One wildland fire official stated that she spent hours on the phone attempting to prevent a colleague from shooting himself. After a drinking binge, a smoke jumper discovered a coworker who was barely conscious. In four years, a retired firefighter had three friends commit suicide.
Examples like these, according to current and former wildland firefighters, are becoming more common. They claim they have struggled to obtain help, citing difficulties in obtaining counselors and limitations on the amount of assistance they can receive.
According to a current smokejumper, some smoke jumpers, who are among the most elite wildland firefighters, wear stickers on their helmets with the names of colleagues who died by suicide.
Top federal fire officials acknowledge mental health support gaps and say they are expanding services. The United States Interior Department expanded a counseling program for federal firefighters this week, one of several new initiatives to improve psychological assistance.
"There's a crystal clear awareness that this is urgent," said Jeff Rupert, director of the Office of Wildland Fire, which oversees wildfire budgets and policies for the agencies of the Interior Department. "We also recognize that there is much more we can do."
The Interior Department and the United States Forest Service are in charge of federal wildfire management, and there are currently several hundred unfilled firefighter positions. Some firefighters reported leaving their jobs early due to increased burnout and stress.
Patricia O'Brien, a clinical psychologist and former elite firefighter, surveyed 2,625 current and former wildland firefighters in 2018. Twenty percent of those polled said they had suicidal thoughts in the previous year, and 57% admitted to binge drinking in the previous month.
Dr. O'Brien, who directs the Bureau of Land Management's mental health response program, says federal agencies are finally recognizing the need to address the issue.
"Unfortunately, that recognition comes from terrible losses and negative outcomes," Dr. O'Brien said, speaking to The Wall Street Journal in her personal capacity rather than as an agency employee.
The situation has gotten worse for the approximately 16,000 firefighters employed by the Interior Department and Forest Service. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, an average of 7.4 million acres have burned each year over the last decade, up from 3.4 million in the 1990s.
Crews are being deployed for longer periods of time as they fight more destructive fires that behave less predictably. According to wildland firefighters, the transition back home has become more difficult. Some claimed it destroyed relationships. Others turned to drugs or alcohol.
Nelda St. Clair, a veteran wildland firefighter stationed at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, said she compiled unofficial estimates of 17 to 22 federal firefighters suicides per year between 2015 and 2018. Ms. St. Clair, who has worked with the Interior Department to develop mental health support programs, said that despite progress, federal agencies still have a limited understanding of what firefighters face.
Under the federal government's employee assistance program, permanent wildland firefighters receive six counseling sessions per year for each type of issue. Once the sessions are over, they must pay for their own assistance.
Until this week, the Interior Department's 1,400 temporary or seasonal firefighters did not have access to these services. This fiscal year, the Forest Service also began providing the same counseling access to its 3,623 seasonal firefighters as it does to its permanent counterparts.
According to wildland firefighters, the federal assistance program has not been effective. Some people said they had to wait weeks to speak with a counselor. They claimed that available therapists had little experience treating first responders and that there was no guarantee that they would be assigned to the same therapist again. Others simply stopped trying to contact anyone.
After a smokejumper friend was killed in a fire in 2013, Mike West sought counseling through the program and was referred to a marriage counselor "who really didn't know anything about trauma," he said. The monotony of home life between fire seasons heightened the anxiety of the Forest Service firefighter. "Small tasks like the washing machine breaking down can seem overwhelming," he explained. "I felt like my job was eating away at my brain."
When Mr. West began experiencing nightmares and depression in 2018, he said he was referred back to the same counselor. He said he ended up finding and paying for a trauma counselor in Reno, Nevada, 90 miles away from his home in Susanville, California. Mr. West, 39, left the company after nearly two decades to become a teacher.
Last year, veteran wildland firefighter Brian Wandell dialed the federal hotline for mental health emergencies. Mr. Wandell had broken his back and a contract pilot he worked with had committed suicide. Another firefighter he knew had been seriously injured by a falling tree.
"I was almost in tears." "I just needed to talk to someone," he explained. "However, I couldn't find anyone to assist me." Mr. Wandell said he eventually got a psychiatrist's phone number, but that didn't help much. "None of these people understand what a wildfire is," he said.
State agencies are experiencing similar problems. Tim Edwards, president of the firefighters union for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, said that over the last 212 years, the number of calls to the agency's mental health support program increased from 5,000 to 27,000.
A national shortage of mental health practitioners exacerbates the problem. A spokeswoman for the Forest Service said that firefighters are referred to mental health professionals who understand "the unique aspects of trauma impacts for emergency responders," and that new positions are being created to help meet the demand for assistance.
The Interior Department has stated that it is considering sending therapists with wildland firefighters to better understand their needs. The department spent nearly $2 million this summer to develop a new mental health program for firefighters that focuses on early intervention and trauma support services.
Any service improvements are too late for Joel Mendiola. Mr. Mendiola joined the National Park Service as a seasonal wildland firefighter in 2017 after serving in the Marine Corps. According to the Interior Department, he was hired full-time in November 2020. Mr. Mendiola told his brother, Ben, that it was difficult to access mental health services during fire season, and that the psychological fatigue of long deployments wore on him.
"One of his major complaints was a lack of resources for decompression. "The few times he told me that he did express something to one of his supervisors, they were like, 'Hey, we'll give you a phone number,' and that was about it," Ben Mendiola said.
According to his brother, Mr. Mendiola became more depressed last year. A knee injury aggravated matters. According to his brother, he left the Park Service in the middle of fire season and was applying to the Tucson, Ariz., city fire department. According to his brother, he was seeking therapy through the local Veterans Affairs department and attempting to manage his knee pain.
Mr. Mendiola, 30, was discovered dead in his RV on December 10, 2021. The medical examiner in Pima County ruled his death an accidental overdose of fentanyl and hydrocodone. His brother described him as having slipped through the cracks.
"I think a lot of the outcomes would have been different if he'd gotten more help," Ben Mendiola said.