Voice from the past

Monday night, an e-mail turned up in my inbox, and last night, the telephone rang and it was Dave Hennessey. Dave was a firefighter who joined the Wolfville fire department at the same time I did, and features fairly prominently in the first part of Burning Down the House. He has a knack for finding me, and bringing me up to speed on a whole bunch of things. But last night, I was surprised to learn that my old department played a critical role in bringing critical stress debriefing to Nova Scotia fire departments - and that one of the fire captains I knew well, Sandy Fraser, had gone on to work with departments all over the province to help deal with traumatic fires and accidents. There are plenty of fire departments that now are well on top of the issue: as part of its training program, for example, Riverview, New Brunswick now has family members of prospective first responders come in for preliminary courses, too. As for Wolfville and critical stress debriefing, I'm glad to hear one of my old departments has played such a prominent role.