After cool and dry weather in May and June, the first two weeks of July have been hot and wet in Northwest Vermont. Frequent thunderstorms send groundstrokes of lightning across Burlington and the keen of sirens can be heard through the open windows.
The sirens always make my stomach tense. I’m immediately distracted, irritated, unable to concentrate. Eventually, the sirens fade or stop and I can relax again, until the next time.
I trace my dislike of sirens back 20 years, to the days when I was a police reporter in Western New York. I was required to respond to police, fire and ambulance calls. There was a scanner near my desk in the office and one by the side of the bed in my apartment. After six months on the beat, I would sleep through the routine calls – traffic stops and the like. The mention of a deliberately obscure code – “Code M” meant a shooting – would rouse me from deep slumber and have me reaching for my pants. About that time, I’d hear the sirens start up. I’d be in my car, right behind them, sometimes in front of them, racing to the scene of the tragedy. The scant information the scanner had provided told me whether I could expect to see a dead teenager lying beside a mangled vehicle, a family dispossessed of their home by fire or a corpse with holes from a shotgun.
The same was true in the office. I could be writing on deadline or talking on the phone, oblivious to the chatter on the scanner, until something important was mentioned. Then my head – and the head of every other reporter – snapped around and the newsroom fell silent. Seven seconds later, all was sirens and motion and adrenaline and I was off to witness the new horror.
We reporters noted the brain’s marvelous ability to act as both filter and alarm, even when we were distracted, even when we were asleep. The cops, firefighters and EMTs noted it too. The uninitiated often can’t even make out the words coming from an emergency services scanner; we were attuned to subtle nuances and inflections. Although there was some rivalry and suspicion between cops and reporters, there was also some common ground. This was part of it.
Another piece of common ground was at the scene of the crime, fire or accident. If it was a false alarm, there was relief – even grumbling, if we’d had to get out of bed in the middle of the night. If the call was a real emergency, there was no relief; instead everyone performed their tasks with the briskness that comes from a thumping heart and a surge of blood in one’s ears. We were particularly brisk if there were corpses or blood or things I don’t care to write about, even 20 years after the fact.
We often did our work with an audience; neighbors and passersby came and gathered behind strands of yellow tape. I remember their faces – long and slack with shock as they watched smoke pour from beneath a neighbor’s eaves or a body being loaded onto a gurney. The bystanders were further shocked to see the first responders and press laughing as we snapped our pictures or measured the skid marks on the roadway.
No one ever confronted me, but it was easy to read their minds: “What kind of ghouls can walk around giggling at a time like this?” The answer: not ghouls at all, but professionals with a job to do. We laughed at the time because we could not cry or sink into catatonic shock. We did what we had to and got out of there. The same brain that sorted calls from the scanner provided us laughter instead of tears to release some of the emotions overwhelming us. We knew the people watching wouldn’t understand and so we’d try not to laugh, which just made us laugh more.
It would have been beneficial if we’d had some way to routinely process the anguish we experienced on the job, but few, if any people in those kind of jobs get that opportunity, or take it if it’s offered. There’s a bluff bravado endemic to those professions. That’s probably why there are high rates of depression, divorce, substance abuse and suicide among first responders and journalists who cover disasters and wars.
I was lucky. I was a police reporter for a few years and moved on. The heightened anxiety that comes with the blast of the siren is not long-lasting or immobilizing, but a siren blew this morning and I felt it. It was my brain again. Two decades after giving me tools to identify and work through all those crises, my brain will not let go of the shock and grief.
It made me think of the thousands of service men and women coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, who’ve had to endure combat-zone anxiety 24/7 for month after month and tour after tour. It was a visceral lesson in how deeply debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder will be for them. It was sobering to realize how many veterans will need treatment for PTSD and how few will receive it.
It made me realize that no matter how soon Congress pulls our troops out of Iraq, it won’t be soon enough and that this war will continue to be fought in the minds and dreams and bellies of Americans for decades to come.
We Laughed At The Time
After cool and dry weather in May and June, the first two weeks of July have been hot and wet in Northwest Vermont. Frequent thunderstorms send groundstrokes of lightning across Burlington and the keen of sirens can be heard through the open windows.
The sirens always make my stomach tense. I’m immediately distracted, irritated, unable to concentrate. Eventually, the sirens fade or stop and I can relax again, until the next time.
I trace my dislike of sirens back 20 years, to the days when I was a police reporter in Western New York. I was required to respond to police, fire and ambulance calls. There was a scanner near my desk in the office and one by the side of the bed in my apartment. After six months on the beat, I would sleep through the routine calls – traffic stops and the like. The mention of a deliberately obscure code – “Code M” meant a shooting – would rouse me from deep slumber and have me reaching for my pants. About that time, I’d hear the sirens start up. I’d be in my car, right behind them, sometimes in front of them, racing to the scene of the tragedy. The scant information the scanner had provided told me whether I could expect to see a dead teenager lying beside a mangled vehicle, a family dispossessed of their home by fire or a corpse with holes from a shotgun.
The same was true in the office. I could be writing on deadline or talking on the phone, oblivious to the chatter on the scanner, until something important was mentioned. Then my head – and the head of every other reporter – snapped around and the newsroom fell silent. Seven seconds later, all was sirens and motion and adrenaline and I was off to witness the new horror.
We reporters noted the brain’s marvelous ability to act as both filter and alarm, even when we were distracted, even when we were asleep. The cops, firefighters and EMTs noted it too. The uninitiated often can’t even make out the words coming from an emergency services scanner; we were attuned to subtle nuances and inflections. Although there was some rivalry and suspicion between cops and reporters, there was also some common ground. This was part of it.
Another piece of common ground was at the scene of the crime, fire or accident. If it was a false alarm, there was relief – even grumbling, if we’d had to get out of bed in the middle of the night. If the call was a real emergency, there was no relief; instead everyone performed their tasks with the briskness that comes from a thumping heart and a surge of blood in one’s ears. We were particularly brisk if there were corpses or blood or things I don’t care to write about, even 20 years after the fact.
We often did our work with an audience; neighbors and passersby came and gathered behind strands of yellow tape. I remember their faces – long and slack with shock as they watched smoke pour from beneath a neighbor’s eaves or a body being loaded onto a gurney. The bystanders were further shocked to see the first responders and press laughing as we snapped our pictures or measured the skid marks on the roadway.
No one ever confronted me, but it was easy to read their minds: “What kind of ghouls can walk around giggling at a time like this?” The answer: not ghouls at all, but professionals with a job to do. We laughed at the time because we could not cry or sink into catatonic shock. We did what we had to and got out of there. The same brain that sorted calls from the scanner provided us laughter instead of tears to release some of the emotions overwhelming us. We knew the people watching wouldn’t understand and so we’d try not to laugh, which just made us laugh more.
It would have been beneficial if we’d had some way to routinely process the anguish we experienced on the job, but few, if any people in those kind of jobs get that opportunity, or take it if it’s offered. There’s a bluff bravado endemic to those professions. That’s probably why there are high rates of depression, divorce, substance abuse and suicide among first responders and journalists who cover disasters and wars.
I was lucky. I was a police reporter for a few years and moved on. The heightened anxiety that comes with the blast of the siren is not long-lasting or immobilizing, but a siren blew this morning and I felt it. It was my brain again. Two decades after giving me tools to identify and work through all those crises, my brain will not let go of the shock and grief.
It made me think of the thousands of service men and women coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, who’ve had to endure combat-zone anxiety 24/7 for month after month and tour after tour. It was a visceral lesson in how deeply debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder will be for them. It was sobering to realize how many veterans will need treatment for PTSD and how few will receive it.
It made me realize that no matter how soon Congress pulls our troops out of Iraq, it won’t be soon enough and that this war will continue to be fought in the minds and dreams and bellies of Americans for decades to come.
© Mark Floegel, 2007