23-year fire service veteran, paramedic, and current Flint, Michigan Deputy Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons, who has served her community in every division within the fire service, discusses the daily challenges firefighters face, the toll it can take on their wellbeing and her commitment to transforming fire service culture in support of wellness, resilience, and diversity as well as the responsibility of leaders to model the changes they wish to encourage in their agencies and among their personnel.
The role prayer, gratitude, and thankfulness, along with maintaining a strong after-work life with family, friends, and community service, have played in helping her stay healthy and resilient throughout her career and the challenges and changes she has experienced as a female black firefighter in a profession made up almost entirely of white men when she began, and which remains one the least diverse public safety professions in 2021. Her role as a leader in listening to and supporting the firefighters and other staff in our agency, and how she proactively refers them to the professional support they need to work through challenging emotional and mental health challenges and occupational stress injuries.
The importance of leaders proactively identifying and making available the resources their staff, who have to transition between traumatic experiences and home life daily, need for resiliency and mental health support -- their coffee and conversation initiative allowing firefighters to process difficult and potentially traumatizing job experiences.
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Wellness, Resilience & Diversity in Fire Service with Deputy Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons Transcript
Fleet Maull:
Hi, welcome to another session on day six of the Global First Responder Resilience Summit. And I'm thrilled to be here today with Deputy Chief Kerry Edwards Clements. Welcome Deputy Chief.
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Fleet Maull:
Wow, it's so great to have you, and I appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to do this. So I want to share with our audience a little about your background and your long career as a first responder and then we'll get right into the conversation.
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
Okay, that sounds good.
Fleet Maull:
All right, so Deputy Chief, Deputy I'm sorry, Deputy Fire Chief Carrie Edwards Clemens is inspired daily by the strength and resilience of the Flint community and firefighters to stay strong and determined even in the face of many challenging circumstances. Hired into the fire department in 1999 as a trainee, Carrie has served the community and every division within the fire service. She earned her BA from the University of Michigan and an MBA in Public Administration from Columbia, Southern University. She is a grant writer for the Department of Security grants over 23 million. I think I'm going to hire you for my organization. Over the course of her career in Flint, she is the first female to achieve the rank of Deputy Chief in the 165-year history of the Flint Fire Department. Boy, that's something 165-year history. I'm in New England. Yeah, I'm used to talking about towns, and going back a couple of 100 years, I didn't realize Flint had that like long of a history. And is also the first female president of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters. Deputy Chief Edwards Clemens works hard to recognize the needs of her team members, to anticipate and secure resources to support them to be successful, equipment emotional and physical supports for their health and wellness, and keeping them connected to the mission, equipped with the tools needed to fulfill that mission. So again, welcome. It's great to have you here.
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
Thank you.
Fleet Maull:
So I can start off a little bit with your background. How did you end up moving into firefighting? What drew you to this profession?
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
So what? What led me to firefighting? It wasn't that I dreamt of being a firefighter. It was the circumstances and situation at the time, I was recently divorced and I had two small children, and I wanted to support my children without being on any type of assistance. I heard that the fire department was hiring, and I wanted to finish my education as well as become a paramedic, which they were supporting for their department members. And so it was an awesome opportunity. They would send me to school, I could become a paramedic, and they would pay for it and pay me while I do it. And so it was a win, win. And so that led me to the department, and that led me to the fire service.
Fleet Maull:
And you were also trained as a paramedic.
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
Yes, that's where my love for the department came. I was able to affect change in the lives of individuals who were, you know, experiencing some type of medical emergency. I could actually see medicine work, and that was the best thing about being a paramedic. It also introduced me to the community, because I was there with the members of the community, and I fell in love with the fire department because I was allowed to be in the community and helping others.
Fleet Maull:
Great. And I know that shines through and everything I've read about your work. So you know you've spent over two decades now in your career and with the Flint Fire Department. How have you sustained yourself over several decades of you know, a profession where there is a lot of stress and trauma exposure and so forth, how have you taken care of yourself and sustained your own health and well-being?
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
Prayer. Prayer works. I'll say that I do a lot of prayer, and I'm thankful for a lot of things. Every morning I get up, and I am very thankful. And so that's one of the things that has helped me maintain here in the fire service, with seeing trauma all the time, is that you have to have that after work life, and so it's family, friends organization, community organizations. I've always been busy helping others, because no matter how bad things are going, I always saw that someone had a need, and I was able to help. And so, of course, diet and exercise, it keeps my mind, and it keeps me, I have the ability to keep up, because this is a fast-paced profession, and it's just, I do a lot of health and wellness, mindfulness meditation. We have a program and a partnership here at the fire department with the local foundation, the Crim foundation here, and so that has helped me just maintain within this profession and what we see every day.
Fleet Maull:
You're doing all the right things, obviously, certainly, prayer works with human beings. We've known this forever, for 1000s of years, and an attitude of gratitude. We've also known that for a long time, but now we have the neuroscience to back it up, that leading a prayerful contemplative life, that having a sense of gratitude, also engaging in the community, all these things contribute to health and longevity and mind training and mindfulness, all these things that I mean, human beings have been doing this to take care of themselves for 1000s years, but it's, I think it's helpful to know now to have the brain science to back it up that this stuff really does work, and especially when we're faced with increasing challenges, it just becomes really, really, all the more important. So firefighters and other first responders are really at risk for some pretty serious, negative health outcomes, both physical and mental health outcomes, because of ongoing exposure to high stress, which can become chronic stress if it's not well managed, as well as both primary and secondary trauma. And the health statistics. I haven't looked at the health statistics for firefighters in particular. I'm very familiar with corrections, and they're really not good there and not so great among law enforcement either. And I would imagine there's, there's issues among the firefighter profession as well. So I'm curious about what you've seen that there really works, and how you support your people. You know, that old, you know, just suck it up and tough it out. Attitude has been proven to be a failure. And you know, you could say it works until it doesn't right, and at what cost, right? So what are you saying that's working, and what are you promoting in your department?
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
So, what we see that works is, first of all, that attitude that you just spoke of a lot of firefighters. They are the manly men and nothing bothers them so they don't want their brothers to see that something affects them. And so that's always been a challenge here and in most fire services, that it'll build and build and build until it explodes, and then something happens. And so here in the fire department, we, and in the organization that I'm a member of, we try to promote talking about it, recognizing when things are a lot of us turn to vices. It could be the drinking, it could be anything. We turn to other things, as opposed to saying, You know what this call really got to me, because this child was the same feel, shape, skin complexion as my child, and it really got to me. And so we're trying to encourage them to talk about it. We have ministers, we have support groups, and we have employee-assisted programs that provide counselors. However, I can't make them do it, and so I'm trying to create an atmosphere in which okay, it's okay because a lot of times they don't feel that it's okay. Because I'm a firefighter, I'm tough, I'm supposed to be able to take this, or I'm a first responder. I'm supposed I signed up for this, but I'm trying to create an atmosphere in which it's okay to talk about it. Sometimes the atmosphere created leads them to talk to me, and I tell them, Look, I will listen all day long, but you need someone that's this is their wheelhouse. They need to be educated and ready to and prepared to help you. All I can do is listen, and then I start shuffling out like parts. You know, I have this person, I have this organization, I have this person, I have this and then I try to get them in support and encourage them all they need so much encouraging to say it's not okay, it's okay to say it's not okay, but recognize this, and let me help find the support that you need. Because guess what? Your Duty Day is coming up. I need you back here in 48 hours. And so it's trying to create an atmosphere in which we recognize that certain feelings and emotions and things that happen, it's not okay with you, and we want to provide that and be that support that you need to get you to the next level of your healing because the veil will ring again.
Fleet Maull:
Absolutely. Well, it sounds like you're really taking a very proactive approach. And you know, I think first responders, I think it's important to recognize that, in general, first responders are very resilient people and there are some things about an attitude of mental toughness that can be helpful, but it's not the kind of brittle and denial and, you know, stuffing things down. It's, it's somehow we could combine the natural resilience that most first responders have with a certain quality of mental toughness, a willingness to, you know, take on the tough things with doing the inner work, the kind of work you're doing around diet and exercise and mindfulness training, and, you know, whatever people try to support, people reach out to for keeping themselves emotionally healthy or spiritually healthy and so forth. And we could bring those to, I think that would be the real sweet spot.
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
Yes.
Fleet Maull:
So you're a leader in your profession. You're the second in command there in the Flint Fire Department, and you're the president of the International Association of Firefighters. So from your perspective, what? What can leaders do? What are some of the most important things leaders can do to really support the line staff and the frontline staff in being more resilient, in overcoming some of the stigmas around mental health issues, so that they're getting the support they need when they need it, just, you know, taking care of themselves so they can have a long and healthy career in a long and healthy retirement.
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
And so as as leaders, I feel that that leaders should be there. For instance, I can't I can't tell you to be tough and do this job, and this shouldn't affect you. And I need you to go and then when something happens, not be there to provide that support that you need. So before anything happens as a leader, we must identify partners in things that work, things that have proven to work, and things that have proven to be helpful. A lot of times in the fire service, a lot of people don't think about post-traumatic stress in the fire department, okay, and so we're working here in the city of Flint. There are so many fires we fight, fire per capita. More fire per capita than similar-sized cities. And so we have the fires, we have the emergency calls, and the traumas daily. I mean, maybe every two or three hours, but it's, it's so often and that we don't really, we don't really think about it. It's like, this is just what we do. And then you at 8 o'clock, when the bell rings, we immediately send you home, even when people go to war and they come back from service, they have to get re-acclimated into society. They have to take that, that intentional moment or period of time where they have to transition from war to civilian life. The fire department, you're going through all this trauma, and you see all these things, and then at eight o'clock, when the bell rings, I leave. You just gotta go. You gotta go home, and you gotta deal with whatever is outside and you're still living those traumas inside. What we can do is recognize that, hey, when they're sticking around the station, don't hurry up and push them out. Give them a moment. We have something called coffee and conversation. It's like the ongoing shift and the off-going shift and oncoming shift and coffee and come, just sit and talk. Just give them a minute to have that intentional breath before they have to go home and deal with the honey-do list. I need you to do this because you said you were going to do this. I had the kids all day, so now it's your turn, not even considering that they have had shootings, stabbings, decapitations, and all these things go on. No, when the wife is waiting with those lists and those children immediately transition to you when you get off work, without regard to what you've experienced. And a lot of firefighters after the first couple of months or so, the family don't want to hear those stories anymore. They don't want to hear it. So you can't go home and talk about all the trauma and the gruesomeness of the job, and you can't talk about it because they're tired of hearing it. And so now where do you go? Because that's your best friend, your wife, your husband, your mate is your best friend. And so now you're limiting the conversation that we can have. You're limiting that. And so now where do they go? So we encourage them to stick around just for a minute. Just talk. Just just stick around for a minute while you're driving home. Take that intentional breath. We learned in our mindfulness class to recognize a color every time you stop at a light. Take a breath every time you see something, boom, wonderful color. And I would say the same thing about green and red and orange. What wonderful colors. Stop and take that breath so that when you arrive home, you have now taken that adrenaline down and you can face your life. Your civilian life? It's still civilian life because we're different here in the fire service.
Fleet Maull:
That's wonderful. And you pointed out something I think is really important, is that ride home, and the ride to work, for that matter, on the ride home, you know, we get, actually, we know, scientifically, we get kind of neurobiologically hooked into our work environment. It's a process of mirroring, and that's appropriate to be in that environment. It's helpful when it's more conscious, but it happens one way or the other, and if we don't unhook from that place when we get home, we're still hooked into work, and we bring that whole one by home with us. And that's not what our family's looking for from us, right? So be able to use that drive to get back into a neutral zone view, some simple breathing tools and things like that, recognizing coz into some positive things or something, you know, some tape jabs on that's an opportunity to really make that shift. And then when we're going to work, it's an opportunity to really prepare mindset, straight, right? And prepare like, you know, I don't know what I'm going to run into at work today, maybe an easy day, maybe a crazy day, but I wanted to be the best, so let me prepare myself, right, so that that commute time can be really valuable. Now, I know in some professions, the commute time's gone away because everybody's working from home, but I assume the firefighters don't have that option of working from home. You can't put out fires over. Zoom right.
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
And the wonderful thing is that the firefighters have been working throughout the pandemic, so we have to add that on to the trauma things going on, and the risk at the time when it first started, the risk of going into homes and possibly bringing the virus home to to the fire station, as well as your family and so on top of everything, the buyers, the traumas, the stabbings and all of this, and they have to deal with me, so we'll talk about that later. All of that, then they have to deal with the pandemic and being safe and personal protection, and then, you know, it's just so much that feels on top. And then we didn't even talk about what's going on at home. We have not even covered what's going on at home, and the employee assistive program that we have offers counseling to the families of the firefighters or the first responders. And so we're reaching out because they're going through as well. People love firefighters and first responders because of the service that they provide, however, is still, they have a responsibility to their families as well, and we want to make sure that that they're they're present to provide the support that the family needs because that is so important to mental health. Is that your family happy? Happy mate. I know they say, Happy wife, happy life, but I'm gonna say Happy mate, happy house. I don't even know how to rhyme it, but you understand what I'm saying.
Fleet Maull:
Absolutely, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, the pandemic, obviously it's a small thing. I mean, it has challenged all of us. It's so radically changed our lives and challenged all of us. Our first responders are challenged both professionally and with a whole nother layer of challenge and stress and trauma exposure to their job, and then they're also challenged personally like the rest of us taking care of their families and so forth. So you're absolutely right. I think we just need to, we all need to be so grateful for what our first responders do every day regardless, but in the midst of this pandemic, it's really doubly so. So female deputy chief and long history of Flint, Michigan's Fire Department, and you're the first president of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters. And you know that ended, and significant culture change, I'm sure, and I'm curious as to, you know, kind of what you witnessed over the two decades of your career, where you see things moving, how we've made progress, where we still have, you know, a long way to go, perhaps around gender, around race, around the stigmas that are attached to mental health and mental illness, or just seeking that kind of support, emotional support, as well as just, you know, the making wellness a priority in the profession. So I know that's a lot of territory. So you can start wherever you want with that, but I am just curious as to what you've seen from that perspective.
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
I've been a member of the International for over 20 years. The same amount of time that I came into the organization, Fire Service and the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters was birthed out of the 50s and 60s, the civil rights movement of the time, police brutality, a lot of things that we saw in 2020 was the reason that our organization was founded to support fire prevention in communities of color over mobility, we were brought into the fire service, but it was separate and it was not equal, and so we've always fought for equal rights within the fire service. And as a female, this is a male-dominated profession. So now you have an African American and I'm female, and it's a male-dominated profession. And so when I say I was hit by all sides, I was hit by all sides. What? What? What kept me going is that I did have the organization, and just because the members are African American firefighters does not mean that they're members of the organization, and so as a female coming into a male-dominated profession, that's where my family and my spiritual life and the counselor that I the counselor that I was seeing. So I'm not going to get on it, get on here and encourage people to see counselors and therapists. I had to do that as well in order to maintain it because I didn't know how to handle the hostility in the atmosphere in which I was joined. I didn't know how to handle that, and so I had to seek outside assistance in order to maintain inside the fire service because I didn't understand, how can I have this job? And it's like being at home. These are family. These are family. They've been here for years. They have their tradition, they have their rich history. But think about it, I wasn't there in your tradition. I wasn't there in your rich history 165 years ago. And so that made it difficult, because you have a lot of those same stigmas, and you have a lot of those things till this day, they feel that way. However, the equalizer, the great equalizer, is education. That's the equalizer for me because that's one thing that no one can stop or take away from. You can't. Can't take that. If you tell me that I have to have this, this, and this in order to move to the next level, I'm going to get this, this, and this and move me to the next level. Now if you don't, then I'm going to fight, and you got to explain why I can't have it and you can have it. And so I say education, training, upward mobility is the great equalizer because if they give you this is what you need in order to be successful, you do that, then why aren't you successful? And so we deal with a lot of rich traditions, and I cringe sometimes when people talk about a lot of my firefighters, they'll come in here and they'll say, this is how it's always been done. And I said, Well, I wasn't there, so I don't understand. Well, we did this, this, this, this, and this is our culture. Okay? What? I wasn't there, so I don't have this culture. So can we talk about how we can change this? Because this isn't right. And then let me explain why it's not right. A lot of people don't want to have the conversation with me. And I said, but let me tell you when I say the International was first out of the civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s. If you look at those pictures of fire departments, what do you see? You see the fire department with their holes on African American children. That's all we saw. That's what we saw. And so they have a lot of history. And I tell everybody, the fire department is the best well-kept secret. It is the best well-kept secret because you can send all your children to college. You can have all the houses you bought here and up north. You can advance your education. You can do all these great things. But a lot of people don't know about it. All they think we do is put the wet stuff on the red stuff. And it's more than that. It's it's more than that. You have to be trained. You have to know building construction. You have to know a lot of things. You don't just run in and put it out and other avenues, which I found a building inspector and code enforcement officer and so these are certifications that you can get, and you don't have to stay. You have to be at a certain level in order to affect change in the fire station. You can affect change by including when young firefighters come into the station, being all-inclusive, okay, training them, and showing them your truck. There are some things that you can do. Don't pick and choose somebody come in, because they're going to be responding with you. So on that level, you can be inclusive in order to make policy changes. Okay, advance up, and then you start submitting policy and changing the rich traditions that aren't supportive of my culture. You have to, you have to get you can't just talk about it and complain about it. Start writing policy. So what about this policy is not correct? What about this policy? Do you have a problem? We have a policy in the fire service of promoting your buddy, and they have a book out call from buddy to boss. And so I read the book, but I said, I don't have any buddies. I don't have any buddies. And so it kind of, I had to regroup. Okay, I have to how do you supervise people that were discriminatory, or they sent you hate mail, or they said they were going to kill your family, or they turned off your oxygen in a fire? Here's how you supervise those individuals. God is good. Thank you for this day. I am not going to I'm not going to do anything, but do good to you. The best I can do is treat you the way I want to be treated. I'm going to show you how to be all-inclusive. I'm going to show you how to affect change, and I'm going to get you the mental health that you need. I'm going to give you the support that you need because it could be something that was handed down from father to father to mother to mother. However, I'm different. I'm all-inclusive. We're going to get through this together. Because when you go into a fire or you go into a scene as a police officer, you don't care what color anybody is in the fire department, you can't see who's helping you. If it's not written on their jacket, you don't know who's helping you. We have to depend on each other to get the job done, and at the end of the day, we're all about supporting and helping the citizens the community. That's why, in the midst of every shift, I try to put some activity that involves children in the community, to take your mind off of the truck, because they only see us when there's an emergency. They only see us at the worst possible time that can exist. That's when they see us. So what I'm trying to do is say, okay, firefighters, okay, let's go out in the community and let's play with some children. Do you know how excited the kid gets when a fire truck comes down? Do you can you imagine and some of our community here in Flint as well, this is the only fun park or Cedar Point, if you know what that is, that they'll see? This is the only Kings Island or Disney World that they'll see is the firefighters coming so that they can spray water and just the light on their faces, just how they light up when they can put on a helmet. It's heavy. Oh, it's and it's it brings a firefighter joy. It breaks up the monotony of what they do, and the children, they run home and they tell their parents about it. And today we have fire prevention in the station. And I saw these firefighters come alive with these children.
Now they had a fire afterwards, but at that moment where they enjoyed and it took them away. And then they remembered one of the guy. His name is Lt. Justin Green. I'm gonna call his name. He just lit up because he remember when he was a kid and he met a firefighter and came into the station, and he just lit up because it was a community coming in, To me that was a win because I was able to just break it up. They had a fire shortly after, but I was able to break it up and offer him some joy, the joy of service because you're serving on one ear, but you serve on the other, and that's how that's how you maintain that emotional stability, is you got to break it up for them as a leader. I have a challenge I call a table tent, because they always playing something marbles. I haven't figured it out yet, but they always playing something in the station. I'll go get a trophy and put on a king paddle. And so now I got the stations playing together, trying to win against other stations. It's just little things that we can do as leaders to help support the group dynamic because this is our home. This is our family. You know, families fight, that's just what we do. But we also love, and we love hard. I tell people all the time, I can talk about my sister all day, but you can't. I can talk about these firefighters all day, but I'm not gonna let you do it. And that's how we that's how we love, that's how we support and so as a leader, if we encourage that, just the little things everybody thinks is, the big things is, I gotta get you to a couch. It's so hard to get our first responders to a couch because they don't want anybody to know that they have a need or that they need to see someone. I'm just not going to, but I'll handle it. Everybody thinks they can handle it. Well, I'll be the first to raise my hand. I can't handle it. I need to talk. And so it's one of those things we provide a little bit, just a little bit, and then maybe after they have this interaction, this group dynamics, and we're working together as a team. I can say, Hey, how are you doing? You know, let me slip you this card. Okay, you know what you need to breathe. When they come in my office, they are nervous. I tell them, no, stop-breathe. I didn't take you over there to the conference room. I brought you to my office. This is the office of peace. So I got them thinking, I'm here to help, and I am. And so maintaining that mindfulness and breaking all these stigmas is it didn't happen overnight. 165-year history is not going to resolve overnight. We have to work at it every day, a little step every day, and I work at it every day to break those stigmas, those traditions. Some of the traditions are awesome, so I'm not going to tell you that some of the traditions that we do are awesome, but there are also some that are so horrible okay, that we have to work toward breaking that. And some of these guys weren't even around, and they still tried to do these things. Okay, stop it. It's not accepted. We can do other things, let's make our own traditions. Let's make our own history. Let's rewrite some stuff, and we can do that. I'm sorry. You know, I love to talk.
Fleet Maull:
I'm getting that impression! Well, talking is really healthy, to really get all that out there and communicate. And it's a joy listening to you. You've already jumped into my next question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway, but before I just want to comment that I just love the way that you so clearly articulated that if we want change, we have to put ourselves in a position to be an agent of change. To put yourself in a position to rewrite policy, to do what you need to do to get there. When they have no excuse but to open that door anymore, get inside, and start making the changes, right? The other part of what I was hearing from you is that famous statement from Gandhi, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Really model that change. You're not coming at people in an aggressive way, you're coming a them with love, acceptance, and support. You're really being your values. I think those two messages are very powerful for those of us who want to effect change in whatever aspect of our society. First, do the work to position ourselves to be change makers, and then be the change that we want to see, and model the change that we want to see. I think that is so powerful. So you talked about the community activities, and engaging with the children, both out in the community & bringing them to the firehouse. That is just such a win-win obviously. And I know you're very engaged in various other community activities. I'm curious even in terms of wellness; I have a new friend who is one of the presenters on our summit, and he has an organization called Cities for Peace. And he's bringing together first responders, law enforcement, and community members and working in some large cities, LA, and some other cities. They're currently getting law enforcement and citizens to work together. He had this vision of our first responders being in the community actually teaching wellness. Teaching people about breathing and mindfulness and other things. And somehow we could all learn to be resilient together. I'm curious about your vision of that; instead of doing it in our own little silo, could first responders and fire professionals in particular come together in the community and learn how to be resilient together?
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
You know, that's an awesome, awesome idea. And it is one that will work. I mean, community and first responders, together: we are actually doing that here, it's not called that. But they came into the fire station to introduce mindfulness to our firefighters, and we also have it now at our neighborhood association, where they have the first five or ten
minutes. The same organization does a mindfulness at the start of their meeting. And so I see it catching on. I see it catching on. I also see that the meeting ran better after they did it. So I know this is all connected somehow, but the meeting ran better. And also, with that being said, after we did our mindfulness training, I did have a couple firefighters come forward and say, You know what, I want to talk about my story. We have 12 new recruits that started, and I had two firefighters come in and say, I want to talk to them about my story. And I know the challenge, because I'm the one that they picked to talk to when they don't want to go anywhere else. And I'm I'm saying, This is not my lane, but I'm going to listen. Then when you're done, I'm going to, I'm going to give you some more information, but I always take that moment to listen. But just those two guys coming for saying that they wanted to talk to these recruits so they don't fall down the same path or hold that that they did is possible. And I'm reminded of a story about a path, and it was an old story, and I don't remember the entire story, but they were saying he described his life in three phases. He said one day he was walking down the street, he fell in a hole, and it took him a long time to get out of that home. Then he said he was walking down the street, the street, you saw the home, tried to go around the hole, and you still fell in the hole. But it took him less time to get out. And then the third phase was that he took another streak, and that really, it really hit home for me, because when the young man was talking to me this morning, she kind of said that. He kind of talked about telling the firefighters how he went to vices, and I'll just call them vices, you know, a lot of different things that were conducive to a healthy lifestyle. He did all of that. And so he was saying, and then he did this, thinking that, okay, I don't do that anymore, but this is better on my body or for me than that. And then now he's on a totally different path, and so he was going to bring that around, and he's sharing his story in the community, just him when he goes somewhere, he just talks and to me, that's the biggest testimony that anyone can have. I try to tell my organization, because we have chapters across the country, and I try to we're all about fire prevention and education activities in the community, and firefighter mental health is so such a large, important part of the message that we need to send to our first responders. We have had more firefighter suicide than than I care. We have one here, and we're still not over, and that was two years ago. We're still not over. We because when, when we when the young man passed away, he took his life. We announced it, and then there was a fire. We announced that he had taken his life. We didn't have time to do anything there was a fire. So what I had to do was to call the out counties and say, Hey, we got, you know, we got mutual aid. We need you guys to man our stations until we can get a hold on what just happened and the community, because it was a suicide. Certain things can't happen, supposedly, but we have to do it all ourselves if we want anything to happen. The community saw our need and came together. Other fire departments saw our need and came together, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. And so the community part of what we do is so important, because they're the ones that they are salary, that's just stop their sleep. Okay, they're the ones that they are salad. But it's more than that. To a to a first responder, you have to have a heart for you have to have a heart for certain service. Everybody can't see a decapitation or or intestines and all that and and come back to work the next day, and then I'm asking you to go out and play with some kids, and they do it. You have to have a heart for that. Even on their days off, we have fire prevention week, they come up to help, because now I got it in there. It's programmed that, hey, his kids gonna be at a station. Let's go play program in the community. We are the community, our fire stations, our police stations are located where in the community, we are part of the community, and we all work together for that goal, service to others, but we have to be mentally prepared and able to do that, and so that's where the mindfulness and the meditation and and just being thankful. I'm so thankful to be here, just being thankful for the small things, my eyes, my hands, my feet. I'm thankful for the breath that I take. I'm just thankful because it could be something different and I'm able to share. Hopefully it catches on. I hope I'm I hope that I am like a match. That with my thankfulness, you can wake up and say, oh, you know what? I'm thankful too. I got hands and eyes to see I can get around and you know, I want to be infectious. I want to I want to catch on okay. I want it's okay to not be okay and to seek help. I want that to catch on, but I'm going to keep preaching it. No, preaches not the word. I'm going to keep saying it until it catches on. Because it's so important that when you're not okay, that you have the resources, and the resources come from our community.
Fleet Maull:
Well, it's just that's so inspiring. And you know, you're not just saying that, you're also modeling, and that's what's so important. So you know, today, this summit is about leading healthy change in public safety. And so I'm curious what you know, if you're up in front of a big conference full of public safety leaders, both at the policy level the operations level, you know what your core message might be, what do you think some of the priorities are today for our overall society to become healthier and safer, and for the public safety profession to be healthier and safer. And what do you think are some of the key priorities all move forward together? So one major key is awareness.
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
Take the training as a leader, as a first responder on every level. Take the training so that you are aware when something's not right, okay? Because awareness is key. If I can get you before you explode. Then I make him, you know, I may can calm that down. And it's so important, because the training is really good, but it also helps you become more aware of not just yourself, because I can calm myself down, okay? And so the training has enabled me to calm myself down, but I can recognize I can look in one of my firefighters eyes and say, Oh no, call me, text me, meet me outside. I need to find out what's going on. So not just being self aware, but being aware of the ones that you work with is so important, and so make sure you have that relationship where, if you see something, say something, get to them before they explode. It's so important that we encourage them that sometimes it's not okay and it's okay to not be okay. It's okay to not be okay, but let me help you so that you can be okay to return to work another day. It's very important that we come together during the time, while we just went through the 20th anniversary of 911, and I 20 years, we just come to the 20th anniversary, and we pay tribute to the first responders. We have a chapter a young lady named Regina Wilson that that was her crew in New York. And so we got a chance to pay tribute and appreciate all that the first responders had done the ones that lost their lives. But we also recognized that it was a lot of people in that building, community members that stepped up. They stepped up and they put their on that day, everybody was a first responder. On that day, everybody was a first responder because people stepped up. There were heroes that we'll never hear about. There were people that got people out of the building, and they were going back to get some more people that we'll never hear about, because we hear about the first responders, because they were on duty, the EMS workers, the police officers and the firefighters, but there were so many community members that stepped up that day that we'll never know, and they were, at that moment, first responders. They responded. I'm asking the community and our firefighters, police officers, our leaders, to step up and be that family that we were 911 we were a family. Everybody stepped up. Everybody cared about the well being of others, and that's how we bring this all together, caring about the well being of all God's children, and that's how we can make a difference here. That's how we can make a difference in our community and in our first responder community.
Fleet Maull:
Wow. Deputy Chief Carrie Edwards Clemens, such an inspiring message and and truly a remarkable public safety leader, president of Vice President, I'm sorry, give you a demotion here, president of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters. It's just been a joy to have this conversation with you today. So inspiring and, and I am just really so inspired to try to get this very positive message out to our first responder community and to the rest of our community, because I think you're really modeling and talking about what we all need to do to come together, and then just what you said of, you know, those moments like 911 when we were one family, how to find our way back to that without, you know, I have to have another tragedy to do so, but that's really, I think, what we all need to be called toward. So thank you so much.
Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons:
Thank you for this opportunity, and I really appreciate just being able to talk about my story, and what I see. Talking is very therapeutic. And so you have done awesome for me today because I was able to share. So thank you for that.
Fleet Maull:
Thank you.
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