PRESS RELEASE
To: Newsroom
For Immediate Release
Contact: Brian A. Crawford, Public Information Officer
Phone: 673-6652, cell: 455-2609, page: 675-2137

Emergency Workers Undergo Stress Debriefing Following Shooting

Shreveport firefighters and paramedics are exposed to stressful emergency scenes that are often unpleasant and unsightly on a daily basis . . .

It is the out of the ordinary incident, such as yesterday’s triple shooting involving two small children, that causes even the strongest emergency worker to possibly suffer aftereffects. Because of this, the Shreveport Fire Department provides members who are exposed to such incidents a chance of de-stressing soon after the incident. Following yesterday’s tragic events in Southeast Shreveport, fire department members who responded to the Broadmoor Terrace incident attended a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) before heading home.

The Shreveport Fire Department has been involved with Critical Incident Stress Management since 1988. In that time, the team has been called upon hundreds of times to provide debriefings, defusing, and crisis interventions both locally and nationally. Among these are line-of-duty deaths, death/injury to children, mass casualty incidents, and various traumatic incidents. The team has also been the primary CISD for large scale events included the Oklahoma City bombing, Hurricane Andrew, and several area tornado disasters.
Critical Incident Stress can be most simply defined as s syndrome in which an emergency service worker responds to serious events, and is unable to cope with what he or she experiences at the scene, hours, days, or even weeks later. An emergency worker, no matter how directly involved, no matter what age, regardless of the level of experience, can suffer. In fact, 87% of all police, firefighters, emergency nurses, and doctors suffer from the effects of Critical Incident Stress during their careers. ###