When the eyes of the world were on Humboldt, Fire Chief Mike Kwasnica took a few minutes for himself.
For two days after the Humboldt Broncos bus crash that killed 16 people, the Humboldt Fire Chief was a key part of an event management team trying to deal with a situation that no one could have possibly foreseen or prepared for. Once the Humboldt vigil began, Kwasnica took some time to himself and had a meal.
Kwasnica and Humboldt city manager Joe Day spoke at the Saskatchewan Association of Fire Chiefs convention to share their story about managing a situation that no one could possibly be prepared for.
“When we wanted to assemble a team to respond in Humboldt we quickly realized that it was a mental health issue and media issue as much as it was anything else,” Day said. “We brought in the people from the mental health side that could advise us on how to deal with the public that was grieving and how to deal with the media that was going to be needing answers and information.”
While the accident was 170 kilometres away, much of the response was centered around the city of 6,000.
“As a Fire Department we’re trained to respond to incidents. We have the plans laid out, we do the exercises, we do the mocks, but this is something that you can’t do a mock for, it’s something you can’t plan for,” Kwasnica said.
Support Systems
What Kwasnica did have was a tight-knit fire and rescue community to lean on. Those networks are strengthened by events like the SAFC convention that is being held in Moose Jaw until Saturday.
“To have those networks in place before something really bad happens is absolutely essential for something of this magnitude to go as well as it did for us,” Kwasnica said. “We were able to reach out to other communities in the area and they were offering a lot of support and a lot of resources that we didn’t necessarily have or we maybe weren’t thinking as clearly as we should at that point in time.”
Kwasnica noted that just before his session was a presentation on mental health and how to do a self-assessment on your own mental health. He said his department is very proactive in monitoring their staff’s mental health and they have anyone who was involved in a traumatic event document was they saw and what they felt to keep a record on file.
“These conferences are essential for that,” Kwasnica said. “Saskatchewan isn’t that big. We’re spread out a lot, but the fire departments are very well-known to each other and the fire chiefs are very well-known to each other. Sometimes it just takes a simple phone call to somebody to listen.”
With the anniversary of the crash nearing, the community of Humboldt is still healing. The first responders who were on scene are no different.
“I know the fire departments that responded are still struggling,” Kwasnica said. “This is an event that no fire department ever wants to respond to. (Mental health) has been talked about more in the last year than it has in the first 17 years I’ve been in the fire service.”
Beyond sharing his story Thursday, Kwasnica is also a part of a firefighter’s peer support network in the province.
“We do this quite often. We will respond to a fire department that has had a traumatic event and we’ll do a debriefing or a defusing,” Kwasnica said. “I go as peer-support because it’s nice to have somebody there that you can relate to and that they can understand where you’re coming from.”
Given the scope of the event and the attention it drew in relation to the size of the community, Day said that outside support from surrounding areas and agencies was critical for the people on the ground in Humboldt.
“It’s OK to accept help when it’s offered,” Day said. “One thing we learned was the reliance and support of your peer groups.”
Day said it’s a tricky tightrope to walk between people in the community who do still appreciate the outside support and see a need to recognize those who died and then those who feel the time has come to move on and don’t wish to see constant reminders of the tragedy.
In a video message Humboldt mayor Rob Muench said:
“Over the last several months our community has really come together. We would like to tell everybody that we’re doing OK here.
“On behalf of our community we would like to get the word out that we’re very grateful for what everybody has done for us. As we’ve pulled together we will be moving forward in a positive way. This is the kind of community that we are.”
