West Licking fire members return from Hurricane Ian deployment

Two members of West Licking Joint Fire District were recently deployed to Florida to help communities in the aftermath of hurricane Ian.

Deploying with the Ohio Associatiation of Professional Firefighters Peer Support Team through the International Association of Firefighters, Lt. Brian Palmer spent five days helping firefighters affected by the hurricane, conducting station visits to hard-hit areas.

EMS Coordinator Ginger Wortman deployed with National Disaster Medical Services, which is a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, serving as a registered nurse on a 40-person team of clinicians and support staff in North Port, Florida. Wortman said their team built a free-standing emergency rooms system in a parking lot, where they lived and provided care to the community. Partnering with North Port Fire and Rescue, Wortman said they received their 911 patients and helped keep their resources in their community.

"The devastation was pretty unreal. When you actually went to Sanibel Island or Fort Myers Beach or Pine Island, those areas - it was just devastation," Palmer said. "Pictures do not do the damage justice. You can look at pictures of everything you saw but it doesn't really sink in until you're right there. It's pretty unreal."

As part of the peer support team, Palmer said he worked with firemen who were struggling as they worked five to seven consecutive days without being with their families during the natural disaster.

"Just because they're working, doesn't mean their own personal issues in life just stop. They're still dealing with all of that, yet drug away from their family life for seven days," Palmer explained. "So we just worked with them, tried to work them through the process. (It was) a lot of listening. Some people just need to vent."

Through Wortman's deployment, she said they saw families up to a week after the storm hit, families who were still without power and under a boil advisory, so they were rationing water from local resources. Wortman said their team treated chainsaw injuries, injuries from stepping on nails, fire ant injuries and more. With a pharmacy on site, she said they were also able to administer the first dose of medications and fill their prescriptions because some local pharmacies hadn't yet opened.

"We blew a lot of bubbles because a lot of times the whole family comes in. There's no one there to leave the children at home, so if one of the family members needed treated, they would bring them all," Wortman explained. "So a lot of times, depending on how busy we were, a couple of us would take the kids and other siblings and entertain them for a little bit while the other family members were being treated. Just to kind of help them get abck to a new sense of normal."

This was Wortman's first deployment, and Palmer previously deployed to Surfside, Florida after a condominium collapsed in recent years.

Five years ago, Palmer said, he recognized some issues in one of his coworkers and the department got him in-patient help that day. They later learned his suicide note was in his desk drawer.

"...That sparked my interest in pursuing mental health. It is a real crisis a lot of people are experiencing," Palmer said, explaining he joined Licking County's Peer Support Team then joined at the state level.

Wortman said her deployment was something she's wanted to do for nearly 20 years.

"It's just something I've always wanted to be able to do. The idea of austere medicine - where you're literally going out in the parking lot and meeting people where they're at," she said. "To me, what a better way to meet the people and help the people in need is to meet them where they're at in their worst hour."

Wortman and Palmer expressed gratitude toward the department for its flexibility and support of their families while they were gone.

West Licking Joint Fire District Chief Todd Magers said Wortman and Palmer's deployments provides them experience they can bring back and could benefit their community.

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: West Licking fire members return from Hurrican Ian deployment