INGRAM, Texas — Riding on horseback through brush and over numerous dead turkeys, Margo Mellon spent Tuesday scanning the flood-ravaged ground of Texas’ Hill Country for dead bodies.
As she and her rescue mates trudged through the muddy terrain, state officials announced that more than 160 people are still believed to be missing. With countless miles swamped by the floods, nobody knows when the searches will end.
The triumphs of finding people alive ended days ago, while the mission of recovering bodies that might include even more children is far from over. The grim undertaking has prompted questions about how first responders and rescue teams are able to mentally reckon with the work ahead.
Mellon, a 24-year-old volunteer with search and recovery organization Texas EquuSearch that is a working with local fire departments, said for now she feels emotionally detached as she focuses on the task. But she knows the experience will be difficult to process once she returns home to Corpus Christi.
“I’ll try not to think about it too much,” she said. “I’ll just think about the fact that at least the families have closure.”
The flash floods deluged homes, campgrounds and an all-girls summer camp over Fourth of July weekend. More than 100 people have been killed, including 30 children.
“We process it the best we can,” Lt. Colonel Ben Baker of the Texas Game Wardens said Tuesday at a news conference after taking a deep breath.
“We’re making sure they have the support,” Baker said of the search teams, adding that “to see a child in that loss of life is extremely tragic.”
The discussion about first responders’ mental health likely wouldn’t have occurred a generation ago, experts say. And while first responders have higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological health conditions, most are able to process the heavy realities of the job.
Nick Culotta, who was a paramedic in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said people in the profession are able to compartmentalize and work on autopilot. Despite the challenges of recovering bodies, he said the work is crucial.
“It’s definitely not the goal that you are hoping for,” he said. “But just being able to give someone closure that their loved one was found can give us a sense of accomplishment. There are still people unaccounted for from Katrina.”
Mental health challenges may follow, he said, which is why learning how to rest and get support is important.
“People will still continue to call for police. People will still get sick. Things will still catch fire,” he said. “What’s really important is understanding your limitations. And having resources available to use, whether it be an anonymous help line or a sit-down with a mental health counselor.”
The stresses of the job affect everyone differently, said Robin Jacobowitz, interim director at the Institute for Disaster Mental Health at SUNY New Paltz.
A lot of it depends on what the first responder experienced previously, both on the job and off, she said.
“For these responders who are working in Texas, it’s probably not their first incident,” said Jacobowitz, who co-authored a report on the mental health needs of New York’s first responders. “So what they’re dealing with now is probably layered on top of what they have dealt with in the past. And those things add up.”
Stress from the job can show up through sleeplessness, flashbacks or introversion, Jacobowitz said, as well as feelings of “Could I have done more? Did I do enough?”
Most will lean on friends and family as well as clergy or spiritual advisers. But because many don’t want to burden them with what they’ve seen, they also lean on each other and mental health professionals.
One of the biggest predictors of recovering from a traumatic event is the degree of social support a person has.
“Not every traumatic incident turns into full-blown PTSD,” Jacobowitz said. “You may struggle with PTSD-like symptoms and then be able to work through them.”
There’s been a marked shift toward acknowledging the mental health challenges of the job, said Ian Stanley, a University of Colorado emergency medicine professor.
Much of the change has occurred in the last decade, pushed along by the growing focus on PTSD among veterans coupled with the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic on first responders, Stanley said.
But there’s still a long way to go because the issue “hasn’t been talked about for so long,” he said. Challenges include serving first responders who work for volunteer organizations or in rural areas where there are fewer mental health resources.
The issue also hasn’t been studied as extensively as it has among veterans and service members.
Stanley stressed that most first responders are “resilient to these challenges and live happy, healthy, productive, resilient lives.”
But he noted that many of those recovering flood victims in Texas are in small communities.
“They might be recovering bodies of people they know or their neighbors,” he said. “And that’s really challenging.”
___
Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia.
