AUGUSTA — In 1984, an Auburn man put a 4-year-old girl in a hot oven and baked her to death because he thought she was evil.
Retired firefighter Richard Wurfel of Windham told legislators that of the 12 first responders, 11 had left their jobs at fire, police and emergency medical service within a year. They never forgot what they’d seen, Wurfel said.
Like many emergency personnel, Wurfel said it ought to be easier for first responders to get professional help.
When the session got underway months ago, Lewiston Democrat Jared Golden had only a few bills he really hoped would make it through the legislative grinder mill.
One of them, to help emergency responders diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, is now a law.
Gov. Paul LePage signed the bill this week after receiving bipartisan backing from his House and Senate colleagues.
Golden, the assistant House majority leader, said he was “very pleased” to see the measure successfully reach the statute books.
“Law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel put their lives on the line to protect and serve us and in doing so they are frequently confronted with tough experiences that many of us will never have to go through,” Golden said.
“These men and women always have our backs and we should have theirs,” he said.
The bill mandates a presumption that if an emergency worker is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, it is work-related and should be covered under workers’ compensation.
That doesn’t mean the workers automatically qualify, but it shifts the burden of proof onto their employers to show the PTSD is not work-related.
Paul Gaspar, executive director of the Maine Association of Police, told lawmakers that emergency responders such as police “are the first-line witnesses to the people and events that citizens can only turn away from when seen on the nightly news.”
“The brave men and women who commit to service in public safety see, hear, smell, touch these experiences and are still expected to react and contain the situation,” he said, leaving “an indelible and lifetime mark” in their memories.
He called the first responders “daily victims of the human condition” who are exposed to violence, death, loss and tragedy on a regular basis.
Gaspar said that one officer had to go through nearly two years of appeals before he attained a disability retirement.
In that time, he said, the officer had to provide testimony about his experiences repeatedly, each time reliving what he’d seen, breaking down each time.
“This is simply not the way to treat a person with many years of service to their community,” Gaspar said.
Richard Lumb of Wilton, an expert on the subject, told lawmakers that “the environment that public safety providers inhabit is fraught with danger, chaos, deviant behavior and numerous other physical, psychological, emotional and social harm issues.”
“They respond to events that others run from and then must engage to alleviate the encounter,” he said. “Over time, it erodes normalcy as the world within which they work is the harmful one, both to them and others who find themselves confined to the events.”
For too long, he said, “we have ignored the outstanding problems emerging from constant exposure to the negativity and that time should end with solutions that assist with education, prevention and treatment.”
Golden said, “We depend on these professionals to keep us safe and protect us from crime. At the very least, we should be able to recognize that these jobs can take a toll on the people who perform them, and make it easier for them to get the help they need.”
scollins@sunjournal.com
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