Rising from the ashes

The smoke was already thick when Robert Grosch awoke at 5 a.m. on Oct. 16, 1999. He would remember what came next for the rest of his life.

Preparing for the worst, Grosch and his wife, Barbara, started packing their car with things from their home in Palo Cedro, east of Redding. The next thing they knew, a sheriff’s deputy was pounding on the front door: “Get out, now!” he said.

They quickly snatched the family photo albums, which contained precious memories, and Barbara even grabbed artwork from their walls.

They didn’t know it at the time, but it’d be more than a year before they could go home again—and there wouldn’t be anything else of theirs remaining. The Jones Fire destroyed 174 homes and killed one firefighter as it torched neighborhoods from Lake Shasta to the Redding Municipal Airport.

Grosch, a retired therapist, often has a chance to share his story in the hopes of helping others. As an American Red Cross volunteer, he’s managed the mental health response at evacuation centers at many locations, most recently in Redding to help families who fled from the Carr Fire. Scorching more than 163,000 acres, that blaze quickly escalated to the sixth most destructive fire in state history since igniting July 23, only at 45 percent containment as of Monday (Aug. 6).

The Grosches were fortunate because they weren’t displaced for long: Unlike some other residents, they had insurance that covered the rebuilding of their home—where they still live today—and rental expenses.

But the event was still traumatic. The couple would check in with each other at the end of the day: On a scale from 1 (the day of the fire) to 100 (the day before), where are you? It helped them recognize when they felt they were making progress, and when they needed extra help from one another on tougher days.

Four days after the evacuation, Grosch returned to his practice to regain a sense of control over his life. Meanwhile, Barbara rehung their old decorations in their rental.

“There’s comfort, when you have this kind of tragedy, in reconnecting with anything that’s familiar,” Grosch said. “As soon as she hung the pictures [and artwork] on the wall, it began to feel like home again.”

Instead of sitting around waiting for the next episode of Jeopardy, Grosch wanted to do something meaningful in his retirement. That’s why, for the past 12 years, he has served as a director of mental health operations at evacuation centers across the U.S., assisting on every type of natural disaster, including 2008’s Hurricane Ike, Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and 2011’s Tuscaloosa-Birmingham tornado.

“My loss of my home, if anything, became a gift of better understanding,” he told the CN&R by phone from Redding. “When people feel overwhelmed and say, ‘I feel my life has changed dramatically and will never get back to normal,’ I can say, ‘Well, let me share that I’ve been there, and it can get back to normal.’”

After surviving a disaster like the Carr Fire, many people will experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Data from the survivors of the 2003 California Firestorm show that one-third screened positive for depression three months later and almost one-fourth screened positive for PTSD, according to a 2007 study published in the journal Psychiatric Services.

Common symptoms of PTSD listed by therapists include sleeplessness, nightmares, intrusive thoughts or flashbacks (i.e., running or driving through flames), inability to concentrate or make decisions, confused mental states, panic attacks, physical pain (i.e., headaches, nausea, chest pain), depression, anxiety and social withdrawal.

Durham-based therapist Pennisue Hignell, who counsels fire survivors, describes PTSD as the brain failing to adapt to trauma. Panic attacks are often an activation of the trauma memory network—“like a splinter in the brain starts coming out.”

She added: “The brain normally adapts when an event happens,” processing what has occurred when the body enters REM sleep, so the person is better equipped to face that particular event in the future. “When there’s a significant trauma, the brain is not able to do that.”

For a while, Grosch said, some people may try to avoid certain smells or sights that can trigger a negative reaction, like a fireplace or the smell of smoke.

“They’ll be happy as can be, bouncing their grandkids on their lap, and all the sudden their body twitches as they remember the event,” he added.

If any of these symptoms persist or get worse, it’s advisable to see a therapist, Grosch said. Some people—children especially—may not experience symptoms until much later.

Hignell said some people are more resilient than others, or may have certain support systems—such as loving relationships or spirituality—that help them adapt to trauma. Others have a much harder time.

Hignell volunteers with the Northern California Trauma Recovery Network, a group of therapists offering an alternative technique for victims of trauma, called eye movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR). The method “imitates the natural process of the brain to deal with trauma,” she said. In general, patients make left-right eye movements while focusing on aspects of a disturbing memory.

Such an approach, which doesn’t require extensive rehashing, can be effective, she said, as it can be tough to convince disaster victims to seek out therapy.

“Their brain is naturally trying to avoid any remembrance of the events,” Hignell said. “People don’t want, lots of times, to get into long-term therapy … [To] have to talk about it and relive it, sometimes that makes them more traumatized.”