Rocky Barker has an article in the Idaho Statesman about how criticism of the organization has brought about changes. Below is an excerpt:
The harsh words from some of the surviving family members of fallen firefighters about the Wildland Firefighter Foundation weren’t easy to hear for Vicki Minor, the executive director and founder of the group that is dedicated to helping them.
I reported in February that critics and former board members said the foundation has grown too fast and had too few controls in place to ensure proper spending. But it was the view of some family members that they were treated poorly or forgotten that was tough on the Boise woman who has dedicated more than 16 years to help firefighters’ families through their grief.
Minor said this week that she and the foundation are better for the scrutiny.
“Actually, I’m grateful we had this done,” Minor said. “(This has) helped us become better at what we do, and that is taking care of wildland firefighters.”
An independent review conducted by Boise consultant Karyn Wood for the foundation’s board confirmed many of the shortcomings I reported in February. There was a lack of clear policies and there was little oversight on expenses, reporting on how they gave money to firefighter survivors and clarity about how the money they raised was spent…
The statue of a wildland firefighter that was removed from the Boise Airport and placed in Prescott, Arizona July 9, 2013 at the site of the memorial service for the 19 firefighters killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
There is no doubt that the Wildland Firefighter Foundation has accomplished much to help injured firefighters and the families of fallen firefighters. Vicki Minor, the Executive Director, is well known for the hands-on emotional and financial support she has provided through the foundation. We have been a member of their “52 Club” for years, and many times on this site we have praised their work and helped to publicize some of their fund raising activities.
We were troubled when in early December a television station in Arizona published an article in which they quoted some family members of the 19 firefighters that were killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire who were not satisfied with the level of assistance they received from the WFF. One of their criticisms was that the foundation did not donate all of the money they received after the tragedy to the families. They did not take into account that the WFF had a larger mission than just that one horrible incident. The WFF said that all of the funds earmarked by the contributors for the Yarnell Hill Fire were given to the families.
The spotlight on the organization revealed management issues within the WFF that were concerning.
Rocky Barker of the Idaho Statesman has written an in-depth article that explores the controversy while also providing examples of assistance the WFF has provided to firefighters and their families.
Brendan McDonough, Yarnell Hill Fire survivor, speaks in Prescott, Arizona at the July 9, 2013 memorial service for the 19 firefighters that died on the fire. Vice President Joe Biden and Arizona Governor Janice Brewer are on the left and right, respectively. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Brendan McDonough watched from a distance as the other 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots became entrapped and died June 30, 2013 on the Yarnell Hill Fire south of Prescott, Arizona. Now, according to an article in the USA Today, he still struggles with stress-related problems. No longer a firefighter but working for the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, he wants to “create a non-profit organization to fulfill a dream of building a “healing center” in Prescott where first-responders, including troubled wildfire crews and their families, can seek treatment.”
The article’s main focus is a topic that rarely gets discussed in the world of wildland fire — the day to day psychological strains that firefighters face which are similar to those experienced by warfighters. The military has a highly developed program for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but the land management agencies, with a primary focus of growing trees, cleaning campgrounds, and managing visitors and non-native plants, have done little, effectively, to deal with a shocking suicide rate, for example.
The excellent article gives several examples of how stress is negatively affecting some of our firefighters. Below is an excerpt:
…Wildland Firefighter Foundation Executive Director Vicki Minor — Burk Minor’s mother — estimates that as many as one in four such firefighters struggle with emotional trauma.
She says her organization counted six firefighter suicides during 2013. If accurate, it suggests a rough suicide rate of 17 per 100,000, far higher than the national average and similar to the pace of these deaths in the military.
“Our government, our fire officials, the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, they’re really good at taking care of the land and they know how to fight fire,” Vicki Minor says. “They don’t know how to take care of their people.”
Federal workers get free visits to a contracted private counselor, but many firefighters complain these providers are not schooled in PTSD treatment, Vicki Minor says. “I’ve had several of these men say that they had to pay for a therapist out of their own pocket,” she says.
The Forest Service recently published pocket-sized pamphlets with tips on traumatic stress and resilience. But the guides offer nothing about where to seek help if necessary, except to cite websites from the Department of Veterans Affairs and private suicide support groups.
Forest Service Fire Management Director Harbour says the deaths of the 19 Prescott firefighters were a wake-up call on the emotional stress firefighters may incur. “How do we deal with what we carry after we go through a traumatic incident?” he asks.
He and his staff have turned to the Marine Corps for ideas about building emotional resilience in firefighters. He urged in a briefing paper to senior officials that “we have developed wonderful new tools to help physically protect firefighters. Now is the time to ‘build a better brain!'”
He and his staff have turned to the Marine Corps for ideas about building emotional resilience in firefighters. He urged in a briefing paper to senior officials that “we have developed wonderful new tools to help physically protect firefighters. Now is the time to ‘build a better brain!'”
The land management agencies should consider developing an experimental program with the Department of Veterans Affairs that would take advantage of their existing PTSD treatment facilities, such as the one at the VA Hospital in Hot Springs, South Dakota, the “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Residential Rehabilitation Program”. Send a few firefighters with PTSD symptoms to a facility such as this and then evaluate the possible benefits.
On July 7, 2013, 19 hearses carried the remains of the Granite Mountain Hotshots back to Prescott, Arizona. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Coors Protect Our West campaign. TNS advertising photo.
The MillerCoors company has started a campaign to donate money to an organization that supports wildland firefighters. Images like the one above are appearing on trucks and billboards in some western states.
Through the Coors Banquet “Protect Our West” program, the company will contribute 25 cents to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation (WFF) for every case of the beer sold in select states in the Western region throughout July and August, up to $250,000. The non-profit WFF assists firefighters and the families of firefighters injured or killed while battling vegetation fires.
The 25-cents-per-case donation applies to cases of Coors Banquet sold in Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
From comments on the WFF Facebook page, it appears that the firefighter featured in the photo is Josh Ross who has worked on the Roosevelt Hotshots. In keeping with the tradition of firefighters buying beer for their comrades if their photo is seen in public media, a “jury” decided that Mr. Ross must buy two kegs of beer by the end of the season. “The jury went easy on me”, he wrote.
In other efforts to donate funds to the WFF, during July and August Coors Banquet will donate $100 for every double play turned by the Seattle Mariners to the Foundation. The company anticipates donating over $5,000 during the course of the campaign. And, the Arizona Wilderness Brewing Company will give $1 to the WFF for every pint of a special beer they recently introduced that is named after the Slide Fire which burned near Oak Creek Canyon north of Sedona, Arizona in May.
If you have not already, please join, or re-join, the 52 Club to help the WFF support firefighters and the families of firefighters injured or killed while on the job.
Wildland firefighter statue outside the memorial service for the Granite Mountain Hotshots in Prescott, July 9, 2013, Photo by Bill Gabbert.
After the 14 wildland firefighters were killed on the South Canyon Fire in Colorado in 1994 the Wildland Firefighter Foundation commissioned a stature to be built in their honor. For years it sat outside the airport in Boise, but last year just before the memorial service for the 19 firefighters that were killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire the statue appeared in Prescott at the entrance to the arena where the service was being held. The Prescott Daily Courier published an editorial today about its travels since that day on June 30, 2013.
Here is how the article begins:
The world showed its heart to the Prescott community this past June 30, when 19 of our Granite Mountain Hotshots perished in the Yarnell Hill fire they were struggling to contain.
One of the grandest memorials arrived in Prescott within a few days of the tragedy: a statue that had greeted and bid farewell to wildland firefighters passing through the Boise, Idaho, airport, either to help fight a fire or board a plane to fly home.
This extraordinary gesture of sympathy, the Spirit of the Wildland Community statue, honoring all firefighters – past, present and future – arrived in Prescott quietly, without a lot of fanfare.
The statue – all 1,300 pounds of it – was flown from Boise in Ross Perot’s personal Boeing 737, and when the plane landed in Phoenix in hot July summer heat, Jackson Hotshots unloaded the statue by hand and helped get it to Prescott Valley, where it first stood for the memorial services for the Hotshots on July 9 at Tim’s Toyota Center, a very fitting greeting for people who attended the public farewell to the firefighters…
A firefighter being photographed with the Wildland Firefighter statue at the memorial service for the Granite Mountain Hotshots in Prescott. Photo by Bill Gabbert.Inside the auditorium during the memorial service, July 9, 2013 in Prescott. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
The Katie Couric show on Tuesday did something surprising. Not only did they interview three wives whose husbands were members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire June 30, but they publicized efforts to donate large sums of money to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation. The WFF assists firefighters that have been injured on wildland fires and the families of firefighters who have been killed. It is a wonderful organization that does great things for the wildland firefighter community.
In this first video Katie talks to the three wives.
Then three members of the Fire Department of New York mention how wildland firefighters helped them out by sending Incident Management Teams to assist them after they suffered the attacks on the World Trade center on 9/11. I have seen folks from the FDNY mention this several times — they talk about paying back the wildland fire community and “paying it forward”. They lost 341 firefighters and two paramedics on 9/11.
The FDNY has already raised $50,000 for the families of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, and on the show the brother of deceased firefighter Patrick Joyce, who runs a foundation in his honor, announced the organization was donating $10,000 to the WFF. Then Katie produced a second large check for the same amount contributed by the Safeway Foundation.
And it didn’t stop there. One of the FDNY gentlemen said they are hoping to get every firefighter in the country to donate $10 each to the WFF. If that happens, $10 million would be raised.
If you have not already, join the WFF’s 52 Club, which means you have donated the equivalent of $1 a week for a year.
