From his first days as a rookie firefighter and emergency medical technician to his command of a company as a twenty-year veteran, Jeremy Norton has made regular, direct encounters with the sick, the dying, and the dead. In his memoir, Trauma Sponges: Dispatches from the Scarred Heart of Emergency Response, Norton documents the life of an emergency responder in Minneapolis, revealing the stark realities of humanity at its finest and its worst. Here, Norton is joined in conversation with colleagues: Captain Ricardo Anaya, Captain Shana York, and retired Captain Bridget Bender.
Jeremy Norton has been a firefighter/EMT with the Minneapolis Fire Department since 2000. He was born and raised in Washington, DC, and was a high school teacher in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He taught creative writing at the Loft Literary Center before joining the MFD.
Bridget Bender is a recently retired captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department.
Ricardo Anaya is a captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department and has been a Minneapolis firefighter since 2015.
Shana York is a longtime firefighter and captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department.
"While many bear witness to injustice and decide that silence best serves their privilege, some use their privilege to dismantle the inequities that created the disparities in the first place. Jeremy Norton is the latter." —Dr. Michele Harper, author of The Beauty in Breaking
"Trauma Sponges is a powerful book, by turns tender, brutal, and incisive, full of wisdom and wonder." —Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You and The Ask
"Norton is the Poet Laureate of Emergency Services, a writer whose talent and heart spark and crackle on every page, devastating and dazzling with equal measure. He sorts through the wreckage of the lives he's saved and those that were lost, presenting us with what remains: our raw humanity and, somehow, hope." —Nora McInerny, founder of the Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast and best-selling author of Bad Vibes Only
"With clarity and sensitivity, Jeremy Norton has written an eye-opening book that shows us what firefighting is often about: encountering medical emergencies more often than fires, helping strangers through the trauma of death and loss, and witnessing the ways that racism, poverty, and violence singe our society. Theirs is a particular courage that we must all celebrate." —Dr. Sunita Puri, author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour
Chapters
From his first days as a rookie firefighter and emergency medical technician to his command of a company as a twenty-year veteran, Jeremy Norton has made regular, direct encounters with the sick, the dying, and the dead. In his memoir, Trauma Sponges: Dispatches from the Scarred Heart of Emergency Response, Norton documents the life of an emergency responder in Minneapolis, revealing the stark realities of humanity at its finest and its worst. Here, Norton is joined in conversation with colleagues: Captain Ricardo Anaya, Captain Shana York, and retired Captain Bridget Bender.
Jeremy Norton has been a firefighter/EMT with the Minneapolis Fire Department since 2000. He was born and raised in Washington, DC, and was a high school teacher in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He taught creative writing at the Loft Literary Center before joining the MFD.
Bridget Bender is a recently retired captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department.
Ricardo Anaya is a captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department and has been a Minneapolis firefighter since 2015.
Shana York is a longtime firefighter and captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department.
"While many bear witness to injustice and decide that silence best serves their privilege, some use their privilege to dismantle the inequities that created the disparities in the first place. Jeremy Norton is the latter." —Dr. Michele Harper, author of The Beauty in Breaking
"Trauma Sponges is a powerful book, by turns tender, brutal, and incisive, full of wisdom and wonder." —Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You and The Ask
"Norton is the Poet Laureate of Emergency Services, a writer whose talent and heart spark and crackle on every page, devastating and dazzling with equal measure. He sorts through the wreckage of the lives he's saved and those that were lost, presenting us with what remains: our raw humanity and, somehow, hope." —Nora McInerny, founder of the Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast and best-selling author of Bad Vibes Only
"With clarity and sensitivity, Jeremy Norton has written an eye-opening book that shows us what firefighting is often about: encountering medical emergencies more often than fires, helping strangers through the trauma of death and loss, and witnessing the ways that racism, poverty, and violence singe our society. Theirs is a particular courage that we must all celebrate." —Dr. Sunita Puri, author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour
What is University of Minnesota Press?
Authors join peers, scholars, and friends in conversation. Topics include environment, humanities, race, social justice, cultural studies, art, literature and literary criticism, media studies, sociology, anthropology, grief and loss, mental health, and more.
Jeremy Norton:
Like, let's go to work, see what the world has in store for us, and hope we all make it home in the morning.
Shana York:
I don't think most people know how 9 1 1 is being used.
Bridget Bender:
There's an inherent value and importance to doing this kind of work and feeling like you're part of something really special.
Ricardo Anaya:
You have to make judgment calls on things, and that could go three or four
Jeremy Norton:
different ways, and you you run with it one way. I am profoundly aware of how beautiful and bleak this life is. My name is Jeremy Norton. I have a memoir with University of Minnesota Press entitled Trauma Sponges, Dispatches from the Scarred Heart of Emergency Response. I've been a Minneapolis Firefighter since the year February.
Jeremy Norton:
I am currently a captain. I work on engine seventeen in South Minneapolis. And with me tonight, I have three friends and coworkers, Bridget Bender, Ricardo Anaya, and Shana York. And I'm gonna let each of them introduce themselves, say their rank, how long they've been a firefighter, and also how old they were when they started, and then, what got them interested in firefighting or the Minneapolis fire department. I'm gonna go on my screen left to right.
Jeremy Norton:
So, Bridget, you're up first.
Bridget Bender:
Thanks for having me. So I'm Bridget Bender. I just recently retired actually from the Minneapolis fire department out of the rank of captain, and I was captain of Ladder seven. I was 21 years old when I started. I actually turned 21 the day I interviewed for the job, so I was just a baby when I started the job.
Bridget Bender:
I initially became interested because I was actually going to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and I was pursuing a totally different path. Engine nineteen responded to a call there, and I didn't know that the fire department also did emergency medicine. And so I was talking to one of the firefighters, and I got interested. And he told me about the test that was coming up, and I was kinda curious. So I went to it out, and I ended up being very, very interested in all the aspects of the job, the emergency medicine, rescue work, public service, and public safety, and things like that.
Jeremy Norton:
Very solid lead off. Rick?
Ricardo Anaya:
My name is Ricardo Anaya. I've been a Minneapolis Firefighter since 2015, currently captain on engine seven. I think I I said I was 28 when I started. I had a background in construction labor and youth job training. I had gone to college to teach English and studied languages and intercultural studies and but to pay for college, kinda got into the building trades and pouring concrete and like that a little more than teaching, but found kind of a blend in youth job training and the trades.
Ricardo Anaya:
I really enjoyed the adrenaline rush of pouring concrete with my crews, and I think that's what sort of led me towards firefighting was a few of the coworkers that I had that had dabbled in testing with Minneapolis, and it sounded fun and exciting. I figured I'd do it for a couple of years and then come back to my crew and ended up sticking around.
Jeremy Norton:
Excellent. Shana Shana?
Shana York:
Well, hello. I am Shana York. When I came on, Bridget and I were in the same class. When I came on, I was 25, and I was drawn to the fire department. I, used to work with youth as well, like Ricardo, only slightly different because I worked with middle school girls, and we had a firefighter come talk to the group of girls that I was working with.
Shana York:
And while that person was talking, I found that I had more questions than the kids had. And so I applied not really knowing what I was getting myself into at all. I enjoyed it. My joke has always been that a lot of times people say, oh, it must be really different. And I think a lot of times it's a lot the same as working with a bunch of middle school girls, which is good to answer.
Jeremy Norton:
I was 32 when I started. I got interested in '94, '90 '5. I failed my tryout. I've been a middle and high school English or literature teacher, and I moved up here. And I was looking for a job that provided health insurance and dental insurance.
Jeremy Norton:
And much like what Bridget said, offered a way to challenging work, serve the community, help other people, and feel enriching. And a friend of mine had just joined the department in '94. And I was like, oh, this looks like a way to do this job and not spend eighty hours a week grading papers. So I spent about four or five years chasing it and ended up getting hired in February. Now I'm curious, how realistic was your idea of the job versus what you experienced in your first year?
Bridget Bender:
I think for me, it was not at all realistic. I think I expected, you know, what you see in the movies and, like, nonstop action. I expected that the biggest challenge was gonna be, like, seeing gory things or seeing really difficult things. I wasn't prepared for the downtime, the nonemergency calls, the station dynamics, and relationships. I was pretty naive.
Bridget Bender:
I had just turned 21. I remember being very surprised by not to lead with such a hot button item, but, like, the sexism there was shocking to me and appalling. I thought, you know, oh, people are still sexist? Like, what's that about? So that was a huge challenge, and I I wasn't prepared to have to work so hard to feel like I was not even necessarily accepted, but tolerated in the beginning.
Shana York:
When I came on I mean, all we did in training at the time was, like, fire EMS, fire EMS, fire EMS. That's what you're gonna do. And then you go to a station and, yes, the interpersonal dynamics. And I had come from maybe six years or so working at the YWCA where our mission was to empower women and girls and eliminate racism. And then I went in and the language I heard and the way people talk to each other and the people who liked each other, Just the general conversation was so flooring to me.
Shana York:
I don't even think I ever thought I'd be accepted. I think, like Bridget mentioned, just to be tolerated sometimes. And there were some places I remember sitting in a parking lot at a station and someone walked by and knocked on my window. Like, what are you doing? It's like, I'm just taking a minute because I know once I walk in those doors, it's going to be nonstop for twenty four hours, and I'm just gonna gather myself here and have a last two minutes, three minutes of peace before I head in.
Ricardo Anaya:
Yeah. I I was, I think, similarly shocked by what station life was. I had a really busy first, like, couple months, and I think that's what I expected job duty wise and had a a crew that I meshed with well. And then it was the rest of that first year where you get, you know, signed off to float around the city, and it's going out to slower stations. And and that downtime on the outskirts of the city where it's a little slower, the station dynamics and and just the job culture caught me off guard.
Ricardo Anaya:
Similar experiences where I'm sitting in my car thinking like, alright. Here we go.
Bridget Bender:
I do think it did help in a way that I was so young because I didn't have a lot of outside, you know, work experience to compare to. I had pretty much been a bartender, a server, and a college student, and so I didn't really have a standard expectation of what work life was like. And that helped me to sort of fit into whatever I was presented with better, I think. If I had been older and had more experiences, it would have been harder to adjust and harder to sort of accept the conditions in that space that can be difficult.
Jeremy Norton:
Yeah. I kind of like what a little bit what Shana was saying that I had times where the weight of the stupidity and just sitting there watching time die was, like, worse than Dolly's clocks. Like, just time was just dying on the walls. I would have probably quit except I've been a teacher, and I've seen similar dynamics, the pettiness, the territorialness. And I was like, well, I get to raise my children.
Jeremy Norton:
I'm home to take care of the kids. This is, you know, this is work that gives me time off, and all jobs to a degree suck. But had I not had previous experiences, I think others said this is the most dysfunctional, fuckwitted system because it's layers. It's like all the interpersonal stuff and then systemically and then HR then civil service and the city itself. I mean, the layers and layers are just crazy.
Jeremy Norton:
Bridget and Shana were just in the list right behind me. You know, so there wasn't much space between us. I tried out in '95, '90 '6, I think. And as I was learning about the job, Jen Cornell and a lot of the kind of second wave of women who were hired in the late eighties and early nineties, you know, there may be nine of them, but that was a that was a clump. Like and, you know, I would hang out with them after they got off work, and I listen to them talk.
Jeremy Norton:
And so, yeah, they would talk eventually about, you know, a baby, you know, or a car crash or a fire or shooting, all the other stuff. But what they talked about when we would go to, like, Ruby's Cafe down on Warren Park was just dealing with endless misogyny and homophobia and racism. And then while I was revising my book, I realized that growing up, my dad and my stepmom were are both lawyer or were both lawyers. My dad, white guy, fit in. He would just come home and just be in his own little world.
Jeremy Norton:
And my mom would talk about not the legal aspects, but dealing with being a a female lawyer in the seventies and how much overt sexism. So she couldn't get good at her job because she had to deal with groping and the glass ceiling and being dismissed and the stupid, you know, shoulder pads and horrible outfits, the uniforms that they expected women to wear. And I thought, wow, like, that's really what Jen and her group were talking about, that that's what they were fighting. They couldn't get to be good firefighters because they weren't getting that institutional support from the brotherhood, and they were facing active hostility. Right?
Jeremy Norton:
And so that really shaped a lot of my understanding that how many nonwhite men and women of all races have had to fight against an almost indifferent hostility just to do the job. The women who get on this job are almost overwhelmingly badasses. But, Shana, I was stuck in this hellish year where I was stuck in a ladder company that did nothing with, like, three men who had, like, forty years on and then three younger dudes who didn't care. And it was hell, and I hated every minute of it. It just was horrible.
Jeremy Norton:
And Shana came in right when a new captain who actually she knew from high school, like an arrogant entitled prick. And they're kinda casual you know, it's like, is it semi racism, semi, like, misogyny, or just both? Just a nice little ball of, well, we're not gonna say anything because we don't wanna offend her, so they just didn't know how to deal with her. And Shana keeps her own counsel, and she's really good, but she also was an adult enough that she wasn't trying to fit in because smart enough to realize they were never gonna accept her. And what a shitty club to try to fit into.
Jeremy Norton:
I'm curious for you three to talk about the notions of the brotherhood. Because, Bridget, you were saying that we spend more time often with our work crews than we do with our families. This can be a very good social dynamic, and then there's all the other parts that are completely horrific.
Bridget Bender:
I was thinking about this article I read. There was a research study about covert discrimination versus what you were talking about with, you know, the first and second wave of women. It was very overt discrimination still. By the time Shana and I came on and certainly ten years after we came on, it's just gotten more and more covert. It was interesting because the study that I read, they found that the people who experienced more covert discrimination, it was more harmful to them.
Bridget Bender:
It was more difficult because when you don't know specifically whether or not something's happening, you're more likely to internalize and blame yourself for what's going on or blame yourself for not understanding or being too sensitive. I really resonated with that article because I felt like what I experienced was both overt and covert, but the covert stuff was much worse to deal with because it's like you couldn't speak up about it. You couldn't tell anybody because there were no rules being broken necessarily. And I've fought that with race, sexuality, religion. Like, there's all kinds of covert discrimination that happens because nobody wants to get in trouble.
Bridget Bender:
They don't wanna get sued, but they do wanna kinda signal to one another that they're still part of the old boys club. They'll mistreat people, but they'll do it just under the radar enough so that it's really, I think, more harmful in a lot of ways. Because at least the times that it was more overt, I could be like, that guy's an asshole, and stay away from him.
Shana York:
Like Bridget said, when something extra stupid happens, it's easier to say, hey. You can't say that. You can't do that. I'm not okay with that. But I remember when I was a rookie and every single time we came back from a run and I was on night watch, porn would be on when I'd come back.
Shana York:
Every single time. They'd and I'm like, I don't even know who's doing this. I'm so tired. I can't see straight. I've never been in this environment.
Shana York:
What what is happening? And that's why when I opened, I said, it's a lot like middle school girls. Like, why are we doing this childish thing? Someone's going out of their way to wake up every time we get a call and find porn and put it on for me who doesn't even really watch TV. I was always sitting in the corner reading a book.
Shana York:
So it but it's like, who do you get mad at about that? Not that that's even necessarily in the in the grand scheme of things that have happened to me on the department. I don't think that's something to get mad at, but it's so childish.
Bridget Bender:
That's exactly it. Like, I'm thinking of sort of microaggressions. Accent people accidentally I'm doing finger quotes for the listeners. Accidentally spitting their chew in my drink. You know?
Bridget Bender:
And, oh, I thought it was my spittoon. You know? Or I thought it was my my spit can. It's like, you know they're doing it on purpose, and you can't really do anything about it or accidentally erasing my credits and the watch book or, you know, stuff like that where it's these little things. But when there's 15 men doing it every day that you work and all day throughout the day, it really adds up after a while and becomes overwhelming.
Ricardo Anaya:
Yeah. So I I think my radar on racism is kinda skewed with my personal history of, like, growing up in rural Wisconsin. When we first moved there, we were one of two Latino families in the town growing up in that. Like, I was five or six when we moved there, so I wanted to be a part of whatever was going on and kinda learn how to navigate through and and probably just tolerate a lot of it to just make do. So I I think I have this tendency to wanna just move past whatever's going on, the the covert racism.
Ricardo Anaya:
But then moving to Minneapolis and spending ten years not in the fire service and just in in college and then in working in nonprofits and construction companies that were connected to nonprofits, something similar to, like, what Shane was talking about with the YWCA. Their mission was to empower women and eliminate racism. Like, the organizations I was a part of had similar values and similar missions. And so then going into the fire service and then discovering, oh, wow. Yeah.
Ricardo Anaya:
People are still on this stuff. It was a a rush back of all this old stuff that and and having to decide through, like, how am I gonna deal with this? And being new to the fire service, I could see that tendency to wanna just fall in line, tolerate what was going on towards me or towards others, but then also having ten years of saying, no. Like, I'm not about to, like, take all this again, and I I know that other people shouldn't either. But finding that balance where you might not be willing to tolerate, but then you're just kind of put off to the side and not a part of the group then.
Shana York:
I mean, this is a instance where I'd be really interested in, Jeremy, what you have to say because I think you have the benefit of everybody knows you now. So we know you and we know your ideas and what you stand for. But when you came on, you were a white guy, maybe a few tattoos, a flat top, and you were probably part of conversations that I've never been a part of that stopped when any of the rest of us entered the room. I think it'd be interesting to hear your perspective.
Jeremy Norton:
Yeah. I taught for four years in Chattanooga at evangelical Presbyterian missionary ex military schools. I went from kind of being a dissolute lit major in Boston to suddenly getting my shit together and then being in Tennessee, and there was, like, a lot of evangelical literalism. That opened up my understanding of the structural con of America, you know, not just kind of the fact that I read and I had professors who challenged kind of all the received wisdom about how America is supposed to be, but being down in the South where it's America on concentrate. God, God's glory, the, you know, patriotic.
Jeremy Norton:
There there's a gendered hierarchy. There's a racial hierarchy. There was in the nineties, there was utter, utter homophobic closeting. And seeing it was all bullshit. And it was like, oh, this is a matter of just comfort.
Jeremy Norton:
And so then when I got up and got into the fire department and listening to Jen and and her cohort talk about it. And, you know, you don't really think it's that bad. And so I spent all this time, my first several years, hanging out with Jen and Rita and Maresca and Marymoon and Rosita when she was there, like, Sheree, like and then one day, Jen, Bonnie, and I were going to work out at the downtown health club, and we parked a tent. And we pulled up to the back of tent, and Bonnie was a new captain. And and even they were like they had to tense up to walk in because on the back of Station 10, it was like, oh, this is some, like, vaguely, like, wildly homoerotic looking bunch of Marlboro men.
Jeremy Norton:
It was just men with bad late eighties, early nineties haircuts and mustaches staring with, again, like, the most seething hatred but not saying a word at Jen and Bonnie. And I was like, oh, that's right. Fireman. Oh, fuck. This just like, I because I had this whole different idea of, like, the job is a bunch of crusaders and groundbreakers.
Jeremy Norton:
And I'm like, oh, oh, and it's like, look, I'm educated, I'm from DC, I'm privileged in so many ways and I've had a great education and I've had people very, very smart and long enduring women and friends of mine who are people of color, who've shown me through their just lived experience how different our experiences are. And so there's a way in which I've never bought into it. And fortunately, it's anathema to me. Do it like the last place I ever wanna be is some circle jerk of dudes talking about how great it used to be. So that makes it easy to say, like, I don't mind not sitting in because these guys are fucking reprehensible.
Jeremy Norton:
But then it also became, my job is to advocate for everyone who doesn't have the ability to come in and feel comfortable. And as you the three of you know, trying to speak as the voice of reason in our workplaces is like pissing in the wind. They're not like, oh, wow, Jeremy. Your points about historical racism. Thank you so much.
Jeremy Norton:
Right? It's it's a bunch of dumb people who are comfortable by that group thing. You know, and that's one of the things I chose was a challenge in the book. I go into a lot of detail about the way that the compulsory machismo leads us to heart attacks, leads us to overextending in the buildings, leads us to all the unhealthy aspects of our job. And no one is challenging us to do those things better, to not do those things at all.
Jeremy Norton:
I don't know anything that you all can imagine. I've been disappointed by people who I thought were better than they are, but generally, it's dumb white dudes complaining. But I I wanna go back to something, Bridget, you said. For the listeners at home, when they think firefighting, they think going in work together, fighting fires, it's like backdraft or rescue me or which Chicago fire any of that stuff, which is all CGI. That we come to the job not knowing what it's going to entail.
Jeremy Norton:
And you go to rookie school and you have no idea how dysfunctional it is. Even if you're have an idea of how dysfunctional is, you don't know how profoundly dysfunctional each rookie class is. And all they're screaming at you about is, if you don't do what that person does, you're gonna die. You don't know about fire. I don't care how many books you've read or how many how many children you've tutored or any.
Jeremy Norton:
This is the real thing. If you don't do this, you're gonna fucking die. And we don't have anything to compare it with. So they scare you into this kind of you wanna sit around the table and, you know, kind of wrap up the drops of wisdom from some salty person. I mean, like, you know, a couple of months later, you realize they're full of shit.
Jeremy Norton:
I'm curious how you all each made that kind of transition from what you thought the job was gonna be to what it is. And then that gap between what they told you was going to be the issue, fighting fires, how much do you bench press? Because we always have bench pressing contacts on the fire ground to what it is we actually do. Because that's where I keep going back to. You don't have to agree with my opinions.
Jeremy Norton:
But let's look at what we're actually doing and talking about. And I want so, like, I'm happy to have the traditionalist convince me otherwise.
Shana York:
I think what we actually do on a daily basis is a lot of problem solving that's not written in a book. We figure out how to lift someone without hurting our backs, who's stuck in the bathroom but covered in poop, but also has a bad shoulder so you can't lift them by their shoulder or it's a 50 degrees in that space and they're hot but we need to get them out of a window or just something very obscure that is not taught. And I think what we teach and even now because I'm in the training division and I've been involved in training classes for a couple of years now, and we sell it to the cadets. Like, if you just follow your rules and your guidelines, everything is gonna be okay. But the reality is that person who's in charge of the rig that day, very rarely is is the situation something that is written about in a book.
Shana York:
Like, if you go to a house fire, that's great because we know exactly what to do at that. But if we go and it's like a chicken coop on fire that's kind of next to the garage or there's a tree but it fell on the house but it kinda looks like it might land on the neighbor's house, then we are forced to use our problem solving abilities. And I don't think I don't think it's glamorous enough to sell to firefighters, to that older brotherhood generation. No one wants to hear that we're really just thinking about things, and we're looking at the magical tools in our toolbox and thinking about how am I gonna do this without calling another rig? How am I gonna do x y z without hurting the person, hurting the property?
Shana York:
They don't have TV shows about that. Right?
Ricardo Anaya:
Yeah. I think at at training, it's we wanna teach cadets and new firefighters that there's pass and fail, clear cut lines of what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, and any amount of gray is pushed back on. Like, you find the right answer, you find the solution, and you run forward a % on it. And then, yeah, you you come across any collection of shifts, and there's a plethora of things that fall in between all these things that we've trained on and things that you have to make judgment calls on that could go three or four different ways, and you you run with it one way. And that gray area is something that doesn't jive well with traditional fireman culture.
Bridget Bender:
I do think there is some usefulness to the authoritarian do as I say, don't ask questions, just do it kind of training that we receive. The problem, I think, for, you know, emergency work is that the context is everything. And we sort of pick up the same tool for every job. And that authoritarian system isn't super useful in every context. It's useful when things are happening really quickly.
Bridget Bender:
I'm in charge. I'm making decisions, and I need the people following me to do what I say and not question it because time is of the essence or there's no space for democracy in that moment. It's not safe. Right? Versus we're on a call like Shana just described where there's a lot of problem solving.
Bridget Bender:
You know, this person is not in imminent danger, so we have time. We can discuss different things. We have to take multiple conflicting values. You know, we wanna not get contaminated with somebody's, you know, bodily fluids or we wanna not further injure somebody's shoulder injury. And we want to protect someone's dignity and integrity and humanity who is in an embarrassing situation and we also don't wanna hurt ourselves, you know.
Bridget Bender:
And so those situations is more useful to have a democracy and a problem solving team working together. But because we only learn the one way of do what I say and don't ask any questions, it's ineffective and it puts way too much pressure on the person in charge and it gives them way too much power over everything we do. And I think that that trickles down into the stations where there's this rank and order and value placed on seniority and rank that isn't necessarily useful all the time. And that 1% of the time that it is useful on the fire ground when shit is happening and you need to do what I say, it's like, what about the other 99% of the time? And that's where I think that things need to change.
Bridget Bender:
We need to figure out how to instead of doing it one way or the other or, you know, just throwing everything out the window. Figure out when it's useful to be like that and when it's not and think of some new ways, new SOPs or new guidelines, new leadership models that actually are more collective and take everybody's experiences into consideration because that's really where our strengths are is when you have a good team filled with many minds and many experiences that can problem solve those things.
Jeremy Norton:
One of the things that I'm fascinated by is I honestly and genuinely believe that the thing that gets all of the emotional weight, firemanship, firefighting, that's what our job is, and everything else is just incidental and kind of distraction. And because I'm a nerd and because I learned from Jen and Kathleen and re like, the women I saw who were ostracized when I was coming up and and and realized that what they had to say was as right, if not more correct, than what the guys who were ragging on just because they could. So I've been questioning since I started and I started researching before widespread Internet stuff before YouTube and all that, trying to find out are there actually tactics out there. And then it's like, oh, no. We really have a kind of horrid traditions or superstitions and cliches.
Jeremy Norton:
Right? And I am oppositional defiance enough that I'm like, but that's bullshit. And also, let's look at what just happened. And I'm a nerd, and I was a teacher, so I'm like, let's actually break down what we did. So we can't even do that about firefighting, and I think that leads to the misconception.
Jeremy Norton:
One of, I think, the reasons why we're catching so many people struggling with kind of traumatic exposure and stuff is because they aren't prepared for what happens the majority of our shifts. Like, anyone who comes to do this job, they go, I'm gonna go fight fire and be a kick ass fire dude, and then you spend all your time treating the public who's in need and immersed in all that suffering, no wonder there's a disconnect to what all three of you said, two related Ben Pena stories. Ben was my rookie, and he's the captain now, and I was complaining about one of the previous, not you, Ricardo and not you, Sheena, previous training people where they were doing, you know, like, burpees and, like, this super hot, hot, hot stuff. Ben was like, well, when the chips are down, I want somebody who's not gonna quit. And I was like, wet chips.
Jeremy Norton:
I've never ever ever seen anyone other than one of the old school Vietnam Vets who threw a threw a choke can of somebody and walked off a fireground. I've never seen anyone refuse to do anything on a fireground. Like, I've seen us do things incorrectly. I've seen us do things rashly. But it's not like doing push ups ad nauseam is gonna make you there's no connection there.
Jeremy Norton:
I'd rather spend more time studying how to read smoke. But I also laugh because when Ben was a rookie, he he was with me when for his first full rookie shot. And we walked back from calls because I was a brand new captain. And to what Shana said, I was like, That's number 463 that's not in the captain's book that they don't give me. All the problem solving that we were doing just alone, I had a driver who wasn't helpful, and then I had a rookie.
Jeremy Norton:
And I'm sitting here on these calls, whether it's a weird odor, a dead body, and not dead body, tree down all these things where there was no rule book, and you just had to use logic and those same problem solving skills also mean we're inclined to question a lot of the received wisdom. And so I said all along, this new generation, this, you know, the so called millennials, and I'm not lumping you in with whatever that hoard is. They know how to read and write and use a computer. That's fucking great. Like, this idea that they might ask us why we're doing something.
Jeremy Norton:
Like, that goes to Bridget's point. Like, that's collaboration. I want people to be smart about what we're doing. And I think that's where it's so easy to manage lives and now they kind of the negative side of the Internet is all these firemanship, stupid macho posturing websites that the young and the impressionable go to and think that's what they're supposed to do because we don't actually see this is good firefighting. One of the things that the core of the book is about EMS, and one of the things that a lot of our listeners, you know, may not understand is that in cities, urban areas, the fire department responds with paramedics to provide EMS calls.
Jeremy Norton:
So when you call 911 and say I've got chest pain or I've got my foot is caught somewhere it should be caught, the dispatch has a very limited algorithm, and they would send the police department, the paramedics, or the fire department, or all three or a combination of the three. And that is how most fire departments spend the majority of our time, somewhere around 75 to 85% of our time. That's also where we save the most lives and that we perform the most public good. How have your experiences at work kind of shaped your understanding of, like, the realities of our health care system and then the end of life cultural denial?
Shana York:
If I think of myself, I've lived in Minneapolis as a homeowner since '98, and I can say that I've probably called 9117, maybe eight times. And then I think of my busy days on busy engines, and there were times when we'd see the same person two, three times in a shift because they were having issues. I don't think most people know how 911 is being used. For the people who call 911 because they're out of their inhaler and it's a holiday weekend and their doctor can't call the pharmacy and the pharmacy is closing early, that's the only option they have. And I think so many people have privilege to be like, oh, okay.
Shana York:
Well, I'll just use another inhaler or I'll just do this or that. And if you move a lot or you don't have the resources, what are you left to do when you have a problem like I can't breathe? When people think about what we're doing, zipping through the city, I think they imagine, like, we're going to CPR, and then we're gonna get right back on the rig, and we're gonna go deliver a baby, and then we're gonna get back on the rig, and then we're gonna do this. I don't think they understand exactly what we do, and I I don't think they understand the scope of the health care problem that we currently have.
Bridget Bender:
I was gonna say something similar in that. I think our for profit health care industry has created a huge problem where, you know, if you can't afford insurance or the completely counterintuitive ties between employment and insurance where the sickest people who need health care the most can't work. I just experienced that last year going through cancer and thank God I had, you know, a job and plenty of sick time and benefits and things to get me through that. But it was very apparent to me last year, like, what do people do? I couldn't work, and I needed health care.
Bridget Bender:
And I think what happens is that people who cannot afford health care end up using nine one one for their health care because the way the laws are, you can't be refused emergency health care. One way or another, we're all paying for health care. Hospitals charge more money because they have to offset the costs of emergency medicine. To what Shana was saying about the inhaler, it's like, I've thought that before in the middle of the night responding to a call where a kid needs a nebulizer or needs an inhaler, and we're sending a fire truck, a police squad, an ambulance. That child is being transported to a hospital where they're going to the emergency room, seeing a doctor, getting prescribed, all to get the inhaler that they could have just gotten in the first place if we had universal health care.
Bridget Bender:
The thousands of dollars that it's costing and the time and man hours of all the staff responding to that call. I mean, it very quickly adds up and then you put on top of that the opioid crisis, constant overdosing, and the poor health care system we have in place that is for profit and is not meant to keep us healthy, but meant to treat our illnesses. The sickest people are the most vulnerable. Right? And so I think the fire department was very eye opening for me to see how skewed things can look, especially, again, context is everything.
Bridget Bender:
And if the my only experience with health care was the fire department, I might have some really negative views about, like, the kind of people who are using emergency medicine. Why are you wasting all these tax dollars? Or why are you calling 911 for things that you should be doing during the day? You know, and like Shana said, it's way more complicated than that. People don't have options.
Bridget Bender:
And so why are we forcing people to use 911 for their only line of defense in health care versus giving people more support and help on the front end so that they're not having to use the 911 emergency system, for nonemergency health care issues?
Ricardo Anaya:
Yeah. I I can't begin to try to understand the way our health care system works and doesn't work. I feel like, Shane and Bridget, you hit all the points, and and I I'm left still not knowing what the answer is. Like, as far as, like, the fire department's role in that piece of the puzzle, when I first heard the term trauma sponge, it was like a bio for you, Jeremy. And I think at the time, I was still pretty early in my career, and I only understood that as like, oh, because we are performing the labor of cleaning up at trauma scene.
Ricardo Anaya:
Several years past that, I'm seeing it kind of again and understanding it as like, well, yeah, we're we're a sponge that's cleaning up. We're also a sponge that's, like, holding the collective trauma of all these things. We're we're holding it with us. And and it's probably in the last year that I made that connection. Like, oh, it's people didn't just talk about clean cleanups.
Ricardo Anaya:
They're just talking about, like, the labor we do. If you've smelled a sponge in the fire station, there there's there's a special time to smell
Jeremy Norton:
it anywhere else. The sponge that we order,
Ricardo Anaya:
things that we
Jeremy Norton:
pick up from or floor
Ricardo Anaya:
or I don't even know where people put it, but the the smell. And I I feel like that's probably a pretty accurate portrayal of what the fire department's role is.
Jeremy Norton:
I started well, one of the reasons I started writing this book and started writing when I was even before I was a rookie was to explain to family members what we did and then to explain to the citizens who said, I just wanna ride at the hospital. Why is the fire truck outside my house? They're like, why'd you call 911 for a thumb ramp? Right? And this goes back to your question about, like, kind of my straight white male myth is generally the black captains who were not raised by white Republicans, who basically said you're gonna see a lot of sociology.
Jeremy Norton:
You're gonna see a lot of poverty. You're gonna go into poor people's homes just because they don't have fancy shit. That is their only shit, and they don't have insurance. It's that same speech of, like, respect where you're going. You know?
Jeremy Norton:
And that was a simplistic breakdown, but it was an effective one. And then over time, I wrestled with that same you know, we get burned out. We see the hardships. We see the end results of, I would say, our nation's malignant behaviors. Right?
Jeremy Norton:
So we see people who haven't had education or health care or jobs for generations. So they're not making good decisions. And then that made me say, oh, we sit around, we get paid well, people wave at us because they think we're heroes and and too many of us that sell white dudes buy into it. Right? They think that that makes us special.
Jeremy Norton:
And, really, our job is to respond, as Bridget said, to anything that people need. And it's to be of use, to be of service. And I think that gets lost a little bit. How many lives have we saved? All the four of us.
Jeremy Norton:
And how many days have we made better when we can't pull somebody out of poverty? But we can sit there in somebody's squalor, somebody's illness, somebody's brokenness, somebody's despair, and be a human being, to be someone who sees them nonjudgmentally, to hold their hands, to pick them up when they're covered with shit or piss or all that stuff, and look at them and see them. The systemic part of this, no one wants to change the nine one one system. They're not allowed to. Dispatchers are not allowed to use their discretion.
Jeremy Norton:
We get sent for everything. Everyone's afraid of getting sued. So they you know, so the paramedics go into almost every call knowing they're gonna transport, which means the paramedics stop looking at people as individual cases. Like, we don't have handcuffs. We don't have stretchers.
Jeremy Norton:
We have the lowest qualified, but that allows us to be the most effective. Like, as Bridget said, the problem solve. Right? Our ability to get along with people, to be nonjudgment. I don't care if that's a stolen car.
Jeremy Norton:
I don't care who that is, wife, not wife, boyfriend, husband. I don't give a fuck. I wanna get the knife out of your leg. I wanna get your friend breathing again. I'm gonna put the car out and get you out of it because it's on fire and you crashed it.
Jeremy Norton:
I don't care. Oh, we're here for you yesterday. I'm gonna help you out. That's what we get to do. What do you see as a way that we can prevent the ongoing traumatic immersion, the the traumatic stress, the PTSD for lack of a better term?
Jeremy Norton:
Because somebody has to show up.
Bridget Bender:
I have to start with clarifying my view of PTSD or the pathology that gets assigned to what I believe is a very normal healthy adaptation to our very fucked up, unhealthy environment. Our nervous systems are doing exactly what they're designed to do. They're adapting to our environments, and they're adapting to the more dangerous environment because from a survival standpoint that's advantageous to be adapted to the more dangerous space. The problem is and this is the theme of everything that I think about is like context is everything. It's actually adaptive and useful to be unemotional, dissociated, checked out, very logical and heady when you're fighting a fire or giving somebody CPR or dealing with these, like, really chaotic traumatic scenes that we go to.
Bridget Bender:
It's just not super useful to be that way at home, at family dinner, or with your spouse and kids. But the problem is is we don't have that option to just switch it on and off. And so what I think the solution is is to stop pathologizing, first of all, what is a normal adaptive function of our nervous systems to be able to allow us to do that kind of work, but then recognize that it's not useful in every space and to put ourselves in check and ask those around us to put us in check and remind us that I don't need to have hypervigilance when I'm at family dinner or going up for a walk by the Mississippi River, you know. And that's a real story, like, of me freaking out because John and the girls wanted to go down by the riverbank and I'm thinking of everything that's happened on that riverbank and it's like, no danger. This can't happen and I look crazy.
Bridget Bender:
Right? So I think, you know, the solution is in changing how we think about PTSD, think about trauma, but also recognizing and preparing ourselves for the fact that it's somewhat inevitable that it's gonna happen. If you're on that job for any length of time, you're eventually gonna start to adapt to it and be really open about talking about what's happening, break down that stigma in our culture and the the machismo you talked about earlier. Because that's the one thing I can uniquely say for certain because I was, you know, the peer supporter for several years, and I work as a clinician with first responders regularly and it's like that's all a facade. You know, men very much have feelings and are sensitive and emotional people just as much as women.
Bridget Bender:
They talk to me all the time about very similar experiences to one another, but they don't feel safe to talk to one another about it because they think it's just them and that it makes them less than somehow. And I think breaking down sexism in these male dominated fields actually would most benefit men. Women, we can get support from each other. We can talk about what's happening. We can have emotions.
Bridget Bender:
We can get our needs met. But there's still a huge problem with male loneliness and male, isolation. And in these male dominated highly traumatic fields, I think there's a huge problem with trauma and males not being able to safely process through that stuff and put it in context so that they're not taking it home to family dinner, if that makes sense.
Ricardo Anaya:
So, Bridget, I think you, mentioned earlier, like, the skill sets we have in different aspects of our job, and and we have the skill set on a fire scene where there's authority in the chain of command, and you're making big decisions, and they seem urgent, and they they have big consequences, you know, and how fast you can follow them. But then there's a lot of other aspects of our job, like medical calls where there are times during CPR where maybe it's similar, but there's a lot of other times where it's it's a lot slower and there's different skill sets we have to use. And I think that's something in the fire service that we do is we just go to that same skill set of fireman, whatever whatever it is, command presence and authority. Whereas if we can slow down and channel some of those other skill sets, the same skill sets we should be using with our family and with our coworkers when we're back at the station, sometimes it it seems out of place like uncomfortable when we start using, you know, words like kindness or humility or or empathy, if those are the skills we're using a a scene, but it it's a lot of times what's needed, you know, when you're in someone's they're letting us into their home, and it's this shared relationship of interaction.
Ricardo Anaya:
And they called us, but we're also guests in their home. A story that came to mind as we're talking through some of this was in the last couple months, a firefighter that was on the rig with us that day, he's also a community paramedic. So he has this other skill set that's not just firefighter and not just emergency medicine, but community paramedic where he's responding on a much slower time frame where he doesn't have to be in and out in three minutes. He doesn't have to just package and transport to the hospital. He's there to look at the bigger picture.
Ricardo Anaya:
And I've really enjoyed working with him where he's not just worried about, okay, what are the vitals, what are the patient information, how we package for transport. He's looking at, like, what's going on, what are the things that can help this person. And the call that stands out most to summarize this way that he works is we're on a call for someone who was late stage cancer and transitioning from taking care of himself at home to going into a facility to be taken care of. And he had made this decision with this nurse on a hotline, and we were called to facilitate that transport through the ER through, the hospital ER for lack of a better structure. And so we noticed as he's hanging up with the on the phone with this call taker that he he couldn't hang up the phone because his nails had grown very long, probably longer than an inch, and he it was getting in the way of him tapping his phone.
Ricardo Anaya:
And the firefighter just very naturally was like, oh, do you have a nail clipper? Can I help you clip your nails? And he sat there and very patiently clipped all 10 of his fingernails. It took multiple clips to get down to a point where he could use his phone again. And just watching that play out was I had never seen anything like that riding on a fire truck responding to calls the way that we do.
Ricardo Anaya:
The willingness to slow down and take a look at what the whole picture is and the dignity that that this person was afforded and, you know, leaving his apartment for his last time. I think skill sets like that are things that we can really incorporate more into our work and still hold on to the other things that we need at a fire or at a CPR. But being able to channel all those things can help us at work and probably help us transition back to when we're home with family and kids and, interacting in a nonemergency environment.
Bridget Bender:
Even from a systemic standpoint of even if we didn't care at all about people, which we obviously do, from a money and service provision standpoint, those are the kind of things that are so simple and are costing a lot of money. And I volunteered on Medic One for those couple years that we were running it. And for the listeners that this was a program where we would have an EMT go and visit in the home of people who had been recently discharged from the hospital to see if they understood their discharge orders, had the things they needed to, like, follow them, how they were healing up. The idea was to keep people from returning to the hospital within seventy two hours because there was a lot of, like, readmittance of people who were essentially getting sent home too soon. But I found consistently that there were little problems that could be solved, like, kinda like you were just talking about with fingernails not being able to dial the phone.
Bridget Bender:
One of the guys I went to, he he had had surgery on his hand and he had incisions and so he couldn't wash his dishes very effectively and so they were piling up, they were full of molds, there was flies, it was really nasty and, like, he was at a high risk of infection because he couldn't wash his dishes. And so, like, the hospital ended up sending some paper plates and things over for him and that kept him from having to get a nasty infection and go back to the hospital. And to what Jeremy was saying, it's like we should be thinking bigger picture and adapting and evolving to our current needs, in the community and not just continuing to use the same system that we've always used when it doesn't necessarily work anymore or isn't as effective it as it could be To what you just said, Ricardo, it's like that empathy and compassion piece and emotional intelligence are such important aspects of this this kind of work now, and it should be part of the training for all first responders. I think we would have a lot less problems if people were more emotionally intelligent when they're responding to these calls where people are extremely emotionally dysregulated, and it's chaotic.
Shana York:
I was thinking something that's interesting, like, from a PTSD perspective, what's challenging about PTSD is what's challenging about all mental health is it's different for everyone. Right? Like, some people really thrive in this hard charging, fast paced environment. And they get in and they find some people, and it doesn't matter what's going on because to they're doing it together and it's happening all day, every day, all day, every day. And some people do that and they're like, woah.
Shana York:
This this is too much or this isn't working for me. And I think that's what's challenging, and I guess I had nine years in a row. I I sat down and counted it up on a busy engine company, and I was with the same people for the most part. And I can all in all be like, that was a really fun time from my problem solving, putting out fires perspective, but it was probably all in all not healthy for my mental health. So that's when I was a firefighter, but then when I became captain, and I think they still kinda do this for the most part, but not as intentionally as they used to, but they take you from that environment where you're comfortable and they put you somewhere else intentionally.
Shana York:
At that time, I felt so shitty, for lack of a better word. Like, these are my people. This is my family. These are people I text, I send pictures to, I hang out with even though we are the unlikeliest of friends. And then now you just take me out of that environment, and then it's like, okay.
Shana York:
Now go be successful somewhere else. And I don't know a solution here, but I think for some people, the solution is taking breaks. And for some people, the solution is not taking breaks. And for some people, the situation is, like, you should just be on the busiest rig possible for as long as possible because that's where you do well. And for some people, it's every couple years you maybe need to reset and go somewhere else.
Shana York:
So I think that's a challenge probably. And then from Bridget from your current perspective too is like, okay. Well, what does the person who's asking for help need? And actually listening to people instead of just charging forward with our SOPs and our rules and our checklists and just stopping. And maybe someone just needs their nails clipped so they can call their friends, or someone needs paper plates so they can do whatever.
Shana York:
And, I mean, I've been on calls where people have said, like, crews have just, like, hugged someone. Just hug someone. Like, someone's having a really bad, bad day. That's the worst day you can imagine. Maybe they just need a hug.
Shana York:
And I guess that's, like, a benefit that I've had being female. If I do that, everyone's just like, well, fine. Whatever. The girls are hugging someone. It's okay.
Shana York:
And I don't feel like there's any backlash from that. Or if there is, I it wouldn't matter.
Jeremy Norton:
I can sometimes push back against this notion that men aren't expressing their emotions. Right? Like, I know, Bridget, what you're saying is that it that's where we see it. Like, the one hand, I think there's always been a really kind of dysfunctional social world, like the old days when it was like three old dudes at Station 12 who grunted each other. There was a social world, but they also police each other and they were rigorous.
Jeremy Norton:
Right? So it's like a both ends. You know, I grew up in the seventies where coaches kicked us or hit us or yelled at us. So when I got up here and and, you know, seeing some of the old school, like, Vietnam era chiefs who were and captains who were screamers, that stuff didn't bother me. But two of you have kind of said, you know, like, on the fire ground, that kind of authoritarian autocratic thing is okay.
Jeremy Norton:
And, generally, the shouters shouted all the time, which meant, like, that was how they were managing, like, to use some of Bridges framework. Like, that's how they were managing their learned behaviors, managing what had been chaos when they were rookies. And now twenty, thirty years later, that's all they knew. Like, they only had one move. So, like, I don't mind getting yelled at, but I do mind getting yelled at by people who have no other move.
Jeremy Norton:
And that's for me where I started pushing back at the the very beginning saying, I'm gonna ask. Like, I asked Russell a lot, like, why? And everyone's like, you never questioned him. I'm like, well, he's not God. And even and if he is God, he should have the answer.
Jeremy Norton:
So that cultural thing, I've done some of the peer counseling. And I'm really surprised how many of the people who've had, like, what they would say PTSD events. The root of it is, I would say, a disconnect between who they think they're supposed to be and reality. There was this car crash, and this poor kid was dead, and I just can't get out of my mind, or I should have done something. And I'm kinda like, you know, the part I don't say this aloud because it's not good peer counseling.
Jeremy Norton:
That's a statuous overinflation of your ego. Like, the card wrecked before unless you hit them with your fire truck, the card already wrecked. You didn't cause the wreck. Inserting ourselves, and that's why I think the whole fireman stuff is such a Trojan horse because we inflate who we're supposed to be when most of us are just flops playing and panicked and afraid because we don't actually get challenged. We don't actually get good correction.
Jeremy Norton:
But this notion of who we're supposed to be and that leads to this discordance. I have a rookie recently who said after a a bad call, she was watching the men deal with they were talking about it. And I'm not gonna say anything that was that was private, but it was striking to her that they all talked in their own way about maladaptive coping. Like, one guy was high, one guy was drinking, not at work, but they were, you know, on their they were at home, and they're just basically drowning this really truly shitty event in booze or weed or disassociation. Right?
Jeremy Norton:
And then we're saying that it wasn't working well. The breakdown becomes because they can't be stoic. Right? And so when you see a guy kind of blubbering and losing control, that's so destabilizing for our self identities. But she said, why do we ever think that stoicism was a functional thing in the first place?
Jeremy Norton:
Right? You know, which, Bridget, you know, you like, the women will agree with. Like, for fuck's sake, men, quit holding it all inside. But, you know, this notion that that's what we need in this job. Like, you needed combat vets who I've seen it all, who nothing bothers them.
Jeremy Norton:
And so they just sit there completely disassociated watching a dead, whatever, family, a horrible car wreck, amputate, like, all the stuff that we see. And we've privileged this idea that these flinty eyed men are are the benchmark, but really most of them have horrible coping skills. The way they choose to do it is generally maladaptive and harmful for themselves and their families. They treat each other shittingly. None of that is leads to healthy behavior.
Jeremy Norton:
What I would love to be able to get in before I retire is have us do a better job kind of finding a way to say, like, look, you like, you don't have to make everything. You either have PTSD or you don't. It's like, let's find a way to just deal with, you can have feelings and move on. Although, Shane, I do want to say your the people who are on the super busy rigs that cumulative immersion and sleep depth and solid immersion is not good for anybody. Too much time on the engine, too many years in a row like that took a huge effect.
Jeremy Norton:
And Bridget and I were at a thing at the U of M about sleep issues, which shifted into kind of traumatic, effects with the group of firefighters who were talking. And, you know, I just said to, you know, our our friend, like, hey. You lost your shit. You were running on so little sleep for so long. It it became just really unhealthy.
Jeremy Norton:
But you don't see it's like someone who's high or really drunk. Right? This is a great idea. Let's go steal that car because we're drunk and it's fun. I
Bridget Bender:
was just gonna say that it's tricky because I think some of those ways of being are actually useful and protective, not just for us doing the job, but for the communities that we serve. We're responding to emergencies. It's chaotic. People are very afraid. They don't know what's going on, and they're really looking to us to gauge whether or not they should feel safe or, you know, be panicking.
Bridget Bender:
And they need to see stoic, calm faces on us. And the same goes for a crew. Like, I always would tell my firefighters or, like, rookies, new people, look at me if you're feeling nervous, unless my face looks panicked, you don't need to be panicked. Just, you know, stay calm. And so I think that at least in the work itself, it's very useful to be unemotional, to dissociate.
Bridget Bender:
It's easier to perform rescue operations if you're thinking about the person that you're working with as more of a body, at least until you're done doing what you have to do. And I think what is really hard is when humanity creeps in, the people become people, and it's someone's mom or it's someone's child or there's Jeremy had asked about death and and our experiences with it. And for me, it's always been the most difficult when there's relational aspects to whatever it is we're seeing and doing because it makes it real. It's like it it makes the scene and the call a real person and a real life instead of a call we went on. And so it's really challenging because, you know, it doesn't need to be one or the other.
Bridget Bender:
And I think that we need to have balance, but it's like, when do we use the authoritarian strategy, or when do we rely on our ability to dissociate and detach? And and then when do we reconnect, and when do we lean in and show compassion and empathy. And so it's really tricky, and we don't know enough yet about really what's happening to understand how to fix it.
Jeremy Norton:
You know, one of the things that has really changed, and this is where I keep pushing, on some level, there is no overarching god of the fire department. Not that there ever was. But now, like, you are free to do so much, and you have three deputies now who are all very pro EMS. Right? They understand great when they're on the rig.
Jeremy Norton:
One of them, I I didn't agree with his personal behaviors, but he treated people well. Like, the things I've done for people in the community, it's all the little stuff. Do the right thing for people. We're getting paid. We're more healthy and more functional than they are.
Jeremy Norton:
And I think that, like, some of the stuff I've done, like, I've and maybe it's because I'm a little bit older than y'all by, like, six minutes. And my folks are getting old. I have so much more empathy now when we go to the various nursing homes or convalescent homes. Like, I see them as people. I go into people's homes, and I understand now that generational like, looking at our cultural denial about death.
Jeremy Norton:
Like, so we'll go in and see someone who's clearly dying, and the family, no one has told them. No doctor has been direct with them. And the paramedics have no option but to transport them because they're not allowed to not. It's almost as bad as us doing CPR on someone, you know, who with cancer. Like, it's just it's a violation of somebody, but that's that's a systemic issue.
Jeremy Norton:
You know? And, again, at this point, blood, piss, shit, none of it bothers me. Like, I've got a pretty good stomach, and so I don't mind. And I take a grim pleasure in just the vagaries of humanity. Like, I love this shit.
Jeremy Norton:
I demote it because important to
Bridget Bender:
also recognize that there's an inherent value and importance to feeling special, doing this kind of work and feeling like you're part of something really special. Doing this kind of work and feeling like you're part of something really special and that it's elite. Because, otherwise, I mean, if you didn't have the camaraderie, you didn't have the sort of, quote, brotherhood and the specialness and the pride and all of the things that go along with it. Why on earth would people wanna run into burning buildings and do these very dangerous things that are really taxing and exhausting and we're not doing it for the pay. We're not doing it for a lot of things.
Bridget Bender:
And I I think that one of the draws of these types of emergency work fields is the specialness of it and the pride that comes along with it. And I think that that's important and it's earned. Anyone who is part of the fire service or law enforcement or different public safety fields, We're risking our lives and we're sacrificing a lot. At the same time that it's a civil service job and there's not a whole lot of like qualifications necessary and we can all get over ourselves a little bit. At the same time, I think we have a lot to be very proud of and that, you know, the people who are doing these jobs deserve at least a little respect.
Bridget Bender:
I think we need that to get people to be willing to do this, the crazy shit that we do. So we almost need, like, young impressionable people who are very attracted by the pride and the specialness and the, you know, being part of something really important. And we also need mature, smart, wise problem solvers who can think critically. It's about balance, I think, and it's it's about recognizing the value in both. But context is everything.
Bridget Bender:
Right?
Shana York:
I think, yes, and, like, we are owed some amount of respect, but I also think most of us wouldn't do the job for free. I wouldn't. And I think that for the most part, and I I've had the chance to experience, like, we were talking a little bit about mortality. Like, my dad died in December, and I had to make a phone call on his behalf. And to see people that I was like, oh, who's coming?
Shana York:
Oh, let's see. Let's hope. And the utmost professionalism, the respect that they showed to him and my family in a situation that was kind of a train wreck, it was amazing. So I think that part of it, yes. And then I think we need young people to be able to do the stuff, and we need to find that balance, right, of, like, yeah.
Shana York:
I'll do whatever. And is this safe? I don't know what the solution is, but I know recruiting firefighters nationwide is just, I mean, there's other attractive things you could do.
Ricardo Anaya:
Yeah. I I think the fire service is something that I was drawn to do. Like, I those riskier activities maybe are the things that drew me towards it. I think I would have done it for free at the beginning. I don't think I would have stayed for free.
Ricardo Anaya:
You know? I feel like we get all the respect and thanks that we deserve. Sometimes, like, our brotherhood or or the tradition that comes behind firefighting is something that we we can hide behind and and stop sort of driving to be excellent at our craft and cultivate new skill sets that are needed in an array of situations. The younger people that we are recruiting and hiring is a way to sort of invigorate us out of the ruts that we will inevitably fall into. The close knit ness that we have, that brotherhood really keeps us insular and doesn't really feed into innovation.
Ricardo Anaya:
And so when we bring new people in, some of our recruiting has changed a little bit. It seems like we're getting people with fresher ideas and a perspective more keyed into some of the things like kindness on a medical call. Everyone's skill set can be beneficial, but the combat medic who comes into the fire service and is very experienced looking at a CPR situation and and a really bad CPR situation or other type medical and can see it as work to do as a body. They they know how to do that. We need that dynamic, and we also need people who come in and struggle to see it as just a body and can cultivate empathy and kindness and compassion as a culture.
Ricardo Anaya:
And I think blending all those things into how we do our work and try to recruit and try to move forward is important.
Jeremy Norton:
Yeah. I think there's a sweet spot kind of and it's not a set spot. You can't be just earnest. Like, this job is not a job for earnest people because there's just too much that's unsolvable. There's too much that's messy.
Jeremy Norton:
It'll just destroy it. I profoundly believe that our cultural insularity protects us from an ability to honestly evaluate ourselves. And I also wanna say that when I started, there were some old school dudes, like some of the old bastards at eight who were so good on medicals. Right? Like, that they were awesome, that they saw that as part of the job, and they were also atrocious human beings to the junior people at the station.
Jeremy Norton:
Right? It was both end, and that's the part that I think a lot of people don't understand that through this job, I don't see people as good and bad. I think some of our best people are I mean, we're all flawed, and so shitty people can do really great things. And there are some of us who are horrible. And on calls, they're wonderful.
Jeremy Norton:
And what they do seems genuine, and that's really all that matters even if what they say back on the rig is completely atrocious. Having been a chief and having tried to push up and then also go back down, we wrap ourselves, I think, so much in this received wisdom and how it is and who we are. And, like, you know, we fought this fire a hundred times. I'm like, dude, how are you guys fighting a hundred fires when I haven't and I've been here every day and I haven't seen it. Like like, the the how much the cliches protect us from what I think of is a freeing introspection.
Jeremy Norton:
But then I also see that refusal to do that is what we that becomes the becomes the Trojan horse for self doubt, for overreacting, for making bad, unjustifiable tactical or non tactical decisions on fire ground because they don't know what else to do. One of the things that I really have embraced, especially at 17 South Side since the riots and and watching a lot of our coworkers struggle with engaging the community, it's like do right, be kind, and find a way to be of use. And so I kind of try to instill that with the rookies. Right? Like, let's do right, let's be kind to people, and let's find a way to be of use.
Jeremy Norton:
So I'd like to end up with saying, what do or did you enjoy most about the job?
Bridget Bender:
It was fun. It might sound weird to think of that kind of work as fun, but there's nothing like it. I enjoyed that I got to go to work, and every day was different. I had no idea what was gonna happen. I was challenged and had to use my mind and problem solve.
Bridget Bender:
I never got bored. And I have a ton of life experiences that most people will never have. Working as a firefighter and an EMT, you see all types of life and ways of living, homes, jobs. Like, you get a little glimpse into a million people's lives, and you get to be there and do something that's really meaningful and impactful and important.
Ricardo Anaya:
I have, like, a running list of top things that I enjoy about the job, and a lot of them are these experiences where you don't get to experience it in any other aspect of your life. Stuff like shoveling the apron of the fire station with seven people or getting called at three in the morning to pick up an elderly woman who is living on her own, but maybe requiring just a little bit extra boost to make that happen. I think that's, a beautiful thing that we get to be a part of. And and so I think it it kind of all centers around, like, this opportunity to work with people in ways that matter, that make someone's day a little better, and and you get to strive hard and sweat and work and do something a little bit fun. Unique opportunities to to work hard and make someone's life better.
Shana York:
I would third that. I mean, that's what I always try to think when I go to work. Like, I'm gonna try and make someone's bad day a little bit better. I also enjoy meeting people on on both sides, people that are also firefighters, people that we get called to, talking to people in a way that I might not normally ever talk to x y z person. But we can have a good conversation or we can watch an alien history show and be like, oh, that's right.
Shana York:
It was the aliens for the rest of the shift. I also really enjoyed coming from, like, a youth education background. I really enjoy the short term nature of it where you can be like, I went to that house. Someone had a broken arm, and we sent them to the hospital. And in my mind, I can just pretend everything's okay with that situation.
Shana York:
I we and this is way at the beginning, but we talked about adjusting to the job. And I remember the first year I was on the job, one of the things I did is I went to a call where I recognized a kid that I used to work with, and he was smoking crack with his mom. And I remember thinking, well, this is why more after school programs didn't work for him. If this is what he was doing at home or if this is the environment he was coming home to, and and we went on another call where I recognized one of the people I used to work with. And just in any situation that you're working with someone whether, well, well, I'll just take my situation where it's in a school and you see them every day and you work with them every day, but you don't see their whole life.
Shana York:
In emergency services, sometimes you get to see that part of people's lives that they don't want you to see. Like, our house is nice, our lawn is good. When you walk in, you're like, wow. This place has a lot of garbage, and they haven't taken their trash out. Or that might sound weird, but it's interesting to see that other side that you normally wouldn't be let into.
Jeremy Norton:
Try to explain to people that we never ever ever know what we're gonna experience when we go to work. And, yes, we'll see the range of all their so and so who's CHF is acting hopper, those so and so the diabetic, but you don't know. And that also means you don't know when the horrific call is gonna get there. I've had arguments with people where I say, like, I am profoundly aware of how beautiful and bleak this life is. I am humbled by all that we have when I go to work and see how many people have nothing.
Jeremy Norton:
And I also know how much suffering there is and how much sorrow, and and I'm very aware of the, like, the brevity of life. And yet, I do think most of us embrace the shit out of our lives. Right? Like, partially because I think we see so much that most firefighters are pretty happy. I absolutely have nothing but a warehouse of shitty stories, but they aren't haunting me.
Jeremy Norton:
They're just facts on some level. And the human behavior part of it fascinates me. I mean, obviously, I wrote a book about it. Like, that part, the existential part of it fascinates me. You know?
Jeremy Norton:
And then it's like, let's go to work, see what the world has in store for us, and hope we all make it home in the morning. And that laughing together, and that's the part that, you know, we didn't get into really here. But being on the rig together, rolling through the night early morning, and you're the only ones awake, and you're just sharing some bizarre thing that you just saw or some horrible thing, there's nothing but gallows humor, and that's how we stay sane. And then the maintaining our compassion so we don't become closed off to people. Like, that, I think, is the challenge.
Jeremy Norton:
Hey. I wanna, answer one question I meant to ask. I was listening to a bunch of actors on podcast, and female actors all talk about they get these questions. Hey. Who's watching your kids?
Jeremy Norton:
Meanwhile, the other the male actors are just like, oh, I'm just an actor. My kids are at home. With us, with our schedule, everyone's always like, oh, you must have a wife at home. But for two of you, since we've all got kids, on one hand, have you experienced a lot of that kind of default stupid chauvinism? But then for all three of you, how has our work reality shaped how you engage your kids?
Jeremy Norton:
How you talk to your kids? How you treat your kids, I think.
Bridget Bender:
This is like a whole podcast question. But in short, you know, knowing what I know now, I profoundly regret some of the ways that I was as a parent when my kids were little because of the job. It made me very hyper vigilant, very afraid, controlling because I was so afraid that my children were gonna be harmed in all of the many ways that I saw children harmed. But also, I think it provided a sense of profound gratitude for my children and, you know, coming home from work, it was like every time it was just this big relief that I was reunited with them and I would just hug them and just squeeze them because it was like, I was so grateful that I had them. The job really impacts parenting quite a bit.
Bridget Bender:
As a mother, I feel like if I had known then what I know now, I don't know if I would have wanted to be away from my kids for forty eight hours at a time when they were little. They were with my mom, so it was a nice, happy, you know, second place that they could be with someone who loves them as much as I do, but there is something to be said for being around and being consistently there for them that I think that they probably are gonna struggle with because I wasn't there for two days at a time when they were little.
Ricardo Anaya:
When I was in rookie school, I had two young kids and a third was born during the academy. So they were two, one, and zero, some somewhere around there. I I think being a parent and having our job and the duties and the schedule asks a lot of the other people who are caring for your kids. That's one aspect of it. One thing I think about a lot is the experiences I've been able to have with my kids because of my schedule.
Ricardo Anaya:
Field trips or Tuesday afternoons at the zoo when they're really little before they're in school, all these little experiences, because you're rolling around, you know, in the wee hours of the morning with your crew working, you know, on a twenty four or forty eight hour shift, you're stockpiling up those work hours, and then you get these stretches of time with your kids where I wouldn't have been otherwise as a parent. I would have been at work. And so I'm thankful for those opportunities. I try to be cautious of the ways that I'm developing skill sets at work and getting more comfortable use, you know, muscle memory with the skills I use at work that don't translate to good parenting, whether it's responding at an emergency scene or interacting with other firefighters or the cultural stew that I'm seeped in for forty eight hours at a time, coming home and trying to transition those skills to something that's a little more positive as a parent.
Shana York:
I hope all of this is true. I'm coming off of four years. So the last time I was on the rig, I only had one kid, and now I have three. It's all a blur. But, I I'm hoping what Ricardo says is true, that I do have time to go on the field trips and to do the things because I've been working eight to four thirty for the last four years, and I felt like as a parent, many times I was completely empty because I was always going back to work.
Shana York:
And I always had things going on at work, and I was always thinking about work, and I was always fielding calls from work. So I'm hoping going back to the rig, I know I could lean towards maybe the not so great tendencies that I might develop that might serve me while at work that don't at home, recognizing that I'm gonna need a little time when I come off a shift to to kinda make that transition, but I'm hoping that the good will outweigh the bad as far as things that I can be involved in. And, yes, I'll miss things, but there's things that I'll be able to participate in that I wouldn't have been able to do, like, for the last four years. It's like, oh, we're having a picnic on Tuesday. I I can't go.
Shana York:
I'm I got a meeting. But if I'm at home, sure. Why not?
Jeremy Norton:
I have to say, I did the math early on, and I was in rookie school and my plan plan was brand new. She was, like, six months old. And I got worried. I was like, god. I've gone all these and I was like, okay.
Jeremy Norton:
They're sleeping. So I just need a functional adult at home while they sleep. And I spent more time with the girls in probably a month, but, say, a year just to be nice, then my dad spent with us my entire childhood. As long as you can you know, you have somebody who can help you, whether it's a partner or a roommate or a parent, or a sister or brother that can help with the kids in the overnight. You know, I did all their their doctors, their dentists, the school stuff.
Jeremy Norton:
Like, I I really do believe that that helps. You know, the worry of that sense of, like, they're not feeling abandoned. Right? And it's but it's also what you do when you're home. I think that's where sleep depth gets you the busy stations, the cumulative sleep, I feel like that the sleep depth really messes with us.
Jeremy Norton:
And I feel it now where we get a, you know, an occasional really bad night and I'm a zombie. But, you know, my kids are out of the house, so it doesn't matter. The dog's object. But context, as Bridget said, really and, you know, and knowing that I'm tired, I would come home and, like, see the mess in the kitchen that I'd left clean deliberately before I left, I would take personally. It's like, why, you know, why am I expecting somebody who doesn't like cleaning the kitchen to clean the kitchen?
Jeremy Norton:
And it's got you know, but I was tired and I'm and from our our work world, you do what you're supposed to do immediately. Right? Like, that's what the the thing is. And so that doesn't, like, we're not cops, but we do have a little bit of that quasi military. And so you come home, and it's not your Durgan or rank firefighter.
Jeremy Norton:
No. It's your partner or it's your mom or it's, you know and or it's your teenager who says, you know, screw you. You know, but but but that flexibility. But, again, like, if we buy our own hike, we set ourselves up to fail. Yeah.
Jeremy Norton:
I mean, I I think I'm I'm just so grateful that this job allowed me the time to be with the kids as they're growing up, like, more than anything else. Like I say, for the listeners, get working smoke detectors and c o detectors, get a DNR, DNI, have an advanced directive, have thoughts with your aging parents or partners. Death is undefeated. The more you can do to be prepared for it, the less all four of us will have to come into your house and see all your plans that never really came to fruition. But that's about it.
Jeremy Norton:
Thank you all so much. And and, yeah, Bridget, it's great to see you, Shana and McArdle. Thank you all so much. I really appreciate your time.
Shana York:
Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Jeremy.
Bridget Bender:
Thank you.
Shana York:
This has been a University of Minnesota Press production. The book Trauma Sponges: Dispatches from the Scarred Heart of Emergency Response is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.