, independently, by the involved agencies to the reporter, giving him nowhere to go with his story, other than to report on a closely coordinated and successful mission to help the family of a grievously injured member of the service.
Coincidentally, having a PIO with knowledge of the local reporters and their beats came in handy in this case. The reporter involved was not on a local government beat, but rather on the state news and politics beat. This gave all involved a clear indication that the story spin would be more one of the state agencies than of the injured firefighter or his family, and all were prepared to appropriately and effectively deal with the inquiry.
Media is critical in getting the word out about an injured firefighter’s plight, and oftentimes is the catalyst for support from the larger community. Like many others, including the fire service itself, the media is also geared more towards the LODD and the drama and immediacy of the story without a long list of medical procedures and rehabilitation information that continues on indefinitely. The LODD, for better or worse, has a short and intense story arc that appeals to the news media. The objective is to make the media want to know enough about this story, by providing news “events” such as condition reports, announcements of fundraisers, and the like, in order to continue to garner and maintain public support for the injured firefighter and their family.
Conclusions And Lessons Learned
As we look back on more than a year of time that has passed since this injury took place, the department finds itself in a new normal: many department members and their families have become closer to one another and certainly to the family of the injured member; acts of kindness large and small, noticed and unnoticed, are still done on behalf of the member’s family; and, all look forward to the member’s return home from his out-of-state rehabilitation stay.
Everyone is also far more aware of their own place, individually and as a member of this fire department. The injuries suffered in the line of duty in this case are those which could befall any member and there is a need to be prepared for those possibilities. The fire company has changed its rules to make sure that these kinds of incidents can be responded to more quickly in the way of providing support for the family of the injured member. The fire district, which had already provided accidental death and disability coverage for all members, also enhanced its security camera system so as to be better able to capture in-station incidents. Almost certainly, individual members have taken note of the significant legal and financial impacts of the entire incident, not to mention the dramatic personal toll that it has taken on family forever changed.
As for lessons learned, the following is probably as good a starting place as any, but is not all inclusive of the many issues and concerns to address in making certain that a serious LODI is incurred.
Personal
- Make certain to have insurance in place: workers’ compensation (through your fire department—in New York, for volunteer firefighters, it is known as the volunteer firefighter’s benefit law insurance coverage); health insurance is usually provided by an employer, but with Affordable Care Act-inspired changes, more and more people are acquiring health insurance on their own; life insurance is not just for those who die and those left behind, but can also be used in instances of catastrophic illnesses depending upon certain provisions; and, finally, all members must look into some form of disability insurance, the least understood, but by some estimations the most important coverage for long-term financial stability after a serious injury or illness.
- The single greatest challenge in this case of LODI was the inability to legally represent the interests of the injured firefighter without getting a court-ordered guardianship, and all the issues that come with it. The three most important documents to have are: a power of attorney; a health care proxy; and, a Do Not Resuscitate order.
- Money on hand, and outstanding credit obligations in check. A major consideration of any injured firefighter, paid or volunteer, is whether financial resources are adequate to sustain their family during the pendency of the injury, or afterwards should that injury result in a career ending. It is crucial to have cash available to cover interruptions in paychecks, or to manage the continuing flow of bills, which don’t slow down even in the event of an injury.
- Especially in the case of volunteer firefighters, but applicable to paid departments as well, make sure there is an understanding of the rules and abilities to contribute time to an injured firefighter’s sick time account at their day jobs. This will require (and should encourage) coordination of benefits discussions between the non-fire employer and the fire department to maintain the flow of pay to the injured member’s family for as long as possible.
Fire Department
- The fire department can help both before as well as after an LODI has occurred, by assuring that its members have their personal affairs in order, by providing some form of accidental injury insurance in addition to the statutorily required workers’ compensation insurance. Take the time during drills or company meetings to discuss the survival issues raised here, as they can be just as important as the other operational safety issues that get most of our attention.
- The “brotherhood” becomes much more like an extended family to the loved ones of the injured member, but, like a family, the obligations to that member and their family go on long after the emergent stages of an injury situation. The department should make certain that matters large and small are managed throughout the period of disruption to the family, and that the member and their loved ones always know intuitively that they are still very much a part of the larger firehouse family.
- There may be no better time for mutual aid than in cases of LODIs. As the fire department responds to the needs of the injured member and their family, rely upon the mutual aid system in your community to take some of the load off, reduce the inevitable stress of trying to do too much for too many, and allow the members of the affected fire department to process both the sense of loss in having a member separated from service by this injury and the sense of obligation to the member and the family.
- The fire department and its members are eyewitnesses to the incident causing the injury, but should recognize a certain obligation to not act on that status to report it out through social media. Controlling a message for accuracy and in keeping with the legal obligations of the fire department and the wishes of the family (not to mention the confidential health information of the injured firefighter) will go a long way to making an oftentimes unmanageable situation far more controllable.
- Do not forget the value of critical incident stress debriefing resources for members who witness an LODI, who are close to the affected firefighter or anyone else adversely impacted by LODI events.
The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Peter J. Molinaro, Esq., a 30-year member of the Menands, N.Y., Fire Company, and Alyssa Snyder, Esq., of Park Strategies, LLC, both in the preparation of this article and, most importantly, for their many hours of selfless service to the Wheatley family in handling many of the legal issues raised in this article.
GREGORY V. SERIO has 25 years of service to the Verdoy, N.Y., Fire Department, including six years as chief of department, and has also served as an operations chief for the Town of Colonie Emergency Services. He has many years of collaborations with Chief Jason Wheatley through the fire department and as neighbors. Serio served as superintendent of insurance for the State of New York from 2001-2005. He is a partner in Park Strategies, LLC of New York, N.Y. and Albany, N.Y. Chief Serio currently serves as treasurer of the New York State Association of Fire Chiefs.
