Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
By JOHN POPE
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
In a new study of the post-Katrina health of New Orleans’ firefighters and police officers, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that about one in five showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder and that slightly more than one in four had symptoms of depression.
“What surprises me is that there’s not more,” said Lt. David Benelli, president of the Police Association of New Orleans.
“It seemed like the guys were doing really well during the ordeal, but you don’t know what’s going on inside,” said Capt. Terry Hardy, a spokesman for the New Orleans Fire Department.
Trying to restore and maintain order in the days after the storm plowed through New Orleans was psychologically wrenching, Benelli said, because police officers had to contend not only with the chaos in the streets but also with the tumult that was assailing them, their families and their homes.
“That’s a formula for stress,” Benelli said. “It’s hard enough dealing with other people’s misery, but when you’re coping with your own misery, too, it’s tough.”
The people performing the interviews for the study found plenty of misery. According to their report, about 95 percent of the police officers and firefighters said their homes were damaged, and more than half the people in each group said their homes were uninhabitable. Nearly 70 percent of the police officers and almost 60 percent of the firefighters said they weren’t living with their families.
Although researchers found psychological problems in New York City police officers and firefighters after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Benelli said he thinks the situation their New Orleans counterparts faced was much worse.
“At the end of the day, after working 18 or 20 hours, those officers had homes to go to. They had a nice family life,” he said. “Our officers were dealing with the same type of human misery, but at the end of the day, these officers had no homes to go to.”
The study appears in today’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the CDC’s peer-reviewed journal. Based on questionnaire responses from 912 police officers and 525 firefighters, the article also records conditions such as respiratory problems, cuts, sprains and rashes, the most frequent complaint, which afflicted about half of the people in each group.
Symptoms of post-tramatic stress disorder include nightmares, emotional numbness, anxiety and hypervigilance.
The findings underscore the importance of including plans for police officers’ and firefighters’ physical and psychological health in disaster planning, the authors said, and it recommended follow-up “to better understand, monitor and treat their health conditions.”
When much of New Orleans was submerged, slightly more than three-fourths of the firefighters and police officers said their skin came in contact with floodwater. Although there has been continuing concern about the potential for widespread contagion because the water contained human and animal waste, household chemicals and petroleum products, the authors said the relation was “not clear” between exposure to the water and symptoms of illness.
About 30 percent of police officers and firefighters complained of upper-respiratory problems. There were fewer instances of nose and throat irritation, wheezing and diarrhea.
But there definitely were severe health problems. Benelli said one officer lost part of his foot to an infection and another died of complications from surgery for an infection.
And two officers, Patrolman Lawrence Celestine and Sgt. Paul Accardo, took their own lives. There were no suicides in the Fire Department, District Chief Norman C. Woodridge said.
“In situations like this, police officers are walking around with their emotions pent up inside, like a time bomb,” Benelli said, adding that some may not manifest for months.
“It’s just like going to war,” he said. “Just as some veterans come back from the war in a body bag, some come back in a psychological body bag because there are things going on inside that even those soldiers don’t know.”
The Police and Fire departments have teams of mental-health professionals to help people handle these problems, but Benelli and Woodridge said police officers and firefighters have to take the first step if they’re going to get better.
“You won’t really know unless they come forward to you,” Woodridge said. “If they don’t want to come, they’re not going to come.”