The Emotional Toll Of Fires: Counseling And Home Insurance Coverage

The Emotional Toll Of Fires: Counseling And Home Insurance Coverage – Three years after a devastating fire, a California community is dealing with another crisis: PTSD. Is what is happening a warning for all of us?

Smoke from the Camp Fire covers Butte Creek in Paradise, Calif., in 2018. (Ray Chavez/Digital First Media/The Mercury News/Getty Images)

The Emotional Toll Of Fires: Counseling And Home Insurance Coverage

Jess Mercer received a call from her stepmother, Annette, that morning, shortly after 8 am. Jess was in her apartment in Chico, Calif., a bustling university town nestled in a valley below the foothills of Paradise, about 20 minutes away. He was confused. Early morning, on the day of the week: Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018. He wasn’t expecting a visit from Annette, or his father, Tommie.

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Things are different: The sky is dark. The ash fell like black snow, except it was warm, and carried the smell of smoke. His family found out that Jess was trying to escape from a big fire.

He heard his father’s voice on the line. Everything he spoke was in short sentences: “Remember all that I have told you. I do not know. I will try.”

The call left Jess nervous, and she thought “I don’t know” maybe that meant they didn’t know if they were going to get out in time. He got into his car, pointed to Paradise, and almost got nowhere when he realized that the roads were already closed. Instead, Jess stood at the mouth of the beautiful Skyway, near the Walmart parking lot, and watched as the cars streamed by from Paradise. He called his family 60, 70, 80 times, but the cell towers burned like needles and the service was unreliable.

For an hour, he studied the worried faces in every passing car, seeing if he recognized them. A woman with six children in her car, fine. The carriages piled up with many people banging their heads on the roof, breathing deeply. No sign of Tommie and Annette’s green truck, damn it.

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Jess, now 36, moved to Paradise from Wyoming when she was 16. For the first year, he stayed at the Lantern Inn, with Tommie and Annette. Their small hotel room had thin walls and one bed; Jess was sleeping on the floor. Money was scarce. In the evenings, the staff at the Cozy Diner across the street would give Jess leftovers from the salad bar, usually rolls and vegetables.

Later, his family moved to a three-bedroom, orange-beige house off Dolores Drive in Paradise. Jess remembers how proud her father was of moving in. This is the first house he has been able to buy since moving to California, about 20 years ago.

When Jess turned 18, she moved to Chico to be closer to her job as a cashier at a big box store. Even then, he spent all his time on the mountain, an area known to the people of the Ridge village. Over the next ten years, he bounced back and forth between Chico and Paradise, until 2018 when he moved into a blue house in Paradise with his partner, Ashley, and planned to stay for good. But in May of that year, they discovered that the house had structural problems, and they found it again in an apartment in Chico.

That’s when Tommie and Annette came to the door, four hours after they called Jess. Tommie, in his 70s, was wearing burnt sweatpants, worn-out shoes and no teeth. He was carrying a cat box but forgot to put the cat in it.

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By the time the Camp Fire burned, the town of Paradise would be leveled, along with a large portion of the surrounding communities: Magalia, Concow, Pulga and Butte Creek Canyon. More than 150,000 acres will be burned, 18,000 houses will be destroyed. At least 85 people will be killed. It was a fire, and it was the worst and worst fire in the history of California.

The Lantern Inn is off the Skyway and the beige-colored house in Dolores and the seven other places Jess called home. What was left, brutally, was enough to remind him that there used to be a town: ads at the Cozy Diner for $4.99 cheeseburgers, movies at the theater for “A Star Is Born.” Three years later, the symptoms persisted, much to Jess’ dismay. “The opportunity is one thing,” he said. “Freezing in time inspires.”

In May 2016, Jess was officially diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, caused by living in a house with a schizophrenic brother. But after the fire, his pain worsened. Currently, he sees a doctor a few times a month and is on many medications. Six months after the fire, his partner called him “the chance.” The first time panic broke out was one year after the fire. It was the second of last December. Both times he had to be hospitalized.

He always felt like he was in a fight or a plane, he said. If he reaches out to pick something up, his knees never bend. That way if he has to leave, he will be ready to run. The pit can determine whether you live or die. He knows this. Recently, a fire alarm went off during a work meeting and he ran out of the room.

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Sometimes he feels angry, as if there is an “animal” inside him that can come out at any time. Other times, very tired, he can talk about painful memories like ordering a sandwich.

He could feel the pain in his body. The constant memory of the fire caused him to jump up and hurt to the point where he had to soak in a tub; even confiscated. When a seizure occurs, it’s like her body is trying to heal PTSD, she said.

To say that everyone in the area affected by the Camp Fire suffers from PTSD would be incorrect. But the more and more people I talked to for this story, almost all of them reported experiencing PTSD or PTSD-like symptoms. There were other factors, of course: increased alcohol and drug use, anxiety, depression, anger, survivor’s guilt, grief. A few selected people were very good, telling me how the fire gave them a chance to rebuild their lives in a better way. But mostly, I heard about PTSD.

From Hippie, the 60-year-old war veteran still has burn marks from the day he rode his motorcycle into the fire. From Iris, a shop owner whose boyfriend died in a fire. From Dawn, a mother of two who still has panic attacks. From Sean, who was so exhausted from the fire that caused his PTSD that he drove to a lake and contemplated taking his own life. From Corinne, an artist who suffered a heart attack in her early 50s due to depression.

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A scientific study: A study conducted by scientists at the University of California San Diego that was published in February in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that the number of people who survived the Camp Fire are suffering from many mental health problems, many. specifically PTSD. “The amount of PTSD we saw in each individual was remarkable and very significant,” said Jyoti Mishra, senior author of the study and a professor in the department of psychiatry at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. “It’s similar to what we expect to see in war, but now we’re seeing it in communities where people are affected by fires. It really shows how climate change is and mental health issues.”

What comes next, experts say, is a different crisis. The mental health system is not built to cope with a world where the entire population is suffering or living in a state of anxiety, and its antiquated nature means that many people are not getting the help they need. “Physicians, counselors, mental health in general, are very late in the game,” said Susanne Moser, a climate change expert. “It’s 20 years behind – at least.”

Lise Van Susteren, a psychiatrist and psychologist in D.C., said she “can’t think of anything more important than mental health and climate.” He added, “In most cases, the physical damage from the weather can be corrected. You can rebuild, you can repair, you can replant. But what? significant impact on our mental health requires additional research to understand how society functions.Mental health problems are not they are invisible scars. They flow through our personal, political, economic and social lives, day by day.”

It cannot be ignored that climate change is a political issue. Not everyone presents as a serious threat. Maybe that’s why it’s harder to admit, or easier to ignore, that the slow climate change will come to mental health: before our lungs are strengthened, it might trigger many of us.

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“The damage to the body from the weather can be corrected.

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